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About the Book
Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
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Part VIII: Christian Scholarship
Chapter 1
A Protest . . . .
THIS PAPER,
as indicated in the prologue, is really concerned with the Christian
aspect of the subject rather than the scholarly aspect. But it
seems proper and necessary to state briefly what we mean by the
latter in the present context. Scholarship has more to do with
the presentation of material rather than the accumulation of
it. The latter would more properly be termed Research, whether
the subject matter is scientific, historical, or whatever. A
presentation will be scholarly if it fulfills three conditions.
Scholarship
must be the attempt
(a)
by an informed and disciplined mind
(b) to
achieve an accurate statement of what the evidence is
(c) accompanied
by an objective evaluation of what the evidence implies in relation
to all other similarly
derived knowledge.
Each of these
three contributing elements is important. The mind must be trained
to think logically, to sift the evidence with care, to present
it as far as possible without bias, and to discern what is relevant
and what is not. A mind may be informed but undisciplined, or
a mind may be disciplined but uninformed. Neither can produce
a scholarly work. Yet, though one succeeds in achieving this
initial prerequisite of an accurate statement of what the evidence
is, isolated pieces of information � however correct they
may be � are seldom of great significance by themselves.
They become important when they are related to the body of information
that already exists in that field of inquiry. For this reason,
it is customary to present a resume of what may be called "background
information," in which the new material is related to the
old and the reader's thinking is thereby
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oriented within the framework of
"all other similarly derived knowledge." Moreover, this orientation
has, as we shall see, a significant but often neglected counterpart in
Christian Scholarship. Meanwhile, meeting the standards of Scholarship
per se there are certain generally accepted rules for any scholarly
presentation which an author is ideally expected to honour. Like many
other rules governing human behaviour, these also are perhaps best stated
in a somewhat negative form.
- There is no substitute for accurate and thorough
documentation. It is, in fact, considered by many societies the
one essential hallmark of scholarly writing. The items which
must be included to make documentation complete are, as a minimum,
the author's name and initials, title of the book or article,
publisher or journal, place of publication, volume number, date,
and pagination. If the complete information is simply not available,
then one must be honest and say so.
- A part of the truth, or one side only of
the truth, ought not to be presented as the whole truth. Where
the data is susceptible to more than one interpretation, the
fact should be stated clearly.
- Opinion or interpretation should be identified
as such and never confused with fact � an all-too-common
fault in both evolutionary and anti-evolutionary literature.
- Personal bias should never be intentionally
concealed where it has been a decisive factor in the presentation
of alternative interpretations.
- If one has borrowed ideas or information
(or stolen them!) from some other source, one should be willing
to acknowledge the source and not pretend to have originated
the material oneself. It is dishonest to present someone else's
thoughts as though they were entirely our own creation. This
does not mean that we may not so grasp the thoughts of another
and so build them into the structure of our own thinking that
we can honestly say, "I think that, etc. . . . " But
it does mean that we should not observe, for example, "I
have come to the conclusion that, etc. . . ." and then proceed
to enunciate someone else's striking and stimulating and generative
idea as though it were entirely one's own discovery.
pg.2
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- No authority in one field should be uncritically
accepted as an authority in another field which is either unrelated
to his own or only by a tenuous thread. There is a tendency for
the general public to believe
that some great authority � on astronomy, for example �
can be depended upon to be equally careful in statements which
he may happen to make with respect to psychiatry. In fact scientists
themselves have often accepted this backhanded compliment and
come to believe they can indeed fulfill the requirement:
of omnicompetence because of their training. Unfortunately experience
shows that scholars often tend to be as uncritical of the statements
made by others outside their own field as they are critical of
statements made by those in their own field. True Scholarship
will try to weigh very carefully all such "unauthoritative"
observations. They are not necessarily to be ignored or dismissed,
but rather to be examined with more than ordinary care.
- One ought to avoid at all costs the temptation,
which may be quite strong at times, to strengthen one's own position
by either quoting another person in such a way that the reader,
who is not acquainted with him, may be misled into believing
that he holds views similar to our own which he does not in fact
hold at all, or by presenting another's contrary view in such
a way as to make him appear ridiculous or irrational or even
hostile, whereas in fact he may be none of these. It also seems
essential that when a man admits a weakness in his own position
or dissatisfaction with it while still holding firmly to it,
one should not quote the man's admission of dissatisfaction in
such a way as to give the impression that the man is just about
converted to one's own views.
- Sarcasm ought to be avoided in any and every
form, for though it may entertain, it communicates very little
that is constructive. Since Scholarship has as its primary goal
the communication of information and ideas and is concerned only
in a very secondary way with entertaining the reader (after all,
it doesn't have to be dull!), then sarcasm surely should be avoided.
It is a fundamental requirement of Scholarship that if one disagrees
violently with an opponent, and states it, one must demonstrate
that he has at least properly understood what his viewpoint really
is, and all too frequently sarcasm is a cover-up for ignorance
in this respect. On the other hand, humor is sometimes an excellent
way of getting a point across. For this reason � borrowing
a phrase from the Greeks � we may title this requirement
not merely as "seriousness," but "appropriate
seriousness."
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Now,
whether a scholar, writing merely as a scholar and nothing more,
considers himself in a secular sense called upon to assume any
social or moral responsibility for what he says is a point about
which there continues to be a great deal of argument. Up to now,
opinion has on the whole tended to absolve him, except of course
insofar as he does have (1) a social responsibility to
be objective in discussing issues directly bearing upon human
values (such as racia1 differences), and (2) a moral responsibility
to be truthful. The broad implications of what he discusses are
not, at the present moment, considered to be his responsibility
as a scientist or a scholar � though they may be when he
presents his views in the form of an opinion only, as a private
individual. He may rightly be impersonal.
However, in a scholarly work that
is properly to be referred to as Christian, there must be evidence
that the author has recognized a special relationship toward
his readers which imposes upon him some responsibility for the
implications of what he says in relation to their Christian
faith. While there is no unanimity on the question of whether
a scientist needs to assume any such responsibility for the beliefs
of his readers, to my mind the Christian writer must certainly
do so. The initial summary statement of the definition of Scholarship
must therefore be extended slightly to cover this new dimension.
We thus have a definition somewhat as follows:
Christian Scholarship
is an attempt
(a)
by an informed and disciplined mind
(b)
to achieve an accurate statement of what the evidence is
(c)
accompanied by an objective evaluation of what the evidence implies
not merely in relation to all similarly
derived knowledge, but
(d)
in relationship to the fabric of Christian faith founded upon
biblical revelation.
Although this
definition appears simple enough in itself, it requires further
elaboration to this extent, that no writer could possibly have
a large enough perception to be able to discern all the implications
of his words if one takes into consideration the enormous spread
of opinion held by readers in all walks of life who, whatever
their denominational affiliation, consider themselves Christian
readers. A statement which has no subtle implications for the
plain-minded Christian believer might have profound implications
for the highly informed theologian � and vice versa. Clearly,
therefore, no man could possibly be expected to assume full responsibility
for all the possible implications of what he is saying.
This might seem to render the definition meaningless: but actually
this is not really the case.
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In
a nutshell, when we speak of the "fabric of Christian faith,"
the practical problem which must be solved before such a definition can
be made to work is to define also whose Christian faith we have
in mind. Even though the problem is narrowed down somewhat by defining
it as "founded upon biblical revelation," there still remains
a very broad spectrum of interpretation as to what is "of faith".
I think, in a way, that from a practical point of view the answer is comparatively
simple: the responsibility of the writer must be for the implication of
his words as viewed in the light of the beliefs of his probable readers.
Let me explain more fully what I mean by this.
If some latitude
is permitted, we may say that certain types of publications normally
enjoy certain types of readers who share a more or less similar
body of beliefs. One might distinguish, possibly, the average
reader of the Bible League Quarterly from the average
reader of Christianity Today or Sword of the Lord or,
again, Prophetic Voice. No implication is intended that
there is necessarily incompatibility or potential opposition
between these groups of readers. But it is probably fair to say
that these journals continue to exist because there are still
groups of people who share certain well-defined views of Scripture
or of world events or of Christian experience or of modern theological
trends which are not shared with the same interest or concern
by people who belong to other readership groups.
What we are really
proposing, therefore, is that each of us will tend to present
our thoughts in a form more acceptable to one particular group
than another. Whether we do this unconsciously or deliberately,
we are
almost certain to have in mind one particular publication in
which we hope to see it appear. Then, as a practical method of
dealing with this question "Whose Christian faith?",
it would seem that the answer is, "The Christian Faith of
the body of people who are most likely to be our readers."
It is not difficult
to illustrate why it is necessary to limit a writer's responsibility
in this way. For example, one could say very little in an historical
sketch of the life of Mary without at the same time implying
things which would be an offense (or an encouragement) to any
reader of Roman Catholic persuasion. Obviously, therefore, the
principle of "responsibility for implications" must
be limited to this extent, that Protestants would assume responsibility
only for Protestant readers and not for Roman Catholic ones,
and presumably vice versa. It may be objected by some that a
large portion of readers in these two categories would not be
considered as Christian readers at all, only as nominally Christian
readers. The whole principle then becomes embroiled in a discussion
which can never be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties
and consequently in practice proves
pg.5
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valueless. Some "modification"
or, perhaps better, "qualification" of what is meant by Christian
responsibility is inevitable.
If a man claims
to be a liberal, sincerely holding this form of Christian faith
� no matter how much or little others may consider it to
be Christian � he should surely be required only to endeavor
to acknowledge in what he writes all implications which challenge
the faith of his like-minded liberal readers. On the other hand,
if a man has professed to be a strongly evangelical believer
in the best sense, he must surely see to it that whenever he
publishes an article of a scholarly nature, no statement will
be made in it that challenges the faith of his like-minded evangelical
readers without taking care to point this out and, if possible,
making some attempt to resolve the difficulty. This is perhaps
even more critical when the writer is of fundamentalist persuasion.
A concrete example
will help to illustrate my point. In the fall of 1962, in a Christian
paper which I believe has the largest circulation in the New
World of any publication of this kind and an editorial staff
that includes numerous Christians of note, there appeared a feature
article dealing with the antiquity of man. This article was well
written by one who knew his subject and was undoubtedly completely
sincere in the views he expressed. In brief, the writer held
that Scripture gives us no information regarding the form of
Adam's body: nor does it give us any firm figures by which to
determine how long ago he appeared on the stage. In short, it
was implied that according to Scripture, Adam might very well
have been an extremely primitive creature, only just human in
capacity and scarcely so in physical form.
We wrote to the
editors and suggested that in view of the fact that such a picture
of Adam could hardly be reconciled with the Adam of Genesis I,
the writer should perhaps have taken the trouble to do two rather
important things � since he was, after all, writing for Christian
people. The first of these is that for the less-informed readers
he might have indicated that the firm conclusions to which he
gave expression are interpretations of the data and not the data
themselves. It is true that these interpretations are held by
the majority of physical anthropologists, and that if truth is
defined as the agreement of experts, then this is in the scientific
sense the present truth. But many readers without the benefit
of scientific training (and this unfortunately includes a fair
number of Christian leaders) are not always sufficiently aware
of the vital
pg.6
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distinction between a
generally agreed-upon interpretation of the data and the data
itself. Thus they are apt to accept opinion when it is dignified
in this way as though it were incontrovertable and established
fact.
A well-known anthropologist,
however, has observed that there is a curious inverse law in
these matters which has the effect of making "opinion"
more firm and more dependable as it relates to matters more remotely
set in the past where the evidence becomes less and less substantial.
The less material there is, the more dogmatic one can be in interpreting
it � because there is less likelihood of being proved wrong.
People are more willing to make forthright and pontifical statements
about a few remains that have been buried for thousands of years
than they are about similar bones buried yesterday. The reasons
are obvious.
Now, my point is
that statements made in this article were a direct challenge
to the faith of thousands of godly people who have intelligence
enough but not sufficient information or experience to guide
them in the assessment of the views presented. And this was issued
in a Christian paper, the reputation of which would tend to lessen
the critical faculties of those who read its articles. Did this
display a proper sense of Christian responsibility?
But this takes
into account only one aspect of the problem, namely, the presentation
of interpretation as though it were fact. There is a more serious
aspect of the matter. The Christian faith is predicated upon
the substitutionary sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, who stood
in His role as the Second Adam in direct antithesis to the First
Adam. Mankind is viewed as two families which stand in distant
juxtaposition, that family which derives from the First Adam
by natural procreation and that family which derives from the
Second Adam by supernatural re-creation. Everything in Scripture
strengthens this antithetical arrangement, this division between
the unsaved and the saved. Furthermore, man is nowhere
considered merely a spiritual being; it is the whole man who
is always in view, and therefore one cannot evade this issue
by proposing that the First Adam, though he may have had an almost
simian body, was nevertheless spiritually a human being.
But what happens
to the structure of Scripture when the First Adam is reduced
to such a primitive creature as Zinjanthropus, for example, whose
mental development was probably extremely slight and who most
assuredly had no such monotheistic faith as the Adam of Scripture
clearly had? Can one conceivably justify the Lord's title as
the "Second Adam" if the First Adam was such a creature?
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The
trouble is that ideas once given lodging in the mind, particularly
when reinforced from an "authoritative" source, are
exceedingly difficult to dislodge and tend to work themselves
out to their inevitable conclusion. The seed germinates and grows
into a tree which harbours all kinds of unforeseen things. The
leaven leavens the whole lump. Living upon the borrowed capital
of a formerly robust faith, people who admit these ideas into
their thinking may continue for years with every appearance of
a faith still as robust. But the fabric of it is already being
weakened from within hiddenly. Do we not have a responsibility
when we write an article of this kind, which introduces such
destructive elements, to take some honest steps either to warn
the reader of the implications of our words or to provide him
with some clues that will enable him to reconcile his old faith
with the new "knowledge"?
In the final analysis,
the writer of this article was inviting us to accept a picture
of the First Adam which makes the Lord's title as the Second
Adam little short of blasphemy. Stated this way, strong as the
words are, the implications of the article are appalling �
yet these implications would not be consciously realized by many
readers. Even if I am exaggerating the dangers here unreasonably,
it is nevertheless sadly true that a little doubt is a precocious
thing and has such an enormous capacity for growth that we must
be more than ordinarily careful not to initiate doubt in the
minds of our readers without at the same time providing a firmer
foundation for their faith in its place.
Let us by all means
explore the evidence as the author of this article did, but let
us also display a proper sense of responsibility by pointing
out to the less discerning and more easily misled reader some
of the more important implications of the interpretation we are
placing upon the evidence, making some attempt, at least, to
assist the reader to reconstruct for himself a faith in Scripture
which is even stronger.
Fulfilling the
requirements of Christian Scholarship becomes doubly difficult
when the author himself, though exceedingly well informed, is
apparently quite unaware of, or unwilling to face up to, the
implications of his own words. An excellent illustration of this
appeared not long ago in a journal which is published as an expression
of the views of a group of Christian men with scientific training.
In an article by
a well-known author dealing with the controversy between the
Creationist's view of human origins and the Evolutionist's, the
writer questioned the intelligence of those who still prefer
to take the
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words of Genesis as literally
as possible. He poured scorn on that kind of literalism which
tries to make history out of Genesis 1-3 by interpreting the
events as though they really happened in the way Scripture says
they did. The author felt that it is "senseless" to
assume that God really "planted" a garden: for this
would imply a kind of manual labour � and surely God doesn't
use hands! Similarly he held that God did not literally "breathe"
into man's nostrils, for then we must suppose that God has lungs.
. . . This, he felt, is altogether too anthropomorphic.
But let us consider
the matter more carefully. Let us explore the implications of
once admitting that there is,
in fact, no reality behind these simple statements of Genesis,
that the words are instead to be taken rather as accommodation
for an age when faith was much less mature.
At the outset we
ought perhaps candidly to admit that in our own mind's eye we
cannot think of God as a "person" at all except with
some kind of bodily counterpart to our own being. Deities which
are completely etherealized become impersonal. One cannot worship
a mere Force in any personal and realistic way. In this sense,
the many, many passages of Scripture which speak of God as having
hands or fingers or arms or ears may be in part an accommodation
to our needs. But I do not think this is altogether so. And the
reasons for this have profound importance, for when the simple
words of Genesis are thus challenged, the challenge can be shown
to have repercussions throughout the whole of Scripture.
We are told that
God spoke to Adam in the Garden. That Adam heard this Voice as
a real sound is clearly borne out by the fact that he hid from
God � physically. But a real voice surely implies the assumption
of lungs, even if only for a brief moment in time. This is not
an unreasonable conclusion, because the same Lord who appeared
to Adam also appeared later on to Abraham and there not merely
conversed with him but physically partook of his hospitality.
These and other appearances are, as it were, pre-incarnation
incarnations.
There is every
justification for making such an assumption, for we have a number
of post-Resurrection scenes that bear directly upon the problem.
The same Lord not merely ate food prepared by His friends (Luke
24:42), but even prepared it for them Himself (John 21:9). Surely
it would take real hands to prepare a meal for such down-to-earth
individuals as Peter and his fishermen associates. Yet the Lord
who so set the table upon this occasion returned to a state
of complete invisibility, beyond the confines of space and time,
when the meal
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was finished. It is
clearly possible, then, for God in the person of Jesus Christ
to assume human form with sufficient substance that He could
call to them across the water, be recognized for who He was when
they approached Him, and with His own hands serve them food which
(like the Garden) He had deliberately prepared. If this was possible
after the Resurrection, it was certainly not impossible in Genesis.
When the same Lord
invited doubting Thomas to thrust his hand into His side, is
it conceivable that such a physical organ as a human hand could
afford confirmation to Thomas' mind if all he met was some kind
of ethereal "side"? If we may speak reverently of such
things, must we not say that the Lord's real side was only part
of a really integrated body including "lungs" �
a body assuming these physical characteristics only for a season
in order to make real contact with man? And did He not on another
occasion eat food, drink fluid, lifting the vessels containing
each to His mouth � an act surely calling for real hands?
Yet a moment later, at the instant of recognition, He vanished
from their sight � food and liquid vanishing at the same
time.
It seems foolish
to admit the reality of such Resurrection scenes as these and
yet deny that the same Lord could not also have met Adam face
to face as He did Abraham. It would seem dangerous to ridicule
the possibility that the Lord could so materialize Himself in
the appropriate form to meet with Adam � for then one would
surely be logically forced to view the resurrection scenes as
"accommodations" also, having no more reality in history
than hallucinations. This is tantamount to saying that there
is no truth to that article of Christian faith which holds that
the Lord was bodily raised from the dead after the Crucifixion.
It is all the same
Lord from Genesis to Revelation whenever man found himself face
to face with God. It is not anthropomorphism to say that God
supplied Adam and Eve with a covering for their nakedness, since
four thousand years later the same Lord again assumed human form
in the most completely physical sense that He might provide a
covering for man's nakedness before God. If it should be argued
that this covering is symbolic and that therefore perhaps the
first one was also, the answer is that to provide it, the Lord
assumed (in the Incarnation) a very real physical form and one
may rest assured that the Lord could have done so in the first
instance. At any rate, the touchstone of the record in Genesis
is the record of the Resurrection scenes in the New Testament;
and thus to say, with an unfortunate note of sarcasm (which ill
becomes Scholarship), that
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the events in Genesis
understood literally make nonsense is by implication to challenge
the scenes after the Resurrection as equally nonsensical if understood
literally.
Undoubtedly the
author of this article would have hesitated to go this far. But,
as we stated, the mind has a strange way of working out to logical
conclusions ideas which are once given admittance, especially
when those ideas have been reinforced from a source which is
assumed to be authoritative. What the author of this article
failed to do, unfortunately, was to examine the implications
of his words when viewed in the light of Christian faith as a
whole. Had he done this, he would surely have hesitated to commit
himself, in effect, to a clear denial of the reality of the Resurrection
scenes in the New Testament. As it is, many of his readers must
in the end have been led to do just this very thing if his influence
was great enough.
One final point.
It is my firm conviction that what a man writes is far more important
in the long run than what he actually does. We hear much in Bible
school and from the pulpit about the need for responsible Christian
action. But a man's good deeds are apt to be soon forgotten,
whereas what he commits to writing may literally bear fruit for
a thousand years. His faith or unbelief continues to give comfort
or distress as long as the printed word is in circulation. Should
we not pay a little more attention to the things which we write,
not with a view to confining � as one branch of the church
has done by stating what may be published and what may not be
� but rather by encouraging every writer to assume a greater
sense of responsibility toward Christians of lesser sophistication
who may be misled by what they read from a supposedly authoritative
source?
Emphasis upon increasing
a sense of responsibility for personal behaviour meets
the Christian reader at every turn. But emphasis upon the responsibility
of the Christian writer for the implications of what he is
writing seems to have been sadly neglected.
If an author should
submit an article to the editor of a paper or a journal which
is directed to a group of readers more or less identified as
to the kind of Christian faith they have; and if that author
has made statements, the implications of which challenge that
faith, but at the same time has done nothing either to state
the nature of the challenge or show how it may be met if that
be so, it is surely the duty of the editor to draw the author's
attention to this serious oversight. Sound Christian Scholarship
will not flourish without the joint efforts of both editors and
authors � and reviewers also, let it be said. Even the publisher
surely has some responsibility here.
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So then, to be specific because I am firmly evangelical
in my faith, it is my duty not merely to be scholarly but to
be scholarly in a Christian way by adding to the other safeguards
of Scholarship the duty of considering carefully the implications
of what I am saying for those who are of like evangelical faith
and who will be, in my mind's eye, my most sympathetic audience.
This seems to be
the bare irreducible minimum requirement. Any embellishment makes
the principle exceedingly difficult to adopt. But if this were
to be the minimum standard insofar as the Christian aspect
is concerned, coupled with the exacting requirements of accuracy
insofar as the scholarly requirements are concerned, then
surely we should be on the way to achieving a more worthy literature
by the very fact of having defined the standard by which its
real worth is to be judged. Perhaps in due time, both for authors
themselves and for readers, there would be an increasing awareness
of the real significance of much that passes for Scholarship
in Christian circles but is all too often merely a display of
worldly wisdom designed to impress Christians and non-Christians
alike with the competence and sobriety of the writer. I believe
it would be a most healthy exercise if all of us who write were
to examine our own words to see whether we are really aware of
the impact they are having upon other readers.
Clearly it will
not always be possible to deal with the implications fully: in
fact, frequently it will not be possible to do anything more
than draw attention to the fact that there are implications for
Christian faith. The resolution of the challenges implied may
often have to be left to minds of greater clarity or wisdom,
or to the broadening of our understanding of the facts.
No man has a large
enough mind to be able always to fulfill the ideal of Christian
Scholarship set forth in our opening definition. But this very
fact should make us humble and all the more careful about the
use of pontifical statements which, in the final analysis, seem
to have the ultimate objective of displaying our own sanity and
good judgment and the foolishness of all contrary views. The
great difficulty is to find the balance, to be moderate in all
things, to be � as the Greeks put it so well � "sweetly
reasonable and appropriately serious."
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Above all, it seems to me of fundamental importance
that no article, originating from a source which by its
very nature is likely to make the reader less critical, should
ever appear in print until both the author and the editor have
assured themselves that it fulfills this prime requisite of Christian
Scholarship, namely, that "It is accompanied by an objective
evaluation of what the evidence implies in relation to the fabric
of Christian Faith founded upon biblical revelation."
pg.13
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Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights
reserved
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