Inadvertently, the TGC/T4G world discipled an entire generation of men toward prideful over-confidence, the absence of epistemic humility, and the assumption of pastoral omnicompetence. The DeYoung/Kwon/Thompson discourse is putting this on display. It’s sad to watch.
This is one of the reasons why the discussions about social issues now creates great divisiveness. Instead of the posture being, “these are difficult questions & we don’t know the answers.” The posture is: “a pastor is going to resolve complexity into certainty in 5-10 points.”
My ethics prof at Covenant Sem, David Jones, read about social issues for 27 years before he wrote his 1st book on them for a broader audience. Why? In part, epistemic humility. The more you read on a subject the more you realize how much you don’t know. wng.org/sift/david-cly…
That’s not the culture TGC created. The culture is, “here’s the right way to think about X or Y. We have the people with superior mental capacity to address complex questions of theological ethics in a few bullet points.” This is over-confidence folks. DeYoung on race shows this.
Humility is not the culture of conservative/Reformed evangelicalism today. The willingness to say, “we could be wrong about a lot of things” or “there’s a lot we don’t know.” Where’s that posture? Pastors can’t read three books and become experts. It’s an unfair expectation.
Where is the encouragement to consider the real possibility that one could be wrong—with the need to listen first, reflect for 10 years, read a few 1000 pages, & then offer an opinion on matters of prudential judgment on social issues? Who are the ethicists? Where’s the nuance?
The urgency for certainty, errant teachings on the meaning of the sufficiency of Scripture, the propping of anointed spokesman, etc. has inadvertently led people to believe they you can arm-chair/blog your way through theological ethics. The DeYoung/Kwon/Thompson displays this.
Certainty, certainty, certainty! This is birthplace of the type of hubris that feeds the tribalism that only reads books by people with whom you already agree; & instead of reading X on your own, you want the right person to tell you what to think about X. It’s anti-intellectual.
Thomas Sowell has a great book about the arrogance of academics and I’m sad to say that he could easily write the same book about an originally designed pastor-only world that addresses tough social questions. It would be called, “Pastors & Society.” amazon.com/dp/0465025226/…
It’s the culture that produced Owen Stratchan-types who are now making egregious and ridiculous claims about the work of Jarvis Williams. Or DeYoung on Kwon/Thompson on race. It’s why CRT was such a nuclear bomb for PCA, SBC, etc. Here we are…
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