Book Review
Pulpit Masters
The Pastor as a Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision
by Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan
Baker Academic, 2015
(240 pages, $19.99, hardcover)
reviewed by S. M. Hutchens
Addressed in distinctively Reformed tones to the Protestant Evangelical world, The Pastor as Public Theologian, in its historical essay, surveys the phenomenon from the patristic period through Augustine, and then from the Reformation through the present, finding a steep decline in Protestant public theology and theologians from a high point among the Puritans and in the First Great Awakening, down through the emotional manipulations of Charles Finney as carried forward by evangelizing Methodists and Baptists, to its marginalization and practical nullification in our own culture, a culture that has very little interest in the opinions of learned divinity. This is reflected in the universities, where it may at best survive as an adjunct of "religious studies."
Glimmers of hope for a return to better days are seen in the neo-Evangelicalism of Harold John Okenga and Carl F. H. Henry, who called Evangelicals to full intellectual engagement as Christians with the surrounding world—the desideratum of the pastor-theologian. The book concludes with a list of summary theses to be considered by those interested in returning the preaching pastor to his former position as an intellectual in service to church and culture.
Issues & Burdens
In the reading, several issues recurred to this reviewer's mind. The most critical was that, while granting that pastors trained to the level pictured as desirable here is a good thing, how many churches of the tradition to which it is addressed (or any other for that matter) really want them? That is also to ask how many are willing to pay for the years of training for the young married men they prefer to call—to make this heavy addition to their budgets or to weigh their value against that of foreign missions and sanctuary air conditioning. The Public Theologian, with a mind informed and sharpened by years of disciplined study, usually in graduate schools, tends to be a very expensive thing indeed, and when such men are presented to the churches of this tradition that get them, it is not normally through the support of the churches themselves, but by the pastor and his family.
Here also we face the very significant bifurcation to which one of the essays in this book briefly and disdainfully alludes: that between, on one hand, the splanchnic Evangelicalism of post-Finneyite revivalist types, for which high intelligence and deep theological learning have little practical significance, and, on the other, a minority, much of which is uncomfortable even identifying itself as "Evangelical," that is part of a confessional Reformed tradition with a history of expectation, paralleling that of the Lutherans, that pastors be as learned and intelligent as the most accomplished members of their congregations. Evangelicalism has a problem with this, for here there is a long habit of dividing what may be admired, but is optional, from the catalog of personal qualities and inspirational talents that are of decisive
importance in the Evangelical pastorate.
Progressing through the book, this reader could feel the weight of its burden increasing as the range of responsibility for these fonts of pastoral learning and public engagement enlarged. This is a natural occurrence, for the pastor is and must be a head from which a whole body is joined and knit together. Very early in the history of the Church, however, the apostles established a diaconate because those responsible for preaching the Word of God (a head-function) should be relieved from doing its social and support ministries.
Now, though, many of the latter are, as a matter of course, regarded as duties of the pastor, who is thence spread so thin that all reasonable expectation of his being an effective public theologian of the kind encouraged by this book evaporates. A pastor will not be this unless his congregation wants him to be, and this desire can only be realized if he is protected by church leaders from members who think reading, thinking, and writing isn't real work or "what we pay a pastor for." One of the contributors alludes to this situation, but mere allusion in this context is insufficient.
A Perplexity & a Cheer
This reviewer found himself perplexed by the book's historical orientation on pastors as public theologians, for in moving directly from Augustine to the Reformation, it blandly passes over a medieval episcopacy that was so successful in the public dispersion of theology that it had kings cowering in the snow and the Western world vitally concerned with what the Church, with its encompassing social influence, thought about everything. Here public theology, done by the church's pastors—don't popes and bishops count?—was at an apex of power and influence that has not been equaled before or since.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on ministry from the online archives
32.1—January/February 2019
Sex, Women's Ordination & the Rejection of Hierarchy & Equality by James A. Altena
more from the online archives
28.2—March/April 2015
Man, Woman & the Mystery of Christ
An Evangelical Protestant Perspective by Russell D. Moore
33.3—May/June 2020
On Flight & Fight in the Present Tribulation by Douglas Farrow
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
