Fundamentalists and Scholarship, Part 11

The Dual Responsibility of a Christian Scholar

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10.

In some sense, all Christians stand between two worlds. One part of their witness is to put Christianity on display in every sphere of human endeavor. This demonstration does not take the place of deliberately sharing the gospel, but the world ought to be able to see how Christian values affect the way that people transact business, raise livestock, overhaul engines, or perform any other task that is legitimate in its own right. People ought to see that Christianity makes a difference for brokers, ranchers, and mechanics, among others.

A Christian who becomes involved in any field of endeavor will owe something to that field. A Christian auto mechanic had better know how to fix cars. A Christian dairy farmer needs to know how to care for cattle and how to avoid contaminating the milk. A Christian truck driver who does not understand the rules of the road is a disgrace to his profession as well as to his faith.

Christian scholars, including theological scholars, stand in the same kind of dual relationship. As Christians, they owe something to the Scriptures, the Lord, and the community of faith. As scholars, however, they also owe something to the scholarly disciplines and to the community that fosters those disciplines.

By definition, scholars build upon and contribute to a tradition. They become scholars by entering and advancing a conversation that has already been going on, usually for a very long time. If not for this conversation, each generation would have to begin amassing knowledge anew. Scholars can further their disciplines only because they have first received something, and though they may work hard to master the conversation, they receive it as a gift. Therefore, they are indebted to the participants who have furthered the conversation in the past and to those who maintain it in the present.

Scholars owe it to their disciplines to preserve all parts of the conversation. To be sure, the conversation will include many false starts and wrong turns, but even those should be instructive. Knowing the errors that have been committed is one way of avoiding them in the future. Studying why the errors were wrong is an aspect of understanding why the real advances are correct. Every scholar in every discipline discovers that part of the scholarly task is to gain an understanding of error.

Scholars also owe it to their disciplines to uphold the highest standards of academic integrity. That is why peer review is so important, and it is why there is no such thing as a freelance scholar. The results of research are submitted to the community. The members of the community are responsible to detect and expose any fraudulence or sloppiness in the work. Involvement in both sides of this task (production and review) is the responsibility of every member of the community. When individual scholars or splinter movements seal themselves off from the community in intellectual ghettos, they are no longer recognizable as scholars.

Scholars are also responsible to defend the value of their disciplines, both within the larger academic community and before the world at large. Crypto-zoology is not a recognizable academic discipline, but physical anthropology is. Astrology is not a legitimate discipline, but astrophysics is. Alchemy will never become a genuine, academic discipline, even if alchemists begin to publish journals with footnotes and other scholarly apparatus. The public is often confused about what are genuine, academic disciplines. One of the responsibilities of scholars is to defend the value and legitimacy of their disciplines. Incidentally, this responsibility includes the duty to defend colleagues against misunderstanding and misrepresentation.

One of the most important tasks of a scholar is to uphold the collegiality of the discipline. The progress of knowledge within the scholarly community depends upon calm, deliberate discourse. Each member of the community is obligated to strive toward this ideal. Scholars address each other collegially. Activities and attitudes that undermine collegiality (territorialism, one-upmanship, demagoguery, and the “did you go to the right school” game) are genuinely destructive. They are the marks of the shabbiest sort of scholars.

This dynamic places Christian scholars in a delicate position. Because they are scholars, they must fully engage the members of their disciplines. Therefore, within the scholarly community, they will find themselves interacting with colleagues whose thinking is obnoxious to the Christian faith. They will be colleagues with infidels and apostates. How is a Christian scholar to handle those relationships?

On the one hand, Christian scholars must never treat apostates as if they are Christians. Anyone who comes preaching a false gospel falls under the anathema pronounced by the apostle Paul (Gal. 1:8-9). With such a person, no ground of Christian cooperation ever exists. Insofar as an endeavor is carried out under the Lord’s name, then a Christian scholar must insist that apostates be excluded.

On the other hand, within the sphere of academic relationships, Christian scholars bear the duty of collegiality toward all members of the community. This duty extends even to colleagues who are infidels and apostates. Within the academy, the Christian scholar must treat them with customary deference and uphold their right to free inquiry. Both inside and outside the academy, the Christian scholar must defend his colleagues—including infidels and apostates—from misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Oddly enough, Christian scholars may find themselves defending apostates from fundamentalists when the fundamentalists offer critiques that are based upon misunderstanding. That is as it should be—even the Devil deserves to be represented fairly for the simple reason that a lie can never be made to serve the truth.

These are the responsibilities Christians undertake when they wish to become scholars. They are the scholarly side of the Christian scholar’s duties. Christian scholars also bear Christian responsibilities, however. They owe duties to their Lord, to the Christian faith, and to the communion of the saints. Those are the duties we will discuss in the next essay.

Despised and Rejected

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

My sun has set, I dwell
In darkness as a dead man out of sight;
And none remains, not one, that I should tell
To him mine evil plight
This bitter night.
I will make fast my door
That hollow friends may trouble me no more.

‘Friend, open to Me.’—Who is this that calls?
Nay, I am deaf as are my walls:
Cease crying, for I will not hear
Thy cry of hope or fear.
Others were dear,
Others forsook me: what art thou indeed
That I should heed
Thy lamentable need?
Hungry should feed,
Or stranger lodge thee here?

‘Friend, My Feet bleed.
Open thy door to Me and comfort Me.’
I will not open, trouble me no more.
Go on thy way footsore,
I will not rise and open unto thee.

‘Then is it nothing to thee? Open, see
Who stands to plead with thee.
Open, lest I should pass thee by, and thou
One day entreat my Face
And howl for grace,
And I be deaf as thou art now.
Open to Me.’

Then I cried out upon him: Cease,
Leave me in peace:
Fear not that I should crave
Aught thou mayst have.
Leave me in peace, yea trouble me no more,
Lest I arise and chase thee from my door.
What, shall I not be let
Alone, that thou dost vex me yet?

But all night long that voice spake urgently:
‘Open to Me.’
Still harping in mine ears:
‘Rise, let Me in.’
Pleading with tears:
‘Open to Me that I may come to thee.’
While the dew dropped, while the dark hours were cold:
‘My Feet bleed, see My Face,
See My Hands bleed that bring thee grace,
My Heart doth bleed for thee,
Open to Me.’

So till the break of day:
Then died away
That voice, in silence as of sorrow;
Then footsteps echoing like a sigh
Passed me by,
Lingering footsteps slow to pass.
On the morrow
I saw upon the grass
Each footprint marked in blood, and on my door
The mark of blood for evermore.

This essay is by Dr. Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). Not every professor, student, or alumnus of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.