The Benedict Option versus Redeemer Presbyterian Church (NYC) is a wrestling match this writer would pay to see. Which side has the greater strength either of argument or piety than the other? To leave the mainstream culture because it is hostile to Christians passing on their faith or not to stay merely but take the mainstream culture captive for Christ is a binary that in 2022 looks like a closer match-up than it might have say before Mike Brown’s death in Ferguson, Mo. and co-eds at Yale University worried about Halloween costumes.
However the managers and agents come out on where to stage this slugfest, Presbyterians may have trouble identifying where their rooting interest lies precisely. The problem is a commitment to a “learned ministry.” Presbyterians, ever since their origins in the sixteenth century, have picked up right where the classical, medieval, and Renaissance worlds left them. Knowledge of the liberal arts, biblical languages, systematic theology and its adjacent field of philosophy, church history, and more – these were all subjects that presbyteries and assemblies expected pastors to have studied before they could assume the responsibilities of word and sacrament.
Townsend P. Levitt | “The Dilemma of Presbyterian Culture” | Nicotine Theological Journal, 16.3 (Summer 2022), 4‐5.
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