Holy Joys Podcast
A discussion of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church. A ministry of holyjoys.org.
Holy Joys Podcast
"Feed My Sheep": Theology and the Church
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David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the relationship between the church and theology, using John 21:17* as a starting place and drawing from William Burt Pope's Compendium on "Theology in the Church."
*In the discussion, the verse was accidentally cited as John 21:21.
The Bible has no concept of a theologian who is not pastoral or a pastor who is not theological.
SPEAKER_02There's another image you need to have in your mind, and it's that the Bible is in the church, and the church is its protector and its guardian and its keeper and its arc.
SPEAKER_01You're listening to the Holy Joys Podcast, co-hosted by Jonathan Arnold and Dr. David Fry. Visit us at holyjoys.org and stay tuned for weekly discussions of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Holy Joyce Podcast. I'm David here with Jonathan. Welcome back, Jonathan. How are you? Good, doing well.
SPEAKER_02Got my boys um put off some child care friend of ours and uh eat lunch and ready to dive in.
SPEAKER_00Hey, let's do this. And I uh have to fully disclose before we get into today's topic uh that we are doing or I am doing double duty in this podcast recording, uh twisted Jonathan's arm into uh discussing something that I had to record for an upcoming class anyway. And so uh thanks, Jonathan, for doing that. Uh the topic today is uh theology in the church. And uh just to give some background of where this is coming from, uh, I'm about to teach again uh the doctrine of the church, ecclesiology, uh as a graduate class. I'm very excited about it. Uh, but one of the uh preliminary assignments, actually, that's due before the class starts, is for them to listen to a um lecture or a survey on theology in the church. And uh so uh I was gonna have to record that myself. And so instead we're gonna have a conversation about theology in the church and what do we mean by theology of the church. So I'm actually going to start out uh with a scripture that I was reflecting on actually earlier this morning, and then I'm gonna throw a question out to you, Jonathan. All right. So uh the scripture is John 21, 21, uh, where Jesus uh tells Peter, uh, feed my sheep. And three simple words, yet a powerfully profound command that captures a couple of images here, really three images that uh uh recur in scripture. Um the middle one there, Jesus showing ownership, right? My my church, my sheep. Uh so that's that's the first one. But but then uh sheep, very familiar. That's a metaphor for the church, the people of God used in the Old Testament of Israel. We're pretty familiar with that. And then feed, right? The uh the imagery of of food that's used for uh theological nutrition. Uh that's a uh something that, for instance, an elder is required to do. That's something that believers are to contribute to each other. Uh, there's different kinds of food uh based on one's ability to eat or drink. Uh so uh it but my reflections this morning as I read that was wow, that brings together like this very idea that I'm supposed to be making a video or recording on that has to do with the theology in the church. Like that, like Jesus is saying, like, feed, give theological nutrition to my sheep. Like, man, I'm not sure. Uh that's it's one of those moments where, like, oh wow, that just came together in such a neat way. So I I have not reflected deeply on that passage, uh, but I'll throw this out to you. Um reflect with me a little bit just on that passage and then and then uh the the broader concept of what do you hear when you hear theology in the church? That phrase, what's that what comes to mind?
SPEAKER_02Yes, it's not been long since our church uh we're reading through the Bible together. We read through Ezekiel, and Ezekiel 34 has this you know condemnation of Israel's shepherds, uh shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves, should not shepherds feed the sheep? Uh and then he goes on to talk about how he's gonna appoint uh David, which is the Messiah, Jesus, to feed his sheep. Uh he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And so when Jesus tells um Peter, feed my sheep, I think the um the apostolic role of being a um special representative of Christ in that foundational period of the church is one aspect of what's happening there. Um and then you know, after the apostles, elders, uh plural, uh in the local church, fulfill that that same role. So God's people had gone so long ignorant about the law, ignorant about the scriptures. Um we do have some examples, like like Ezra, of faithful leaders and shepherds in Israel who get up, open the book, read the book, explain that, you know, explain it and apply it and exhort from it, uh, give theological instruction, moral instruction, ethical instruction to the people of God. Um, but there had been so much neglect that the people of God were very ignorant uh of scripture and of theological matters. And God is saying, There's gonna come a day when I'm gonna send this new king, this new faithful, faithful Messiah who's gonna make sure that my people get my word, theological instruction, moral instruction. And then Jesus looks at Peter, right? So we're waiting for the Messiah to do this, and then and then the Messiah looks at Peter and says, You do it. So it's like that's the weightiness of this apostolic office, is like the church has been tasked with fulfilling Christ's role as his representatives. That's pretty weighty.
SPEAKER_00Right, and and the imagery of that that Jesus is giving to uh to Peter as a having a role with the sheep. So Jesus didn't say pastor my sheep. I mean, that's all entailed, right? But he he specifically conveyed that concept with a particular concept of feed them. So there's a lot more that goes into pastoring a flock of lambs than just feeding them, right? And you mentioned uh Ezekiel 34. Uh that actually kind of opens up some of those other things, you know, going out and getting the lost lamb and the and the one that has gone astray, and the one that, you know, binding up the one that's been injured and strengthening the one that's weak and and uh and so forth. But but here Jesus kind of pinpoints down to a particular point here, and that is feed, feed them. Almost as if and and and let me ask this as a question. Do you think that maybe there's something there that it that feeding them is sort of the um the the first part of uh all of the other shepherding responsibilities that that come along, like guiding them, guarding them, binding them up, and so forth?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I'm um just off the top of my head here, thinking about an integrative approach to that. Um the other day we were talking about Josh McNow's approach to the atonement, where he says, like, he says penal substitution is the heart, Chris's victor is the head, recapitulation is the feet. So just taking that body image for a second, could we say like feeding with theological instruction is the heart of pastoral ministry? Visitation, pastoral visitation to the sick, to the needy is kind of the feat of pastoral, of a shepherd, feat, you know, pastoral ministry. And then that ruling office, uh the the role, the ruling role, the administrative role, the oversight role, which always involves teaching, but that's kind of the head of it, you know, and we see that um the elders who rule, especially those who labor in teaching and preaching, like the teaching, the preaching uh of God's word, the feeding of the sheep with theological instruction is kind of the heart of what we're doing, but we don't want to separate that from the feet or from the authoritative role that a pastor has because both of those are important. You've got to go with your feet, be among your people personally, a personal presence in their lives, when they're sick, when they're suffering. Um, you've got to remember you do have this special authoritative role, and the church needs to recognize that in order that you can carry out your duties. But the heart of what you're doing is getting them God's word. And I love this old Puritan phrase, deploying doctrine. Even in those times of visitation or whatever you're doing, you're always deploying doctrine to meet the needs of the sheep. So feeding is kind of the heartbeat of all of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, I get that. That's that's I like that description and that explanation. Um, and as as you're talking, and I'm reflecting again on Ezekiel 34, uh, feeding the sheep, uh, you know, you are you're you know, you have to gather the sheep to feed them. You know, they have to be called, they have to be herded, they have to be uh gathered, right, for that to happen. Um if there is one that is sickly or there's one, you know, their diet, right? Their diet's gonna be tailored, you're gonna be extra uh you know attentive to make sure that that one is getting the food that they need and so forth. So, man, all of this sort of pastoral care uh in so many ways attaches to what are you feeding them? You know, how are you feeding them uh and so forth. So, and I think I just naturally, I think this is right, I naturally think of feeding sheep as a sort of instruction, uh, not just preaching, but preaching, teaching, instruction, discipling type of ministry. But and and I think probably Jesus speaking to Peter is primarily referencing what will become Peter's you know preaching ministry. I I do think that that's is the primary referent here. Uh, but feeding, of course, can be you know it can extend beyond, of course, especially pulpit ministry. It's not limited to pulpit ministry, but uh that probably is is the primary referent here. Now I have a I had a little outline I actually threw out to you, and I'm just kind of grappling with, and we actually kind of played with uh some of the terminology here, and and uh I'm not stuck on this outline, but uh what I'm wanting to do is orient the student to uh to the doctrine of the church by kind of stepping back and taking a look at the forest before in the class that I'm about ready to teach, we dive into the forest and we start looking at the trees in more detail. And and so I've just called this, you know, theology in the church. Um and as as I have reflected on this uh today and in the past, um, asking myself, okay, well, what's that mean? What do you mean by theology in the church? Is there some other preposition? You know, what's the word mean in mean there? And uh we actually, uh you and I actually talked about um do we mean you know theology within the church? Uh I've I I've talked about uh theology, you know, for the church, theology from the church, you know, there are different prepositions. And uh, of course, the challenge with prepositions is sometimes they can be so somewhat ambiguous. And then you pointed out that uh William Burt Pope in the first volume of his compendium actually has a section called Theology in the Church, right? So uh I I read over that, and I think it's actually it's about a 10-page section, but it's actually the first two pages that I think are uh right along the the line of what I've been thinking. And so uh let me point out a few things and get your thoughts on this as well. So he here and throughout his work sees a close relationship between scripture, the spirit, and the church. Like those three never separated, right? And uh so for instance, he starts out this section. Now, again, for those of you may not be familiar with uh Pope's compendium, first of all, get familiar with Pope's compendium. And we've done some podcasts in uh in the past on uh on Pope and his work on the church from volume three. Uh by the way, we're looking at the second edition and uh we're in volume one right now, but he's he the way he lays out his uh theology is he will like make a statement or offer a proposition and then he will analyze it. He'll he'll make uh give commentary on it. So in the proposition section, uh he starts out with the Lord has been pleased to commit his revelation as finished in the scriptures to the keeping of his church under the control and supervision of the Holy Spirit. Uh so he is a good Protestant on that point, um, and I think has a just a really nice theology that he works out here of the relationship between um scripture, the church, and the spirit. And then uh you pointed something out in his comments. Uh, can you comment on that? Uh there was something down here uh as he is reflecting on this proposition of the church being uh kind of the keeper of the scripture under the supervision of the Holy Spirit. Uh you pointed out this line, the oracle has always had its arc. Can you comment and flesh a little bit of that out? You that stood out to you. I think I think you that even came back to your mind without even looking at it. So you've obviously reflected on this in the past.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's just interesting because um, as Protestants, we really want to emphasize that scripture is over the church. And I share that conviction. Because scripture is the inerrant word of God, it has final authority over the church, and the church must submit to scripture and always seek to reform itself according to scripture. So we typically, to create like a mental picture, we typically view the church, and then the Bible is like hovering over it. Um and that that's an important image, but Pope is like balancing that out by saying there's another image you need to have in your mind, and it's that um that the Bible is in the church, and the church is its protector and its guardian and its keeper and its ark, it's like sacred location. And um we have to remember that the church is written by, yes, by God, but um through men of the church, right? Not just men, but leaders of the church, prophets and apostles in the church. So it's it's written by the church, it's it's written for the church, it's it's it's passed on from generation to generation in the church. And he talks about that as well, how um, you know, it's always the early oracles were in the keeping of the covenant people. We wouldn't even have the Bible without the church. Um, so he he wants to hold the two together, and then he comes around to this kind of summary statement about how um the church was enlarged as sorry, as the church was enlarged, the Bible was enlarged, but never was the one without the other in the world. So um we need we don't want the church to stand over the Bible, but as we remember the Bible's final authoritative role in the church, we need to keep in mind that the church has a special relationship to the scripture in keeping and guarding it, which is why it's dangerous for us to practice theology or biblical exposition in isolation from the church. And I think that's a key point that you're driving towards here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I actually, so you you just said use this phrase. I don't know if this is a phrase that Pope uses or not, but you said, you know, the scripture is written by the church. That's not a phrase I I don't think I've ever heard that phrase. Uh, but it makes a lot of sense in regard to what Pope is saying here. Now, he doesn't mean that, you know, I wrote scripture or you wrote scripture or that he wrote scripture. He's referring to the apostolic church, he's referring to the apostles, right? The apostles are the um the the the first members of uh of the body of Christ, obviously under the head of Jesus Christ Himself. So, so yeah, I think this is this idea here that the one the Bible, Scripture was never without the church, and the church was never without scripture. We kind of do tend as Protestants tend to put that as sort of an order. You have the Bible, and then the church kind of came into development, or and then sometimes, of course, Roman Catholics turned that around. You have the church, and then the Bible kind of develops from that, you know, it wasn't the Bible until the church said it was the Bible, you know, that sort of thing. And like both of those are wrong, right? But both of those are wrong. It's so it's not like one preceded the other by centuries. It's like, no, this at scriptures are being written. Uh you know, the it's the apostolic message is being put down into writing and what we now understand as the as scripture at the very same time that the church is being born, right? It's it's happening simultaneously. And so I actually wrote in the margin here, you know, apostolic. You know, this is this is the first thing we mean when we're talking about theology in the church, is that theology, the Christian faith is apostolic. That means it is never separate from the church. So uh one of the things I want to impress upon, especially every seminary student and every pastor, is that you can be a pastor and a theologian in the same person. We've talked a lot on this podcast about pastor theologians. I don't think I've ever shared the story from Kevin Van Hooser, so I'll share it now. Uh, he tells a story about uh a time when he was teaching uh lecturing over in um Edinburgh, and he took a break from the lecture hall and went down the street to a cemetery and was looking at some of the famous, uh, well-known gravestones. And as he was there, he overheard an American couple uh uh just uh off a little distance, and they were looking through the gravestones, and all of a sudden the wife uh just exclaimed to her husband, Hey, look, there are two people buried in this grave site. And the uh husband looked back and said, Well, what do you mean, two people? And she said, Well, look, it says right here on the gravestone, it says, Here lies a pastor and a theologian. And of course, Van Hooser is is expressing what is a quite common understanding, and that is whatever my pastor is, he's not the theologian. You know, the theologians are those, you know, professors at the seminary, or those guys who write commentaries, or those guys who write, you know, 1200-page systematic theologies, you know, or multiple volumes. You know, those are the theologians. Now, my pastor, he's just you know, a good guy, you know. Uh well, that's that's I'm not sure if that speaks more of the state of the church or the state of theology, but the Bible has no concept of a theologian who is not pastoral or a pastor who is not theological. And again, that's not the question. The question is whether or not we're going to to be faithful theologians or not. That's that's the that's the question. So uh I want to uh really impress upon uh my students before we ever dive into a doctrine and study of of the church, uh, that if if we come out the other side of our seminary studies with a a deeper passion for theology in the church and a definite plan for how to make that happen, how to feed the sheep, then our seminary education has been well worth it. If we don't come out with both of those, then what in the world are we doing? Uh, we're not doing good theology in that case. So, uh, theology in the church, uh Theology is is for us. And by theology, let me just say, you know, what we mean is it's it's within the community of the saints, the fellowship of believers, the church, that we learn how to talk about God. It's within that worshiping experience with our brothers and sisters that we learn how to think about God. It's where we learn to confess our faith and to believe in our heart what we ought to about God and our relationship to Him. That's theology in the church.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think one of the things that's biased people against the theological enterprise in general is that uh they've seen theology done uh in the academy without without a lot of attention to the to the church and its needs, exploring topics that um maybe need to be explored, but in a way that just seems like so esoteric and and it's completely unrelated to the needs of the sheep. Um and so it seems like theology that's an academic enterprise for people who want to you know sit around talking about how many angels are on the can dance on the head of a pin. Um but if you look at the great theologians of church history for the first at least 1800 years, you know, um Augustine, uh these guys are pastors, right? John Wesley, he's a pastor, he's a great, a great theologian. Absolutely. Um and so yeah, theology is by its very nature pastoral because it's it's about the sheep, it's about feeding the sheep. So I think that that uh yeah, I think that scripture in John 21, 21 is a good anchoring point for thinking about why and how and where um you know we do theology.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so feed my sheep, Jesus says, and that uh command continues to issue to uh each of us, those of us who are pastors, those of us who may have roles that are extensions of the pastoral ministry, small group leadership, children's ministry, youth ministry, discipleship, whatever that might be, uh bring theology to bear on your life uh within the church, because that's where it belongs. And uh and I think when when that when that happens within the local church, theology will become relevant again. Uh theology will uh shape a person's life and moral formation, and theology will be something that is not some scary concept that is dealt with in behind closed doors and some you know ivory tower. Uh, but it's something that means something about our ministry, uh, shapes our daily ministry, our counseling, our visitation, our small group leadership, our our preaching, our kids' ministry, our outreach, all of those things should be shaped by careful and intentional thought given to theology. So this has been uh kind of a quick uh uh introduction to theology in the church. And uh anyone who is interested in taking this ecclesiology course, it's not too late to sign up. I think it starts uh in about two weeks. Um and would love to have you. So um yeah, good. Thanks for joining me, Jonathan, in uh this brief discussion. And uh we we wish the best for those who are trying to lead in their local church in a robust theological way.
SPEAKER_02In the show notes of this episode, I will make a bullet point list with resources from Holy Joys. I actually think we have that section of Pope's compendium, Theology in the Church, on the website. So it's really easy to read. It's nicely formatted. We have a whole bunch of resources on the Pastor Theologian. Uh, one of my favorites is a little article I wrote called No, I'm not called to teach at a Bible college in defense of pastor theologians. I got so sick of people telling me maybe you're called to teach at a Bible college. No. So now I can just send them this article. Uh we have some podcasts on that topic, and then uh some of the discussion that we had there about the relationship between scripture and the church. I have an article titled, The Bible is the church's book. And I just make a couple of the points that we already uh discuss about the church's role in relationship with scripture.
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