The Pastor as Public Theologian by Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Author:Kevin J. Vanhoozer [Vanhoozer, Kevin J. and Owen Strachan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pastoral Ministry/Theology, Christianity and culture, REL074000, REL067000
ISBN: 9781441245724
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2015-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

A Ministry of (New) Life: Theology in the Imperative Mood

The gospel is in the indicative mood. Preaching the good news involves saying what has happened and what is the case: Jesus has died for our sins; God raised Jesus from the dead; Jesus is now the living Lord, to whom the Spirit unites us in faith. Yet the gospel indicative—what is in Christ—also contains a tacit imperative, a demand actively to conform to what is and joyfully participate in what is. And insofar as living into the reality of Christ is a corporate project, we could also speak of the cohortative mood (from Latin co, “together” + hortari, “encourage”), whose telltale “Let us” signals that pastors must heed their own exhortations: “Let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Rom. 14:19). “Let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity” (Heb. 6:1). “Let us love one another” (1 John 4:7). Living to God, living into Christ, living through the Spirit, with others—this is the essence of theology.

The pastor-theologian walks a fine line, reminding Christians of what God has already done yet also encouraging them to make their lives correspond to this reality. Being in Christ is both gift and task, privilege and responsibility. Exaggerate the gift, and you risk antinomian complacency; exaggerate the responsibility, and you risk legalistic anxiety. The apostle Paul walks this fine line in his epistles, many of which begin by reminding readers of the great indicative (Jesus died and was raised for our justification) and then go on to exhort readers to live into this reality. In Colossians, for example, Paul first summarizes what God has done, “If then you have been raised with Christ,” and only then drops the imperative, “seek the things that are above, where Christ is” (Col. 3:1).[31]

Some may object to my associating the gospel with imperatives. What has gospel to do with law? Interestingly enough, the idea of obeying the gospel is a thoroughly biblical idea. It is possible to hear the gospel but not obey it (Rom. 10:16). The consequence of not obeying the gospel is eternal destruction: existence “away from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thess. 1:9; cf. 1 Pet. 4:17). Obeying the gospel is not a burden for those whom the Spirit has joined to Christ, however, for Christ lives in them. At the same time, the imperatival mood of theology matters: God saves us by grace through faith, but we must nevertheless work out our own being-toward-resurrection “with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). Richard Gaffin rightly captures the tension: “Where the indicative is present, a reality, there concern for the imperative must and will be a reality that comes to expression, however imperfectly, minimally or inadequately.”[32]

Theology is the project of corresponding to what is in Christ in word and deed. To be or not to be in Christ: that is the only question for the disciple. In making explicit what is in Christ, Christian doctrine implicitly gives disciples their marching orders: correspond to what is.

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