A Screwtape Letter on Biblical Scholarship
A Screwtape Letter on Biblical Scholarship (with apologies to CS
Lewis)
-by Eric Matthew Vestrup
A mythical letter from Screwtape to a young demon who has been
assigned to an aspiring seminarian and student of Christianity.
My dearest young tempter:
About the matters which you seemed concerned about, the cause is not
at all lost with your subject aspiring to study Christianity and
Bible-related issues. Yes, he may actually learn Scripture, but
we have reason to not occupy ourselves with that disastrous possibility.
You see, we have succeeded most triumphantly in turning the former
thorn-in-the-side of Biblical scholarship into one of our dearest
allies.
How might you carry out the victory you so boastfully claimed for
this man's soul? Since you have asked, let me pour out the experience
and knowledge of one who has seen the last three hundred years of
Western thought. First, we have succeeded completely in removing any
thought of whether the Biblical texts might actually contain true
propositions, and we have replaced it with a type of non-thinking that
those lowly humans call "modern Biblical scholarship", truly a
great accomplishment of Our Father Below.
We have turned many divinity schools, religion departments, and,
proudly, many of the seminaries into places where "modern" scholarship
takes place. In these institutions students are not taught
how to think or to understand Biblical texts -- quite the contrary --
they are taught what other prominent scholars say and think about
Scripture. You see, we need only tweak man's pride in his intellectual
accomplishment, and he will readily throw out a simple and reasonable
approach for a far more complicated one, so long as it makes him appear
learned and scholarly. I remember once when people actually read the
Pentateuch and our Enemy revealed Himself to such people (yes we older
demons had it much harder then than you tykes do now), and this made our
work more complicated. But now, you will find that many scholars don't
bother to read and comprehend the words of the text. No, we have set
them off on the most delightful diversion of postulating sources,
redactions, and a multiplicity of authors for documents that any fool
can see are unified. This was accomplished because rationalism and
materialism (praise to our Father Below!) seeped into Biblical
scholarship.
Of course, the pathetic fools embraced this mode of thinking without
realizing the subtle gradient on which they were being led. First, the
integrity was questioned. Next, we filled their minds with theories
about redactors and sitz-em-lebens for the texts in question.
Then we stood back and watched our work blossom. Soon the inspiration of
Scripture was undercut, and we filled men's minds with the thoughts that
they could make the Scriptures anything they wanted do, so long as they
attached the label "scholarship" to it. Thus, some professor
can posit a second- or third-century date for the Pastoral letters
(wretched trash!), despite the fact that he is two millennia removed from
the scene and at odds with the people who were actually there at the
time, but can have his theory taken seriously because it is
"scholarship". Right now, several institutions have succeeded
in portraying the Christ as a Marxist or whatever is the latest fad on
the basis of speculative reconstructions. We feed the word
"scholarship" into their minds, and then we sit back and enjoy
the confusion that arises.
Yes, it is that easy. But you must always keep your subject's mind
off of the question of whether this "literary" approach to the
texts is at all true . Never, never, never let him ask or ponder
this question. And we have designed life and academics so that the
question of whether the rationalistic exegesis is actually valid or not
rarely (if ever!) is asked. That is because his teachers assign him
books about the texts and readings in the latest trends in
scholarship instead of the texts themselves. Make sure your subject is
so busy learning the critical theories, which noted scholars support
them, how this fits into man's experiences towards the Numinous, how
this makes him more educated than those ignorant fundamentalist types
who actually read the text, etc, that he never has the time or the
energy to actually sit down and study the text itself. The key word,
dear fellow, is scholarship .
Why only a small time back I had a subject who the Enemy had given a
great mind to. He was quite in the Enemy's camp while young, but he soon
fell into our clutches when he was taught the critical theories as a
seminarian. I remember that he was once questioning his professors about
the validity of rationalistic exegesis and criticism, but I was able to
plant the thought in his mind that the liberal criticism was
"scholarly" while actually taking the grammatical and
historical approach to the texts was "unscholarly". You should
have seen that sap's pride swell up when he got to think that he was in
the scholarly minority while the great majority was simply uninformed of
the latest trends of criticism. I can assure you that this man
eventually came into our camp quite unwittingly.
Keep on pounding the word scholarship into your subject's
mind. If he thinks that the author of the fourth gospel (a pack of lies
by the way!) was actually John Bar-Zebedee, my goodness don't let him
actually weigh the evidence for and against the critical arguments! That
would be the worst thing you could do. We don't need logical debate in
the battle for souls. No -- instead let him think that "The
majority of scholars hold that the fourth gospel was not written by an
eyewitness" or whatever the majority says. Get him to think that
any traditional and historical evidence for authenticity are old and
tired hats while the new scholarship and its literary theories is where
the exciting action is! Keep him focused on the fact that the majority
holds to these theories. Don't let him study the foundations of
criticism, and, when he sees the subjectivity of it, keep him thinking
along the lines of "scholarship". Many a soul has been brought
to us thanks to scholarship.
And if he still shows a strain of thought that does not depend on
scholarly hearsay, we can arrange to have him take a university position
in the field of Biblical scholarship. That way, he will have to
construct new and elaborate hypotheses (and hypotheses on top of those!)
to make a name for himself in the field. And when he begins to wonder if
his hypotheses could actually be false, feed him the idea that he is a
scholar and continually make him view his guesses as the latest in
scholarship. And we can be sure to feed him the idea that the
traditional literary views to the texts are "old",
"outdated", and "boring", while at the same time
prompting him to find his theories "exciting",
"new", "on the cutting edge". The pride of men --
especially of academics! -- is such that they all too easily, even
willingly, are bedazzled by the complexity of their hypotheses. And the
public --- oh this is so glorious --- will be so overwhelmed by the
theories and will believe them because they are "scholarly".
We have led many to Our Father's place thanks to their willing
acceptance of any literary theory and rationalistic exegesis that comes
from a "scholar". (Many don't even realize the circularity of
rationalistic exegesis of texts with supernatural claims -- the fools!)
Yes, my young apprentice, you still have a wide-open opportunity to
control this man and bring him to us. A true professional, of course,
will not merely lead the subject to us, but he will also make sure that
the subject also leads others to us as well. Keeping this in mind, and
exploiting the decadent side of human scholasticism, the upper hand is,
and shall be, ours.
Your concerned mentor,
Screwtape