That title sounds almost polemical. No, it’s meant rather to point to her own interesting post of a similar title (a couple weeks old, I have to admit… I’m still catching up on my blog reading after the quarter has ended). She talks about her experiences with interviewers from the press about her new book The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says. She reflects on how she gets asked what religion she is, which is most likely not a question received by, say, classicists or other types of historians. Naturally, the idea behind the question is to see how the person’s faith has affected their scholarship and perhaps even the conclusions they have come to. Here’s an excerpt:

That said, when I answer the reporter’s question, “What religion are you?”, with “A liberal Christian” or “A progressive Christian”, there is usually a pause as the reporter responds, “but your book is conservative.”

How delightful. How fascinating. How paradoxical.

I am not a liberal or conservative scholar. I am a historian of religion whose main goal is to reconstruct the history and theology of the ancient Christians as accurately as I can. If the text had said that he was a hero, I would have supported that position. But it doesn’t. So I have to follow through, maintaining academic integrity even if this means that I have to take a position opposite many scholars whom I consider to be friends. Judas is still a demon, even in the gnostic tradition. Epiphanius was wrong, as are the scholars who wish it to be otherwise.

I am in complete agreement here. I often say that it may be my deep commitment to Anabaptism that leads me to study social issues in the New Testament and early Christianity, but that I’m not out to prove anything in particular. I don’t have an Anabaptist ax to grind (a funny image, come to think of it). I simply hope to explore and discover the evidence of what may have been the social situation of the early Christians. I want to be completely honest about what I find.

One of the things I find humorous about April’s interviewers’ reactions is: I’m not sure I’d say her conclusions about the Gospel of Judas are conservative. She goes against what the “liberal scholars” (emphasis on the quotation marks here) are saying, but does that make her “conservative”?

It seems to me that a “conservative” would literally want to “conserve” tradition. The traditional understanding of the Gospel of Judas is that Judas is understood to be a “hero.” See Irenaeus and Pseudo-Tertullian, for example (April refers, I think, to the 38th chapter of Panarion by Epiphanius of Salamis, for which I can’t seem to find a good online resource). The “conservative” understanding of the Gospel of Judas, it seems to me, would be that it portrays Judas as a hero. It was considered heresy, after all. So, if anything, the so-called “liberal scholars” on the Gospel of Judas are really “conserving” the traditional understanding of the Gospel of Judas to some extent, whether or not they do so intentionally (they may, however, disagree with the value judgment of the traditional understanding–i.e., that it is heresy). April offers a “liberal” understanding in that it suggests a nontraditional view of the Gospel of Judas: that Judas is not the hero for the gnostics.

But the point is: April is not driven to find a nontraditional view and thus be a “liberal” scholar in this way, but rather that she is simply investigating and reporting what she finds. Just goes to show again the (non)usefulness of “conservative” and “liberal” as identifiers for scholarship.

Update (12/20/2007): See this post from April today regarding Robert Eisenman’s misreading of her work (he calls her a “theologically-minded scholar”).

I have just had an interaction with April DeConick regarding her approach to early Christianity and the response of some bibliobloggers to it. Tensions seem to be revealing themselves and I would like to explore them for a moment. Here is a quote from April DeConick’s Forbidden Gospels Blog:

What impedes our examination of early Christianity is not the limitations of historical criticism as some in the Academy would like to lead us to believe. The impediment is the fact that the majority of biblical scholars still have not dislodged themselves from their own faith perspectives. As long as this is the case, historical inquiry is impossible because the historical-critical perspective cannot be used uncompromisingly. Although I recognize that there can be no “objective” history recovered or written, this doesn’t mean to me that all subjective inquiries are the same. The theological inquiry is not the same as the historical.

Those in the Academy who have not dislodged themselves from their faith operate to defend, justify and explain it in terms they couch “historical” while privileging the New Testament canon and ignoring or dissing the apocrypha. Their personal religious belief in the authority of the New Testament scripture has led them to a common (and erroneous) assumption, that the New Testament texts are the only documents that tell us about the history of early Christianity. This leads to another common (and erroneous) assumption, that these canonical texts are accurate and reliable documents for the study of early Christianity. In this way, the religious walls of the canon have imprisoned the Academy for a couple of hundreds of years, holding us back from an honest historical analysis of early Christianity.

Many comments have been made to challenge this perspective. One commenter seemed to lump her view in with “those of secularised people living in late-20th century America, and that subset holding positions in full-time education (i.e. leftish, liberal, post-hippy, hostile to Christianity, Clinton not Bush, etc etc).” Another biblioblogger has written on his own blog: “She is a ferverently secularist and eschews faith-based approaches. . . . Given the tone of this remark, I think I prefer the company of James Crossley who is somewhat more restrained in his criticism of faith-based approaches. Actually, James is probably more pro-secular than he is anti-faith!” A patristics blogger has left the comment under another of April DeConick’s posts:

It is very possible to write as a good scholar within a religious tradition. We know this because so many of those writing in, say, patristics or even in the Apocrypha and Biblical Studies do write from a religious tradition and still manage to retain balance. They may have a different understanding of their purpose and they may ask questions that a ‘humanist’ may not, but I’m unconvinced that their scholarly integrity is compromised by their religious affiliations.

There are other examples, but we can see a theme coming out here. I asked Dr. DeConick how she would respond to the implied suggestion that she is “anti-faith.” Her response to the whole whirlwind of comments in such a short amount of time (she’s been blogging for less than a week, after all):

It is fascinating to me that my hard line on historicism has dumped me so immediately into the anti-faith, pro-secular, liberal camp (whatever that is supposed to be). Also fascinating is the immediate swing to point out that I’m not value-neutral because of my critical humanist approach (which is nothing more than the historian’s approach in any field of study). This is dizzying. I have nothing against theology or theologians. But I do recognize that there is a difference between theology and history. And I’m a historian who is concerned that theology is still dominating an Academy that claims to be doing history.

At this point, I’m not going to wrestle with whether one side of the argument is “right” or “wrong.” But instead, I would like to explore a theory about the tension. Being at an evangelical seminary myself, I converse with many evangelical scholars or evangelical scholars-in-the-making. The general impression that I get from them is that the academy of biblical and religious studies is overwhelmingly “secular” and “against” any kind of “theological” approach to early documents. At the same time, I have been reading several scholars from another perspective (such as Berlinerblau in his Chronicle article) who seem to think that the academy of biblical studies is too “theological” and entrenched in theological education. And as Dr. DeConick says, “I’m a historian who is concerned that theology is still dominating an Academy that claims to be doing history.” On the other hand, I have the feeling that the “theological” folks feel like a persecuted minority in the academy, worried, for example, that they will be negatively judged for their seminary educations.

Since most current bibliobloggers wear their faith on their sleeves (including myself), perhaps they feel like this biblioblogging world is a “safe” place for them. Maybe they feel threatened when another academic comes on the scene blogging things like “The impediment [to our examination of early Christianity] is the fact that the majority of biblical scholars still have not dislodged themselves from their own faith perspectives.” At the same time, perhaps more “secular” folks (and by that I just mean they are attempting to be “non-theological”) come into this biblioblogging world and see their frustrations confirmed in the blatant faith-based approaches to biblical studies.

To me, it sounds like a mutually threatening atmosphere in which both sides feel they are defending their views against the flow of the academy, and now it’s gotten a little tense online too. I think the dizzying response to Dr. DeConick’s blog has to do with the fact that she may have touched a nerve here. The problem about the blogging world is that it lends itself to knee-jerk reactions, and sometimes those knee-jerk reactions are not as cordial and respectful as they should be.

That’s my theory. I am happy to be corrected. Being one who is outward about his faith, I would tend to agree with the comment of our patristics friend listed above. But I can also see the need for accountability in these faith-based approaches. I would point to my earlier post about OPP people saying that the NPP is calling Judaism “racist.” When the basic values of our faith are at issue, I think we do tend to retreat to polemical tones. And at the risk of sounding “holier than thou,” I think that us Christians should pause a little longer and take a note from the person at the center of our faith, who reportedly told us to “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” I don’t mean that we shouldn’t examine and challenge the claims of others, but I think we should first breathe, then examine and challenge ourselves. Personally, I hope to be able to say to those with whom I disagree: “I don’t agree (and this is why), but I see where you’re coming from.”

April DeConick, Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies at Rice University, has joined the blogging world this past week with her Forbidden Gospels Blog. I’ve noticed because she’s been welcomed by bloggers at PaleoJudaica, The Busybody, Earliest Christian History, Hypotyposeis, Deinde (with a brief welcome and a longer critique of her post), and NT Gateway. Not that I’m worthy of being called a “host” of any kind in biblioblogging, but I would like to welcome her as well. I’d also like to take a few moments to reflect on her approach to Christian origins. In her first post, “Beyond the New Testament Canon,” She writes about herself:

As a scholar of religious history, I do not have to justify my conclusions to believers nor do I judge the texts I study in terms of our modern perspectives of “orthodoxy” or “heresy.” My rules of engagement are simply those of the modern intellectual community in search of knowledge. I consider myself a “humanist,” relying on ways of knowing developed since the Enlightenment in the discipline of the humanities and liberal arts. Given these premises, I take very seriously the study of a variety of early Christian documents, and do not operate within the boundaries of the New Testament canon.

Now, as a confessional Christian who is interested in serving God through an academic vocation in biblical studies, I probably should feel threatened or offended by scholars like DeConick. Instead, I actually feel excited and genuinely interested. Lately, I’ve been really getting into discussions about “orthodoxy” and “heresy” in the early church, particularly from “secular” perspectives and especially in Bart Ehrman‘s writings. As far as I can tell from my introspective reflection on the matter, I can see two reasons for my interest:

(1) I have a varied religious past myself. I was born into a Catholic family that was losing (or had already lost) interest in the Roman Catholic Church by the time I was born. My father has a Masters of Religious Education and was working in the church, but soon gave it up to go for a MBA and a career in business. I was baptized as an infant, but never really taken to Mass during my childhood. Then, as a freshman in high school, my father started taking me to a Unitarian Universalist church. I was enjoying that experience, while at the same time going to a youth group at my friend’s fundamentalist church. I lacked the awareness that this would be considered religiously odd. Later, I converted to Christianity and attended the fundamentalist church for two years. I was gung ho and tried to convert my whole high school, which did not make me popular. Then I went to Messiah College, hoping to deepen my knowledge about the Bible as a Bible major. Instead, my inerrantist reading of Scripture was given the ol’ drop kick out the window in my first class in biblical studies. After intellectually and spiritually wandering around different manifestations of Christianity in college, I was most drawn to Messiah’s founding Brethren in Christ denomination, and particularly its Anabaptist tradition, mixed with spiritually revivalistic elements. And that brings me to my second reason for interest in these secular approaches advocating noncanonical works:

(2) I am an Anabaptist, a tradition which itself was considered heresy (and still is by many) and whose participants even died for such accusations. Being a part of a tradition that followed its biblical and spiritual convictions, even in the midst of such dire circumstances, heightens my interest in the debates about “orthodoxy” and “heresy” in the early church.

I see pros and cons in most of the various movements within Christian origins. I understand that the stakes were high in the early church. I generally agree with what the established “catholic” church found to be “false doctrine.” But I can also understand the motivations of those who were called “heretics.” I can see why Marcion would feel conflicted about what seemed like a violent God in the Old Testament and draw upon the concept of the Demiurge to explain away such violence from his faith. I don’t agree with him, but if I understand the situation correctly, I can see where he’s coming from there. I particularly resonate with Montanism’s challenge to the established church and its claim to an authoritative, apostolic succession of bishops. I can also appreciate Montanism’s desire to keep the gifts of the Holy Spirit alive in a profound way, alongside a strong lived out morality. I feel uncomfortable with some of the things that they prophesied, but I can understand the instinct. Frankly, I have a hard time seeing the good in Gnosticism, which seems to me to be exclusivist in its complicated mysteriousness and irresponsible in its denial of the goodness of creation. But I can understand getting caught up in the philosophies of the day and combining together elements of different viewpoints to make sense of spiritual experience or philosophical reflection.

I do, of course, have troubles accepting everything that the established “orthodox” or “catholic” church did at the time as well. For me, the movement to hierarchy and the separation between the laity and clergy is problematic. I also have a hard time with the strong sacramental theology that emerged, particularly with the eucharist. It doesn’t make any sense to me that the “elements” would actually become the real blood and body of Jesus, aside from being kind of gross (one can understand Roman confusion and disgust with the practice). Nevertheless, I do see that this was a profound affirmation of Christ’s true humanity and indeed even the goodness of matter itself in response to Gnostic and Docetic views. It does seem to me that the “rule of faith” that can be seen in various forms in Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hypolytus, etc. is a necessary attempt to keep in line with the teachings of Jesus and the early apostles’ understanding of Jesus. I do agree that Gnosticism departed from those teachings significantly, even while it mixed some of it in. I understand that the early church felt the need to protect the boundaries of early understandings of Christ through early creedal formulations and a need for ordination, even if I feel uncomfortable with many of the things said by the authors of the time period and the legacy of their decisions.

All of this is to say that I am excited by more “secular” (though I won’t say “unbiased”) attempts to wrestle with the orthodox vs. heresy issue from a fresh perspective. So I thought that Danny’s critique of April DeConick’s first post was helpful, and I don’t necessarily agree with DeConick, but I greatly appreciate hearing things from another perspective. I have enjoyed every post
she’s put up so far. I would also like to point to James Tabor‘s Jesus Dynasty Blog and James Crossley‘s Earliest Christian History in the same vein, both of which I also greatly enjoy reading. Now we just have to get Ehrman into the blogging world!

Additional Note: I just realized that I am not aware of any other women in the world of academic blogs on biblical studies and Christian origins. In addition to her perspective as a “secular” scholar of early Christianity, I say hurrah for a woman’s voice in the discussion!!