The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology)

Sometimes the title of a book encapsulates the entire content of the work, and this is such a case. I facetiously add 'and the resurrection of Scripture,' due to the fact that the Bible, in its current post-modern form, as the inspired words of God, has outlasted the merely modern object-under-the-microscope approach of historical, literary and all other retro forms of criticisms. Of course, contemporary believers should judiciously use these tools, but those tools are as useful as sledge hammers to understand butterflies, when trying to elicit the true revealed meaning of the Bible, a meaning which one can live by, and even die for.Legaspi's work centers on the person of JDMichaelis, one of the inventors of modern criticism. [I prefer to emphasize Spinoza, whom the leaders of his synagogue knew so well, they excommunicated him, forseeing the cultural destruction he would wreak.] So many of those sons of the Reformation, who went from Orthodox Lutheranism or Reform, to a more nebulous, unitarian or deist or pantheist credo, then on to skepticism or agnosticism, were caught up in what they thought was the [permanent] future, where materialist scientism would triumph, so they had to make their academic subject more rigorous, more objective, thus tossing out subjective faith, without which the Bible, and any other scripture for that matter, is just one lengthy crossword puzzle. The text should be dissected, and what one believes or how one lives are merely private matters.A key moment down the primrose path was when Eichorn taught that when interpreting the Bible, one should make a presumption in favor of the distance between the text's meaning then and now, which methodologically omits faith, thus pridefully overturning 1700 years of wisdomConservative/traditionalists know and admit that they are 'dogmatic,' not in the sense that they harshly force folks to adhere to the teacher's beliefs, but in the sense that they do know that there are true, real and objective divine meanings in the Bible, and the creeds which have emerged from it.Liberals are under the illusion that they are never dogmatic in either sense, harsh pedants, or that they don't have certain infallible doctrines which, if you dare to question or contradict, you are cast out into the passe world.I heartily endorse this book, which explores these differences.

This book is an very good academic account of the rise of the German University during the Enlightenment. I read this book for a class at my University and would recommend it for that purpose. However, I would not recommend it as a pleasure read, unless you enjoy reading academia for fun!

Dr. Michael Legaspi is a brilliant writer. This book belongs in every religious scholar's library. I understand another book will be published in the near future. Dr. Legaspi won the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise and I can certainly see why.

Finally a book that goes back to explain the rise of academic rationalism from Germany, the very nations that gave us the Protestant Reformation which called Christians back to the Bible.That was a time when the Enlightenment movement convinced people that reason not revelation was king The Bible had already been studied in the academies built by the church for years. This academic model fell prey to the Enlightenment's crowing of reason above all which dethroned Theology as the dominate science of study and the Bible as divine revelation.Thus, the spiritual and character formation of the student vanished as empirical epistemology became the dominate focus of biblical studies. Thus, Bible study and education died. It was not longer a combination of empirical knowledge about the culture and the grammar of the original languages plus the experiential epistemology from the work of the Holy Spirit in biblical interpretation.This model continues with us today and has contributed no spiritual vitality to its ministers nor the churches that they are pastors of. I once read a person who said there is a difference in a school of divinity and a theological seminary. They claimed the difference was the the school of divinity to a large degree only considered the academic study of theology and the Bible. They went on to claim that the focus of theological seminaries is on the spiritual formation of the students individually and of the campus as a whole along with being academic.Thus, there are seminaries like Asbury Theological Seminary which combine that which too long has been divided, "vital piety and knowledge." They combine a very strong focus on both academics and on spiritual formation. Asbury was the first seminary in America with a department on Christian Spirituality and a required course on the Spiritual Life of the Minister for its M,Div. students as they prepared to go into the ministry.This is a great book!