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Biblical Views: Farewell to SBL

Faith and Reason in Biblical Studies

By Ronald S. Hendel

“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.” 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. He argued that “all the powers in the world can by their authority […]

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Endnotes

1.

Quoted in William B. Ashworth, Jr., “Catholicism and Early Modern Science,” in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 143.

2.

Bruce K. Waltke, review of Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10–31 (Anchor Yale Bible), in Review of Biblical Literature (http://bookreviews.org/pdf/7219_7855.pdf).

3.

Ernest W. Saunders, Searching the Scriptures: A History of the Society of Biblical Literature (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), p. xi.

4.

For a thoughtful critique of postmodernist and feminist critiques of reason, see Genevieve Lloyd, “Maleness, Metaphor, and the ‘Crisis’ of Reason,” in Louise M. Anthony and Charlotte E. Witt, eds., A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2002), pp. 73–89. The conjunction of some postmodernists, feminists, and fundamentalists in this regard is, to put it mildly, ironic.