Academic Theology Posts
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June 24, 2010
Ecclesial Theology and SBL
Elsewhere I’ve argued that the social locations of the academy and the church represent two distinct (and often diverging) fields of theological discourse. In as much as most of our theologians and scholars are situated in the academy, orthodox theology has become, in many instances, detached from the church and her concerns. While there remains some overlap between the academy and the church (particularly when one includes the seminary as a sub-set of the academic world), overall, these two social locations represent diverging theological/scholarly agendas.
The point above …
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June 20, 2010
Pastor-Theologians and Academic Theologians: Toward a Healthy Division of Labor, Part 3
Following up from part one and part two…
Yet in drawing a contrast between academic theology and ecclesial theology, an important words needs to be said here about the mutually dependent nature of the church and academy. As my vision for ecclesial theology has unfolded, I’ve become increasingly aware of the need for a robust partnership between believing academic theologians and pastor-theologians. Doug Sweeney (himself a respected academic historian), helped crystallize this for me at the close of the 2009 Fellowship Symposium of the Society for the Advancement of …
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April 2, 2010
Pastor-Theologians and Academic Theologians: Toward a Healthy Division of Labor, Part 2
In a previous post I raised a question about the necessity of pastor-theologians in light of gifted, ecclesially sensitive academic theologians such as Jenson, Guton, Hart, Webster, Vanhoozer, etc. Is there anything that a pastor-theologian brings to the table that isn’t already being brought by academic theologians? And if so, what?
Nearly all of my study up to this point has been in historical soteriology (Augustine, the Cappadocians, Athanasius, Anselm, Calvin, Luther, …
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March 8, 2010
Pastor-Theologians and Academic Theologians: Toward a Healthy Division of Labor
I’ve spent the last few weeks reading Robert Jenson’s Systematic Theology. The trinitarian framework that permeates Jenson’s project is fascinating. I’ll need more time (a lot more time!) to sort through all of the implications, but his desire to liberate Christian theology from Greek notions of impassibility and move it toward a (in Jenson’s mind) more biblical notion of God’s ontology has my mind churning in all manners of …
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February 12, 2010
Two Birds With One “Pastor-as-Ecclesial-Theologian” Stone
Nothing particularly new here. Todd and I had lunch with a number of area pastors who wanted to hear more about the SAET. We both came away feeling like maybe we could have been more precise in explaining the SAET vision and mission. So I’ve been trying to think in fresh ways about how best to frame the whole discussion. What problems are we trying to address? How does the …
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January 13, 2010
Carl Trueman on “The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind”
Carl Trueman has a piece over at 9Marks that resonates with much of what the SAET stands for regarding ecclesial theology. Trueman’s basic point is that there is tendency among (some) evangelical academics to pander to the fancies of the secular establishment, and that such pandering is harmful to the church and her theology. I used to push this message more ardently in the early days of the SAET, but have since concluded that …
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November 29, 2009
Taxonomy of the Pastor-Theologian, Part 4: The Pastor-Theologian as Academic Theologian
When I tell people the SAET is a theological society for pastor-theologians, I am initially understood to be speaking of the local theologian model (part 2). When my listeners come to realize that I envision a writing ministry as a vital component of the pastor-theologian’s identity, they quickly assume the popular theologian model (part 3). When I explain that we are going for something more robust than popular theology, they immediately envision (often with skepticism) this last model—the pastor-theologian as academic theologian. (After all, isn’t academic theology the …
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November 22, 2009
Taxonomy of the Pastor-Theologian: Part 1
I’ve been reading The Power to Comprehend with All the Saints: The Formation and Practice of the Pastor-Theologian. The book is a collection of essays written by the group of pastors who were part of the (now disbanded) Pastor-Theologian Program of the Center For Theological Inquiry. The CTI’s Pastor-Theologian program was, in many respects, a mainline version of the SAET. The book has a number of robust essays that, …
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November 9, 2009
Doug Sweeny On the Professor as Researcher and the Pastor as Theologian
At the close of the ‘09 SAET Symposium, our Senior Theological Consultant, Doug Sweeney, offered the following proposal regarding the future relationship between academic scholars and pastor-theologians:
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“We will not always need academic, systematic theologians to do all the heavy theological lifting for God’s people. We are not often explicit about this, but systematic theology, insofar as it is distinguished from biblical, historical, philosophical, psychological, and intercultural theology, is the work … -
October 4, 2009
Who Cares What Calvin Thought? (The Church, That’s Who)
Despite their comments earlier in the book, Bradley and Muller acknowledge the difficulty of achieving total objectivity in historical studies, and indeed, affirm the importance of having a sense of involvement in and with the events of history. “Objectivity in historical studies does not, and cannot, exist if it is defined as an absence of involvement with or opinion about the materials.”
This is more reasonable, even if out of step with their earlier comments. But what the right hand gives, the left hand takes away. Bradley and Muller go …
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Welcome to saet-online.org, the online home of The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology (SAET). The SAET is an organization dedicated to assisting pastor-theologians in producing biblical and theological scholarship for the renewal of orthodox theology, for the renewal of the church.
Operating within the historic evangelical tradition, the SAET believes the contemporary bifurcation between the pastoral calling and theological formation has resulted in the loss of a distinctly ecclesial voice in orthodox theology. The SAET seeks to resurrect this voice...(continue reading)SAET Bloggers
Recent Posts
- Doug Sweeney and Owen Strachan-The Essential Edwards Collection
- Mark Noll on Methodological Naturalism
- David Rudolph on “Paul’s Rule in All the Churches”
- Stephen Witmer on Sin
- Eternity Bible College Now Offering Online Classes
- Ecclesial Theology and SBL
- Pastor-Theologians and Academic Theologians: Toward a Healthy Division of Labor, Part 3
- Ecclesial Theology as the Foundation of Popular Theology
- Spring Gathering of the Second Fellowship
- Piper on PhD’s
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