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.

We Are Not Ignorant of His Schemes

Over the past week and a half, a lot of godly men and women have suffered much:

• Johnny Hunt, Pastor of Woodstock Baptist Church and President of the Southern Baptist Convention, diagnosed with prostrate cancer.  [Hunt is a leading supporter of the "Great Commission Resurgence" (GCR), a push to streamline SBC structure to better mobilize for missions.]
• November 24 - Maria Moore, wife of Dr. Russell Moore (Highview Baptist/SBTS) hospitalized, requiring blood transfusions.  Dr. Moore, in addition to being a powerful Gospel preacher, has also come behind the GCR movement, and recently preached at the Acts 29 (A29) Louisville Bootcamp.
• November 26 (Thanksgiving Day) - Matt Chandler, lead pastor of The Village Church, suffers a seizure. Chandler is a powerful preacher and mobilizer for Gospel mission, a leading voice in the Acts 29 Network, recently preaching at the Acts 29 Louisville Bootcamp.  Chandler is also Southern Baptist.
• November 27 - Frank Page, South Carolina pastor and former President of the Southern Baptist Convention (in addition to being a supporter of the GCR and member of the task force developing strategy) suffers the sudden death of his daughter Melissa, age 32.
• November 28 - Thomas Young, lead pastor/church planter of The Sanctuary Fellowship (a Texas A29 Church), dies suddenly and tragically, leaving behind a wife and several children.

Some might conjecture that such a series of events is accidental or coincidental.  However, the Bible speaks of suffering and pain as coming from three sources: the Flesh, the World, and the Devil.  The Flesh refers to our human sin nature.  The World (as Pastor Robert Cheong would say) is corporate flesh.  It's what happens when a bunch of sinful humans live in sinful community - sin manifests itself in cultures and their systems of expression.  What about the Devil though?  Who or what is he and what role does he play.

The Bible speaks very calmly and certainly about the existence of a real and personal Devil.  Formerly an archangel, at some point in eternity past, he chose to revel against God's authority, leading an angelic revolt.  The notion of a created thing overcoming its creator is laughable, though, and the Devil and his angels lost and were cast from heaven.  Satan shows up throughout the Bible as a hateful being, bent on destroying God's good work.  His onslaught is described as being systematic and planned.  In brief, here's how the Bible speaks of him

• Satan seeks to tempt the righteous to do unrighteous things (Job 1-2, Matthew 4:1-11).  This is usually done in collusion with the sin nature innate to all humans (James 1:14).
• Some temptations to sin include physical and painful attacks on the person.  Job suffered such, as did the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. 12:7).  In his personal ministry, Jesus "went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil" (Acts 10:38).

1 Peter 5:6-11 speaks directly to this:

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you,  casting all your anxieties on him, because  he cares for you.  Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your  adversary the devil  prowls around  like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.   Resist him,  firm in your faith, knowing that  the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.  And  after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,  who has called you to his  eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.  To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Pet. 5:6-11)

A roaring lion seeking someone to devour.  Paul elaborates on similar in 2 Corintians 2:11.  In context, Paul is speaking to the church at Corinth, urging them to bring a repentant man back into fellowship, he urges them to do so "so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs."  Satan wants to destroy the church corporate, in addition to individual souls.

What does this mean for these 5 men & their families?  All of these are intimately connected to a expansive push of Gospel mission.  Satan has a vested interest in seeing that the mission does not go forward.  Captive souls, dead in sin, are his prey. "In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.  For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord" (2 Cor. 4:4-5).  Satan is yet a created being, and when Father God calls people to salvation, he is powerless to stop them (John 10:22-29, Romans 8:38-39).  However, God has decreed the lost souls hear the Gospel by we humans preaching to them (Romans 10), and when we join Jesus in proclaiming his Gospel, we join Jesus in entering into a ground war against Satan.

What does this mean for me? One might ask, I've been chewing on these thoughts over the past few days.

1. Pray that the Gospel would go out to every people and people group on Earth.  The Gospel is a message for all people and all people must hear.  We had a prayer meeting at church this morning, praying for the Gospel to go out among the nations and it really hit home to me how we must pray this forward. 
2. Pray for the leaders around you who are Gospel pace-setters.  Start with your pastors, but be mindful of missionaries, leading pastors in this nation, etc.  My church, Sojourn, has 13 elders (pastors) so I pray for several each day, with each assigned to a specific day.  However you do it, though, just do it!
3. Think globally and act locally.  The Gospel is for the ends of the earth and it starts next door.  Get to know your neighbors! (This is a week-sport for me.) Get to know your co-workers.  Love your family.  Speak the Gospel to them.  
4. Think globally and act globally.  The Global Mission requires a ton of people.  Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few and that we are to ask the Lord of the Harvest to send out workers into the Harvest.  In addition to praying, might you be the answer to the prayer?
5. Don't be afraid.  This world is one of trials, yes, but read the Book.  In end, God's victory (already accomplished through Jesus) will result in a final rest for God's people.  As Jesus said, "In this world you will have trouble.  Take heart: I have overcome the world."
6. Pray some more.  See #1-#5.

Feel free to chime in below with any thoughts or questions.  Grace and peace!