Theology Thursday: Need Ministers be Theologians?

We evangelical Anglicans, John Richardson wrote in his 1994 article, are theological amateurs in every sense of the word. We do it for love, we don’t do it for the money (or at least only for very little money!) and, here is the crunch, we’re not very good at it. ‘We neither study theology carefully ourselves nor value theological study highly in others’.

As one who has recently read a lot about how to construct a curriculum for a theological college, I can only sympathise. Liberals and Catholics, and all the permutations of those traditions, certainly struggle to agree as to what ought to be in the curriculum. Evangelicals, however, barely consider the question at all. We are letting – indeed, have let – theology be dominated and determined by those who do not hold the authority of Scripture, and all that implies, at heart.

When Richardson was writing, theological education in the Church of England was under pressure. The hierarchy ‘apparently believe that the intellectual centre of theological education can safely be held by the secular universities’. The trend was towards part-time education, demonstrating either a cost-cutting tendency or a philosophy that did not see a firm grasp of the Scriptures as a prerequisite for effective ministry. Even more disturbing, Richardson wrote, evangelicals did not want to go to theological college. They did not value it nor enjoy it.

What Richardson wanted to promote in this article was the importance of high theological and academic standards for evangelicals. This, he says, need not be at the cost of pastoral gifts. Academic ability, or at least some of it, is ‘a biblical requirement’ for pastoral ministry (1 Tim 3:2, 2 Tim 2:24, ‘ability to teach’ requires that some learning has been done). Also, he was not claiming that academic excellence alone is enough for the pastor; theological training should include pastoral, evangelistic and other ‘practical’ emphases.

Academically excellent training, Richardson also claimed, was, in his experience, a means to effective ministry. ‘There is now a depth to my understanding of the bible, and consequently to my preaching and teaching, which was simply not there before’. He advocates the importance of a clear understanding of biblical theology, understanding the Bible as a whole book, which simply does not happen in the sceptical atmosphere of university theology departments, and which does not happen enough in Christian colleges suffering from excessive deference to Source critics. Also biblical languages, philosophy and systematic theology are praised.

Well. As a lecturer at a theological college that does all these things, I am hardly a dispassionate observer. However I have seen the growth in godliness and maturity of our students as they grapple with Scripture and the truths of God during their time at college, and can only plea that John Richardson was right. Theological training matters, because ministry matters, because Christ matters. The pressures against it are even stronger now than when he wrote in 1994, but the need just as great.

Richardson, John P. “Need Ministers Be Theologians?” Churchman 108/4 (1994): 306–15.