Featured Luther Rice College: Matthew Henry is outdated, but Calvin is not??

I watched this video produced by Luther Rice College

What do you all think about this video, especially the parts about quoting Matthew Henry vs John Calvin, and free resources in a college paper?

The Research Process Step 2 Seek Appropriate Resources
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The Research Process

03:48 Wrong kinds of sources:

• study bibles
• outdated resources (consistently older than ten years)
• resources available for free on the web

Think about what your notes and bibliography suggest about you to your professors!

04:40 Matthew Henry is good, but written in the 1600's. Outdated. Concerned with the Catholic Church, not German higher critics challenges to Bible authority. That came 200 years later. Does not apply to the Evangelical challenges we face now.

06:26 Finding Germinal Sources
Read the original work. Read John Calvin himself, not someone that wrote about John Calvin.

 

Sad is exactly the right word.

 

I explored that idea, knowing the speaker discussed them at different points, but I couldn't get past being clearly told to use one, but not the other, and being told that a professor's opinion of the entire paper would be affected by that choice. No instruction was given about when to use up to date research and when to use primary sources, was it?

If he he had said this, I would have understood that. It would have fit in with his caution not to use study Bible notes. What specifically defines Matthew Henry as a devotional commentary, and how can I know the difference between devotional and academic commentaries.

I am just not impressed that new is always better. And his blank statement not to use free resources was particularly concerning. If a Christian makes his material available to all Christians, it is no longer of value to academics?

I am more curious than have any opinions about how academia and Christianity mix in colleges. And I want to get up to speed quickly on this topic, so I have that knowledge as context. It took me about a year at a secular college to get that context about secular colleges. I needed that context to know when to ignore and when to obey the rants of my some of my more radical professors. When I followed general college expectations, and received a paper back with angry notes scribbled all over it, because in reality the professor didn't like my conclusion, I just played a passive aggressive role of bringing papers back to the tutoring center to ask how I could "do better" next time. The tutor would then report the professor and someone higher up would warn him to lay off me.

Elevating Calvin and banning Henry reminds me of my secular college. Yes, the professor stated a reason, but ... the reasons did not always stand up to scrutiny of his superiors and his peers.

I was confused by secular academia at first, but I eventually figured them out. My conclusions of what drives secular academia just don't fit into any professed goals of Christianity.

 

That video really needed something more after the way that was presented.

 

I could quote Leon Morris' New Testament Theology in my research paper? I have access to that.

 

double post sorry

 

Thanks!

I getting some context. I am also getting burnt out on this. Some of this is a distraction from what really matters. It isn't that I am not willing to work at things, it is just that some things are not worth working at, especially if it means not working at something else. I think I have enough context to pull back and think long and hard about how I want to proceed.

 

Okay, so now I know what "higher critics challenges" are, but I am not convinced that Matthew Henry's lack of challenge to them makes him outdated. Why give them so much credit? Why focus so much on every type of challenge, instead of staying focused on the core ideas presented at the beginning?

This feels a bit like a victim that tries to prove false every lie stated about her, instead of walking away and LIVING her life, centered on HER. If we stop and argue every little thing that anyone presents, who is in control? Who is at the center, and who is orbiting who?