Last week nearly 10,000 people invaded the French Quarter of New Orleans for a three-day conference. It wasn’t a convention of Mardi Gras mask-makers, a congregation of Bourbon Street miscreants, or an assembly of Hustler devotees. No, this was the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. This is a collective of the world’s religious scholars. SBL is the largest society of biblical scholars on the planet. The program of lectures and meetings is the size of a phone book for a mid-sized city. Too many choices! So many great biblical scholars were there: N. T. Wright, Jon Dominic Crossan, D. A. Carson, Bart Ehrman, Stanley Porter, Frederick Danker, Alan Culpepper, Craig Evans, Robert Stein, Joel Marcus, April Deconick, Elaine Pagels, John Kloppenborg, R. B. Hays, Peter Enns, Buist Fanning, Harold Attridge, Luke Timothy Johnson, Peter Davids, Craig Keener, Ben Witherington, Rikki Watts, Robert Gundry, Emanuel Tov, Walter Brueggemann, Eric Myers, Eugene Boring, J. K. Elliott—that’s just a small sampling of the names. Liberals and evangelicals, theists and atheists, those who are open and those who are hostile to the Christian faith—all were there.
Overall, the Society of Biblical Literature is comprised of professors who teach religion, humanities, biblical studies, history, ethics, English literature, and theology at virtually all the schools in the nation that offer such subjects. Not just the United States, but a multitude of other countries are represented (although because of the long distances and short conference, many scholars did not come). Private schools, public schools, elite schools, and unknown schools—all were represented. Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Tübingen, Chicago, Duke, Dallas Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Fuller Seminary, Princeton, Yale, Biola, Claremont, Manchester, Durham, St Andrews, Westminster Seminary, Wheaton, Gordon-Conwell, Emory, TCU’s Brite Divinity School, SMU, University of Texas, Northwestern University, Rice, Brandeis, London School of Theology, Münster University, Notre Dame, community colleges, even unaccredited schools were represented.
As remarkable as it may sound, most biblical scholars are not Christians. I don’t know the exact numbers, but my guess is that between 60% and 80% of the members of SBL do not believe that Jesus’ death paid for our sins, or that he was bodily raised from the dead. The post-lecture discussions are often spirited, and occasionally get downright nasty.
The annual SBL conference is a place where young scholars can present their papers, meet senior scholars, and talk to publishers about book projects. Great opportunities are at SBL! Master’s students meet with professors whom they’d like to study with for their PhDs. They make appointments, go out for coffee, or just happen to bump into them at the conference.
Now, what I’ve said about SBL so far sounds like an exciting, positive event in which a good exchange of ideas occurs, and people grapple with what the Bible is all about. To a degree that is true, but a darker underbelly to the conference, never far from the surface, shows up often enough. It has to do with the posture of many liberal scholars toward evangelicals.
One of my interns, a very bright student who is preparing for doctoral studies, met with one scholar to discuss the possibility of studying under him for his doctorate. The scholar was cordial, friendly, and a fine Christian man. He encouraged James to pursue the doctorate at his non-confessional school in the UK. (We have found the UK schools to be far more open to evangelical students, since they are more concerned that a student make a plausible defense of his views than that he or she holds the party line.) Later, James met a world-class scholar of early Christian literature and engaged him in conversation. James demonstrated deep awareness of the professor’s field, asking intelligent questions and showing great interest in the subject. Then, the professor asked him where he was earning his master’s degree. “Dallas Seminary” was the response. The conversation immediately went south. The scholar no longer was interested in this young man. James was, to this professor, an evangelical and therefore a poorly educated Neanderthal, a narrow-minded bigot, an uncouth doctrinaire neophyte—or worse.
This was no isolated case. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. There is an assumption that students from an evangelical school—especially a dispensational school—only get a second-class education and are blissfully ignorant of the historical-critical issues of biblical scholarship. Many of the mainline liberal schools routinely reject applications to their doctoral programs from evangelical students who are more qualified than their liberal counterparts—solely because they’re evangelicals. And Dallas Seminary students especially have a tough time getting into primo institutes because of the stigma of coming from, yes, I’ll say it again—a dispensational school. One of my interns was earning his second master’s degree at a mainline school, even taking doctoral courses. He was head and shoulders above most of the doctoral students there. But when he applied for the PhD at the same school, he was rejected. His Dallas Seminary degree eliminated him.
The prejudice runs deep—almost as deep as the ignorance. Yes, Dallas Seminary is a dispensational school. But it’s not your father’s dispensational school. Progressive dispensationalism, engineered by Darrell Bock, Craig Blaising, et alii, about twenty-five years ago has tied a dispensational hermeneutic to a more nuanced appreciation of the biblical covenants. Gone are the days of seeing two New Covenants, of distinguishing the ‘kingdom of God’ from the ‘kingdom of heaven’ in Matthew, and of seeing eschatology as not-yet but not already. The differences between other hermeneutical systems and the dispensationalism of today are not nearly as great as they used to be. But much of liberal scholarship has simply not kept up. There is widespread ignorance about what dispensationalists believe along with what seems to be an unwillingness to find out.
Further, the great irony is that so many liberal scholars don’t even realize that Dallas Seminary not only has only one unit on dispensationalism, but it has never required its students to adhere to this system of interpretation. So much more could be said here; I would simply invite those who are interested in learning more to read Progressive Dispensationalism by Bock and Blaising.
I can speak to issues in New Testament studies at Dallas Seminary, which I know best. Our NT faculty have degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Sheffield, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Dallas Seminary, and Glasgow. We teach a historical-critical method of interpretation, tempered by our presuppositions that the universe is not a closed-system but one in which God has been active. Our students are trained extensively in exegesis of the New and Old Testament, are conversant with the secondary literature, and are able to interact with various viewpoints. Something like 80% of our doctoral dissertations are now getting published—and in prestigious, world-class series no less. (The same, by the way, is true of our master’s students who earn their doctorates elsewhere.) When Harold Hoehner was alive, there were three members in the department who were members of the prestigious Society of New Testament Studies. Now, down to two, we are anticipating several others getting voted in, in due time.
What irritates me is that so many so-called liberal scholars have already predetermined that DTS students get an unacceptable education. They are closed-minded themselves, thinking they know what is taught at the seminary. A genuine liberal used to be someone who was open to all the evidence and examined all the plausible viewpoints. Now, “liberal” has become a hollow term, invested only with the relic of yesteryear’s justifiably proud designation. Today, all too often, “liberal” means no more than left-wing fundamentalist, for the prejudices that guide a liberal’s viewpoints are not to be tampered with, not to be challenged. Doors have been shut in the students’ faces, opportunities denied. Spending $100 on an application is too frequently a waste of time and money, since applications coming from DTS students are routinely chucked into the round file.
If we’re to judge liberal vs. conservative by one’s method, then the new liberal is the evangelical and neo-evangelical who is willing to engage the evidence, examine all sides, and wrestle with the primary data through the various prisms of secondary literature. He’s open. I tell my students every year, “I will respect you far more if you pursue truth and change your views than if you protect your presuppositions and don’t.” And they know my mantra, “Go where the evidence leads.” Sadly, some of the most brilliant scholars in biblical studies have become radically intolerant of conservatives. When conservative professors have that same attitude, they’re usually afraid of having their ideas challenged because they’re insecure in their beliefs. And they’re labeled as fundamentalists. When many “liberal” scholars are just as intolerant, what should we call them?
583 replies to "Frustrations from the Front: The Myth of Theological Liberalism"
I haven’t read all the comments on this thread, but in the event that anyone is interested in reading about the merits of Historical-Criticism, this article by Professor Linneman, a student of Rudolf Bultmann, is interesting. Click here.
CD,
I guess I’m not sure where you are coming from either. I think when we talk about historical we may be talking about different time periods. It seems to me the Early Church was concerned with more than just Baptism (hence the Nicene Creed) and that at the same time some of the doctrines you mention, such as Mariology (I believe the assumption of Mary wasn’t made a part of formal doctrine until the 20th Century), were later developments that may have some basis in the Early Church, but were certainly not universally held, or considered central doctrines by most (Tertullian for instance denied the perpetual virginity of Mary, while Origen accepted it).
CD,
Also I don’t Dan is saying and I’m certainly not saying that there aren’t Christian groups both historical and current which have a list of essential beliefs (much) more extensive then those Dan listed. So if you think Baptism should be on that list then by all means put it there and we can argue about it later and elsewhere (as the merits of baptism would be far off topic for this post). Adding something to the list would not serve to negate, or make non-essential those things already on the list. Instead we need proof for something like the Early Church didn’t believe that Jesus was divine, or didn’t believe in his bodily resurrection. In other words disproving the idea of historical Christianity is going to require disproving the items on Dan’s list as beliefs on the Early Church, not arguing that there should be others on the list that aren’t there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yoy84BLVDY – Have you seen this respnse to your blog article on this issue?
CD:
The case for the new school and Bauer is not as strong as you suggest. Everyone knows there was diversity in the early church. That is not debated, although you claimed I did not recognize the fact in my Missing Gospels. The difference in Jewish versus Gentile believers in their practice shows as much. But there is much in Bauer that is questionable. Not his important and significant breakthroughs in terms of method that all recognize and I praised in the book, but the way he applied the data, which all recognize had problems (even his fans who I quote making the point). In Missing Gospels I asked when flawed results in terms of content (not method) should be seen as possibly related to a flawed theory. I made the point that “Gnostic” texts cannot make a solid a claim to an early pedigree as proto-orthodox texts because of their doctrine of God and creation. This raises questions about those who wish to treat all these sources as equally valuable in discussing the earliest Christianity.
How does that relate to this post topic? Because when you aver that all the evangelical treatments on the new school are terrible (and misrepresent those works in summary), it may reflect the bias problem Dan W raises. Maybe what the remarks reflect is a “party line” not unlike what some criticize on the other side (an irony, perhaps?). Please note the sources I used are those standard to these discussions and that an expert like Martin Hengel spoke well of the book. So some at DTS (and other evangelical schools) are interacting on topics and in terms all use and apply. Because we read the data differently and synthesize it differently does not disqualify us simply because our result is more conservative than the take of others.
This whole discussion is giving me a new appreciation for Harvey Cox and Karen Armstrong.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/11/08/why_fundamentalism_will_fail/?page=full
I am not a “full” preterist, but for the eschatalogical views still held by the DTS, it’s really no wonder many hold it’s graduates as pathetically under-educated. Consider these issues raised by Gary DeMar against dispensationalism’s double standards:
“My primary problem with the Preterist view,” Robert Heidler, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary writes, “is that it is a blatant example of replacement theology.” If you want to end a debate over eschatology when you can’t make a cogent biblical case for your position, just charge your opponent with holding to replacement theology. What is “replacement theology,” sometimes called “supersessionism”?
Here’s a typical dispensational definition:
Replacement Theology: a theological perspective that teaches that the Jews have been rejected by God and are no longer God’s Chosen People. Those who hold to this view disavow any ethnic future for the Jewish people in connection with the biblical covenants, believing that their spiritual destiny is either to perish or become a part of the new religion that superseded Judaism (whether Christianity or Islam).[1]
“Replacement theology” is dispensationalism’s trump card in any debate over eschatology because it implies anti-semitism. Hal Lindsey attempted to pull this card from the bottom of the deck in his poorly researched book The Road to Holocaust.[2] He wove an innovative tale implying that anyone who is not a dispensationalist carries the seeds of anti-semitism within his or her prophetic system. This would mean that every Christian prior to 1830 would have been theologically anti-semitic.
As Peter Leithart and I point our booklet The Legacy of Hatred Continues,[3] it’s dispensationalists who hold to a form of replacement theology since they believe that Israel does not have any prophetic significance this side of the rapture! Prior to the rapture, in terms of dispensational logic, the Church has replaced Israel. This is unquestionably true since God’s prophetic plan for Israel has been postponed until the prophetic time clock starts ticking again at the beginning of Daniel’s 70th week which starts only after the Church is taken to heaven in the so-called rapture. Until then, God is dealing redemptively with the Church. Am I making this up? Consider the following by dispensationalist E. Schuyler English:
An intercalary [inserted into the calendar ] period of history, after Christ’s death and resurrection and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, has intervened. This is the present age, the Church age. . . . During this time God has not been dealing with Israel nationally, for they have been blinded concerning God’s mercy in Christ. . . . However, God will again deal with Israel as a nation. This will be in Daniel’s seventieth week, a seven-year period yet to come.[4] (E. Schuyler English, dispensationalist)
According to Schuyler and every other dispensationalist, the Church has…
The claim that dispensationalism has gone through some significant metamorphasis echos Rome’s claim that Vat II initiated a great change for that apostate church.
According to Schuyler and every other dispensationalist, the Church has replaced Israel until the rapture. The unfulfilled promises made to Israel are not fulfilled until after the Church is taken off the earth. Thomas Ice, one of dispensationalism’s popular writers, admits that the Church replaces Israel this side of the rapture:
“We dispensationalists believe that the church has superseded Israel during the current church age, but God has a future time in which He will restore national Israel ‘as the institution for the administration of divine blessings to the world.’”
It’s quite evident, therefore, that dispensationalists, using their own words, believe that prior to the rapture, the Church has replaced Israel, and this replacement has been going on for nearly 2000 years. Israel will only get its preeminent position back for only 1000 years during the dispensationalists’ version of the millennium.
Dispensationalists will argue that it’s during the seven-year post-rapture period that the Jews return to their preeminent position. This can’t be true, since dispensationalists teach that it’s during the second half of the seven year period that, according to Charles Ryrie, will undergo “the worst bloodbath in Jewish history.” John Walvoord follows a similar line of argument: “Israel is destined to have a particular time of suffering which will eclipse any thing that it has known in the past. . . . [T]he people of Israel . . . are placing themselves within the vortex of this future whirlwind which will destroy the majority of those living in the land of Palestine.” Arnold Fruchtenbaum states that during the Great Tribulation “Israel will suffer tremendous persecution (Matthew 24:15–28; Revelation 12:1–17). As a result of this persecution of the Jewish people, two-thirds are going to be killed.”
During the time when Israel seems to be at peace with the world, she is really under the domination of the antichrist who will turn on her at the mid-point in the seven-year period. Israel waits more than 2000 years for the promises finally to be fulfilled, and before it happens, two-thirds of them are wiped out. Those who are charged with holding a “replacement theology viewpoint” believe in no inevitable future Jewish bloodbath. …
Before critics of replacement theology like Robert Heidler throw stones, they need to take a look at their own prophetic system and see its many lapses in history, biblical interpretation, theology and logic.
Living faith,
Thanks for the comments, but this is not really a post about defending dispensationalism. Feel free to comment on DTS’s view of dispensationalism and its relationship to liberal scholarship.
Darrell Bock —
First off let me commend you for responding.
Lets give an example. In chapter 4 of your book you address the Gospel of Thomas dating issue and cite Pagels as your representative. Your present her as making two arguments:
1) similarity of theology between Q and Thomas
2) similarity of structure between Q and Thomas
However neither of those arguments are meaningful Pagels, they predate her. What is more specific to Pagels is the argument that:
the Book of John is a response to the book/theology of ThomasNow it follow from this that Thomas must predate John, but her thesis is how the theology of John (one baptism) triumphed over the theology of Thomas and why.
Dr. Bock this is a key issue. You skip the core thesis of the book you are responding to in your refutation, without even mentioning it is the core thesis. I’m not being critical of your scholarship because you arrive at different conclusions, I’m being critical because your book reads like you never read the work you are claiming to be responding to.
Then if I go to your “The Nature of God and Creation Part 2” you talk a lot about the Pauline core with gospels as endorsing the position of a good creator. You never mention the man, Marcion, who invented the idea of merging the Pauline with a gospel to form a “new testament” believed in lower creator God and a higher redeemer God. At the same time you contrast this with a hodge podge of different later texts. To argue that:
1) Writings hostile to the creator God are late
2) The NT (earlier writings) are pro Yahweh
Moreover you clearly attribute Jewish to be non rejecting of the creator God.
a) There is a wealth of Jewish literature hostile to Yahweh and I think the New School has done an excellent job of showing that Christian Gnosticism emerged from Jewish Gnosticism. At the very least you needed to discuss “Judaism” here as being only the orthodox variant and respond to the existence of many other forms hostile to the creator.
b) Marcion deserves a mention and a response, for obvious reasons given this argument.
c) You are begging the question by assuming an early NT. You know this is a contested hypothesis and I don’t think you are free to use it indiscriminately in this way.
I could keep going but I think you get the point. My problem is not with your conclusions, it is with your methods. Your book which is clearly meant to be scholarly looks like an attack on a straw man, is very misrepresentative of the depth of New School writings, and doesn’t treat the evidence in a balanced or reasonable way.
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to turn this into an ad-hominum but I do think it is essentially apologetics not historical analysis. There needs to be a good critique of the New School but it needs to be very slow and very methodical. Issues from the mainstream of scholarship like the documentary hypothesis should be assumed since New School…
Dr Bock —
I hit the 3000 char limit. I hope my point was clear that there is a difference between:
1) Disagreeing on the importance of evidence
1′) Misrepresenting the evidence
2) Disagreeing with the chain of logic of an author
2′) Misstating the chain of logic of an author
3) Disagreeing with the conclusions of an author
3′) Misrepresenting the conclusions of an author
I know I’m coming off as very harsh but I gave your book as an example of the problem that DTS faces. The problems of conservative Christian scholarship is fundamentally the blending of what is acceptable in apologetics with what is acceptable in scholarship. I think your book is an apologetic, and as an apologetic it is pretty good. A reader learns a lot of good counter arguments against someone who has a surface level knowledge (especially 2nd hand) of New School claims. As scholarship it has problems. Scholars must constantly present the best possible case for the opposing view and defeat that to definitively prove their point; apologists are free to take advantage of any biases or ignorance in their audiences.
Sorry for the tone but I wanted to say to your face what I had said above when I didn’t know you were following to give you a chance to answer.
Michael T —
There are really two issues here which you are conflating:
1) What beliefs were rejected by the church as being heretical. That is to believe / preach them made one a bad Christian.
2) What beliefs were rejected by the church as being entirely outside the faith, that is made one a non-Christian.
My argument with Dan is not so much that historic Christianity didn’t relatively quickly center on the items on his list as being important (though I’d disagree with him about exactly when) but rather that this was ever the definition of Christian.
Believe the right stuff = being a Christian
is a very recent idea and still only held by a minority of Christians.
Just to give an example the most famous American missionary of the 20th century, Pearl Buck, considered the virgin birth a “pernicious superstition”. She was widely regarded as a Christian leader, though even at the time seen as being on the left. In the 20s and 30s Americans (by a large majority) wanted Churches that had both a Buck and a Machen. Today’s Christians accept those schisms as natural and understand the complete rejectionism of the right towards the left but I don’t see how you can call this anything but recent.
As far as Mary being recent let me give you an example with lots of textual evidence sura 5:73-5:
[5.73] Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah is the third (person) of the three; and there is no god but the one God, and if they desist not from what they say, a painful chastisement shall befall those among them who disbelieve.
[5.74] Will they not then turn to Allah and ask His forgiveness? And Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
[5.75] The Messiah, son of Marium is but an apostle; apostles before him have indeed passed away; and his mother was a truthful woman; they both used to eat food. See how We make the communications clear to them, then behold, how they are turned away.
Here you have the Koran defending the fact that Mary needed to eat like a regular human. What do you think they are responding to?
As for her assumption, that does seem to have weak support historically (though there are ancient writers like John of Damascus who supported it) but her sanctification go way back, or the title Mother of God (formalized 430 Council of Ephesus).
Luke, do you mean that at DTS you’ve engaged feminist critics doing feminist criticism? Postcolonial analysis that questions the Bible’s mimicry of colonial discourse by actual postcolonial critics? If so, I’ll stand down.
I’m a graduate of a self-described evangelical seminary. They explicitly excluded such voices from being represented there, except by way of critique.
Dr. Carey,
Yes, that’s what I mean. We don’t have any profs who describe themselves as such though, if that’s what you’re getting at by “engaged”. We have some who glean from the insights of these critics, point to their works, and use them to shed light on texts, but none who would label themselves as such. I wrote a paper on Luke 10:38-42 and used the work of feminist critics quite extensively (Amy Jill Levine et al.). I have also purchased Phyllis Trible’s book “Texts of Terror” and plan on reading it this summer.
I have not read much about postcolonial criticism other than maybe one or two dictionary articles. I would very much like to learn more about it though, particularly its relevance for Gospels study. We do have a guy who just graduated this past May who is doing his PhD at Brite on this very subject (postcolonial criticism).
Even though we may not have scholars who are recognized in the field of these various types of criticisms or courses devoted to them, we do engage them in our research and the occasional professor will mention them. I would like to see it implemented more, but we certainly do not stay away from them. Our NT Intro. course is the only course that goes into the various criticisms. Most profs stick to the standard “source, form, redaction” criticisms and do not go much beyond that, but as I noted earlier, a younger prof. is teaching the class next semester and he claims that he is going to go over all of the above and help define/explain them. I had him for a few exegesis courses and the books he was always reading and would recommend would always have some type of modern criticism in the title (e.g. “A Rhetorical and Feminist-critical Study of…”
To be truthful, most professors here would see many of these various criticisms as foolish or may bring them up only for critique, but there are a few who engage them and inform students about their positive value. Admittedly, we have a long way to go, but it is present and is something I look at and study quite often. Because of that, don’t “stand down” because we need more people to help us see the value in these critical approaches as opposed to a strict historical-grammatical approach. We need criticism about the status quo and to be informed about up-to-date methods, and we need to have much, much more of this stuff in the curriculum. But it is not absent, and the occasional student does engage it. I would say studying them is a little hobby of mine because I enjoy them so much.
CD-Host,
There is no argument from me that after the 5th Century there was relatively little disagreement about a number of the Marian dogmas until the Reformers came along. However, prior to this there was significant disagreement on the issue. Furthermore, even if this doctrine was believed widely it doesn’t appear to me that it became a essential doctrine until much later.
Mainline University Bias? My Response…
After reading the long post and many responses over at Parchment and Pen and after yesterday’s post, I have this response:Much of what Dan Wallace says is true and many “liberal” institutions are not all that “liberal” in that they……
CD,
I don’t think I’m conflating the two issues you mention, rather I think we are working in the admittedly gray dividing line between someone who is unorthodox and someone who is outside of salvation. As stated in an earlier post my primary concern is of a pastoral nature. From this flows the reality that I am not going to call “Christian” someone who falls outside of Orthodoxy because I am not sure where the line between unorthodox and unchristian is among other reasons. I can of course conceive of someone who doesn’t understand the doctrine of the Trinity (heck most average church goers don’t) or even denies it, but still has saving grace, but I am not going to call such a person Christian or extend Christian fellowship to them.
Michael T,
Sorry to interject, but I’m wondering if that last sentence has a typo somewhere. Surely you don’t mean to say I must “understand” the Trinity in order for you to call me a Christian. Or is that precisely what you mean?
I was once assured that no one but Augustine and C. Michael Patton have ever correctly explained the doctrine of the Trinity. 😉
Sorry Bill I can see how that would be confusing now. I didn’t mean to say I wouldn’t call people who don’t completely understand the Trinity Christian. Rather I was intending to refer mostly to those who deny the Trinity altogether. I was not intending to refer to your average layperson who probably has an incorrect understanding out of pure ignorance and just needs further teaching to understand the concept. My comment was carelessly worded and I apologize for the confusion.
Oh and BTW understanding with regards to the Trinity might include understanding that it can’t be completely understood. 🙂
“might”????? 😉
Beautiful.
But seriously, thanks, brother. I suspected you “might” have wanted to clarify that. 🙂
————-
Btw, all, this really has been an impressive conversation so far…
[…] be honest, after serious reflection, this is my interpretation of Dan Wallace’s beef with so called “theological liberal intolerance.” I personally know students […]
Michael T —
Your answer phrasing who is a Christian, in terms of who is saved, fundamentally incorporates the notion of an earthly church of limited importance and a heavenly church of great importance. What Catholics call “ecclesiastical deism”. Denying this union between the earthly and the heavenly church is a modern doctrine, one of the earliest responses by Protestants to the question, “If the Catholic Church is not the church that Jesus founded then what is?” In other words you doctrine is based on a 17th century issue and hence is not early / historical at least if you exclude the first few centuries. Nowhere has this answer fit better with the social/political system than in America, so while European Protestants did make this argument they felt they were on thin ice; not that it was obvious and almost 2nd nature. So I’d take it a step further and mention tone, the casualness with which you deny this union is American Protestant and hence even more modern.
BTW I do understand your point regarding wanting to break off the unorthodox from the orthodox. You don’t want to consider someone like me “saved” or in fellowship. I get that, what I think is worth realizing is the reason you have this problem is:
1) You think in terms of individuals being saved not families and certainly not communities. You are an individualist to the core.
2) You don’t trust an institutional church to be doing this sort of thing, it is something you feel you need to wrestle with in a personal / local church way.
And you can see immediately what I mean by:
(1) is really about individualism
(2) is really about not having a state church in any sense
It seems like you are agreeing from the 5th to the 15th century that baptism was the criteria for membership. Which in my mind already is enough to say that Dan’s list is not the “historic criteria”. It sounds like you want to go back further. My problem is that we go back beyond the 5th century it starts to get harder to determine what is the church, what is Christianity, who are the spokespersons for it….
In other words the Christian world stops looking like the Christian world of the middle ages and becomes a lot like today, with a plethora of churches and theologies. Some of these church are going to agree on these issues some will disagree. Some will consider confessional uniformity important others will not. And most (including the Catholic / proto-Catholic) will recognize the people in the other churches as Christians; though quite often bad or inferior Christians. And even in that diversity I’d say the vast vast majority of those Christians with radically different faiths would assert that baptism into Christ is what made the people in the other churches bad Christians and not non-Christians.
So lets narrow it down. What is a year specifically you think Dan’s list would have been accepted as the criteria for calling oneself a Christian?
Excellent post, Dr. Wallace. Definitely food for thought.
[…] the biblical studies blog world) Scot McKnight responds to Dan Wallace’s frustrations about biases against evangelicals in scholarship (more than 500 comments so far.) David Miller has collected some of the links to […]
Andrew (#499) said: “A question I would ask Dr. Wallace (and any other professor at DTS) in light of his “openness” to other perspectives is whether (if he were given the choice) he would be willing to take on a liberal doctoral candidate or whether DTS would be willing to hire a liberal scholar on their faculty. I have my own guesses about what the responses would be but I’m willing to give Dr. Wallace the benefit of a doubt.”
Andrew, that’s an appropriate question, and it can be answered in two ways. First, since I am at a confessional school in which both faculty and students must affirm an evangelical doctrinal statement, your twofold question is a moot issue.
Second, since you said, “if he were given the choice,” I can address that in part. As for students, I personally prefer a wide-open stance, in which students do not need to adhere to any confession. Some evangelical schools already do this, and I would like to see DTS follow in their path. I understand why the seminary does not do this (viz., the ThM is primarily a degree preparing a person for ministry, and the seminary has a longstanding reputation of producing evangelical pastors). Nevertheless, I think the beliefs that one comes to at the end of one’s program of study need to be hammered out in a context in which they are truly and deeply probed. As for hiring liberal faculty, that’s a different matter. DTS is a confessional, evangelical school, and I don’t think it would be appropriate to hire someone at this school who is too far outside the seminary’s confession.
However, what you may really be driving at is whether I can work with liberal scholars. To that, I can give a strong affirmation. I have been involved in more than one project in which scholars of every stripe worked together. Further, as I said about 400 comments ago, when I choose my academic interns (both women and men), I don’t ask them what they believe. I choose them on the basis of their academic potential and other criteria, but not specific views/beliefs.
If you really knew me, you would know how firmly I embrace the principle of academic freedom. One of the reasons I am adamant about this, admittedly, is that I don’t want my students to abandon the historic orthodox faith. I certainly try to persuade them of what I believe are the sine qua nons of the Christian faith, but I do so (I hope!) with charity and an accurate representation of alternate views. And I happen to think that the best antidote to theological liberalism is open discussion in which no questions, no viewpoints are antecedently barred. When certain kinds of questions are deemed inappropriate because they are outside the scope of a professor’s comfort zone, then perhaps that professor’s faith is not as firmly established as it should be. Hence, academic freedom is best both for the students and the faculty.
So Dan, first off you present no evidence for you claim, other than anecdote. That in itself makes it impossible to believe. Show me some facts.
Second, you criticize others for what you admit you do yourself. DTS is a partisan institution, but you criticize others for being partisan.
Michael, how can one “believe” what one does not understand? You can certainly parrot a proposition, but nobody actually believes it in any rational sense, they just claim to out of peer pressure.
[…] But the number of non-Christian teachers in the Scriptures isn’t the writer of the article’s primary concern. The post turns, moving from this point about the percentage of those among Scripture teachers to a second train of thought, to the “liberals” within the Church. I generally take this term—liberal—within the theological community to mean anyone who does not read the Scriptures literally. Generally, “liberals” are dominist, though there are dominists who are not liberal, of course. The term is hard to pin down, though. Anyway, back to the author’s line of thinking. …but a darker underbelly to the conference, never far from the surface, shows up often enough. It has to do with the posture of many liberal scholars toward evangelicals. … There is an assumption that students from an evangelical school—especially a dispensational school—only get a second-class education and are blissfully ignorant of the historical-critical issues of biblical scholarship. Many of the mainline liberal schools routinely reject applications to their doctoral programs from evangelical students who are more qualified than their liberal counterparts—solely because they’re evangelicals. -Parchment and Pen […]
[…] This post was Twitted by lukesammons […]
It may come as a surprise to those who consider me a flaming liberal, but I, too, was told that my degree from an evangelical seminary (Fuller) disqualified me from the elite PhD programs in systematic theology. My reflections here: http://blog.tonyj.net/2009/12/liberal-bias-in-the-academy-in-response-to-jesus-creed/comment-page-1/#comment-5324
CD,
You ever hear the statement that the worst thing to ever happen to the Church was Constantine?
That aside I think Dan’s list is historical at just about any date past the Third and Fourth Centuries and probably even before then, however many would consider it incomplete. This brings me back to the point I made earlier that if the list is simply incomplete it doesn’t help you. People who deny any of the things that are on Dan’s list are still going to be unorthodox. I’m still waiting for evidence that something on Dan’s list shouldn’t be there, not an argument about whether other things should be there (heck if we had a fundamentalist in here we could end up with a list that takes up all 526 posts so far in the blog of things that should be there). I also think CMP’s earlier posts on Orthodoxy might be helpful.
QUOTE: C Michael Patton on 07 Dec 2009 at 6:54 pm #
Living faith,
Thanks for the comments, but this is not really a post about defending dispensationalism. Feel free to comment on DTS’s view of dispensationalism and its relationship to liberal scholarship. END OF QUOTE
I posted what Gary DeMar said as why liberal scholarship thinks lowly of the DTS.
Besides, the many posts here haven't stayed on the topic you insist I remain on, and I see no reproof to any of them. Did I miss something?
I must have missed the rule that forbids quoting here.
If you define a Christian by these fundamentals, can you explain how that doesn’t make one a fundamentalist?
And what of the Christians before the Third Century (BC – Before Constantine)?
Not being snarky – really curious.
Dan – I really appreciate your thoughtful response in comment #526.
This argument still confuses me quite a lot. I would say, and I think it would probably be the majority view, that it would be more accurate if you substituted the word “liberalism” with “orthodoxy.” If someone blocks a line of questioning, that is inherently anti-liberal.
Michael T —
OK well if you are going post 3rd and Dan’s list…. then the only point of disagreement is whether the person is a non Christian or a bad Christian. I’d cite the CCC’s distinction between incredulity/heresy (a bad Christian) and apostasy as evidence.
2089 Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. “Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”
__________
And again I’m not trying to add to Dan’s list I’m saying the ticket is consenting to be baptized, with no beliefs at all required
For example Pope Eugene IVth:
Holy Baptism holds the first place among the sacraments, because it is the door of the spiritual life; for by it we are made members of Christ and incorporated with the Church. And since through the first man death entered into all, unless we be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, we can not enter into the kingdom of Heaven, as Truth Himself has told us. ….The effect of this sacrament is the remission of all sin, original and actual; likewise of all punishment which is due for sin. As a consequence, no satisfaction for past sins is enjoined upon those who are baptized; and if they die before they commit any sin, they attain immediately to the kingdom of heaven and the vision of God.
[…] de haut en bas post notes, plays into the ongoing debate (warning: annoying adverts) begun by Dan Wallace about whether evangelicals are treated as proper scholars. I’m afraid that just as some […]
D. A. Carson came to very much the same conclusion when I heard him on an on-line audio lecture given a few years ago. He believes that many of his students are more open to reading opposing points of view. His students are encouraged to read Bultmann and Barth while many ‘liberal’ seminary students and pastors believe that they can only ready Kummel, Ehrman and Raymond Brown (A little more moderate) but not Carson, Moo and Morris, Donald Guthrie or DeSilva. This recent breed of ‘New Atheists’ are also a sign that times are a changin’.
PS Thank Dr Wallace you for having Zondervan put the notes to your syntax onto laminated sheets. Now I can review while in the shower or when at the beach next summer.
CD,
I have no doubt that the Catholic Church believes this and has fro many centuries, what I am wondering is at what point this became a belief of the Church. Did the earliest writings of the Church support this? Or was it a development that occurred as the church moved from an eastern to a western focus and is ultimately a result of the Augustinian line of thinking?
I mean I don’t want to get into it too much because this is not the place for it, however I have become increasingly convinced through reading many of the Anti-Nicean Fathers that a number of our doctrines in both Protestantism and Catholicism (I’m less and less convinced of the penal substitution view of the atonement for instance all the time) are either wrong or the emphasis is in the wrong spots. In my limited reading (again lawyer, not bible scholar) it seems there is a split in the thinking of the Church as things moved from a Eastern to a Western center. This culminated in the writings of Augustine which seem to repudiate many of the other writings of the Early Church on a number of issues. Yet I still find in these writings acceptance of almost all of the doctrines listed by Dan (a select number did deny some of these but it is the exception rather than the rule – i.e. Origen saw a hierarchical Trinity though he still believed the Godhead was triune in nature). That is why I tend to agree with Dan that these are the sine non qua of historical Christian Orthodoxy (not necessarily what is required for salvation).
paulf (#527) said, “So Dan, first off you present no evidence for you claim, other than anecdote. That in itself makes it impossible to believe. Show me some facts.
Second, you criticize others for what you admit you do yourself. DTS is a partisan institution, but you criticize others for being partisan.”
Paulf, I suppose you have not read through all the comments, so you haven’t seen what I’ve said about the first point elsewhere. Here’s the basic problem I have with giving any specifics: because some of my students are still trying to get into various programs, I don’t want to exacerbate the situation by naming names. If you decide that I’m not telling the truth, that’s your choice. But do you think I would really be making these things up? Further, since I wrote the blog post, scores of people have spoken to me, written me, or blogged on another site (and some here) that this is what they have experienced. Anecdotes though they be, they come from more than a quarter of a century of personal data.
Allow me to add yet another anecdote to the mix: A master’s student at a premier institute cited D. A. Carson in a term paper. The student was at the top of her class. The professor pulled her aside and told her that if she kept the citation to Carson, she would get a C on the paper; if she dropped it, she’d get an A.
As for your second point, I think I sufficiently answered that question in my comment #526.
As I was trying to edit my comment #536, I was blocked from doing so. So, let me add this:
To paulf: As for your second point, I think I sufficiently answered that question in my comment #526. But let me reiterate: I was not criticizing partisanship in the original blog post; I was criticizing the shutting off of dialogue. I have no illusions that universities will move to the right in their understanding of the biblical narrative or theology. All I was asking for was open dialogue rather than ridicule.
Heidi, your comment #530 restates what I was saying in the blog post originally: you are absolutely right that “If someone blocks a line of questioning, that is inherently anti-liberal.” That’s why I spoke of the myth of theological liberalism today in the first place—because on many occasions it blocks a line of questioning and is therefore inherently anti-liberal. There are fundamentalists on both sides of the theological aisle.
Dan, I don’t doubt your stories, just that it constitutes anything more than that some unidentified people feeling aggrieved. How do we know whether their beefs are justified without specifics?
And yes, I have read the thread. You say you believe in academic freedom, but in practice it is limited to people who — at worst — believe almost everything you do. DTS wouldn’t hire someone who studied the bible and decided on the basis of facts and logic that it was not the inspired word of god and that Jesus was not the savior of the world. But you expect others to be fair to your side.
That strikes me as hypocritical. In fact, I think Jesus said something about that. Hmmm, beams and splinters….
PaulF,
I think you are confusing the issues and comparing apples to oranges. Dr. Wallace most specifically said in a number of comments that he endorses engaging with a wide breadth of scholarship to give an intellectually honest assessment of the topic. That doesn’t mean DTS, or any other confessional school has to hire liberals to do so but that students, though adhering to a confessional statement, are well versed in their respective topics.
I should add that a fair comparison to your point would be if Dr. Wallace was advocating that mainstream institutions hire conservative evangelicals for honest exchange of ideas. But that is not what is being advocated here.
Dr. Wallace,
Thanks for such a wonderful blog post which has raised some very good points about the theological educational system. Clearly, people have lots of opinions on the matter. My question then is what is your advice for a potential graduate school student wanting to study theology? Should she attempt to go to the “best” schools even if she will undergo unmerited criticism and scrutiny? Or, should she attend a school that will appreciate her academic background while perhaps offering her an inferior education? It seems that you have simply commented on problem at hand, but now I’m left wondering where to go from here. Thanks.
Oh gosh I can’t believe I wrote anti-nicene fathers earlier – hmm against Nicea – that makes a lot of sense. Ante-Nicene sounds much better.
paulF,
I’m curious, what would constitute “facts”? Do you suppose elite schools keep a record of students who are snubbed by their professors…what would that be filed under “PCS” for Prejudicial Cold Shoulder? The anecdote used in the original blog post is about a student who was clearly viewed as intelligent and knowledgeable by the liberal professor. Only when the fact that the student attends DTS was revealed, did the conversation turn south. Would you say that was justifiable rejection?
very interesting comments…
As a Th.M. student here at DTS I myself was surprised
they do not enforce their beliefs on dispensationalism on the student body.
Instead, I am more than happy to experience more ‘open’ enviornemnt
where students themselves can decide for themselves (by rigirous study
on the Bible itself) what they will believe.