The Power of a Grid and the Humility of Bruce Waltke

It is in vogue in our day to criticize academics and academia, and much of the criticism is well deserved - but then again I doubt that any of us are involved in any kind of enterprise that doesn't merit much well deserved criticism.

Having attended two seminaries and taken assorted classes at another I have had the chance to run into a lot of seminary professors and one of the things I have noticed about these guys is there humility.  This is one thing we don't think about when we think about seminary professors.  To be sure, I've seen a few, and thankfully the number is very small, who did appear arrogant and egotistical.  But by and large, at least in the circles I have run in, the men with the greatest learning have often been the most humble.

I could tell you story after story to document this, but I wanted to borrow a terrific story that Glenn Lucke wrote the other day to illustrate this.

In a moving tribute to his friend Dustin Salter, Glenn relates a story involving Dustin Salter, Richard Pratt and famous Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke.

One day Richard Pratt was talking about the benefits of literary analysis, not instead of other forms of analysis favored by evangelicals, but in addition to them. To make a point Pratt told a story about Bruce Waltke, a huge figure in Hebrew and Hebrew Bible studies. Waltke had recently come to teach at RTS, he had learned literary analysis a few years before, and was now re-reading the Bible in light of it. Waltke—did I mention he is a huge figure in Hebrew language and Hebrew Bible studies?—told a class the week before he now felt that the text had been obscured to him all these decades, that he was only now really reading the Bible. Pratt's story about Waltke stunned the class.

Then Dustin stunned the class. "Woo hoo! Richard! The power of a grid!"

The story is stunning in it's implications, if you think about it.  Here is a world class scholar who has written who knows how many articles and books on the Old Testament, who comes to a point, late in life, where he realizes that he had been missing the point all along.

He changed his grid. 

I had a conversation with a friend recently and we were having some heady discussion about paradigm shifts, change and things like that and he mentioned the "evangelical glaze."  The "evangelical glaze" comes over a person when you confront them with a new way of seeing things and they think to themselves "I cannot have been wrong all this time in what I have believed."

I don't know how all of this has played out in Waltke's life - but I think we would all understand if he gave the "evangelical glaze" and rejected literary analysis in favor of his past work.

And yes, the implications are clear - what grids do I have and do we have that need to be changed, and are we willing to change them?

Related Tags: Religion, Theology, Church, Christian, Christianity, Old Testament, Bible, Humility

Comments

[Jeremy Pierce]

I'm not sure exactly what Waltke is getting at, but I know of one thing that might be a part of that whole rethinking. Waltke had a pretty much completed draft of his huge, two-volume Proverbs commentary. He was then confronted with a mess of work that had come out during his two-decade writing of that commentary, arguing that the proverbs after ch.9 aren't organized as haphazardly as scholars have long thought. He had to do a major revision of the whole commentary in the light of all this. I believe it added several years or more to the process. This can't be the whole of what he means, but it's pretty significant.

[M.Jones]

Makes me proud to be a Regent alum. :)

[Mason]

I am astonished. This is happening to me. Only recently have I began questioning the received cliches from my Bapitst denomination. "Walk the aisle," "remember the date, time and place, of salvation," "born again," blah, blah, blah and etc.

The layers of religiosity - the evangelical glaze as you so aptly phrased it - of my beliefs are being stripped away by the Holy Spirit in a manner that I am unable to comprehend. I see for instance not that Peter "took his eyes off Jesus," which is the usual platitudinous explanation for his sinking in Matthew 14, but that his mind drifted from who should be the focus of all we do, Jesus, onto what was in the world, the storm. Moreover, I see now for the first time that unlike what I would have done, just stepped into the water, Peter asked/prayed for permission first. He said "if it be thou, bid me come."

I never noticed the Biblical phrasing until recently. I was always taught (I am a lay person) ask for what you want and everything will be cool if you end with "if it be thy will."

The Bible without the "evangelical glazing," is an astonishing document. Thanks for the post it affirms I am not alone just as Elijah wasn't either when he heard "the still small voice."

I fully understand Waltke's "grid change," it is happening to me.

[steve smith]

David,
I just came across your blog because of your post on humility.I appreciated your comments and story.

Often the hardest side of business or life to master is the human side, and nothing is more human than ego. I believe how we manage ego on the human side affects everything else, one way or the other. Humility is so powerful because of its unique ability to open our minds and hearts. Until we’re ready to listen and learn, curiosity, learning and honesty rarely show up. But as crucial as an open mind and heart is, that may not even be the most essential characteristic of humility. Humility is a means to an end, and that end is progress; of students, an organization, a community, our fellow human beings, etc.

Teaching and debates that facilitate true progress and learning require we temporarily suspend what we think is best for us to consider what’s in the best interests of the everyone.

In one of our surveys as we wrote our book, nearly eight out of ten people wish their organizations were more humble. Interestingly, when we’re teaching those same people and we begin the discussion of becoming more humble, there is hesitancy until we explore what humility really means. As a trait, humility is the point of equilibrium between too much ego and not enough. Humility has a reputation of being the polar opposite of excessive ego. In fact, the exact opposite of excessive ego is no confidence at all. Humility provides the crucial balance between the two extremes. To borrow a phrase from Alcoholics Anonymous, humility doesn’t require we think less of ourselves, but that we think of ourselves less often. Humility is not the equivalent of being weak, ignored, indifferent, boring, or a pushover. If it is to be a point of equilibrium, humility must include confidence, ambition, and willpower.

Without a clear understanding of what humility is, it can be seen as a trait best left to special causes and religious leaders, but not businesspeople. If humility seems to be an out-dated concept in a fiercely competitive world, it’s because humility is misunderstood, understudied, and underused—and, consequently, underestimated. As an indispensable trait of great leadership, humility must make its way past the pulpit of Sunday sermons and into cubicles and boardrooms. Humility should be our first reflex, not our regret once the moment has past.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts and best wishes.

Steve

[Richard Kindig]

Amen.
"What grids do I have and do we have that need to be changed...?"

What would happen if the judgment day was long enough to allow people a chance to think, observe, and learn from what is happening? Could it be that "judgment" does not mean merely sentencing, but correction and instruction in righteousness? What would we think of God if, instead of saying to the vast majority of the human race at their re-awakening, "You blew your chance and you can never learn from your mistakes..." He instead would say, "I've purchased you through the Cross, and I have decided to let you turn over a new leaf. Show some humility and I'll teach you my ways... and there is yet hope that your final end might be better."

Would evangelical Christians say, "Not so fast, God... I've been telling people that if their car crashes or their heart explodes before they repent, they are lost forever. You can't give them a second chance now!"?

In my view it's not necessary to be a Universalist to believe that God has much more that He plans, and has promised, to do to redeem and teach the unsaved world.
Isaiah 25:8 and 26:9 are just two of a hundred verses I could name which tell me the popular "grid" is missing a huge insight into God's love, grace, and power to save.

[William Meisheid]

On my website for my company, up since 1996, I put a tagline in the heading that goes like this:

"Paradigms beware, shift happens."

It is something I have struggled against my entire professional and Christian life, allowing my thinking and inquiry to be strangled by any one paradigm (other than the demand for honesty and truth, of course, which is not strangling but guiding).

I have recently come to view the paradigm shifts, grid realignments, focus shiftings in my life to be the hand of the Potter on the clay of my vessel. After all, if we were already perfect we would not need any shifting...

I take that as self asserting and what most of us do over and over is resist the hand of the potter, being comfortable just the way we are, the way we see things, forgetting that even Paul could say, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." 1 Corinthians 13:12