The Pastor-as-Scholar and Public-Theologian with Owen Strachan (Part 2)
This is the second part of my interview with Dr. Owen Strachan, which follows Part One that posted on Monday. You may listen to the audio below, or you may read the transcript.
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Jackson Watts (“JW”): I think a lot of pastors who listen to this or read the transcript will say, “Yeah, I can buy that. And I get that.” And I think they would say that they see the mandate to study, to be a student, to interpret the Word. I wonder too, though, if there is an error that guys might run into. Just to call attention a specific portion of the book, Piper says, “Right thinking exists to serve right feelings for God.” And I read that and I think a lot of people in principle would agree with that.
But isn’t it easy (and maybe from your own ministry experience you can speak to this) to bypass the right feeling part and say, “I’ve got a sermon to do, so my right thinking in this moment is principally to accomplish a task, that is, to present a sermon, a lesson, and so forth.” So do you think it’s easy to bypass the affections and the joy that Piper speaks about?
Owen Strachan (“OS”): Great point. Yes, definitely true. And I think we cannot think of this matter without talking about the all-too anti-intellectual tone and spirit that pervades evangelicalism. I think our movement is afflicted with spiritual pragmatism. So we know that the most important work in the world is spiritual work. And that’s wonderful and so the tasks that I was mentioning ago that you referenced are super-important.
But here’s the deal: they are informed by what you know. So what you have to preach, what you have to counsel with, what you have to evangelize with, disciple with, etc., what you have to take with you in the hospital as someone dies before your eyes is theological. If you are going into that hospital room, if you are comforting a set of parents who have just lost a child, what you are going to say to be, I think anyway, if you’re a Christian pastor (whether or not you know you’re a theologian of Word), it’s going to be doctrinal. It’s going to be truth. You are going to say things like, “All who are in Christ will live forever.” You’re going to say, “God works all things to our good and His glory.” Listen, if you’re familiar with you these things that doesn’t make them a-theological.
Let’s simplify even further. If you’re a missionary, or you’re the type of person who doesn’t even like theology, and theology wasn’t what you studied in college and seminary and you didn’t want to be around people who liked it, if you are going around the world telling people, “Jesus is Lord,” you are the most theological person possible. Your whole life is conditioned around a theistic truth, the reality of which and depths of which you could never fully plumb. What does it mean to say, “Jesus is Lord”? We could talk about that all day and never stop.
So, there’re two things to say in conclusion to this question. Number one, whether or not you’re aware that your labor as a pastor is theological, it is. It’s theological; it’s theistic. The second is that we should actively push against both inside and outside of evangelicalism a culture that is anti-intellectual and that is pragmatic. We should see thinking as an end unto itself [to think is a self-justifying good]. It is not without any grounding in Scripture that some aspects of the Christian tradition have seen God as essentially mind. Now I don’t think God is all mind. But there’s definitely a strong aspect of that in the divine being. God is intelligence itself. We do not reap the fruits of that kind of grounding and we need to do a great deal more as Christians to prize thinking—not thinking for its own end, but thinking unto God.
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JW: So I’m assuming the book you and Kevin Vanhoozer have co-authored [is] coming out next year?
OS: Yes, that’s right.
JW: I’m assuming these are the kinds of themes that pervade that book?
OS: That’s exactly right. I do two chapters, lengthy chapters (almost 10 thousand words), and then he does them as well. My two chapters are on sort of a biblical theology of the pastor as a public theologian, and then a historical theology of the pastor as public-theologian. And then he has a couple of chapters where he is actually working that out in terms of the experience and practice of a pastor.
I can honestly say this is an exhilarating book. Not because of me (let’s make that very clear), but because of Kevin Vanhoozer and because of the material. It’s just really exciting material that frankly we, just as a movement I don’t think, have thought about. There is a tradition of working as a pastor-theologian in the Christian church (especially post-Reformation), but that’s not something that people have thought a lot about or written on. So Vanhoozer and I try to ground this model in the Word and then we try to locate it in church history. Then he tries to ground in terms of practice, and it’s fun stuff. I mean who’s a better writer, by the way, than Vanhoozer, in our circles?
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JW: Oh yeah! Well, as our time is getting away from us, I do want to close by asking you about another project, and you can let us know when it’s coming out so we can look for it. A book on Chuck Colson? Is that right? So [tell us] a bit on that so we can know what to anticipate.
OS: I appreciate that. It’s called The Colson Way. It comes out with summer 2015 Thomas Nelson as you said. It is an engagement with Chuck Colson’s life and story, so it’s kind of a lay biography. But it really is two things: (1) I tell the story of Colson’s life and his work and then (2) I apply it for us. I try to call out the reader to a Colson-esque life. Now, the book is not to say that everybody is going to have the same level of influence in the public square, [and] the same ability to turn the levels of power as Colson did. We just won’t. But we can be brave and courageous and ethically equipped, as Colson was. And we can speak up.
I think there’s a tendency in our circles to think this: “Well, Chuck Colson and William Wilberforce and those guys, they really did all the ethical work, they did the heavy-lifting. They were the activists par excellence, and I’m so thankful for them, and I look up at them and gaze at them, and am inspired to think warm thoughts about ethics in my heart,” when in reality I think Colson and Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer and others are supposed to fire us up. You know a lot of politics, according to Tip O’Neil is local. He’s the famous Speaker of the House as you know from Massachusetts, and he said all politics is local. Well, all activism is local too, to some degree. So I think we need to recover that sense. In other words, I think a lot of Christians are discouraged because they think, “Well I’m not going to argue before the Supreme Court justices on marriage, so what role do I really have? I mean I’ll pray for it, but what can I really do?” And praying for it, by the way, is the most significant thing we can do. God is real, and He hears our prayers.
But the small and quiet acts we do also matter. And that’s what Colson actually teaches us. Colson did have his spotlight moments right? He did give the 1993 Templeton Address, which the secular press covered in great deal. But most of the time, even this heroic figure like Colson, was going to prisons and one-by-one meeting inmates (many of whom would never see the light of day again), and shaking their hands and then preaching a simple Gospel message that you and I and all believers love.
That’s the kind of work, when you start to put it like that, that’s the kind of work that everyone can do. You don’t need degrees. You don’t need training in the White House. You don’t need a J.D. to do that. You simply need to be a Christian. You need to hear afresh Christ’s call to be salt and light. You need to pray, and then you need to get going. You need to risk some of your solitude and your comfort and your ease, and you need to be a salt-and-light Christian, loving your neighbor—means more frankly than baking cookies for them when they move in and giving them hugs. It means loving them in a public square sense as well. So I try to tease that out in the book.
There’s so much more to say about things like being salt and light and loving your neighbor than we often think. We often reduce those teachings of Christ to very simple, applications (and many of those are good and right), but there’s also a world of what we call “public theology” built into those core principles, so there’s much more to think about there.
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JW: Well said. And I look forward in the future to discussing this, maybe when this book or the other one with Vanhoozer comes out maybe we can do something with that and plug that and let people know about that as they come available. So thanks a lot for your time today.
OS: Thanks a lot Jackson.
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