Postmodern theology emphasizes that God, or the idea of God, is subject to human interpretation. It is influenced by deconstructionists such as Jacques Derrida, the German idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Christian existentialists including Soren Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich, and philosopher Martin Heidegger.

Christian atheism is an ideology that embraces the teachings, narratives, symbols, practices, or communities associated with Christianity without accepting the literal existence of God. It often overlaps with nontheism and post-theism.

2011 00:17:05 when john john cobb organized this two-day seminar about morphic resonance and whitehead

theology managed to change right from from the medieval theology

The danger is in conflating our Christian identity and our national identity. We can be Christian, we can also be American. But to assume that being American means being Christian and that being Christian means holding to a narrow view of what it means to be American is limiting to all of the above.

To assume that one side works on behalf of God while the other works in rejection of Divine order is a perversion of the unity that could exist in, at least, recognizing shared spiritual ideals. That spiritual unity cannot exist when we suggest that true Christians either wear red hats and carry “Don’t Tread on Me” flags or do not.

By rejecting the idea that the stone provides useful evidence of a creator, Paley avoids the oversimplified argument that the existence of anything proves God’s existence. But the watch provides something different: evidence of purpose.

If 1 am scholarly, it is not in any sense because I try to stay on the cutting edge in the discipline of biblical and theological studies. 1 am far too limited for that. What “scholarly” would mean for me is that the greatest object of knowledge is God and that he has revealed himself authori- tatively in a book; and that [should work with all my might and all my heart and all my soul and all my mind to know and enjoy him and to make him known for the joy of others.

Since our faith is rooted in the understanding of a book, we want people to learn how to read, and then to have the Bible in their language, and to learn how to think carefully and doc- trinally about the book.

On and on the chain of argumentation grows. Words become statements, and statements are linked to form larger units. And these larger units are linked to build the whole book of Romans. The point here is simply this: since much of the Bible is written this way, pastors are called to trace these arguments with active, careful, rigorous reading, and explain statements and the connections and the larger units to their people, and then apply them to their lives.

that many parts of the Bible (like Paul’s letters and Jesus’s sermons) are less like strings of pearls and more like chains of steel, That is, the authors don’t just give a sequence of spiritual gems; they forge a chain of logical argumentation, Their statements hang together. They are linked.

he Bible is a book. Jesus came in the flesh and was called the Word of God. He taught many things, and he did many things. He died for sins, and he rose again. He founded the church and poured out the Holy Spirit. All that foundational speaking and doing is preserved in a book. My ninth point is simply this: reading a substantial book well is hard mental work,

In one sense, the Bible itself is the whole counsel of God. But that’s not what Paul meant here. This is too big. He didn’t just read the whole Bible to them. He taught them from the Bible (Acts 19:9). There must be a faithful way to sum this up in what’s called a coherent and unified whole counsel of God. And my point is, it takes mental work to find what that is and to work it out in understandable, shar- able ways

So the pastor’s job is to look at the Bible and work hard to understand what’s in it, and then work hard to make it understandable and attractive and compelling to our people.

The Bible tells us in Ephesians 4:11 that Jesus has given to his church pastors and teachers. And it tells us that these pastors and teachers should be “able to teach” (i Tim, 3:2). They should be good teachers. So all of us pastors should be thinking, God is giving me as a gift to my church. And he is telling me, The way you will be a gift to your church is if you are an effective teacher.

Don’t try to manipulate people. Don’t try to coerce people and make them do things. It has to come from inside, from their hearts. And that means they need knowl- edge that awakens love.

o good scholarship—good use of the mind in seeking and finding truth—stands in the service of honest, coura- geous ministry. And the goal of that ministry, whether it succeeds or not, is to put people’s souls on a solid footing. The aim is that great affections for God would be awakened by clearly seen and courageously spoken truth.

e go now to Luke 12. My point here is that Jesus assumes that human beings use logic, and he holds them account- able to use their logic well.

he answer is that God has ordained to use means to give life. He has designed that life would be given, and truth would be imparted, through Paul’s reasoning.

herefore think over what Paul says! Don’t say, “Because God gives understanding, I don’t need to think.” And don’t say, “Because P'm thinking, God doesn’t need to give it to me; I can get it on my own.” It’s both-and, not either-or.

So clearly, the problem is, according to verse 2, that their zeal does not accord with knowledge. So even though Christian hedonism puts a huge weight on zeal (passion) for God, now we can see how worthless that zeal is if it’s not based on true knowledge. So the use of the mind to come to true knowledge is necessary so that our satisfaction in God will be an honor to him.

Thinking hard about biblical truth is the means through which the Holy Spirit opens us to the truth.

So, when I say that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in bim, Lam referring to a well-grounded satisfaction. I see real things in Jesus and in God the Father; [see real reasons for being satisfied in him. And therefore my emotions are truly an honor to him because they are based on real reasons.

If God is going to be glorified in our being satisfied in him, then our satisfaction in him must be based on truth. And truth is what we find by the right use of the mind—by scholarly effort

o knowing right things about Jesus doesn’t automatically produce right affections. But knowing those right things about Christ is essential for having right affections for God.

o knowing truth is the proper means to admiring truth. Both thinking and feeling are indispensable. But they are not both ultimate. Thinking exists to serve admiring. Thinking is meant to serve worship and delight and satisfaction in God.

Right thinking about God exists to serve right feelings for God. Logic exists for the sake of love. Reasoning exists for the sake of rejoicing. Doctrine exists for the sake of delight, Reflection about God exists for the sake of affection for God. The head is meant to serve the heart.

Many pastors, especially those who love the glorious vision of God’s being and beauty and plan of salvation, have a scholarly bent that threatens to over-intellectualize the Christian faith, which means they turn it mainly into a system to be thought about rather than a way of life to be felt and lived. Of course, it is a system as well as a life. But the danger is that the whole thing can be made to feel academic rather than heart-wrenchingly real.

In other words, at the heart of magnifying God’s worth is feeling God’s worth. Treasuring the Treasure. Enjoying the glory. Admiring the greatness. Savoring the feast. All this is the necessary precursor to behavior that glorifies God.

And 'm probably not the first to do that. Jonathan Edwards said, “God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in”! That is what 1 am trying to say for our day: the glory of God is magnified when we rejoice in him. C. S. Lewis says exactly the same thing even more clearly. In his book on the Psalms, he writes:

But knowing all that, I could not resist any longer. The passion to preach and to see God shape and grow a church by the Word of God was overwhelming.

He said, in effect, “I, the God of Romans 9, will be proclaimed and not just analyzed or explained.” By the end of that sabbatical, the battle was over, and | had resolved to leave teaching and seek a pastoral position,

Meanwhile, my exegesis and systematic theology classes were undoing my Arminian presuppositions with biblical facts.

By all of this singularly blood-earnest scholarship a introduced me, through Scripture and through Jonathan Edwards, to the truth that God is most glorified in us when lam most satisfied in him. This was the seed from which has grown all the books I have written and all the sermons I have preached. The fact that God pursued his glory and my joy in the same act of worship was the most explosive teuth I have ever learned. The sources were the Bible and then Jonathan Edwards.

n partnership with Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book, he taught me that the task of the true scholar, whatever his vocation, was: ® to observe his subject matter accurately and thoroughly; ¢ to understand clearly what he has observed; * to evaluate fairly what he has understood by deciding what is true and valuable; * to feel intensely according to the value of what he has evaluated; * to apply wisely and helpfully in life what he understands and feels; and © to express in speech and writing and deeds what he has seen, understood, felt, and applied in such a way that its accuracy, clarity, truth, value, and helpfulness can be’. NON : LA known and enjoyed by others.

hen came John Stott and Men Made New, a little yel- low paperback of an exposition of Romans 5—8. [ loved it. It was fuel on the flame that Ockenga had lit, and it showed me the kind of careful attention to the text that, for me, made it live.

These were immeasurable gifts and had the effect of synthesizing my Wheaton experience. The intellectual stimu- lation, the emotional deepening, the stirring of imagination, the passion to write—all of these came together in C. S. Lewis and made me wonder if I should teach English litera- ture as a vocation.’

Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for being modern. This has freed me from the tyranny of novelty.

Lewis was the main influence on Clyde Kilby, and Lewis had the same effect on me as Kilby did. He gave me an intense sense of the “realness” of things. To wake up in the morning and be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the warmth of the sun rays, the sound of the clock ticking, the sheer being of things (“quiddity” as he called it). He helped me become alive to life. He helped me see what is there in the world—things which if we didn’t have, we would pay a million dollars to have, but having them, ignore.

Lewis embodied the fact that rigorous, precise, pen- etrating logic is not inimical to deep, soul-stirring feeling and vivid, lively—even playful—imagination. He combined what almost everybody today assumes are mutually exclu- sive: rationalism and poetry, cool logic and warm feeling, disciplined prose and free imagination. In shattering these old stereotypes for me, he freed me to think hard and to write poetry, to argue for the resurrection and compose hymns to Christ, to smash an argument and hug a friend, to demand a definition and use a metaphor.

When you are being shown what you've always looked at all your life and never seen, it is absolutely revolutionary. Kilby was one of the greatest influences of my life, and I scarcely know what he thought about anything—politically, psy- chologically, theologically. It was the way he saw the world and spoke of the world. He was so alive to the wonder of things. This was incalculably valuable preparation of soul for the vision of God that would come just a few years later at seminary.

{shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day, E shall sim- ply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, a person. f shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are, but simply be glad that they are. [ shall joyfully allow chem the mys- tery of what Lewis calls, “their divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic existence.”®

He taught me that there is always more to see in what I see.

The point of every class seemed to be: any system of thought that denies truth denies itself. In other words, he modeled the universal significance of the law of noncontra- diction: if you say there’s no truth, then you’ve just spoken something that doesn’t count. That simple insight has been life-saving and life-illuminating for over forty years. It spared me from being enamored by all the ludicrous post- modernism that was already rampant in the late 1960s. Thank you, Dr. Hackett.

rthur Holmes and Stuart Hackett were both in the phi- losophy department at Wheaton in the late sixties. Holmes embodied two things I had never seen before: (1) the quest for a comprehensive worldview that helped make sense of everything—and that had Christ as the integrating center. and (2) the life of the mind as vocation. In other words, Christian scholarship as a vocation came onto my horizon as a possibility for the first time in my life.

riting became the lever of my thinking and the outlet of my feelings. If [didn’t pull the lever, the wheel of thinking did not turn. It jerked and squeaked and halted. But once a pen was in hand, or a keyboard, the fog began to clear and the wheel of thought began to spin with more clarity and insight. And when the feelings that rambled around in my heart as an introverted, insecure adolescent needed form, I turned to poetry and writing. So along with the disciplines of precise thinking and painstaking observation came a passion for conceptually clear and emotionally moving expression in writing.

hese were two huge impulses feeding into who I am in ministry: painstaking observation of texts and the demand for precise thinking—from myself and from others.

So what hap- pened in Mrs. Clanton’s biology class was the awakening of a self-conscious awareness that dependable knowledge—of the world or the Bible or anything else—depends on seeing what’s really there for the mind to work with.

ll the sharp reasoning in the world will simply lead you astray if you start with observations that are inaccurate or incomplete.

eometry class marked a serious awakening of my love for right thinking. From that time to this, I have had an ear and an eye for non sequiturs in what J hear and read. If a politician or preacher says, “All cows have four legs; Fido has four legs; therefore Fido is a cow,” I’m all over it. From that class on, I have had a self- conscious expectation that I will never knowingly be illogi- cal or incoherent.

The process of reasoning from axioms and postulates and corollaries in order to turn theories into proofs was explosively exciting to me. I loved the ability to draw right conclusions from true premises.

But I was a believer. I loved Jesus. I hated sin. [ feared God in a good way. I took heaven and hell and salvation and the gospel very seriously. They were dominant realities in my life. And so the seeds of ministry were there. But there was no dream to be a pas- tor and no awareness that there even was such a thing as scholarship.

In other words, Paul repeatedly talks about his personal life and experience with God with a view to helping his listen- ers. So, yes, this approach is risky. But there are reasons for it.

esus said, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John $:44)° You can’t. You can’t believe in the crucified Messiah as your supreme treasure and hero, and then love the exact opposite of the mind-set that took him to the cross.

I put Philippians 2:3 before me regularly with its pierc- ing word kenodoxian (vainglory): “Do nothing from rivalry or vainglory [Rexodoxianj, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3 at). The love of human praise—human glory—is universal and deadly.

The Internet world we live in today is awash in narcissism and vanity, with some people taking their clothes off literally, because exposure gives them a tush, and others doing it spiritually—because the addicting power of talking about yourself, where anyone in the world can read it, is overpoweting.

There is another possibility—in fact, there are several. One is that [do not have “exceptional qualities,” and I may just be stupid to take this approach. Another possibility is that I may be egotistical and vain.

f course, my assumption is, for Edwards and for myself, that in our aim to raise the affections of our hearers, we have experienced authentically raised affections ourselves. And these affections are in synch with what is true and in proportion to the nature of the truth.

22 The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor resenting the British of a generation ago (and perhaps much like today’s), said at the end of his autobiography: While some readers have observed that in these chapters I have said little about my domestic life, others have wondered why I have been so reticent about my religious experience. The reason is probably the same in both instances: I do not care to speak much—especially in public—about the things that mean most co me, Others do not share this inhibition, and have enriched their fel- lows by relating the inner story of the Lord’s cealings with them—-one thinks of Augustine’s Confessions and Bunyan’s Grace Abounding. But it calls for quite excep- tional qualities to be able to do this kind of thing without self-consciousness or self-deception.! So now you can see I am trapped. My first reaction when I read this was to say, “No wonder { have found his com- mentaries so dry”—helpful in significant ways, but person- ally and theologically anemic. My second reaction was to say (this was in 1980, the year I left academia and entered the pastorate), “Good grief! You say, ‘I do not care to speak much—especially in public about the things that mean most to me.’ | say, ‘The only thing I care to speak abour— especially in public—are the things that mean most to me!’” zero Empathy Both his and my statements are probably overstatements. But seriously, this is one of the differences between me and many scholars, and it is part of what pushed me out of the guild. [ am regularly bursting to say something about the Piper: The Pastor as Scholar «=23 most precious things in the universe—and not in any disin- terested, dispassionate, composed, detached, unemotional, so-called scholarly way, but rather with total interest, warm passion, discomposure, utter attachment, and fully emo- tional, and, | hope always, true. At least true is my goal.

But seriously, this is one of the differences between me and many scholars, and it is part of what pushed me out of the guild. [ am regularly bursting to say something about the

at God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

In the same way, the gospel declaration always comes clothed in theology. And this theology is not something additional to the gospel. It is an essential part of the good news.

For peo- ple to believe the gospel, they must not only hear the story itself, they must also understand its meaning. Not only must people hear that Christ died and rose again—these brute facts of history do not yet bring us to the heart of the message—they must also be confronted with the why of his death and resurrection. They must understand that God acted in Christ for them.

This encounter occurs through the hearing and believing of the gospel. But what exactly is the gospel? Many Christians would likely agree that at the heart of the good news is the biblical story of God’s saving activity on behalf of sinful humankind. God has provided the way of salvation. And Christians all realize that to “call on the name of the Lord” (Rom 10:13), people must hear this salvation story.

First, theology is practical because it is inextricably linked to the most practical aspect of Christian life—its beginning point, that marvelous transaction we call “conversion.”

They engage in theology not merely to amass knowledge, but also to gain wisdom. Good theol- ogy, therefore, brings the theoretical, academic, intellectual aspect of Christian faith into Christian living. In so doing, theology becomes immensely practical—perhaps the most practical endeavor one ever engages in!

Christians who study and write about theology tend to divide their inquiry into several foundational beliefs or interrelated topics. These central theological foci include C] God (theology proper) C] humankind and the created universe (anthropology) DEFINING THEOLOGY @ 39 (J Jesus and the salvation he brought (Christology) [] the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s work in us and in the world (pneu- matology) (1 the church as the fellowship of Christ’s disciples (ecclesiology) [1 the consummation or completion of God’s program for creation (eschatology) Good theology begins by exploring these topics as they are informed by faith in Jesus, who is the revelation of God.

This is how theology works. As Christians become more reflective and replace erroneous beliefs with correct convictions, and as they test and hone valid but imprecise and immature beliefs, they become even more steadfast in faith and more sure of what they believe. But the grounding work of good theology does not stop here.

To many people, the search for truth as embedded in the one true religion is passe. What is “in” is the quest for spirituality. And this quest, they claim, may lead through a variety of religious traditions, each of which offers some insight. Their advice? Just remember that no religion holds the final answer, Each religious expression is merely a way station along the path. So move with the times from one religious fad to the next!

Good theology assists Christians because it grounds their lives in biblically informed, Christian truth.

A central goal of theology is to understand and describe what we believe as Christians, what we hold to be true given our faith in Jesus Christ. Since the first century the church has affirmed the importance of theology to its mission. And Christians have defined theology ac- cording to the role it plays in the church’s task. We engage in theo- logical reflection because theology assists us in being Christ’s disciples, and we can understand theology in accordance with the assistance it is designed to give.

In this general sense, theology is not uniquely Christian. It is rather a nearly universal human endeavor, of which Christian theology is a specific embodiment. The unique thing about Christian theology is that Christians seek answers to the ultimate questions by looking to Jesus Christ because they are convinced that “Jesus is the answer.” That is, Christians believe that Jesus has revealed truth and ultimacy to us because he is the revelation of the very heart of God. Since Christian theology explores the beliefs about God and the world that are uniquely Christian by looking to Jesus, we may say that Christian theology is reflecting on and articulating the beliefs about God and the world that Christians share as followers of Jesus Christ.

In the broad sense theology is the attempt to reach below the surface of life and gain a deeper understanding of God. Theology seeks to understand God’s being, God’s nature and God’s relationship to the world.

Viewed from this perspective, theology means “the teaching concerning God” or “the study of God.” This is surprisingly similar to the dictionary definition.

Theology seeks answers to general and personal questions about God, ultimate meaning, purpose and truth. But this way of defining theology is only partial, and because of its generality, it is wholly inadequate for describing the discipline (the science or formal study) of theology. Therefore, let us define it more precisely.

Rather I mean that most of us would find Christians truly cast in the New Testament mold fairly obnoxious: civically reprobate, ideologically unsound, economically destructive, politically irresponsible, socially discreditable, and really just a bit indecent.

improper than Pri<lc

‘Man

We regularly, in the interests of Plato-worship, disembody language and reason, with the narrow-mindedness Mark Johnson points out in an important recent book, The Body in the Mindl3 Our persistent evasion of the "Q" question makes for a great deal of self-centered, self-serving preaching and a great deal of self-satisfied practice. We do sometimes follow that master of contemptuous, self-satisfied self-absorp-tion, the Platonic Socrates, closely indeed.

bars women from teaching men or holding any leadership position over them.

We would be left floundering in conflicting nonsensical schemes if we accepted all the views that we can't really disprove.

There is no reason at all not to steal that discourse from men .... Besides, that doesn't mean anything; we don't steal anything at all-we are within the same cultural system.

that two-thirds of the teach-ers in these schools are women; that nearly three-fourths of our church members are women; that through the modern Sunday-school women have already become the theological teachers of the future church; and that, per mntra, out of about sixty thousand persons in our penitentiaries fifty-five thousand are men; that whiskey, beer, and tobacco to the amount of fifteen millions of dol-lars worth per year arc consumed almost wholly by men;

OTIIER SCRll'TURES

to furnish unleavened bread, or a pas-lor who provides it,

Junia

carried out to the leuer in other respects

Paul's prohibition against women speaking in church:

There seemed no logical reason why they might not be touched by the 1-loly Spirit just as men were-no one would want to say that such action was beyond God's power

hostility to the ministry of women is as bitter as was that of Rabbi Eliezer

Move

the high eloquence which I have last mentioned, is always the offspring of passion.

the narrative that computer technologies are liberatory

This is surprising, not least because it could be argued that the foundation of social science itself rests on the response to various religious crises which prompted the production of increasingly secular and societal remedies for what had once been considered theological and metaphysical con- cerns: as Comte explained, theology's 'treatment of moral problems [is] exceedingly imperfect, given its inability . .. to deal with practical life' (cited in Lane 2004, 5). Hence, his 'system of positive polity'