Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all

wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

— Colossians 1:28[1]

I. Introduction & acknowledgements

A. Gratitude

Let me begin by expressing gratitude to my colleagues, the administration, and the Trustees of Reformed Theological Seminary for the privilege and the stewardship which mark this occasion. Additionally, thank you, students, friends, and guests for being here today. I’m not entirely comfortable with being the cause of this occasion, which seems a lot for the removal of the adjective “associate” from my title, but I am happy to be the excuse for fellowship, reflection, and the enjoyment of God’s good and tasty gifts following. I also thank the staff and others who have had a hand in providing the hospitality which follows this address.

B. Ritual

While we at RTS do not often stand on ceremony, this is one of those occasions which merit doing so. Amidst the late Modern diminution of institutions, we do ourselves well by occasions which acknowledge their vital role in common life.^[2] If you are not accustomed to such occasions, this is not an initiation ritual, a form of seminary hazing. It is an acknowledgement that institutions matter and that the responsibility conferred upon us is a solemn one.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “In an age when every one puts on his oldest clothes to be happy in … you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a widespread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connexion with vanity or self-conceit.”^[3] In other words, those who stand on ceremony on the proper occasions are not being vain, but obedient to the hoc age, or need to “pay attention,” of such occasions. Lewis wrote, “The modern habit of doing ceremonious thing unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offenders’ inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for everyone else the proper pleasure of ritual.” In the spirit of our subject of Wisdom, it’s important to remember that we are entrusted with things that are not ours and therefore we must treat them as stewards rather than as owners.

C. A school of the prophets

Since the Colonial period in North America, theological seminaries have aspired to the ideal of being “schools of the prophets.”^[4] Such an aspiration imitates the emergence of the prophetic guilds during the monarchical period of the Old Testament.^[5] While both fidelity to this aspiration and success in achieving it waxes and wanes, it nevertheless is a noble and biblical aim to which a seminary may aspire.

D. A school of sages

While I don’t wish to supplant the notion that a theological seminary should aspire to being a school of the prophets, I would like us to consider a parallel or perhaps even higher aspiration which is to be a school of sages. My proposal is that pastoral formation should proceed from, along the contours of, and toward Wisdom. I say “proposal,” yet it’s more of a project or a prospect which has occupied me for some time now. By a “school of sages,” what I mean is that theological education should conceive of Wisdom as the beginning and the goal of pastoral formation so that the process is shaped by Wisdom. By the term “Wisdom,” I don’t mean simply “best practices.” Although Wisdom should lend itself to best practices, Wisdom is not mere pragmatism. Nor do I equate Wisdom with mere knowledge of the Bible and doctrine, though devotion to scripture and theology is essential. In contrast to best practices, Wisdom often seems impractical and, from the world’s perspective, even foolish. In relation to knowledge, Wisdom necessarily involves knowledge but goes well beyond it. I will say more about the definitions of Wisdom and sage momentarily.

E. Back story & perspective

During the fall of 1990 at the beginning of my second year of Ph.D. studies at Westminster Theological Seminary, I boarded an early flight at the Philadelphia airport every Wednesday morning, arrived in Orlando before lunch, sometimes lunched with students, and taught Genesis–Joshua from one to three in the afternoon before taking a flight home that evening. Toward the end of what I came to call my “thirteen-week interview,” the then-leadership of the campus sat down with me and said something like the following: “We have some very well-known professors who are a great draw for students and because of that the campus is growing rapidly, but those professors either don’t have the time or the inclination to spend time with students. We would like you to join the faculty to teach, but also to give students the personal attention they need and deserve.” And so I did. For the ensuing twenty years (interrupted in the middle by service in a denominational role) I regularly heard the refrain from RTS institutional leadership that in addition to teaching, we faculty publish, serve the church, and mentor students and none of these are more important than the others and I took that expression of institutional values to heart.

So, for my entire twenty-eight years I have given priority outside the classroom to students and the church. Today I observe with you the loss of an adjective—“associate.”^[6] However, no one should expect today’s occasion to represent anything new. It is a milepost on a journey, not a change of trains. I assure you that promotion to the rank of full professor will make no material difference to you students or to me. Rather than marking a new chapter, today I want to reflect upon how I have come to understand my work among a company of remarkable colleagues. Rather than putting forth something new, it is my intention to describe what is “now,” and how I got here, the “here” in this case referring to my role among a distinguished faculty in a distinguished institution whose mission places its highest priority on the training of pastors to serve the local church. How have I come to understand my role in this mission and how might that shed light on the overall process of pastoral formation?

F. Curricular perspective

I address this question today as “Professor of Pastoral Theology.” Had I addressed it at an earlier point in my tenure, this would have been a different address in many ways. For my first twenty years I taught Old Testament, including at one time or another every Hebrew language and Old Testament Bible course except Prophets. My second decade added New Testament, specifically Gospels, and I was thus designated a professor of “Biblical Studies” for my two-testament teaching load. For the last eight years I have been assigned to the department of Pastoral (née Practical) Theology. For about twenty-five of those years, I had a different course load every academic year and either helped coordinate chapel worship or served as Dean of the Chapel. For nearly the entirety of my twenty-eight years, most of the preaching curriculum has been my responsibility. Not counting electives, I have taught approximately half of the M.Div. curriculum at one time or another.

G. The calling to generalist

In hindsight, an experience I had as a graduating M.Div. student now seems almost prescient. In the spring of 1987, Os Guinness, well-known writer and public theologian came to Covenant Theological Seminary for some special lectures. Guinness, as you may know, was significantly shaped by the life and thought of Francis Schaeffer who regularly emphasized the need for orthopraxy to match our orthodoxy. In one of Guinness’ lectures he said something like the following: “What the church needs most is not necessarily more orthodoxy, but to be able to understand and apply the orthodoxy which it already possesses.” Don’t misinterpret Guinness’ statement to intend that we should abandon the task of theology, rather it sounds in some ways similar to the agenda of what we know today as theological retrieval. But he was lamenting that the weakness of the evangelical church is due at least in part to the failure of the church’s ministry to ensure that orthodox doctrine reach all the way to the pew.

As a student who had been stretched between the academic life of the classroom and the pragmatic expectations of the youth, college, singles, and men’s ministries I had been serving during seminary, my interest was piqued by his comment. During a Q&A time following the lecture I reiterated what Guinness had said and asked how he envisioned its solution. After pondering for a few seconds, he said, “Well, I suppose there need to be people who are intentional about being called to the intersection of disciplines in order to integrate faith and practice.” When Schaeffer had died just three years earlier, I believe it was J. I. Packer who referred to Schaeffer as a “prophetic generalist.” I took Guiness’ comment in the same vein. I can’t say I made a conscious choice that day because I did go on for advanced study as a specialist in Old Testament, but the opportunities and responsibilities which have come my way over the last nearly three decades have brought me perilously close to what I felt then. The opportunities, necessities, and demands that God has put before me have placed me in a low earth orbit which is neither the deep space of advanced scholarship nor the troposphere of pragmatism. If you know the old maxim of a scholar being someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing, then for me it’s been more of the opposite of knowing less and less about more and more so that I will eventually know nothing about everything! But it’s been wonderfully interesting, so please don’t tell anyone in charge what I’ve been up to. With this background in mind, I want to describe how this professor of pastoral theology has come to understand the task of forming pastors.^[7] As Nathan Coulter wisely admonished his beloved Hannah, “The chance you had is the life you’ve got … you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.’”^[8]

H. Causes for concern

My thesis that pastoral formation should proceed from, along the contours of, and toward Wisdom is able to stand on the merits of Wisdom alone. However, that thesis is also occasioned by several contemporary concerns. The first is that, in looking back over forty years of ministry, it’s clear that those who serve long, faithfully, and fruitfully bear at best a very vague correlation with early perceived talent. In other words, the best over the long term were not high-round draft picks. On the other hand, those perceived as the most talented early on seem to correlate more highly with burnout, flameout, ejection, crashing, and burning. As Princetonian Samuel Miller said long ago,

… no class of men are [sic] more likely to do harm in the sacred office, than your striking, splendid, popular preachers, who have power to excite strong feelings, but not wisdom, prudence, and knowledge enough to regulate and direct them. A ship that carries much sail, and but little lading, is always in more danger in traversing the Ocean, than the vessel which spreads less canvass [sic] to the winds, and at the same time bears an equal, or even a less cargo.^[9]

The second concern is the increasing influence of “influencers” upon Christians in general and ministry candidates in particular. Podcasts, video channels, and theology conferences where the work of theology is done without the context of the local church tempt the theological novice to want to be an influencer more than a pastor. This contextless-ness correlates with hyperbole in the messaging, i.e., the expression of teaching in the extreme, especially in criticism of those “who don’t do it right.” The “cage stage” has been a thing as long as I have been around, but this particular phenomenon has accelerated in the age of theological rock stars so that many young people want to be influencers more than be pastors.

A third concern is the great “de-churching.” The number of young adults raised in the church who leave the faith along with prominent “ministry” figures who deconstruct testifies to “the unbearable lightness of being” in late modern life. The weightlessness of free-floating self-determination leaves the young untethered and at the mercy of the cultural winds. In my view, this attrition isn’t as much due to new facts from science, church abuse, or another of the many factors commonly ascribed, though no doubt these things can enter in. Upstream of all these things is, I believe, a dearth of Wisdom. The wise youth sees the hook in the worm while the fool sees only the worm. Christians nurtured in the faith sans Wisdom encounter new situations and experiences which they are not equipped to address. Skillfulness, which is of the essence of Wisdom, equips the simple to identify the flora and fauna of folly and wickedness. Unlike Eve, who knew not how to answer the serpent, the wise youth trusts in his wise and trustworthy teachers and desires the life offered by Lady Wisdom so that he doesn’t go with the wrong crowd or fail to see the end of the road of folly (Prov 1:8–33).^[10]

A final concern is what I call the “early exit.” There seems to be a trend of mid-life ministers leaving pastoral ministry in the local church either altogether or to do non-pastoral “ministry” (i.e., to do “ministry” but not as a pastor). The circumstances and the merits of these moves vary greatly, but they are frequent enough to suggest something is in the water. In a former day pastors might preach twice on Sundays, teach weekly Sunday school, do home visits and other pastoral care appointments, and conduct a weekly mid-week service until they retired, typically beyond the published Social Security retirement age.

These transitions fall into three broad categories which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Complete departures from ministry are often precipitated by a lack of personal resilience or an ennui that sets in when the future is seen as an endless road of sermon preparation and pastoral care. Others leave from frustration due to the inability to make a “visional change,” i.e., to take a church’s ministry “to the next level.” The same gifts and abilities present in the beginning are still there, but it turns out those gifts were for buying time until the church could achieve a breakout mode or return to some past golden age of its history. The cavalry of vision or undiscovered best practices just never arrived.^[11] The third broad category is the departure from pastoral ministry in order to have a ministry of broader influence. Unlike the parachurch missionary ministry to the college campus or unreached people which can be intentional about gathering souls into the sheep pen of Christ, this kind of parachurch ministry seeks freedom from the daily entanglement of soul care and Word ministry in order to minister at arm’s length in the abstract. By noting this, I don’t intend to judge the legitimacy of such ministries, but only to suggest that increasingly the prospect of spending one’s life as a local church pastor seem insufficient as a calling. “Wash, rinse, and repeat” is okay for launderers and tax preparers, but not worthy of greater talents. Or, to describe it in terms used by the late Chief Rabbi of the [British] Commonwealth, Lord Jonathan Sacks, everyone wants to be a prophet, but not as many want to be a sage.

II. A sage is better than a prophet

In an edition of his regular Torah commentary newsletter Covenant & Conversation, Sacks took his title from the Talmud which says, “… a Sage is greater than a Prophet.” Referring to Psalm 90, a psalm of Moses, verse 12—“So teach us to number our days / that we may get a heart of wisdom,”—the Talmud quotes Rabbi Ameimar who said, “Since a Prophet must have a heart of wisdom, the Sage, who is wisdom personified, must be greater still.”^[12] Ameimar’s reasoning was that Moses—of whom Maimonides said “from Moses to Moses there is none greater”—prayed for wisdom because he did not yet possess it, or at least not possess it in sufficient measure. Therefore, the one who has Wisdom, the Sage, must be greater. In other words, if the greatest prophet who ever lived prayed to receive that which the Sage already has, then the Sage must be greater than the Prophet.^[13]

I don’t intend to argue Sacks’ case as much as encourage us to try it on and see how it fits. The prominence of Wisdom throughout scripture, including its presence in the Gospels and the other New Testament writings, alone justifies serious consideration of whether it should be a major center of Christian formation in general and pastoral formation in particular. Wisdom deserves to be accounted for in one’s biblical, systematic, and practical theology. Narrow focus on the ordo salutis and the forensic aspects of salvation can sometimes cause the seminary student to obscure broader substantive aspects of Christian theology. Since Wisdom doesn’t typically fall under one of the heads of systematics, it can be even more neglected. Similarly, the role of the sage, because it is not an office, can be obscured by the prominence of the threefold office in the Reformed tradition. We rightly conceive of the pastoral office in continuity with, even if not a continuation of, the prophetic office. And though only Christ bears all three offices mediatorially (i.e., only he fully, perfectly, and vicariously fulfills and performs them), the threefold office has a strong analogy if not typology for the ministers, elders, and deacons of the church in their prophetic, royal, and priestly functions.^[14] The pastoral office of the New Testament is understood most commonly in continuity with that of prophet in the Old Testament. But how does the sage relate to these offices?

A. A scribe/sage of the kingdom

If we may examine the sage through the role of the scribe, the need for giving the sage more serious consideration should be clear. From the destruction of Solomon’s temple up to the period of the New Testament, the role of the scribe evolved dramatically into one of Israel’s central religious roles.^[15] If we have developed a generally negative notion of scribes because they are often mentioned in opposition to Jesus and his program, we are forgetting those like Ezra and his school who led God’s people in covenant renewal through the reading and expounding of God’s law. While Jesus condemned scribes and others who “tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders” (Matt 23:1–4), he also commended “every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven” who “is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matt 13:52).

Here I follow John Nolland’s suggestion that Jesus isn’t referring to those who are already scribes who then become trained for the kingdom, but those who would become taught by Jesus in order to become scribes of the kingdom.^[16] Jesus is addressing his disciples, those he is training, i.e. “discipling.” Nolland asserts this because the “process of being discipled is … so closely linked conceptually with the notion of the scribe as the trained scholar.”^[17] In other words, a good disciple is one who is trained as a scribe. What marks such a scribe is his skillfulness—essential to Wisdom—at bringing out old and new things from his treasure. Note that this saying of Jesus is preceded by several parables about treasure—a hidden treasure, a pearl of great value, and a valuable harvest and fish catch. Note, too, that the immediate response to Jesus’ scribe-saying is the astonishment of the Nazarenes who said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works” (Matt 13:54)?

For Matthew the scribe, there is a vital connection between Wisdom and the scribe’s work. Wisdom, in fact, is a dominant theme in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus is presented as the consummate sage-king and the calling of disciple and scribe are one and the same.^[18] Having been taught by the sage-king Jesus, his disciples are qualified to go into all the world and to teach people to do all that Jesus commanded (Matt 28:20). The commission to teach everything that Jesus commanded is anticipated earlier by the description of the wise man as the one who listens to and does Jesus’ word (Matt 7:23–25).

Given that one of the basic responsibilities of the wise is to make others wise, we might even call the Great Commission the “Sage Mandate.” Matthew’s notion of the disciple as a master of Wisdom arises out of the sage-king in Proverbs as well as Isaiah’s promised Servant’s preparation as one who is given “the tongue of those who are taught” so that he might “sustain with a word him who is weary” (Isa 50:4). “The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly” (Prov 15:2). What I am proposing is that the process of forming pastors should give self-conscious attention to how Wisdom must shape that process because a disciple of Christ is one who is trained as a scribe, a steward of God’s Wisdom.

III. The telos of a sage: the life of the blessed God

 A. Eating from the tree of life

The first implication of this proposal is that pastoral formation must intentionally seek the telos of Wisdom. This pertains not as much to the content of the seminary curriculum as to the aim of the curriculum. The end of pastoral formation should be the same as Wisdom’s end, the Beatific Vision. Wisdom’s goal is not just knowing about God, but knowledge of God that comes from contemplating God which begins with a desire to see God, leads to seeing God, and transforms one into the likeness of God. God is life and there is no other true source of life other than God himself. Therefore, when Wisdom promises life, it promises the blessedness of the blessed God Himself. Such a telos is not only aimed toward but marked with beatitude along the way. “She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed” (Prov 3:18). “For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord” (Prov 8:35).

B. Being a tree of life

Wisdom not only holds the promise of life for the wise, but also life through the wise. The life of God which the wise know through Wisdom becomes a source of life for his community. Not only is Wisdom life for the wise, it is life-giving to others. “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence” (Prov 10:11). “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and whoever captures souls is wise” (Prov 11:30). “The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death” (Prov 13:14). Such is the “blessed” man of Psalm 1 who not only receives beatific life as a tree planted by water but is a source of life by bearing fruit (Ps 1:3). This is nothing less than what Jesus promised as the Logos become flesh. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10).

For the pastoral ministry student and professor, Wisdom’s end should make theological education and pastoral formation subservient to seeking God’s face by living according to Wisdom’s instruction in order to receive the life of God and be a source of life to one’s community.

IV. The beginning of pastor-sage formation: the fear of the Lord

The second implication for pastoral formation as Wisdom is to recognize the beginning of Wisdom. Wisdom certainly involves cognition, but it is a knowledge which proceeds from Wisdom’s beginning which is the fear of the Lord. Psalm 19:7 states, “the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple” and in parallel with a series of terms describing God’s revealed will also states in verse 9 that “the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.” This “visceral fear or awe of God’s person”^[19] is not only the necessary starting point for Wisdom (Prov 1:7; 9:10), it is “the basic spiritual grammar for understanding the book” of Proverbs.^[20] The fear of the Lord stands alongside Wisdom itself as a source of divine life because it is essential to Wisdom. “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death” (Prov 14:27). Such awe of God’s person is mindful of God’s transcendent holiness, knowledge, and power which are the basis for trusting in the equity, righteousness, omniscience, and omnipotence which make Wisdom trustworthy.

V. The process of pastor-sage formation: embodied instruction

A third implication of pastoral formation as Wisdom is that the student and professor committed to it will commit themselves to the process of Wisdom. This process is one made clear in Proverbs, but is well expressed by Psalm 34:11:

Come, O children, listen to me;

I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

What man is there who desires life

and loves many days, that he may see good.

The process is initiated by an invitation. “Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance” (Prov 1:5). This invitation is a refrain throughout Proverbs, such as in Proverbs 1:8: “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching.” What does this process involve and how should it shape pastoral formation? There are several aspects I wish to emphasize.

A. Relational

This Wisdom process is necessarily relational, the result of a process of interpersonal interaction between the wise and the simple. By that I don’t simply mean that there has to be a relational component as if that were simply an ingredient. I mean that the attainment of Wisdom must be fundamentally obtained in the context of relationships with the wise. There must be two qualities to that relationship. One is trust. The simple must entrust himself to the sage, not as infallible, but as a steward of the deposit of God’s Wisdom. The sage-simple relationship must also be regarded as covenantal. Wisdom, as the instruction of God’s royal son to the simple, is itself an expression of God’s covenantal bearing toward his people. The sage understands his role as a covenantal role, an obligation to his covenant Lord which he carries out with respect to the child of the covenant. Conversely, the simple trusts the sage not just because the sage is trustworthy, but because the sage is God’s covenant instrument.

Seeing pastoral formation as Wisdom leading the teacher to commit himself to the process of Wisdom is radically different from the broader educational world as it is often experienced. A theological education understood as training in Wisdom will not be regarded as a retail process. Students will be receptive rather than demanding, reflective instead of reactive. They will show humility rather than hesitation; not only about what they are taught but in the feedback they are given. They will see their instruction as covenantal stewardship, a stewardship of God’s wise ways which are received with the reciprocal obligation to impart Wisdom to others, just as Paul exhorted Timothy to entrust what Paul taught him to faithful others (2 Tim 2:2; cf. 1 Tim 4:6). It is in this way that the disciple is made “wise for salvation” (2 Tim 3:15). Teachers, correspondingly, will regard their instruction not as impersonal, but personal, willingly embracing the covenantal opportunity and obligation to enter into the student’s life and to receive the student into his life.

B. Embodied

A second vital element of the process of pastoral formation as Wisdom is its embodiment. That is, it will take place in physical spaces where the sage and the simple are in one another’s physical presence. Embodiment matters at three levels. First, we are embodied creatures. Our embodiment is not a liability from which the gospel will free us. The image of God is not simply a soul, but a body and a soul. Therefore, Wisdom is learned not just with the brain, but with the whole person and its implications for bodily life and actions. Witness the degree to which Proverbs speaks to body parts in commending and describing Wisdom as well as physical acts such as work, speech, and generally “walking in the way” as the fruit of Wisdom. Wisdom is the right ordering of our “steps” and our “way” as reordered by the heart and desires. “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established” (Prov 16:3). “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Prov 16:9).

Second, instruction in Wisdom must happen in an embodied relationship where mutual interpersonal knowledge and physical presence are part of the pedagogy and the curriculum. “One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor” (Prov 12:26). The sage-simple relationship depends upon personal knowledge of one another. The simple trusts the sage because he knows the sage. The sage’s life speaks to his commitment to the simple, his commitment to Wisdom, and the plausibility and credibility of Wisdom. The sage is able to guide the simple because he “sees into,” perceives the character, tendencies, loves, and habits of the simple. Paul’s legacy as with the elders at Ephesus not only appealed to his teaching, but to his manner of life as emblemized in his hands. “You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me” (Acts 20:34). A recent article on the banality of “advice” and “coaching” in contrast to wisdom which depends upon deep interpersonal knowledge asks, “Can we rescue coherence from fragmentation, integration from alienation, wisdom from instrumentality?”^[21] We can only by seeing through such contemporary reductionisms as “coaching” and rejecting them in order to embrace embodied discipleship.^[22]

What Paul exhorts Timothy to entrust to faithful men required Timothy to first hear from Paul in the presence of many witnesses. Conversely, Timothy needs to know as trustworthy those to whom he was to entrust the teaching (2 Tim 2:2). Exemplified by the parent-child relationship in Proverbs, Wisdom’s transmission depends upon personal embodied relationships. Wisdom demands that we resist and even counteract the incipient dualism of the fall and not allow theological education to participate in the “dis-carnation,” or what Martin Heidegger called the “de-severance” emblematic of Modern life, especially via means of educational technologies.^[23]

Third, embodiment is essential to Wisdom because Wisdom is something that is to bear fruit in the community. Wisdom is not simply for personal peace and prosperity, but for the enrichment of one’s family, community, and nation. In the case of pastoral formation, the “end user” of Wisdom is Christ’s church. The pastor-sage will be, as a wise one, a tree or source of life. This is why one’s church community before and during seminary is essential. This same life-giving effect is to take place in the learning community, in “life together.” Therefore, theological education done at arm’s length—whether before a screen, on audio, or in a classroom—is insufficient for pastoral formation. To be embodied inherently, necessarily, means to be formed in a place, by a place, and for a place. By “place” I mean among a community of people. Since pastoral ministry, by definition, must occur in a place—there are no pastors of the invisible church—pastoral formation must be embodied in a body, with the wise, and in a place.

VI. The curriculum of pastor-sage formation

Pastoral formation as Wisdom not only involves a process, but also a curriculum. Returning to Jesus’ scribal metaphor in Matthew 13, we see not only the skill of bringing forth, but the curriculum of household treasures. The curriculum of Wisdom according to Proverbs are the commands, the counsels, of God. While Proverbs is flush with observational knowledge, this observational knowledge is derived from looking at the world as the wise and skilled work of the Masterful Creator whose norming norms are found in his law. This observational knowledge is necessarily dependent upon revealed knowledge (Prov 1:1–6) precisely because the grain of the created order is not always clear on the surface and because Wisdom is often counterintuitive to observational knowledge. Thus, Proverbs repeatedly refers to the law of God as the curriculum of Wisdom, as in Proverbs 19:16: “Whoever keeps the commandment keeps his life; he who despises his ways will die.”

A. Devoted to scripture

This means the pastoral aspirant who is persuaded that his preparation is the pursuit of Wisdom will devote himself to the knowledge of God’s Word, particularly God’s law. He will do this as a devoted student of seeing the teaching of scripture as from God, about God, and toward God who is life. As Scott Swain has written, “theology is wisdom about God and all things in relation to God. This wisdom exists first and foremost in God: God knows and loves himself in the bliss of his triune life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt 11:27; 1 Cor 2:10–11).”^[24]

This must include devotion to biblical theology, for in Jesus’ reference to “treasures old and new” he points us to the co-relative principles identified by Geerhardus Vos of the progress of redemption and the organic growth of revelation. In the idea of “old and new,” a scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven recognizes the movement from old to new, i.e., of the coming of the kingdom of heaven, how God in Christ is bringing about the fulness of time (Gal 4:5). The skilled scribe of the kingdom recognizes that the treasures of the house—the scriptures—bear witness to this historical progression of redemption, the ability to discern which treasures are old and which are new and how they are to relate to one another.

B. Able to proclaim God’s mighty acts

The historical progression innate to the household treasure reminds us that what we know of God ontologically is communicated to us through God’s mighty acts in history. Simply put, we don’t know God’s excellencies apart from his mighty acts of creation, providence, and especially redemption. This accords with our understanding of Wisdom being “skillfulness” since in his mighty acts God demonstrates his own skillfulness or Wisdom. While Wilhelmus à Brakel is right that “it is the duty of the Christian to reflect upon the attributes of God,”^[25] it is significant that Herman Bavinck chose to title his shorter theology The Wonderful Works of God.^[26] Petrus van Mastricht reasons that wisdom is the perfection and power of God’s mind. While knowledge is its power, wisdom its perfection. It is wisdom which tends toward contemplation (i.e., of God’s excellencies). This is consistent with seeing the Wisdom of Proverbs as skillfulness since it seeks to act according to God’s skillful ways in creation, providence, and redemption.^[27] We see divine ontology and action reflected in Vos’ description of Wisdom as “That perfection of God by which He uses His knowledge for the attainment of His ends in the way that glorifies Him most.”^[28]

This must not mitigate but animate the work of theological retrieval and of systematic theology since the purpose of God’s mighty acts is to reveal his attributes, his excellencies. And let me here say as a Christological maximalist and one who fully endorses the full sense of scripture, that contemporary biblical theologians are just as capable of going off both the metalyptical and figural rails as the best (or shall we say worst) instances of premodern allegorization. Knowing the difference and relation of “treasures old and new” is not the same as reading a text of scripture and saying, “this reminds me of that.”

I’ll always be grateful that my on ramp to biblical theology was Geerhardus Vos whose first inaugural lecture, by the way, was not his famous address on biblical theology delivered at Princeton in 1894 at his appointment as professor of biblical theology, but one six years earlier at now-Calvin Theological Seminary on theological method.^[29] I, like many, never personally experienced Loessing’s “great ugly ditch” between biblical and systematic theology, though I have certainly witnessed it along the way.

It is the zealots who drive into ditches, including hermeneutical ditches. Wisdom teaches us that pendulums are always swinging. The trick is to know in which direction and how fast it is swinging. All I am suggesting is that we continue to devote ourselves to a healthy relationship between systematic theology and biblical theology and in doing so devote ourselves to being good grammatical-historical exegetes able to read the Bible biblical-theologically in its full canonical sense in order to describe God and all things in relation to God so that we are skillfully able to declare the excellencies of God by proclaiming God’s mighty acts—particularly the excellencies in that most wonderful work of God “who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:10). Proclaiming God’s wonderful works is essential for that most important task of theology which is to know God and know all things in relation to him.

Of his 1997 blockbuster film Titanic director James Cameron said that the sinking of the Titanic was “like a great novel that really happened,” and so he set about to produce the most costly ever film at that time and the first film that drew unprecedented repeat viewings.^[30] Titanic maintained first place in box office receipts for a then-record fifteen weeks and I remember people having conversations about how many times they had seen the movie, in some case seven, eight, nine times, or more. After week upon week of cultural buzz, a plain t-shirt appeared with the simple text “The boat sank. Get over it.” Here is a question. While that t-shirt was an accurate, if not sufficient, plot summary, do you imagine that people would have paid even once to walk into the theater with their popcorn to view that t-shirt? The glory was in the story.

This is why we attend to the history of redemption, particularly in our proclamation. Redemptive history is the story of God’s mighty acts through which God in his wisdom has chosen to glorify himself. In his Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments, Vos concludes the first chapter by enumerating the practical uses of a biblical-theological method of reading the Bible. Biblical theology as he conceived of it exhibits the organic growth of special revelation; supplies an antidote to rationalistic criticism; attends to the historical setting of scripture; counteracts an anti-doctrinal tendency; and liberates us from the rationalistic limitations of proof-texting. The final usefulness he expresses as follows, notably concluding with a maxim of Thomas Aquinas:

The highest practical usefulness of the study of Biblical Theology is one belonging to it altogether apart from its usefulness for the student. Like unto all theology it finds it supreme end in the glory of God. This end it attains through giving us a new view of God as displaying a particular aspect of His nature in connection with His historical approach to and intercourse with man. The beautiful statement of Thomas Aquinas is here in point: (Theologia) a Deo docetur, Deum docet, ad Deum ducit.^[31] [Theology teaches God, is taught by God, and leads to God.]

VII. Why is a sage better than a prophet?

Turning from Rabbi Vos back to Rabbi Sacks, why then is a sage better than a prophet? Looking to Ezekiel as an example, Sacks notes that the prophets were only accountable to God, not for the responses of the people.

And he said to me, “Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants also are impudent and stubborn: I send you to them, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ And whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house) they will know that a prophet has been among them.”

                                             — Ezek 2:3–5

Later in Ezekiel 33, the “watchman on the wall” passage, the watchman again is responsible only for the warning, not for the response. Should he fail to warn of danger, the blood of the people will be upon the prophet’s head. But if the watchman warns and the people do not heed the warning, the guilt will be the people’s and not the prophet’s.

By contrast, Sacks says, “… the Sages took the ideals of the Prophets and turned them into practical programmes.” According to Sacks, the sage “had a completely different approach” than the prophet. He recognizes that according to Leviticus 19:17 the task of warning belongs to all the people. “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him” (Lev 19:17). Sacks reasons,

Note the difference between the two approaches. The Prophet takes a heroic stand but does not take responsibility for whether the people listen or not. The Rabbis do not take a heroic stand. In fact, they democratise the responsibility for rebuke so that it applies to everyone.^[32]

Sacks concludes:

The Sages, perhaps to their surprise, realised this: where the Prophets failed, they succeeded. I believe that institutions like prophecy survive when they are translated from utopian ideals into practical policies. The greatness of the Sages, still not fully appreciated by the world, is that guided by the visions of the Prophets, they gave us the instructions for how to get from here to there.

Sack’s reasoning is remarkably like the New Testament vision for the church. While the scribal role evolved in the days of Ezra during the rebuilding of the nation of Israel, so in the church age Christ the Sage supplies discipled kingdom-scribes as the means of building his promised church (Matt 16:18). The offices given to the church by the ascended Christ are “to equip the saints for the work of ministry for the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph 4:12).

It is true that the apostolic ministry has a prophetic function to proclaim the climactic kingdom-inaugurating redemption wrought in Christ, yet that apostolic ministry is only fulfilled in the establishment and maturation of the church (Eph 3:20–21; 4:13–16). While the edifice of the church is to be built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with Christ as the cornerstone (Eph 2:20), the church is to be a people who speak the truth to one another in love (Eph 4:15); sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to one another (Eph 5:19); confess their sins to one another (Jas 5:16); and forgive one another (Eph 4:32). In other words, the goal of pastoral ministry is to form a priestly people who continue the ministry of the risen and ascended Christ as they live on earth as the whole Christ (1 Corinthians 12).

Being a pastor-sage doesn’t relieve the pastor of being a prophet-preacher, but it embraces a dimension of ministry that is more challenging. One of the hard things about pastoring is that we see face to face our successes, struggles, and failures every time we stand up to preach. Naturally we want people to be better, be happier, and do better. But the New Testament vision for the church is to be a body, a city, a commonwealth, a family, a temple. Drive-by preaching, no matter how widely heard, profound perceived, and highly acclaimed, is only to the credit of the prophet-preacher if it fails to gather and perfect the saints.

Being a pastor-sage is both glorious and excruciating because it is the way of Christ. By that, I mean because it is the way of the cross. How so? Here I turn once again to our beloved former colleague Bruce Waltke who sums up the two paths of Proverbs this way. “The righteous (saddîq) are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.”^[33] Such an understanding of righteousness not only reflects the constant refrain and the deep Wisdom of Proverbs, but points us toward the one “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).

The pursuit of Wisdom would be vain apart from the One Who was Wisdom from the beginning. Jesus Christ is the eternal Logos who was in the beginning with God (Prov 8:22–31a) and who came in the flesh to bring the life of God from heaven (Jn 6:33). He is the answer to Agur’s appeal:

Who has ascended to heaven and come down?

Who has gathered the wind in his fists?

Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment?

Who has established all the ends of the earth?

What is his name, and what is his son’s name? Surely you know!

            — Prov 30:4

His name is Jesus. “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” (Jn 3:13) Something greater than the temple (Mt 12:6) and someone greater than Solomon (Mt 12:42) has come, for the one for whom the temple was built and the one from whom Solomon asked Wisdom has come in Jesus Christ. He has become to us “wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor 1:30).

Through his utter deprivation, beginning with the incarnation itself,^[34] Christ has won us the treasures of a share in his inheritance (Eph 1:11). But in order to share in the divine life, he calls us to follow in the way of the cross. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mk 8:34–35). Daily dying with Christ and to self, according to Paul as well, is the path to resurrection (Phil 3:9–10). The pastor-sage doesn’t take up the cross in place of Christ, but after Christ. His self-sacrificing life is not one in which he dies for his people, but by which he shares in the sufferings of Christ which lead his people to the life-giving Christ (as figured in baptism, Rom 6:1–5).

Because cruciformity is the path of the disciple, the pastor-sage will regularly face choices between a career and a ministry. Flannery O’Connor once said, “What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.”^[35] The pastor-sage will allocate his time and subject his ambitions according to the work of nurturing a community over notoriety and acclaim. He will linger in a conversation when a sermon is waiting. He will make himself accessible rather than build perimeters around himself so that he can achieve personal and professional progress and success. His glory will not be found in being tweetable, but in seeing the saints becoming sages. He won’t alter his course because his peers are climbing the ministry success ladder. His very best work will likely never be seen or heard by human eyes or ears, but only by his Father who sees in secret.

In pursuing the path of a pastor-sage, the young minister must be prepared to have his work overlooked and underappreciated and to content himself with making a difference in the lives of the saints. He may even be thought foolish for not making a bigger deal of himself. If that happens, he is in good company, for “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18). In spite of the difficulty, your challenge is to “consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards” (1:26).

Balaam’s ass saw heaven opened and spoke the word of the Lord. Paul said the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s autobiographical novel, The Idiot, the proclamation of the gospel is “the braying of an ass in the marketplace.” The forming of pastor-sages is folly to the perishing and folly to the pastoral aspirant who only wants to be a prophet. In this respect, pastoral formation is the making of, well, faithful asses.

VIII. Conclusion

I don’t for one minute wish to imply that you should turn from the rigorous academic preparation with which you are being challenged. Nor would I even imagine implying to my colleagues that they reevaluate the content and presentation of the curriculum. To do so would spite myself as one who gains weekly from the wisdom and insight of my colleagues, not to mention depriving you students of the riches they impart. What I am proposing is that we elevate our aim as we do what we do so that from beginning to end and in the process in-between we desire Wisdom, for Wisdom is the pearl of great price since the reward is the life of God and God Himself as we find him in the consummate Sage Jesus Christ. As Melville’s Father Mapple so gloriously concluded in the great Jonah sermon of Moby Dick:

Delight is to him—a far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,—top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath—O Father!—chiefly known to me by Thy rod—mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s, or mine own.^[36]

In my office hangs a reproduction of the nineteenth century painting by Alexander Ritchie titled “Knox returning from Church, after having preached his Last Sermon, 9th November, 1572.” It was given to me framed by a number of graduates of the M.Div. Class of 2000 and includes their signatures on the back. In the painting Knox is depicted with a cane in his right and a gentleman supporting him at his left elbow walking down a cobbled street with several adults and a child looking on. It appeared in John Howie’s nineteenth-century work, Scots Worthies, with the following historical inscription:

Having finished the service and pronounced the blessing with a cheerful but exhausted voice he came down from the Pulpit and leaning upon his staff crept down the Street which was lined with the audience who as if anxious to take the last sight of their beloved Pastor followed him until he entered his house from which he never again came out alive. Edinburgh 1572^[37]

It’s never too early to start planning your final sermon.

My wish is that RTS Orlando be known not only as a school of the prophets, but a school of sages—a place where teachers and students alike pursue embodied wisdom in an embodied way toward the end of knowing God and all things in relation to God who are devoted to a pastoral ministry which makes wise. Let us therefore attend to the invitation of our Triune God—Wise Father, Sagely Son, and Illumining Spirit.

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,

and whatever you get, get insight.

Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;

she will honor you if you embrace her.

She will place on your head a graceful garland;

she will bestow on you a beautiful crown.

                        — Prov 4:7–9

 

[1] This article is an edited and expanded version of an address delivered January 15, 2025, at Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando on the occasion of the lecturer’s promotion to Professor of Pastoral Theology. Unless otherwise specified, biblical quotations are taken from the English Standard Version.

[2] E.g., Yuval Levin, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2020); Douglas E. Schoen, The End of Authority: How a Loss of Legitimacy and Broken Trust Are Endangering Our Future (New York, NY: Rowan & Littlefield, 2013).

[3] C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (London: Oxford University Press, 1942), 16.

[4] See, for example, Richard Warch, School of the Prophets: Yale College, 1701–1740 (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1973), 279.

[5] E.g., Ramah, Bethel, Gilgal, Jericho, Carmel and Samaria. See Ira Price, “The Schools of the Sons of the Prophets,” The Old Testament Student 8 (1889), 245–246.

[6] Hence the subtitle of this address.

[7] The term “pastoral theology” predates “practical theology” and has traditionally referred to the particular areas and practices by which pastors care for the souls under their care. With the broadening of the Protestant tradition since the Reformation and the gradual evolution of modern anthropology toward the therapeutic, the general use of the term “pastoral theology” has taken on greater and greater therapeutic priorities, priorities which should greatly concern us given the deleterious triumph of the therapeutic and emergence of the Modern Self. For an account of the successive historical shape of pastoral theology, see John T. McNeill, A History of the Cure of Souls (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1977); E. Brooks Holifield, A History of Pastoral Care in America (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1983); and Charles A. Clebsch and Charles R. Jackle, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective (New York, NY: Jason Aronson, 1975).

[8] Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter: A Novel (Brooklyn, NY: Counterpoint, 2004), 113.

[9] “The Importance of Mature Preparatory Study for the Ministry: An Introductory Lecture” (July 3, 1829) cited in The Confessional Presbyterian 1 (2005), 42.

[10] Fittingly, one recent scholar argues that Sirach 34:9–13 and 39:4 are reflective of social practices which viewed the sage as particularly suited to travel in order to learn more about the world; Elisa Uusimäki, “Itinerant Sages: The Evidence of Sirach in Its Ancient Mediterranean Context,” JSOT 44.3 (Dec 2020): 315–36. Such is the need for Wisdom for the modern youth who sets out into the world for higher education and professional opportunities.

[11] Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes how a “visionary” can destroy Christian community when he wrote, “Those who want more than what Christ has established between us do not want Christian community … Christian community is not an ideal, but a divine reality … a whole Christian community has been shattered because it has lived on the basis of a wishful image … But God’s grace quickly frustrates all such dreams.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Prayerbook of the Bible, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 5 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2005), 34–35. The community is not the only casualty, but so also is the pastor’s sense of call.

[12] Jonathan Sacks, “A Sage Is Greater than a Prophet,” Covenant & Conversation (August 22, 2020), 2. <https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/shoftim/a-sage-is-greater-than-a-prophet/>

[13] Sacks describes the sage as “Wisdom Personified.” By “sage” I don’t intend a technical definition but simply one who has become wise according to the biblical canons of Wisdom such that they are recognized as wise and qualified to be reliable guides to instruct others in becoming wise.

[14] See Edmund P. Clowney, The Church, Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995), 208–14. Though we must always bear in mind the threefold ministry of Christ is the whole church’s ministry, not just the ministries of special office. It’s worth noting at this juncture that the threefold office has absolutely no correlation with personality types though the triumph of the therapeutic has caused some to use them as such. In fact, their use as personality types cuts across a biblical understanding of special office by confusing personality with responsibility and mistaking faithfulness with job satisfaction.

[15] James L. Kugel, “Ancient Biblical Interpretation and the Biblical Sage,” in Studies in Ancient Midrash, ed. James L. Kugel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies: Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2001).

[16] John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; Carlisle: Paternoster, 2005), 571.

^[17] Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew, 570.

[18] Patrick Schreiner, Matthew, Disciple and Scribe: The First Gospel and Its Portrait of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019). For more on the fulfillment of Wisdom in the Gospels, see Ben Witherington, III, Jesus the Sage: The Pilgrimage of Wisdom (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1994).

[19] Bruce K. Waltke, Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 483.

[20] Waltke, Old Testament Theology, 180.

[21] Alexander Stern, “The Story of Advice: Narrative in a Fragmented World,” The Hedgehog Review (Fall 2024). <https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/in-need-of-repair/articles/the-story-of-advice>

[22] I will not be surprised when “fathering” becomes the next retail wave of pseudo-professional therapeutic relationship product.

[23] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 138–44.

[24] Scott R. Swain, “10 Things You Should Know about Systematic Theology” (Crossway blog, October 8, 2017). <https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-things-you-should-know-about-systematic-theology/>

[25] Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, trans. Bartel Elshout (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 1992), 1:133.

[26] Trans. Henry Zylstra (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2020).

[27] Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2: Faith in the Triune God (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2019), 252, 255, 262–63. See also vol. 1: Prolegomena (2018), 104, for the ways in which he describes theology as involving wisdom and prudence, both of which are prominent aspects of Wisdom.

[28] Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, Single Volume Edition, trans. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2020), 30.

[29] Bradley J. Bitner, “The Theological Vision of Geerhardus Vos: Theological Education and Reformed Ministry,” Themelios 49.3 (Dec 2021): 641–64.

[30] Ed W. Marsh and Douglas Kirkland, James Cameron’s Titanic (London: Boxtree, 1998), v–xiii.

[31] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948), 18.

[32] Jonathan Sacks, “Sages and Saints,” Covenant & Conversation (2018–2019), https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/naso/sages-and-saints/.

[33] Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 1–15 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 97.

[34] “Christ’s humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time” (Westminster Shorter Catechism A. 27).

[35] Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979), 354.

[36] Herman Melville, Moby Dick or The Whale (New York, NY: The Modern Library, 1950), 48.

[37] Engraved for inclusion in John Howie’s 1879 work, The Scots Worthies (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1995).