The following is an excerpt from Albert Mohler’s Commentary entitled “Can Believers Be Bible Scholars? A Strange Debate in the Academy.”

Michael V. Fox doesn’t believe that faith-based scholarship of the Bible is possible–and he wants to see such scholars marginalized in the larger world of scholarship. In an essay posted at the Web site for the Society of Biblical Literature [SBL], Fox argues, “In my view, faith-based study has no place in academic scholarship, whether the object of study is the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or Homer. Faith-based study is a different realm of intellectual activity that can dip into Bible scholarship for its own purposes, but cannot contribute to it.”

This all flows forth from the secular/sacred split that is dividing the modern mind. The secular/sacred split divides the mind into two areas first, the subjective realm of religion and morality and the objective realm of science and reason. In the realm of scholarship, as discussed above, all faith-based scholarship is placed in the subjective realm of religion and morality while non-faith-based scholarship is placed in the objective realm of science and reason. The ever-widening chasm between these two realms is discrediting all faith-based study as subjective and thus inconsequential. We must regain a view that Scripture is objectively true and that it is total truth for the totality of life. We must have undivided minds and live undivided lives unified under the objective reality of the Biblical metanarrative.