What typically happens is you're given either-or fallacies all over the place.
And a lot of...
I won lots of hearts and minds one day in Wisconsin when I insisted
in a doctoral seminar that a course in logic should be required of
all students going through a doctoral program in biblical studies.
You know, so I have just bounced around. I really appreciate Providence,
I had no sort of conscious direction at any number of points.
And again, I figured, you know, I'll be okay.
If God's really there, if he's in charge, he'll fix my boneheaded mistakes,
you know, he'll give me some direction when I need it.
He'll impede me from just screwing things up too badly.
You know, I had these thoughts. And when I was in graduate school, like at Penn,
I would do things like, Okay, I want to know who the bias people are here.
Because we...
you know, I'm reading liberal scholars and stuff like this. And, you know, I'm not okay with that.
So I went up to the Semitics Reading Room at the University of Pennsylvania.
This is the Ivy League.
And I went through the stacks of the Semitic reading room to look for,
to see how many books I could find that were published by an evangelical publisher.
I found one: R.K. Harrison's Introduction to the Old Testament.
Okay, and that taught me a great lesson.
And I really believe that, look, none of these questions have been asked...
there's nothing new under the sun. There's going to be somebody who has had
this question, who has thought deeply about it. And it's just, you need to give it time
to go find an answer.
So I would also do things like every degree that I pursue,
I don't really know what exactly to do, but I'd like it to be harder and more antagonistic.
Because that's probably a good thing. You know, like if I'm going to suppose to get a PhD,
this is what I'm going to do. And, you know, I would just think thoughts like this.
And, again, maybe I was naive, I don't think I was naive. I think this is good theology.
I believe that God would be okay. Scripture would be okay.
None of these questions are new.
And what's probably needed is some good creative thinking about the problem.
Tell me about "antagonistic." Tell me what you meant by that. That's good.
Yeah, I wanted to be exposed to critical scholarship in the sense that
the professors were teaching things, and sort of were at the forefront of their field,
of ways of approaching Scripture that either I knew I wasn't, or I had been taught was bad,
you know, like, was something to stay away from, like higher criticism and things like that.
What you do is you learn that every approach to Scripture is presupposition driven.
And the other side will often refuse to admit that.
They're going to be just like the fundamentalist; their their system is objective,
"of course, it's objective, how could it not be objective?" you know,
like, there's no assumptions driving the bus here.
When there are always assumptions driving the bus.
Yes.
And so que question is...
And, you know, there's gonna be something worth thinking there.
Worth thinking about that's going to come through.
And often the key is: how is a question or problem framed?
You know, how do we approach whatever the issue is?
What happens in biblical scholarship a lot, especially when it comes to,
we'll just be broad now, evangelical versus non-confessional, non-evangelical.
What typically happens is you're given either-or fallacies all over the place.
And a lot of...
I won lots of hearts and minds one day in Wisconsin, when I insisted in a doctoral seminar
that a course in logic should be required of all students
going through a doctoral program in biblical studies.
You could even hear the crickets chirping.
Wow.
I probably won't go down that road too far.
You know, it was just one of those moments where this is so obvious to me
that I don't really find either of these trajectories terribly satisfying.
So like, there's some cosmic rule that says I have to pick one?
Like, where is that? You know, but if you question that,
then there's something wrong with you; either in a fundamentalist context
or in a liberal critical, non-confessional context.
And I just find that objectionable. And I'll confess, sometimes I find it entertaining
to be honest with you. But it's sort of just the way it is and
I guess it's become kind of a... not a stick that I beat people with,
but maybe a little stick that I jabbed people with every now and then that you know,
we ought to just admit that we do this.
Like it's the most obvious thing in the world you know, but let's just admit it and try to
come up with something better, take it apart, put it back together again and noodle it.