Head or Heart?
Is the teaching plan too academic?
In 'The teaching program of the local church in an age of Biblical illiteracy', and in 'An example of a possible four year plan,' we have argued the need for:
- long range planning - four years or more
- consecutive teaching through complete books
- dividing up passages according to the units of thought of the original, and
- working 'top down,' from Bible to book to individual message
One of the main criticisms that has been leveled against this approach is that it is all head and no heart - it is too academic: it turns the local church into a Bible college, and substitutes an academic curriculum for a church program. What people need, it is said, is not this kind of highly structured teaching program Rather, they need to encounter the living God, and to worship him.
At one level, this comment is not (or should not be) controversial: of course people need to meet with God, to worship him, to hear him speak and to be equipped to live for him.
However, at another level, this comment is seriously misguided, because it sets up an opposition between head and heart - between encountering God and being taught what God has said in his Word. But this is a false opposition. The historic Christian position has always been that we encounter God precisely through hearing what he says in his Word. Head and heart are not opposed to each other: they are together, different aspects of our total human response to God and his truth.
This was the position of the Reformers. It was the position of the early Church Fathers, and it was the position of the Bible itself. (Examples)
If you take the criticism to its logical conclusion, it is really saying that we do not need to teach people what God has said in his Word at all. It is enough for them to have some kind of existential encounter with God.
If there is one thing we can learn from history, it is that where people open themselves up to existential encounters with God without the checks and balances of his revealed Word, this will lead them into all kinds of wrong beliefs and, before long, into all kinds of wrong actions.
While it is important for people to meet with God, the primary way that they do this is through his Word, taught in a way that connects with our minds, rather than bypassing our minds, and in a way that lines up with how God originally gave his Word to us.
Examples from the Bible
1. Luke chapter 24 verses 44-45
He said to them, 'This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.' Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
Jesus has just risen from the dead. If ever there was a time when his followers would have benefited from an existential encounter with him, without the need for Biblical content, this was surely it. But Jesus did not just tell his followers, 'come and have an existential encounter with me.' Rather, he focused their thoughts on the Bible. He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
2. 2 Timothy chapter 2 verses 2
Paul writes to Timothy:
And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.
Paul did not just say to Timothy, 'help people to have existential encounters with Christ.' He did not even say 'find reliable men who will be able to help people to have existential encounters with Christ.' He said, 'pass on the content of the teaching to reliable men who will be qualified to teach others.'
There are many other Biblical examples, but these two should be enough to show that the Bible itself will not let us falsely prioritize heart over head in the way described above.