Dear Alumni,
I hail from a long line of medical
doctors. Although none of us has ever had formal
medical training, we are all perfectly confident that we
can diagnose ourselves and prescribe a remedy. My
grandmother (“Big Mama”), in fact, created a concoction
which she called “the remedy.” No fancy names to
befuddle patients and overwhelm them with a foreign
vocabulary. Just “the remedy.” Since we were,
generally speaking, hypochondriacs, the remedy seemed to
work. Only in my adulthood did I learn that it
consisted mainly of cheap bourbon and coconut shavings.
(We were Southern Baptists: whiskey could only be
justified for medicinal use.)
Of course, if anything serious
happened, we went to a hospital like everybody else.
There too we assured patient and not-so-patient
physicians and nurses that we had a pretty good idea
what it was and what would solve it—we just needed the
doctor’s signature for a prescription.
By now, readers are probably
questioning my mental as well as physical health.
However, I can assure you that I am not quite as foolish
these days, especially after becoming a father of four.
A bad doctor will kill you, but so will self-diagnosis.
We all look for the best doctors in town and when there
is a serious illness, we try to find the most qualified
specialist.
There is nothing wrong with using
the means that God has provided to improve and prolong
our life, but we will all die regardless of the care we
receive. After this, the judgment. Those who are in
Christ will be raised to life everlasting, while the
rest will be raised to everlasting death. How much more
important it is, therefore, that there be well-trained
physicians of the Word.
I’m often reminded of this point
these days, when the familiar sentiment of Pink Floyd’s
anthem, “We Don’t Need No Education,” seems to be more
common than ever. Americans especially love practical
leaders who can “get the job done” over scholars who
spend a lot of time reading. Long before the “Jesus
Movement” of the 1970s, many evangelicals disparaged
churches of the Reformation for their educated
ministry. Radical Anabaptists like Thomas Muntzer mocked
Luther for wanting “to send the Holy Ghost to
college.” Calvin sharply rebuked these sects for their
assumption that the Spirit works immediately and
directly, apart from his Word and a ministry trained and
ordained to declare it in Christ’s name. The
nineteenth-century revivalist Charles Finney, though
ordained in the Presbyterian Church, came to criticize
his denomination for its insistence on an educated
ministry. Since, according to his essentially Pelagian
theology, salvation is not a miracle of God’s grace but
a planned, pragmatic consequence of the right use of
techniques, personal power and charisma trumped formal
training. If one has the inward call of the Spirit (the
“anointing”) and a cleverness in practical matters, what
need is there of an outward call of the church through
training and examination? A good conversion experience
made up for any lack of knowledge. Ignorant of church
history, many of these evangelists unwittingly repeated
past errors; ignorant of the biblical languages, proper
methods of interpretation, and theology, their exegesis
was often only superficially connected with the biblical
text.
We would never tolerate a medical
doctor who, instead of addressing our acute illness,
told personal stories and anecdotes. Yet many Christians
tolerate preachers who do the same, “dressing the wound
of my people as though it were not serious,” as the
self-appointed prophets in Jeremiah’s day.
The real provocation for this
article, though, came from re-reading Brian McLaren’s
A Generous Orthodoxy (Zondervan, 2004). In this
book, McLaren, a leader in what is now called the
Emergent Church (or Emerging Church) movement, calls
evangelicals to abandon their historical commitments to
the Reformation’s “solas.” He says that while evangelicals in
the past have been committed to “an errorless Bible”
that is a sufficient authority for faith and practice,
we must see tradition, reason, and experience as
authoritative alongside Scripture. Furthermore, he
adds that we have
a lot to learn from the texts and teachings—but
especially the lives—of people from other
religions. Concerning liberal Protestants, McLaren says,
“…I applaud their desire to live out the meaning of the
miracle stories even when they don’t believe the stories
really happened as written. (I find it harder to be
sympathetic with those who take pride in believing the
miracles really happened but don’t seek to live out
their meaning.)” (61). McLaren admits, “I am
consistently over-sympathetic to Roman Catholics,
Eastern Orthodox, even dreaded liberals, while I keep
elbowing my conservative brethren in the ribs in a most
annoying—some would say ungenerous—way. I cannot
even pretend to be objective or fair” (35). Indeed, he
has mostly positive things to say about the Anabaptist
heritage, Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, liberation
theology, and liberalism. “Why not celebrate them
all?”, he asks. “What if we enjoy them all, the way we
enjoy foods from differing cultures? Aren’t we glad we
can enjoy Thai food this week, Chinese next, Italian the
following week, Mexican next month, and Khmer after
that?” (66). Evident throughout his book is McLaren’s
assumption that the gospel is about our love and good
works, not God’s. Our goal should not be to convert
Jews, Buddhists, and Moslems to Christianity but to make
them better Jewish, Buddhist, and Moslem followers of
Christ, he argues.
McLaren even has a little room for
Reformed Christians at the food court. “When I was
growing up,” says McLaren, “there was
anti-intellectualism rampant in Evangelical
Christianity. At that time it was mostly in the
Reformed churches (Presbyterian, Christian Reformed,
etc.) that one found much intellectual vigor and life of
the mind” (187). However, this is where the complements
end. The author takes apart the Calvinist “TULIP”
petal-by-petal. He says that if they want “to
participate in a generous orthodoxy” (i.e., his own
blend of properly balanced traditions), Reformed people
will have to drop their “fondness for reductionism,
epitomized by their love for the Latin word sola (only),
seen in what are often called Reformation mottoes:
sola Scriptura, sola fide,” and so forth
(198).
This book is so full of
distortions, confusion and self-contradiction in his
interpretation of history and theology that it can only
be taken seriously by post-evangelicals looking for a
reason to take their parents and pastors to court. Yet
McLaren himself fends off any criticism that might be
offered with a self-deprecating concession, namely, that
“…I myself will be considered by many to be completely
unqualified to write such a book of theology, being
neither a trained theologian nor even a legitimate
pastor if legitimacy is defined by ordination
qualifications in a bona fide denomination. Rather I am
only a lowly English major who snuck into pastoral
ministry accidentally through the back door of the
English department and church planting, and whose
graduate education consisted of learning how to read….In
other words, I am a confessed amateur” (34). One doubts,
however, that many evangelicals will actually be among
those readers who will be put off by such a
confession. Instead, American evangelicals will be
likely to celebrate his competence precisely because he
has not been “tainted” by formal seminary training. Yet
the ironic, playful, eclectic, and whimsical style in
which McLaren does theology without actually doing
theology is as dangerous in pastoral practice as it is
in the practice of medicine. While we are not meant to
take ourselves seriously, the gospel is
not a game. It’s a matter of life and death. Children
play games, but eventually come to learn that life calls
for more serious reflection. In Ephesians 4, Paul
reminds us that our ascended King has poured out on his
church the gift of pastors and teachers so that we will
not be “tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine.”
Through Jeremiah, Yahweh sternly
rebukes the false shepherds and false prophets who dare
to speak when they have not been sent and stubbornly
declare their own word as God’s. In John 10, Jesus said
that he was the Good Shepherd and that his sheep listen
to him rather than following interlopers who come in
through the back door. Paul reminds us that the gospel
ministry is not a free-for-all. “How shall they preach
unless they are sent?”, he asks in Romans
10. Furthermore, his epistles (especially to Timothy)
are chock-full of instructions concerning the proper
qualifications of those who are to be ordained by the
laying on of hands.
To be sure, the church’s history
(and present) is littered with examples of many who
received an excellent education and were examined,
approved, and ordained, who nevertheless led God’s
people astray. In fact, especially since the
Enlightenment, university divinity schools and
theological faculties have borne much of the
responsibility for converting sons of evangelical
families and churches into skeptics. Yet we do not
abandon a formally educated ministry any more than we
abandon doctors and hospitals in spite of run-ins with
“quacks” and “hacks” in the medical profession. Rather,
the Christian faithful, for their own health, must
insist upon rigorous training in sound, confessional
seminaries and examinations on the floor of classis and
presbytery. The proper response to bad education is good
education, not abandoning formal training altogether.
As you know, at seminaries like
Westminster Seminary California, the choice between
being a pastor and being a scholar is regarded as a
false one. We are training pastor-scholars. Just as your
doctor needs to be professionally trained as well as
practically experienced, those who watch over your soul
for Christ’s sake need tools for lifelong ministry that
they do not have simply by virtue of having a stirring
personal testimony. They will one day give an account
for their flock. The stakes are too high and Christ’s
promise too wonderful to settle for an unprepared
ministry. My hope is that through their prayers and
gifts churches will cherish the seminaries that serve
them, support the men in seminary who will one day
occupy their pulpits, and hold both accountable to the
faith that must be clearly articulated and defended in
each new generation.
Michael S. Horton
J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics
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