The Pastor As A Scholar - Q & A with Don Carson and John Piper

before before we start I just want to say one book that I would for those of you who are very interested in what we've talked about tonight is Doug Sweeney's upcoming book from University Press Jonathan Edwards in the Ministry of the word dr. Sweeney sparked a lot of my thought on this topic which is why I proposed this event and I would just commend it to you it's coming out soon the Henry Center Booth has Flyers for it and Doug will get your heart fired up either for theological pastoral ministry or scholarly ministry so look for that book in days to come because you both questioned the use of scholar in in the event title I just wanted to say what I was what I was thinking in offering that title and then have you respond in the past it seems to me that theology was done for the church there is certainly and always will be a place for high level academic theology theology among the experts but it seems to me that in the past men like Agustin Luther Calvin Edwards Warfield many others we could name the Puritans thought of themselves as theologians of the highest level but for the church so they weren't doing they weren't writing books just to be smart in the way that you kind of talked about a few minutes ago dr. Carson they were writing to build up and edify the church and draw lost people to the beauty of the Christian faith and the way that you write about dr. dr. Piper that's what I was thinking of when I proposed this you could you could substitute theologian for scholar and you could again add that tagline for the church is that something that makes sense does that help clarify the two callings no because because they're they're different levels at which you can do that I mean if you take Jonathan Edwards nature of true virtue the it was written for the sake of the church but I doubt that any laypeople have gotten much help from at all and so that's what I mean by their different levels you take his religious affections that's another level they're both powerful books but one has zero Scripture in it and is talking about consent to be what in the world is consent to being and it is it's a he's just operating at a cutting edge philosophical response level so I think that's okay to do that there should be people who do that not me I'm going to do religious affections level so the the reason it would be harder to say the reason that didn't help me is because if you ask me are you one of those I just have to make distinctions again okay yes i I think that there is another factor that's being left out at many occasions in the history of the church the most learned person around not only in the church but also in the entire society was the pastor and and until the explosion of knowledge - in the latter half of the evangelical awakening of the of the player on the Enlightenment and they were they were thinkers who learned so many things on so many fronts that the pastor was an exegete but was also studying some biology and they were the most knowledgeable people around and and so one of the reasons why you got so many unconverted people that wanted to be pastors was because this was also a path toward the life of learning but but eventually the the the the place of learning was not in pastoral ministry it was in the university or it wasn't a secular approach to knowledge and this sort of thing and the pastor becomes someone was working with a narrower sphere and and then you had the breakup of the great evangelical institutions such that you had more and more people getting their theological training and minor Bible Institute's and things like that and the whole life of the MA line four for a hundred years was was less and less well treated in the North American context with some remarkable exceptions until you you you had the founding of the great evangelical institutions and the revitalizing all of them again starting with fuller in 1947 and and and so forth Trinity for all of its strength started as a Seminary really in 1961 that that's it and and John was right to say that there was a generation in there that that that was the transitional generation that was far more lonely there there were not many of these front-rank thinkers alone along they just weren't there so in the 1950 the number of front-rank evangelical commentaries around it written in english they were pathetic they were just almost nothing there they were semi pop things FF root that's that Bruce that was about it and he'd written a few after you said F at Bruce well you could say F F Bruce I mean the dish it wasn't RBG task was doing a little Tyndale bits but there was just nothing there and and so people look back with nostalgia to the great days of FF Bruce where's a scholar standing head and shoulders above everybody like FF Bruce well tell you why stood stead shoulders above there was nobody else stand above and he was a great scholar in many ways but but but there was no competition nowadays there are many who have the capacity of an FF brutes because of an F F Bruce do you see and and so for all of the fact that there's all kinds of decline in the West and all kinds of morale in other areas that that's true nevertheless in the area of biblical theological scholarship all I know it's mixed it's compromising all the rest but there's great grounds for encouragement two huge things for which to be thankful and nowadays is a major crisis coming along in the church in some area and there going to be some Christians they're going to be addressing and thinking it through that's wonderful you know so III don't think it's it's those sorts of who's a pastor who's a scholar and where the drifts are I've just been been turning on one thing like writing for the church or I think it's turned a lot of things sociological and in our history and and so forth okay one pushback Edwards is a divine and supernatural light or heaven is a world of love or many other sermons are some of the the richest most theologically astute sermons you could find it's some of the most beautiful writing in the English language I think and I'm guessing you might agree there he obviously has a brilliant mind so I'm not thinking we should all go and try to be like him and write like him but he is doing theological work in those sermons in a way that I wonder if many pastors can't try to do not to try to be smart and not get degrees to try to look good but to push their minds challenge themselves and do that kind of theology for the church and to have academic theologians who write high-level theology who engage in their own conversations but who also in a very Edouard Xion way write for the church as well does that make more sense is that the kind of thing we could emulate I totally amen amen so that that doesn't sound like pushback that sounds like good great so I'm I love that that's what I would like to call mentor dude that do that as much as you can do it and and and grow in you in your capacities you learn Greek if you can learn Hebrew if you can and be as meditative on 2nd Corinthians 4 4 to 6 as you can I mean Edwards was able to do that because he could look at that in the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God he saw that and he saw worlds of implication so that's what that's what I mean I want I want people to see that so it does take I don't know if the word scholarly I like theological better a breath a breath of awareness of what's been saying in other parts of the scripture that are coming to bear on that as you read it it also takes an unusual imaginative penetrating mind to take every one of those words light of gospel of glory of Christ who is in every one of those words you've got to see through and the more theological you are the more vast the worlds are that open with each of those words so we want meditative reflecting long staring at the text type thinkers so thinking is what is what I'm after in if I'm trying to beget theological pastors is take a text and think deeply about it helps if you can go through the Greek and Hebrew helps if you know other parts of Scripture but go deep penetrate through and think your your way through and then put it all back together in a synthetic way and then do the divine and supernatural light sermon yes yes yes yes but I mean if there's a sense which I agree entirely but but just one sense yeah the the but is we're not all Jonathan Edwards so some people who simply try to emulate him eventually try to build a systematic theology out of each word and then lose what the local text actually says it's methodologically flawed they think they're doing what Edwards did but they don't have his skills and so you you want at the same time to throw in other things as well and to recognize differences and give some grace even while yeah I do want people to be working to their full capacity as theologians and so forth how come you can say you know three minutes worth and I'm restricted to one sentence don't think it was that way with the left oh yeah okay okay you know I don't think so my final question for you and then we're going to go to text and Q&A if a let's focus on pastors for a minute if a pastor heard your talks synthesize them caught a vision for what you've been talking about tonight and what we're in the way that we were just talking about with Edwards a kind of Edouard Z and richly theological ministry how can a young pastor act on this kind of vision and how can a pastor who is already situated perhaps middle-aged doesn't have a lot of opportunity to go and get further training or that sort of thing how can the those two groups embody this vision come to embody it the two groups again young young guy training for the ministry and older older past at the risk of being a smart aleck read a great deal less on the internet and a great deal more of books now don't misunderstand I mean I'm not knocking the internet yet you know in the gospel coalition we just pushed a big thing there and and it's why it's wonderful too but but it's such a scrappy environment you know you're not you're not learning to think unless you're downloading entire books from the internet and reading them on the screen I got no objection to that and believe it or not I have a Kindle too and I like I can read site Agustin on my Kindle but but but but at the same time there's a way of just collecting little bits and pieces here and there that don't train you to think well and in that connection you have to read and reread the Bible but it needs to be read within the context of the history of the Church of historically of others who believe it or not some people have studied these texts before you you know and and it's worth finding out what they have to say as well you don't have to keep reinventing everything you have to learn to find things for yourself and your authority really must be the way you start and end there but at the same time you must become informed by by how others before you have wrestled with these things and they become your teachers and so on and that requires sustained thought so in the context of pastoral ministry reserve time in the study not just for preparing for the next sermon but for reading beyond that you just have to block out time for that and if you're going to be a technical scholar then again you have to reserve time for for learning for reading for thinking and so much more could be said and we beyond that also for praying and adoring and all the rest but you have to reserve time for that and not just sacrifice everything to the urgent demand of the next email number one when you go to school or a house school don't choose classes choose teachers find the teachers who do it model it best and and take as many classes as you can doesn't matter what they teach I say that about college and I'd say it about seminary don't take classes take teachers ask around find out who is the thinker the modeler number two not only don't read internet as much as books read fewer books and read them with pencil in hand and read them very slowly and underline and write questions in the margin and say no it doesn't agree with chapter with page 22 and then go to 23 and and argue get inside and think and argue with a book number three find a group of men this may be the pastors already out there who love to do this with you and get together and read critically some book like like that and read Mortimer Adler how to read a book no matter what age you are if you haven't read that book Mortimer Adler how to read a book it's 90 years 60 years old as a book and it will show you how to do reading most people do not know how to read I would venture to say most people in this room do not know how to read because reading is an unbelievably non passive active affair when you when you do it and we've been taught by teachers assigning us twelve books in a class not to read we've been taught not to read we think that moving through passages is reading it's not reading interacting so that you can restate an author's thought can reconstruct his argument to his satisfaction and then give reasons and their kinds of reasons you can give he was inadequate in the way he described he was incomplete he was illogical he drew wrong inferences you need to learn the kinds of ways you can interact do the same thing then with the Bible so there is a way what I'm talking about is learning how to think think and observe think and observe what you know is observe what's there and think rightly about it so the the fetal pig and geometry that's what it's about so wherever wherever you can find somebody to just train you to do that do it Isaac Watts mainly known for what hymns but he wrote a primer on logic why would that be because you can't understand the theology you build the hymns unless you think rightly so the poet and the logician thank you we have just a few minutes for texting questions I'm going to get them up here and I'll read them to you to hope they're here they're everywhere what are some of the biggest issues you think the church and evangelical scholars will need to deal with in the next 20 years and let's let's say let's do a lightning round let's do quick answers if we can Islam crystal adji is Jesus the only way that's right start continuing challenges in epistemology that is how do you know the truth the place for revelation and understanding all of that you're going to you're doing a big two-volume thing on Scripture because even though he was instrumental generation ago to write serious things on the authority and inspiration of the scripture it needs to be done again because of how many people in new ways challenged the authority of Scripture so every generation needs its big book on that I was working on that that'll be that'll be there for 20 years to come probably we are not yet through the debates about justification and the exact place of substitutionary atonement in the structure of biblical thought there's going to be more and that one comes again every generation as well in one fashion or another you got to keep redoing that one yeah yeah like go ahead after that the doctrine of God and that that's partly because of a whole lot of other things but one of the most neglected doctrines I think in evangelical world is the doctrine of God we just haven't spent enough time thinking that through holistically clusters of family issues in relation to the public life and whether you will be allowed without going to jail just end up in your pulpit and say that homosexuality is is sin or to spank your children or to say that my wife should submit to me this this whole cluster of practical family things will will become volatile more than they are now that you see what's happening in Canada you see what's happening in in Sweden and other places and will will will be there and I've told about I will be in jail rather than not preach that it's right to spank your children I will go to I will not not preach that in order to stay out of jail I will not even use the phrase so-called gay marriage without putting the words so-called enjoy it frustrates me that we are big we have bought the phrase because there is no such thing as so-called gay marriage it doesn't exist in the universe why evangelicals would start using the term is a sellout stick the word so-called in front of it every time you use it because there is no such thing that that would be called that that will be called hate speech and it will be worthy of imprisonment around the corner and related to that are the pastoral theological personal definitional issues surrounding what tolerance is and that is tied to some historical questions they've been shifts in what tolerance is perceived to be but it's also tied to what you think the church's relationship to culture should be there is a nest of issues related to that where it's going to be important to think very clearly as we're being painted into a corner and being called intolerant in a very intolerant way and yet people don't see just how deeply ironic and tragic and even stupid that is but but nevertheless that's what's happening and and this has to be addressed I'm afraid there's one more I think that the explosion of let's just say contemporary worship music and contemporary worship forms and our church would feel that way to most people but a very very rock oriented so almost everywhere in the world now that and we have the same songs whether or not the ethos generally associated with that on a Sunday morning can sustain the gravitas of the glory of God over the long haul whether it can hold it it is possible I mean there are contemporary worship songs that can that that draw out my heart into the bigness of God in a most marvelous way but there is a kind of lowbrow hip cool y'all come family a chatty way of doing worship today the question is if that becomes more and more prevalent what becomes of the majesty of God in this book it's very difficult to maintain a sense of the bigness and the majesty of God if everything about the service is calculated to be chummy and close and warm and touchy and feely and y'all come so there's some something's got a break there and I I think I pray what will happen is that all the best of contemporary worship music and and all the best of the weightiness of glory will will move into just forms so that your people your age you look 20-somethings what will will will feel that sooner rather than later and and you won't overreact against contemporary and so you know going to go to liturgical and old hymns and organ and try to do it all old again but rather you'll say we've got to find a way so that from the beginning to the end of this service there's a way Tina sebat it a seriousness because that corresponds then to what the word will will say and who he is and what he'll really signifies and how glorious the cross is all those realities just don't fit in talk shows they don't if you try to do your little talk show down there as you welcome people and please just make this as street like as possible there are realities most of them here just don't fit there they don't they get so dumbed down that the the weight of hell and the horror of judgement and the glory of the Cross it's just people lose their capacity for all man a footnote even though you know a sentence you're asking me yeah yes you may oh thank you for thank you I am 63 yeah that's right you got to respect your older so I mean what can you say I agree with that absolutely 100 percent I think that practically in the local church one of the questions that those who are responsible for some worship can ask themselves is not just what is Orthodox but what is best there are lots and lots and lots of songs that are individually acceptable but learn to choose what's best not what passes a mere orthodoxy test that will already change everything and then start looking around for certain writers two weeks ago I was in England and I sat down again with both Stuart townand and Keith Getty and his wife there their friends Keith and his wife believe it or not spend part of their honeymoon in our home I mean how stupid can you get but nevertheless they did and and and and you know what these people do every time some of us get together and some of these things they sit down and they ask questions like what doctrines are we not hitting adequately in our hymns what should the tone be I mean there there are some people out there that are doing this right the Stewart town ins and the Keith Geddes of this world are just a cut above almost all the other contemporary hymn writers pray for more of those that there are some people making the right moves I'm encouraged by right by that all right wow that was quick indeed like that was may I encourage you to exercise authority yes over us tonight can we do one last question you may all right I guess that wasn't a good that wasn't a good exercise of authority is he cannot not exercise yeah last question and then we're going to have Jackson Crum come up and close the night for us all things being equal outside of scholarship does scholarship bring a deeper intimacy and love for God than those who lack scholarship it's a good question to close on does scholarship bring a deeper intimacy and love for God than those who lack scholarship all things being equal is a very crucial qualifier and if scholarship means right thinking and right observation the answer is clearly yes exactly but if scholarship means something like being an academic without reference to whether or not your subject matter is right your disciplines are right your focus is right your motives are right then the answer is it can be merely deceptive and lead you straight to hell amen let's let's applaud our speakers

Channel: The Gospel Coalition

Views: 18,688

Rating: 4.9139786 out of 5

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: 3CzeQJRLvsY

Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 24 2014