Skool, Part 4 (Academic Theology vs. Theology for the Church)

Skool is an (allegedly somewhat) on-going series in which I reflect on my experience in the Pastor's School of Sojourn Community Church here in Louisville, KY. Beyond that experience, I hope to challenge the mode of pastoral training in America, now exported throughout the world. As a former staff member of an undergraduate ministry training college (and an honors graduate of that same college), I want to write with sensitivity yet honesty, that we might be always reforming ourselves back to Scripture. Previous posts can be found here, here, here, and here.

Graduate work, in some ways, is like chaining oneself to a rack voluntarily. It's only a matter of time before you're going to be stretched... and most likely pulled out of joint. I'm not complaining, mind you. I made this choice. It feels that now, as the train hurtles toward the brick wall, that I'm just beginning to get the feel for this whole academic thing again. It's taken a while to shake off a year's worth of complacency, but, it's beginning to come back to me. The nuance between purely academic theology and theology for the church is becoming more apparent to me - stark, even.

Theology means the study of God. It's a broad umbrella category. Under this umbrella (ella) exists a host of sub-disciplines: Christology (study of Christ), anthropology (study of man), harmatology (study of sin), eschatology (study of last things), etc, etc, etc. It is not uncommon to hear evangelical Christians deride the very concept of theology. This is often done with spiritual sounding words about wanting to be "all about Jesus" but if you're reading this post, chances are you already see the (blatantly obvious) error of this logic. If we think of theology as the study of God, then we realize that everybody on the planet is already a theologian, like it or not. Christians especially are people who claim to take their theology from the Bible. So, how can we possible avoid thinking about God? Why would we want to? If we must think about God, should we not think about him in the way he wants to be thought? In light of this, the Apostle Paul writes to the church at Corinth. This community had fallen into some deep sin, but was showing signs of community repentance. As Paul reasons with them regarding the Christian life, he says: "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5). This "spiritual warfare" is portrayed as being normative. Thinking theologically is part of our spiritual warfare in this life.

In Pastor's School, we spent the first semester on what is known as Biblical Theology. Biblical Theology seeks to see how the "big picture," or meta-narrative of Scripture. Having understood the big picture, we can then investigate each stop along the way and see how it relates to the whole. We have spent this second semester considering what is traditionally known as Systematic Theology. As the name implies, it considers individual topics systematically. One can ask what the Bible teaches about any topic, compile relevant passages, and compare and contrast. It is clear that theology is the task of the church. In the several hundred years following Jesus ascension, as the church grew and spread, the need to summarize essential theology led to such things as the ecumenical church councils. The church took seriously its command to hold to truth, and it did.

Fast forward to today, and we find the landscape significantly altered. The questions of theology often find themselves in an overly academic, laboratory-esque setting. Taking thoughts captive is changed from something done in the Christian life to something done in a classroom. "Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words" (Lewis, Till We Have Faces) become the mode. This tendency has mushroomed exponentially since the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment collectively shook off the long held convictions of authority (specifically the Church, but also Scripture), but for some strange reason, wanted to keep Christianity as a sort of community beneficial spirituality. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant blasted the earth to ash with with their critiques and rejection of a "knowable" God. The religious establishment chose to blaze their trail through the scorched earth, birthing the great liberal quest for a "historical Jesus," attempting to find a kernal of truth in the mythical husk of Scripture. The Classic Liberal Era came to an end as World War I erased most every pretension regarding the "goodness" of humanity, but theological movements in its wake have often failed to find a path to long lost green pastures.

Where does that leave us today? The Academy as a whole (meaning all of scholastic academia, by no means limited to theology) has long left her Mother Church. How the church reacts to the academy must be done carefully. My seminary's tagline is "For the Truth, For the Church, For the World, For the Glory of God." The order is significant. By speaking of the truth first, Southern makes a clear statement that Scripture is to be held supreme in our discourse and life. The danger setting it apart like this, though, is that out of a desire to make truth concrete, we may yet throw it into the world of ambiguous truth claims that is academia. I just saw an apt quote on Mark Driscoll's Facebook regarding this, so excuse the lack of a citation. Alister McGrath, himself a brilliant and noted theologian, writes: "For the Christian, ‘truth’ is not primarily about logical propositions or statements, but about an encounter with the living God himself, and the consequent struggle to try and put into words that greater reality” This is exactly it. It's not that the Bible doesn't make logical propositions and truth claims. It's that they are spoken a living, personal, eternal God. That is the task of our theology.

The church needs men like Alister McGrath to contend at the highest levels of academia, and yes, people who are interested in such things should feel free to pursue them. One of my seminary classes this semester benefitted greatly from his research in the given field. However, my fear is that perhaps we're putting too much attention on a smaller piece of the pie. The ideas of philosophy/academic theology most certainly influence people who influence people, but while knowing the philosophy/academic theology may help us in reaching out the influencers, does it really help us reach the influenced? Doesn't most of this world fall into the latter category?
Diagnosing this problem is easy; curing it, not as much.  What prescription will lead to the cure?  How can we form a vibrant, practical, theology for the church.  The first and most obvious clear step is to preach the Bible in all its rich, complex, life-changing reality.  But what steps come after that?  I'd love your thoughts.

Skool, Part 2 (Or, "I Was an Accidental Bail-Out Proponent!")

Skool is an ongoing series, chronicling my journey through Sojourn Community Church's Pastor's School,  with further reflection on seminary education and the predominant form of ministry training in America today.  I hope that these biblically grounded musings will prompt you to reflect on the role of seminary in ministry training. 

As the economic train soared off its tracks and into a deep canyon last Fall, then Secretary of the Treasury came up with a big, bombastic plan to get the choo-choo going again.  This plan to inject Federal cash into the economy, particularly by propping up failing bastions of business, was quickly dubbed "The Bailout."  Initially in favor of the plan, my enthusiasm for it began to quickly wane.  It wasn't until I sat down at Quills Coffee for a "relaxing" game of Monopoly, however, that I came to a shocking realization that I had been in favor of the bailout my entire life.  Growing up, I called it "Free Parking."

In case you've never played Monopoly with the "Free Parking" house rule, here's how it works.  In the middle of the board, a crisp orange $500 bill is played to seed the pot.  As play advances, and players are tagged for fees, fines, and taxes, this money, previously due to the bank, is paid to the middle instead. Over time, this can accrue into quite the sum, and Free Parking, that space that's so hard to hit, changes from safe zone to gold mine.  I've played so many games in which a player on the verge of collapse suddenly has the resources to build those hotels on Marvin Gardens, Ventnor, and Atlantic with enough cash left over so as to survive a walk on the Boardwalk.  By simple, dumb, luck of the die, a player can survive whatever previous situation they've gotten themselves into.

This isn't an economics point, though: This is a spiritual one.  It is remarkably easy to decry a system intellectually while yet supporting it practically.  How many of us have been angered by the steady flow of jobs outsourced to foreign countries but have outsourced the training of ministers outside the direct supervision of the local church?  Here's some propositions for you:

1. The Bible conceives of one community of believers, that being the church.
I could proceed to bombard you with proof texts, but I think that that's overkill.  The power and primacy of the church is self-evident in the New Testament, so much so that Paul points back even to the creation of the family (husband and wife) and says that this, the most prime of all human relationships, is a model of Christ and the church (Eph. 5:22-33).  For the record, I'm coming at this issue, (the training of pastors), with the primacy of the church assumed.  Also assumed on my part is that the church exists in a universal or "catholic" sense, but membership in the catholic church assumes membership in the local church.

2. The Bible proclaims that it itself, (the Word of God), has been given specifically, to the church.  All of its commands and teachings are given to her and for her.

Academics have contributed much to the study of Scripture but the cart-horse relationship works best when the cart knows which of the two has the requisite power for transportation.  Academics are needed, but they are in needed in service to the church, not as supplement to the church, nor as superior to the church.  Thus, Scripture has much to say about how to train pastors and what pastors must be in regards to character, etc.  These were written for the sake of the church. 

Having established that the church is the Gospel community and that she has been armed with the Word of God, why on earth would we want to outsource the bulk of training outside her fellowship?  ("Greek and Hebrew" someone will say.  We'll come back to this one at a later date.)  In addition to being irresponsible, it is also less effective.  Case in point: preaching.

Teaching and preaching is a crucial task of the elder.  Not every elder must be able to deliver a sermon in the pulpit, but every elder must be able to teach the Word of God (1 Tim. 3:2).  Paul  charged Timothy to pass on what he learned to faithful men, thus creating an organic program of expansion and multiplication (2 Tim. 2:2).  Specifically, he was to "entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."  The snarky old phrase: "Those who can't do, teach" deserves to be stood on its head.  Those who do, must teach.

I bring up preaching because that is our current area of study in Pastor's School.  We're working through Bryan Chapell's Christ-Centered Preaching and talking through the weekly sermon with Daniel.  We're required to critique each message, and hopefully, chances to preach will come soon.  I come into this class having the benefit of having learned much about preaching by one, watching my father for 18 years, two, preaching myself, both to my father's congregation (my old church in Arizona), and three, having taken preaching classes in college.  Let's focus on three.  I had an incredible preaching professor and he taught me so much about the "big picture" of the Bible.  But the weirdness and oddity of preaching to a classroom of student peers is next to impossible to overcome.  Discussing "application" in the classroom is eerily abstract in and of itself.  It's like a zoo.  Zoos are great, but wouldn't you rather go on safari? 

I do not desire this series to be simple deconstruction.  Anyone with a brain can deconstruct just about anything.  Rather, let's think about what we can build in its place.  What are your thoughts?  How should aspiring young preachers go about learning their craft?  I think a good first step is asking one of your preaching elders to walk you through the process they take in studying/querying the text.  What do you think?