One of the most delightful articles I have read in the last few months is the text of Millard Erickson’s 2003 presidential address to the Evangelical Theological Society. An undercurrent of humour runs through the speech (after a rather headlong outburst in the beginning!). But by far the best reason to read it is the wisdom that Erickson captures in the few pages of his address. Let me highlight a few of his insights.
First, Erickson calls us back to primary texts:
I am more concerned that we avoid what I would term “secondary plagiarism,” which is simply undue reliance on secondary sources. It is certainly legitimate to utilize secondary sources, as a tentative and preliminary guide to the primary sources, but to use them as a substitute for the primary sources may be hazardous to one’s scholarly health… Just as the biblical text sheds a lot of light on the commentaries, we should make sure that the primary sources have priority in our research. I think of an error that accidentally slipped into a footnote of one of my books. Somehow, through sheer concatenation of circumstances, a noted evangelical scholar, in a book written several years after mine, repeated the exact error I had made!
A little less defensiveness might be a good thing:
In all the years that I have been writing, I have made a point of never writing to someone who has written a negative review of one of my books, and please be assured, there have been some obviously unenlightened and confused reviewers. I have occasionally dropped a note of appreciation to someone who has been unusually generous, complimenting him on such obvious insight and good judgment, but I have let the negative comments go by, even if I thought they were unfair or had misunderstood. It has seemed to me to be wise to use here the principle recommended for dealing with aggressive drivers, FIDO: forget it; drive on.
Finally, he urges us take a moment to step back from our past experience and look closely at the present.
Because something was a problem when we were younger and more formative, that issue colors our future perception. It becomes a case of “everything looks like a nail, when you have a hammer in your hand.” Because I had some real legalists in the first congregation I served, I may spend my time fighting legalism and overlooking the opposite problem. Because as pastor I had to deal with the problems caused by a rather radical type of Pentecostalism on the part of a few that threatened to disintegrate that inner-city Chicago congregation, I may become blind to the danger of allowing rather little opportunity for the working of the Holy Spirit.
Millard Erickson’s article is winsome, challenging and, as he hoped he would, he has lit “a candle, rather than cursing the darkness.”
(HT: Justin Taylor)
September 7th, 2006 at 12.12 pm
Three most commendable points indeed. Point 2 is, incidentally, a cardinal rule of academic work: you never comment on a review of your own works. I never actually wrote a negative review (I think it would be a waste of time), but I was pleased once to receive a kind note from G. Treitel after I had written some nice things about one of his books in a French journal.
Point 3 is so very important. One probably always has a “seminal experience” in the light of which one assesses all things. However it can also be an asset provided one manages to “step back” from it, as you say. No one can hold all things together on his own; and bringing in several focuses allows to increase our understanding.
Point 1 is probably the most important. I often wonder how the Church drifted from Paul to medieval theology. I am sure part of it was that instead of looking to the Word, it was looking at commentaries. And when you have commentaries on the commentaries of commentaries on earlier commentaries, before you know it, you end up with indulgences. The scary thing about a doctrine like indulgences is that you can actually understand rationally the intellectual process by which, starting with Paul, you arrived fifteen centuries later to Tetzel. So, back to the sources!