An anthropocentric observation only allows the Bible to be
anthropology rather than theology, but theology is its purpose. What this means
is that the scholar who holds to naturalistic assumptions is often prevented
from seeing the Bible as it was intended. He can only superimpose his analysis,
gained not from the text, but from his own worldview, upon the text. In other words, he is hindered from
understanding the object of his study, and often must transform it into a
foreign object with a completely different purpose—one more befitting and
complementary to his worldview. Hence, it is the naturalist, not the
supernaturalist, who is bound, hand and foot, from understanding his supposed
area of expertise. As such, he is merely an apologist for his own worldview,
not a master of the subject to which he has supposedly devoted himself.
You know what makes this even more tragic?
ReplyDeleteYou take the average ill-informed layman, and tell them that so-and-so has a M.Div or Ph.D at a liberal Ivy-league seminary, and they think that the M.Div or Ph.D is really smart (read "wise") about Scripture and God.
The unsuspecting sheep is prey for the wolves and the teachers of wolves.
Yeah, this is a generality of course, but having known many people who came from Ivy League schools, and having briefly attended one, I have been impressed with their breadth of knowledge, but not so much with some of their depth of it, or even their depth of understanding and being critical of their own methodologies of inquiry.
ReplyDeleteI'd make the exception for a couple professors and students I've known from Princeton, but in general, the Ivy League student/professor isn't any more, and sometimes less, brilliant than one from a regular university or seminary (in fact, I think you're trained to think through what you believe a lot more in seminary than other schools because you're forced to do so from a more uphill battle in competing with university students for spots in PhD programs or jobs, and because Christian positions are always perceived by academics as lesser scholarship).
All that to say, I wouldn't trust the Scarecrow to interpret life for me just because the supreme Wizard granted him a PhD.