Continuing the theme of my TCI post on NT Wright, I would like to address another question many raise regarding the bishop’s new perspective. That is: what does it imply about the application Luther made of Paul’s thought to his own day?

I want to make the case, briefly, that Wright’s view of Paul doesn’t change much vis-à-vis the Reformation issues.

Wright’s critics have charged him with relocating the doctrine of justification from soteriology to ecclesiology. There is one line in What Saint Paul Really Said that certainly gives this impression, but in later works he has clarified his point, and affirmed that what he really means to affirm is a both/and. Justification is about salvation, but also about church.

Many have not noticed, though, that Wright’s affirmation consists with the Reformers. They too affirmed that justification was both about soteriology and ecclesiology (not to mention politics!). As Brad Littlejohn puts it in his summary of Luther’s view of the two kingdoms:

It flows, in short, from the doctrine of justification, with Luther’s famous concept of simul justus et peccator, his conviction that the realm of appearances is very different from the realm of spiritual realities.  Christ reigns mysteriously and invisibly over the kingdom of conscience, and no human authority may dare to interpose itself as the mediator of this rule; it is by faith alone that we participate in this kingdom, so we must not be deceived into identifying it with external works or rituals.  Perhaps better than the terminology of the “two kingdoms” then, the zwei Reiche, is that of the “two governments,” zwei Regimente.  The spiritual government is that by which Christ rules inwardly in the conscience by his Word and Spirit, the realm of grace; the temporal government (weltliche Regimente) is that by which Christ governs all external human affairs by law, in which he works not directly and immediately, but through the larvae, “masks,” of earthly governors and institutions.  Only the elect experience the former; the latter they share in common with the unregenerate.

Luther’s doctrine of justification severed the absolute link between any human institution and divine rule.  This meant, of course, that no ecclesial authority could claim the power to ultimately determine who was saved or lost.  No bishop or Pope could set a divinely authoritative boundary around the community, and include or exclude at his whim. Rather, God alone determined the ultimate shape of his church, and he did this through his Word, received by faith.

As I noted in my previous post, Wright would agree with all of this. But, further, his explanation of Paul’s logic in, e.g., Galatians, requires Luther’s practical conclusion for the Roman Catholic Church of his own day.

Wright explains in What Saint Paul Really Said (p. 122):

When two people share Christian faith, says Paul, they can share table-fellowship, no matter what their ancestry. And all this is based four-square, of course, on the theology of the cross. ‘I am crucified with Christ,’ he writes, ‘nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me’ (2:19-20). The cross has obliterated the privileged distinction that Saul of Tarsus supposed himself to enjoy; the new life he has as Paul the apostle is a life defined, not by his old existence, but solely by the crucified and risen Messiah.

The bishop emphasizes that in Paul’s day a major point of the doctrine was to build a united Jew-Gentile church; but it is just as clear that the logic of Paul’s teaching opposes other possible divisions, beyond those of race. That is, if the unity of the church is based on the new life Christians receive through their initial faith, a life defined solely by the crucified and risen Messiah, then clearly it is impossible for a new human institution to come along and create new rules that will again divide that family.  God has created one badge of membership: faith.  To add to that badge, whether with the Jewish law or a new manmade one, is to offend against the same divine work.

I’m not the first person to notice that something like Wright’s perspective still causes problems for institutions such as the RCC in Luther’s day. Donald Garlington, in his book Studies in the New Perspective on Paul (pp. 14-15) speaks of the implications of his NPP, which is similar to Wright’s:

If I may build upon and extrapolate from Dunn’s remarks, the difference between my version of the NPP and Roman Catholicism revolves just around the relation of tradition to final judgment (justification) by works. If my perception is correct, then what is stake in the latter’s doctrine of judgment is not “good works” in the most generic terms, but a commitment to the Tridentine standards, including such articles of faith as papal infallibility, the mass, the sacraments, the perpetual virginity of Mary, and prayer to the saints. By contrast, the obedience of faith in Paul bypasses all forms of tradition, Jewish, Christian, or otherwise, and focuses fidelity solely and exclusively on Christ. The latter- day justification of the people of God hinges on union with Christ and the observance of all things that he has commanded the church (Matt 28:20), and nothing other than that. In short, what is required for a favorable verdict in the last day is allegiance to Jesus and his law (1 Cor 9:21; Gal 6:2). It is in this regard that the Reformers made a right application of Paul’s denial that justification is not by “works of the law.” That is to say, if justification is not by Jewish tradition, then it is not by church tradition either.

My way of putting the matter would be: insofar as the Roman Church conceived itself as having the power to determine who belonged in the community of God’s people, and who did not, based on its laws and canons in addition to the faith God requires, it was reproducing precisely the Judaizing heresy, though now without any possible claim to Mosaic sanction.

From time to time I discuss magisterial Protestant political theology here at CoG, and in that vein I wanted to direct our readers to a series that has just completed. Brad Littlejohn and, in one case, Peter Escalante, have done a helpfully brief series on two kingdom theology, laying out their narrative from Luther (and his context) to the present day, via Calvin, Hooker, and early modern thinkers like Locke.

Here are the six installments

The Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed—Pt. 1: Introducing the Antagonists
The Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed—Pt. 2: From Luther to Calvin
The Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed—Pt. 3: From Calvin to Hooker
The Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed—Pt. 4: Richard Hooker
The Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed—Pt. 5: From Hooker to Locke
The Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed—Pt. 6: Why Does it Matter?

Brad nicely summarizes many of the themes within the series (though there is much more in the final installment than the following):

1) It [Protestant two-kingdoms thinking] de-sacralized, or more properly, de-totalized, the State and the exercise of civil authority. Political authority was still ordained by God, accountable to God, and indeed redeemed in Christ, to be sure, and to this extent, could be said to mediate his rule. However, this rule of God’s “left hand” was radically distinct from His proper work of redemption and oversaw matters of temporary and limited significance; civil authorities were responsible to preserve the created order, not to bring in the new creation. This teaching set a decisive limit to the scope of civil authority, or the sorts of demands it could make. Of course, medieval papalism had certainly limited the state as well, but by seeking to make the civil authorities the policemen of the church, it had made rulers tangle with matters of conscience with politics, making heresy a civil crime. Although haltingly and inconsistently, Luther’s heirs worked to disentangle these two.

2) More foundationally, it deprived the church as such of juridical or coercive authority. There could be no spiritual jurisdiction in the full and proper sense of both of these terms. This was in stark contrast to the medieval system, in which the penitential system of the church was conceived in increasingly juridical terms, and the church accordingly tended to take on the characteristics of a civil polity. Worst of all, in the Crusades and in Boniface’s claim to a plenitudo potestatis, it made the sword to be a possession of spiritual rulers, calling for holy violence on behalf of the Church against the Church’s enemies. Luther’s reform, however, radically de-sacralized violence, associating it entirely with temporal rule and very limited temporal ends, and many of his heirs admirably carried forward this legacy.

3) Closely related to these two points, it stood as a bulwark against any attempt to immanentize the eschaton. Since we walk by faith, not by sight, any attempt to attribute eschatological ultimacy to any visible institution or activity was misguided. The two-kingdoms doctrine instilled in the Christian a sense of healthy detachment toward earthly loyalties, a healthy realism about what earthly institutions can accomplish, and offered consolation when they failed to achieve their lofty aims. It discouraged any attempt to make the kingdom of God a complete outward reality here and now by force, whether by holy war or holy law. Neither civil authorities nor church authorities could expect to create a perfectly virtuous people here in the midst of history.

4) Because of all these things, it treated freedom of conscience as sacrosanct. Because faith was not dependent on any human works, nor could it depend on any human authority, God alone remained master of the conscience, and his word alone, not the commands of either princes or bishops, could bind it. Although of course the realm of this freedom was debated fiercely and at times constricted, the principle was clear, and however much Protestants might quarrel over the scope of “things indifferent,” the fact that civil authority was limited to the regulation of these set the stage for the progressive expansion of civil society and individual freedom.

5) It served as a bulwark against an overextension of the sola Scriptura principle, to which many Protestants were tempted, and safeguarded the continuing value of natural reason and prudence to guide political deliberation. Good two-kingdoms thinkers resisted any idea of a Scripturally-mandated blueprint for politics or jurisprudence. This was one respect in which two-kingdoms thinking, in many other respects hostile to late medieval theology, preserved some of the rich contributions of scholastic Aristotelianism. Richard Hooker is perhaps the most prominent example of this use of the two-kingdoms doctrine, recovering the full resources of Thomism in his account of law in the civil kingdom even while maintaining a staunch Protestantism when it came to the spiritual.

6) In all these ways, the two kingdoms doctrine clearly paves the way for the development of liberal institutions. However, it provides what many Christian defenders of liberalism have lacked—a basis for secularity in the sense of non-ultimacy, but not in the sense of non-religiousness. In Protestant two-kingdoms thinking, the civil kingdom, despite all of the above, remains both informed by and concerned with the exercise of true religion. While natural law was retained and even championed by many of these thinkers, Scripture remained its authoritative interpreter, and the redemption wrought in Christ, although fully realized only in the eschaton, had implications for civil rule inasmuch as it disclosed the proper, restored order of fallen creation. Since grace perfected nature, good religion conduced to civil peace, and hence a good ruler could not be entirely indifferent to the promotion of true religion, although he must never seek to compel belief.

As a bonus, a few other essays by these gentlemen:

In celebration of the upcoming DVD release of The Dark Knight Rises, I want to share again a condensed form of a multi-post discussion Littlejohn wrote on the political themes of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy. I include this post here both because I’m a complete Batman nerd, and because TDKR can be plausibly seen, in my humble opinion, as an apology for a 2K order over against the eschaton-immanentizing project of Bane/The League of Shadows.

Escalante (in some cases along with Steven Wedgeworth) has also discussed the themes of the 2K series previously. Here he interacts with Davey Henreckson further on Locke’s period, and here and here Peter and Steven delve into more detail on Calvin.

I commend to you, in general, both The Sword and the Ploughshare, and The Calvinist International.

James K. A. Smith put up an interesting post the other day, responding to a pointed question about his ecclesiology: Response to Deroo: Whose Church? Which Ecclesiology?

I basically just want to use this post to set out a contrast. Smith’s position is nicely outlined in the post itself:

Can I begin in a negative mode by identifying what the church is not? When I speak of the church, I am not thinking of the “one, true denomination” and certainly not thinking of my denomination—or some other denomination or communion that I romantically think is “the” church. I’m also not primarily thinking of a local congregation, though local congregations are necessary instantiations of the wider body of Christ. Furthermore, nowhere do I suggest the two definitions that Neal articulates (“those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God…” or “those who have the Holy Spirit inside them”) would be adequate to define an ecclesiology.

So what do I mean by “the church,” then? Let me try to improvise in response to that question. Neal is right to see my understanding of the church is “institutional” and bound up with “Nicene orthodoxy.” He also rightly highlights that I see the “the church” primarily as a community of practice, which I would articulate in the MacIntyrean sense.[2] As a community of practice, the church would be informed by a narrative and a tradition that specify and substantiate the “standards of excellence” for that community of practice (without which there is no community of practice[3]).

So perhaps I could say that the church is that trans-national community of practice (a “body politic”) rooted in the biblical narrative as specified by the “catholic” tradition of both the creeds and the liturgical heritage.[4] In the history of the church, our language for “standards of excellence” has been “canon.” As William Abraham helpfully emphasizes, the “canons” of Christian orthodoxy include more than “the canon”; they also include “ecclesial canons” which “comprise materials, persons, and practices officially or semi-officially identified and set apart as a means of grace and salvation by the Christian community. They are represented by such entities as creed, Scripture, liturgy, iconography, the Fathers, and sacraments.”[5] This is what it means when we confess the “one, holy, catholic, apostolic church.”

So the church is an international community of practice, a body politic, normed by the ecclesial canons of documents (“in which the very ‘canon’ of Scripture is a product of the canons of the ecclesia”), persons, and practices that have come to be part of the bedrock of Nicene Christianity.

In contrast, I’d like to quote from Peter Escalante, summarizing the magisterial Protestant position on what the church is: (more…)

source: http://www.filmapia.com/published/places/christ-redeemer

This question is being discussed continually these days, and not without reason. We are living in a time of great upheaval, both politically and ecclesially, and it is common for people in such times to step back and ask themselves, what exactly should we be doing here?

When it comes to Christians, at least as represented in the blogosphere, we have begun to ask ourselves the question found in the title to this post more frequently and fervently. And we have also begun to articulate very different answers.

You have the answer of neo-Anabaptists, who say that the church is called to form counter-cultural communities, living out a vision of pacifistic social justice. You have the answer of Westminster West, suggesting the church’s role is simply to preach Law and Gospel, and administer the sacraments, and that Christian faith has nothing to contribute to broader pursuits in society. And you have the answer of Radical Orthodoxy and other groups which suggest the institutional church’s role is to direct all of society.

What might the political theology and ecclesiology of the magisterial Reformers say to this question? I think their first response would be to divide the question, or ask a counter-query: What is the church you are talking about?

When we ask “what is the church’s mission?” are we referring to the institutional church, constituted as a visible fellowship surrounding the sacraments and the elders of the church? Or are we referring to the corpus christianorum, Kuyper’s “organic church”, the sum total of all believers as they exist in the world?

It seems to me that, if we are speaking about the institutional church, the Westminster West approach might be best on a general level. That is, it seems the institutional church’s mission should be to do what it is best equipped to do: preach, teach, baptize, celebrate the eucharist, and give general guidance to parishioners (including, if necessary, discipline of sorts, as well as general direction in how to live as a Christian in the world). If we are speaking about the organic church, then it seems that the best answer is Kuyper’s approach: each Christian should seek to do their work to the glory of the triune God revealed in Christ, and for the common good. They should seek, by the grace of God, to reorder their little corner of the fallen world, so that it reflects God’s original creative intentions, for it is this reordering that is God’s redemptive intention. Grace, after all, is meant to perfect nature. Arguably, too, the anabaptists and the Radical Orthodox preserve this point: both are concerned to stress that the Christian live his whole life in submission to Jesus as Lord, and to see all of reality in the light of the triune God’s creative love. This leads quite directly into a Kuyperian approach, if these views are shorn of their political and theological errors.

All of this is another way of saying: the answer to our major question should be inflected along the lines of vocation. Those given to spend most of their time ordering visible fellowships (i.e., pastors), should spend their time doing things that only pastors can do: expositing the scriptures, shepherding parishioners according to general scriptural principles and prudence, leading public worship.  Those who have been called to spend most of their time outside the institutional church should do what they are called to.

Conflating these two leads to crusader churches, Amish ghettoes, and lots of other mistakes. Preserving the distinction, on the other hand, gives us an institutional church devoted to excellence in being what it is, and Christian men and women doing their work in the world to the glory of Christ and for the good of their neighbours.

There is one major objection I can see to this perspective: the office of deacons. In this office we seem to have an institution in the visible church which is devoted to things outside the realm of preaching and sacramental activity. But I think it would be at least possible to argue that the office of deacon was created in the early church for strictly prudential reasons. That is, while human society in general, and the magistrate as representative of that society in particular, have a moral obligation to help the poor, unsurprisingly in many cases they do not. Because the corpus christianorum‘s mission is to restore nature, and this is inclusive of restoring the poor to a place within human society, the earliest members of that corpus determined a wise way to deal with this problem (especially the problem as it manifested within the corpus) was to create members of visible fellowships that would have a dedicated responsibility to address this situation. It might be at least arguable that in a society where these conditions were not present, the office would not need to be present. That is, if the corpus christianorum (or even just the society, or the state) were taking care of the poor sufficiently, the visible assemblies of the church would not need to.

Another objection to the above position might be: does this imply clergy can never speak of specific political or cultural issues? I think the answer is that they may, but then again, it would be a matter of prudence as to when these things should be done. For clergymen who are not trained on the specific issues that they might wish to speak on, their course of action should be restraint: only speak as far as you are trained to do so. When it comes to moral instruction, this might mean sticking to more general principles of morality and prudence presented in scripture and the created order, and leaving more particular judgments to people whose calling it is to determine such things.

David Fitch is continuing the discussion on the politics and ecclesiology of the Reformed tradition, and I have a few thoughts to add. In his post, he explains his general perspective:

As I see it, when Reformed theology was uprooted from its cultural moorings in the Majesterial Reformation and transported to N. America, it lost what it was “reforming.” It’s reason to be – reforming Catholic Europe- was gone. It had to find an integrity in itself. Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, and Sola Christus had to stand alone. Sola Scripture no longer stood as a reforming princple reforming the corrupt traditions of Catholic church structure. It had to stand on its own as an adequate understanding of Scripture’s authority and principle of interpretation unto itself.  Sola Fide no longer stood as a reforming principle against the corrupt sacramental systems that fostered abuse and a works righteousness in Roman Catholic Europe. It had to stand on its own as an adequate understanding of God’s saving operations in the world. And Sola Christus could no longer stand on its own as a reforming principle against a monolithic church structure that made all salvation take place through her structures. It had to stand on its own as an adequate understanding of the church. The developments here, so I suggest, eventually led to an individualization of Christian faith, one that is inherently aligned with modernity and certain democratic capitalist culture systems. (Read C. C. Pecknold’s brilliant and concise narrative of how this all took place in ch.5-8 of Christianity and Politics)

Further, in one of his comments, he adds:

Likewise, Kuyper’s sphere-sovereignty is different/but related to the evangelical’s uncritical friendliness towards capitalism and other social structures. To me, this is a church-culture relation that makes sense out of untied Christendom context, but does not have the critical nexus necessarily to do the work necessary when the powers/structures or spheres have become rebellious…

I have a few thoughts about these comments: (more…)

One Reformational doctrine that has come under fire in recent years is the concept of the invisible church. There have been more criticisms than I could summarize briefly here, but one of the main arguments has come from Anabaptists, who contend that the doctrine undermines the distinct Christian identity (and the discipleship that goes along with it) of the church. If the real church is visible only to God, so the criticism goes, then the visible church no longer can provide a witness to a watching world.

Much could be written by way of response, but I have three thoughts for now.

(A) The doctrine of the invisible church is the only way one can preserve three important biblical facts: (1) being a part of the body of Christ seems to imply a state of heart that is positive towards God; (2) being a part of the body of Christ seems to imply performing visible practices (like Communion and Baptism, along with peacemaking, etc.); (3) only God can see the heart, and he does not judge by human standards, which can mistake participating in visible practices for possessing a humble and obedient heart toward God. That is, it is a reality of this life that people can go through the motions of (2) without the truth of (1) applying to them. This alone implies the validity of the invisible/visible church distinction.

(B) Affirming the distinction has some important benefits. On the ecclesiological side, it allows one to recognize that the church is a mixed community (see the parable of the wheat and tares), and thus requires one not to become perfectionistic with communal discipline, attempting to read hearts instead of just observed actions. It also takes any surprise out of the existence of apparently hypocritical Christians. On the political side, it can prevent justification for holy war and theocracy. Identifying the visible church with the invisible church has the danger of absorbing the authority of Christ over kings into the visible church itself, so that the church becomes an alternative polis bent on world conquest. The invisible/visible distinction also can remove a support in the overall case for pacifism (which, of course, is not seen as a benefit, but as a drawback, by Anabaptists). That is, if the visible church is not identical with the polis that is the kingdom of Christ, then all of its practices need not be taken as exemplary in every sense for the cities of the world. Rather, this perspective (affirming the distinction) recognizes that the visible church is something like a visible manifestation of an invisible city with an invisible king, and that in some respects it is not a city and not like a city. Instead, it is complementary with some aspect of the cities of the world, rather than being in intrinsic conflict with them. More specifically, its practices of peacemaking do not contradict role of judgment that cities have.

(C) Having said all this, I also want to argue that the distinction does not in fact undercut motive for discipleship. That is, the doctrine teaches that what is most essential is a humble and contrite heart toward God, and that God is not pleased with outward obedience absent inward love. It should be clear how this provides motivation for discipleship. And if it provides this motive, then participation in the visible community follows obviously: for being a lover of God implies doing what he wants, and in Christ he has revealed to us that that includes doing certain visible practices.

I think, sadly, the distinction is being rejected for facile or even misleading reasons, and that much will be lost if it is truly forgotten. Hopefully some of these thoughts might provide some cause to reconsider.

A while back I wrote a personal attempt at tackling the issue of how to determine “the essentials” in doctrine, and concluded that there is no one answer to the question. I was encouraged to see similar comments in Bavinck’s prolegomena:

In studying the relation between faith and theology, we need to frame the question properly. It should not be: what is the minimum of truths a person must know and hold as true to be saved? Leave that question to Rome, and let Catholic theology decide whether to that end two or four articles are needed. Admittedly, Protestant theology, in the theory of “fundamental articles,” has given the impression of wanting to take that road. But it ended with the acknowledgement that it did not know the magnitude of God’s mercy and therefore could not measure the amount of knowledge that is necessarily inherent in a sincere faith. In addition, between the theory of “implicit faith” and that of the “fundamental articles” there is, for all their seeming similarity, an important difference… . [I]n the theology of the Reformation, it sprang from the fact that a number of different churches emerged side by side with confessions that diverged form each other on many points. For that theology, therefore, the focus was on the question concerning the essence of Christianity. Faith, on the part of Rome, is assent to an assortment of revealed truths, which can be counted, article by article, and which in the course of time increased in number. Faith on the side of the Reformation, however, is special (fides specialis) with a particular central object: the grace of God in Christ. Here an arithmetic addition of articles, the knowledge of which and the assent to which is necessary for salvation, was no longer an option. Faith is a personal relation to Christ; it is organic and has put aside quantitative addition. Rome, therefore, had to determine a minimum without which there could not be salvation. On the side of the Reformation, faith is trust in the grace of God and hence no longer calculable. (Reformed Dogmatics, 1:614)

Burtchaell explains the relation between Harnack and Weber:

One influential advocate of Harnack was to be a scholar who had few theological credentials at all: Max Weber, the pioneer social scientist. His sociology of religion was derivative, and he chose to draw his typology of religious organization from Harnack’s own work. In a short time Weber’s research would then be cited, in circular fashion, as sociological evidence that sustained the Harnack assumptions. (138)

Burtchaell summarizes a response of Olof Linton to Harnack regarding Acts 15:

As he reconstructs the Jerusalem assembly in Acts 15, the community resolved the issue of gentile membership in the church by taking ab allot on the proposal of elders. Harnack imagines that “yea” and “nay” were the two options. That would show convincingly that the community held final authority. But what if only “yea” were imaginable? In an assembly of equals a majority rules. In an assembly of unequals a minority of select people decides. The presbyteroi were not a college apart from the Jerusalem church; they were the dominating group within the assembly. Our Western understanding is that democratic institutions represent the people’s interests and stand against the claims of elite groups. Acts implies an oriental tradition wherein deliberative councils or assemblies bring rulers and people together, as a collectivity, to formulate and adopt a consensus. The methods for reaching the consensus may be informal, but they are well understood.

Paul judges a man. Then the community judges the man and reaches the same verdict. Is their concurrence a mere sham? No, says Linton, it is a collectivity at work, and its work is the work of Paul, and also of the church, and also of the Lord. The people are not the ultimate authority. And Paul is not just one vote. (118)

I basically agree with the points made here, with the extra qualification that the apostles would have outranked the elders at Jerusalem, and when Paul spoke to his churches. But the larger point is one that is often missed: it is assumed, contrary to the rest of the evidence we have about how apostles functioned vis a vis the churches, that Acts 15 was some kind of totally egalitarian communal discernment process. This is unlikely, to say the least.

At the same time, I don’t think it would be accurate to say that the church was simply not a democracy, when considering the relation of elders to laypeople. While elders clearly had (and have) an authority in the church greater than laypeople, it is a custom of the church as old as the apostles that the laypeople would consent to the ordination of elders, and that laypeople are ultimately responsible to discern if their elders have gone off the rails, so to speak, and separate or defrock if necessary. So while the ordinary operation of the church may not be democratic, extraordinary circumstances can bring to the fore democratic aspects of the church that are otherwise latent.

In James Tunstead Burtchael’s study on early church polity, From Synagogue to Church, Burtchaell explains one aspect of the (largely German) consensus about the development of that polity:

…one must not presume any constancy of tradition that would allow one to project the settled usages of later times back into the primitive record. Thus, for instance, if Paul never mentions presbyteroi we must infer that there were none in his churches. (183)

As I’ve been reading more in biblical critical scholarship, I have come to appreciate just how faulty it is as a science. For an entire generation of scholars, forming a consensus, to not see how baldly fallacious this argument is (a truly cautious scholar would infer nothing from silence in itself, not a negative conclusion), suggests something deeper is motivating these biblical scholars than just a search for the truth (since a brief perusal of their writings can easily demonstrate their intelligence was not lacking). This has been a maturing process for me, and I believe a helpful one.

(And, after all, scholars have noticed many wonderful things in scripture and history that have been missed in the past; but for all that, if someone encounters scholars disagreeing with what seems to be the plain evidence, one should not immediately assume that one is mistaken. It is indeed more than possible that the consensus has been drinking the coolaid instead.)