The Pastor As A Scholar - Don Carson

well to be brutally honest if I had my way we'd pronounced the benediction and go home it was a wonderful address wonderfully moving and you have the heart of just about everything that's really important right there so I'm sort of a scholarly footnote nevertheless I remain profoundly grateful to the Henry Center and the other sponsors for this evening it's always an enormous pleasure to work with John and I'm frankly humbled to see so many people turn out for a rather esoteric topic to prove how wonderfully I can mangle the most elementary homiletically I shall proceed with an introduction divided into five parts and a main body with an apostolic number of points now my footnote for my purposes I will not count Paul so there are only 12 points not 13 now if I if I were really winsome I'd go and tell my story now but it's not nearly so interesting and I'm not very winsome so I'll just go to the introduction with my five points number one the pastor a scholar and the scholar as pastor to begin by criticizing the title is usually a cheap shot but in this case there's an ambiguity that needs to be exposed John felt it as well coming at it from his point of view in England where I lived for nine years this title might be thought presumptuous over there scholar is not a word by which one would usually define oneself rather it's a word that someone else might use of you if you are exceptionally gifted in your field in other words over there scholar tends to be a measure of one's superior competence the word for the corresponding role as opposed to competence is academic so what is meant by the title does it mean the pastor is academic and the academic is pastor but that's a different question now you can see that there is an issue at stake beyond just whether you live on one side of the big pond or the other one an academic is normally thought of as a person who has opposed in an academic institution in that sense an academic is not a pastor unless perhaps by vocational Bar time conversely a full-time vocational pastor is not an academic no matter how many PhDs he's got except perhaps in the sense of offering some part-time courses in an academic setting immediately the discussion becomes still more complicated when one recalls how some larger churches not least Bethlehem Baptist Church where John Piper serves begin their own parallel training schools in this case the Bethlehem Institute is this department this Institute rightly called an academic institution if so when we speak of academic pastors or pastor academics must be some kind of institutional affiliation for the categories to take on meaning do you sound getting confused isn't this what scholars do and then then we write up a big footnote and explain how the question needs to be reformulated lest we wallow in semantic quagmire I'll abandon a cadet and retreat quickly to the word scholar and acknowledge that even here in North America it can refer to either an academic role or a relatively advanced degree of competence in one's field the title may sound self-promoting to British ears but the lovely ambiguity means that when we talk about say a pastor scholar we're not reduced to talking about institutional affiliations and the like but about pastoral work in the framework of rather more advanced technical competence than is customarily the case something like that a competence that may or may not have an institutional connection that's my first introductory point second this is the time I think to recognize that God assigns hugely different gifts so that one of the things this evening must not do is give the impression that there's only one legitimate path to working out pastoral and scholarly vocations or that we all have to be scholars in some sense as well as pastors Arnold dalla Moore was a Baptist pastor who took theological training with my dad that's a long time ago his only degree his terminal degree was the bth a Bachelor of theology for 40 years he served one small Church in a small Ontario town the town of Cottam small Baptist Church for for dears the only church he ever served but nevertheless he also set himself the task of mastering all the material that has ever been produced on George Whitfield he devoted summers to going to Britain looking up archival material learned how to handle libraries it became a hobby a challenge a life goal and more than 30 years later he produced the Magnificent 2 volume biography of George Whitfield I don't cry very easily but all that book is massively footnoted footnoted he found he found archival material nobody ever seen before lost away he kept hunting it down picked away picked away the way nevertheless again and again as I read that biography I cried and cried and said do it again No he was a pastor scholar what was he scholar pastor I he was he was a Baptist pastor in a small town but it would not be wise to suggest that every Baptist pastor has either the intellectual gift or the long-term stamina or the calling to do the research and writing that that magnificent project entailed that's the truth John Piper has advanced training from model ooh he might not have enjoyed his time there but it must have done him some exegetical good he's even been known to write poetry in German his latest book is Velvet steel it's a book of love poems to his wife he one of them's in Germans wonderful few of us in this room can claim similar research and writing skills I'm sure Tim Keller taught in a seminary but for years he's been a pastor a local church relatively unknown until the last 10 years but which of us does not my admirer the reason for God probably the most important fundamental apologetic for Christianity since CS Lewis now that's a heritage to leave to but he did it because it was just stated in the context of pastoral ministry but he's nevertheless got this first-class mind that thinks through how the Bible and theology has got to intersect and challenge the idolatries of every age my point is that more important in formal education is the gifts of intellectual curiosity and rigor of focus and stamina of lonely research and writing and some have those gifts and some do not what can I say there are some people that are far far far more gregarious it makes no sense to pretend that you're something you're not it makes no sense at all to think that a certain set of gifts is superior to another set of gifts God distributes them wisely there are some pastors whose gifts of gog area sness and friendship and open handedness in the context of motorcycle gangs beats mine hands down I ride a motorcycle but might shouldn't have that degree of good garius to that register just don't I just ride my motorcycle number three there is an evangelical tradition that treats what Jesus says about the greatest or first commandment love the Lord your God with heart and soul and mind and strength as authorization for all Christian intellectual endeavor the argument goes something like this here o Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength here surely is a Dominical mandate for evangelical scholarship well yes and no certainly Jesus words lay a heavy emphasis on thought on engaging the whole person focusing on how we think as we love God more so in fact than our English translations sometimes disclose you see in English if I say to my wife I love you with all my heart it's because in current English usage heart is a symbol for the center of one's emotional life but that's not what is meant by heart in the Bible in the Bible the center of your emotions is down about your gut old English versions use sometimes kidneys or bowels of compassion I have never said to my wife I love you with all my kidneys never had but nevertheless if in our world we think up here and we feel about here in the biblical world it drops we think about here and we feel about here so when the Bible says we're to love the Lord with all our heart we're not supposed to think ah intensity of emotion it's not that hard is exactly the equivalent to mind it means something like your whole being your thought your emotions your volition your whole you but dominant in all of that is what you think so to love the whole the Lord your God with all your heart that's how you think holistically and with all your soul that means the whole you and well your mind now you're back to thinking again and with all your strength there's nothing about bowels of compassion and kidneys so there is something to be said about how important the mind is did you say sort of love God with our heart and mind is clearly important transparently this means that using our minds and Will's and a lazy slapdash or arrogant ways not only pathetic it verges on the blasphemous and since all truth is God's truth we are not far from the inference that all Christian intellectual endeavor offered cheerfully and wholeheartedly up to God that is Christian scholarship lies close to the heart of our calling whether you're tackling the exegesis of Psalm 110 or examining the tail feathers of a pileated woodpecker you are to offer the work up to God and see such intellectual endeavor such scholarship is part and parcel of worship it's God's world that's right and yet and yet we cannot forget that mark 12 and parallels and Deuteronomy 6 from which Jesus draws the first commandment do not tell us to exercise heart and soul and mind and strength and order simply to understand God better the commandment is to love him indeed in the context of Deuteronomy 6 this love is expressed in knowing and following his words not least in passing them on to the next generation to our children that's the framework in which it's expressed love for God must never never degenerate into protestations of passion without thought into sentimental twaddle it must be shaped by thinking God's thoughts after him and loving him precisely in and through and by means of knowing and delighting in his words which is precisely why there is so much my emphasis on mind and volition so just because I study the half life of a quark or a piloted woodpecker or the consistory records of Geneva in the years after Calvin's death or the destructive influence of cliche Cemal or a Hebrew infinitive construct does not guarantee that I love God better in fact it may seduce me into thinking I am more holy and more pleasing to God when all I am is doing pleasure to myself I'm pleasing myself after all there are lots of atheist who like to study plenty of secularists are fine technical scholars who enjoy their work and make excellent discoveries and write great tomes without diluting themselves into thinking that they thereby prove they love God and deserve high praise for the in the spiritual sphere nothing is quite as deceitful as an evangelical scholarly mind that thinks it is especially close to God because of its scholarship rather than because of Jesus nevertheless as soon as one has said that sort of thing I say it all the time one must immediately repudiate the pendulum swing that favors anti-intellectualism we are to love God with our hearts in the biblical sense with our minds again the very business of training others involves the closest use of the mind the things you have heard me say which surely entails text which is understood by mind in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others that involves the mind it involves other thing it involves not less than the mind do you see in short biblical warnings about how knowledge puffs up love builds up as in first Corinthians 8 do not condone anti intellectualism conversely biblical mandates to love God with our minds do not grant scholarship and elevated status that exempts it from adoration faith obedience love a lust for evangelism at some level scholarship without humility and obedience is arrogant talk of knowing and loving God without scholarship in this sense it's just bone ignorant number four so far had been painting with a broad brush I've referred to a wide sweep of scholarly disciplines from ornithology to European history to biblical exegesis but in the rest of this talk I want to focus on biblical and Theological scholarship including those disciplines such as church history and historical theology that most directly strengthen the pastor's grasp institutionally therefore I'm not thinking about universities Christian or otherwise but primarily about seminaries and similar institutions partly this is where I've spent a lot of years topically I'm now focusing on every discipline and not on every discipline but on those most tightly related to faithful pastoral ministry I doubt in any case if a Henry Center when it issued its invitation was thinking about how theoretical physicists might be faithful by by vocational pastors number five probably I should say a word about my own pilgrimage I I'm not gonna take my hour to do that because as I say my story's far more boring as an undergraduate I went to Canada's McGill University and studied chemistry fair bit of mathematics my intention was to pursue a PhD in organic synthesis at Cornell my life was lined up thank you I come from a Christian family a pastor was my father in in French Canada I was brought up in a bicultural bilingual situation my parents were very wise and not trying to squeeze me toward doing that sort of thing they always encouraged me to pursue whatever interests I had so long as they were reasonably decent and and when I went to McGill they applauded it there was no effort to squeeze me into following my father's course and I had no intention of doing so why was that McGill enjoying myself immensely I have to say the pastor of our church came to me one spring and said Don I want you to be an intern with me this summer I said in all respect there are quite a lot of university students in this church and you got me confused with somebody else you know there's some that are heading into the ministry I'm I'm heading for Cornell and he said no I've made a mistake I know you're studying chemistry but I would like you to help me this this summer and so we had an argument for two hours and I won I didn't do it I went off and did research chemistry in a government lab in Ottawa and air-pollution that summer I was helping a another chap up the valley who was trying to begin a small church and I began to observe things in the laboratory there were two kinds of people in the lab order I had fun they gave me my own project big budget I was fun I was enjoying myself but in the lab there were two kinds of people there were first of all those who were approaching retirement and hated what they were doing they were just counting the days to get out of there it was a job to make money and then they wanted to go you know they wanted they wanted a cottage up in the Laurentian Mountains somewhere and that that was their God chemistry was just a disgusting job to make enough money to pay for it and then there were others for whom chemistry was God I mean they were writing papers they were doing research they they were first-class scholars and so on and I didn't really quite belong to either of them maybe I wasn't old enough for the first group probably I wasn't smart enough for the second but whatever it was that's not the way I looked at I mean I enjoyed my job but I was having a blast lots of fun enjoyed chemistry but it was nowhere near grabbing my heart I was a Christian and and and this part-time stuff on the weekends helping somebody plant a church of the valley who was a pastor was capturing more of my imagination I I began to play in my mind courses I had learned on the English side of my youth by and by when I look on his face beautiful face thorn shadowed face by-and-by when I look on his face I wish I'd given it more and and I could picture myself coming to God on the Judgment Day and say well God here's my chemistry where'd he go at huh believe me I am NOT knocking chemists I have long since developed a theology of Voe catio that is a sense of vocation in which all work is cheerfully and joyfully offered up to God I'm not denying that God calls people to be garbageman and chemists and nurses and who knows what I don't want to know any of that but it wasn't capturing me any more I don't want to say and in September of that year I heard a man by the name of wilkinson a missionary to Haiti his daughter married one of my best friends an Egyptian call famous atala they've served now many many years in Heliopolis near Cairo her father preached a sermon on Ezekiel 22 I thought for a man to stand in the gap before me for my people and I found that it was over I cried all through the last half of service I all I could say was here am I send me so I shouldn't enchanted courses and went off to seminary I got involved in church planning in French in English Jew chorus I began to serve a church in the metropolitan Vancouver area I had no intention of pursuing a PhD I was going to plant churches that's what I was do I was asked to fill in from time to time at a small Baptist Bible College in the area when a vacancy turned up on their faculty they asked me to apply I declined I was a pastor besides he didn't have an advanced degree I was enjoying the ministry this was the front line that's back up nevertheless the invitation served to make me wonder if I should get more training while I was still young and single yes I was young and single I was planning churches I was young and single our church was growing we bought property next door precursor to tearing down the building expansion all that I realized that if I stayed another year I would have to stay for five because usually you shouldn't help a church through a building program and and then and then leave the next year I mean there's some people to do but you probably shouldn't and I know Jackson did it that way but you know there are exceptional gifts I just don't think I should do that so I left I applied to study with F F Bruce under whom I had taken some courses in Manchester University because I didn't think anybody else would put up with me and then there was a pastor in the area New England he said why don't you go to Cambridge I said you know I I probably couldn't get in there and why should I go to Cambridge he said have you ever heard of Tyndale house I hadn't I mean my ignorance of things British and European and universities and with it was glorious it was multifaceted multi-layered and I didn't know anything you know and I looked I I wrote to the University and they said well you know you're supposed to have all of your applications in to come to Cambridge University by the end of March at the latest it's earlier now was into March then this was already the end of May so I wrote to Professor cfd mole and I said you know I know I'm late but somebody suggested I might apply so are you interested and I sent him some records and stuff and lo and behold make a long story short I III got in yeah the first weekend I was in Cambridge You Know Who am I bumped into on the street ffs bruise from Manchester to whom I had just written saying I'm sorry I'm not coming there so I bumped into him on the street in Cambridge and he said oh Tom what are you doing here I said well I'm I don't mean to be rude but I decided to come to Cambridge instead of Manchester I mean how can you say I decided to study under somebody else you know and what he said a perfect gracious gentleman that he was well I studied at Cambridge how can I possibly criticize you for that and we remain friends after that because he was courteous and I didn't know any better about the Prolog Amin of these sorts of things so I stayed there for a number of years but because I had been in ministry quite a while already I had a backlog of sermons and Bible studies and so on so it pretty soon I got involved in university evangelism Cambridge is a Collegiate university so they have 27 college that meant that each one of them had their own little Bible study groups and and and so there's lots of Bible studies going on each week and I was doing that and speaking in churches in East Anglia and and then around the country just a wee bit and by the time I got home at the nmi PhD several years later I taught it up all the times I had spoken in churches or Bible studies or evangelistic meetings or something apart from the PhD it was 2.6 times a week I had a blast I mean for probably some of the most enjoyable years of my life but we were just wonderful I was doing research I was enjoying the work and all of that but at the same time because of this backlog and Bible study and evangelism and so on I I was having a lot of fun I just have to tell you was a great time eventually I went back to Vancouver at the end of the degree I got married my wife and I went back to Vancouver and I was there in Vancouver for several years we planted another church in the side while I was teaching at a small college and then in 1978 I came down to Ted's so far the most serious temptations I have had to leave my present post and go elsewhere have not been to join another faculty whether at a seminary or a university though I've had invitations to both my most serious temptation has been to return to full-time pastoral ministry I was very close to heading in that direction some years ago about 15 years ago 18 years ago when Karla Faye Henry after whom the Henry Center was named and Kenneth conser descended on me with prophetic fervor and told me rather intensely that if I left Ted's at that point I would be defying God Almighty you must understand that by saying this they were not emphatically not relegating pastoral ministry to some second-tier they weren't if you think that you don't know these guys I have known both of those men steer many PhD graduates into pastoral ministry both men were churchmen through and through they had the highest regard for the priority of the local church perhaps they simply thought I wasn't very qualified for it maybe maybe they thought I would be better at a quartermasters job than on the front line could be but the reason they gave me was they they thought that at the time that at least some of the material I was writing met certain kinds of needs that not everybody was addressing in the same way and they didn't want me to take a post that was likely to reduce the output to be perfectly frank I still wrestle occasionally with whether or not they were right John says he's 63 I'm 62 at the moment my energy levels haven't dribbled away what can I say that's that that's not bragging that's that's God's gift of certain genes not other genes I still have a lot of energy and if I left Trinity I mean I have no intention to but if I did and I could I'd be far more likely to go back to pastoral ministry and have another shot for 10 years than then to go to another institution so that's my background those are the five points of my introduction I think I'd have preferred to devote the rest of this address to the theme of the pastor as scholar but John Piper has done that far more effectively than I could and not surprisingly I've been asked instead to address the theme of the scholar as pastor I'd like to revise it the scholar is frustrated pastor instead of telling any more of my personal story I'm going to preach of the lessons I have learned I'll offer I offer a dozen number one take steps to avoid becoming a mere quartermaster now any army needs quartermasters for those of you who don't have military background I've got a son of the Marines I'm learning all the jargon the quartermaster's are the ones who provide the supplies to the frontlines by all means give appropriate honor to those who devote themselves to equipping and supplying with books and training courses modeling and answering questions but it's still in most senses not on the front lines it might be on the front lines of certain intellectual inquiries and certain challenges and so on yet it is possible to write learned at ohms on apologetics without actually defending the gospel in the current world it's possible to write commentaries without constantly remembering that God makes himself present he discloses himself afresh to his people through the word if you're an academic you need to put yourself into places where as it were you take your place with the frontline troops from time to time it can be done well half a dozen different ways you might take five years out from a seminary appointment and serve in a church for a while but it might also mean engaging the outside world at a personal level at an intellectual and cultural level it it might mean doing some evangelism and might mean working and serving in the local church but avoid becoming a mirror quartermaster because I had done some pastoring before I went to Cambridge as I say I had a leg up on stuff already there background material some experience and so on so I was involved in preaching and teaching here and there my doctor father my doctoral supervisor at Cambridge was a man called Barnabas lenders Barnabas lenders came from the Anglo Catholic side of the Church of England so much so that he was a monk were monkish robe with a rope around his tummy and so on but he was also a lecturer in the university I'll tell you a bit more about him in a moment but by this point although he came from an Anglo Catholic background which on critical issues is usually pretty conservative he had swung too far left liberal and he was my doctoral supervisor and I was working on John and Jewish background and this sort of thing and I went in for a supervision one Tuesday afternoon he was articulate he was patient he was a very good writer he taught me many many things but on this particular afternoon we were dealing with what he judged to be the intellectual background to the notion of new birth in John 3 and he worked through zoroastrian possibilities and he worked through Gnostic possibilities and whether gnosis was old enough and he worked through all kinds of things we were arguing and debating wanted to know if I had learned enough of the sources and on and on and on you know what I got to confess to you I was quite wicked i sat there the whole time and interacted with him with with the front part of my brain and the back part was smirking it's not a very nice attitude but you know why it was smart the reason for this mark was pretty good the smirking itself wasn't very nice that weekend I had preached in a little town of March it's a little town out in the fens swamp country the village Bobby in that town was known to be a brutal drunk the village policeman and that weekend when I preached he got converted he was born again what can I say so I'm back on Tuesday and he's arguing about the origins of born again I didn't give her a rip I just wanted to see more people born again what it's so shaped where I was going do you see I mean I was interested in those intellectual questions but they were just not abstracted from from life and ministry for me and it wasn't it wasn't any great intellectual endeavor that it brought me to that point it was reading the Bible and preaching and seeing the gospel word do you see I wrote a book once called the gagging of God after it came out marked ever a dear friend in Washington DC had me give some lectures on post-modernism in Washington they run something called a henry form henry keeps cropping up the henry form for four people in DC and the way introduced me was Don Carson is the author of this book held up with this whopping big tome the gagging of God I've just got one question who will gagged on now I've been induced a lot of ways but never by that particular device before but but you know the origins of that book the origins of that book was University missions University evangelism I I'm not a philosopher by training I'm not an epistemology though that's not my field but I just kept doing university missions and I was beginning to observe that the questions being asked me were different that there was a shift going on that students would ask me questions I didn't know how to answer them so I when did some more work and then eventually somebody asked me to speak to a small group on it and I did some more work and eventually I thought I gotta put some of this stuff together and so I did and then I was still so unsure of myself that's not my field what I did was I sent out the book to six people whom I respected some non-christians I sent one to to a postmodern philosopher up in one of the Midwestern universities and I gave it to a sociologist and so on hey what's wrong with this book tell me what's wrong with this book and I got all these criticisms back and I rewrote it again and went off and it became the gagging of God now the point is that none of that came out of sort of indifferent intellectual endeavor it came out of evangelism it came out of mission it can't kill know came out of the priority of the gospel that was already presuppose do you say number two beware the seduction of applause this can come from at least two directions first it can come from an academic direction it becomes more important to be thought learned than to be learned the respect of peers who write erudite journal articles becomes more immediately pressing than the Lord's approval obviously there's no Grace and simply irritating academic colleagues in confusing contending for the faith with being contentious about the faith yet if it becomes more important to you to be established by oup or Cu P than to be absolutely straight with the gospel if you shy away from some topics for no other reason than the fact that those topics are unpopular in your guild you are in the gravest spiritual danger when I studied at Cambridge I had a dear friend who was also studying at the same time at Oxford he was straight godly man effective preacher and on all kinds of critical issues he was up and down had a high view of Scripture in the early 80s by which time I was at Trinity John Woodward and I decided we would put together two books on Scripture we saw kinds of erosion and we planned out scripture and truth and hermeneutics Authority and cannon and we invited people in various parts of the world to contribute and I wrote to him by this time he was lecturing in another institution and he wrote back and said Don he said I applaud your I applaud your project this needs to be done I'm really grateful but I don't think I should take it on because he said I have a dream of one day being appointed to Oxbridge that means either Oxford or Cambridge and if I write on this area they'll blackballed me so he said no my response by the time you get there you won't believe the stuff anymore either which is exactly what happened now he makes sneering condescending comments about that stupid ignorant doctrine of inerrancy that's stupid American bias well anybody that says that doesn't know church history for a start I mean it's not American Americans have originated a lot of things but on that one you can read correspondence between Jerome and Agustin for example which which which have every bit as much theological acumen about what we call inerrancy is as as our statements of faith to try to wrestle with these things today which is just an ignorant comment but it shows where he has drifted do you see I had a number of experiences at that time that were humbling and shaping I was single as I told you Barnabus lenders my doctorate father was also single and he was a monk he was a Langton monk and he was the head of their chapter house the Society of st. Francis and because I was single I - writing around for me Alan he was saying Levite mere out of the chapter house and I'd go and eat with the monks you know and have graces in Latin this kind of thing on this particular occasion I had him back to our place Tyndale house at that time had full meal service and he came around and then afterwards we went back to my room and got at the coffee and we were talking and by this time I had been there long enough that I was beginning to be able to ask some questions when I first went there you know I was the Canadian hick I'm from Canada old is is 400 years you know amount Hochelaga it's not European old then I go to st. Bennett's Church in Montreal and in inch in Cambridge and part of the building is a thousand years old and Cambridge Cambridge it got its name from from the Romans they put a bridge over the river cam there and these buildings in this history my college was Emmanuel College is where the Puritans were you know when Cromwell took over power you know he appointed the heads of all of the other colleges in Cambridge out of out of the graduates of of Emmanuel College because they were the only ones he could trust the Puritan library in in in in emmanuel college let alone the university library is the second best Puritan library in the world so I was this this this Canadian pastor who walking almost on holy ground you know this is this Cambridge took me a while to lose that just a wee bit and start asking rude questions I I wasn't nearly as bold or insightful as John I was really slow but I was becoming interested in how things worked and how people got there and so Barnabas lenders came up bless his heart to my room and I said you know I I'm a Canadian I'm a foreigner I don't know what I'm allowed to ask and what I'm not allowed to ask I'm still learning the culture here but do you mind if I ask you something of your spiritual heritage he said no I don't mind at all I said well my understanding of anglo-catholic is that on all kinds of critical issues it's pretty conservative but as I listen to you and learn from you I I see that on most critical issues you're so far left you know I almost need field glasses to see you and and I I don't know how you do that and yet you still have this sort of almost Catholic view of the sacrament and and and and then I'd visited his church Saint Bennett's it was it was it was it was more like a mass and it was like an Anglican service let alone like a Baptist Church well that I had come from I mean I I didn't I don't know how he put this together I said good could you could you tell me how you got there he's our my telling you it all he said to my father was an Anglo Catholic bishop I learned Latin and Greek from my father starting from the age of five he added Hebrew when I was 11 I had a fine home upright disciplined I I was trained in anglo-catholic thought and went to a good English public school which means private school they use words differently over there and and then when I graduated instead of going to university I went to an Anglican Training College because I felt God was calling me to work with the poorest of the poor so I joined the order I went to it a two or three-year Anglican college and and I started working with the poor in London with the Society of st. Francis and then after about 20 years of that the Society of st. Francis asked me if instead of working with a poor in London they could send me instead to work with university students at Cambridge so I thought well the only way I can do that is by becoming a student myself so at the age of 36 or 37 he enrolled as an undergraduate at Cambridge studied divinity and and during the course of his three years there three years of an honours degree he he went through an intellectual revolution ie he just came out the other side he just became as far left on critical issues and who wrote one win and the sources and all of that he just moved very very very far left just very far left I said well and then in due course he was appointed to the faculty so I said to him look I I understand that that makes sense to me I I understand it's not where I am but I understand what I don't understand is how you've moved there and yet you still have this very very high view of for example the mass how do you do how do you how do you put that together and he began to answer and I pushed a little harder I said look if you don't really believe that the historical Jesus really is God how do you start ascribing worship in any sense to the host in the sacrament I mean ah how do you do that and I was getting into it you know you know I'd never get quite as excited as John I'm I'm an academic what can I say but but nevertheless I was getting somewhat excited I have this sort of french-canadian background - and and we were getting a little further and pushing a little harder and and and suddenly it dawned on me that the man was sweating profusely and was beginning to stutter and I backed off it suddenly dawned on me for the first time in my life first time in my life that scholars might not really have the gospel at all know I'm a little slow to wait that long to see it but that that that's where I was he was at Richmond now he remained a friend I eventually edited a fresh lift for him honor to whom honor is due I'm grateful to him on many friends he's gone now or else I wouldn't be telling you this story but something dropped in my mind what it said was I'd have what I've got them what he's got simple as that there's such a small point but it was important beware the seduction of applause but there's a second direction from which applause may come and that's the conservative constituency of your friends a narrower peer group but one that for some people is equally seductive scholarship is then for sale you constantly work on things to bolster the self-identity of your group to show their right to answer all who disagree with them some scholars who are very indignant with colleagues who in their estimation are far too attracted by the applause of unbelieving academic peers remain blissfully unaware of how much they have become addicted to the applause of the conservative bastions that egg them on that's also a kind of applause I'm more conservative than you are you know and it may be mere traditionalism it may be right might be wrong but it's not submitting joyfully thoughtfully Principia to the authority of God's most only word on the last day we stand or fall on the approval of one person one master the Lord Jesus refresh your soul with that resolution again and again and again and again and again or stay out of scholarship it's one of the most seductive places in the world number three I go faster toward the end be of good cheer fight with every fiber of your being the common dichotomy between objective study of Scripture and devotional reading of Scripture now all of us become aware of how students come in to seminary classes for example and they might have had some little taste of ministry and and and they love the Lord they want to learn more about the Bible and and and and they're really really keen and then they take Greek lululu a oh that's hard Luo Luo a salut then case one case one then got case two you know and and then after that you have to actually have reasons for wondering whether or not not mark was written before Matthew is that so desperately what you have to learn it you have to learn it because the teacher says you have to learn it and besides you have to have some understanding of how the New Testament came together it's not just theoretical abstract stuff but but it might kill your joy in reading and then suddenly students who had such a warm-hearted devotional relationship now suddenly they're plowing through texts year two doing basic exegesis and pulling out commentaries and reading books and and and and and and and this is all sort of academic and then if they do manage to keep their devotional life straight then they go back and think not just talk to me Lord just talk to me now we'll do devotional stuff now we'll do critical thought and that will do devotional stuff and that will do critical thought and that will do devote god help us listen be worshipful and devote in the most critical painstaking careful detailed exegesis and when you're having your devotions don't stop thinking don't stop thinking not ever not ever and if eventually your languages get up to it sometimes you might learn to have your morning devotions in Greek and your evening devotions in Hebrew keep working at it this is God's Word it never stops being God's Word just because you're Stahl you're working a little more critically with your you're interacting with a few more difficult things to think about and eventually you get more of them under your belt and and and and there's pleasure and delight in reading an English text and hiding it in your heart and seeing the Greek behind it and knowing what stands there and and you fought thinks through and then you've read some some previous commentaries of other generations and you know where some of these debates are never ever ever develop an upstairs Downstairs approach to the biblical text spiritual over here when you're not thinking and then thinking over there and you're not spiritual that's hopeless don't do that fight it with every fiber of your being it is always true to this man will I look he was of a contrite spirit and who trembles of my word I don't care whether you're working on an objective janitor or not it's still true number four never forget that there are people out there people for whom Christ died I have to keep reminding cell myself at Trinity or any other institution I work at that we have not mere colleagues but brothers and sisters in Christ we don't have mere students organic sponges whose primary function is to soak up data and then squeeze it back out again on demand but blood-bought children of the Living God many of them will become vocational ministers of the gospel cross-cultural missionaries evangelists they're not just sponges they're creatures made in the image of God of course a seminary is an academic institution our job is to teach men to teach well they gotta learn yet not only should a Christian scholar in a seminary environment remember what any Christian scholar in any academic environment for those students named namely to those these students have been created in the image of God but such a scholar in a seminary environment should also recognize the ministry potential of the students detect all the more the enormous potential found in each classroom I'm old enough now to look at some of my students in what they're doing in different corners of the world and it is the most moving thing I can think about you know there's autumn and oh and Jennifer Kolbe less both 4.0 out of Princeton 4.0 out of Trinity both of them you know what they're doing I'm not gonna tell you where it might be dangerous they're working with Islamic refugees in a Muslim country they've learned the language they're setting up structures they care for these people as refugees and start Bible studies that are seeing people genuinely converted that's what they're doing and I taught them other brothers had taught them to but how wonderful that is you know and and I needed to remember while I was teaching them while I was teaching them Greek while I was teaching them advanced Greek grammar helping them to understand aspect theory that not only were they blood-bought children of God they had potential for working in ministry situations that are absolutely shattering that's part of my vision I must have that as I'm teaching students do you see or else had just become a teacher for hire just as a good pastor will not treat the sermon as an art form that is an end in itself but as a means of extending grace in the re revelation of the Word of God for the good of people so the seminary professor will not treat lectures papers quizzes and assignments is nothing more than formal Hoops through which to jump in the necessarily painful passage toward a degree but as a means of grace wisely and rightly administered as part of a larger mentoring and shaping designed to encourage a student to be a servant of the gospel a herald of the word rightly interpreting the word of truth a worker who does not need to be ashamed moreover at least some of our students come not from solid Christian homes they bring an enormous emotional moral guilt baggage can you as a teacher so handle the Word of God in their lives that they sometimes observe spectacular works of transforming grace taking place if not what makes you think you're qualified to teach others when they are going to be charged with exercising that same kind of ministry to others never forget there are people out there I'd like to tell you a lot more stories there's not time now I'm going to go quickly we're gonna run out of time here number five happily recognize that God distributes different gifts among scholar pastors as you distribute different gifts among other groups some will be able to teach and write but not preach how those will be able to teach and preach but writing might be more of a challenge we'll be excellent writers but perfectionist their output will be small but superb others are more slapdash gifted popularizers and so forth their their writing might be plentiful but not so good and you can guess what side of the spectrum I stand on in that regard obviously we are wise to hone and develop the gifts God gives us but we should not slip into the trap of thinking that all scholar pastors must be similarly endowed or there is moral fault as the green-eyed monster can rear its head among pastors so also among scholars as pride and triumphalism can pastoral ministry so also scholarly ministry what have you but what you received rejoice in the service to which God has called you as to both arrogance and jealousy and rejoice even more as scholars who are more productive than you are what can you say I'd love to say more about that I will add this little footnote learn from those who have gone ahead of you to think through how to be at least reasonably strategic don't puff yourself up into thinking you can be all that strategic we just don't know enough we we take on projects and turns out they're not gonna be all that important than any case you get involved in it let me tell you when you write a PhD thesis there are times when you think this is the most exciting thing the most earth-shattering thing the most brilliant revolutionary thought that this is earth-shattering when I published this the whole world will be convinced of my profound brilliance and then two hours later you're still writing on the same flippin thing and you're thinking if I get a PhD for this the entire degree is is-is-is debased and diminished how anybody could ever get a degree I mean that's part of the the emotional anguish when you write books and you do research and so on if you've never felt that it's because you've never read a book you've never written a book well what what I am saying is that you have to be careful when you start talking about strategic thinking and publication it's a subjective thing you need to talk with others about it but when I look at some of the people that I admired most to help to shape me when I look at scholars on whose shoulders I stand I see in almost every one of the the ability on certain occasions to pick up a certain topic that was needed at the time and bang it right on the head get it exactly right for example Leon Morris the apostolic Crete preaching of the cross if you don't own that book on sell your shirt and buy it it's still that good I mean a lot of books on the atonement out now that that one was revolutionary when it came out in the mid 60 and he did this two or three times that this one didn't have as wide an impact he wrote a book called the New Testament and the Jewish lectionaries anything boy that's really an exciting bedtime read isn't it the New Testament the Jewish lectionaries but let me tell you at the time it was an answer to a whole drift in biblical scholarship and he handled it so well that it killed it did you know to be able to understand the times and and and to respond wisely and well yeah I think in those terms on occasion number six recognize that students don't learn everything you teach them my students certainly don't learn everything I teach them so I have to ask myself what do they learn well they learn quite a lot of what I teach them to pass the exam but in terms of lifelong commitment what did they really learn what do they really learn let me tell you what they learn they learn what I'm excited about they learn what I act as if it is central that that's what they learn so if the gospel becomes that which is assumed never denied but that which is assumed but not what you're excited about then you will teach your students that the gospel isn't very important now you don't mean to say that you don't mean to say that and and if I went to you and challenged you and said you know I haven't heard how you tie that to Christ vicarious substitutionary death on the cross I don't see how you're doing that and Paul says that's a matter of first importance how do you put that - I believe that - what are you doing challenging I believe that with all my I've always believed I haven't denied that and don't you see and my third book on page 362 and the footnote I actually mention it but your students will learn what you're excited about so that unless you train yourself I don't care what your discipline is to major on the majors - to work toward the center and be excited about that which is of most fundamental importance according to the revelation of God you are in fact teaching people to marginalize that which God declares to be a matter of first importance and then your only another generation away from denying the gospel the first generation begins to assume the gospel the next generation marginalizes that the third generation denies it you can't do that number seven therefore as a follow-up to that make the main thing the main thing not only by not merely assuming the gospel but in every domain of life you don't want to teach people to be masters of the New Testament you want to teach people to be mastered by the New Testament you don't want people to learn merely what certain passages say you want them to learn how to find out what passages say you don't only want to teach them the truth about some particular passage you want to take them by the hand and say do you see where that comes from do you see how you can find it for yourself you have to keep making the main thing the main thing do you see so it's possible to teach a course let's say in systematic theology such that everything you say is Orthodox and and you start a long disquisition on the deity of Christ and you work through you work through nykeya you work through the chalcedonian confession and and you work through some of the disputes for example that had to be faced at the time of the Reformers all over again the Sicilians and what they were doing and all the way up to the Liberals and maybe you might even throw in a small excursus on Java's witnesses and so on and what are the connections between Jehovah's Witnesses and Aryans and and you work through all of this and and then you come up with a formulation and and and now you've taught us something about the systematic theology of of Christology it's all good some salt routes which was all interesting but at some point you've never stuck the students finger on a biblical text at the end of the day I don't want people just to be right I want them to know where it comes from in God's most holy word I want them to make that connection so I want system Atisha --nz for example New Testament scholars can do it too I want system editions to open up their Bibles to work with stuff here and then show it's been used in church history and to show how philosophy is sometimes handle it and eventually make a synthesis and at the end of the day say this is what the Bible teaches do you see that I worry about system Editions who spend 60 70 80 percent of their time on what used to be called prolegomena it now all has to do with them hermeneutics and interpretation and epistemology and so on but they never actually get around to tell you what you ought to believe I worry about system Editions who who keep showing all the things that are wrong in evangelicalism God knows there are lots of things wrong and evangelicalism and those things have to be said but they can say so many things about what's wrong with evangelicalism at the end of the day they're students who aren't as bright and as Orthodox as they are they go away and they become smart-mouthed all they can do is talk about how they're better than other evangelicals they might even even be happy to call themselves evangelicals anymore because they're they're busy finding everything that's wrong do you see you make the main thing the main thing you keep coming back to the gospel you keep coming back to the truth to the Bible's whole storyline to who Jesus really is to what the glory of God is about to do to to what is the matters of first importance according to the Apostle there's number 7 I'm getting faster number 8 pray and work for a scholarly vision beyond that which is offered by publishers do you see after you've written your first book somebody's gonna write you and say you know I wouldn't wonder if he wouldn't mind writing a chapter on a related theme and then if that goes well somebody's gonna write you and say you know in addition to that we've got a book series over here would you like to write a commentary on this subject and gradually you start filling in all your time we projects that have been offered by publishers and some of those projects are good and you should say yes to some of them but at the end of the day you're now you're now actually finding your life controlled by publishers agendas how that work that are godly publishers and their ungodly publishers and all the rest but at the end of the day where's your agenda where's your vision which what are you trying to do what would you build your life toward did you see I I remember reading a biographical novel biographical essay by a world-renowned New Testament scholar he's still alive I won't mention his name a brilliant brilliant man he's written many many wonderful books he bragged that he had never ever ever offered a book manuscript to a publisher he had always only written things that a publisher had asked him to write and he's written scores of books well was a reflection of how bright he was and how goodie how well he could write and all the rest that that in some ways people kept coming to him but didn't the man have a vision I mean what was the man trendy we're not we're not things in the world he wanted to respond to do you see don't get owned number nine love the church love the church no I think that Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is a pretty interesting place it's here I've given it more than 30 years of my life i but you know Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is not going to exist in eternity the church is love the church I I'd like to say much more about that number 10 avoid lone Ranger's scholarship it was Francis Bacon who said reading maketh a full man speaking maketh a quick man writing maketh an exact man so you want to collaborate with others who are also reading you want to speak with them and challenge some of your views of some of their views you want to write and rewrite and have your material tested by others did you say if you do write something as a scholar as a scholar pastor as a pastor I don't really care give it to somebody else to read first it's much better to get criticisms from your friends even from your enemies before you go to press then get it in the reviews and it'll make a better book collaborate with people did you see what when I wrote the gagging of God as I said I sent it to six people to read I I don't know enough I don't know enough one colleague who's long since gone to be with the Lord he wrote toward the end of his scholarly career a big fat tome some of you will know what I'm not I'm not gonna mention it he was a brilliant man he was a very brilliant man he wrote this very very large to him and when I got it I started reading the articles in it and there are some things in it were absolutely brilliant just breathtakingly right he'd got it right and there are other articles where there were areas that I knew something about uh-huh this guy hasn't done his homework and you know what he could have saved himself the embarrassment and made a far better book with much more enduring power if he'd only farmed it out to a few more people 11 be at least as interested in the work of others as in your own be quick to offer lots and lots of encouragement that's pastoral smarts and every front isn't it number 12 take the work seriously but not yourself take the work seriously but not yourself have a good laugh at yourself it's your spouse to laugh at you your children to laugh at you you know I edited two fat volumes twelve hundred pages called justification and variegated Nome ISM you have no idea how many times my wife has joked about that title when we've had dinner guests you have no idea and it's a good thing it's it's a good thing take the work seriously don't take yourself seriously oh there's so much more to say but I've long since gone over time and I watch i watch doug sweeney and owen stron looking at each other and looking at each other's watches and saying you know we better call this thing to a close may the lord bless you all real good

Channel: The Gospel Coalition

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Keywords: Holy Spirit, biblical, God, teaching, evangelical, reformed, pastors, ministry, pastor, reformation, spirit, gospel, minister, Christianity, Jesus, churches, coalition, church, faith, Christ, preaching, Christian, spiritual, bible, preacher, the gospel coalition

Id: i3z91fE1zxY

Length: 65min 0sec (3900 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 24 2014