What We Have Heard from the Beginning: The Past, Present and Future of Johannine Studies

6: Response: To What End, Methodology?

123 The career of R. Alan Culpepper is a synopsis of the movements in Gospels scholarship during the past forty years. Indeed, Culpepper has been an integral force in exploring, educating, and encouraging the changes that have occurred. It was my pleasure to study and work with him during his years at Baylor University. His example as a scholar, teacher, and mentor challenged and shaped many of my views regarding the Johannine corpus. As indicated in his essay, Culpepper’s career is a portrait of the changes in methodology since 1967. From historical reconstructions of the Johannine community to the myriad literary theories applied to the New Testament narratives, Culpepper has been knee–deep in the moving flood that has deluged Johannine scholarship. His earliest monograph, The Johannine School, applied an essentially historical–critical methodology , based on the question “What can we know?” to the problem of the Johannine community (Culpepper 1975). As rhetorical issues became more prominent in the late 1970s, Culpepper applied chiasm to the prologue of John (Culpepper 1980). Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel was an early exploration into the feasibility of applying a relevant methodology from secular literary studies to this classical text (Culpepper 1983). Since that time, Culpepper has stressed the importance of rigorously establishing 6: Response TO WHAT END, METHODOLOGY? Stan Harstine 124 STAN HARSTINE our methodological choices. In his mind and practice, there is no room for haphazard scholarship. Culpepper’s emphasis on methodology promotes reflection upon the question, “To what end, methodology?” In the introduction to Anatomy, he provides some reflection of his own. “My hope is that the present effort will be judged on the basis of its capacity to expose new considerations, explain features of the Gospel, and stimulate greater appreciation for its literary design” (Culpepper 1983, 11). One answer to our question, then, is simply this: methodology applied to the biblical text should illuminate and explain the text. Scholarship must reassess any methodology that fails in this regard, no matter its status or entrenchment. It is understandable when graduate students mimic their senior professor ’s approach and when recent Ph.D.s either strive for tenure or hang tenaciously to their temporary appointments, but it is vital for scholars to evaluate the effectiveness of their methodological models and to refine their approaches to research. Those scholars who initiate a radical shift in the methodological paradigm are rare, but those who radically appropriate and effectively apply current methodologies may be equally rare. Adopting a methodology purely for its popularity, its ease of publication, or its shock value are insufficient reasons for investing academic energy. A second answer to our question, then, is this: Scholars must critically evaluate their own methodology for its effectiveness and appropriateness. Having given some reflection to method, it is important to investigate the other part of our question: “To what end, methodology?” Though it is acceptable and customary to speak of the ancient author and audience of the Fourth Gospel (authorial, implicit, or otherwise), scholarship is seemingly tainted when conscious regard is given for a specific modern audience. Just as discussion of the Johannine community includes studies on exclusivism and inclusivism (Culpepper 2002b), Johannine scholarship would profit from active discussion in this area. When Alan Culpepper relocated his office from the Tidwell Bible Building in Waco, Texas, to Atlanta, Georgia, to guide a new seminary at Mercer University, he acted on his personal preference regarding the audience he would pursue with his scholarship. Perhaps the most common audience of Johannine scholars , indeed the likely audience for the current volume, is other Johannine scholars. The “guild,” however limited it may be, holds the distinction of being the primary audience for many scholastic efforts. Articles are written , papers presented, and books published for the purpose of gaining a hearing from those within the Society of Biblical Literature. A specific methodology is often required for a paper or article to be accepted by a group or journal; methodological code words are therefore strategically located within the abstract to draw preferential treatment. If there is a TO WHAT END, METHODOLOGY? 125 major problem with the guild as primary audience, it is its finite quality, indeed its exclusiveness. For some unstated reason, biblical scholarship increasingly avoids what is clearly the larger, and more obvious, audience of the canonical literature : the community of faith. The religious community as an audience for “pure” scholarship seems to be an outmoded or restrictive...