Theories of Knowing

Over at the Tea Shop they’re talking about fortifying SBL against theologizers. I felt curious about the issue, since last year when I was at SBL here in Boston – Nawlins is just too far for a poor student like myself – I was not under the impression that SBL was being taken in such a fashion. It might be my naivete, or I picked some good sections, who knows.

In going through his discussion, I found this little bit: “some presentations seem to construe the Bible as the primary human text“. I find the objection to the possibility of such an idea strange. If one looks at the text through the critical lens, two billion people religiously find the text as their own. If we were to add in Muslims who honor the Biblical texts to a degree, that is another one and a half billion people. That is over half of the world who identify primarily with this text. That does not even count those who culturally are informed, either actively or passively, by this text. And that is only at this point in history. So, it seems an argument could be made to suggest that this is the primary text by which humanity sees itself, or has seen itself, or is at least in tension or heavily informed by. All this within a critical point of view. It would seem the existence of such a society named The Society of Biblical Literature and the lack of any other major religious literature society would have brought this point into clarity. But, whatever.

I commented to try and find the perimeter, the shape, of this secularizing argument:

I’ve often wondered about where the line of theology is drawn, so I’m glad you’ve brought it up. There must be some element of doing theology that is equally critical as critically examining someone else’s theology. Wouldn’t restricting sessions to only critiques create a situation in which theologies are only destroyed/lessened/rendered lame, rather than be constructive. And that constructiveness need not only be constructive for a specific group (e.g. the church), but for any group, and perhaps, hopefully, all groups? I guess I wonder at the specific audience-focused nature of some sessions that are permissible (feminist, lgbt) while some are not (faith-based). Granted, anyone refusing to be critical or academic in any of these specific audience-focused groups should be refused. I would find it strange that a group for theological readings of lgbt or feminist issues would be permissible while a group for theological readings of ecclesiastical issues would be denied (especially while lgbt and feminist issues are more and more being brought directly into ecclesiastical situations.)

I think the aspect of being constructive is important, for all disciplines. Critical science is able to construct an understanding based on its premises. In all of this thinking I’ve found Jon D. Levenson’s two essays on this topic to be very formative. It is incredibly valuable that we all agree on the historical and critical methods by which we investigate these texts. We flatly do not, and cannot know about the authorship and history behind theses texts. The texts aren’t intended to tell us about this information. The critical methods have been developed to get us some of these answers. However, as Levenson argues, this method is just another system of knowing. All systems of knowing have an equal claim. Religious knowledge is another system of knowledge.

As the tea shop was so quick to point out, critical scholarship is incapable of making a value judgment. I would agree. However, one must recognize the critical project as a value judgment as well. Philosophers have gone well past recognizing the modernity project as failing at the attempt to be fully objective. Of course, religious knowledge are also making value judgments, that is no where in dispute. Why are we unable to recognize this fact? As a person of faith I am able to live in two worlds, the critical world as a would-be-someday scholar, and the religious world. I find some critical results to impact my world of faith. And my world of faith often gives interests and leads to my critical world. I don’t find these two offices to be antithetical whatsoever. As far as SBL goes, if the organization decides to make some sort of statement towards groups that are operating outside the critical method, that is fine. But as Levenson points out, those who only operate within the critical world have no business saying that the value judgments another system of knowledge (within which they don’t operate) are unbelievable.