By Dr. Scott Hahn

 

I've just returned from an ecumenical meeting held at the world's largest Baptist university, Baylor University in Texas.

 

The subject was the Bible and how it's studied and taught in colleges and universities. My contribution was a paper on Pope Benedict XVI's important criticisms and corrections of modern biblical scholarship. 

 

The paper generated lots of discussion. Our conversations also got me thinking about the relationship between what scholars say about the Bible and what people in the pew believe.

 

The stereotype is that scholars live in an ivory tower and that what they think and talk about doesn't have much to do with the real world. But that's far from true, especially when it comes to the Bible.

 

In recent months, we've seen a rash of news items related to the Bible and the early Church. There has been the "discovery" of a supposedly "suppressed" Gospel of Judas, not to mention all the hype surrounding the false claims of The DaVinci Code about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and early Church authorities.

 

What most people don't realize is that these stories and issues represent the bad fruits of wrongheaded ideas about the Bible that have long been afoot in colleges, universities, and even some seminaries.

 

About a century ago, scholars started studying Scripture, not as God's Word, but merely as ancient literature. They introduced novel assumptions - that whatever the Bible says about miracles and divine acts can't be true; that almost everything in the Bible must reflect the hidden agendas of power-hungry early Church leaders.

 

As I told my Protestant friends and scholars at Baylor, this is an urgent concern of Pope Benedict. He believes the consequences of bad biblical scholarship have made "major inroads" in parishes, causing many believers to doubt such fundamental truths as whether Jesus is really the Son of God or whether the resurrection really happened.

 

Bad ideas, indeed, have consequences. But so do good ones.  That’s why the renewal of Bible scholarship is one of the St. Paul Center's urgent priorities.

 

That's why we're getting ready to publish the second volume of our widely acclaimed journal, Letter & Spirit.  That's why we're promoting some of the best, cutting-edge work in biblical theology, and building bridges with Protestant scholars who share our concerns.

 

We’re out to change the way the Bible is studied and taught in the academy. That, in turn, will change how Scripture is preached and prayed for generations to come.

 

As always, I thank God daily for your generous prayers and support - which makes the great work we're doing possible.

 

July 2006