Book Review: Book Reviews

Abstract

The Pastor Theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision. By Gerald Hiestand and Todd Wilson. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2015.187 pp. $18.99 (paper).The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision. By Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2015. xi + 221 pp. $19.99 (cloth).What does a scholar-priest do? I am asked this or a related question with some frequency, especially when I am talking with a search committee. Sometimes question is about phrase scholar-priest, and what it means that I self-identify as one. Occasionally, deeper question pertains to my level of commitment to pastoral task, as in, Will being a scholarpriest distract me from being present to parish? Rarely, it is asked as part of a larger discussion about intellectual life of parish and how I might fit within said life. I have developed a response to different variations of questions. Yet, I am left concerned how linking life of scholarship and ministry would be a cause of quandary in first place.It is felicitous, then, to see emergence of interest to revitalize vocation of scholar-priest (or pastor theologian) in and for church. Two recent additions to this quest are Gerald Hiestand and Todd Wilsons The Pastor Theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision and Kevin Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan s volume, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision. As their titles attest, both texts seek a retrieval of a vision that once animated pastoral vocation. As a work of retrieval, concern authors have is not to repristinate a past (and mythical) golden age of pastor Rather, goal is to read present ecclesial and conditions in a way that opens up a path for a robust vocation that restores minds to ecclesial body.Both books come at task of retrieving a vision for pastor theologian by attending to history, location, and activity of vocation. In terms of history, each book traces a similar heritage of learned clergy from Justin Martyr through Augustine to Luther and Calvin. According to Wilson and Hiestand, it is early modern period, with secularizing influences of European Enlightenment and North American experience of revolution and Second Great Awakening, that ushers in the demise of pastor theologian. What emerges in nineteenth century is growth of professional theologians in academy and a kind of anti-intellectualism in clergy. As a result, study and fostering of a imagination drifts away from life of church. If society were one grand dinner party, argues Strachan, the theologians were increasingly to be found in comer, left alone to their fantastic thoughts and their pious imprecations (p. 89). The single image of pastor theologian is replaced with a diptych: scholarly theologian teaching in university and pastor administrating to flock.It is not until twentieth century, with likes of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, N. T. Wright and Alister McGrath, that vocation of pastor theologian begins to regain attention of church. Yet Wilson and Hiestand contend that church remains largely in a state of theological anemia that rests squarely on shoulders of a theologically anemic pastoral (p. 58). Even contributions of Wright, McGrath, and other lights have not been able to persuade church communities and denominations to create conditions for clergy to combine parish ministry with habits of study, writing, and teaching. In a stinging critique, Vanhoozer calls upon greater church community (including seminaries) to let go of mess of secular pottage (p. 183) that has detheologized vocation of pastor, and claim pastorate as once again proper location of theology and reasoning. …