Old Testament Poetry and Wisdom Literature, Part 5

‘Critical’ Scholarship, Continued

We ended the last post with two questions. First, in what way are critical scholars wrongly critical—what is their error? Second, if critical examination of others is right, how should we be critical, and how does that relate to the study of Scripture? We will address the first question today.

How are ‘critical’ scholars wrongly critical? Those who consider themselves ‘critical’ scholars are wrongly critical in that their presuppositions are overly critical. This is evident from a number of practices that are common to critical scholars. All of these might not be present in every single critical scholar, but the following things tend to characterize critical scholarship as a whole.

Critical scholars tend automatically to doubt traditional interpretations and conclusions. In order to be convinced of a ‘traditional’ conclusion, they require evidence. In and of itself, this is a helpful approach but the problem is in the degree and amount of evidence they require and the reason that so much evidence is necessary. Specifically, they require an overwhelming abundance of evidence because they have their own (somewhat uncritically received) conclusions about what is and is not valid. For example, when dating certain Old Testament texts such as those in the Psalms, some critical scholars will date the texts very late (1^st or 2^nd century BC) because of their preconceived notions about the evolutionary development of religion. These scholars say that personal, individual views of religion did not develop until very late (like the 1^st or 2^nd century BC), therefore, the texts must be very late as well.

As I have pointed out in previous posts, this is an example of presuppositions determining what conclusions are acceptable. As I also said before, this is not necessarily wrong. It becomes wrong, however, when we do not allow that new evidence may correct our presuppositions. I would argue, in the example above, not that the Psalms must be from a late date because of the individualistic understanding of religion contained therein, but that the evolutionary conception of religion must be incorrect because it does not comport well with the data from the Psalms. A parallel situation can be imagined in the scientific realm. If a scientist composes a hypothesis that does not match the data, what should he do? He should suspect that they hypothesis is wrong or needs to be amended. The critical scholars, however, when placed in that situation, are suspicious of the data and cling to the hypothesis! Rather, they should reject the hypothesis because it does not describe the data—they should be as critical to the hypothesis of the evolution of religion as they are to the data of the Psalms.

In a similar way, critical scholars generally have an antisupernatural worldview that prevents them from reaching traditional conclusions. This naturalistic worldview is assumed to be correct and—though they might not admit it—infallible. They (less than critically) place their faith in their own worldview and judge everything critically on that basis. This is problematic, because when our worldviews cannot describe all the data, we must examine our worldviews. This is true for all people, whether Christian or non-Christian, conservative or ‘critical’. We cannot make our worldviews our god—to do so is prideful idolatry!

A final way that ‘critical’ scholars are wrongly critical is that some tend to have a bias against ancient cultures in favor of ‘modern’ cultures. This bias can be manifest in the low views that some scholars hold of the cultural practices and cognitive abilities of ancient peoples. The evolutionary concept of the development of religion can be an example of this bias if it describes ancient people like uncivilized brutes who were incapable of grasping monotheistic religion. These scholars are ‘critical’ of any evidence that could point to the contrary, regardless of how compelling that evidence might be. 

In these ways, critical scholars are wrongly critical or overly critical. In some cases, they merely need to be fair by being as critical of their own presuppositions as they are of the textual data. I believe that correcting these errors would help to bring conservative and liberal scholars together in their study and their conclusions.

Next time, we will strive to discuss how we may be rightly critical.

--Dean of Admissions