His post reminds me that while I was in Houston earlier this year, I attended a big United Methodist congregation where every Sunday morning 150-200 people gathered each week to be part of an adult Sunday School class where Rev Bill Kerley presents academic biblical scholarship in ways that are accessible to the non-theologian. I was taken there by the brother and sister-in-law of my hosts and it was clear that my transport providers’ lives and those of the regular attenders had been transformed by what they were hearing. I found it fairly basic, but it would have been quite concerning if I hadn’t.

I also agree with James about the need to provide material at different levels, although I think we sell people short if the ‘elementary school’ level material doesn’t at least hint at the fact that there is more to it than what is being presented.

I myself have been seeking to use my Sunday school class to introduce some information from academic Biblical studies to people in that class, and it has been responded to mostly favorably. This suggests to me that there is a mutually-reinforcing circle, with clergy not saying anything about things they learned in seminary, and ordinary church members not hearing about things and so never having a chance to show they can cope with more than their clergy believe. In particular, if one approaches these topics inductively, so that it is the overlapping passages (and thus the Bible itself) that raises these issues, rather than those scholars that some people are suspicious of, the exposure to these topics can be a positive one and less painful than either side imagined.

The problem of individuals at differing levels of faith development and religious education has always existed – Origen mentioned the issue of topics that might be too unsettling or controversial and which should therefore only be discussed among the educated. Although I personally believe that people can cope with more than we give them credit for, people at different places in their lives may not be ready to graduate from an elementary school approach (books that provide the ‘right answer’) to a more advanced one (questions, methods, and some things being more or less certain than others).

Once you start to study the Bible as history or literature or anything other than the pure word of God, then it is hard to avoid noticing that it is not really consistent and often contradictory, which leads to the slippery slope that a particular church’s beliefs might not be so set in stone.

Also, few few people have the curiosity or desire to learn in depth. Intellectual subjects bore most people.

I have to re-read Bauckham in order to be able to be certain about this, but the impression I received from his book was that he believes that if we could show that (parts of) the gospels are eyewitness text, this would make them more reliable than the heavily redacted documents that historical criticism takes them to be. I don’t think that this is necessarily true for reasons that I’ve blogged on before – here and here. So while I don’t think that Bauckham has necessarily set out to ‘prove’ faith, I am not quite sure why he or anyone else might consider it important to categorise bits of Scripture as ‘eyewitness’ accounts except because they could thus be considered to be more accurate. Are my biases showing?

Your concerns here, and the similar ones of April and others regarding public illiteracy of biblical scholarship, bear analogy to my own concerns on the illiteracy of most biblical scholarship to new findings on Gospel origins. Just as the public are lacking the prerequisites that would prepare them for college classes on the New Testament, so also NT scholars are lacking the prerequisites that would prepare them for the new findings (www.tjresearch.info/contents.htm). The latter generally lack awareness of the reality of the UFO phenomenon (www.nicap.org), and so cannot accept the straightforward interpretation of Merkabah mysticism and certain NT events like the “star” of Bethlehem. Also lacking is an appreciation of the apparent reality of reincarnation (www.spiritandsky.com/reincarnation/evidence). Hence they are unprepared for the real teachings of the man known as “Jesus.” The illiterate public is fearful of losing their faith and perhaps being sent to damnation, while NT scholarship is lacking in curiosity over topics they have been conditioned to feel would be a waste of their time and detract from their professional advancement.

Some of us, therefore, are not so concerned with the public’s illiteracy as with that of scholars who ought to be capable of educating the public in “true” truth.

Jim Deardorff