Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew

De: Hans Boersma, Scot McKnight - Foreword

Narrado por: Mike Chamberlain

The disciplines of theology and biblical studies should serve each other, and they should serve both the church and the academy together. But the relationship between them is often marked by misunderstandings, methodological differences, and cross-discipline tension.

Theologian Hans Boersma here highlights five things he wishes biblical scholars knew about theology. In a companion volume, biblical scholar Scot McKnight reflects on five things he wishes theologians knew about biblical studies.

With an irenic spirit as well as honesty about differences that remain, Boersma and McKnight seek to foster understanding between their disciplines through these books so they might once again collaborate with one another.

©2021 Johannes Boersma (P)2021 eChristian

Long Overdue!

I wish I would have read something like this at the beginning of my theological education. The wisdom here could have saved me a lot of time and wasted engagement.

The Bible makes the best sense within the context of the church. Its function can never be wholly determined by the academy. This is the perfect handbook on how to make the academic study of the Bible the handmaiden of theological study, instead of its replacement as in so many seminaries and universities today.

Excellent.

I read Boersma’s book (hardback, with pencil in hand) Seeing God last year. It was my first introduction to what he explores as a sacramental, Christ centered theology. It was wonderful, but perhaps like so many of us living 300 years down the Enlightenment road (embedded in the immanent frame -Taylor), it has been very difficult to bend my mind and heart to the ancient, pre-modern biblical idea of a heavenly, Christ-centered and “divinized” participation. I’ll need to read it again. This book takes up the defense, better the gracious and well articulated plea, that Scripture itself warrants (hmm, necessitates)the five sine qua nons he argues for. As a lay Christian who loves to read, I want to be able to say “Amen” to all five of his theses, but I still have some outstanding, not yet well articulated questions with regard to his allegorical hermeneutic, Christoplatonism, and not least how to square the concept of a (emphasis ‘divinized’) heavenly participation in Christ with the almost constant biblical refrain that our consummated eschatological existence will be (in the words of Randy Alcorn) gloriously (yes mysteriously) earthy. Boersma’s treatment of 2 Peter chapter 1 with regard to the relationship between (in regeneration) our having been made partakers of the divine nature and the Christian virtues (culminating in love) that Peter so beautifully describes was wonderful, and since so timely with regard to the now prevalent concerns (many legitimate as he seems to graciously concede) of the social justice campaign really deserves its own full length book. Suggestion: no doubt Hans Boersma is well qualified to take this on. Some might have trouble with this (I had a few) but in light of Boersma’s last chapter, perhaps a partnered writing with Eric Gregory (Yale) whose treatment of Augustine and the ‘political’ Order of Love was also excellent. Overall I am especially grateful for Boersma’s Reformed leaning ecumenism—so much needed in our ecclesiastically fractured age. Lord, help.

Unhelpfully Male-Centric

I bought this as a biblical scholar, curious about what theologians might have to say to me. I am not sure if these five things came from a broad survey of theologians, or whether this is Boersma's own list. In any case, I was disappointed although not surprised. The book could be summed up as: Don't stop listening to (mostly white) men.

In each of the five chapters, Boersma promoted a certain lens needed for approaching scripture: christology, neo-platonism, providence, church dogma and traditions, and contemplation. These are not bad caveats in and of themselves, and I mostly enjoyed listening, especially to chapter 2. But he recognizes throughout that all of these lenses can be misused, and his ultimate standard against which he measures right and wrong uses seems to be the church fathers and church leaders, in other words mostly white men.

This problem can be encapsulated by his overall use of male-centered language and his lack of reference to any women (at least that I noticed in the audiobook) except for one imagined 19th century black women who would interpret the Exodus differently than he does. However, he fails to ever value her contribution to the task of interpretation, or to propose any way in which she might be able to participate. In fact he asserts the primacy of our identity in Christ so vehemently over the acknowledged different interpretations that stem from social location that it seemed likely to me that all interpretations would be seen as special and marginalized except for a historical white male interpretation equated to one's identity in Christ.