Going to Seminary

In my mind, the primary reason we attend seminary is so that we can learn how to handle God’s Word appropriately. Of course there are many other benefits to seminary that go beyond that, but I believe that this is what makes seminary unique. There are lots of places to learn some of the more “practical” things, but ultimately it gets down to God’s Word.

To do that most seminaries will force you to learn the original languages. There are many good reasons to do this. Luther wrote “let us zealously hold on to the languages” in one great article. Erasmus described reading from the Latin Vulgate as “drinking from a muddy puddle” while reading the New Testament in Greek was like drinking from a “pure fountain.” Of course, most of us give mental assent to the truths of this, but the fact is that we have some very good English translations and if we use them properly we can get to the same place, right?

After all, Greek and Hebrew are a lot of work. It takes a lot of time to study paradigms. It is exhausting to translate even a familiar passage of Scripture as we go through our grammars and lexicons for reference. Despite the best efforts of Bill Mounce, there really is no fun way to learn vocabulary. All these things just take mental elbow grease.

What I’ve noticed is that most students get through the languages and then pretty much discard them. They gave lip-service to the value in learning them, but clearly they did not see the point. If they had they would have stuck with them.

My exhortation to you is to keep up with your languages. Like with physical fitness it is much easier to maintain than to get it back once you’ve lost it. There are very good reader’s editions of Greek and Hebrew that will get you past the drudgery of obscure vocabulary and keep you in the text. Commit to spending a little bit of time each day. Even 5-10 minutes will do if that is all you have.
I have a few personal motivations to do this. One is that I worked very hard in Greek and Hebrew classes and I don’t want to just throw all that time away. I have talked to countless men in ministry who remembered taking Greek and Hebrew, but cannot use any of it today. I don’t want to be one of those guys.

Another is that I see the value in it. I would not go so far as to say that it is vital to keep up with the languages, but it is definitely very valuable. As a practical matter, diagramming a passage from Paul often gives you the points of your sermon right from the text. Remembering how the languages work will sometimes help you make decisions about the meaning of difficult passages too. Some things just don’t translate perfectly into English.

But for me, perhaps one of the most compelling reasons is to recognize just how blessed I am. There are pastors around the world who don’t even have a Bible, let alone a seminary education. They would love to have just a complete Bible in their native language, let alone one of the many excellent study Bibles that are available to me today. We have a plethora of resources at our fingertips. Our seminary educations give us outstanding preparation for ministry. Throwing such a key part of that education away is akin to the millionaire who lights his cigars with $100 bills. Why waste something so valuable?

In Mark 12:30 Jesus said the greatest commandment was an echo of the shema of Deuteronomy 6. This is the first and greatest commandment that we are to follow. This implies that those of us in seminary with an eye toward leadership want to help people do that. But are we being prepared to do that ourselves?

Much digital ink is spilled on this topic in circles of seminary students trying to glorify God with their studies. I want to share my own story about this in hopes that it might be a blessing to others.

I came to seminary thinking that I had all my theological ducks in a row. I was ready to slap the heretic label on just about anyone who didn’t agree with me on most points. I had a little wiggle-room, but it was vitally important that folks agreed with me regarding counseling and soteriology, for example. To do less was to dishonor God and His Word, at least in my way of thinking.

Shortly after coming to seminary a couple of the younger pastors at my church introduced me to the Emergent Church movement. Of course, I initially wrote all of them off as heretics as any good conservative believer would (or so my thinking went). But it was also around that same time that I took my class on 1 Corinthians and learned about how many different viewpoints there are on the immoral brother and head coverings, even from conservative scholars. When you add in more liberal scholarship it starts to make the head spin.

Suddenly my dogma was not as sure as it once was. This led me into a very intellectual pursuit of God for a long time. I really wanted to study more devotionally, but I barely had enough time as it was. I really didn’t have time for deep meditation on what I was taught. I suddenly started looking at everything through an academic lens. I did not come from a dispensational background, but my school certainly does. My morning reading became a quest to see if they were right or not. I would sit in church and grade my pastor’s theology or mentally correct the lyrics to the songs we sang. Academia sucked the life out of my devotion to the Lord because everything stopped at my head and never made it to my heart.

While I have not gone back to my life of habitual sexual sin or gluttony, I have seen traces of the old unfeeling me that I really don’t like. When I started seminary I was much warmer with my wife and my children. I was ready to talk to people about the Lord every chance I had. I see how I’ve been on the return path to being cold and clinical. My study of theology started running everything through my head and it never made it to my heart. Rather than deepening my love for the Lord I started to hold Him at arm’s length.

This, of course, is backwards. The more I learn about the Lord the more I should love Him. I only have one year left at seminary, Lord willing, and I want to make this one count. It’s vital to think through all the heady topics we encounter at seminary, but ultimately I want to be like Paul who said to the Corinthians that he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Or, as Karl Barth supposedly said when asked what he learned after all his study of Romans, “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.”

Brothers and sisters, that’s what it is all about. Jesus loves you. Remember that always as you go through seminary. All of this is about Jesus and knowing Him better. Let your learning lead to love.

There is a generation of pastors ministering today who were taught that they should take care of the church and let God take care of their families. As a result, the term “PK” exists among parole officers to refer to a pastor’s kid. It’s very easy to completely pour oneself into ministry to the detriment of family. After all, you’re doing God’s work, right?

What I’ve learned is that it is easy to do the same thing with seminary. Since I work full-time and am married with two children I only take two classes per semester. This also explains why I am on the fifth year of a three-year degree. It would have been nice to be done earlier, but the cost would have been too high to my family. In fact, there are times when I wonder if it is already too high.

My wife stays at home with our children. Our daughter just started second grade and our son just started preschool. The last three years in particular have been pretty taxing on my wife since our son was born. There are days when I leave the house before the kids get up and I don’t come home until they are in bed. Although they are generally well-behaved, they tend to get a little unruly when they don’t have enough daddy time. They accept the fact that I am in school, but they definitely like the breaks when I’m not.

I am committed to maintaining a personal devotional life. I also am committed to getting regular exercise as I believe it is vital to both physical and spiritual health. Plus, I want to excel at school for a few reasons. One is that I like getting good grades, though that is not the primary reason. Another is that I go to a very small school and actually know the professors. I feel like I would be insulting them if I didn’t try my best (I didn’t worry about that so much at Ohio State). But the best reason is that I want to do good work for God’s glory, just like the men who laid interior stones in European cathedrals did their best because they considered it to be an act of worship even though no one would ever see their work.

The problem is that I only have 168 hours in the week just like everyone else. I have found that I do not do well if I get less than seven hours of sleep for more than a few days in a row. How do I get things done without sacrificing my family on the altar of seminary?

One thing I do is set an early alarm. I have my devotional and exercise times before everyone wakes up. This means waking up around 5:00 AM most days. I found that waking up at the same time every day makes it easier. This is important to me because I do not want to sacrifice family time.

Another thing I do is to remain opportunistic with my time. I do vocabulary flashcards on my iPod Touch that I carry with me everywhere. I do them when I’m walking around my office, for example. I do homework at lunchtime when I’m at work. That makes me a bit antisocial, but it also preserves my time for my family. I do homework while my daughter plays with friends and my son naps. I do homework most evenings after the kids go to bed. This of course also means that I need to take time out for date nights with my wife. Funny, but God always seems to supply the time I need for that.

What I try not to do is waste any time. I used to love video games, but rarely play them anymore. I have some guitars, but don’t have much time for them either. I never watch TV and will only watch a movie with my wife. This may seem like a huge sacrifice, but I’ve found that entertainment isn’t as entertaining as I once thought it was.

Ultimately, I’m responsible for the three disciples at my house. I don’t want my kids to join the ranks of PKs who hate the church and their dads. I don’t want my wife to resent it or me. I’m doing my best to serve them and disciple them. To do that I need to remain focused on making the best use of my time.

Parents – how do you handle this?

I started seminary as a 32 year-old who experienced some serious personal trials. By the grace of God I had been set free from both pornography and self-gratification as well as gluttony and laziness. I had served in a ministry helping men find freedom from those habitual sins and in that time developed what
I thought to be a pretty sound theology. I figured that I needed seminary to give me a piece of paper so that I could get hired by a church to do full-time ministry.

While it is true that a MDiv does open doors, I have since learned that seminary is about much more than the piece of paper. To be perfectly honest, I wanted my school to bless my convictions so that I could move on to the “real” work. I had no idea what I was actually getting into. Here I thought I was simply attending a school that pretty closely matched what I already believed and, therefore, I would
not be challenged too much. I was very wrong.

The first big challenge came when I took an elective course on 1 Corinthians. We had to write papers describing all the views we could find on some of the more controversial passages. What I learned was that there are a LOT of views out there and quite a few of them have biblical warrant even within a traditional approach to inerrancy and inspiration. I suddenly realized that there was not quite as much room to be dogmatic about some issues as I thought.

Next came Greek exegesis. That was where I learned about textual criticism. I have not gone down the road of some folks like Bart Ehrman, but it did make me rethink my view of the text. I still believe that the Bible is God’s Word and we can trust it, but looking at the text-critical issues around some passages definitely opened my eyes to what goes on under the hood of our English translations. This served to leash my dogma.

Another big challenge was my hermeneutics class. I came from a nominally Roman Catholic background, but am a fully-committed Protestant now. However, hermeneutics made me appreciate the authority of the Roman Catholic Church because I began to see how easily the Protestant system can devolve into “what this passage means to me.” This showed me how important it is to be tethered to church history because if you see something in a passage no one else has seen for nearly two millennia you’re probably on the wrong track. And even if you do find precedence in church history you may still be on the wrong track. This forced me to relax my dogmatic approach on some controversial passages where I previously thought that disagreement with me meant you were a heretic.

Finally, my Hebrew classes really opened up my eyes to how we translate and read the Old Testament. The wide semantic range of many Hebrew words has taught me to be careful about making too much out of any single translated word in my English Bible. This was yet another thing to soften my previously hard dogmatic approach. Just as anyone preaching from the New Testament should promise not to overstate the aorist tense, I learned not to overstate the value of Old Testament word studies.

I write this story to encourage anyone in seminary to engage your classes with an open mind. You are learning from men and women who have dedicated their lives to particular subjects. Chances are they have thought through these issues more deeply than you have or will. Do not simply seek approval for what you already believe when you enter seminary, but allow the experience to transform you.

Personally, I feel like I have acquired a framework for thinking things through. I may not always come to the same conclusions as my professors, but at least I have a way to evaluate these issues and make my own decisions. And I have the freedom to do that as well, as long as I have biblical warrant to do so.

Basically, I am grateful to have opportunities to tear down some personal theological houses of straw and rebuild them with brick. The rebuilt houses may have the same shape as those of straw, but they are now much more solid because I feel more sure about the Rock on which they are built. And that is easily the greatest blessing I received from seminary.