A Criticism for Higher Criticism in Biblical Studies

The New Testament scholar Craig Evans makes a compelling observation about how the academy can sometimes hinder the church through overly skeptical scholarship:

Some scholars seem to think that the more skeptical they are, the more critical they are. But adopting an excessive and unwarranted skeptical stance is not more critical than gullibly accepting whatever comes along. In my view, a lot of what passes for criticism is not critical at all; it is nothing more than skepticism masking itself as scholarship. This way of thinking is a major contributor to distorted portraits of Jesus and the Gospels in much of today’s radical scholarship.