Bible and Beeswax

Thoughts and products about theology and culture.

Category: theology

  • Why Would an Artist Become a Pastor?

    I asked myself this question perpetually throughout College (and Seminary): why would an artist become a pastor?  My answer, in short, is because of Jesus.

    My father is a pastor in the PCA (a conservative Presbyterian denomination), but as a child I never envisioned myself as a pastor.  In fact, I wouldn’t have considered myself an excessively, or even mildly, pious child.  By the time I was in High School I did tell others that I was a Christian, but I didn’t provide a good defense of the gospel, and I didn’t really pursue understanding it as objective truth.  But, when I went to College to pursue Fine Art, everything changed.  As I started learning about philosophy, literature, and art, I felt a great desire to understand what is true.  Because of this, I read the Bible, the Qur’an, the Upanishads, and the works of various atheists and social theorists.  I became overwhelmingly convinced of the truth of the Bible.  In a paraphrase of one of Flannery O’Connor’s characters–if Jesus is who He says He is, then there’s nothing else that you can do but give your life for Him.  I decided that I’d do whatever I was capable of doing to serve Him, and promote the well-being of His Church.  It took a few years, but I sensed a call to the ministry as a pastor, and followed up on this by going to Seminary.

    What exactly is the “call to ministry”?  Some people talk about it like a voice cries out from the heavens, “Go, be a pastor,” but I never experienced anything like that.  While there are debates about the exact nature of “the call”, I will say that my call to ministry included an overwhelming conviction to preach.  “If I do not preach Christ,” I thought, “I will die.”  It was like a fire was pent-up in my bones, and unless I proclaimed the works of Jesus I would be entirely burned.  This in itself, however, is not a proper way of discerning whether or not one is called to ministry.  Someone can have this desire but be entirely unsuitable for the role of pastor.  Rather, this desire must be accompanied by the both the necessary gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as godly character.  If one is incapable of understanding the Bible, or of living a godly life, then they shouldn’t go into the ministry.  But it takes time to figure out if you fit these requirements, and so for about two years I weighed and discussed whether or not I was properly called to the ministry.  I eventually accepted that I was, in fact, called to preach and pastor, and so after graduating from Belhaven, I started school at Reformed Theological Seminary.

    Seminary was a difficult time.  Looking back, I think there were three main things that made Seminary a difficult time.  First, the transition from reading styles.  Second, the transition from general lifestyle (roommates to wife/family).  Third, the transition from fine art as a vocation to pastoral ministry as a vocation.  While my Undergraduate degree was academic, Seminary was a whole other level of academia.  My primary issue was actually with the amount of reading.  As a creative writing minor, I had a love of words, the odd turn of phrase, the peculiar in writing.  But in Seminary I was told: the goal of reading is general conceptual understanding, not complete knowledge of the book you read.  This absolutely infuriated me, not because I believed it was wrong, but because I simply wasn’t used to the idea.  I think I finally got the hang of this style of reading after about a year.

    Second, I had a hard time managing the transition from living with a bunch of roommates to being married to my wife.  Marriage has been both wonderful and challenging.  We were married in the middle of my first semester in Seminary, and both found it a trying time for our marriage.  I’ve talked to friends about it, and basically summarize Seminary as “the pressure cooker.”  The time invested at the school and the church, the unavoidable financial tension, and the strain of study all pressurize whatever marital issues you are already undergoing.  Because of our experiences, I recommend taking a year to two off from school before re-entering school, especially if you are planning on marrying someone right around your first year of Seminary.  Thankfully, though, if the pressure cooker doesn’t blow up–it does a great job cooking some undercooked food!  We both are grateful for what we learned in Seminary, and we now feel like we’re able to take a breath of fresh air after a deep dive into the ocean.

    Third, I struggled with the transition from fine art to pastoral ministry.  Anyone who switches vocations knows the difficulties associated with it.  As a person without much development in my particular field, I only experienced a flavor of what a full-blown vocational transition can give you.  I have friends from Seminary who had been called to pastoral ministry after 20 years of work in their previous fields, and my own experience will never quite match up to their own.  At the same time, it was still hard on me.  Where I once held a sketchbook, I now hold a notebook.  I once read poetry and essays on art, and now I read tomes related to Systematic Theology.

    But the difficulties were worth it.  I now feel prepared to preach and teach, as well as to counsel and comfort the Church that I’m called to shepherd.  The greatest privilege a person can be offered in this life is to serve the Lord Jesus, and I am so happy to serve by bringing the Word of God to bear upon my friends in Tunica.  I’m a pastor first and foremost, and would never do anything to impede this high-calling of God.   That said, fine art has provided me an abundance of resources:  I feel like I have a grasp on world history through the study of art history; aesthetics opened a door for me into philosophy; and thinking imaginatively has been extremely helpful for apologetics and sermon preparation.  The worth of Jesus compelled me to transition from fine art as a main vocation to pastoral ministry, and the worth of Jesus compels me to shepherd and to reach out to the fine arts community.

  • How to Do History and Science

    I’ve been reading through Michael Licona’s, “The Resurrection of Jesus,” and think that his first chapter is seriously helpful in beginning a conversation on the philosophy of history and science.   He has an excellent paragraph on the relation of scientific inquiry to historical inquiry located on pg. 66 of this pdf, under heading 1.2.12, “Is history a science?” (pg. 68 of the printed text). 

    I think it’d be helpful to summarize the basic points of his introduction.  The questions that I have written in bold could provide a starting point for a strong philosophy of history/science.  Feel free to answer them, or provide resources that answer them!  

    In his prologomena on the philosophy of history, Licona essentially suggests that we use methods that are similar to the methods employed by scientists. Here is his basic methodology:

    1. Define history (or science).  He defines history as, “past events that are the object of study.”  How should we define history and science?

    2. Explain pre-conceptions of the historian (or scientist).   He calls these preconceptions, “horizons,” or our, “preunderstanding”.  He suggests that ways of overcoming our horizons include: use a common method, explain your preconceptions and your methods publicly, check yourself by your peers, submit your ideas to unsympathetic experts, account for the historical bedrock (things so strongly evidenced that they are regarded as fact, and are agreed upon by the majority of scholars), and last, actually seek for the truth.  These same methods must be employed by scientists for them to arrive at valid hypotheses.

    3. Explain “certainty” (which is intimately related with epistemology).  He suggests that we cannot have absolute certainty that an event has occurred, but we can have accurate certainty. Since this is the case, all that we propose about an event is provisional.  While historians are attempting to verify an event as historical, what are scientists trying to verify?  How much certainty can they have about these things?

    4. Explain Epistemology.  Licona suggests that a form of critical realism is the best approach to reality.  This  means that first, as a realist, we believe, “reality exists independently of our knowledge of it, and our scientific statements and theories refer to this independent reality.”  Second, in opposition to “naive” realism, which suggests that, “accurate historical judgments always result when correct method, theory, and evidence are employed consistently,” critical realism suggests that “accurate historical descriptions may be held with varying degrees of certainty.”

    5. Define truth.  He states that the correspondence theory of truth is most widely accepted, and the best understanding.  He defines it by saying, “For our descriptions of the world around us to be true, they must correspond to its conditions.”

    6. Define (historical or scientific) fact.  Licona says, “Richard Evans defines a historical fact as something that happened and that historians attempt to ‘discover’ through verification procedures.”  These verification procedures are the methods he encourages in overcoming our horizons (#2).  How would we define scientific fact? Do scientists employ the same verification procedures?

    7. Explain ‘burden of proof’.  Licona suggests using methodological neutrality (rather than credulity or skepticism), which means that the one making a claim bears the burden of proof.  If you claim Jesus was raised from the dead then you bear the burden of proof.  If you claim Jesus wasn’t raised then you also bear the burden of proof.  If we carry this over into science, the scientist who makes a claim is the one who bears the burden of proof.

    8. Develop methodology.  
    A. He proposes that the best method for weighing hypotheses is argument to the best explanation (as opposed to argument from statistical inference).  This means that hypotheses that fit a proposed set of criteria are preferred, and likely represent what occurred.  
    B. The proposed set of criteria generally includes: explanatory scope (quantity of facts), explanatory power (quality of explanation), plausibility (supported by other accepted truths), less ad hoc/simplicity (refers to fewer presuppositions), illumination (provides a solution to other problems).  Are these sets of criteria appropriate for scientific hypotheses?
    C. These different criteria are given different weight, and Licona follows this order of importance: plausibility, explanatory scope and power, less ad hoc, illumination. To what extent is this weighing of criteria valid?  Does this carry over into scientific study as well?

    9. Develop a list of levels of certainty.  All of the lists I have seen appear fairly arbitrary, however I might as well list what Licona suggests.  He goes in order from the absolutely ridiculous to the pretty much certain: “certainly not historical, very doubtful, quite doubtful, somewhat doubtful, indeterminate, somewhat certain, quite certain, very certain, certainly historical.” A general guideline Licona proposes says that for something to be considered ‘historical’ (or else, ‘scientific’), “1. The hypothesis must be strongly supported and much superior to competing hypotheses and/or 2. the reasons for accepting a hypothesis must significantly outweigh the reasons for rejecting it.” It would be good if we apply something like this to scientific hypotheses.

    All this from a theologian of all people!

  • The Cosmic Navel, The Silver Cord: The Body of Christ

    I am reading an article concerning Jewish (rabbinic) thought on the possibility of incarnation.  The author suggests that a rabbinic form of prayer, kawwanah, implies that if God is capable of being ‘imaged’ in prayer in His shekhinah glory, then He is capable of incarnation.  But in the midst of all of this he spends a good bit of time discussing the direction of prayer, and how the Holy of Holies is to be prayed towards because it houses the glory-cloud of God, enthroned between the cherubim.  He says,

    Prayers are to be directed to…the cosmic navel, the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem.

    But when you consider what Christ tells us about prayer it blows all of this rabbinic nuancing out of the water.  The true believers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth–not towards Jerusalem, not towards Samaria–but in Spirit.  Similarly, we are taught that the Church in Christ is the ‘naos’–the inner-chamber of the temple–to the Holy Spirit.  We do not pray to a location because we are the location of God’s glorious presence through the Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21).  In this sense, those joined to Jesus by faith are the ‘cosmic navel’, the belly-button of the universe.  Since Jesus has sent us the Spirit, and intercedes with the Father in the heavenly ‘temple’, we have access to God that those outside of Christ cannot begin to fathom.

  • Two Reasons I am a Calvinist (from the book of Acts)

    Two reasons I am a Calvinist:

    “When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.” (Acts 13:48)  

    “A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening: and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.” (Acts 16:14)