Ronald Hendel, of the Biblical Archeology review, has written a critical piece entitled “Biblical Views: Farewell to SBL“. His beef appears to be that the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) is allowing into its membership, heaven forbid, various “evangelical and fundamentalist groups.” This, he suggests, compromises the group’s scholarly integrity.

Much could be said about his comments, here I will only parse some of them. First, Hendel begins by citing from Pascal’s Pensées, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.” Hendel clearly approves of Pascal’s contention and goes so far as to appropriate the sentiment, he elaborates Pascal’s position as follows,

This famous line from Pascal’s Pensées draws a wise distinction between religious faith and intellectual inquiry. The two have different motivations and pertain to different domains of experience. They are like oil and water, things that do not mix and should not be confused. Pascal was a brilliant mathematician, and he did not allow his Catholic beliefs to interfere with his scholarly investigations. He regarded the authority of the church to be meaningless in such matters.

While I am not a Pascal scholar this appears to be a caricature of Pascal’s position. Hendel  suggests that Pascal’s distinction between “reason” and the “heart” is a distinction between faith and reason. He goes on to state that Pascal believed the two did not mix and had different domains, and that the latter (the heart) had no bearing on mathematics or other scholarly investigations.

Now the former seems plausible, just after the citation Hendel refers to Pascal states “It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason.” However with regards to the latter points Hendel made, Pascal goes on to state,

We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to impugn them. The sceptics, who have only this for their object, labour to no purpose. We know that we do not dream, and, however impossible it is for us to prove it by reason, this inability demonstrates only the weakness of our reason, but not, as they affirm, the uncertainty of all our knowledge. For the knowledge of first principles, as space, time, motion, number, is as sure as any of those which we get from reasoning. And reason must trust these intuitions of the heart, and must base them on every argument. (We have intuitive knowledge of the tri-dimensional nature of space and of the infinity of number, and reason then shows that there are no two square numbers one of which is double of the other. Principles are intuited, propositions are inferred, all with certainty, though in different ways.) And it is as useless and absurd for reason to demand from the heart proofs of her first principles, before admitting them, as it would be for the heart to demand from reason an intuition of all demonstrated propositions before accepting them.

Pascal is quite clear, far from being “oil and water” and having nothing to do with maths or any other scholarly discipline Pascal believed that the very foundations of all knowledge, whether mathematical or another form, are based on faith; reason reasons from these premises but cannot prove them (not that it needs to). When Pascal goes on to state that “those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convinced” the implication is that certain religious beliefs, known by faith, function as properly-basic beliefs’ at the foundation of ones knowledge and, as such, are the premises one can legitimately reason from to other conclusions without first needing to prove them.

Second, Hendel’s objection to allowing evangelical groups into the SBL is wanting. His basic objection is that,

The SBL online book review journal (Review of Biblical Literature) has featured explicit condemnations of the ordinary methods of critical scholarly inquiry, extolling instead the religious authority of orthodox Christian faith.

Hendel’s concern here seems to be that some evangelical groups are opposed to critical and scholarly inquiry. He substantiates this further,

Listen to this, from Bruce Waltke, widely regarded as the dean of evangelical Biblical studies: By their faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, [evangelical scholars] … hear the voice of higher biblical criticism, which replaces faith in God’s revelation with faith in the sufficiency of human reason, as the grating of an old scratched record.

This, however, is a non-sequitur. Waltke in this citation criticises “higher criticism,” Hendel concludes from this that he opposes critical and scholarly inquiry. But this is not the same thing, why can’t a person, for example, engage in critical and scholarly inquiry, engage in careful research, follow the rules of logic, and so on, and yet reject some of the methodological principles of higher criticism. Alvin Plantinga has offered a carefully argued epistemology of religious belief that provides the basis for a critique of higher criticism. He might be mistaken but surely one needs to actually engage his argument instead of simply assuming it is wrong. Hendel’s assumption, that it is impossible to do this, surely needs more than mere assumption and assertion.

Hendel’s objections to Waltke are similarly mistaken. In response to the above citation he says,

This is a quaintly stated position, which directly attacks the applicability of human reason to the study of the Bible. Instead of reason, “faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”—as interpreted by evangelical scholars—should be the rule in Biblical scholarship. Waltke dismisses critical inquiry as an annoying nuisance, like the scratchy sound of an old LP.

Here Hendel contends Waltke denies “the applicability of human reason” to the study of the bible. This again does not follow. In the above statement Waltke denies that reason, by itself without faith, is insufficient but to say reason is by itself insufficient does not entail it has no application at all; it simply states that it has to be supplemented by faith to get a true or accurate answer.

In summary Hendel confuses the claim that reason, unimplemented by faith, is insufficient with the rejection of reason altogether. Moreover, he seems to think that reason and higher criticism are the same thing. This, however, simply appears to, at best, misunderstand and, at worse, caricature the views of faith and reason many evangelicals hold. Had Hendel reflected on what Pascal actually said, he might have understood this a bit more.

Tags:   Faith and Reason · Pascal · Ronald Hendel · Society of Biblical Literature5 Comments