The Dichotomy of the Academy and the Church

Today I was watching a video for a prominent seminary in the United States about one of their New Testament programs. One of the things that they were adamant about was that they did not want to uphold the perceived dichotomy that there is between the academic side of Christianity and the Church. I thought this to be a very interesting point to make.

No seminary needed to deeply understand scripture!
(although it can help!)

You may be asking, what the heck are you talking about? Well essentially they were talking about how the church tends to separate academic study of the holy scriptures from the worshipful study of the scriptures.

Whether you realize it or not, you probably uphold one of these sides of scri
pture. For many we tend to cling to the idea of using the Bible as something we read to relationally get closer to God. Don't misread me, this is very good. We should desire to grow closer to God in relationship with God by learning from His writings to us, the Church. The only problem with focusing completely on this is that you miss much of the depth of scripture. You miss small nuances that could not be noticed unless you took time to academically focus on scripture and study it intensely.

Now it can be easy to write off this idea because, honestly, not everyone is an academic. Not everyone (well, almost no one) wants to learn to speak Koine Greek, Aramic and Hebrew fluently. Most people don't own Biblical commentary sets. Should this however keep you from studying God's word? Most certainly not!

Much like everything else in our age, we can learn about anything you desire with the click of a button. We have vast amounts of resources on the internet that people long before us would have loved to have access to. So that argument is invalid. You can search for knowledge from highly trained leaders to grow our own knowledge easily, and often, for free.

Now don't take me as saying that everyone in the church needs to do research papers and present them at conferences to truly be following Christ. That would be quite unnecessary. Some people are meant to lead in music. Some are to serve with children. Some are even meant to worship and serve Jesus through being a custodian. Then academics are meant to serve through their research, study, and teaching of scripture. But, we should all have an equal desire to have vast understanding of the Word of God. Clearly we will never master everything, but we can strive towards greater understanding to benefit those we serve, whether as the children's minister or the janitor.

As the professor in the video I watched said, we should use our study and research of scripture as an act of worship, not just an academic exercise to flaunt our intelligence. Being a person who studies and desires knowledge of the Word doesn't require a Ph.D. It merely requires a desire to follow Jesus Christ.