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Professional Christians and monasticism
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:date: 2015-01-16T11:09:57
:category: faith
:tags: church
We had on Tuesday very interesting debate during our regular
Theology on Tap about postmodern apologetics. During the heat of
discussion I passionately argued against the very idea of
professional Christianity without regards that at least one but
probably more professional Christians were sitting at the table.
I certainly didn’t want to offend anybody and I very much like
and value work done by at least one such person, so I should
probably explain more what I think about the idea of professional
Christians.
First of all, whatever else I think theoretically we have to take
into consideration current reality. If there ever was
Christianity based on the authentic intentional communities (or
whatever is the current trendy name) and I am certainly not
persuaded about that (see below), then it had to be very much
limited temporarily or locally. Puritans in the Early New
England, kibbutzim in Israel, Jerusalem congregation in the time
of the Acts of Apostles, some early monastic communities, and of
course many village communities, would be just part of the
authentic community maintaining itself and pastor was there truly
just to serve The Word and Sacraments (as is still the job
description of many pastors in Czechia). But I cannot imagine
that large communities in rather anonymous cities (trend which
I guess started already with the Roman congregation) could be
sustained without some ministers working full-time on the
organization of the congregation. Even less I could imagine
something like that in the modern and postmodern cities, where
churches are almost the only close community around. I can see
all ministers truly busy and it is hard to imagine that even
small congregation like PCF would work without a full-time
pastor.
However, there is yet another category of Christian ministers who
I think are very valuable for the life of the church. From the
five-fold ministries (Eph 4:11; apostles, prophets, evangelists,
pastors, and teachers) I can see at least teachers and pastors
(meaning organizers of congregations) as very naturally being
professionals. I know something about scholarly life and I know
that it is almost impossible to do really deep thinking and still
be bothered with something else (life and family are more than
enough). I would think that apostles and evangelists will be in
similar positions, although Paul managed his business in the same
time while being a Saint Paul. We don’t know much about the
sources of income of other apostles … Peter most likely didn’t
carry his nets around the Mediterranean sea, and I don’t know if
my namesake St. Matthias carried on job of a carpenter.
When thinking about this I was suddenly struck by the similarity
of current ministers (missionaries, teachers, Bible translators,
etc.) living of universities or other NGOs and medieval monks.
Both of them are typical professional Christians and both of them
are doing work essential for maintaining Church working. And it
is strange, but at least in the Czech lands, sharp decline of the
importance of monastic orders (during the reign of Joseph II in
the late 18th century) was time of sharp rise of the universities
as the predominant place of the intellectual life. Actually few
first important modern scientists, for example, Dobner,
Dobrovský, and Bolzano were monks. If we accept this analogy, it
is suddenly somehow strange that especially Protestants have no
problem with all those people who are working in not completely
ultra-practical professions, considering ultra-vicious criticism
of monasticism by the original Reformers.
But what is even more important for me is that using this image,
I can suddenly see myself in the position of a medieval
bourgeoisie who is passionately arguing against wasteful monks
(see for example The Cantebury Tales). However, there is
a difference between monks then and professional Christians now.
Then, most of their audience (Christian AND non-Christian) was to
some extent religious, so I guess they very more or less willing
to accept a religious figure as an authority.
Hmm, … I started to write something about the limited role of
professional ministers on the current secular culture, but I was
not able to finish it in the coherent thought. I started to think
about the role of the pastor John Mullen has on his surroundings,
and I can clearly see that he has managed to get a lot of impact
with his Úvaly neighbors although he obviously cannot represent
to them anything else than a religious figure. Perhaps we here in
Czechia are so post-post-religious and post-secularist than
honestly behaving religious person not trying to hide it is
acceptable. Or perhaps it is not about religiosity at all and the
difference between the situation of the postmodern Church in
America and here is that obviously most of the Church in Europe
(and especially in Czechia) has no secular power and quite
obviously it is not threatening to anybody (compare with the
discussion about restitution of the Church property which is
quite vicious … John probably profits a bit on the fact we won’t
get anything).
So this post doesn’t have proper exhortation in the end.
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