Where bad science and hermeneutics intersect

If we believe that the same God who created asn evolving universe is revealed in an evolving Bible, we can derive some fascinating insights from contemporary studies of genetics. Today's chickens, it turns out, still have the genetic information in their DNA that was used to produce long tails, scales, and teeth in their ancestors the dinosaurs. During embryonic development, some of those primitive dinosaur characteristics still manifest themselves in chicken. (Human embryos similarly have stages where they sport gills and tails, so it is said that our ontogeny recapitulates our phylogeny.) We might say that the Bible similarly retains the record of its own evolution, and in our individual spiritual development we may personally recapitulate earlier stages.

Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 273.

It is tough to even know where to start with this quote. Do you start with the hopelessly outdated (Contemporary? Really?) and abandoned arguments for evolutation based on embryology? (I always knew that dinosaurs had something to do with my spiritual formation. I just could never figure out precisely what. Thanks!) Do you start with the retreaded developmental hypotheses of source criticism? I have not read the entire book in question, so I don't want to be unfair or uncharitable to McLaren, but I was under the impression that he was a prominant voice for the emerging movement. So why is he acting so modern by restating all of their old arguments?

Some thoughts on the documentary hypothesis

A short opinion piece reflecting on the documentary hypothesis and does it really matter.  It is also a reminder of how certain scholarly assumptions develop a sort of dogma about them over time - to reject these scholarly assumptions is to be labeled either a fool or a heretic.  I've always considered source criticism as little more than a red herring anyway.  It baffles me that scholars can exert so much energy either defending or demolishing arguments about authorship and sources (oftentimes without any historically verifyable evidence) and in the process totally miss or dismiss the message of the word which has been passed down to us.  This is what happens, I think, when you separate scripture from its moorings in the Church.  For instance, Hebrews has been used as authoritative scripture within the believing community for about 2000 years.  I love speculating about the authorship of Hebrews, but to a great extent it doesn't matter.  What does matter is what this book has had to say to the Church through the years and what it continues to say to the Church today. 

The Exaggerated Importance of Extra-Biblical Texts

It is remarkable how frequently there is the tacit assumption that we can be more confident about how we interpret secondary first-century sources than we are of how we interpret the New Testament writers themselves. But it seems to me that there is a prima facie case for thinking that our interpretations of extra-biblical literature are more tenuous than our interpretations of the New Testament. In general, this literature has been less studied than the Bible and does not come with a contextual awareness matching what most scholars bring to the Bible. Moreover, the Scripture comes with the added hope that there is conherency because of divine inspiration and that the Holy Spirit will illumine Scripture through humble efforts to know God's mind for the sake of the glory of Christ.

John Piper, The Future of Justification (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007), 34-35.

Evolutionary Theology?

It is simply historically false to suggest that the intellectual boundaries of Christianity were not defined until well after the New Testament era. The evidence taht they already existed in the New Testament era is compelling. However, as offshoots and aberrations from the earlier and more apostolic faith arose in the second through fourth centuries, the church was forced to more clearly define Christological orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Then indeed the boundaries were more rigidly and firmly put in place. But this is not because before the fourth century what existed was a "free-range" Christianity that would have considered Gnosticism (or, for that matter, an inadequate Christology or polytheism or libertinism) a legitimate variant on a Christian theme. It is because the specific problems raised by such later deviations had not yet formed, or had not yet fully formed, in the New Testament era.

Ben Witherington III, What Have They Done with Jesus? (San Francisco: Harper, 2006) 224-225.

Source Criticism

An approach to texts that seeks to discover the literary sources of a document. The assumption is that certain biblical texts underwent a lengthy process of growth and com-position, both oral and written. Source critics examine texts in order to discover evidence of sources on the basis of language and style, the use of divine names, doublets of stories and any discrepancies within or between passages. In OT studies, the most prominent field for source criticism has been the Pentateuch. Source critics, for example, observe that Genesis 1–2:4a uses the name Elohim when referring to God, and is an orderly and tightly constructed account of creation, with the humans, male and female, being the climax of creation. In contrast, Genesis 2 uses Yahweh Elohim, is a story (not a day-by-day account) and has Adam being created first, then Eve. Thus source critics conclude that these two different accounts of creation derived from two different sources, the Priestly source (P) and the Yahwist source (J) respectively. In the study of the Gospels, source critics have the four Gospels, and particularly the three Synoptic Gospels, to compare with each other in order to construct the literary sources used. Source criticism addresses the problem of disparity between styles and accounts in a single document, but does not answer the question of how these accounts now fit into a unified composition.

Arthur G. Patzia and Petrotta, Anthony J, Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 107