Continued form last week [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 ]APPROACH # 4, Historical-Critical Exegesis
Drowning in a sea of subjective opinion and division, Protestants quickly began grasping for any intellectual method with a fig leaf of objectivity. As time went by and divisions multiplied, science and reason increasingly became the standard by which Protestant theologians hoped to bring about consistency in their biblical interpretations. This "scientific" approach, which has come to predominate Protestant Scholarship, and in this century has even begun to predominate Roman Catholic Scholarship, is generaly referred to as "Historical-Critical Exegesis." With the dawn of the so-called "Enlightenment," science seemed to be capable of solving all the worlds problems. Protestant Scholarship began applying the philosophy and methodology of the sciences to theology and the Bible. Since the Enlightenment, Protestant scholars have analyzed every aspect of the Bible: its history, its manuscripts, the biblical languages, etc. As if the Holy Scriptures were an archaeological dig, these scholars sought to analyze each fragment and bone with the best and latest that science had to offer. To be fair, it must be stated that much useful knowledge was produced by such scholarship. Unfortunately this methodology has erred also, grievously and fundamentally, but it has been portrayed with such an aura of scientific objectivity that holds many under its spell.
Like all the other approaches used by Protestants, this method also seeks to understand the Bible while ignoring Church Tradition. Though there is no singular Protestant method of exegesis, they all have as their supposed goal to "let the Scripture speak for itself." Of course no one claiming to be Christian could be against what the Scripture would "say" if it were indeed "speaking for itself" through these methods. The problem is that those who appoint themselves as tongues for the Scripture filter it through their own Protestant assumptions. While claiming to be objective, they rather interpret the Scriptures according to their own sets of traditions and dogmas (be they fundamentalists or liberal rationalists). What Protestant scholars have done (if I may loosely borrow a line from Albert Schweitzer) is looked into the well of history to find the meaning of the Bible. They have written volume upon volume on the subject, but unfortunately they have only seen their own reflections.
Protestant scholars (both "liberals" and "conservatives" have erred in that they have misapplied empirical methodologies to the realm of theology and biblical studies. I use the term "Empiricism" to describe these efforts. I am using this term broadly to refer to the rationalistic and materialistic worldview that has possessed the Western mind, and is continuing to spread throughout the world. Positivist systems of thought (of which Empiricism is one) attempt to anchor themselves on some basis of "certain" knowledge. 11 Empiricism, strictly speaking, is the belief that all knowledge is based on experience, and that only things which can be established by means of scientific observation can be known with certainty. Hand in hand with the methods of observation and experience, came the principle of methodological doubt, the prime example of this being the philosophy of Rene Descartes who began his discussion of philosophy by showing that everything in the universe can be doubted except ones own existence, and so with the firm basis of this one undoubtable truth ("I think, therefore I am") he sought to build his system of philosophy. Now the Reformers, at first, were content with the assumption that the Bible was the basis of certainty upon which theology and philosophy could rest. But as the humanistic spirit of the Enlightenment gained in ascendancy, Protestant scholars turned their rationalistic methods on the Bible itself—seeking to discover what could be known with "certainty" from it. Liberal Protestant scholars have already finished this endeavor, and having "peeled back the onion" they now are left only with their own opinions and sentimentality as the basis for whatever faith they have left.
Conservative Protestants have been much less consistent in their rationalistic approach. Thus they have preserved among themselves a reverence for the Scriptures and a belief in their inspiration. Nevertheless, their approach (even among the most dogged Fundamentalists) is still essentially rooted in the same spirit of rationalism as the Liberals. A prime example of this is to be found among so-called Dispensational Fundamentalists, who hold to an elaborate theory which posits that at various stages in history God has dealt with man according to different "dispensations," such as the "Adamic dispensation," the "Noaic dispensation," the "Mosaic dispensation," the "Davidic dispensation," and so on. One can see that there is a degree of truth in this theory, but beyond these Old Testament dispensations they teach that currently we are under a different "dispensation" than were the Christians of the first century. Though miracles continued through the "New Testament period," they no longer occur today. This is very interesting, because (in addition to lacking any Scriptural basis) this theory allows these Fundamentalists to affirm the miracles of the Bible, while at the same time allowing them to be Empiricists in their everyday life. Thus, though the discussion of this approach may at first glance seem to be only of academic interest and far removed from the reality of dealing with the average Protestant, in fact, even the average, piously "conservative" Protestant laymen is not unaffected by this sort of rationalism.
The great fallacy in this so called "scientific" approach to the Scriptures lies in the fallacious application of empirical assumptions to the study of history, Scripture, and theology. Empirical methods work reasonably well when they are correctly applied to the natural sciences, but when they are applied where they cannot possibly work, such as in unique moments in history (which cannot be repeated or experimented upon), they cannot produce either consistent or accurate results. 12 Scientists have yet to invent a telescope capable of peering into the spirit world, and yet many Protestant scholars assert that in the light of science the idea of the existence of demons or of the Devil has been disproved. Were the Devil to appear before an Empiricist with pitch fork in hand and clad in bright red underwear, it would be explained in some manner that would easily comport to the scientists worldview. Although such Empiricists pride themselves on their "openness", they are blinded by their assumptions to such an extent that they cannot see anything that does not fit their vision of reality. If the methods of empiricism were consistently applied it would discredit all knowledge (including itself), but empiricism is conveniently permitted to be inconsistent by those who hold to it "because its ruthless mutilation of human experience lends it such a high reputation for scientific severity that its prestige overrides the defectiveness of its own foundations."13
The connections between the extreme conclusions that modern liberal Protestant scholars have come to, and the more conservative or Fundamentalist Protestants will not seem clear to many — least of all to conservative Fundamentalists! Though these conservatives see themselves as being in almost complete opposition to Protestant liberalism, they nonetheless use essentially the same kinds of methods in their study of the Scriptures as do the liberals, and along with these methodologies come their underlying philosophical assumptions. Thus the difference between the "liberals" and the "conservatives" is not in reality a difference of basic assumptions, but rather a difference in how far they have taken them to their inherent conclusions.
If Protestant exegesis were truly "scientific," as it presents itself to be, its results would show consistency. If its methods were merely unbiased "technologies" (as many view them) then it would not matter who used them, they would "work" the same for everyone. But what do we find when we examine current status of Protestant biblical studies? In the estimation of the "experts" themselves, Protestant biblical scholarship is in a crisis. 14 In fact this crisis is perhaps best illustrated by the admission of a recognized Protestant Old Testament scholar, Gerhad Hasel [in his survey of the history and current status of the discipline of Old Testament theology, Old Testament Theology: Issues in the Current Debate], that during the 1970s five new Old Testament theologies had been produced "but not one agrees in approach and method with any of the others."15 In fact, it is amazing, considering the self-proclaimed high standard of scholarship in Protestant biblical studies, that you can take your pick of limitless conclusions on almost any issue and find "good scholarship" to back it up. In other words, you can just about come to any conclusion that suits you on a particular day or issue, and you can find a Ph.D. who will advocate it. This is certainly not science in the same sense as mathematics or chemistry! What we are dealing with is a field of learning that presents itself as "objective science," but which in fact is a pseudo-science, concealing a variety of competing philosophical and theological perspectives. It is pseudoscience because until scientists develop instruments capable of examining and understanding God, objective scientific theology or biblical interpretation is an impossibility. This is not to say that there is nothing that is genuinely scholarly or useful within it; but this is to say that, camouflaged with these legitimate aspects of historical and linguistic learning, and hidden by the fog machines and mirrors of pseudo-science, we discover in reality that Protestant methods of biblical interpretation are both the product and the servant of Protestant theological and philosophical assumptions. 16
With subjectivity that surpasses the most speculative Freudian psychoanalysts, Protestant scholars selectively choose the "facts" and "evidence" that suits their agenda and then proceed, with their conclusions essentially predetermined by their basic assumptions, to apply their methods to the Holy Scriptures. All the while, the Protestant scholars, both "liberal" and "conservative," describe themselves as dispassionate "scientists."17 And since modern universities do not give out Ph.D.s to those who merely pass on the unadulterated Truth, these scholars seek to out-do each other by coming up with new "creative" theories. This is the very essence of heresy: novelty, arrogant personal opinion, and self-deception.
Continued in Part 9 - The Orthodox Approach to Truth
11. The term positivism comes from the French word positif, which means sure, or certain. This term was first used by Auguste Comte. Positivistic systems are built upon the assumption that some fact or institution is the ultimate basis of knowledge — in Comtes philosophy, experience or sense-perception constituted that basis and thus he was the forerunner of modern Empiricism [See Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 1914 ed., s.v. "Positivism," by S.H. Swinny; and Wolfhart Pannenburg, Theology and Philosophy of Science, trans. Francis McDonagh (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), p. 29].
12. For example, one method for determining the reality of past events, among empirically minded scholars, is the principle of analogy. Since knowledge is based on experience, then the way one understands what is unfamiliar is by relating it to something that is familiar. Under the guise of historical analysis they judge the probability of a supposed past event (e.g. the resurrection of Jesus) based upon what we know to take place in our experience. And since these historians have never observed anything which they would consider supernatural they determine that when the Bible speaks of a miraculous event in history that it merely is recounting a myth or a legend. But since to the Empiricist, a miracle entails a violation of a natural law, then there can be no miracles (by definition) because natural laws are determined by our observation of what we experience, so were such an Empiricist to be confronted with a modern analogy of a miracle it would no longer be considered a miracle because it would no longer constitute a violation of natural law. Thus empiricists do not produce results that falsify transcendent reality, or miracles; rather their presuppositions, from the very outset, deny the possibility of such things. [see G. E. Michalson, Jr., "Pannenburg on the Resurrection and Historical Method," Scottish Journal of Theology 33 (April 1980): 345-359.]
13. Rev. Robert T. Osborn, "Faith as Personal Knowledge," Scottish Journal of Theology 28 (February 1975): 101-126.
14. Gerhard Hasel, Old Testament Theology: Basic Issues in the Current Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982), p. 9.
15. Ibid., p. 7.
16. I have discussed Liberal Protestantism only to demonstrate the fallacies of "Historical" exegesis. An Orthodox Christian is much more likely to be confronted by a conservative Fundamentalist or a Charismatic, simply because they take their faith seriously enough to seek to convert others to it. Liberal Protestant denominations have their hands full trying to keep their own parishioners, and are not noted for their evangelistic zeal.
17. For a more in-depth critique of the excesses of the Historical-Critical Method, see Thomas Oden, Agenda for Theology: After Modernity What? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990) pp 103-147
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