Teaching in Related Academic Areas
A PhD in biblical and theological studies requires knowledge of a variety of topics, which could open doors to some related fields. For example, someone with that training could teach history, archaeology, or modern Hebrew. However, getting a position in these areas may prove difficult when competing with candidates who have doctoral degrees in those areas.
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Dr. Matt Jenson
Professor of Theology
Torrey Honors College, Biola University (La Mirada, CA)
Like many people with PhD’s in theology and biblical studies (mine was in systematic theology), I did undergraduate work in something else. My bachelor’s degree was in literature and philosophy. While in many cases, a person leaves his or her undergraduate education behind, I get to integrate all of my education in my current teaching. The Torrey Honors College is a great books honors program at Biola University. We don’t fit the mold of this project exactly, in that about half of what we teach is Bible and theology, though it is outside Biola’s school of theology. (We’re housed in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.) But where schools of theology these days often focus on the historical context of the biblical texts, in our great books approach we do close reading of the texts in English translation as part of the canon of texts that have shaped Western civilization. Thus, even when I’m teaching the Bible and theology, it’s as part of this different conversation. I absolutely love it! We are less beholden to genre distinctions, and in the same course students read Homer, Plato, and the Pentateuch. While there are losses (our students have little sense of the ancient Near Eastern parallels to OT literature or of the important conversations in second-temple Judaism), there are big gains.
The other thing about our great books program that makes it a bit of an outlier these days (though perhaps not as much if one considers the history of education) is that our classes are discussions and not lectures. My job as a faculty member is to ask an opening question that will lead into a discussion based on a close reading of the text, and from there I am meant to get out of the way, allowing the text to teach and playing the role of Socratic question-asker. There are losses here, too. It’s so easy for students to miss things! But our philosophy of education suggests, and we trust, that if students struggle together to understand a book and, more importantly, the world that book is talking about, they will be better prepared to understand their world, God’s world, and to play the part the Lord has called them to in it. All of this dovetails with the strong emphasis on mentoring that we have and that many will find in great books programs (especially if class sizes are small). I pastored for a short time before coming to Torrey, and I almost stayed on rather than taking an academic post. I realized, though, that so much of what I loved about pastoring—having permission to share the very good news of Jesus with people, helping morally and spiritually form people, walking with them through difficulty—I could do as a mentor and faculty member in this Christian great books program. Fifteen years later, I am grateful to say that has been the case.
I can’t recommend teaching in a “great books” or “classical” or “honors humanities” program enough. There are many of these at the collegiate level, and they seem to be sprouting up everywhere at the secondary level, too. There’s a freshness to the work, as you teach across so many different kinds of books. There’s a sense, too, that you’re talking about ideas that matter. And you get to see how the Christian faith has always already been a part of the conversation. Furthermore, by teaching material across the centuries, you and your students have a good shot of being delivered from what C. S. Lewis so memorably called “chronological snobbery.” I’ve got two pieces of advice for someone who’s curious about this field. Firstly, read, read, read—and read widely, transgressing the boundaries of your discipline. My work is constantly funded by the reading I do for the sheer pleasure of it. Secondly, and perhaps surprisingly, focus your graduate studies on a big meaty topic within your discipline. Academic jobs are hard to come by. And, even while great books programs like people with lots of interests, they don’t always know what to do with people who have overly idiosyncratic PhDs. I did my dissertation on sin in Augustine, Luther, Barth, and a post-Christian feminist writer. That’s straight theology. It gave me a footing in the theological tradition, and from that expertise I was able to walk confidently into other areas.
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