kata ta biblia

I was inspired by Roland Boer and James McGrath to do my own search for the identity of N.T. Wrong. Unlike James, however, I’m thinking it is a name that we would not recognize so immediately as Goodacre’s.

My Guess: Dr. Steve Young, a tenured Instructor in Philosophy at McHenry County College

Starting Clue: The IP address of N.T. Wrong apparently comes from Woodstock, IL.

Next Step: McHenry County College is one of the closest institutions of higher education (about 5 miles). It has a Philosophy Department. Within this department, I find Steve Young, who is a member of both SBL and AAR. He teaches courses on the Bible as literature, World Religions, The Quran, Religion and Violence, and Women’s Studies.

More on Steve Young: He holds a Ph.D. from Drew University (1998), an M.Div. from McCormick Theological Seminary (1981), and even had a stint at Moody Bible Institute dealing with Sacred Music before getting his bachelor’s in ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan. The spectrum from Moody to Drew may suggest that Young is a former fundamentalist, which could account for a great deal of the postings of N.T. Wrong. He has a background in music which is reflected in many posts on music on Wrong’s blog. The book reviews listed for Steve Young on his CV reflects a strong interest in Islam, which is reflected in the several references to Islam on Wrong’s blog.

Still more on Young: His profile on RateMyProfessors.com indicates that he has a strong sense of humor, which we would expect for Wrong. The reviews are overwhelmingly positive, seeming to indicate that he is a good communicator, which we would also expect. Described as giving “a lot of work” and “not the easiest grader.” I would expect high standards from Wrong as an educator. They describe him as “knowing his stuff” and being “very educated.” One student says, “He makes you feel inferior by asking questions that make you rethink the answers you give him in class.” Apparently, Young actually makes his students think in class. Again, to be expected.

Young’s dissertation and abstract: “My thoughts are not your thoughts”: Pierre Bayle on the Inscrutability of God and the Legitimacy of Difference

The Huguenot skeptic Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), as an early modern road-not-taken for Reformed theology, can inform a deconstructive postmodern theology. Bayle’s understanding of power, knowledge and God and his spirituality developed in response to the constraints placed upon his thought not only by Catholic persecutors, but by Calvinist opponents as well. I draw upon the work Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze, to show how Bayle employed a set of “strategies of resistance” to the power of the church of his day. In particular he resisted the limits placed on the forms of thought permitted within his religious community while continuing to claim allegiance to that community. Chapter 1 recounts the exiled Bayle’s conflict with the Walloon Consistory in Rotterdam and his enmity with the theologian Pierre Jurieu. Chapter 2 addresses the first of a set of strategies of resistance to coercive ecclesial power: to point out and critique the role power plays in the formation of theological truth, and thereby delegitimate it. The next strategy is to relativize theological truth claims. The third chapter examines the way in which Bayle does this: he notes that theological truth is not static, but is an expression of a human community that is itself diverse, made up of many different people, no two of whom think alike. The fourth chapter examines another strategy: Bayle’s preference for using metaphorical, and thus inherently contestable, language to express theological commitments. The next chapter highlights Bayle’s extreme emphasis on the notion of God’s inscrutability, and therefore the inappropriateness of imposing theological consensus on the church. Finally, chapter six looks at the impact of power on Bayle’s spiritual life. A deep bifurcation between his Christian and philosophical identities resulted in a “technology of the self,” a spirituality, that was itself a strategy of resistence to the coercive character of ecclesial power. In every case, we see Bayle’s resistance to any attempts to create theological uniformity by any means other than reasoned persuasion. At each step along the way, Bayle sought to protect the diversity of the church from the dangers of a coercive uniformity.

His comprehensive exams included: Enlightenment and Modern Period; Dissent and Religious Authority; Plato; and Foucault. Young also has an article in The Journal of Early Christian Studies on manliness in the Shepherd of Hermas. He has given presentations on “Technologies of the Spiritual Self” and “Why (to) Not Believe in God(?): A Religious Case for Atheism.”

In sum, Steve Young has the kind of wide-ranging education, interests, and sense of humor that we would expect from the identity of N.T. Wrong. If my information on N.T. Wrong’s IP address is correct, then the geographical location would make sense. The only thing that is confusing me is that Young does not list Hebrew in his research languages. Also, Wrong seems to have good knowledge of the UK (even if he may not be British himself) and I don’t see any info on whether Young has a connection with the UK.

Those two points aside, I think I’ve got a pretty good link. If not, I just introduced Steve Young to one corner of the internet in a very unorthodox manner.