What are the benefits of academic rigor?

Here is an interesting link found at the ATS website.

http://www.ats.edu/member_schools/advtr.asp

It lists ATS member schools and the various degrees offered.

Lloyd

 

Let me make a parallel here between my undergrad and my seminary (so far.)

I did my undergraduate at the University Missouri Rolla in Electrical Engineering. For those who know engineering, Rolla is a VERY respected school. It would not be on the level of MIT and Berkley, but it is definitely the top of the 2nd tier.

In that curriculum, of the 133.5 hours I had to take, we had 3 hours of "practical" classes, and then about 10 hours of practical labs for theoretical courses. Overall we're talking about 100 hours of theoretical classes.

Despite what the commercials state, employers still prefer to hire Electrical Engineers who have gone through a program like this over against ITT Tech and Devry Grads.

The prevailing thought is that if I understand the theory behind electronics, I can adapt to new technologies. If I don't understand the theory, just how to work with the current electronics, I'll be in trouble in 10 years if I don't take new courses.

Now how does that tie to seminary? So far, I've taken only 1 "practical" course -- a required course for 1st year students. It was largely worthless, because all we did was come in and discuss "how would you handle this situation?" And there was rarely the question of "what is the Biblical justification for doing ____?"

However, the classes I've taken (Church History, Greek, Hebrew, Ethics, Hermeneutics, Philosophy, etc) I've actually grown in my faith and feel better equipped to go out and lead a church.

I've never taken a class on how to do a baptism, or how to lead a funeral, but the people that I've talked to who have, say they never prepare you anyway.

I look at as being to take the theory of examining the Bible and our current setting, and make wise and informed judgments on the situation, rather than just being able to apply methods.

I think academic rigor is very important. When I was a full time software engineer, I didn't use 1% of the equations I learned in school, but after going through a rigorous school, what I faced at work was rather simple (by comparison).

 

Nate

That is a bad comparison.

You did NOT go to school for software engineering.

 

I'm not sure what you're saking. Are you implying that schooling should not be a requisite for a pastor?

I would no more give ear to an unschooled pastor than I would give a driver job to an unlicensed driver or get a medical diagnosis from an unschooled or unlicensed physiclan.

 

They do have a decent program ...

 

Bill,

I would no more give the pulpit to an educated man not called by GOD, then I would give it to any other sinner.

At least a man of God is in GOOD company ... Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Peter, Mark, James, to name one or two.

 

Has enlightenment won?

Why do we have such academic attitudes and are not expressing Godly wisdom?

It is God that gives godly wisdom. We do not gain godly wisdom from dusty books, even if they were touched by Billy Sunday or Paul.

Don't get me wrong, good schooling does not hurt. But 'good schooling' is NOT what God's calling is about.

 

EG,

It is not a bad comparison, Software Engineering is a subset of Electrical Engineering, just as a chaplain might have taken a "pastoral tract" in college.

But EVEN IF software engineering were wholly different than electrical engineering, it would strengthen the point, because it would show I got a job based on my performance in theoretical classes. Rather than taking classes specifically focused on software engineering.

So too someone who is well educated in theology (greek, hebrew, systematic etc) would be equipped to be a missionary, pastor, chaplain, lay leader, professor or any other type of work.

And "good schooling is not what God's calling is about" -- I would agree 100%, but I know that in order to be the best past pastor I can be, it will certainly help if I sit at the feet of men who have struggled through the scriptures before me.

 

None of my students would work as hard as I make them work but most of them tell me later they appreciate what they learned. Last year I was 35 years in the same field. To have students tell me they don't need something is like an idiot telling someone he knows all he needs to know. The well trained person knows what he doesn't know, but the untrained person does not know enough to ask the right questions and where to get the answers.


Sometimes God's work is like handling cadavers but I would like to think it is the living who need help. Too many are trying to raise the dead. Why should God's work of being a pastor require any less then a believer who believes it is God's work for him to teach at a secular university. Which is eternal? To teach at a university usually requires a doctorate and high school a BA. Why should a pastor have any less?

Academic rigor requires a certain discipline for future learning happen.

 

I have never seen God use a lazy man. Preaching and teaching is academic work before it reaches the heart. If the person preaching just uses the SYI (Share Your Ignorance) principle it cannot reach his heart first. If it does not reach his heart how can he share an intelligent message that is understood by all. Fog is hard to see through.

I have never seen a man whom God was using who did not first seek to better understand God through scripture and the people he was trying to reach.

 

No pupilt should be given to a man not called by God, educated or not. However, a man called by God who does not seek to equip himself is being irresponsible with that calling.

 

No pupilt should be given to a man not called by God, educated or not. However, a man called by God who does not seek to equip himself is being irresponsible with that calling. </font>[/QUOTE]I would question a man's calling if he is unwilling to work. I would suggest it is not a passion but a way of getting a pay check.

 

Good point, gb.

 

I like Spurgeon's take on it. In his Lectures to my Students, he tells how people would apply to his college. He'd ask them why and they'd say that they tried being a cobbler, a tailor, a butcher and failed in all of them, so he figured God was calling him to be a pastor.

Spurgeon rejected this man because he didn't think God called someone who could do nothing else.

 

Wasn't he that old guy that said
"if you can do anything other than pastor than don't pastor"

 

Some here seem to think that if you don't go to school you are lazy.

That is getting old.

There are many great men of God that do not have time to be rigorous ... they do have time to take care of God's people.

Just because an instructor can prove himself by overburdening his students does not indicate that God called him to teach. I would dare say that it is contraindicative.

[ October 03, 2005, 10:23 PM: Message edited by: El_Guero ]

 

Rigor for the sake of knowledge = good

Rigor for the sake of rigor = bad

Loading a student down so much that he can't come up for air, IMO, does more harm than good.

 

G,

You are setting up false dichotomies. Dusty books are not at variance with godly wisdom. Spurgeon, that "old man" as you referred to him, had this choice insight:

"In order to be able to expound the Scriptures, and as an aid to your pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the commentators: a glorious army, let me tell you, whose acquaintance will be your delight and profit. Of course, you are not such wiseacres as to think or say that you can expound Scripture without assistance from the works of divines and learned men who have laboured before you in the field of exposition. If you are of that opinion, pray remain so, for you are not worth the trouble of conversion, and like a little coterie who think with you, would resent the attempt as an insult to your infallibility. It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to others. My chat this afternoon is not for these great originals, but for you who are content to learn of holy men, taught of God, and mighty in the Scriptures. It has been the fashion of late years to speak against the use of commentaries. If there were any fear that the expositions of Matthew Henry, Gill, Scott, and others, would be exalted into Christian Targums, we would join the chorus of objectors, but the existence or approach of such a danger we do not suspect. The temptations of our times lie rather in empty pretensions to novelty of sentiment, than in a slavish following of accepted guides. A respectable acquaintance with the opinions of the giants of the past, might have saved many an erratic thinker from wild interpretations and outrageous inferences. Usually, we have found the despisers of commentaries to be men who have no sort of acquaintance with them; in their case, it is the opposite of familiarity which has bred contempt. It is true there are a number of expositions of the whole Bible which are hardly worth shelf room; they aim at too much and fail altogether; the authors have spread a little learning over a vast surface, and have badly attempted for the entire Scriptures what they might have accomplished for one book with tolerable success; but who will deny the preeminent value of such expositions as those of Calvin, Ness, Henry, Trapp, Poole, and Bengel, which are as deep as they are broad? and yet further, who can pretend to biblical learning who has not made himself familiar with the great writers who spent a life in explaining some one sacred book? Caryl on Job will not exhaust the patience of a student who loves every letter of the Word; even Collinges, with his nine hundred and nine pages upon one chapter of the Song, will not be too full for the preacher's use; nor will Manton's long metre edition of the hundred and nineteenth Psalm (Ps 119:1-176) be too profuse. No stranger could imagine the vast amount of real learning to be found in old commentaries like the following:--Durham on Solomon's Song, Wilcocks on Psalms and Proverbs, Jermin on Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, Greenhill on Ezekiel, Burroughs on Hosea, Ainsworth on the Pentateuch, King on Jonah, Hutcheson on John, Peter Martyr on Romans, &c., and in Willett, Sibbes, Bayne, Elton, Byfield, Daille, Adams, Taylor, Barlow, Goodwin, and others on the various epistles. Without attempting to give in detail the names of all, I intend in a familiar talk to mention the more notable, who wrote upon the whole Bible, or on either Testament, and I especially direct your attention to the titles, which in Puritan writers generally give in brief the run of the work."

Bill

 

When God calls a man to pastor His people, and that man does not have the opportunity to study as you have, then how can we tell that man he has not served his Master properly?

 

G,

1. Everyone has an opportunity to read. Anyone who says otherwise should not be in the ministry.

2. Sometimes we, by God's grace, make our opportunities. Opportunities for study, i.e. distance education, provide an embarrassment of riches.

I left an 8-year pastorate to take miniscul support in a bivocational pastorate to support my wife and 3 teenage daughters, whom she homeschooled, so I could go to SBTS. We sacrificed literally thousands of dollars. I graduated with the preparation I believed I needed debt free but with no savings. Financially, it was like starting over at age 48.

Perhaps there are a few who could not have done that, but most could have if they were willing to sacrifice sleep and money. I believed that the ministry called for such, and I was unable to resist the call to go.

When God calls a man to pastor His people, I believe that He provides the opportunity for learning. Perhaps those whose excuses outweigh their commitment are not really called.

Good night. This old man has got to go to bed! I have a hard day of studying planned for tomorrow.

Bill