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Teaching the Bible along the Devotional/Academic Faultline: An Incarnational Approach to the Quarrel between Love and Knowledge
Author(s) -
Newell Roger
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
teaching theology and religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.165
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1467-9647
pISSN - 1368-4868
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9647.00174
Subject(s) - disappointment , honor , conversation , reading (process) , faith , sociology , class (philosophy) , literature , philosophy , religious studies , epistemology , aesthetics , psychology , art , social psychology , linguistics , computer science , operating system
. There seem to be two irreconcilable approaches to reading the Bible, and these often collide in an undergraduate's first college class in religion. Students from a devotional background find the scholarly approach a disappointment compared with their preferred way of reading. Yet upon closer examination the limits of an exclusively devotional way or an exclusively academic way soon become apparent. A way beyond this impasse is described as an incarnational approach, which seeks to honor the integrity of the literary, cultural, and historical features of the Bible while also taking seriously the personal faith of both student and instructor. This strategy is not original of course, but is a case study of a way in which the Christian tradition may address the quarrel between two competing ways of reading and turn it into a conversation.