mgpcpastor's blog

Or, Carl Trueman, A Cage Of Pigeons And A Cat (Or Two)
Carl Trueman is a provocative writer and academic.
9Marks published an essay by Trueman entitled ‘The Real Scandal Of The Evangelical Mind’.
The essay focusses on people characterised as basically claiming an identity as evangelical and biblical scholars while at the same time desiring acceptance in wider academic circles.
Trueman: “We live in strange times. Hardly a year goes by without some conference on the future of the evangelical church somewhere having at least one speaker, or sometimes even a slate of speakers, who arguably represent precisely the kind of theology that has emptied pews, castrated preaching, and disemboweled commitment to the gospel.”
The culture is one in which: “Say nice things about Jesus, have a warm feeling in your heart when somebody lights a candle, and be kind to your grandmother and—hey presto!—you belong; you too can be an evangelical. Thus we have deniers of penal substitution, of any meaningful notion of biblical authority, of the uniqueness of Christ for salvation, of justification by grace through faith, of the particularity of salvation. No matter: just stress that Jesus was a jolly good bloke, mouth a few orthodox sounding phrases, speak with a bit of engaging passion, and you too can get a membership pass and a speaking gig.”
Oddly, (or not) just as there is nothing new under the sun, ideas that were poisonous a
Barth seems to be a source of fascination, despite his offerings being based on a dead methodology and which produced a lifeless sort of universalism that isn’t.
Various atonement theories are espoused with scarcely an open acknowledgment to their last outings when popularised by the liberal theologians of the last century.
Emergent models are collapsing in on their own pretentious lack of clarity.
And those in the theological industry keep returning to this material with the fascination of a child on a beach prodding a dead jelly fish with a stick.
A denomination like the one to which I belong, the Presbyterian Church of Australia, sustains three theological colleges. These are government accredited degree issuing bodies.
My suspicion is that our adherence to such a model as the means by which we prepare and train men for pastoral ministry is less and less motivated by a conviction that this is the best way to prepare men for pastoral ministry. I believe our denomination (those who lead it and especially those within the theological education arm of it) just can’t bear the thought of a ministry that does not share the same academic credentials and experience as that of other churches.
After the disruption of 1977 a lot of energy was put into maintaining theological colleges, so that the Presbyterian Church of Australia could continue with an educated ministry. This was done with scant recognition of the fact that the theological colleges were the places where theological decline was initiated, fostered and defended. They produced the Uniting Church. Their present fruit is available for all to see.
Academic credibility is no guarantee of orthodoxy. Committment to orthodoxy is the best guarantee of orthodoxy.
Trueman, of course, is an academic. He is not suggesting that academic pursuit within evangelical scholarship be abandoned.
Rather, he contends: “This is not to say that high-powered scholarship should be off-limits, nor that the immediate needs of the man or woman in the pew should provide the criteria by which relevance is judged; but it is to say that all theological scholarship should be done with the ultimate goal of building up the saints, confounding the opponents of the gospel, and encouraging the brethren. The highest achievement any evangelical theological scholar can attain is not membership of some elite guild but the knowledge that he or she has done work that strengthened the church and extended the kingdom of God through the local church.”

Evangelical academics producing work that sustains and nourishes the kingdom.
Sounds good, doesn’t it?