This week, Logos Academic posted this piece by Fuller Seminary’s Joel Green on their blog as a part of the “What Makes a Good Biblical Scholar?” series. It provoked a heated reaction from some corners of the Internet and among certain sections of the biblical studies guild. Here are some of my thoughts on it:

1. I think it is clear to those who know Dr. Green’s scholarship that he is using “good” in a particular sense, namely in relation to the scholar who holds particularly Christian commitments, beliefs, and orientations toward her or his work. He makes this clear in the comments. Yes, it would have been helpful to have fronted this comment, but a good faith reading of an intentionally brief piece in a series of such pieces understands this, I think.
2. In other words, Green is defining “good biblical scholar” with only one possible definition of “good.” He doesn’t claim that his description is the only possible definition of “good,” and he clarifies that in the comments. There are other possible ways of defining “good biblical scholar,” which, I take it, is part of the purpose of the blog series.
3. If you’re familiar with Green’s scholarship, you’ll know that he *does* believe there are other definitions of “good biblical scholar” from the fact that he engages non-Christian biblical scholars liberally, critically, and appreciatively.
4. The real issue I have with some reactions is not that they ask Green to clarify that he does, in fact, believe that there are other definitions of “good biblical scholar.” The issue I have is that some commenters refuse to acknowledge Green’s own definition as a possible definition. For many biblical scholars, introducing any kind of faith or devotional element into the practice of biblical studies automatically voids it of the quality, “scholarly.”
5. As I and others have said repeatedly, I do not think many in the biblical studies guild has reckoned adequately with the epistemological foundations on which it often rests. The invocation of empiricism and rationalism as somehow automatically superior and qualitatively different from, say, faith seeking understanding betrays a lack of critical engagement with one’s own beliefs that these kinds of comments purport to champion.
6. In other words, I am not (and Green is not) “anti-biblical studies,” or unappreciative of the many excellent, high-level, scholarly contributions of non-Christians to the field, or claiming a kind of intellectual superiority to those same non-Christian biblical scholars. But the reverse is often not true.