Carl Trueman writes in The Wages of Spin (see blog for Saturday 11 June: Singing the sorrow) about the divorce that has occurred between the church and the academy (theology). It's basically about how the church needs to be more theologically informed and the academy more church oriented.
I think Trueman is right that there is a breach. It is so common for the pew punter to separate knowledge and experience ('Professors at universities and seminaries may have lots of fancy words, but I just have simple faith in Jesus'), while it is just as common for academic theologians to relegate gospel experience and prioritise competence and respectability.
Trueman's book is a great read. The first part is called 'Evangelical Essays' with chapters including:
- Reckoning with the Past in an Anti-Historical Age
- The Undoing of the Reformation?
- The Princeton Trajectory on Scripture
- Warfield on the Glory of Christ.
Part Two is called 'Short, Sharp Shocks' with chapters including:
- The Importance of Evangelical Beliefs
- What can miserable Christians sing?
- The Marcions Have Landed!
- Boring Ourselves to Life
- Why you shouldn't buy the big issue
- Evangelicalism through the looking Glass
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3 comments:
Can you translate "pew punter" into American English please? I think it'll make more sense for me then.
Big Chris
Because I said so
Sorry - 'pew punter' = the person in the pew!
"Academy more church - church more theological"
Indeed!! The Bible doesn't envisage separate seminaries - and Paul was appointing elders and pastors in churches that he had planted within a couple of years of their conversion, without any apparent seminaries. It would be great to see churches that were strong enough to give people the theological depth to stand on their own two feet without them having to go and inhabit ivory towers first. I'll put the book on my wish list.
Cornhill and others are at least moving in this direction.
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