Inadequacy of Ministerial Formation

In John Calvin as Teacher, Pastor, and Theologian: The Shape of His Writings and Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), Randall C. Zachman writes:

John Calvin lived during a time when many Christians, both Roman and evangelical, recognized that the ministry of the church was in crisis. It is difficult for us to imagine what the training of ministers must have been like before seminaries were created precisely to address the lack of adequate ministerial formation during this period. John Calvin was well aware of the dire consequences of this lack of ministerial formation. According to Calvin, neither bishops nor priests were skilled in the interpretation of Scripture or particularly adept at teaching the summary of the doctrine that leads to genuine piety…Due to the neglect of Scripture and its teaching by the leaders of the church, Calvin thought that the ordinary people in the church were liable to believe anything that their pastors told them, leading to the superstitious worship of God. (p. 11)

In Calvin’s time, the church was in crisis. In our time, the church is still in crisis. Whenever and wherever there is a lack of ministerial formation, there will be a congregational de-formation. The spiritual formation of pastors shapes the congregation’s health unimaginably. Calvin wrote the Institutes and his biblical commentaries to train future pastors so that they were theologically sound and biblically competent to take care of local congregations. “Once pastors are equipped with such a summary of doctrine [through the Institutes], Calvin with his biblical commentaries offers them further assistance in their reading of Scripture.” (pp. 63-64)

As a teacher or doctor of the church, Calvin saw the consequence of pastoral deformation, which led to congregational deconstruction inevitably. That’s why he devoted all his efforts to restore the proper interpretation of Scripture and Christian dogmas in the life of the church.

Conversation Partners

There are many people showing up in my life, but only some have influence on me like a stamp on the envelope. I have read many books over the years. I realize that there are only a few individuals I have constantly conversed with, like Eugene Peterson, Walter Brueggemann, N. T. Wright, John Calvin, etc…These people have judged me, corrected me, encouraged me, and affirmed me through the years. Most important of all, they have kept bringing me back to God in conversion, in prayer, in silence, in adoration, in thanksgiving, and in praise. How does the Holy Spirit guide us into all the truth? I believe one of the ways is to have conversation partners across the ages.

Peterson guided me through my pastoral ministry. He still does. Whenever I encountered problems or I felt downcast in ministry, I turned to his writings. He wrote four books for pastors: The Five Smooth Stones; Under the Unpredictable Plant; Working the Angles; and The Contemplative Pastor. In different periods of time, I read these four books at least 3-4 times. I gained wisdom from them. I got encouraged by his pastoral struggle, wisdom, and theology in his own ministry. I believe he is the first one to show me how to draw a connection between the Bible and the congregation. No one does it better than him. 

Brueggemann is a radical biblical interpreter. He is not conservative in a lot of ways. The way he talks about the God in the Old Testament is filled with insights and passion. After reading his works, you don’t find the text as a static document. Rather, the word of God is dynamic, and the dynamic of God is fully revealed in his interaction with Israel. God’s involvement with human affairs is beyond human imagination. I think he got me interested in reading the Old Testament with a sense of anticipation as well as imagination.

I heard N. T. Wright delivering a lecture on Pauline theology at Gordon College while I was studying at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. He only held a Greek Bible with his right hand while he was lecturing. He kept quoting the Old Testament, especially Isaiah, without notes. He just quoted them from his memory. Back in my mind I was thinking, “Paul is speaking right in front of me. If Paul were still alive, this person standing in front of me would be him.” He is bold with beard. I guess this is what Paul looked like back then.

John Calvin was 500 years old in 2009. I think his pastoral endeavor was insane. He accomplished more than he could have accomplished. I think what drew me to him in the first place is that I found out he wrote the Institutes in order to feed God’s people with God’s word and theology in a systematic way. He first wrote it in 1536 and revised it five times over the years until 1559. He expanded the Institutes because of his pastoral concern for the congregation. There is no room for theological speculation in Calvin’s theology.  The goal of his theology is to bring glory to God by building up the church. Shawn D. Wright, Associate Professor of Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes about John Calvin’s pastoral theology in the Institutes:

Indeed, it may be its pastoral orientation that makes the Institutes so relevant for twenty-first century readers. I think that it is this pastoral focus, which gives the Institutes its “feet,” so to speak, and allows modern readers to connect so familiarly with Calvin, even though he inhabited a different world—several religious, political, social, and intellectual revolutions ago. In fact, I believe that Calvin’s “pastoral vision,” that is, his view of the priority of God and a relationship that all human beings must have with him in either friendship or judgment, permeates the Institutes and makes it intensely relevant for us.[1]

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[1] Shawn D. Wright, “John Calvin a Pastor,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 13, no. 4 (2009): 5.

Discipleship Letters 99-100

Discipleship Letter 99                                                August 15^th, 2010

In defense of himself before the young emperor, Charles V, in the early evening of April 18, 1521, Martin Luther said, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason…I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience” [Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity. 2^nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), p. 154.]. Luther’s conscience was captive to the Word of God.

Today not too many people embrace Scripture in such a high regard. All of us say that Scripture is God’s Word—divine revelation. But we don’t have such a high view of Scripture, and let the Scripture become our measuring rod. In this technological age, we know almost about everything. However, we almost know nothing about Scripture.

“You search the Scriptures because you believe they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!” (Jn. 5:39). We rarely search Scripture; we merely read it, skim through it, and take a look at it. We should search Scripture, and let Scripture searches our conscience. Our conscience says yes to one thing; God’s word says no to our conscience. We then learn to say no to that thing. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts” (Ps. 139:23). It has something to do with searching and knowing Scripture.

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Discipleship Letter 100                                              August 22^nd, 2010

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin said, “The knowledge of God, as I understand it, is that by which we not only conceive that there is a God but also grasp what befits us and is proper to his glory…Indeed, we shall not say that, properly speaking, God is known where there is no religion or piety” (I. ii.1).

There is no knowledge of God if there is no piety of people. God can’t be known if He is not approached by people with reverence, honor, devotion, and delight. In Christian theology, the knowledge of God is not mere rational knowledge, but relational knowledge. He is someone whom we can know and relate to. He can be known because He reveals Himself to us through Christ; we can relate to Him due to the mediation and indwelling of the Spirit. He is the God who can freely demand on His people; we, as His people, have freedom to respond to His calls. But any response requires some sense of devotion and delight.

“For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond him—they will never yield him willing service” (I.ii.2).

In our age, we need Christians who have rational knowledge (e.g. biblical, theological, and cultural knowledge) as well as relational knowledge (e.g. personal piety, high moral standard, and willing service).

Calvin's Institutes

The first edition of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion had been published in 1536. The first edition had only six chapters. Over the years, Calvin kept revising the Institutes as time went by. In 1559, five years before Calvin died, the final form of the Institutes had been published. It had eighty chapters. In twenty-three years, on the one hand, Calvin worked as a pastor to participate in the life of a congregation. On the other hand, Calvin educated the congregation to think doctrinally and act ethically as a theologian. The fact that the Institutes had been expanded from six chapters to eighty chapters did not happen out of an ivory tower or out of Calvin’s theological speculation. Rather, it happened out of the exercise of his pastoral office.

Ford Lewis Battles said,

“Calvin claimed a double pastoral intent for the Institutes: (1) to introduce neophytes to the study of the Scriptures; (2) to justify the French evangelicals before a hostile government and…to hearten these evangelicals in their effort to lead a Christian life under harsh circumstances.”[1]

Calvin developed his theology while he was developing the congregation as a pastor. Calvin’s theological development, in other words, was driven by his pastoral concern. One of the reasons why he developed the doctrine of predestination later in the Institutes was to assure the salvation of believers under harsh circumstances. Believers doubted the love of God and their own salvation. Calvin assured them with God’s sovereign election. It was out of Calvin’s pastoral intent that the controversy of the doctrine of predestination was given birth.

Bruce Gordon said,

“The 1559 Institutes was a masterpiece of organization and clarity, despite Calvin’s serious illness. His goal in this work is to present a comprehensive account of doctrine in a clear, brief and persuasive manner. This doctrine, he maintains, is what the true Church has always taught. His purpose is to explain the teachings of the Church in the right order so that the faithful might understand. This does not replace scripture, but is intended to act as a guide to key topics to be founded in the Bible…The purpose is to bring people to God. And the constant revising of the Institutes reflects Calvin’s continuing struggle to find a better way of educating and edifying.”[2]

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[1] Ford Lewis Battles, Interpreting John Calvin. Edited by Robert Benedetto, with Introductory Essays by I. John Hesselink and Donald K. McKim (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), p. 301.

[2] Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 302-303.

Packer on Calvin

Packer on Calvin[1]

Dear John,

This is a fan letter, naked and unashamed, one that I have long wanted to write, even though for obvious reasons I cannot mail it to you. But public acknowledgement of one’s debts is good for the soul, and when one is a teacher of theology it is good for the church, too. I don’t know why, but Christians I meet seem to think that theologians who teach spring fully formed from the womb and work in isolation from one another—hence the “I am of Calvin”/ “I am of Finney”/ “I am of Pannenberg,” which Paul would surely have nailed as pure Corinthianism. I hope that by declaring my debt I can reduce the possibility of the world or church ever being bothered by “I am of Packer” people.

I wish people grasped that theologians, like other Christians, learn with the saints in the multigenerational fellowship that is the church, where mentors, pastors, and peers help us to see things we hadn’t seen before. Augustine had Ambrose, and you had Augustine, Luther, and Bucer, and I had Owen, Warfield, and you. We get to where we are by standing on others’ shoulders and benefiting from their brainwork. You were clear on that—much clearer than some of the hero-worshipers who have written books about you! No true theologian works as a one-man band.

One thing you helped me see is where theologians really fit in. The church lives through the potency of preaching—the mystery of God’s Spirit applying God’s Word to God’s people through God’s spokesman. So the primary function of theologians is to ensure, so far as human beings can, that the Bible is explained right and applied properly. I think I only give the film version of your thought when I tell people that theologians are the church’s plumbers, water engineers, and sewage-disposal experts—back-room boys whose crucial though unspectacular job is to secure for the pulpits a flow of pure and unpolluted Bible truth. You, of course, had a larger role; you were a preaching pastor, and you educated other preaching pastors in the academy. How you managed to get through it all, especially in those grisly last years when you were dying by inches, I shall never know. But it is for your clear grasp of the theologian’s task that I admire you now.

Another thing I learned from you was the true nature and ideal shape of what we nowadays call systematic theology. Your Institutes is a marvelous tapestry of evangelical wisdom that modeled for me the apostolic way of tying together the many strands of revealed truth about God’s grace to a sinful world. You put the sovereignty of God, the mediation of Christ, and the ministration of the Spirit right at the center; you set up the life of faith and praise as the goal; and you did not write a speculative sentence from start to finish of your 700, 000 words! I would like you to know that I have had the Institutes by me for 40 years, that I keep finding fresh wisdom in its pages to a degree that is positively uncanny, and that I am very grateful.

The way you dealt with predestination, in particular, strikes me as an all-time brilliancy. Like Paul in Romans, you separated it from the doctrine of providence and postponed it till you had spelled out the gospel, with its bona fide, whosoever-will promises; then you brought in the truth of election and reprobation, just as in Romans 8 and 9, not to frighten anyone, but to give believers reassurance, hope, and strength. It’s a beautifully biblical and powerfully pastoral treatment.

The irony is, as I expect you know, that in the… [nineteenth] century the idea spread that all serious theologians arrange everything round a single focal thought, and yours was predestination, so they lost sight of your biblical breadth and balance and pictured you as a speculative monomaniac who pulled Scripture out of shape to make it fit a scheme of your own devising. That’s still your public image, and Biblicists like you are still called Calvinists in a way that implies they have lost their biblical footing. Such is life! I expect you’re glad to be out of it.

With deepest respect and gratitude,

J. I. Packer

[1] Parker’s letter to Calvin is taken from J. I. Packer, “Calvin, the Institutes, and Me”, in Indelible Ink: Twenty-Two Prominent Christian leaders discuss the Books that Shape their Faith. Edited by Scott Larsen (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2003), pp. 86-89. This letter was first published in Christianity Today, Vol. 35, no. 1, (January 14, 1991): 11, under the title “Fan Mail to Calvin.” This is a revised version of the original letter.

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