Theology

Seminary–You’re doing it wrong

Kirk E. Miller 2 Comments
My seminary--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

My seminary–Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

If you’re doing seminary without significant involvement in a local church, as the saying goes, “You’re doing it [sic] wrong.”

Over the past two years of seminary I’ve become more and more convinced of the church’s importance in my (and others’) seminary education. It takes a church to raise a Christian. And equally so, it takes a church to form a seminarian. As such, I am convinced that going through seminary without significant involvement in a local church (i.e., not just attending, but being involved in ministry) is incredibly harmful to one’s seminary experience and formation process.

Let me share with you at least three reasons why.

1. It’s a needed supplement to your seminary education.

We learn a lot of valuable stuff in seminary. But seminary can’t provide us with all the training we need. (Get your Greek out!) It’s a para- (“alongside”) church organization, not a para- “this-is-all-there-is!” organization.

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Theological Astuteness ≠ Spiritual Maturity (Paul Tripp)

Kirk E. Miller 1 Comment

Paul-TrippIf you know me to any significant degree, you will likely know that I’m quite passionate about retaining the natural link between theology and practical matters. There’s a statement I say occasionally that my wife likes to call my ‘life motto’:

Everyone’s a theologian. Everything is theological. And all theology is practical.

In other words, I can’t stand it when people drive a wedge between theological understanding and practical matters (e.g., you often hear this when people speak of ‘heart’ versus ‘head’ and things like that, as if the Biblical view of man is partitioned like that). In my view, these things are mutually inclusive and interdependent.

Having presented that caveat (or better, complementary comment), I love what Paul Tripp is saying here. It’s challenging and pastorally perceptive.

It is quite easy in ministry to give in to a subtle but significant redefinition of what spiritual maturity is and does. This definition has it roots in how we think about what sin is and what sin does. I think that many, many pastors carry into their pastoral ministries a false definition of maturity that is the result of the academic enculturation that tends to take place in seminary. Permit me to explain.

How the Covenantal Nature of the Church Disallows the Prevalent Individualistic, “Contractual” Ecclesiology (Gregg Allison)

Kirk E. Miller 1 Comment

The Church is the Church of the New Covenant. It is the New Covenant community. And Gregg Allison [1] rightly perceives that apprehension of this reality destroys the popular individualism in much contemporary church culture.

The dilemma: individualism and “contractual ecclesiology.”

AllisonHe cites Michael Horton who calls this unfortunate phenomena “contractual ecclesiology,” by which Horton means the following:

In evangelical contexts, the church is often regarded chiefly as a resource for fellowship. For the uniquely individualized personal relationship with Jesus, the church is not only dispensable but perhaps also a hindrance to personal growth. … [A] voluntaristic emphasis emerges, with human decision as the contractual basis for … ecclesial [church] existence. [2]

Many view the church as a ‘contractual reality,’ i.e., something that comes into existence  when fellow Christians just so happen to commit to one another (what is seen as an otherwise optional activity). In other words, the church is the product of Christians deciding to form a community. Thus the church’s existence is thought to be based on fellow ‘contractual’ agreement.

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Scot McKnight and Robert Paterson on the Saving Significance of Christ’s Death in Acts (an Artificial Conversation)

Kirk E. Miller 1 Comment

king-jesus-gospelI like to maintain the habit of reading multiple books simultaneous. An interesting thing that happens occasionally is when two or more books happen to ‘interact’ over an idea as I read these books in conjunction. Something like this happened as I just finished Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel and am near the front end of Robert A. Paterson’s Salvation Accomplished by the Son.

In The King Jesus Gospel (which, by the way, is a good book, although many conservative evangelicals like myself will quibble over emphases and the way he frames/words things), McKnight makes the point that too often evangelicals have reduced the Gospel to the cross of Christ to the exclusion of “the full Story of Jesus, including his life, his death, his resurrection, his exaltation, the gift of the Holy Spirit, his second coming, and the wrapping up of history so that God would be all in all” (119). However, this was

Not so in the early gospeling [i.e., evangelism], for in those early apostolic sermons [he is referring to those in the book of Acts primarily here], we see the whole life of Jesus. In fact, if they gave an emphasis to one dimension of the life of Jesus, it was the resurrection. The apostolic gospel could not have been signified or painted or sketched with a crucifix. That gospel wanted expression as an empty cross because of the empty tomb (120).

That’s true. McKnight is right.

But, without necessarily pitting McKnight’s argument against Peterson’s (to follow), one might get the impression from McKnight that the apostle’s gospeling in the book of Act’s didn’t provide much comment (if any) on the theological, redemptive significance of Jesus’ death. … And that’s where Robertson’s observations serve as a helpful conversation partner.

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Christ’s Resurrection as the Accomplishment of God’s Faithfulness to His Creation (Vinoth Ramachandra)

Kirk E. Miller

Elsewhere I’ve written about this subject–the significance of Christ’s resurrection as inaugurated eschatology, the bursting of the new creation into the midst of this fallen creation in the person of Jesus Christ who is the resurrected new creation “pioneer” of sorts. But, I’m currently reading Ramachandra’s Faiths in Conflict?; and he summarizes this concept quite well. So, I thought I’d share his thoughts here. If it’s worth saying, it’s worth saying more than once and in more than one way by more than one person, right?

Resurrection, for all first-century Jews, was bound up with the hope of the kingdom of God, of God’s vindication of his people Israel before their pagan enemies and the renewal of his disfigured world.

Resurrection, then, was corporate… public, and physical. … The age to come would be a renewed space-time world in which the righteous dead would be given new bodies in order to inhabit a renewed earth. Thus, the resurrection of the dead – the righteous to eternal life and the wicked to destruction – marked the consummation of the human drama. It spelt the triumph of Israel’s God who was also the universal Creator and Judge of all humanity. Resurrection, marked the dawn of a new world order, the final and supreme manifestation of God’s justice, mercy and power in history.

…

But … the early Christians proclaimed that the resurrection had occurred in Jesus before the day of resurrection for all. … In the resurrection of Jesus, God not only gives a glimpse and pledge of the new creation, but he announces the dawn of that new creation before its promised fulfillment. Here is a foretaste of the future age in the present.

…

Resurrection [specifically the general resurrection inaugurated in Christ’s resurrection, the “first-fruits” of the general resurrection, to use Pauline language] is a fresh creative act of God in which he displays his faithfulness to his creation by raising it to new life in his presence beyond death and decay. Resurrection, then, is the Creator’s final act of faithfulness to his creation…

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