Hearers and Doers
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Hearers and Doers

A Pastor's Guide to Growing Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

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eBook - ePub

Hearers and Doers

A Pastor's Guide to Growing Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

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About This Book

The foundation of discipleship is sound, scriptural doctrine. The value of sound doctrine is often misunderstood by the modern church. While it can be dry and dull, when it flows from the story of Scripture, it can be full of life and love. This kind of doctrine, steeped in Scripture, is critical for disciple-making. And it's often overlooked by modern pastors.In Hearers and Doers, Kevin Vanhoozer makes the case that pastors, as pastor- theologians, ought to interpret Scripture theologically to articulate doctrine and help cultivate disciples. scriptural doctrine is vital to the life of the church, and local pastor-theologians should be the ones delivering it to their communities.With arresting prose and striking metaphors, Vanhoozer addresses the most pressing problems in the modern church with one answer: teach sound, scriptural doctrine to make disciples.

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Publisher
Lexham Press
Year
2019
ISBN
9781683591351
PART ONE
Warming Up: Why Discipleship Matters
1
THE ROLE OF THEOLOGY IN MAKING DISCIPLES
Some Important Preliminaries
Two very different films frame the concern of the present book.
The 2008 Pixar animated film Wall-E offers pointed social commentary. Like many science-fiction films, its story is set in the future, but what motivates it is a very present environmental concern.
The film depicts a traumatized earth and a future society of consumers who have so depleted the world of its resources and, in the process, created so much rubbish that it is not darkness that covers the earth but debris—piles and piles of it (in contrast to the robot-hero, Wall-E, who recycles). In fact, there’s so much garbage on the earth that all of humanity has to take to space in search of a new place to live, a new world with new raw materials to consume. However, a good planet is hard to find, and old habits die hard, so, after seven hundred years of life on board their “Executive Starliners,” where all tasks have become automated and there is no garden to keep, the humans have developed into full-time consumers who do nothing but eat and enjoy asocial media. They are too bloated even to get up off their deck chairs. One critic says that the film describes humankind as “obese, infantile consumers who spend their days immobile in hovering lounge chairs, staring at ads on computer screens—in other words, Americans.”1 Ironically, the human passengers aboard the Axiom are more robotic than Wall-E, for they passively allow themselves to be programmed by whatever program, or advertisement, they happen to be watching. They are sleeping with their eyes wide open, glued to their electronic devices. Sound familiar?
The second film, Cold Souls, is a “metaphysical tragicomedy” that also comes wrapped in science fiction. It appeared a year later and features Paul Giamatti as an anxious New York actor (a fictionalized version of himself) who has trouble disassociating himself from the characters he plays, a problem that takes a significant emotional toll. As he struggles with his current role, in Chekhov’s emotionally fraught play Uncle Vanya, whose protagonist is stuck in a melancholic funk, Paul decides to avail himself of a high-tech company that promises to deliver a life free of angst by extracting his soul and then putting it into deep-freeze storage. The idea is that, once divested of their souls, people can enjoy relief from all the emotional burdens and existential sorrows that afflict and weigh them down. Accordingly, he undergoes the procedure, piercing to the division of soul and body, only to discover that his soul resembles a puny chickpea. Being soulless helps neither his marriage nor his acting, however, so he returns to the company and leases a Russian poet’s soul to give more authenticity to his performance of Chekhov’s play. His acting improves, but his marriage doesn’t. Eventually, Paul decides to get his own soul back, only to discover that it has been stolen by someone who thinks she can become a better actor by implanting Paul’s soul. The film depicts humans as tormented souls who move through life searching, unsuccessfully, for meaning.
These two films may not represent the state of the art in thinking about bodies and souls, but they do represent the state of contemporary social imaginings about what it is to be human and in what human flourishing consists. Elsewhere I have sounded the alarm about how the imaginations of many churchgoers are being held captive by secular pictures of human flourishing and the good life.2 It is an alarm worth sounding again, for what rules our imaginations—the pictures and stories that yield self-understanding and give coherence to everyday life—orients us to the world and directs our steps toward success. The time, energy, and money we spend during our roughly fourscore years on the world’s stage is largely a function of the stories and images of human flourishing in which we believe and put our trust.
KINGDOM PICTURES ISRAEL LIVED BY
Consider the kings of Israel. Each of them had a certain picture of what he wanted his kingdom to be. No doubt many of these pictures were influenced by the many kingdoms that surrounded Israel. Where else would they get their pictures of “successful” kings? Indeed, the Israelites got the very idea of having a king in the first place because everyone else seemed to be doing it. The elders of Israel approached Samuel with just this logic: “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Sam 8:19–20 NIV). Interestingly, some of Jesus’ disciples were in danger of making the same error when they thought the kingdom of heaven he came proclaiming would reinstate the kind of Davidic earthly monarchy marked by military might and political power (John 18:36). Even after his resurrection, his disciples’ imaginations were still captive to certain stereotypes and misconceptions of the kingdom: “They asked him, ‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ ” (Acts 1:6). I wonder: how different are disciples today?
Back to Israel’s kings and concept of kingdom. As I was saying, the imaginations of most of the kings after David and Solomon, especially in the northern kingdom, were captive to secular pictures of what successful kingdoms were supposed to look like. The basic error of these Israelite kings was to trust in human resources (fighting men, chariots, silver, gold) instead of the word of the Lord. To place one’s ultimate trust in anything but the Lord God is to commit idolatry, ascribing worth to the worthless (mute and impotent images made of wood and stone). What is of particular significance is how the misleading royal/social imagination led to the wrong kind of walking. This description of Jehoram is typical: “And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel.… And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (2 Kgs 8:18). Or again: “But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the LORD, the God of Israel, with all his heart” (2 Kgs 10:31). It gets worse: “He [Ahaz] did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD his God … but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nations” (2 Kgs 16:2–3). A false picture of kingship held them captive, though they were of course personally responsible for their idolatry.
Not all the kings were evil. Josiah, for example, discovered the words of the covenant with the LORD God, and this fueled his imagination enough to work important reforms (2 Kgs 23). In reminding Israel’s kings of God’s word, the prophets were purveyors of what Walter Brueggemann calls a “counter-reality,” a different way of thinking about and socially embodying power, success, and justice.3
In the end, however, it was not enough simply to listen to the word God spoke through the prophets. The hearing fell on hearts hardened by a false picture of what a successful nation looked like. What counted was what Israel did, and the kings, representing the whole nation, did not walk in the way of the LORD. In an event of poetic justice, Israel eventually got a king like the other nations—the king of Assyria, who captured the capital, Samaria, and took all the Israelites from the northern kingdom away. The Bible is clear about the cause-and-effect relationship: “And this [exile] occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God … and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations” (2 Kgs 17:7–8). The holy nation had defiled itself.
THE CHURCH AS HOLY NATION
The church, like Israel, is called to be a “holy nation” (1 Pet 2:9). Peter also calls the church a “chosen race” and a “royal priesthood.” The church is not only an assembly of individuals but also a social reality—but of what kind? Church history is full of suggestions: everything from “Holy Roman Empire” to “counterculture.” In this book, I want to focus on the striking biblical image of the church as the corporate body of Jesus Christ, composed of many embodied persons. What body image rules how we think about the church? Many may be tempted to think of the church as only another earthly institution whose dynamics can be studied, explained, and improved on by psychologists, sociologists, or those with PhDs in institutional management.
The apostle Paul, for his part, is more interested in bodybuilding. And so, he thinks, is the Lord Jesus Christ: “He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph 4:11–12). Church leaders do this partly by building up the individuals that are its members. What disciples do with their bodies contributes to the building up of the body of Christ. Moreover, contra popular opinion, our bodies are not our own, to be used anyway we like. They are rather temples of the Holy Spirit, constructed on the basis of Jesus’ pouring out his own body for our sake: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:19–20). Pastors are to engage in bodybuilding to God’s glory by awakening disciples to the reality that their bodies are members and instruments of Christ’s: “So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor 6:20).
Making disciples, then, involves more than converting souls. It involves bodybuilding, that is, edifying the church. We build the church by building up the body one member at a time. However, it is not yet clear what pictures and which images we ought to have in mind to guide us in thinking of building up the body. How exactly do we glorify God in our bodies? Who can tell us what to do with our bodies?
There is probably no more damaging picture distorting our present-day lives, and our understanding of the God of the gospel, than “love.” Love is often depicted as a desire to be fulfilled (romanticism) or as accepting people for who they are (inclusivism) or as loyalty to one’s own people group (tribalism). The love stories produced by Hollywood suggest that fulfilling love’s desire is an unadulterated good—even if it may involve adultery, if the marriage is stale and unfulfilling. Love is presented as an intrinsically good emotion, never mind the sexes, genders, and increasingly, numbers of people involved. Some believe that love must be “free” of all obligations, especially the social bondage of monogamous marriage. Given this romanticized, sentimentalized, and politicized image, it should be no surprise that many view the Bible’s portrait of God as a jealous judge to be past its sell-by date.
As we’ll see in chapter 2, there are plenty of other images—particularly of wellness, health, and fitness—in secular culture. Our pictures of human flourishing are as ancient as their contemporaries. Salus was the Roman goddess of welfare, health, and prosperity. Salus is also the Latin term for “salvation.” Should citizens of the church, a holy nation, be disciples of Salus and worship at her shrine with her other devotees? Christians today must take care not to repeat ancient Israel’s mistake, adopting idolatrous practices out of a desire to be like the other nations. The church today may not be in danger of worshiping idols made of wood and stone, but it is in danger of trusting the wrong things—programs, techniques, ideologies, even theologies—instead of fearing the Lord, walking according to his word, and pursuing salus in Christ.
TRANSFORMING THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY “IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES”
One of the key prophetic tasks of theology is to free the church, a holy nation, from idols. This includes false ideologies and metaphors and stories that guide and govern a people’s way of life. That’s the negative task of theology: to call out false beliefs and false practices and the false ways of imagining the world that fund them. Pastor-theologians therefore need to have at least a basic understanding not only of the Scriptures but also of the context disciples inhabit. The cultural context deeply influences the way people experience, interpret, think about, and seek to live out the gospel. To Socrates’ adage “Know thyself” we must add, “Know thy culture.”
The philosopher Charles Taylor, in his book A Secular Age, helpfully draws attention to the importance of the social imaginary for understanding our present cultural context. A social imaginary is the picture that frames our everyday beliefs and practices, in particular the “ways people imagine their social existence.”4 The social imaginary is that nest of background assumptions, often implicit, that lead people to feel things as right or wrong, correct or incorrect. It is another name for the root metaphor (or root narrative) that shapes a person’s perception of the world, undergirds one’s worldview, and funds one’s plausibility structure.5 For example, the root metaphor of “world as machine” generates a very different picture than “world as organism.” To “know thy culture,” then, we have to become more specific: “Know thy worldview, and the root metaphor that generates and governs it.”
Sociologist Peter Berger first called attention to how the modern and postmodern world pictures made religious traditions and the idea of the sacred seem less plausible.6 The emphasis here is on “social” rather than “intellectual”: a social imaginary is not a theory—the creation of intellectuals—but a storied way of thinking. It is the taken-for-granted story of the world assumed and passed on by a society’s characteristic language, pictures, and practices. A social imaginary is not taught in universities but by cultures, insofar as it is “carried in images, stories, and legends.”7 People become secular not by taking classes in Secularity 101 but simply by participating in a society that no longer refers to God the way it used to. “God” makes only rare appearances in contemporary literature, art, and television.
Social imaginaries, then, are the metaphors and stories by which we live, the images and narratives that indirectly indoctrinate us. Yes, we have all been indoctrinated: filled with doctrine or teaching. The doctrines we hold, be they philosophical, political, or theological, feel right or wrong, plausible or implausible, based largely on how well they accord with the prevailing social imaginary or world picture. What I have called above the “negative task” of theology is to critically reflect on the way in which the church embodies the prevailing social imaginaries of the day rather than the biblical imaginary—the true story of what the Triune God is doing in the world. Pastor-theologians do not fight against flesh and blood, but against social powers and ideological principalities.
One important way theology helps church leaders to make disciples is by better enabling them to critically examine the images and stories by which Christians live in light of the biblical images and stories by which they ought to live. Chief among these is, of course, the story of Jesus Christ, the climax of the story begun in the Old Testament concerning Adam, Abraham, and Israel.
The apostle Paul is worth imitating in this regard, for he clearly saw how the story of Jesus’ lordship differed from, and subverted, the prevailing Roman story of Caesar’s lordship, going so far a...

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