Higher Biblical Criticism

TakeYourVitaminZ linked to a great article that I encourage you print, save, tweet, post, or just discuss in real life (!) with any college-bound student you know:

It provides a brief and excellent summary of the point I was trying to make with my teenagers last week. (Yes, the same teenagers that I will be apologizing to in a few hours.) We had been discussing the scientific method, epistemology, and whether believing that Jesus is Lord is the same thing as believing Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are real. (Sounds like a great geography class, doesn’t it?)

During our discussion, I told them about how my now friend and then undergrad philosophy professor, Dr. Paul Jensen, would slip me articles from theological and philosophical journals whenever my presidential scholar professors of theology would be completely dismissive of anything not wholly grounded in the rational naturalism of the Enlightenment. (I never met one theology professor at my undergrad who did not seem wholly bent on turning young Christians away from the Christian faith (“NO intellectual or academic person would EVER hold that view!”) or redefining the Christian faith in such contorted, even obscene ways, that it resembled nothing of the orthodox Christian faith. Maybe they existed, but I never met them.)

I would read these articles and they were like LIFE to me! I was a brand-new Christian. I knew next to nothing about why I believed what I believed; and I certainly knew nothing about logic, reasoning, epistemology and the hubris of higher academia. Talk about naive! That was me. And I really wonder if I would have been shaken and led astray by those wolves had it not been for Paul Jensen. Humble, gentle, brilliant Paul Jensen. He was unflappable in the face of my fear, emotion, and confusion. His life was full and busy and yet he (and his wife, one of my most beloved professors and friends) made time for me. He copied articles and handed them to me with encouragement. (“Tara, these are brilliant scholars. They demonstrate the weaknesses of the (one-sided) arguments you are hearing in your classes. Read these. They will encourage you and instruct you.”)

He not only commended me for my regular church attendance and active participation in a local Christian church, he modeled this aspect of the Christian life and was not only my philosophy professor, but my Sunday school teacher and my fellow pew-sitting, sermon-note-taking, brother in Christ.

He was never disrespectful of anyone. Never. Not once that I can remember. When appropriate (for example, when a Christian group asked me to debate homosexuality or abortion with another professor), he would engage in dispassionate discourse with such clarity, charity, and reason that even his students on the opposing side would have nothing bad to say about him. (“He disagrees with me, but he loves me.”)

He always took the time to define his terms before entering into a debate. He presented his opponent’s view in the best light. (No straw men!) He never devolved into name-calling disguised as pathos-laden rhetoric. Oh no. But he used logic and ethos and great rhetorical skill to do all he could to gently present truth. He lived out 2 Timothy 2:24-26:

“And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.”

I am grateful for teachers like Paul Jensen and the author of the above article (Pastor Bob Thune). In the late 1980’s, I would take my dimes to the xerox machine, make copies, and stuff the mailboxes of my friends who had responded positively to my invitation to read a different viewpoint than what we were hearing in our “highest academic presidential scholar” classes. Now, I can just blog it here, tweet and retweet, post and share, and discuss in real life too. And so I shall.

Thanks, Z! And thanks, Pastor Thune, too.

Yours,
Tara B.