The term “Secular Biblical Theologian” (of which there are many) is an oxymoron.

Quote Source – Jeff Hilles

Every so often you run across a phrase that sounds impressive until you stop and actually think about what it’s claiming. “Secular Biblical Theologian” is one of those. Say it fast and it sounds like a credential. Say it slow and it falls apart in your mouth.

That’s the whole point of this quote. It isn’t a jab at scholarship for scholarship’s sake. It’s pointing at a category error – the idea that you can study the God of the Bible with the reverence switched off and still call what you’re doing theology.

Words That Cancel Each Other Out

“Secular” describes an approach that brackets out the divine, that treats its subject as belonging only to this present age, answerable to nothing beyond it. “Theologian” means the opposite – someone devoted to the study of God, the word built from theos and logos, God and word. You can’t bracket God out of the study of God and still be doing theology. You’re doing something else – literary criticism, ancient history, comparative religion, perhaps – useful work, but it’s not theology.

Theology Is Never Neutral

A lot of people assume neutrality is possible here – that a scholar can approach Scripture the way a chemist approaches a compound, no prior commitments, letting the evidence speak for itself. Scripture doesn’t allow that posture. It doesn’t present itself as a specimen. Hebrews calls it “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,” piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow (Hebrews 4:12). It cuts. Anyone who has actually reckoned with what Scripture claims about itself has already stopped being neutral, whether he admits it or not.

Paul goes further in Romans. The problem was never a shortage of evidence. People suppress the truth, he says, not because it’s hidden but because they don’t want what it demands of them (Romans 1:18). Applied to Scripture, secularism isn’t a discovery of objectivity. It’s a decision, made in advance, about which conclusions get to stand.

What the Natural Mind Cannot See

Paul names this directly in his first letter to the Corinthians:

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. [1 Corinthians 2:14]

That’s a challenging verse for anyone who wants theology to stay a purely academic exercise. Paul isn’t saying the unbeliever lacks intelligence. He’s saying the unbeliever lacks the organ for it – spiritual truth requires the Spirit in order to receive it. A secular theologian, by definition, has ruled that requirement out of bounds before the first page is even opened.

Reading About God Is Not Knowing God

None of this means secular scholarship produces nothing worth having. Textual criticism, historical background, and careful linguistic work can sharpen how the church reads her own Book. But sharpening the tools isn’t the same as submitting to the Craftsman. A Biblical theologian, properly speaking, is someone who has bowed before the God this text reveals and now labors, under Him, to understand what He has said. Take away the bowing and you haven’t secularized theology. You’ve swapped it out for something that only looks like it from a distance.