Kingdom Harbor

I’m in Chicago all week for a doctoral course called “Becoming Doctors of the Church.” That’s a pretty high-sounding title, wouldn’t you say? It might even sound a bit elitist. In the ancient world it was only the educated elite who could read and write and had access to texts and sacred writings. I’m mindful this week as I study that if I were living 2,000 years ago, I would be in a very privileged, elite class.

In the ancient Greco-Roman world of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, the literacy rates were extremely low (around 10%). Very few people could read or write, and only people of wealth and/or status had access to education and any texts to read in the first place.

Shocking for many to even entertain, its likely Jesus himself was among the illiterate class of his day. He was from a blue-collar peasant family, the son of a carpenter and we have no good historical reason to figure he received a rabbinic education like Paul did under Gamaliel.

In fact, Chris Keith in Jesus Against the Scribal Elite argues that the main reason the Scribes were so frustrated with Jesus was not the content of his teaching, but the very fact that he thought he had the right “credentials” to play the role of a teacher and enter into debate with the professionally trained, scribal experts of the day. Imagine a high school drop out interrupting a debate between two PhDs at Oxford. “Who does this guy think he is?” When someone asked, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” (Matt 13:55), it wasn’t a harmless inquiry but a slam on his social status.

Saturated as we are with books, information, texts and the access to the holy scriptures, its almost impossible to imagine how the first Christians knew the Bible. The fact is, they were heavily dependent upon the presence of a scribal literate “text broker”, or teacher, like Paul to hear any teaching from the scriptures. This also meant such sages or scribes wielded significant authority and influence over their followers.

Dr. Rodney Reeves kicked off the seminar with the following quotation from Tom Nichols to kick around the room:

“I am (or at least think I am) an expert. Not on everything, but in a particular area of human knowledge, specifically social science and public policy. When I say something on those subjects, I expect that my opinion holds more weight than that of most other people.

I never thought those were particularly controversial statements. As it turns out, they’re plenty controversial. Today, any assertion of expertise produces an explosion of anger from certain quarters of the American public, who immediately complain that such claims are nothing more than fallacious “appeals to authority,” sure signs of dreadful “elitism,” and an obvious effort to use credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a “real” democracy.

But democracy, as I wrote in an essay about C.S. Lewis and the Snowden affair, denotes a system of government, not an actual state of equality. It means that we enjoy equal rights versus the government, and in relation to each other. Having equal rights does not mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge.  It assuredly does not mean that “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.” And yet, this is now enshrined as the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense.

What’s going on here?

I fear we are witnessing the “death of expertise”: a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers – in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all. By this, I do not mean the death of actual expertise, the knowledge of specific things that sets some people apart from others in various areas. There will always be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other specialists in various fields. Rather, what I fear has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live.”

From “The Death of Expertise” by Tom Nichols (Prof. National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College), The Federalist, 17 January 2014.

Is there any truth to Nichols’ claim? Is he overstating the case a bit? Are we suspicious of so-called experts? Aren’t such claims just power-plays to manipulate the uneducated masses? If so, what do we do with the fact that a both Judaism and Christianity is the product of various scribal authorities for producing, interpreting, guarding and passing down the sacred texts and traditions?

These are some of the questions we’re tackling together in a room full of aspiring Bible experts and future doctors of the church.