The Pastor as Public Theologian Quotes

“To get a doctorate, you need only have a modicum of intelligence and the ability to grind it out. I’m afraid you may only be qualified to be an academic, not a pastor. Ministry is a lot harder than scholarship.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Right worship, the kind that is pleasing to God, acknowledges the grace that is in Jesus Christ not only with our lips but also with our lives. Christ’s own sacrifice makes possible the right kind of offering and proper worship: the sacrifice of the whole of our lives, a thanksgiving existence that proceeds from a mood of gratitude. Worship”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Jesus is a person, not a proposition; however, language is the means the Spirit uses to enable the gospel to become the all-encompassing framework that allows disciples not only to think but also to situate themselves in relation to the truth, goodness, and beauty of what is in Christ.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“As Søren Kierkegaard says in the opening pages of The Sickness unto Death (the sickness in question is despair): “Everything essentially Christian must have in its presentation a resemblance to the way a physician speaks at the sickbed.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Stanley Woodworth, my high school French teacher, once described the peculiar passion for his own vocation in the following terms: “The joy of teaching lies not in one’s own enthusiasm for the students, or even for the subject matter, but rather for the privilege of introducing the one to the other.” If this is true of French, chemistry, or history, how much more is it true of the pastor’s passion, which is not simply love of God or love of people, but rather the love of introducing the one (people) to the other (God)? The pastor’s special charge is to care for the people of God by speaking and showing and by being and doing God’s truth and love. Success in ministry is determined not by numbers (e.g., people, programs, dollars) but by the increase of people’s knowledge and love of God. This is the only way “to present everyone mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28).”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Here is the central paradox: the pastor is a public figure who must make himself nothing, who must speak not to attract attention to himself but rather to point away from himself—unlike most contemporary celebrities. The pastor must make truth claims to win people not to his own way of thinking but to God’s way. The pastor must succeed, not by increasing his own social status but, if need be, by decreasing it.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Chrysostom at length expressed the need for the overseer of God’s people to preach true doctrine and refute false teaching:”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“(…) a cultura é o software de uma sociedade, um programa para cultivar a humanidade e dar forma à sua liberdade. (p. 154)”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Para ministrar a palavra de Deus, os pastores-teólogos precisam ler não só a Bíblia, mas também o mundo ao qual a Palavra de Deus é dirigida, o mundo em que ela deve estabelecer e ser aplicada. (p. 153-4)”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“O conhecimento bíblico é necessário para que os cristãos compreendam sua identidade em Cristo (i.e., o que significa ser santo) e para que sejam melhores cidadãos do céu aqui na Terra (Ef 2.19; Fp 3.20). p. 152”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Public theology is first and foremost a reaction against the tendency to privatize the faith, restricting it to the question of an individual’s salvation. As we shall see in later chapters, the church is not a collection of saved individuals but the culmination of the plan of salvation: to create a people of God.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“The call to self-emptying will always be unpopular to those whose pockets and closets are full. What”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Pastor-theologians should not have to choose between a “social” and a “spiritual” gospel, for there is only one gospel (Gal. 1:6–7), “an eternal gospel” that concerns the heavens and the earth (Rev. 14:6). The”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Pastor-theologians exist to embody the evangelical mood, an indicative declaration (“He is risen! He is Lord!”) and a concomitant way of being that is attuned to the world as already-not-yet made new in Jesus Christ.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Spend your death on living.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“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.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“It is vitally important not to confuse the is of what is in Christ with as if. That we have been raised with Christ presents us with an eschatological indicative: something that states what is already but not yet fully the case. Disciples really do enjoy union with Christ already, thanks to the indwelling Holy Spirit, even though they have not yet attained to the full measure of Christlikeness. Doctrine that sets forth what is in Christ requires a robust eschatological imagining, a faith-based seeing that perceives what is not yet complete—our salvation—as already finished, because of our union with Christ. It is a matter of seeing what is present-partial as future-perfect. Theologians minister this eschatological reality, the truth of being-in-Christ. Everything depends on getting this point right. We can attain wisdom only if we live along the created and re-created grain of reality. Theologians set forth in speech what is in Christ and therefore say how things are. The eschatological is raises the question of the nature of reality. Indicative statements in the past and present refer to what was and is. That works well for most kinds of ordinary things and events (I’m not sure about quantum physics). However, the gospel concerns not ousia (being in general) but parousia (the new reality that is coming into being in the person of Christ). The ministry of the reality of what is in Christ requires the further ministry of helping people grasp that reality. It is to that aspect of ministering the gospel that we now turn.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“On the Day of Atonement, the Levites performed the central sacrificial rites of the believing community, stewarding annual ceremonies that in graphic detail pictured the evil nature of sin and the bloody nature of divinely provided atonement for sin. The Day of Atonement was a visceral affair, filled with blood and fire and death and, at the pulsing core of it all, the realized hope of forgiveness through repentance. The people could be pure.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“Pastor-theologians know something that others do not know, and they know it because the Bible tells them so. To be instructed by the Spirit in the school of the Scriptures is to be, as Peter and John had been, “with Jesus.” What pastor-theologians know is something quite particular (what God was doing in Christ) but has enormous, even universal, implications.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“The church is wherever the people of God—the public of Jesus Christ—live out their faith and fellowship in the Triune God. This is public theology: children of light being “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14), bringing to light “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages” (Eph. 3:9), namely, “to unite all things in [Christ]” (Eph. 1:9–10). In Newbigin’s words: “This koinōnia is indeed the very being of the Church as a sign, instrument, and foretaste of what God purposes for the whole human family.”[67] The church, as public spire, is the vanguard of the realization of this plan. As such, the church is the public truth of Jesus Christ, and not only truth, but also the public goodness and public beauty of God’s plan of redemption.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision

“The basic gist: theology has been more or less banished from Jerusalem. Theology is in exile and, as a result, the knowledge of God is in ecclesial eclipse. The promised land, the gathered people of God, has consequently come to resemble a parched land: a land of wasted opportunities that no longer cultivates disciples as it did in the past.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision