I don't agree with having to go to college at all to be a pastor or a rabbi or a christian school. To many people in todays world look up to pastors and etc for answers of the truths which are misinterpreted and passed down over tradition. I am not saying sunday churches are useless and dont serve a purpose. But that nobody can be more qualified to lead a church than what God ordains. Where in the bible did God send the apostles to college to learn how to teach the word? Jesus taught the apostles to go and make disciples not open up a college teaching the word.
today most of people beliefs are based upon:
.what "my" pastor said
."These people are biblical scholars, they know what they are talking about!"
. This is the church i grew up in
.
We do not need a church curriculum over the Word of God. The biggest problem is due to education purposes we have sought to send our children to the best teachers we can find to teach us stuff. But doing so it has crept into the church. Would you want someone who went to college to learn about God teaching your children or family the word if he is not truly saved and filled with the holy spirit. i just dont agree with havibng to go to college to learn how to teach the bible to other people.
If I walk up to someone who is entirely unfamiliar with Christianity, hand them a Bible, do you really think they'll--just from reading the Bible without any guidance or instruction--be able to actually believe and confess the Christian faith?
I don't. I don't think they'd know right from left reading the Bible. And that's because our Lord Jesus Christ did not come down to earth and write a book, and then give people a book to read. Our Lord Jesus Christ came down and actively taught to crowds, called together disciples to hear Him that He instructed and guided. Then He told those same disciples to go forth making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them on all that our Lord has said.
Jesus taught people. Then He sent those disciples out to make more disciples. Those disciples met together for sacred purpose, and these communities of disciples continued to grow and expand across the Mediterranean. In order to manage the churches, those same disciples-become-apostles called by Jesus called and ordained people to stand in to oversee the communities, these
episkopoi along with the elders, the presbyteroi, served as shepherds, pastors, of Christ's own flock. To minister to the Church in Christ's name, through the authority of Christ which He gave to His apostles and for the whole Church; to do this by being preachers of the Gospel, and instructors in God's righteous commands, by the service of the sacred seals and works of God given by God--called
sacramenta in Latin. Such as the administration of Christ's Holy Supper: the shared communion and agape of the Church gathered together.
And in these believing apostolic communities, from the frontier provinces in the East all the way to the heart of the Roman Empire, lived together, they worshiped together, they believed together, and they suffered together. And in the midst of this, those whom the Lord had taught, or those later called, took advantage of the Roman system of roadways and boatways; not only to travel across great distances in shorter time, but also because of the relatively quick mobility of information through the sending of letters. St. Paul, to the Church in Ephesus, St. Paul to the Church in Rome. They also took care to write down the very story they bore witness to and experienced, and some other works in due time.
The Jews heard the Scriptures read in the synagogue every Sabbath, so also these early Christians when they began to meet together for their worship followed Jewish liturgical practice with readings from the Scriptures. There was not, as of that time, so much as a well defined Jewish Biblical Canon as there was an emerging consensus among Pharisaic Jews as to what constitutes "The Scriptures", with the Torah and Prophets well defined, but the third category of miscellaneous works or "Writings", was still fluid. Even still, there did exist at the time a ready-set Jewish "Bible" already in the common language, the Septuagint.
In addition to these received Scriptures inherited from Judaism, these early communities also began to include readings from the letters circulating from the Apostles, as well as from the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. How these began to enter into regular readings isn't entirely clear, but possibly it began as these letters were already being cycled around. Some of the New Testament epistles are intentionally written to groups of churches, such as the Epistle to the Galatians which is addressed to all the churches in the province of Galatia. Even letters to specific churches, such as those to the Romans and the Corinthians would have been passed around, cycled through the churches, and most importantly, being copied by hand. These hand-copied writings then slowly entered into the regular readings of the assembled worship. And a growing consensus began to emerge that some of these apostolic and near-apostolic writings were as deserving of the recognition of being called Scripture as the time-honored writings of the Law, Prophets, and the Psalms.
It isn't entirely clear when exactly, but by the mid of the 2nd century we can be quite confident that there was already a proto-New Testament, consisting of the books of the Homolegoumena (the Four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, 1 Peter, and 1 John). Both the Old and New Testament Canons were debated, discussed, but even still with time a continuing, growing consensus eventually did arise, eventually nearly everywhere (hence the 27 books of the New Testament today), while the Old Testament would remain a more complicated subject even into our own times.
The Scriptures and the Church exist together, one doesn't exist without the other. The Scriptures govern the Church, but it is among the responsibilities and duties of the Church to carry the Scriptures, that means to carry the Scriptures in their transmission, as well as to teaching, expositing, etc. We would be helplessly lost without the guidance of the last two thousand years of Christian life and teaching. I wouldn't even have a Bible to read without that guidance, teaching, and practice--because without someone to receive and transmit a select group of works, then copy and later print copies of those writings, confessing and reading those writings; and then someone there to at least put a Bible in my hand, I couldn't have a Bible in the first place.
Christianity is not "just the Bible". And we can't treat it like it is. The Bible is within Christianity, it is vouchsafed within the people of God to whom the word of God has been entrusted, both in the precious teaching of the apostles, and as retained in the sacred words of the Scriptures.
That is why seminaries exist.
And that's why we don't say the Apostles had no seminary training, but that they had the best seminary training. The Apostles got a doctorate in about three years from the Greatest Rabbi Himself.
-CryptoLutheran