Who needs a theological education?

I often get asked whether pastors need a theological education. Here’s how I answered that question last week:

I think the best way to answer that is actually to ask a different question: Does the church need a theological education? The answer to that is, surely, yes. Every New Testament book is a theological education for the church, helping it to grasp the implications of what God has done in Christ. So then, if the church needs a theological education, what does that mean for her leaders? 

If that’s a helpful way to think about it, then we’re not just talking about one or two verses in the Pastoral Epistles about pastors needing to be “able to teach.” The whole NT demands and models theological leadership.

Helping gospel workers to put theology into practice

       Primer is a project I’ve been working on with the FIEC. It’s written for gospel workers to help them put good theology into practice in the life of the church. 

In each issue of Primer we take one pressing topic and over the course of 80 pages or so we offer a kind of theological digest; summarising contemporary debate, drawing on at least one classic historical text, and always keeping the realities of ministry in view. In the first issue we covered the doctrine of Scripture. The second issue (released today) looks at the doctrine of sin. What does that look like? Well, 

      -          We gave Graham Beynon a pile of books recently published on the topic and asked him to go away and juice them for us, discussing the various ways in which they define the essence of sin.

      -          Then we asked Tim Ward to reflect upon the ways in which we customarily preach sin. He considers the dominant models we use to explain sin to unbelievers (idolatry and rebellion), and then asks how well our preaching to believers about their sin stacks up against the New Testament.

      -          Next we reprint a classic passage from Calvin’s Institutes on the extent of human sinfulness. It’s a fantastic passage that takes us into the depths of the human condition in a way that leads us back out to God’s grace as the only possible remedy.   To help that medicine go down, we have Mark Troughton, a serving pastor, guiding us through the text. He sets the passage in its context and helps us follow the argument and apply it to ministry today.

Beyond that, three articles have a more practical focus:

      -          Kirsten Birkett explores addiction and its relationship to sin from both a medical and theological perspective (looking at it through the lens of Augustine’s account of sin).

      -          Next, John Frame gives some short sharp answers to some FAQ’s about sin in the Christian life (Why do we confess sin if we’re forgiven? How does God feel about us when we sin? etc.)

      -          And finally, I’ve written on how we can communicate sin in a culture of entitlement and victimhood. How do we explain sin when everything is someone’s fault?

Primer is published twice a year and is available from the Good Book Company…

Oliver O'Donovan on the limits and possibilities of the body

A few highlights from Oliver O’Donovan’s 1982 Grove Booklet ‘Transsexualism and Christian Marriage”:

“The either-or of biological maleness and femaleness to which the human race is bound is not a meaningless or oppressive condition of nature; it is the good gift of God, because it gives rise to possibilities of relationship in which the polarities of masculine and feminine, more subtly nuanced than the biological differentiation, can play a decisive part. Through masculinity and femininity we claim the significance of males and femaleness for relationship, and give it, through relationship, an interpretation which can express our individuality as persons.” p7.

“One aspect of form common to all matter, of course, is plasticity, an openness to forces that mould and fashion; and this is what makes it possible for man to confer form upon matter while respecting the form that is there. But in more complex organic structures there is also a degree of systemic difference which runs counter to plasticity. The body of a living animal is susceptible to moulding only at the cost of its systemic integrity; sealskins make excellent coats, but the decision to make coats out of them is the decision to kill seals. Respect for natural forms, then, must mean more than the exploitation of plastic possibilities. It implies sometimes the resolve not to exploit plasticity in order that the more complex forms may retain their integrity.” p15.

“To know oneself as body is to know that there are only certain things that one can do and be, because one’s freedom must be responsible to a given form, which is the form of one’s own existence in the material world.” p15

“The first obligation of every human being is to hail that givenness [as male or female] as a created good and to thank God for it, even though he or she may then have to acknowledge that for him or her in particular that created good has taken on the aspect of a problem.” p16

A transgenderism reading list

“How to respond to Transgenderism?” is an urgent and complicated question. I’m just starting work on the topic and the third issue of Primer will be devoted to helping churches think the issue through. That will be out in November, but I’ve heard from several pastors who are trying to get a handle on the issue and write talks for their churches on it before the Autumn. So I’m sharing what’s on my to-read list. I haven’t read all these yet; they will certainly take different approaches and there is a mix of Christian and secular arguments here. Some address the topic specifically; others are touching on debates that I suspect are closely related to it. So don’t assume these pieces agree with each other or that I agree with any one piece. But, hoping that this list might help others get into the topic, here it is. If there are other things you’ve found helpful, do get in touch via email or twitter.

The book most people are aware of/engaging with is Mark Yarhouse Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (IVP)

For a summary of the argument in Christianity Today see here

For a critical review see here, and a response from Yarhouse

here

Other books worth looking at:

Dale S. Kuehne Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationship beyond an Age of Individualism (Grand Rapids: Baker 2009)

Oliver O’Donovan, Transsexualism and Christian Marriage (Nottingham: Grove Books, 1982).

Al Mohler We Cannot be Silent (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2015) ch5.

Links to other pieces online:

Do trans- kids stay trans- when they grow up?

Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme

Understanding and Responding to the Transgender Movement (Family Research Council)

Against Heterosexuality (First Things article)

Alastair Roberts participates in and reflects on a podcast on Megan DeFranza's book Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God

Alastair Roberts expands on a podcast discussion of transgenderism and Oliver O'Donovan's engagement with it

Coming Out Ahead: The Homosexual Moment in the Academy

[the second half of this shows how academic research is developing the work of Michael Foucault to break down a binary view of gender]

Transgender parenting (Ian Paul)

I Was a Transgender Woman

Here’s What Parents Of Transgender Kids Need To Know

Gender identity and the plastic nature of self-definition (Archbishop Cranmer blog)

Transgender Surgery Isn't the Solution (Wall Street Journal)

CMF paper on 'gender identity disorder' from 2004 now updated here:

CMF paper on 'gender dysphoria' (2016)

A website with numerous articles and studies:  http://parakaleo.co.uk/

[updated 25^th May]

A prayer on the Lord's Supper

In the previous post I was talking about how the Passover background for the Lord’s Supper helps us understand the point of the Supper. Just as Passover reconnected Israel with the story of her rescue, so the Lord’s Supper reminds us of the new covenant inaugurated at Jesus’ death and calls us to live lives shaped by that story.

Expressing that in a church service is hard to do though, in the absence of liturgies that capture that well, or in the absence of any enthusiasm for liturgy at all. For that reason I was glad to discover one example of how it might be done well in The Worship Sourcebook. It’s a 4^th century prayer which takes the words of institution (“at supper he took bread and broke it…”) which are the staple of many independent Lord’s Supper services, and places them in the context of the story of redemption. It might be something you can use or be a template to use for writing your own…

            Almighty God, you loved the world so much

              that in the fullness of time you sent your only Son to be our Saviour.

Incarnate by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary,

he lived as one of us, yet was without sin.

To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation;

to prisoners, freedom; to the sorrowful, joy.

To fulfil your purpose, he gave himself up to death

and, rising from the grave, destroyed death

and made the whole creation new.

And that we might live no longer for ourselves

but for him who died and rose for us,

God sent the Holy Spirit,

God’s first gift for all who believe,

to complete God’s work in the world,

and to bring to fulfilment the sanctification of all.

When the hour had come for him to be glorified

by you, his heavenly Father,

having loved his own who were in the world,

he loved them to the end:

at supper with them he took bread,

and after giving thanks to you,

he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying,

“Take, eat. This is my body, which is given for you.

Do this for the remembrance of me.”

After supper he took the cup, saying,

“This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood,

shed for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins.

Whenever you drink it,

do it for the remembrance of me.”

Holy God, we now celebrate this memorial of our redemption.

Recalling Christ’s death and his descent among the dead,

proclaiming his resurrection and ascension to your right hand,

and awaiting his coming in glory.

Amen.

From a 4^th century liturgy used in Alexandria.

Text from The Worship Sourcebook (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 326-27.