What do you want your Pastor to be an expert in?
The past? The present? Or the future?
A little bit of all three?
Do you want him to specialize in proclaiming sound truth?
Or do you want him to be the best at refuting error?
Most people probably want a good bit of both.
I recently received some advice in this area from Horatius Bonar. Horatius lived from 1808-1889. The advice came from something he wrote about refuting his day’s Rob Bell. In the last sentence below, he mentions refuting error from Cain to Colenso. Cain we know, but who is Colenso? J.W. Colenso was the Rob Bell of the late 1800s. He was an Anglican Bishop who wrote a commentary on Romans denying Hell and questioning the validity of penal substitutionary atonement. I find Horatius Bonar’s approach to relevance in the contemporary age completely relevant.
Some well-meaning theological literateurs, or rather amateur theologians, who patronize religion in their own way, are fain to warn us of the danger of not “keeping abreast of the age,” as if we were imperilling Christianity by not being quite so learned in modern speculations as they are. We should like, certainly, to “keep abreast” of all that is true and good, either in this age or any other; but as to doing more than that, or singling out this age as being pre-eminently worthy of being kept abreast of, we hesitate.
To be “up to” all the errors, fallacies, speculations, fancies, mis-criticisms of the age, would be an achievement of no mean kind; and to require us to be “up to” all this under threat of endangering Christianity, or betraying the Bible, is an exaction which could only be made by men who think that religion is much beholden to them for their condescending patronage; and will be accepted by men who are timid about the stability of the cross of Christ if left unpropped by human wisdom; and who, besides, happen to have three or four lifetimes to spare. We may be in a condition for believing, and even defending the Bible, without have mastered the whole deistical literature of the last century or the present. We may be qualified to accept the doctrine of sacrificial substitution even though we are not “up to” all that has been spoken against it from Cain to Colenso.