Thank God our clergy don’t practice what they’re taught!
David L Greentree, February 2010
Yes, I’ve come to the conclusion that in the wonderful providence of God the “theology” most clergy learn in college is kept divorced in their brains from what they actually practice.
Jesus of course did not teach “theology” – he told stories. The Bible does I admit go in for some – but not much, mostly it is again teaching principles by story-telling, prophecies and poetry. I don’t think you’ll find a single acronym – like the Calvinist “TULIP” in the Bible. But in college ministry students have their heads filled with what the courses describe as “theology” but which is often just some species of speculative philosophy. It has been lamented by evangelists for centuries that strong believers enter seminary only to have their faith torn to shreds.
But I suspect now that the Stories of Jesus and the rest of the Bible are such an effective way to teach that the “theology” of the ministry training college gets pushed into the “academic part of the minister’s brain while the day-to-day bit is still ruled by the Bible.
Let me give some examples.
Some years ago at a clergy conference in Melbourne I got into debate with some of the “liberal” clergy. At one point I quoted a bit from St. John’s Gospel: “Jesus said …” . They looked at me as though I was mentally retarded and one burst out “Those are not the words of jesus! Don’t you know John’s Gospel is the product of an early Christian community? So those are just the words that the early Church put into the mouth of Jesus!”
But I noticed a funny thing. When you looked at the lives of these clergy who did not believe that Jesus said the words the Bible attributes to him they still lived out the teachings of Jesus! Sadly looking at the lives of some – perhaps more than “some” – of the clergy whose college training had been almost fundamentalist: they said they believed every word was from God, but they did not live out that belief!
Recently my son David has been turning his philosophy training to an examination of Calvinism. He has been analysing what their arguments actually boil down to and the logical consequences if their arguments were true. Theologians rarely do this – they are too busy fighting to uphold “their” side. We have had lots of profound dinner (and breakfast!) time family discussions.
Now I attended Moore Theological College , which was Calvinist. I had to read Calvin’s “Institutes”. I don’t think I ever even understood what it was all about until young David started his examination of Calvinist doctrine. I certainly never let these teachings impinge on my ministry! (Of course I did get thrown out of Moore College at the end of third year – perhaps it showed that I was not a true believer in their brand of theology!)
It is thirty years since I left Sydney Diocese, and perhaps I am being overly kind, but it seems to me that many ministers there do not practice the Calvinism they profess. Again I put this down both to the wonderful providence of God – that he can use "us miserable sinners" despite ourselves and to the power of Jesus story-telling – ministers may profess Calvin’s determinism, but actually live out Jesus’ teachings to the opposite effect!
Praise God for his kindness in both instances. But if Calvinism (or liberalism!) is the opposite of what Jesus and the rest of the Bible teaches, we probably should try to clean up our "theological" beliefs to bring them into line with The teachings of Jesus we are actually following.
David’s analysis of Calvinism can be found on his blog:
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