J. R. Daniel Kirk, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, recently wrote multiple blog posts about the divide between the church and the academy. In “Church and Academy Need Each Other” he writes:
. . . the church and the academy need each other–and we sometimes reflect this interdependence in ways that we are unaware of.
. . . let me say why the academy needs the church. The church always remembers what the academy too often forgets: the Bible was written for real people. We academics get so caught up in the “real people” back then for whom it was written that we lose touch with the fact that this is still the Christian canon, still the word of God that people in churches today open up in order to hear God’s voice speaking to us. If a church is thriving, one reason is likely because it has understood that part of its business is contextualization–whether it has realized this self-consciously or not. It is speaking the words of scripture into the lives of its actual people . . .
And the church needs the academy as well. The most important reason that the church needs the academy, in my estimation, is because the church actually thinks it is giving historical readings of the Bible, good readings of what the Bible meant, when it tells you what the Bible says and means today . . . The church needs the academy to help it hear better what the Bible is saying, to help it read better–not because we are introducing an alien reading strategy, but because this is what Christians actually think they’re doing, anyway, when they read the Bible.
So What?
I appreciate Kirk’s use of the word interdependence to reflect the nature of the relationship between the academy and the church. Ideally, we can and should learn from one another.
- Do you agree or disagree that the church and academy are interdependent? Why?
- Over the next ten to twenty years, within the context of a healthy mutually enriching relationship, what gifts do you believe the church can offer the academy? the academy can offer the church?