I get that Christians are (rightly) wary of elitism. Christian scholars are not any closer to or more in tune with God than a fellow believer in the pew.
And, for Baptists in particular, the local congregation is the locus of authority, not any pope, ecclesial or academic, making pronouncements from afar.
At the same time, there are academic discussions related to hermeneutics, theology, ethics, and the like that use technical terminology and difficult concepts and that therefore require familiarity and precision.
It’s in that regard that I find troubling the tendency of fellow Christians to enter conversations in which they are novices.
It’s not that I don’t think we all have the same Spirit; of course we do! What I find troubling is that we think that, bc we *do* have the same Spirit, we can make pronouncements on any # of technical issues related to those academic convos *w/ the same authority as field experts
In other words, Christian academics aren’t Gnostics, believing they possess some secret knowledge that others don’t. But they also aren’t speaking about certain topics from the same level of training and experience as every other Christian on the planet.
Christian academics should balance their own attitudes in that regard, avoiding smugness & elitism. But our fellow Christians should also avoid judging us as smug or elite without qualification or evidence simply bc we weigh in on certain issues from our own training & experience
As a friend who shall remain nameless just pointed out to me, flattening out distinctions like this also may ignore the distinctions Paul makes btw spiritual gifts. Some, indeed, were given the gift of *teaching.*
We need each other, and this includes needing - dare I say - those who are uniquely equipped, via time, training, and talent, to teach biblical studies, hermeneutics, theology, ethics, etc.
This doesn’t denigrate other believers without said training but rather recognizes that the one Spirit gives diverse gifts for the building up of the entire body.
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