But Why?
Right thinking about God exists to serve right feelings for God. Logic exists for the sake of love. Christian zeal must be according to biblical knowledge (Romans 10:1-2)... Thinking hard about biblical truth is the means through which the Holy Spirit opens us to the truth (2 Tim. 2:15)... The great commandment of Loving God includes our minds. Truth received through the mind stirs the religious affections of Spirit-filled saints!
Paul reasoned with his unsaved audience in Acts 17 and he regularly employed rhetorical questions in his inspired epistles (1 Cor. 6:2, 9, 15, 19). He assumed that believers would use their minds in effort to think biblically about something. Jesus utilizes/assumes logic in Luke 12:54-27...
2 Cor. 4:2- I want to to be this kind of preacher. I want to stand before God on the last day (2 Tim. 4:1) and say, "I did my all to be faithful and let people think of me what they wanted to think. I don't want to be the kind of pastor who's always watching what people are going to say and then governing what comes out of his mouth by what people are going to say...."
2 Tim. 2:15- It takes hard mental work to rightly handle the Word of God. Don't let anybody ever tell you that hard mental work is unspiritual. We are using our minds to understand God's Word, and we are depending in prayer upon the Holy Spirit to guide our minds... Reading a substantial book is hard mental work. Such is true of the infallible Word of God! (2 Peter 3:16f).
Since our faith is rooted in the understanding of a Book, we want people to learn how to read, and then to have the Bible in their language, and to learn how to think carefully and doctrinally about the Book (of books).
If I am scholarly, it is not in any sense because I try to stay on the cutting edge in the discipline of biblical and theological studies. I am far too limited/busy for that. What 'scholarly' would mean for me is that the greatest object of knowledge is God and that He has revealed Himself authoritatively in a book; and that I should work with all my might and all my heart and all my soul and all my mind to know and enjoy Him and to make Him known for the joy of others. Surely this is the goal of EVERY pastor/elder!"
Right thinking about God exists to serve right feelings for God. Logic exists for the sake of love. Christian zeal must be according to biblical knowledge (Romans 10:1-2)... Thinking hard about biblical truth is the means through which the Holy Spirit opens us to the truth (2 Tim. 2:15)... The great commandment of Loving God includes our minds. Truth received through the mind stirs the religious affections of Spirit-filled saints!
Paul reasoned with his unsaved audience in Acts 17 and he regularly employed rhetorical questions in his inspired epistles (1 Cor. 6:2, 9, 15, 19). He assumed that believers would use their minds in effort to think biblically about something. Jesus utilizes/assumes logic in Luke 12:54-27...
2 Cor. 4:2- I want to to be this kind of preacher. I want to stand before God on the last day (2 Tim. 4:1) and say, "I did my all to be faithful and let people think of me what they wanted to think. I don't want to be the kind of pastor who's always watching what people are going to say and then governing what comes out of his mouth by what people are going to say...."
2 Tim. 2:15- It takes hard mental work to rightly handle the Word of God. Don't let anybody ever tell you that hard mental work is unspiritual. We are using our minds to understand God's Word, and we are depending in prayer upon the Holy Spirit to guide our minds... Reading a substantial book is hard mental work. Such is true of the infallible Word of God! (2 Peter 3:16f).
Since our faith is rooted in the understanding of a Book, we want people to learn how to read, and then to have the Bible in their language, and to learn how to think carefully and doctrinally about the Book (of books).
If I am scholarly, it is not in any sense because I try to stay on the cutting edge in the discipline of biblical and theological studies. I am far too limited/busy for that. What 'scholarly' would mean for me is that the greatest object of knowledge is God and that He has revealed Himself authoritatively in a book; and that I should work with all my might and all my heart and all my soul and all my mind to know and enjoy Him and to make Him known for the joy of others. Surely this is the goal of EVERY pastor/elder!"
Select quotes by John Piper and D.A. Carson from the book "The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor."
