Episode 276: Pete Enns & Jared Byas - The Difference Between Biblical Studies and Theology
What makes biblical studies different from theology, and vice versa? Why does it matter? In this episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and Jared ruminate on the goals, methods, and focus of each distinct field and why it’s important to understand the difference when engaging with the Bible and faith. Join them as they explore the following questions:
Why is it important not to use biblical studies and theology interchangeably?
How do we define biblical studies?
How do we define theology?
What does biblical studies handle, and what does theology handle?
What are some of the tools used in biblical studies and theology? How are they similar or different?
What does historical critical mean?
How would each field approach something like the concept of the Trinity?
What are some of the purposes, methods, and goals of biblical studies? What about theology?
Tweetables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
“Biblical scholarship can appear to be tearing the Bible apart when it's really trying to understand how this Bible came to be and what it meant to the people who wrote it.”@peteenns@theb4np
“Biblical studies deals with the Bible backwards. You have this Bible, but how did it come to be? It deals with the Bible specifically, its own prehistory, and also the setting around which the various parts of the Bible were written.”@peteenns@theb4np
“Theology is more the Bible forward—we have this text, what do we do with it? How do we understand the complex ways of God? How do we live? What do we say in church?”@peteenns@theb4np
“Theology focuses on the nature of the divine and biblical studies focuses on the historical, literary, cultural context of the Bible.”@jbyas@theb4np
“The more right you go on the ideological spectrum of Christianity, the more you blur that distinction between theology and biblical studies, and that's where biblical studies “gets in the way of true faith.”@peteenns@theb4np
“I love talking to theologians who respect biblical studies and vice versa, but the methodologies are different because their purposes are different.”@peteenns@theb4np
“The really positive nature of the field of theology is it's what makes our religion and faith commitments relevant to us.”@jbyas@theb4np
“Just understanding when we're doing biblical studies [versus] when we're doing the work of theology helps those to be more in harmony with each other.”
Mentioned in This Episode
Books: 1 and 2 Samuel for Normal People by Aaron Higashi
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Pete: You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared: And I'm Jared Byas.
[Intro music plays]
Now it's time to tell you about the next class in our summer school series. Our July class is called Go to Hell? Alternatives to Eternal Damnation, taught by the brilliant Jamie Clark-Soles.
Pete: This class will cover topics like the history and meaning of hell; hell and God's morality, and our morality; How does hell fit with the idea of justice? And it's happening live on July 25th from 8-9:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
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Pete: And as always, these classes and all our classes are included in our Society of Normal People membership for just $12 a month, which you can find at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
Folks, we're here to tell you about the newest book in our commentary series, First and Second Samuel for Normal People. It's authored by the brilliant and witty nerd in residence, Aaron Higashi.
Jared: First and Second Samuel is home to one of the most beloved stories in the Bible, David defeating Goliath. But what do we do with the rest of 1 and 2 Samuel? The stories that didn't make it to Sunday school.
Pete: Yeah, and what do we make of the man at the center of them—David, the one after God's own heart? If you've cringed while David's character is celebrated from the pulpit, questioned the example of a king who failed so miserably as a father, or wondered at the heart of a God reflected in a man such as this, this book is for you.
Jared: The book officially comes out Tuesday, July 23rd, but you can actually start reading it right now by going to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/Samuel.
Well, welcome everyone to this joint episode. Today, we're going to talk about the difference between biblical studies and theology, because over the years, we hear a lot of people using these words interchangeably, and that is understandable.
Pete: No, it's not.
Jared: It is understand—
Pete: It's wrong. [Laughs]
Jared: Grace we have for people. But we do want to recognize that there are different fields, they have different areas of focus, different scopes, different methodologies of how to approach it. So today we thought we'd unpack the differences between biblical studies and theology.
[Music plays over teaser clip of Pete and Jared speaking]
Pete: “Biblical scholarship can appear to be tearing the Bible apart when it's really trying to understand how this Bible came to be and what it meant to the people who wrote it.”
Jared: “They're engaged for the theological conversation. They just want it to be informed by biblical scholarship.”
Pete: “For me, the big question is how can everyday normal people understand the difference between the disciplines, but then seek ways of bringing them into conversation for themselves?”
[Ad break]
Jared: So, Pete, do you want to give us an overview, maybe a little bit of a definition to get us started in our conversation?
Pete: Yeah, I mean, very briefly, I think one way of looking at it is that biblical studies deals with the Bible backwards. What I mean by that is, okay, you have this Bible, but how did it come to be?
So, it deals with the Bible specifically, okay, its own prehistory, and also the setting around which the various parts of the Bible were written. So, it's, it's Bible backwards, it's like background stuff. Theology is more the Bible forward. So, we have this text, What do we do with it? How do we understand the complex ways of God?
How do we live? What do we say in church? Things like that. So, it's moving, taking all the Bible's existence for granted and then moving forward from that. And there are two, within themselves, there are diverse disciplines, but when you compare and contrast them, you know, they have different ways of going about things and they're definitely not interchangeable, as you said.
Jared: So maybe we can structure this into five different areas to think about the differences in five different spheres, if we will. And so, we're going to maybe try to unpack those. I think this is a good way to orient the conversation. So, the first is just in areas of focus and scope. Like, what does biblical studies handle, and what does theology handle? And that's kind of what you were just talking about in that biblical studies really focuses on the texts of the Bible themselves, and then it includes, like you said, when you talk about it, the Bible backwards, we're talking about the history of how it came to be.
We're talking about the context, which usually has two parts, the literary context, And then the cultural context of how those came to be, right? So, the words themselves, what are the contexts in which they're being used, and then the culture. How did they dress? How did they eat? How did they think about God?
How did they, back then, think about these things? Because that's going to inform what the text meant in the original context which is the realm of biblical studies. And then, you know, theology is going to encompass more, uh, broadly topics like the nature of the divine, the nature of God, religious beliefs, practices.
It goes beyond the Bible. It studies doctrines, right? And that's going to be an interesting one when we talk about it. It's like, well, doesn't the Bible contain doctrines? So, how do we unpack that? I mean, I think that's going to be, uh, can be confusing. You know, one thing I wanted to point out here, Pete, on this is even when we talk about focus and scope, let's say it talks about theology focuses on the nature of the divine and biblical studies focuses on the historical, literary, cultural context of the Bible.
When you are raised in traditions that were so Bible focused, it becomes really easy to understand why we would collapse these two. Because there wasn't a distinction between the Bible itself and our traditions about the Bible. There wasn't a distinction between the Bible itself and our interpretation of the Bible.
So, to ask, how did the Old Testament portray God—
Pete: Yes.
Jared: —Is the exact same thing as saying, this is how God is. We're trying to make that distinction with these two different fields of study that biblical studies is trying to ask the question, how did the ancient Israelites think of God that we see in the text?
Pete: And in different ways at the time.
Jared: Right. In the text itself. How can we see these various portrayals of God? And then theology would ask the question, what is the nature of God? And those, if you don't know what the difference between those are, it might be because you're conflating biblical studies and theology.
Pete: Right. You mentioned creeds, and that's, that's, uh, I think a good jumping off point because I mean, this is where people get into heated debates about things with things like the Trinity, for example. That is a doctrine, it's a creedal doctrine of the church. It's the result of theological and philosophical ruminations about the text.
Biblical scholars will routinely say, and correctly so, the Trinity is not in the Bible. It's something that comes after. See, that's an example of like, Bible backwards or Bible forwards. I think sometimes the two disciplines forget that, you know? Maybe not so much on the academic level, but maybe on the more popular level, that when you're doing theology, you think you're actually doing the study of the Bible, when you might not be.
And also, with biblical studies, well, all that theology stuff is nonsense. Well, not necessarily. I mean, some of it's really good, right? But that's a difference, you know, and I think an important difference to understand.
Jared: Well, and maybe, I don't know if you have anything else to say about focus and scope, but I want to use the Trinity as a really good example if we move to the second part, which is methodology. How they're different in their methods.
Because maybe, I'm going to put you on the spot, so I'll talk for a second while you think about this. [Pete laughs in background] But I want us to see how biblical studies as a field and how theology would approach something like the Trinity differently. And I think you can see that within the methodology that they use.
So biblical studies, just again, a broad brushstroke, uses what we use this phrase quite a bit on the podcast, historical critical methods. And so, there's that word historical, like we said earlier, in terms of scope, is that we're looking at the history, and then historical critical, it doesn't mean we're criticizing, it means we're using tools of critical thinking and applying it to the Bible.
So they use historical critical methods, and then they would use, like, literary tools. So, the way people, because we're talking about a text, so in the same way that scholars analyze Shakespeare or analyze Tolkien, you have to analyze the Bible. Or Odysseus and the Iliad, these ancient texts. There's a literary set of tools that you can use to analyze these things. Um, as well as archaeology, because again, we're talking about history.
And so those are the tools of biblical studies. The tools of theology would be more philosophical. Like just what made me think of this is because you mentioned in terms of the Trinity, philosophy, like philosophical reasoning is maybe what they were using to develop this. And then systematic analysis. So, you're putting pieces together in ways that aren't original to the text, but do make sense from a certain perspective.
So, if we have these different methodologies, that might sound abstract for people. So, can we use the Trinity and talk about how biblical studies might approach that question of is the Trinity in the Bible and how theologians might ask the question or talk about Trinity from these different approaches?
Pete: Well, I mean, yeah, for, for example, you have at the end of Matthew's gospel, you know, “go out, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.” And I think very quickly people jump on that and say, ah, Trinity right there. And a biblical scholar might respond, “you might be bringing Nicene Christianity back into the gospel of Matthew” because that might not mean that there are, you know, three persons, you know, that share a substance or something.
The chances of Matthew saying that is probably very, very slim. So the context, the Jewish context of the Gospel of Matthew, the setting of the Gospel of Matthew, which we don't know exactly when that is, but we know it's pretty much first century Palestinian Judaism. So how might that have been understood in those days?
And how is that different from how, let's say, later Christians who were Gentile and not Jewish, might have read these texts and you know, legitimately trying to put pieces together, but I would argue in a non contextual way that that's the big difference. You know, it's not enough just to see words there.
It's what would those words mean? That's what biblical studies focuses on through things like literary analysis, or, you know, the general cultural context at the time, at least what we know of it. And even if you can't come up with definitive answers, you can come up with pretty good hypotheses about how some of these things might have been understood.
Jared: When related to the Trinity question, I think you get even more of this distinction when you pull out the phrase, Son of God, where theologians might say aha see there's that Trinitarian language the relational language of father and son and spirit.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: But in a Jewish context you have to recognize what son of God how it was used in other texts at the time, how it would have been hinted at in other parts of the Hebrew Bible and then draw your conclusions to what did it mean for the New Testament writers to comment on Jesus as son of God. And the answer to that within the context is going to be different than, say, 3rd, 4th century Christians who are starting to use this language, Son of God, for Jesus in a different way.
Pete: Yeah, and, and I think it's, it's probably important to say that Jared and I are not suggesting theologians are clueless about historical context.
Jared: Yeah. Say more about that.
Pete: That's really important. And also, it's not that biblical scholars don't care about theology. I'm a biblical scholar. I care about theology. I care about philosophy. Right? So theologians, plenty of theologians who try to work with this attempt to, to want to systematize and make broad comments or draw a broad picture of the nature of Scripture, they're trying to do that within an understanding of some of these historical complexities. I don't think that's always the case, you know, and this is where we get into trouble. I think the more right you go on the ideological spectrum of Christianity, the more you blur that distinction between theology and biblical studies, and that's where biblical studies, “gets in the way of true faith.”
“Theology gives you life, biblical studies just tears things apart.” There are plenty of theologians, the Christian church is full of theologians who understand the complexities of history, but want to draw some conclusions let's say for the benefit of Christianity of the church or Judaism, the benefit of the synagogue.
So I think it's important just to not set this up and we're not doing that as an either or and these two things are opposed to each other, but they are different. And the problems come when I think people forget that and where quoting a Bible passage means you're doing theology or means you've read the Bible correctly. It's much more fascinating than that.
Jared: I may be oversimplifying and I think we're trying to be clear about these distinctions without oversimplifying.
Pete: Cause they are different disciplines.
Jared: Yeah. And so, so correct me, but in biblical studies, again, if we're thinking about method and thinking about source material, biblical studies, source material is the Bible.
It's in the, it's in the name, right? It's in the text. But theology, the source material for the things that they're thinking about and the conclusion they're drawing, actually is broader than just the text. They're bringing in, to use that, uh, phrase we've used, that, that, uh, fancy phrase, the Wesleyan quadrilateral.
They're bringing in experience, reason, tradition, and the text. So they're, the recipes that they're going to make are going to have more ingredients in them than biblical studies.
Pete: Mhmm. But without saying that biblical scholars don't have also those kinds of, let's say, biases, right? That's something that people have pointed out, and rightly so, that, well, biblical scholars, “we just use neutral tools for analyzing the text.”
Now, it's the questions you ask that reflect your own world view, and we're really getting into the weeds here in a sense. We're getting deep down to see how the sausage was made. We're all subjective beings. We all do the best that we can. It's just that biblical studies asks a certain set of questions and theology tends to ask a different set of questions. And when those two come into conversation, I think it's exciting.
I mean, I love talking to theologians who respect biblical studies and vice versa, but the methodologies, they're different because their purposes are different. You know, we, biblical scholars deal with things like “Yeah, I'm reading the Torah, and doggone it, it looks like more than one person wrote this, because you see these different voices, there are inconsistencies, and even contradictions, and the laws differ, but they all come from God on Mount Sinai, and why does it look this way?”
That's a classic biblical scholarship question to ask. Why does the text look this way? There are theologians who will then sort of try to formulate theological issues and theological questions engaging that kind of talk, but, but many don't. And that's, that's sort of, I think what we see more often, Jared, speaking for myself on social media and comments. You know, well intended people, but you start doing things like, you know, this text is, is not one text, but it's probably written by more than one person or Isaiah was written over several hundred years, not just in the five minute coffee break. And getting into biblical scholarship can appear to be tearing the Bible apart when it's really trying to understand how this Bible came to be and what it meant to the people who wrote it.
Now, it came to mean different things over history, and I think that's, that's inevitable. That's a lot where theology comes in. It's taking this ancient text and saying, all right, but what about now? And especially, I think, for Christians in sort of a ecclesiastical communal setting and saying, what, what does this mean to us? What fruit is there for us in how we should live and how we should think?
Jared: And again, to summarize, biblical studies is asking questions around what it meant, and theology is often asking questions about what it means.
Pete: Mhmm. I don't think it's oversimplifying at all. I think that's generally true. I think a good biblical scholar will have an eye open to what it comes to mean, and maybe see the distinction between them and address them. And I think a theologian who's doing their job will also understand, yeah, what I'm applying to today has a complex history. And theology even deals with that. There are theological disciplines that deal with historical theology.
Jared: Yes, so they are different, but maybe we can conceptualize it more as a Venn Diagram.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: So that when you are asking what it means as a theologian speaking from the biblical study side, it's really helpful if you understand what it meant. So those are not divorced. That may not be the primary task of what you're trying to do is figure out what it meant. You're trying to figure out what it means, but to be grounded in what it meant, will allow, I think, for a respect of the text and the tradition that has more integrity, in my mind.
But the other side of that is also true, in terms of the Venn diagram, that if you're going for what it meant, don't be deceived to think that you can have this unbiased approach. You are always going to be colored a little bit, by your own experiences, or blinded by your own assumptions and biases. So you have to be aware of the other, even if your primary focus is the one.
Pete: Yeah, what you just said, Jared, something just sparked in mind. I hope this is helpful. Okay, so I want to understand what Hosea meant in his context in the 8th century. Okay, that's part of the text. That's part of what biblical scholars do. Biblical scholars also deal with the New Testament. And Paul quotes Hosea in Romans in ways that Hosea would never recognize.
So, here's the quandary I think for a lot of people. You have within the Bible, let's call it, some theology going on. Right? Where Paul is taking Hosea and moving Hosea in a direction that Hosea, in fact, I mean not to get into it, it's, how Paul handles Hosea and Romans is diametrically opposite of what Hosea is trying to say.
So we have within the texts that we're trying to study as biblical scholars, we already have the seeds of what we might call theological application at different times and different places. So, I, I think built into biblical studies, and this happens within the Hebrew Bible itself, not just New to Old Testament, but you have later texts commenting on earlier texts and moving in a different direction.
Part of the discipline of biblical studies is to see that and to acknowledge it, and then maybe to pass it on to theologians and say, you know, we've been doing this all along anyway. Now we're just more conscious of how we're appropriating these texts, right? So, I think that's just a statement of how these two disciplines can actually talk to each other, but I think we want to talk more, Jared, about some of the differences between them, just so people are really, really clear that a biblical scholar is not a theologian, a theologian is not a biblical scholar, we're asking different questions and have different goals.
[Ad break]
Jared: That's a good segue into, then, this third category around purpose, like what is the primary goal? And again, the primary goal in biblical studies is to reconstruct these contexts, the literary context, the historical context, the social context so that we can try to best understand the meaning, the past meaning, the meaning in its context of the biblical text.
And so we want to know what did it mean to the original audiences, to the original compilers. What were they intending to do? What are the intentions here? What were they trying to communicate? And then that's usually produces something that's more descriptive. There isn't a lot of prescription. You're not telling people what to do in biblical studies.
Pete: That's actually another good distinction. Yeah. What it meant, what it means. Descriptive versus Prescriptive. Prescriptive.
Jared: So, theologians, on the other hand, in terms of goals, are really trying to I would say, this is my own bias, take the work of biblical studies and understanding what it meant then, and then developing these systems of belief that are more prescriptive, they are more normative of saying, this is how we in our tradition practice this now.
Pete: Mm hmm.
Jared: So, the goals are different in that the biblical studies is really like you said, it's sort of trying—it fails because we're human—but it's trying to lay out and say, well, here's what it is. This is Paul's use of Hosea and it seems to be different than Hosea's use of Hosea.
Pete: [Laughing] Right.
Jared: So, what do we do with that in terms of our faith practice? That's the theologian’s conundrum. Biblical studies isn't going to answer that question.
Pete: Yeah. I mean, the academic discipline of biblical studies doesn't say, what do we do now that we saw Paul do this with Hosea?
Jared: What do we do on a Sunday morning with Hosea knowing that Paul uses it this way and the intentions of Paul was that way? The biblical scholar’s not going to, I mean, they probably will have opinions, but I would argue, or maybe step outside of the field to answer that question in any normative or prescriptive way.
Pete: And theologians will handle it also differently. I mean, some will say, again, the more conservative end of the spectrum will say things like, “Well, Paul's not misunderstanding Hosea. He's actually aligned with Hosea's intention. He's not doing anything crazy.” And of course, there are biblical scholars would say, “Paul's a Jew in the first century. They're always creative with the text. That's, that's how they bring it into their present moment.”
So you have that kind of a debate going on, but there are other theologians who do understand that and they see that and they are actually fueled by it and how they can bring that to, let's say a more general appeal. Not everybody cares about the nuts and bolts of context. Many people do. But at the end of the day, I think, especially for people of faith, it's like, all right, but like, what do I do with all this stuff? Right? Like, what is the Bible and what do we do with it? Right? We're trying to do both of those things here. And biblical scholars are really focused on what is it? You know, which is not an easy question.
And the fact that, you know, your favorite hero in church history, whether it's Augustine or Luther or Calvin or whoever, is very declarative about what some things mean for, I'm going to say this is true for a lot of theologians too, but in the discipline of biblical studies, it's like, that's not an answer.
So if you're going to research, let's say, uh, I don't know, anything, Genesis chapter one and what it means, you know, your research is not going to include probably medieval interpreters who were not really that terribly interested in context to begin with, who were very expansive and creative. It's probably not going to include, I mean, Calvin, people are going to blow up when they hear this, but it's probably not going to include a late medieval thinker like Calvin or Martin Luther.
And it probably also has to engage sort of like the whole context of science today versus back then. So all those things are going to come into play. But yeah, the two disciplines, there is a Venn diagram, those two disciplines are not polar opposite, they overlap. But the emphasis in biblical studies is we're giving a plausible understanding of the context within which this text could have come about and what this would have meant in the context.
And that's helpful. You know, when I'm reading the New Testament, I, I like having an idea of what a Pharisee was. You know, and not just from my own imagination, but from research and history and other, what biblical scholars do, looking at other texts from outside of the Bible that might help us understand these things.
Jared: Yeah, and I think it's important, too, for self awareness around how we engage these texts. Because I'm thinking of just last week, there was a, a meme going around that was basically saying, uh, and I can't remember the Greek word because I don't remember what passage it was talking about, but it was basically saying, “Oh, how come I never learned in church that this Greek word actually means mutual submission?”
And maybe it was in a household code, maybe, uh, Ephesians or something. And then there, you know, because we're us, a lot of our Facebook friends are like biblical scholars and stuff. So then in the comments, there was always biblical scholars who were like, “That's actually not true. Like Greek doesn't mean, the Greek word does not mean that.”
And so we'd have to be self aware that our theological conclusions, because we are trying to take the tradition we've inherited and make it make sense in our context, that we don't get overeager then to put that back onto the text. In the same way that Luther or Calvin did. And, and hear what I'm saying, I think it's fine to say, “Yes, our Christian tradition and our Christian faith now needs to include an understanding of relationships that is about mutual submission.”
You know, we have Christ who has modeled for us sacrifice, but without that mutuality, it becomes abusive. Like, we do need to draw those conclusions, but that's not the same thing as saying “This Greek word in Ephesians means that.”
Pete: That's a theological move.
Jared: Correct.
Pete: Right. It's not, it's not what the text says, but the—folks, the history of Christian theology has been all about moving beyond the boundaries of the text because the text doesn't address the questions we ask. And that's why theology is essential to Christian thinking. I think it's essential, but you, I would rather people say, we're doing something theological here, we know it's not in the text.
Jared: Exactly.
Pete: Rather than saying, I have to anchor it in the text somehow, because you're going to get blown up by people who like—
Jared: Which for me is fundamentalism, it's just now a progressive fundamentalism. It's using the same mindset of no, the text is, it's sola scriptura all over again. The text is, it has this inerrant quality to it. And so whatever conclusions we come to, we have to anchor it in the historical critical, uh, what was the term that was used 15 years ago in that tradition? Uh, grammatical historical way. That's the only valid way we can come to a conclusion.
Pete: Because it's biblical teaching, right? And that's why I see a lot of, I mean, not to go too far afield here—but the discussion we're having now, Jared, I'm going to argue is a distinctly Protestant discussion because of the authority of the Bible. So, and I, progressive, you know, Protestant theologians do the same thing, right?
They want to anchor something in the text. Well, that word doesn't mean this, it really means this, and therefore that person agrees with us. That rarely works in my opinion. I would rather just say, again, this is my biblical scholarship coming through. So like, that was then and now is now. I mean, we gotta think, you know, it's just, we don't, we don't live this way, we don't think this way about the nature of reality, we've actually learned things.
History has moved and yeah, we're still rotten people, all this kind of stuff, blah, blah, blah, but we've also learned a lot of things. And that's, I mean, a lot of what fuels biblical scholarship is finding things in the desert, archaeological finds, texts that look like biblical texts, but they're not part of the Bible. They're creation myths or flood stories or, you know, prophetic works and things like that, that, oh, okay, you know, I might need to take this into account when I'm trying to understand what the Bible meant. That's context.
I mean, the technical term for this, folks, is comparative religions. When you compare biblical ideas or biblical themes or biblical whatever, to the writings and the ideologies and the cultures of nations outside of the Bible.
And the classic example is Genesis chapter one. The more you know about ancient mythologies, the more you're going to read Genesis 1 as a biblical scholar and say, well, this isn't history. This is myth. And if this isn't myth, then how can we say this other stuff isn't myth either, when it's so similar to what the Bible says?
That is knowledge that we have that we didn't have 200 years ago, but we have it now. And so guess what? Biblical studies moves on, it marches on, it keeps thinking, as does theology. So okay, listen, we're dealing with this kind of a text. This is how it describes creation. We think differently about creation. How do we connect with this text? That's what theology does, I think, in a nutshell.
Jared: Yeah. Okay, so we touched on these other pieces, and so maybe we'll be more explicit about it and add on to it a little bit. But another difference is how—and, and these get a little bit more vague, but I think it's worth mentioning.
Okay. So the one is, is the relationship to the religious tradition itself. So the biblical studies in general can be more detached because like we were saying, they're descriptive. It is just a descriptive field. It's not trying to prescribe anything. So it can be more academic and detached because it's focused on the text as an ancient, like you said, comparative religion.
It's comparing it to other religions at the time. It's comparing it to other religious texts, I should say, at the time, and drawing conclusions there. Where theology is typically more engaged in the faith communities of today. And that's where we get this phenomenon that I think blows people's minds sometimes when they come out of more conservative traditions, that a lot of—not all, maybe not even most—but certainly some prominent biblical scholars are not part of any religious tradition or religious faith.
They can be atheists. They could be, you could have a Muslim person be a biblical scholar because it's a historical study and analysis of an ancient text. It's not necessarily, you don't have to have a faith commitment to be a biblical scholar. That's sort of true theologically, but tends not to be true. The theologians tend to be operating within a faith community. Would that be fair?
Pete: I think that's, that's more true than not. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm comfortable with making that distinction. Yeah. I mean, on that Jared, there's, there's an angle here that has helped me understand some of this stuff as well.
And that is, even the origins of historical critical study. I won’t go on and on about this folks, because it's going to be a little bit dry, but you know, when—simply put in the Protestant Reformation, the Bible becomes, it's raised to a level of authority. In like a historical way, it becomes very authoritative.
So, that spurs on the Protestant Reformation, all these groups, they disagree strongly on how these things should be read and what they mean, and, you know, God's behind it all, but, uh, we've got God, and you don't, right? So, what happens, and not long after that, is, you have this rise of, like, secular thinking, you have the Enlightenment, right?
I mean, that horrible word people don’t like to talk about, but the Enlightenment. Which said, you know, you guys are arguing over there about different ways of reading this text and these texts and what they mean, and you've jettisoned Roman authority. Well, why don't we just jettison all authority anyway, and not even worry about God and just read this stuff as if it's literature? And that's the beginning of the secularization, let's say, of the study of the Bible. It enters into the universities, it becomes a topic that you can actually discuss. And I think sometimes what people react against is that history.
That's why, as you said, you can have people who have no religious commitment whatsoever or a very different religious commitment and can still effectively study the Bible in the context of biblical studies. And people say, “well, they don't have the spirit. They're not going to get stuff right.” Well, but they do, you know, and they, they, they have insights into this history, into the literature.
You know, I've, probably most of what I cherish that I've learned about the Bible, I shouldn't say most, but a lot of it is not from Christians, but from either, uh, Jews or people with no real religious affiliation, because they understand something about the history. That, again, that's biblical studies, but the secularization of it all, I think, is what people are still reacting to.
And the rise of fundamentalism, you know, in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, that's a reaction to, you know, “you guys are reading this Bible like apart from God, and you're saying things that our religious tradition doesn't like.” And so they hate each other. And they're at odds, and they've been at odds now for centuries, literally centuries.
So my point is that I can see why people would be reticent to adopting historical critical biblical studies and just stick with theology. I hear that all the time. I hear it from my students. “Theology just gives life. It's easier. It tells you what to do.” And here we are seeing how the sausage is made. There's a tension between them, but that tension is not going away. You can't make believe we don't have ancient myths from Mesopotamia that we can compare to Genesis 1, right? Just, we can’t make believe we don't have the Dead Sea Scrolls, which has explained some things that we see in Paul or in the gospels.
That's not going to happen.
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Jared: Historically, I just had this thought, what bad timing for the Protestant Reformation, [Pete laughs] because at the very time that we double down on biblical authority, you know, we start eschewing tradition. That's about the time that we start recognizing, through archaeology, through all these other things—oh, maybe the Bible is not as unique as we thought. Maybe we can use these other things we're discovering and finding to understand the Bible. So it almost feels like at the very moment we double down on biblical authority, things start to erode it In the way that we thought it was.
Pete: And if anything, also just understanding what the solar system is, even earlier.
Jared: Right, right. It coalesces at a time because what made me think of that is when we are making these distinctions, I think it would be fair to say that in the early church, in the early medieval period, there wouldn't have been a distinction between biblical studies and theology as a field.
They're doing the same, just in the same way that philosophy and science were not distinct fields for several hundred years because we lacked the tools and research ability to run experiments other than just our minds. So, for a long time, people were just thinking through how do the stars function and how does math work?
Pete: Pretty amazingly too.
Jared: Pretty accurately for a long time. But eventually around the same time in the Enlightenment, you know, philosophy and science break off into distinct fields. This is also about the time that biblical studies and theology become more and more their own—
Pete: Specialization?
Jared: —specializations. Yeah.
Pete: Which is inevitable, because there's 2,000 years of theology to study if you want to be a theologian. You know, there's all sorts of languages and ancient stuff you have to study if you want to be a biblical scholar. You actually, it's hard to do all those things. Right?
Jared: It's just a limitation of how—the explosion of information that we have.
Pete: Mhmm. Right. So, I mean, I mean, just, just back to the secularization thing. I think that's very important. And it's why I have sympathy for people who bristle against biblical scholarship because of the history of it and how fundamentalism is essentially a reaction to the secularization of the Bible. You know, you had, for example, you know, John Calvin was very big on things like, you know, “the Bible's true, the Bible is accurate historically, and the Bible's a foundation for all matters pertaining to faith and life.”
And that worked until people started finding things in the ancient world, and then all of a sudden history gets very, very complicated. And instead of folding that into biblical scholarship, the fundamentalist reaction was to distance itself from it. So I think there's, it's baked into, at least in the United States, it's baked into the fundamentalist, and I'm going to say evangelical DNA, to be very wary of what biblical scholars say to you.
Because “they're going to try to tear the Bible down,” and maybe some are, but my experience has been no, they're just trying to understand it, asking those certain kinds of questions with those certain kinds of methodologies.
Jared: Well and it makes it very tricky because I was in this camp, this is, you know, I went to school to be in biblical studies within a fundamentalist framework. And it's very hard to do biblical studies when you are constrained by theological commitments. That becomes really tricky when not just theological commitments, but theological commitments pertaining to the Bible, which is what I think inerrancy is, it's a theological commitment to the text.
And so it bleeds, that Venn diagram gets, in my opinion, overlaps way too much with an inerrantist commitment. Because then you're not free to come to any conclusions that would be contrary to that theological commitment. And that gets hard. What do you do with the evidence? Is you have to have entire organizations and entire books, I always joke that the Archer's Book of Bible Difficulties by—people in my—
Pete: Gleeson Archer, yeah.
Jared: Yeah, Gleeson Archer's Book of Bible Difficulties, they'd say, well, see, we've answered all of the questions. And I'm like, if you have to have a 2,000 page book to answer all the questions—
Pete: Well, several books.
Jared: [Laughing] Like—
Pete: Right, yeah, right. I didn't know there were that many problems.
Jared: [Laughing] I know, right?
Pete: Thanks, pal.
Jared: Exactly, exactly.
But anyway, I just think that there's that idea of the relationship to the religious tradition is complicated because if you do take that more detached outlook as a field of study, but you try to combine that with a theological commitment to inerrancy, that this text is from God and is perfect, it just is, it's going to be, have conflict.
Pete: Yeah. I think that calling them theological commitments is a very fine way of putting it. I can imagine some theologians saying, those are more dogmatic commitments. And there's a little difference between them because I think dogma is not a field of study. Theology is, and there can be theologians who are not dogmatic.
But still, I mean, I think in the popular use of the word, you know,
Jared: My emphasis was on the commitment part. The commitment is such that it becomes dogma.
Pete: Yes. Right. And then you can't move outside of that. And all religious systems have boundaries, and religious systems are theological expressions. They don't come from the field of biblical studies. They don't. They don't necessarily come from the field of theology, but they do come from people who have put pieces together, which is a theological task, to put those pieces together and come up with certain things and say, well, here are the non negotiables and you, you, not only do you have to agree with them, you can't even question them in your own mind.
Jared: Right. Yeah.
Pete: So, yeah.
Jared: Well, and that maybe just brings us to the last point, which again, is related to the previous one. Which is just often you will see, and again, this maybe is more at the, I would maybe say this distinction is more at a lay level that I've seen it. Of just this biblical studies being more academic and focused on evidence based conclusions where theology can be, can be academic. That's why I think it's more at the lay level. But often, you know, faith communities, religious leaders, pastors tend to be more providing theological sermons than biblical studies sermons. And I think that holds true. I mean, to be honest, I think it'd get pretty boring—
Pete: Unless it's biblical studies sermons are given in service to the larger theological—
Jared: And rightly so. And this is, this is more to say the really positive nature of the field of theology is it's what makes our religion and faith commitments relevant to us. That is the engine for why there is a Christianity today, is the theologizing that has happened for 2,000 years.
Pete: The adapting, the bringing it into your moment, right?
Jared: Correct. And that's, I mean, I think that's what, at least modern day preaching, that's the purpose of it is to bring this text into relevancy today. That is theology.
Pete: I mean, you know, my training is in biblical scholarship, but when I ask the question of myself, “so what?” I'm asking a theological question, and you can't avoid it. And I think, I mean, just to emphasize something you said before, Jared, and I want to make sure it's absolutely clear. This is more of a lay distinction. I know Tripp Fuller or Tom Oord would be horrified, you know, that we're like saying, “you're just devotionally oriented.”
No, they're, they use big words, you know, and, and they can be academic and theology is an academic discipline. And biblical studies is an academic discipline. But definitely on the level of the masses in the church, because biblical studies requires languages, because you're, you're dealing with history, you have to deal with languages, have to deal with literature. You have to deal with context, you have to deal with things like archaeology, whatever. It feels more academic.
Now theologians as a discipline, they will know several languages as well. It might not be, well it's going to be almost always Greek, maybe not Hebrew, but Latin, German, you know, Italian—I mean, just, it's Christendom. It goes, languages go on and on. And so I want to just be really clear to anybody listening who might be getting the wrong impression that we're trying to drive these artificial wedges between these two disciplines. We're not. But practically speaking, theology is more amenable to devotional reading.
Right? Not verses, but just how you put the pieces together. And you can understand that, you don't have to know Greek and Hebrew to have, to hear a bit of theology from a pastor or something. Right. And it can appear to be more related to your devotional life as a discipline. That's not true, but it does come across that way. And that's probably why people have the tension between the two.
Jared: Yeah. And even going back to what we said about what it meant versus what it means. Even just using that language, you can see that the “what it means” is more amenable to devotional faith conversations than “what it meant.” For a lot of people, I mean, just to be honest, this is anecdotal, so it's not at all scientific. Anecdotally, I don't know if this is true for you, most people are engaged because they want to know what it means. They're engaged for the theological conversation. They just want it to be informed by biblical scholarship, which is a fair thing to want.
Pete: Right.
Jared: Yeah, I would want my devotional life to be informed by good scholarship as well, just like I want my, you know, relationships to be informed by good, uh, psychological practices and relational practices and like, yeah, we want to have a good foundation, but for a lot of folks, it is the interesting thing. The thing that brings life to them is the theological conversation, not so much the biblical conversation, unless you just happen to be super nerdy.
Pete: And sometimes—exactly right, and there are nerds out there. But, and the thing is that when, when people have an understanding of how things were and they appeal to the Bible and somebody like me says, “you're really misunderstanding what that meant.”
I mean, we don't know everything, but like the, this is just, you're making something up here. Oftentimes the reaction to that is, “Well, you're in league with Satan” or like you're, because you're trying to destroy my faith. And sometimes it comes across like that, you know, I mean, it does. I mean, I see it. I mean, I try not to do it.
So the question is how, for me, the big question is how can people, everyday normal people, understand the difference between the disciplines, but then seek ways of bringing them into conversation for themselves, right? And that doesn't have to be on a deep academic level, but I think it means, I think it means doing both biblical studies and theological studies well. Both recognize fluidity, right? The Bible is a fluid text. It's not a rule book that tells you all the same thing. It's, it's, it's a tradition. It's a journey. The church is a journey. It's a way of the continued adaptation of the scriptural tradition for different times and places.
The difference in the modern period, as opposed to say, even the Reformation or the medieval period, is that we're very historically conscious. And that's part of the legacy of the Reformation. We’re very historically conscious when it comes to the Bible. That's where biblical scholarship can come across to people as attacking their faith or attacking the Bible or attacking God. And that's really unfortunate. I understand that. It's just very, very unfortunate.
Sometimes it's because of how people come across, you know? Sometimes teachers who, you know, lose their faith and they want to sort of dump that on everybody else. You know, that that comes across as very off putting obviously, but just as disciplines, they both have something to say and I'm going to say this. We are in a different place intellectually today than we were in 1500 or 1600 or even 1950.
Jared: How dare you?
Pete: I know.
Jared: How dare you?
Pete: We're in a different place. You know why? Because the world keeps moving. And I'm glad that we have these two disciplines of biblical studies and theology that are themselves examples of adaptation, of thinking through freshly, you know? And that's, I think, to me, that's how these two disciplines can and should coexist and not be antagonistic to each other, right?
Jared: Yeah, I appreciate that. That's kind of my final word as well. That the way you've said that is my hope would be, I think of it as relationally, because I think about relationships between things a lot. And in a relationship, you don't want to be enmeshed. Sometimes we think enmeshment's a good thing. Like, all this overlap, and there's not clear boundaries, and we're all kind of stepping on each other's toes. And that's not to say the answer is to distance or detach from each other. It is to figure out how to intermingle in the right way. It's to have that proper relationship.
Pete: Interdependent, right?
Jared: Interdependent. Yeah.
Pete: Instead of codependent.
Jared: Yeah.
Pete: Right.
Jared: So, and that's what I think these are. It's like, it's just a call to awareness. Just understanding when we're doing biblical studies, when we're doing the work of theology, helps those to be more in harmony with each other, rather than stepping on toes and coming to conclusions that maybe aren't as helpful than if you, you know, you follow the steps more properly.
Pete: All right. Well, I think we've confused a lot of people here today, Jared. I hope not. I hope, I hope this is helpful.
Jared: We did this whole thing so that people would stop calling you a theologian. That's this, this whole thing was, Pete was like mad. He's like, Everybody keeps calling me a theologian. I'm a biblical scholar. And so we were like, well, let's do an episode.
Pete: I'm not that mad about it. I mean, actually, you know, where I teach at Eastern, we decided years ago to call our department that has theologians and biblical scholars in it, the Department of Theology. Why? Because nobody knows who Biblical Studies is. They just don't even, like, what is that? So like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm in the Department of Theology. Are you a theologian? Sort of. Not professionally, but I yeah.
Jared: But it's a hobby of yours for sure.
Pete: Yeah! It is—
Jared: It is because you're a person, if you're a person of faith, you're doing it all the time.
Pete: You are a theologian, right? It's just how informed are you when you do it? And that's why I talk to theologians to try to understand it better.
Jared: Exactly. All right. Thanks everybody.
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Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.
Pete: And if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
Jared: And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@thebiblefornormalpeople.com.
Outro: You've just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People. Don't forget you can catch our other show Faith for Normal People in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Hodge, Steven Henning, Wesley Duckworth, Savannah Locke, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Natalie Weyand, Lauren O'Connell, Jessica Shao, and Naiomi Gonzalez.
