To begin, I want to be clear on one thing: Though in this post I encourage all pastors to be “scholars”, I am not referring to men with multiple degrees or the priority of doing your graduate work overseas. Rather, a scholar is simply “a learner person” or “a specialist in a given branch of knowledge”. All pastors can and should pursue a reasonable and self-defining level of biblical scholarship. It is without debate that John Calvin is the standard par excellence for the Pastor-Scholar. One author wrote, “As far as John Calvin was concerned, almost nothing was more urgent for the church than the reformation of pastoral ministry. For centuries, most ministers had been shockingly ignorant of the Scriptures and thus ill-equipped to preach the gospel. As Calvin said in one debate with a Catholic cardinal (pretending to defend the Protestant cause before God): “Those who were regarded as the leaders of faith neither understood Thy Word, nor greatly cared for it. They drove...
This blog exists to encourage readers to revisit and learn from the "men of old".