truth, goodness, and beauty
[Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Bullinger’s Decades and have been lightly adapted.]
It’s common to hear those who love classical education talk about truth, goodness, and beauty. Sometimes this is connected with a historic understanding of the soul (ontology), often not. But the value of these categories is they help us consider a whole-soul evaluation of whether or not something is correct, right, or valuable. Truth deals with our minds or how we think, goodness with our will or our choices, and beauty with our affections or emotions. Focusing only on truth vs falsehood is a truncated way of looking at the world, functionally sub-human. Truth is tremendously valuable, but it’s not a full enough evaluative tool. We need more than just a focus on ‘is it true or not?’.
Too often our evaluations of local churches are based on doctrinal particularities, is what they believe true or lining up with what we believe. For those who want a serious church, truth is often the highest category in looking at church. And it is a good category. Churches that teach what is false are dangerous to our souls. But Bullinger’s sermon on ministry and ministers helps us consider the church from more than just a bare ‘is it true?’ sort of analysis.
The church of God is built and preserved by the word of God, and that, through ministers appointed for that purpose by the Lord. The ministry of the church reaches out both to provoke and to maintain public prayers and the administration of the sacraments, and it is particularly occupied with the preaching of the word of God.
This is what’s central to a church: does it preach the word faithfully and administer the sacraments rightly? Is this what the ministers (in our day we usually call them pastors) of a particular church are focused on? Is prayer central in the church or just an accessory? The office of deacon was established in Acts 6 for precisely this reason, to help pastors focus on prayer and the ministry of the word. Thus this is what should be the focus of the whole church as well.
The truth of scripture, that pastors are to prioritize prayer, ministry of the word, and care for the flock, leads to them doing, that is, focusing on those responsibilities in the flock and choosing them at the expense of other perhaps necessary but sub-biblical priorities. That in turn leads to the church to grow and flourish, like a luxuriant vine, because she is connected fully to the branch. True belief goes hand in hand with right choice and thus action and beautiful result. Think the godly in Psalm 1 or Psalm 92. Or the depiction of the early church in the first few chapters of Acts. Truth, goodness, and beauty. They go together. Especially in how we think about and what we choose in Christ’s church.
That’s what the church is and does. Who leads the church?
Pastors watch over the Lord’s flock, having care of the Lord’s people, feeding the church with the word of Truth, and keeping the wolves away from the sheepfolds. The chief of these is the good Shepherd, Christ, who said to Peter, ‘Feed my sheep;’ he also joins himself to the rank of shepherds.
Pastors take their example from Christ our Savior. They care for the Lord’s flock, not their own private preserve. They feed the church, sacrificially, rather than feeding themselves at the neglect of the flock. They protect the flock from those who would harm her, rather than through malice or incompetence allowing the sheep to be mauled by predators. And they do so because that’s precisely what our Chief Shepherd has done for us. John Owen’s True Nature of a Gospel Church has one of my favourite Puritan descriptions of pastoral ministry, and he spends quite a while exploring how Jesus’ model as shepherd ought to inform our practice as pastors (you can find a modernized version of Owen’s book in the UK here or in the US here – highly recommend).
Think of Jesus’ reinstatement of Peter after the resurrection. Out of all that Jesus could have spoken about with Peter, what did he focus on? Feed my lambs. What was Jesus’ warning about what would happen at his arrest? ‘Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.’ So his call to Peter was to care for the sheep. He’d fled before. Now, be strong. Tend my lambs. For those of us who are pastors, this responsibility should sit on us far more heavily than it often does…
And the other roles within the church?
We also need to talk about the other officers of the church. There is much speech in the scriptures about deacons, and among ecclesiastical writers, about priests. In the early church the care of the poor was committed to deacons, as it is plainly gathered out of the sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. There are also laws which we see prescribed to them by the apostle in 1 Timothy 3. The office of deacons was separated from the function of pastors; and therefore we do not reckon them in the order of pastors. The ancient fathers referred them to the ministry, but not to the priesthood. We also read that women, not married but widows, ministered in the early church; among others was Phoebe, of the church of Cencrea, highly praised of the apostle and well known. But he forbids women to teach or to take public office in the church. How therefore or in what ways did women minister in the church? Undoubtedly, they ministered to the poor in duties particularly dealing with women. They ministered to the sick, and with Martha, Christ’s hostess, they with great care and diligence cherished the members of Christ.
Scripture is abundantly clear that the office of pastor is reserved for character-qualified and gifted men. That has been far too much of a battleground in the last couple generations, particularly when the battles have been in Reformed denominations. Enough arguing. Scripture is clear on this issue. Let us all submit ourselves to it and obey it.
But then, once we’ve nailed down these principles from scripture, we’re left with the task of applying them. Figuring out who is suitable for ministry is frankly the easy part. How do we then call the whole body, both men and women, to the responsibilities that scripture gives them. In the theologically conservative (ie biblical) circles in which I run, I think we can often focus more on what women can’t do in the church than on what scripture says they ought to do. Bullinger helps us remember what scripture says women are to do in the church. His focus on the role of widows in the early church has ample application to women who are married and have children, as do the rest of the instructions in the pastoral epistles. Another resource I’d highly recommend is Stephen B Clark’s Man and Woman in Christ (UK and US). His discussion on the role of women in the early church is superb, and for those of us who are trying to recover a doctrine of male headship in our churches, a needed encouragement to also consider how we utilize the women God has entrusted to our care as well. Again, are we focusing not only on what is true, but also why it’s good and beautiful? It takes more work to make a house useful and attractive than it does to construct only a solid but bare shell. But the result is far better. And much longer lasting.
There’s even a discussion of pastoral interns in Bullinger’s sermon. That was a surprise to me. He was talking about how all the various ranks of door-keepers and readers came to exist within the medieval church. These would have originally been students of the church, those given practical responsibilities while they were still learning about the weightier spiritual matters of the church. Bullinger’s defence of pastoral training within the church is beautiful; even more is it worth emulating today.
In times past, students or candidates in theology (who are the Lord’s inheritance and who belong to the Lord) were called clerks. These are the very seed of pastors of the church, and many were later consecrated to take over for others in the ministry of the church. These lived under the authority of the church, were trained up by the doctors and elders in the study of the liberal sciences and holy scriptures. This institution is ancient, not new, nor is it invented by man… The most excellent churches have always had famous schools, even from the time of the apostles, as Eusebius often witnesses.
But a focus on truth, goodness, and beauty also requires us to examine what’s false, what’s evil, and what’s ugly. And this is where so many Christians and especially pastors within Reformed churches really have hangups. What was the buzzword a decade ago? Winsome… Granted, we all know circles or individuals who are far too obsessed with decrying this, that, and the other. I wrote about Tigger syndrome last week, the ‘I’m the only faithful one’ mindset. Those who are incapable of building and can only lob grenades at others who have built something. Those who have no real responsibility or care for souls, and who can only point out the supposed failures of others. But if we’re honest with ourselves, that’s not most of us. And that excess is all too often a convenient excuse for us to avoid the hard and necessary work of exposing what is false, wicked, and ugly.
Bullinger reminds us that feeding the flock necessarily requires us to fend off the wolves.
Therefore, since we know that Christ himself, the Son of God, reigns even now in the church as the only one to whom all glory and power is given, and he has not substituted any man on earth in whom he will be worshipped and served, we worship and serve Christ Jesus, the Son of God, alone, and we utterly abhor the pope as antichrist and a dunghill god, or if you will, a god of the outhouse, together with his sacrilegious clawbacks and blasphemous flatterers.
Granted, the Reformers went after Roman Catholicism with a ferocity few in our day would feel courageous enough to emulate, but they did so out of a love for the truth, goodness, and beauty of Christ’s bride. They also did so in defence of the flock, out of a desire to care for Christ’s tender lambs. Are we so consumed with the care for Jesus’ sheep that we’re willing to do the hard work of learning right theology so we can distinguish truth from error? That we can discern between good grass and poison? Whether the waters by which they seek to rest are shallow enough for them to drink safely or if they’ll be drowned? That we can see ahead whether or not influences coming at our sheep are predatory and would lead to their destruction? Failing to do this work is to show ourselves hirelings rather than true shepherds of the sheep.
In all this, we remember the emphasis with which Bullinger began his sermon and to which he returns in its close, Christ preserves his church. He uses us in this work today, he uses us to care for the flock and point it to what’s true, what’s good, and what’s beautiful. But he is the one ultimately guiding and directing the church.
We’re not on our own. We’re serving under the authority of our Chief Shepherd. What a hope, and what a reason for us to be faithful today.
Next, on the ministers of the word of God, their keys and their office
