(Repost) Response to “Blue Collar Theology 5: Dangers of Theological Study”

August 28, 2007

Response to “Blue Collar Theology 5: Dangers of Theological Study”

The following is a response to: Blue Collar Theology 5: Dangers of Theological Study

http://timmybrister.com/2007/09/04/blue-collar-theology-5-dangers-of-theological-study/

Good points – I committed myself to a deeper study of the Word and theology about 5 years ago and have begun to answer the call to go back to school to lay the academic groundwork for entry into seminary, but it has caused me to see the world through different eyes in more then one way. I am constantly reminded to walk in humility and have a keen understanding of the brutal force that pride asserts itself with because I have seen it in the eyes of many “theological literates” and have followed some of them long enough to see the scattered brokenness in their lives that was resultant. I feel like I know what it is like to have opened a door that I cannot close, and to have entered into a place that I cannot leave – and to have learned a language that I cannot always communicate to others in; but the moment that I give myself any glory for that then I am farther behind then I would have ever been prior.

There is a tension between two opposites that we have a degree of disregard for; and that is that theology needs to be practical and applicable to the people of the church – but at the same time there is a bit of self-contradiction in the term “armchair theologians;” there has been historically and there should be today an emphasis on the study of theology as more then just a hobby but a lifetime commitment – in that if you are a theologian you have to look past the “ivory tower” accusations and commit yourself to studying Greek when everybody else is watching football. I wonder if the modern church is suffering from some form of an intellectual shallowness resultant from a shift towards seeing the office of a theologian as strictly emanating from the pastor’s desk. I think many great theologians started as pastors (Barth, Schliermacher) and many great theologians either reluctantly or engagingly became pastors later – but there should be a reverential hierarchy of sorts; in that the theologian is seen as not just an advisor to the parishioner as by pastoral position but that that individual is a pastor to pastors themselves. I have a concern that so many pastors want to shape the content and form of theology today that there is merely a cacophonous roar that in the end winds up with a populist, simplistic and potentially Manichean in nature and culturally-driven/defined/orientated theology, vs. a biblical one.

I also have a concern that the rise of the amateur theologian combined with the office of a theologian also being generally oriented pastorally in an exclusive sense has also contributed to a merging of the idea of what it means to be offended by another person’s liberty in Christ (speaking of Paul’s ‘deference of his offense;’ “I shall eat no meat lest my weaker brother I offend.”) and what it means to be offended by the Word (“others came challenging the liberty that we have in Christ Jesus, and these we did not countenance for an hour” – Paul). Pastors always have the weight of their support around them and their popularity and denominational/organizational concerns/oversight; which are good things – but have the potential to limit what a pastor might want to speak. If a Southern Baptist pastor was reading a biography of Luther and read a letter of his where he was extolling his wife’s beer making skills or where Calvin was asking to be paid in wine, or that the Moravians (precursors to the Puritans) brewed and sold beer to support their missionaries; and if that same pastor suddenly and with great clarity realized that the scripture indeed taught moderation and not prohibition; he would not be able to present those certain history lessons/that certain biblical truth to his parishioners that Sunday morning. He would no doubt formulate a seemingly cogent response that he as a pastor must defer his own offense towards himself and not offend his congregation in meat and drink issues; when in reality he is by nature of such a decision vacating his responsibilities to teach and preach the Word regardless of fear, favor or offense or what this or that currently popular culturally-mediated theological assertion might have to say about what he wants to speak in regards to. To me a truly great theologian should in some level live under the influence but not under the attachments of the rigor of a theological structure; as he must not just allow it to speak to him – but he must speak to it – for this is, after all, what defines a true theologian, as he or she is more then just someone who sits around debating points for the fun of it, but he is engaged in the sober task of contenting with and reforming the brokenness and affirming and strengthening the wholeness and truth of the theologian community that he or she is a part of – and it is crucial and necessary that such work be conducted either to the dismay or joy of those in his company. There is a danger in an individual having such power and influence – as the potential of disruption or reformation is greater with the greater the power in such an individual; but nobody ever said this whole business was safe to begin with – and that is also why we are warned that “teachers” will be held to a higher standard. Once we reassert this weighty responsibility towards what we teach but also in the outworking of how the teachings of a theologian are asserted in both welcomed and unwelcome environments, then the glory and allure of being a theologian is greatly diminished.

In today’s purple embroidered, HD televised, feel good, theology; everyone wants to call himself or herself a Prophet or a Theologian. If they realized the responsibility that it entailed, the potential for alienation and financial and relational impoverishment that will almost always at times accompany those who are used those ways – they’d pick another title and profession, rather then risk getting sawed apart in a log, living in a cave, and being despised and hated by everybody. And that just might not be all that bad a thing.

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(repost) Response to Thristy Theologian’s “Modern/Postmodern, Tomayto/Tomahto”

Sept 20, 2007

Response to Thristy Theologian’s “Modern/Postmodern, Tomayto/Tomahto”

Following is a response to Modern/Postmodern, Tomayto/Tomahto from http://www.thirstytheologian.com/2007/09/10/137.php where the David stated the following:

It has been said by some (Phil Johnson, for one) that Postmodernism is little more than Modernism warmed over. John Piper draws the same conclusion from the following series of quotes by J. Gresham Machen as he opposed Modernism.

I don’t think so:

I disagree greatly. To consider Postmodernism as merely Modernism rehashed is to only see part of the dynamic in operation. I strongly feel that Postmodernism is just a reaction to Modernism and what you see in Machen is the “Classicists” rejection of Modernism. If this sounds like fluff and nonsense, then consider it from this perspective: culture is constantly changing and a degree of the time it is changing in rebellion to a previous state or assumumption. It does this on a micro-level in terms of whether it is cool to wear a certain kind of pants and it does it on a macro level with the larger ideas about how all the other “micro” things are understood. When you hear all the postmodernists crying about how Modernism has rejected this and that – sometimes those assertions are true; especially if the Modernist is only thinking in Modernist Terms and is forcing his scriptural interpretations to manifest itself through what he would term Modernity. If this makes you upset, please bear with me for just a moment. Any reference to a Modernist who deals with scriptural exegesis and hermeneutical presentation in only a modernist way can not be stated without the subsequent notation that postmoderns often follow a likewise path of rejection; whereas the modernist rejects the mythical and the classical; the Postmodernist rejects the Absolute and Written in favor of the Relative and the Experiencial. The argument follows that the exclusively Postmodern mindset is twice divorced from any sense of epistemological wholeness, epochally speaking. Now let me frame this for you scripturally: I believe that we are called to live as the scripture does, in a transcendent or a “meta” fashion – or to append their own verbiage – in a metamodern way. Machen in his books, I believe Piper is quoting Christianity and Liberalism (which Machen later lamented he did not name Christianity and Modernism) lambastes the affects that so called Modernism movement was having on the church. Piper is half right in this regard; but it is not enough to say, well they are just all arguing about definitions, because what is at at stake is not a hermeneutical term – but the very voice of the church, for in speaking to the culture, if we fail in this regard, then we are to be “trampled under the feet of men,” for we will be “unworthy of the dungpile.” We have to make the effort to not just be postmodern, but also modern, and even classical/Mythological in our language and method to the culture. It is not enough to just say we believe the Word – you have to engage in the foolishness of preaching to exhort that truth to the congregation, and if you do not speak a transcendent Word transcendently then you are risking just making yourself another part of an increasingly arcane bunch of banter that accomplishes very little in terms of advancing the Gospel. I footnote this argument with reference to the comments of BB Warfield and Hodge in their arguments for the advocation of Reason within theological formulation. Reason is a Modernist/Enlightenment concept, and I accept it’s use as a tool, such as in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral – but to say “I believe because it is Reasonable” is as absurd as the postmodernist saying “I believe because it is relational” which is on a footing just as illusory. Both the Modernist and the Postmodernist must say – “I believe because the Word says it is so!” I believe that if the church accepts aspects from all three (what I term) “Culturally Reactionary Epochs”, then this is potentially a step in a positive direction. Postmoderns are reacting theologically to abuses within Modernism just as Modernism reacted to abuses in it’s day. We cannot continue to merely continue a Reactionary Posit that necessitates a rejection. The rejection must come from does it line up with the Word? This is a radical concept but in in application it serves as a foundation to help prevent one from not just being pigeonholed by whatever fashionable ways and means of advancing the Gospel is being talked about at present, but also to prevent ones own self from being likewise stuck and only able to see through one’s own default way of seeing. I believe that an effectual process of discipleship entails the understudy seeing the Gospel as Epochially Transcendent and that the ways of a society seeing and believing may change somewhat in terms of their tools – but the foundation – The Word – always remains the same.