Write Like Paul Wrote!

You cannot overemphasize the importance of Paul for the New Covenant church. A central figure in the book of Acts and the human author of so many of the New Testament books, Paul uniquely takes the lessons from the Gospels, especially the cross and the resurrection, and puts them into both theological and practical applications for us. Without Romans, Galatians and Ephesians our understanding of soteriology would be incomplete. Without 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus our understanding of the church would be sorely lacking (in fact it still is in spite of having his letters!)

I think we tend to think of Paul as this towering intellectual, an academic, the ultimate "pastor-theologian", especially in some of the more academic minded  traditions in the church like the Reformed camp. The idea of the "pastor-theologian", the pastor as scholar notion, has a strong pull in much of the church where pastors are expected to emulate Paul and his academic offspring in men like Calvin, Luther, Jonathan Edwards and others. I often had in mind the image of Paul as he appears in this painting, poring over books and scrolls, wrestling with the text and in turn being an endless fountain of deep theological teaching. Surely men who want to emulate Paul, a noble aspiration, would need to devote themselves to studying and thinking and writing! Right? Maybe not. Check this out from Dave Black yesterday...

As a general rule, Paul's epistles were written when he was actively engaged in missionary work, moving from place to place in the midst of intense preaching and teaching. I wonder: Would he have written better -- or written more -- had he been, like many a New Testament scholar today, sedentary? Would he indeed have written anything at all had he not been, at heart, a missionary for Jesus? Would we have the great Love Chapter had he not missionized the Corinthians? Would we have the marvelous Pastoral Epistles had he not planted churches in Ephesus and Crete? Here's what I'm saying: For Paul, as for Jesus (Matt. 9:35-38), Christianity was a way of life, not merely a way of thinking or cogitating in the abstract. The experience of actually serving Christ was central in Paul's ministry and writing. 

 So I ask: Can one be a true student of the apostle Paul and not be a missionary?

Interesting question. Paul wrote his letters under great duress at times, certainly not on a paid scholarly sabbatical. He didn't spend his day in his study, he was out preaching, working with his own two hands. He was often in danger from the enemies of the Gospel, beaten and imprisoned. He worked with his own hands to earn a living and was often on the move as the maps of his missionary journeys in the back of your Bible will attest. He was far from sedentary but we expect the great minds of our time to be just that, academics locked away in their study or attending conferences with other academics. I wonder what writing in the church would look like if the people who did most of the writing were also the most engaged in mission? I doubt the books would be quite as thick or  heady but I think the writing would be more useful to the church rather than just something interesting to chat about in academic circles.

I am all for study and pondering and debating over theology but I fear that too many of our greatest minds are mostly engaged in discussions among themselves, discussions that are inaccessible and incomprehensible to the rest of the church. I would love to see more of the great minds setting aside their offices stuffed with books, ditching their suit and tie and getting out in the mission field where the Gospel is lived out.I find myself more interested today in the simple writings of men and women on mission than on the highbrow academic works. There are lots of very persuasive, eloquent writers who write absolute nonsense but do so convincingly. I am less interested in how well someone writes than I am with how well someone lives.

If you want to emulate Paul, live like Paul. Get a job. Get out in the field. Live among the church. That is how Paul did it and he is the greatest theologian the church has ever produced. Paul's writings were formed by his missionary experience and zeal, his thoughts were forged in the fires of persecution and hardship. We need to hear more from those who live like Paul because they have so much to teach the rest of us who will never be asked to present a paper at a theology conference.

If I was in charge of the seminary system

Which of course I am not and my picture is probably prominently displayed in the security offices of most seminaries. I am just having a little fun spurred on by a post at Eric Carpenter’s blog and because I am sure someone will read this and get offended. What can I say, I am feeling a bit puckish. Having said that, here is what I would do if I were given the keys to every seminary in America:

• Shut many of them down:

o My opinion? There are too many seminaries as it is. According to a quick search, there are over 140 Protestant seminaries in America alone. Does the cost of maintaining that many seminaries make sense when the core function of them is to pump out vocational ministers? I can’t even begin to hazard a guess as to the cost of running a mid-sized seminary but I am sure it is in the millions. Most of that is offset with donations and tuition but that is money that could be better used on a whole variety of efforts. We need a certain number of seminaries but maybe that number is 50?

• Change their focus away from vocational training

o The focus of evangelical seminaries today is vocational training, giving men the requisite education to become a paid minister, full-time evangelist or a certified church planter. Men graduating from seminary are intensively trained to prepare and deliver sermons, lead local churches and deal with people in the context of a local church. I would say they are poorly trained to do what they are called to do, i.e. equip the saints for the work of ministry (Eph 4: 11-16) This model of vocational training for ministers is culturally acceptable and noble but it is foreign to Scripture. Considering how much we emphasize the Bible and simultaneously invest so much of church life into a system that doesn’t even appear as a hint in the Bible we claim to revere, it seems contradictory. If seminaries remain primarily a vocational training school for professional ministers, we ought to scrap the whole system.

• Focus on equipping the local church

o To truly serve the local church, seminaries need to engage the local church. Merely training men to send out to serve is not good enough. How many faithful Southern Baptists will never set foot in a single building of one of their seminaries and never so much as meet one of the faculty? The only connection they will have with their seminaries is the pastor in the pulpit. It is not hard to see the impact of a disconnect between the local church and the seminary system, you only need look back at the state of SBC seminaries before the “Conservative Resurgence”. If seminaries are committed to serving the local church, they need to meet the local church. I suggested over at Eric’s post that instead of sending a few men for three years to seminary, why not have week long intensive seminars all year, at a reasonable cost, to train regular men with jobs to lead in the church? Have the academics get out of their dusty offices and out from behind their books to come and teach in local churches around the country. I know some men do this but we need more of it.

• Maintain the academic core

o There is a real need and place for higher level academics in the church. It is not the highest priority or even near the top but it is there. We need academics who are experts in the original languages to continue to refine our translations. We need intellectuals to combat heresy and error that creeps into the church. I appreciate the work of theologians and academics like D.A. Carson, Andreas Kostenberger and David Alan Black and I am not saying they should become ditch diggers. I am saying that the academic community should always focus on serving the local church instead of serving their fellow academics. Theology needs to be deep but it also needs to be practical. Printing books that only PhD’s can read and comprehend might get you academic acclaim but it is not terribly helpful to the church (Turretin? Owens? Yeah, I am talking about you).

Those are just some thoughts I thunk. What do you think? What would you change about the seminary system or do you think it is fine the way it is? It is nigh impossible to overstate the incredible impact that seminaries have on local churches, on how ministers are trained, about the assumptions they bring with them to the local church, how Christians understand all sorts of doctrines. I think that the system is in dire need of an overhaul. The problem is that those who would need to lead that overhaul are the ones who benefit the most from the status quo.

Academic responsibility

I have mentioned before that a few years back I was taking online courses through Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. I got about 1/3 or so of the way through the M.Div. program and because of that I have a number of books from my seminary classes that I kept. I was looking through one a few nights ago, Christianity Through the Centuries by Earle Cairns . I wasn’t looking at this specifically but I read a paragraph in the section regarding church offices and came across a paragraph that jumped out at me.

I get that being a church historian can be a tricky task. There are some things you have to deal with that a normal historian doesn’t. A Christian church historian ultimately is a Christian first and a historian second. Having said that, read this paragraph from a seminary textbook and see if you have a problem with it:

The deacons had a subordinate position to the elders, but those who filled the office faced the same rigid qualifications for office that elders had to meet (Acts 6:3, 1 Tim 3: 8-13). The procedure for democratic election was also prescribed by the apostles in Jerusalem (Acts 6: 3,5) The dispensing of charity by the church was the major task of deacons. Later, they aided the elders by giving the elements of the Communion to the people. Stephen and Philip were the most prominent in Acts 6-8. (Christianity Through the Centuries, Earle E. Cairns, Third Edition, pg. 83)

I read that and my jaw just dropped. I would say that out of that paragraph there is one thing that is mostly accurate: the desired qualities in a deacon are very similar to those for an elder. The rest of that paragraph is virtually nonsense. Here is the big problem with that paragraph: there is no linkage that I am aware of anywhere in the New Testament that links Acts 6 with deacons. Also, never once do we see deacons listed as a subordinate in a hierarchical sense to elders and we also never see them giving "the elements of the Communion" to anyone. You would think from that paragraph that Stephen and Philip were the guys passing out plates of oyster crackers and waiting in the back of the church to walk forward together. To assert, in an academic work, that the office of deacon that we traditionally think of in the church is Scripturally based is poor scholarship.

Am I saying that Stephen wasn’t a deacon? Not at all. We really don’t know and that is my point. I am suggesting that to assert that he was is irresponsible. "Deacon" only appears, at least in the ESV, in two places. One is in 1 Tim 3: 8-13 where the qualities of a deacon are outlined and the other is when they are greeted by Paul in his letter to the Philippians (Phil 1: 1). From this brief mention we have created a church office and decided that the seven men called to help with the daily distribution to the widows were deacons even though Scripture never makes that connection. In fact, Stephen was martyred for preaching the Gospel and Philip was also an evangelist and preacher. Far from "behind the scenes" guys who made sure the toilets flush and the grass gets mowed, these men were powerful preachers of the Gospel to the lost. In most churches that I have been involved with, the deacons never preached. That was reserved to the senior pastor, so if Stephen and Philip were deacons then the example they give us says that deacons should be as involved in teaching and preaching as the elders.

What really troubles me is that it is stated in an academic work as if it is settled fact when it is anything but. If Dr. Cairns had added a caveat like “traditionally Stephen and Phillip were considered deacons” or something to the effect that the Scriptures never link deacons with the traditional office we have in the church, that at least would be reasonable. To the casual reader though it sounds as if this is just a Scriptural fact (based on the references to Scripture that in reality don’t support what he is claiming in the least). Again we see the danger of prooftexts and Scripture references that are not investigated.

The history of the church is important. Too often we approach it with denominational or traditional blinders on. We make blanket assertions, state traditions as if they were facts and freely demonize people who were our brothers in Christ. We are ignorant of our history as the people of God and because of that we are prone to accept without question historical events and doctrinal positions without much critical examination. That sort of myopic view of history may fly in secular, agenda driven universities but brothers it should not be so among God’s people. Especially not in a textbook designed for religious instruction.

Knuckle dragging Christians breeding like rabbits

I loved the line from Braveheart when the King of England declares: The problem with Scotland is that there are too many Scots! Edward Longshanks, the King of England, decides that Scotland has just too many Scots. His solution: Breed them out!

I thought of that line from the movie when I read an article in the Associated Press about a visit to the Creation Museum by a group of hostile scientists. This quote from one "scientist", Christine Janis of Brown University (pictured with a koala in her faculty photo), was hilarious and insulting at the same time (emphasis added):

Christine Janis, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University, said most of the arguments addressed at the museum she's heard countless times before. What she found most troubling was the crowd.

More than 750,000 people have visited in two years, and Janis is concerned the Creation Museum's version of human history is the only one they're getting.

"They're out-breeding us, that's for sure," Janis said.

Irony alert! Notice that she is concerned that people are only getting one version of human history. Ummm, that is exactly what happens in public schools and in colleges, people only get one version of human history. Students are fed evolutionary theory as the one and only acceptable theory. You get as balanced a view of human history from the Creation Museum as you do in a secular classroom. The difference is that one is given the patina of "science" and the other dismissed as "religion". What Ms. Janis is really peeved about is that the version they get at the Creation Museum is not her version. How dare people show up at a museum that doesn't meet her approval! Why, don't these people know that in the world of scientific exploration and inquiry there is room for only one horribly flawed theory? Alternate theories must be mocked and squashed, after all the last thing that science needs is a free exchange of ideas. The dogma of evolution is settled fact and you even so much as question it to your peril. Scientists are the open-minded and inquisitive ones, so shut up and believe what we tell you!

Apparently Ms. Janis is concerned that all us ignert young earth types are breeding uncontrollably which is simply not a good thing for "scientists". I guess we are so dumb because we don't mindlessly accept evolutionary dogma that we must not know where babies come from. If you think her glib comment smacks of condescension, you are correct! It is the same sort of mindset that you see from people that refer to parents of large families as "breeders". Her comment was probably intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but it also gives you a glimpse of the way that academics view the rest of the country. These sorts of people are the ones who indoctrinate kids in their classrooms and people like Ms. Janis are precisely why I think it is unwise in the extreme to ship our kids off to secular schools and hope for the best.

To an extent she is right that conservative Christian families tend to have more children than less conservative Christians and atheists. Homeschool families on average have something like double the average family size. So if you depend on people to fund your research and pay for your sabbaticals, you have to be worried about the shrinking population of kids in general and the growing proportion of kids that are raised in Christian homes. Always follow the money! At the rate we are going, perhaps someday people like Ms. Janis who think we are descended from monkeys will be extinct.

(For more on this, check out the blog post here from Answers in Genesis)

Speaking of T4G

The Together for the Gospel page has a sporadic blog (although only Ligon Duncan and Mark Dever ever post anything). A recent post by Ligon Duncan has the following quote from the book Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War :

Philip Schaff observed, with dismay, the popularity in America of self-educated theologians, unexposed to the traditions of the academy, who presumed to establish themselves as authorities in matters of religious truth. He lamented that “every theological vagabond and peddler may drive here his bungling trade, without passport of license, and sell his false ware at pleasure.”

What do you think of that?