What Good Are Hebrew and Greek?

Many seminaries today require no knowledge of biblical languages for their degree, and there are increasing pressures to make this trend the norm in theological education. Broadly speaking, at least two causes appear to underlie this development, one educational and one theological.

American higher education tends to be “higher” in name than in fact. In a climate in which “everyone has a right to a college degree,” it is understandable that the more demanding disciplines, of which language skill is one, would be the first to be fudged or sacrificed.

Perhaps a greater contributor to the low priority of languages—particularly ancient languages—is the pragmatic temper of American education, what Richard Hofstadter calls its anti-intellectualism. This manifests itself in a demand for immediate relevance and in an indifference toward academic disciplines that do not have a direct application to the student’s current situation. Philosophically, this pragmatic bent is complemented by a belief that truth resides in the current event or process and by a pedagogical model of “learning through involvement,” or, in an older, related idiom, “progressive education.” This methodology contrasts sharply with a historical (or scientific) method in which an idea or period is carefully studied within its own context, prior to and distinct from its relation to current events or applications.

The desire for instant relevance creates a demand for instant synthesis. In the seminary, then, one no longer is to “learn theology” of a past age; rather, one is to “do theology” in the present. Whatever historical ingredients are needed are to be brought prepackaged to the task. It is like making a lemon meringue pie with a purchased pie shell, ready-mix filling, and aerosol topping—one is “doing cooking” without having to bother with “learning to cook.”

In this context biblical language skills are superfluous. For the historical understanding of Scripture, which language study is primarily designed to facilitate, has itself been severely discounted.

Two Weaknesses

In theological education this method brings the whole curriculum immediately into focus on the minister’s professional task. This might seem entirely desirable; after all, the divinity degree should reflect professional training and not academic achievement. But there are two weaknesses in this kind of reasoning. The first may be brought out by a look at two other professional degrees, law and medicine. In law school—at least this was so when I was there—understanding a case is assumed to require a prior knowledge of, for example, economics, history, and political science. It is necessary to study cases in their historical context lest they be wrongly applied to a contemporary situation. Similarly, in medicine the study of chemistry and biology is an important prerequisite. It is not enough for the future doctor to practice prescription writing and bedside manners.

For future ministers also, academic disciplines are an essential foundation for professional training. Perhaps it would be good to develop this foundation more at the undergraduate level, as it is done in law and medicine. But any professional theological program that does not build upon a competence in academic theology will inevitably be superficial. Lacking the skill to examine a biblical teaching in its own context, for example, the student is not well equipped to apply that teaching to a current situation.

Focusing the whole seminary curriculum on the minister’s professional task has a second weakness: it misinterprets the role of the Bible in the tack of ministry. When inordinate emphasis is given to the minister’s current situation, the Bible tends to be seen, not as an authority by which his ministry is governed, but as a resource that, along with others; aids him in his task. At this point the methodological problem becomes a theological problem, and to this we now turn.

The Ministry of the Word

In the Reformed tradition a central task of the minister has been to teach the Scriptures. This arose from the conviction that both the traditions and the novelties of the Church needed to be continually reformed according to the Word of God. In a recent lecture Professor W. C. van Unnik put it this way: As long as the Church recognizes its divinely given mission to present the message of the Bible ever anew to each generation in its own terms, then the Church’s pastors and teachers can never neglect the serious, sustained encounter with the Scriptures required for fulfilling that mission. Mainstream American Protestantism needs to hear Professor van Unnik’s exhortation. For in its seminaries and its church life during this century, the drift from the centrality of the Scriptures has been, apart from the biblical theology movement following World War II, a fairly consistent trend.

What has this to do with biblical languages? First, it is an observable fact in a number of seminaries that when the language requirement is removed, serious study of Scripture becomes a marginal element in the seminary’s curriculum. Of course, the seminary may only reflect what is already true in the life of the Church. A minister recently confided that he had never made use of his language skills. Having heard him preach, I have no doubt that he was telling the truth. The implications of the statement are rather broad. For without some use of the biblical languages one cannot make a reasoned use of modern literature about the Bible or consult a serious commentary, cannot do a word study or discuss a biblical concept, and cannot distinguish among the many translations and paraphrases being published today.

Even if many pastors and those in specialized ministries no longer use the biblical languages, does this justify abandoning the language requirement for the theological student? Hardly. This narrow view of “relevance” not only restricts the seminarian’s study of biblical literature and historical theology to textbooks of a high-school level but also fails to consider the importance of language in giving perspective to one’s understanding of Scripture. No minister who has—however long ago—learned Hebrew or Greek can ever be quite as susceptible as before to a simplistic misuse of the Bible. Whether or not he ever becomes a gifted interpreter of the biblical message to his people, he has at least an important tool to use to that end if he will.

According to the New Testament, to understand what God is doing in the world one must search the prophets; and, likewise, to understand what one reads one must be alert to what is happening in the world. Neither the ancient Word nor the “signs of the times” can be neglected if God’s current acts and messages are to be discerned and communicated. Exclusive attention to past or present must be avoided just as the distinction between them must not be fuzzed over.

But to my mind our problem today is not a Church immersed in the Scriptures and indifferent to current events, it is rather a Church largely ignorant of the Scriptures, allowing events to determine its message. At a time when academic standards are in decline and the cultural pressures are to define relevance in activist terms, can a seminary say to students, “We demand more because we think it important to the Church and to your ministry”? I think we can. And if we explain why, the student who seriously desires to be a minister of the Word of God will buy it.

E. Earle Ellis is professor of biblical studies at New Brunswick (New Jersey) Theological Seminary Reformed Church in America. He received the Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. The substance of this essay was first published in the “Reformed Review” (Spring, 1971).

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