Thinking Like An Anthropologist

The best anthropologists are specialists in difference. They operate on the assumption of distance between the anthropologist and the object of study. The great anthropological sin is to incorporate the different into a variation of the same, to impose the anthropologist’s social, philosophical, religious, or political categories on a culture where they do not obtain.

In studying the ancient texts that are their chief sources, theologians are tempted to re-conceive what they discover into familiar categories. What doesn’t fit is either ignored or forced into a systematic framework that may not fit the text.

Theologians would do well to learn to think like anthropologists, to become specialists in difference.