Brothers, we are not Intellectuals
The easiest part of being a pastor is the book work. Hours in the study, buried in pages, scouring resources for the missing pieces that will connect Psalm 34:6 to Matthew 5:3. A good pastor will understand the times. He will address, not only the idols of the day, but a Biblical way of navigating the spirit of the age. He most definitely has to be a reader. He, obviously, has to be a speaker. But there is a very real sense in which the clergyman, despite the bookwork, ought not think of himself as an intellectual.
Listen to Thomas Sowell’s definition from Intellectuals and Race:
By ‘intellectuals’ is meant here people in a particular occupation — namely, people whose work begins and ends with ideas. It is an occupational designation, rather than an honorific title, and implies nothing about the mental level of those in that occupation. Chemists or chess grandmasters may be of equal or greater mental accomplishment, but they are not intellectuals because their work ends with an outcome subject to empirical verification by known standards, while the outcomes of the work of intellectuals are subject essentially to peer consensus.
While it may be a debated issue, whether or not shepherds in the church produce an outcome subject to empirical verification by known standards, I would argue that we do. No doubt, many are content to preach and to write for their peers and their approval ratings issue forth from this target audience; but however confused some members of the body may be, the standard of Holy Scripture is perspicuous when it comes to the standard of outcome in relation to their work:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. - 2 Timothy 3:16-17
What does this thorough equipping look like? How can work be assessed in light of its goodness or the lack thereof? The list is given back in 1st Timothy 3.
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ - Ephesians 4:11-16
If there was no objective standard by which to measure the outcome of ministry, there would be no ability to pastor. Local bodies would have no grounds for practicing church discipline. In fact, it very well may be the case that the rampant number of congregations within which no church discipline is practiced are the same assemblies which believe the work of ministry to be an abstraction, belonging somewhere in Schaeffer’s upper story with the Greek myths, Santa Claus, and every other ghost that has ever haunted the faith of men.
Two things come to mind, in relation to the intellectualism that the preacher ought to eschew: When the work of the Church is merely thought of conceptually, with no outcomes that can be verified by known standards, it falls prey to the Gnostic error; a mistake that is made recurrently throughout Church history. This error is finding increased footing in our digital environment in which believers are yielding ground to the idea that the virtual is a sufficient place-holder for the real. Secondly, in a related manner, when the preacher conflates the whole work of shepherding into the category of study, he is in danger of abstracting, yet again, the incarnational into something ethereal. The Gospel tells the story of a Spirit God who moved toward and into the material. This forever changed the material. Lloyd-Jones used to distinguish between sermons and essays in this way. A sermon, he would argue, is to your people for their sanctification. An essay is to an anonymous audience. If preachers slip between the genres and, unbeknownst to them, become essayists in the pulpit, they are in danger of succumbing to this abstraction.
And thou shalt anoint the tabernacle of the congregation therewith, and the ark of the testimony, And the table and all his vessels, and the candlestick and his vessels, and the altar of incense, And the altar of burnt offering with all his vessels, and the laver and his foot. And thou shalt sanctify them, that they may be most holy: whatsoever toucheth them shall be holy. - Exodus 30:26-29
Again, in 1st Timothy 4:5 we see that even unclean food is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. This means that the unclean material thing becomes objectively clean through a properly identified movement of the spiritual towards and into the physical. This theme goes on and on throughout Scripture. The point is that the spiritual comes in contact with the physical and a verifiable and objective change takes place. According to the Scriptural standard, there is a correct and an incorrect way to use the human body. There is a correct and incorrect way to approach God. There is a job description given to the state that is either followed reverently or ignored. The same goes for the Church. There is a verifiable standard toward which marriages are to accord. If they do not, consequences follow as stated by the Scriptural standard. We could go on. The work of the Church is not idea work. It is embodiment work. Ideas are only seeds, no different than a chess move, just prior to its being executed.
There is a strong anti-intellectual sentiment that exists in many churches. Some people without education assume that education is the enemy. It is not. Pride that always accompanies knowledge is the enemy. A resentment, however, can seep in when the pastor is seen, whether he is guilty of this or not, as a kind of college-boy, fresh out of the seminary box and a mile and a half above his brightest parishioner. For these people, the enemy is not the pride that accompanies knowledge; it is knowledge. They are wrong. Intellect is part of the Imago Dei and it is a glorious thing. We can imagine the Apostle Paul encouraging the young seminarian, ‘Let no one depsise you because of your education.’
There is a breed of men, however, who will turn red in the face and scream across the table at one another over whether the presbytery or the congregation has the right to hold the pastor’s membership. There are young men who win arguments by introducing a little Greek into the conversation. There are theologians who love to dwell in esoterica, living, moving, and having their being amongst the Agnoetae and the Muggletonians. It is a given that this kind of intellectualism should be rejected. What needs clarification is that good men spending hours in their study in order to execute a faithful exegesis on the forthcoming Lord’s Day may also be guilty of an intellectualism worthy of repudiation. They are not preaching their take on any given verse. They are feeding the flock in the expectation that their weight and vitality increase in time for slaughter.
In Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy, he casts a description of the woman, Philosophy, having pi and theta woven into the hem of her garment. This is to show the necessary connection between practical and theoretical philosophy, the two forming a ladder or better yet a double helix of ascent. Over a thousand years later, Petrus van Mastricht would attempt a very similar marriage of the practical and the theoretical with his monumental work, Theoretical-Practical Theology. The concern of both men was that truth not be thought of as a bird that never alights. Truth must touch the ground or we could not know it as truth. Preachers of the Word must be shepherds of souls, penned in bodies, governed by the Spirit’s wielding of the Holy Scriptures. We are not idea men. We are men who eat and digest ideas, leaving imprints of their applications to be judged not only by Christ on that final day, but even now by those who know the truth.
