Dr. Danny Carroll article on Society of Biblical Literature

Society of Biblical Literature:

This group of scholars tends to be members of the Fraternidad Teologica Latinoamericana (FTL), an association of a broadly evangelical persuasion that was founded in 1970 with the express purpose of reflecting upon the Bible in light of the needs of the continent. On the one hand, they were frustrated by the failure of more traditional evangelical circles to respond adequately to those realities; at the same time, their interaction with liberationist scholarship stimulated them to look at the biblical text through a more contextualized lens.

Here is a great article from a great professor, Dr. Danny Carroll at Denver Seminary. Dr. Carroll wrestles with contextualized readings of the Bible. If you are not familiar with his work, I'd encourage you to check it out. Here's more from the article, the first part from the text of the article and the second from a footnote related to the clipped text.

Sometimes formal academic training dichotomizes exegesis and contextualization; some believe that such a combination diminishes their academic standing, especially in the academic guild beyond the continent; [4] and, to be honest, others are themselves detached from the warp and woof of their context and thus to incorporate those concerns is not a natural move.
[4] In my own experience I have sometimes found that First World scholars have not taken work from the Two-Thirds, or Majority, World seriously. In various ways they have communicated that, whereas those approaches might be "interesting," "real academic study" is done in North America and Europe according to more traditional methods. I have had students from the Two-Thirds World, who are studying in the West, confide in me how they have been discouraged from relating their research to their home context and have been told to "just deal with the text."

I believe that the emerging church in many respects is seeking to do contextualized readings of the biblical text. The emerging church in many respects is "doing theology" as the liberationist scholars often put it.

Obviously from the footnote and from my experience, many evangelicals are uncomfortable with this practice. The idea of "just deal with the text" is in many ways a western modern notion in which the text is seen as the subject of objective scientific inquiry. However, this is impossible. We all arrive at the text with many biases and our interpretation of any given text is greatly shaped by these biases. I believe that we will continue to see more untraditional methods employed in the study of Scripture in the years to come. And I believe that these methods will prove to be very beneficial.