The Study of Religion in Colleges and Universities
368
The Study of Religion in Colleges and Universities
368Paperback
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Overview
The areas covered in the essays (with their authors) are biblical studies (Stendhal), Western religious history (Clebsch), philosophy of religion (Diamond), theology (McGill), Catholic studies (Preller), Jewish studies (Neusner), sociology of religion (Harrison), comparative religious ethics (Little), history of religions (Sullivan), religion and art (Turner), and religion and literature (Driver). A "practical commentary" on the current state of the field (Gustafson) concludes the volume.
Taken together, the essays provide an overview of the subject matter of religion study that should enable scholars of religion to situate and define their own work while helping others to appreciate the claims that work has upon the resources and concerns of colleges and universities.
Originally published in 1970.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691621074 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/08/2015 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #1642 |
| Pages: | 368 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.80(d) |
Read an Excerpt
The Study of Religion in Colleges and Universities
By Paul Ramsey, John F. Wilson
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1970 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07161-9
CHAPTER 1
Biblical Studies in the University
KRISTER STENDAHL
THE TREND is clear. The center of gravity in the academic study of religion is moving from the seminaries to the departments of religion. This development is neither uniform nor complete. It has, however, reached a point where the question whether a religion department has a proper place within the college and graduate faculty of arts and sciences can be considered resolved in the affirmative, for state universities no less than for private schools. The major difficulties for future consolidation and growth in this area within tax-supported institutions will presumably come, not from within the academic community, but from religious groups who have enjoyed the hands-off-religion attitude of universities in the spirit of the Scopes trial. As a matter of principle, the answer of the universities to such pressures could not and should not differ from the defense of academic freedom in the study of zoology.
What has received less attention is the often almost automatic transfer of the traditional disciplines of the seminary into the structure of programs and instruction carried on in the departments of religion. To be sure, increasing attention is being given to non-Christian religions; courses and chairs in Judaica are slowly finding their rightful place in such departments; the thoughtless arrogance of American WASP culture is being overcome as Roman Catholic theology is "accepted" as part of Christianity; sociology and psychology of religion are being brought into focus, even though such areas are sometimes handled by or together with other departments where the proper skills and interests are found. But when it comes to the core of Christian studies, most departments depend on teachers who have done their doctoral work in the traditional disciplines of Old Testament, New Testament, church history, theology, or ethics. Whether they hold Th.D. or Ph.D. degrees often makes little difference, since most Ph.D. programs in religion depend heavily on the resources of adjacent theological faculties. This fact, together with the increasing necessity for specialization, has worked toward the perpetuation of the traditional seminary disciplines. The only alternative has been various attempts at interdisciplinary programs. Although these have their value, especially for very able students, they always place on the student the unfair demand of bringing together in his own mind and work what his professors have not managed to combine. Good reasons could be given for the view that such demands and challenges belong to post-doctoral research rather than to a well-conceived doctoral program.
When seen from the other side, that of the students and of the college curriculum, it becomes even more evident that, especially in smaller schools with small religion departments, we must find a new way to define the disciplines of the study of religion.
It is in such a context that we must give serious attention to biblical studies. It constitutes a venerable and obvious part of the traditional structure, although the need for specialization has led to an increasing partition between Old Testament and New Testament scholarship. Owing to the inherent tendencies and habits of historical research, these two areas have come to claim for themselves the background of their field rather than to reflect on what grew out of it. For that reason Old Testament scholars have by and large become well versed in the Assyrian, Egyptian, and Canaanite materials, while post-biblical Jewish material up to the Christian era has been handled by New Testament scholarship as far as Christians are concerned. This practical arrangement reinforces awkward terminology when we speak of the "intertestamental" period or when the German term Spätjudentum is perpetuated in the English designation "Late Judaism." Both terms come naturally to Christian scholars to whom the Bible is the unit of the Old and the New Testaments and to whom Judaism from the Maccabees to Bar Kokhba is the latest period of Judaism which they consider religiously or historically significant for their work. In both instances we are dealing with the early post-biblical period of Judaism or, we might say, with "Early Judaism." Terminological observations of this kind are good eye-openers for anyone who wants to assess the role of biblical studies in the university.
Such observations should also help us understand why the definition of areas of study ought not to be attempted without considering the academic structures within which they take shape and function. Prior to the recent expansion of religion departments, serious work in the theological disciplines was done in seminaries, and, as we have indicated, it was this work which set a pattern for higher studies in the field. Another of the factors of some importance here was the substantial influence exercised by the theologians of continental Europe. The names of Harnack, Barth, and Bultmann serve as symbols of that influence in this century. And it was the seminaries which saw it as their goal to emulate such heroes, although there always was a strange incompatibility in the effort — a problem to which more attention should be given. Here I can speak from some personal experience. Having studied and taught on a theological faculty in Sweden, it took me quite a few years on the American scene to discover how deep the differences were. I still find it difficult to sort them all out, since they are subtle and seem to have contradictory consequences. On the one hand, the European theologian is a man of the university, with the prestige and the ethos of "scholarship for its own sake." While he actually educates the clergy of those churches which require academic training for their pastors and ministers, his academic freedom vis-à-vis church and state is well guarded. This gives his work a university accent. On the other hand, he functions within a system where the theological faculty is related to the other parts of the university as a unit parallel to that of the arts and sciences, and not as a graduate school which builds upon a liberal arts college.
The American system makes the faculty of arts and sciences a nucleus of the university. Other graduate schools than that of arts and sciences are, by traditional definition, professional schools. If this designation has a derogatory ring in some quarters, such is neither intended nor necessary. Although good reasons could be found for arguing that much work in the graduate school of arts and sciences is at times equally professional, the anchorage of its disciplines in the college curriculum still suffices to make the traditional distinction a valid one.
This difference in the structure of the university helps to explain why European theological studies are more "academic" in ethos and at the same time more consciously theological, and even unconsciously confessional, if not denominational. The recent development in the United States toward a discipline of religious studies outside of the theological faculty has few and timid parallels in Europe, where by and large studies related to Christianity remain in the hands of theological faculties, centered in the traditional disciplines, and where the history of religion(s) tends to mean the history of religions other than Christianity. The teachers are Doctors of Theology. Even if, as we said, the difference between a Th.D. and Ph.D. in the United States is not as clear as one would expect, the fact that the majority of theological teachers in this country have Ph.D.'s has contributed to a breakdown of the concept of theology as a discipline which gives a specific faculty its academic coherence.
Impressive arguments can be mustered for defining the rationale for the traditional theological disciplines. Yet many such attempts are unconvincing because they overlook the obvious truth that such disciplines presuppose as well as express the structures delineated above. The problems are as much political as they are ideological. Take, for example, church history as distinguished from "secular history." As a discipline in a theological faculty, it can best be defined as a study of history where the selection of material is guided by what is considered important for the understanding and work of the Christian church or churches. It comprises political history, economic history, history of science, and all the rest. There is no special method peculiar to the study of church history. It is simply a study of whatever history is judged relevant for theological students. Or it is a study of history which requires understanding and sophistication on the part of those who concern themselves with religious phenomena, in the same sense as the historian of science is required to understand certain things about science, or the economic historian certain things about economics. Prima facie there is no reason why church historians should not do their work in history departments. Although some do, and more may as time goes on, they do not do so now as a rule. And the reason they do not is the traditional convention that church history is handled by the "theologians," or, more precisely, "in the theological faculty." Yet many a church historian in such faculties does not think of himself as a "theologian" or as "doing theology" — he is a historian.
The parallel to legal history is of interest. Many would argue that the study of church history is more germane to theology than legal history is to jurisprudence; only a few law schools have chairs in legal history, and their incumbents are usually historians with special competence in matters of legal process rather than lawyers with special competence in history, especially where the historical period of specialization is far removed from the present.
For these and similar reasons we could say that church history is that study of history which is deemed relevant to the needs of the seminary graduate. It is not a theological discipline, as opposed to a study of "secular history." The church historian — both in research and in teaching — covers vast areas of "secular history." He does so with the same methods as those which govern the work of his colleagues in the history departments. He becomes part of the theological enterprise by acquiring knowledge and sophistication relating to the issues of theology, ancient and present, but primarily by belonging to a faculty organized for the purposes of theological study and the education of the clergy. When such a discipline seeks its place in a department of religion, the demarcation between that discipline and the work of the history department becomes more crucial, since the pragmatic and professional raison d'être is dissolved.
I have used this example to make a point which I find both important and somewhat contrary to expectations. One would expect that the transfer of the theological disciplines from seminary to religion departments would lead to their increasing secularization. In a certain sense, the opposite will be the effect. How can that be?
In the seminary the different disciplines become "religious" through the aim of the total enterprise, but many of the disciplines are actually secular and the work done is identical with the philological, historical, and philosophical research carried on in various departments of the arts and sciences apart from a department of religion. Theses are written in Old Testament studies, church history, history of religions, etc., which in no way differ in method or aim from those produced in these departments.
But once a religion department begins to formulate its rationale, it will recognize that such a duplication of work and effort makes little sense within one and the same faculty. Its raison d'être must be more distinct. It must be defined somehow as a place where religious phenomena are examined, treated, criticized, and reflected upon qua religious phenomena. The study of a text, a sect, a figure, or a trend does not become study of religion merely because the object is "religious," but because it is treated as a religious phenomenon. Conversely, a religion department can treat "secular phenomena" in literature and ideas as expressions of man's religious quest and needs.
The special competence of a religion department, consequently, lies in its academic sophistication in evaluating, interpreting, and criticizing religious phenomena. It centers in the study of homo religiosus and the different manifestations of the corpus religiosum. Thus it is, by definition, not easily organized according to different religions, with or without predominance for Christianity. Its business, even in studying particular religious traditions, is to subject religious phenomena to scrutiny.
When we turn to inquire about the place of biblical studies in the university, these problems assert themselves in many ways. In the seminary biblical studies constitutes a central part of the curriculum. Its role may differ somewhat according to the theological traditions which are served, but these modifications make only for variations within the obvious. With the increasing specialization of disciplines, biblical studies has become more and more a descriptive and historical enterprise. In the biblical courses a student learns how to assess what the ancient writers of these sixty-six books — or a few more in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions — meant in their own times. This is as it should be in the seminary, since the later developments of interpretation belong to historical theology and the question of possible meanings for today are central in systematic theology, ethics, and homiletics. The recent emphasis on hermeneutics has much bearing on biblical studies, but, strictly speaking, hermeneutics is an exercise in theology proper, and many outstanding biblical scholars remain innocent of the problems it deals with while they continue to be impressive contributors to their own field. This kind of innocence — some would call it historical purism — is defensible and even valuable within the team of a theological faculty and curriculum. Whereas it may be short on theological sensitivity, it is long on comparative material, earlier than and contemporary to the texts studied. If the Bible is treated as a collection of documents by which we can recapture the thought and stance of the men and communities responsible for these texts, then the canon — the lines by which these books were set apart from all other documents — has little significance. Apocryphal, pseudepigraphical, "intertestamental" writings are of equal importance and will loom large since they are less familiar and thus need more attention. New Testament studies becomes an examination of early Christian literature in the setting of Jewish and Graeco-Roman culture. Much of the progress and the excitement in biblical studies stem from this noncanonical perspective.
A discipline of this kind has its place, of course, in any study of the humanities. For all practical purposes, it is a historical discipline: it is good to know the genesis of a significant tradition. Once the historical perspective and method are clear enough, it is not difficult to handle the ambiguity of the term "Bible." Although both Jews and Christians use that term, they mean different things by it: we have a Bible with or without a New Testament. Given this approach, though, we can see not only that the Jewish Tanakh and the Christian Old Testament are identical in content but that the same standards apply for all scholars and students as they try to answer questions about the meaning of these texts at any given time in their development.
Once this point is clearly grasped, however, we must ask if this is all that is needed or expected when the Bible is studied in the context of humanistic learning. One often hears teachers in various fields of the humanities deplore the present situation when the average student lacks knowledge of the Bible which is indispensable for understanding the literature, art, and history of ideas of the West.
Where the history of ideas is dealt with in the humanities courses taking the sweep over "all the great thoughts," something is usually said about Paul — often as a background to understanding Augustine. The biblical scholar knows little about Augustine and the use to which Pauline material and elements were put in the history of Christian thought. He often wishes that survey courses were less "orthodox" in their unquestioned conviction that Paul, Augustine, and Luther were concerned with the same problems. What is needed here is more awareness of how religious texts live by reinterpretation. The very mechanics of creative interpretation in the religious realm requires that we understand the Bible, not as a philosophical text expressing certain ideas, but as Scripture, inspired and authoritative and consequently capable of assuming new meanings. This understanding leads to the puzzling insight that in the living religious traditions continuity is affirmed and achieved by discontinuity. Authority is affirmed and relevance asserted by reinterpretation. From a historical point of view, Paul did not mean what Augustine heard him say. But since Augustine and Luther read Paul as Bible, they were convinced that their problems had their answers in Paul. For better or for worse, that is how Scriptures function, and, if so, we had better take note thereof also in our treatment of the history of ideas. The biblical scholar is well equipped to torpedo the facile continuity in the history of thought.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Study of Religion in Colleges and Universities by Paul Ramsey, John F. Wilson. Copyright © 1970 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- Frontmatter, pg. i
- Preface, pg. vii
- Contents, pg. xi
- Introduction: The Background and Present Context of the Study of Religion in Colleges and Universities, pg. 1
- Biblical Studies in the University, pg. 23
- History and Salvation: An Essay in Distinctions, pg. 40
- Student Concerns and Philosophical Analysis: Unscrambling Theological Uses of "Contingent", pg. 73
- The Ambiguous Position of Christian Theology, pg. 105
- Catholic Studies in the University, pg. 139
- Modes of Jewish Studies in the University, pg. 159
- The Character and Contribution of the Sociology of Religion, pg. 190
- Comparative Religious Ethics, pg. 216
- The History of Religions: Some Problems and Prospects, pg. 246
- The Religious as it Appears in Art, pg. 281
- The Study of Religion and Literature: Siblings in the Academic House, pg. 304
- The Study of Religion in Colleges and Universities: A Practical Commentary, pg. 330
- Selected Bibliography, pg. 347
- Contributors, pg. 353