Several years ago, I found myself in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, attending the annual Bigfoot conference. Yes, you read that correctly. Of all places, it was at a Bigfoot conference that I heard one of the most valuable lessons on research that has stuck with me to this day.
My favorite speaker that year was Mr. David Paulides, best known for his Missing 411 investigations. Paulides stepped to the podium and asked the audience, “How many of you have watched the television show about Skinwalker Ranch?” Of the hundreds of people in attendance, nearly every hand in the room went up. He followed with another question. “How many of you have read the book about Skinwalker Ranch written by the those who investigated it?” This time, I could almost count the raised hands on both of mine. Paulides looked out over the audience and said, “Herein lies the problem.” Then he sat down.
That was it. I remember looking around the room and realizing that a great number of people didn’t seem to understand the point he was making. But it resonated with me loudly, and I have never forgotten it. Here was a room full of people who were interested enough in a subject to travel, purchase tickets, and spend their time listening to lectures. They had watched the television programs, listened to the personalities, and formed opinions about what was taking place. Yet, when asked how many had taken the time to investigate the source material, almost nobody had.
They were interested in the subject, but very few had done the work necessary to understand it beyond what somebody on television had told them. There is a tremendous difference between being familiar with a subject and actually knowing something about it. Watching a documentary, listening to a podcast, or hearing a preacher repeat an interesting historical anecdote does not make somebody an authority. At best, it makes him familiar with somebody else’s presentation of the subject. He may have heard the conclusion, but he has never examined the evidence that supposedly supports it. He doesn’t know what was left out, what was exaggerated, or whether the person presenting the information even understood the original material.
My purpose today is not to discuss Bigfoot, UFOs, or Skinwalker Ranch. There are far more important subjects that deserve our attention. I am talking about the Bible, theology, and church history. These are subjects that Christians ought to take seriously, particularly those who stand behind pulpits, teach Sunday school classes, write articles, or attempt to correct the beliefs of others. If we are going to make historical claims, we ought to be able to support them. If we are going to attribute a belief to a theologian, we ought to know where he expressed that belief. If we are going to tell people what happened during a particular period of church history, we ought to have something more substantial than a story we remember hearing in a sermon twenty years ago.
This brings me to October 31. As is my practice, every year on October 31, while I do not celebrate Halloween, some people seem to think that I dress up as a troll. You see, October 31 is also Reformation Day, the anniversary of Martin Luther’s famous Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. For the past five or six years, my good friend Caleb Hickam and I have made an effort to restore some historical balance to the annual celebration of the Protestant Reformation. While much of the Protestant world spends the day praising the Reformers, we take the opportunity to examine what these men actually believed, what they actually taught, and the persecution that Anabaptists and other religious dissenters suffered during the Reformation.
The response is always overwhelming. One of the most common defenses offered for the Reformers is that they simply did not have enough “light.” We are told that these men were emerging from centuries of Roman Catholic darkness and that we should not expect them to understand everything about biblical doctrine. Their errors, we are assured, were simply the unfortunate products of their time. There is a serious historical problem with that argument. During the very period in which the Reformers were supposedly unable to understand these doctrines, there were Anabaptists who rejected infant baptism and insisted that baptism belonged to professing believers. There were those who rejected the union of church and state, defended liberty of conscience, and refused to accept the idea that civil authorities should compel religious conformity. Many Anabaptists also embraced nonresistance, rejecting the use of violence even in circumstances where others, including myself, believed it justified.
These were not doctrines that had yet to be discovered. These ideas were being discussed, defended, and practiced during the Reformation itself. The Reformers were not universally ignorant of their existence. In some cases, they actively opposed the people who held them, and certain Protestant governments participated in their persecution. There is a considerable difference between not knowing that a doctrine exists and knowing that it exists while rejecting it. The Reformation was not a simple story of godly men recovering biblical truth while everybody else remained in darkness. It was a complicated period involving theology, politics, civil authority, persecution, and competing understandings of the Christianity.
Caleb, in particular, has invested a tremendous amount of time reading what most people would consider dusty, boring books. He has examined historical documents, scholarly treatments, and perspectives that are rarely mentioned in the popular presentations of the Reformation. The objective has never been to manufacture accusations against historical figures. It has been to make sure that when we speak about these events, we are representing the historical record accurately. Yet, time after time, we are met with resistance from people who have never read a serious scholarly work on the subject, never examined a perspective beyond those written to praise the Reformers, and never opened an original document written by the very men they feel so obligated to defend. Nevertheless, they are absolutely certain that our conclusions must be wrong.
I have personally read large portions of Martin Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies, along with his Ninety-Five Theses and Small Catechism. I have read John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Caleb has read these works as well, in addition to numerous modern scholarly treatments of the period, including works written from secular historical perspectives. I do not mention these things to suggest that reading several books makes either of us infallible. I mention them because there ought to be some distinction between a conclusion reached through studying the evidence and an opinion inherited from somebody else’s sermon illustration. Yet, in many conversations, a vaguely remembered anecdote from a preacher is apparently sufficient to dismiss the contents of an original historical document.
How can we have an intelligent discussion about what Luther believed if we are unwilling to read Luther? I am not suggesting that every Christian needs to become a professional historian. Neither am I suggesting that every historical disagreement requires years of academic research. But there is nothing unreasonable about expecting somebody who speaks confidently on a subject to have investigated the evidence supporting his claims.
I think back to that large room in Gatlinburg and to David Paulides standing before hundreds of people. Almost everybody had watched the television program. Almost nobody had read the source material.
“Herein lies the problem.”
We have no shortage of opinions among Christians. We have no shortage of people willing to argue, and we certainly have no shortage of people willing to repeat something they heard from somebody they respect. What we seem to have a shortage of is people willing to sit down, open the books, examine the documents, and do the work.
Listen to our Reformation Day Podcast HERE
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Thank you for this article, Bro. Keener, it makes such an important point/perspective. If I might extend your point slightly, I think the same holds true in Biblical studies. How many who would teach or preach the Word genuinely labor in the text of Scripture, seeking to properly understand the context, running the cross references, and wrestling with common objections themselves, rather than merely regurgitating what they’ve heard others say about that topic or passage?
Absolutely. I have used my opening illustration to have this discussion as well!