The point above regarding diverging social locations is aptly illustrated by a recent exchange between SBL and a disgruntled former member, Ronald S. Hendel. Hendel accuses SBL of becoming too cozy with faith perspectives. The response from SBL is revealing:

“Although SBL invites vigorous discussion of all relevant topics, proselytizing activity is neither welcome nor permitted in SBL-sponsored events and publications and is inconsistent with the SBL’s core values: accountability, inclusiveness, collaboration, leadership in biblical scholarship, collegiality, productivity, commitment, responsiveness to change, communication, scholarly integrity, efficiency, and tolerance. Consequently, any instances of proselytizing activity should be reported to SBL staff. Further, we are unaware of any RBL reviews that even “hint” that anyone is “going to hell.” If any SBL member can point us to such a review, we will immediately remove the review and disavow its sentiments.”

Clearly the rules of engagement governing SBL do not lend themselves to the sort of theological task historically prosecuted by  the church’s most influential theologians. The church’s task is, explicitly, a proselytizing one. Indeed, a significant bulk of the church’s reflection is driven by, and born out of, the duty of proselyting.

I’m glad believing, orthodox scholars like Michael Bird and others are present and moving in the SBL environment. The Christian community needs a voice there;  we have both things to learn and to teach. But given the stated aims of SBL, it should be clear that the agenda of SBL — reflective of the wider academic context –  represents an entirely different sort of agenda than what must once again come to constitute the core of orthodox, theological reflection. We are in need of a rebirth of the ecclesial theologian — the kind of theologian whose primary vocation is pastoral, and whose intellectual center and theological agenda is constituted by the church.

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 Ecclesial Theology (SAET). Sweeney suggested:

“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 of generalists, people who synthesize the findings of those in the other scholarly disciplines and neither have nor require a methodology of their own. They put the big picture together and apply it to our lives. They don’t require the resources or the structures of the academy to do this kind of work (though they do need very good libraries). In fact, the people best suited to synthesize our knowledge of God and His ways in the world, applying this knowledge to the empirical realities people face, are pastor-theologians.

We should work toward a day when professors view themselves as handmaids serving pastor-theologians, and pastor-theologians play an important public role in guiding people theologically. Professors should continue to offer specialized instruction in ancient languages and history, exegesis, church history, social science, and philosophy. They will continue to raise up future generations of pastors. But we should work to raise up the kinds of pastors who can synthesize, exposit, and apply the knowledge of God to the lives of all God’s people with authority.”

We no longer live in a pre-critical context, and thus the pastor-theologian can no longer go it alone. The modern research university—with all of its blessings and challenges—is here to stay. Thus academic theologians and pastor-theologians must work in tandem, each bringing a strength to the theological task the other lacks. As a general rule, the academic context will push professors toward specialized research, while the ecclesial context will push pastors toward multi-disciplinary synthesis. Consequently, the pastor-theologian, even though widely read, will likely lack narrow expertise in the sub-fields of the various theological disciplines. He is thus in need of the believing research professor to help him sort through the myriad of secondary literature, and to serve as a guide to the wealth of resources housed within the academic community. And believing professors need pastor-theologians who can partner with them in thinking through the ecclesial relevance of their academic work, providing professors with a more robust understanding of how the various theological/intellectual paradigms of the academy intersect with the situation on the ground.

Nearly all of my study up to this point has been in historical soteriology (Augustine, the Cappadocians, Athanasius, Anselm, Calvin, Luther, Edwards, etc.)  and New Testament studies devoted to Paul and justification (Wright, Westerholm, Seifrid, Bird, Moo, Dunn, etc.).  I’m a new-comer to contemporary systematic theology, so the analysis provided below must be seen as preliminary. What follows is my “initial sense of things” after reading portions of Jenson, Webster, and Pannenberg, contrasted with the sort of theological reflection written by Calvin, Luther, Augustine, etc. My comments here are not intended so much as a critique, but mere observations. As I will note in a coming post, academic theologians are able to do things that pastor-theologians cannot.

1. Academic Theology lacks a sense of the preacher’s burden. Academic theologians do not typically have to preach to the laity. This reality is evident in the way their work is constructed. The reader senses that academic theology, even explicitly Christian academic theology, is a couple of steps removed from the situation on the ground. Theology, at it’s core, must be pressing toward the pulpit. This does not mean that a theologian’s work should be hung low enough for the shortest goat. But it does mean that whatever I come up with must be — in its most distilled form — preachable. Academic theology lacks this at many points. Don’t misunderstand my point. I’m not saying that a theologian’s project must be preachable without translation — that every interested lay person should be able to pick it up and understand it. Augustin’e De Trinita, or Edwards’ Freedom of the Will, for example, are not easily accessible. But there is a sense in both Augustine and Edwards that they are writing as pastors who have to weekly (if not daily) draw a connection between their most profound thoughts and the lives of  average people. Academic theologians do not — as a matter of vocation — have to do this, and it gives them a certain luxury to split atoms that perhaps need not be split.

2. There is tendency in academic theology to speak of the believing community in the third person. John Webster, in his little book on holiness, is clearly driving toward an explicitly Christian application. Yet the readers notes a certain distance between Webster and the ecclesial community. His customary way of referring to the believing community is in the third person. He speaks of “the christian,” “the believer,” and “the church.” Yet throughout the book he often quotes Calvin, who in contrast speaks of the believing community in the first person — “I” and “we” and “us.” It’s not that Webster never self-identifies with the believing community. But the freedom to do so in academic prose is certainly less than what one finds in Calvin or Luther or Edwards or Augustine. I can’t help but feel that this rubs the ecclesial edge off of Webster’s work.

3. Academic theology is less self-consciously an expression of personal piety. Worship is a personal thing, and each person expresses it uniquely. Far be it from me to make a statement about the personal piety of academic theologians. Yet I think it a safe observation to note that contemporary scholarship (whether theology or biblical studies), is less self-consciously pietistic than what is found in theological treatises of old. One thinks here of Anselm’s Proslogion. In the opening paragraphs Anselm writes,

Lord, you are my God and my Lord, and never have I seen you. You have created me and re-created me and You have given me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know You. In fine, I was made in order to see You, and I have not yet accomplished what I was made for….I set out hungry to look for You; I beseech You, Lord, do not let me depart from you fasting.

The entire treatise is, in fact, a prayer. My point here is not that all theological treatise should be written as extended prayers. But there is certainly something to be said for a genre of writing that makes explicit the author’s personal hunger and love for God.

I like Webster and Jenson, and am finding their work helpful in many respects. And, as mentioned above, I think they are doing some important things that most pastor-theologians –given our eccleisal vocation –  find difficult to pull off. More on that in the next post.

More relevant to the focus of this blog is the extent to which the work of Jenson — a systematic theologian– can be considered “ecclesial” theology according to the SAET’s understanding of ecclesial.  As regular readers of this blog will already know, the SAET is concerned to advance a theology that is more ecclesially sensitive than what is typically found in academic circles. The tendency for academic scholars to suspend their Christian presuppositions and agendas when doing their scholarship is decidedly unhelpful for the church. One sees this sort of thing most often in historical and biblical studies, where the reigning academic methodology does not allow for supernatural presuppositions. Thus historical studies and biblical studies often fail to terminate in theology; little or no effort is made to provide an ecclesially relevant synthesis that advances/protects the message of the church. As George Marsden properly notes, such stricturing is an unnecessary capitulation to secular presuppositions. Much of the SAET’s critique of academic theology has been precisely at just this point.

But to what extent does this same critique hold true for Christian academic systematicians, who by the very nature of their academic vocation, consciously press toward theological concerns? This is an interesting question and one that I’ve been ruminating on for the past month or so. In as much as the SAET’s vision for the pastor-theologian pushes towards systematics, it’s appropriate to ask if there remains a need for the pastor-theologian when we already have gifted academic theologians like Jenson.

Jenson is brilliant — a remarkable thinker and scholar.  He is a significant voice in the ecumenical movement, and those familiar with his overall work know that his theology pushes beyond mere academic concerns. His work is centered around the life of the church, and is distinctly and consciously Christian; it is not merely descriptive, but ecclesially prescriptive.  So the basic critique that I’ve leveled against Christian academic scholarship does not obtain with Jenson (or, I suspect, with other trinitarian theologians such as a Guton, David Hart, Pannenberg, Webster, Vanhoozer, etc., none of whom I’ve read extensively.)

So where does this leave the pastor-theologian? What can a pastor-theologian contribute to orthodox/evangelical theology that is not already being done by academic theologians? In a previous post I had argued for a division of labor between academic scholars (representing their respective narrow guilds) and pastor-theologians. But there is, I now see,  a need for a further division of labor between academic theologians and pastor-theologians. After reading Jenson (and some of Pannenberg) with this question specifically in mind, I’m still convinced the pastor-theologian has something helpful to offer the church’s theology. In a number of subsequent posts I will lay out a preliminary apologetic for the existence of the pastor-theologian against the backdrop of ecclesially sensitive academic theologians.

Here are the two major problems on the SAET radar:

1. The local church in North America is—in the main—theologically anemic.

2. Evangelical theological reflection is—given its location in the academy—often disconnected from ecclesial concerns.

Does anyone really dispute either of these? Evangelical theology is not about to run off the cliff of ecclesial irrelevance. Nor is the evangelical local church on its last theological breath. But I think most of us concerned about both would agree that the dough of evangelical theology could stand a little more ecclesial yeast, and that the local church would benefit from a more theologically substantive pastorate.

Solution? The pastor-as-ecclesial-theologian (i.e., a pastor who writes robust, ecclesially-sensitive theology). The ecclesial-theologian  simultaneously addresses both of the above problems by at once returning a strong theological presence to the pulpit of the local church, and by influencing broader evangelical theological reflection toward ecclesial concerns.

It is self-evident that a theologian in the pulpit will go a long way toward addressing the theological anemia of a local church. Further, it is clear that a theologian’s pastoral vocation will influence his theological writing toward ecclesial concerns, thus returning a distinctly ecclesial voice to evangelical theology. Thus the pastor-as-ecclesial-theologian kills two birds with one stone.

Without a significant body of respected ecclesial theologians, the pastoral office will continue to be seen as a largely non-theological vocation; the local church will remain theologically anemic. And without the ecclesial theologian, theological reflection will continue to remain—at some level—disconnected from ecclesial concerns.

And having made the above argument, one can go on to point out that the pastor-as-ecclesial-theologian model is more than just a good idea; it’s detailed for us in Scripture.

Thoughts?

…There would seem to be a pervasive evangelical inferiority complex. This means that, while we do not wish to exclude anybody, we dread being excluded ourselves. Indeed, for the evangelical academic, in a world so ill-defined, it is always tempting to cut just a few more corners, or keep shtum [is shtum British slang?] on just a couple of rather embarrassing doctrinal commitments, in order to have just that little bit more influence, that slightly bigger platform, in the outside world. This is particularly the temptation of evangelical biblical scholars and systematicians whose wider guilds are so utterly unsympathetic to the kind of supernaturalism and old-fashioned truth claims upon which their church constituencies are largely built. In so doing, we kid ourselves that we are doing the Lord’s work, that, somehow, because we have articles published in this journal or by that press, we are really making real headway into the unbelieving culture of the theological academy. Not that these things are not good and worthy—I do such things myself—but we must be careful that we do not confuse professional academic achievement with building up the saints or scoring a point for the kingdom.

It remains true (as James Barr pointed out years ago) that evangelical academics are generally respected in the academy only at precisely those points where they are least evangelical. There is a difference between academic or scholarly respectability and intellectual integrity. For a Christian, the latter depends upon the approval of God and is rooted in fidelity to his revealed Word; it does not always mean the same thing as playing by the rules of scholarly guild.

He concludes,

Years ago, Mark Noll wrote a book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, in which he argued that the scandal was that there was no such thing. When it comes to evangelical scholars and scholarship, I disagree: the scandal is not that there is no mind; it is that these days there is precious little evangel.

On a related note, have you read George Marsden’s, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Unbelief, or his shorter follow-up, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship? I’m not quite done with either, but I can already confidently recommend them to anyone interested in understanding how the academic scene in North America got to where it is today.

The pastor-theologian in this model is fully abreast of the academic discussions, and the bulk of his writing consists of articles in academic journals and scholarly monographs related to ongoing academic debates. His intellectual center is the academy, not the local church. And most significantly, like academic theologians in the academy, the pastor-as-academic-theologian subjects his theological project to the demands and presuppositions of methodological agnosticism. He writes not as a pastor or a Christian, but as a disinterested scholar. Pastor-theologians of this variety are few and far between in wider evangelicalism, though perhaps more prevalent in certain denominational contexts. Frequently, the pastor-as-academic-theologian is a freshly minted PhD who has taken a job at a local church while he looks for a teaching position in the academy.

Of the three pastor-theologian models discussed thus far, I am least enthusiastic about the academic theologian model. First, I am not convinced a pastor is called to engage in this sort of writing. It distracts, rather than serves, his ecclesial calling as a shepherd. Secondly, even if there are legitimate reasons for pursuing this model, such writing is decidedly not in keeping with ecclesial theology. It does not seem particularly helpful to use the term pastor-theologian to speak of a theologian whose theological project differs in no substantial way from that of an academic theologian. To be useful, the term pastor-theologian must denote more than simply the vocation of the theologian. It must denote a certain kind of theological project. Thus the pastor-as-academic-theologian model is not sufficient for the SAET project.

Ultimately, the SAET is not concerned to resurrect the pastor-theologian model simply as an end in itself. (We are, after all, not the Society for the Advancement of Pastor-Theologians). Nor are we interested in advocating a pastor-theologian model that fails to terminate in ecclesial theology. Indeed, the final telos of our entire project is ecclesial theology.

It is apparent (at least to me) that our ecclesial and theological communities have assumed a definition of the term pastor-theologian without having adequately thought through that definition. That the term is used frequently is obvious. That we understand what we mean by it is not. Bringing definition to the current understanding of the term, therefore, is a necessary first step in identifying the SAET’s vision of the pastor-theologian. In my analysis, the term pastor-theologian is used in a broad sense to denote three basic models: the pastor-theologian as local theologian, the pastor-theologian as popular theologian, and the pastor-theologian as academic theologian. While the SAET affirms—in varying degrees—the legitimacy of each of these models (most especially the first two), the SAET reserves the term pastor-theologian for a fourth model—a model that has all but gone extinct in recent times: the pastor-theologian as ecclesial theologian.

In the next few posts I will be posting excerpts from my ‘09 SAET Symposium paper The Pastor-Theologian as Ecclesial Theologian, which seeks to provide a working taxonomy of the pastor-theologian, and argues for theological writing as a vital component of the pastor-theologian’s identity.

As we will see, the local theologian model is insufficient in as much as it does not include writing theology as a vital component of the pastor-theologian’s identity (this seems to be the assumed model in play for The Power to Comprehend). The last two models, while they advocate writing theology as a necessary component of the pastor-theologian’s identity, are insufficient in that they advocate the wrong sort of theology.

Stay tuned…

“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 of generalists, people who synthesize the findings of those in the other scholarly disciplines and neither have nor require a methodology of their own. They put the big picture together and apply it to our lives. They don’t require the resources or the structures of the academy to do this kind of work (though they do need very good libraries). In fact, the people best suited to synthesize our knowledge of God and His ways in the world, applying this knowledge to the empirical realities people face, are pastor-theologians.

We should work toward a day when professors view themselves as handmaids serving pastor-theologians, and pastor-theologians play an important public role in guiding people theologically. Professors should continue to offer specialized instruction in ancient languages and history, exegesis, church history, social science, and philosophy. They will continue to raise up future generations of pastors. But we should work to raise up the kinds of pastors who can synthesize, exposit, and apply the knowledge of God to the lives of all God’s people with authority.”

In sum, professors in the academy should continue to focus on primary-level research, but theological reflection and synthesis should be moved back into the churches. Doug’s way of parsing this out was extremely helpful in reminding me of the need for church and academy to lock arms. Given the rise of the modern research university, as well as the development of the specialized theological guilds, it is no longer realistic to expect one person to be both a cutting edge research scholar and a robust systematic theologian. The fields have simply become too specialized and the secondary literature too vast.

Given our current context, the professor is best positioned to engage in primary-level research. Pastors—in the main—simply cannot afford the time away from their parishes to do the sort of work the modern research professor does (visiting research libraries, study centers, etc.). And if the professor is uniquely positioned to engage in primary research, the pastor is just as uniquely positioned to engage in theological analysis. Who better to write ecclesially sensitive theology than pastor-theologians?

Doug’s willingness to refer to himself and other academics as “handmaids” is remarkably charitable, and no doubt a word for those in the academy. But for my part, I had lost sight of the fact that pastor-theologians were in need of such handmaids. But we no longer live in a pre-critical context, and thus the pastor-theologian can no longer go it alone. The days of Calvin, Luther and Edwards are gone; the modern research university is here to stay. Pastor-theologians need believing research professors who ably hand them the raw data necessary for theological reflection. And believing professors need pastors who can ably synthesize the data they mine, for the good of the church.

The current division of labor between the academy and the church is, ”Professors will do the thinking, pastors will do the praxis.” But if we follow Doug’s advice, it should become, “Professors will do the research, pastors will do the theology.” Of course, it’s not a zero-sum game. No doubt pastor-theologians can (and will) do primary-level research. And certainly professors will continue to make helpful theological contributions. But in the main, Doug’s suggestion makes the best use of our respective social locations.

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 on to state that a historian should not render judgment on the matter studied. “As a historian, one makes no judgment about the rightness or wrongness of the person’s teaching on an absolute scale. . . the student should not ask whether or not Arminius is ultimately doctrinal right or wrong.” And again, “One’s own writing should not register one’s own theological opinion, pro or con.”

Here I must voice strong disagreement. The entire point of historical studies as done by Christian theologians and historians is precisely to render theological judgment in service to the Church. The conscious divorce between systematic theology and historical studies is the curse of academic theology. To be sure, historians—christian or non—must be careful to do the hard work of finding out what was really going on in the original context; we can’t appropriate what we haven’t accurately understood. But to suggest that Christian historians shouldn’t appropriate the theological reflection of our tradition is significantly unhelpful.

I am reminded here of a recent exchange in JETS between two Calvin scholars on the role of “union with Christ” in Calvin’s soteriology. Thomas Wenger argues for a more traditional, forensic reading of Calvin and accuses Marcus Johnson of allowing his theological agenda to carry undue weight. Wegner writes, “It seems that Johnson has a vested interest to ground his existing theological views in Calvin, and in then grounding Calvin in Paul. . . My arguments have been decidedly historical, and in the original article I do not make a single theological claim.”

Pause here. What was the point of Wegner’s article then? With all due respect to Dr. Wegner (who is a pastor, ironically),  I don’t really care what Calvin thought about anything unless it can be demonstrated that Calvin’s thought has relevance to the Church as she exists today. Wegner’s article is excellent. Indeed I think his read on Calvin is more accurate than Johnson’s  (and I even agree theologically with Johnson!). But the superiority of Wegner’s article is not because he refuses to render theological judgment. If anything, this is a significant weakness of the article. Who is he writing this for, anyway? Apparently not the church, whose very life-blood runs red with theological judgments.

Johnson has not misread Calvin because Johnson has a vested interest in the subject matter. No doubt Wegner has a vested interest as well. No. Johnson has misread Calvin because he misread Calvin.

Bradley and Muller are correct. “It is…exceedingly unlikely that badly done history can be the basis of well-done theology.” Agreed. But  “well-done theology” is the ultimate telos of good history. Historical analysis that doesn’t terminate in theological assertions and a prophetic call to mission is like a “house” with no framing and only a foundation. Good as far as it goes, but useless in and of itself.