Dr. Paul House has been a pastor and teacher in many contexts for over thirty years. He has also served as president of the Evangelical Theological Society and a member of the Translation Oversight Committee for the English Standard Version Bible. Currently, Dr. House teaches Old Testament and Hebrew at Beeson Divinity School. He is the author of several books, including Bonhoeffer's Seminary Vision: A Call to Costly Discipleship and Life Together.
The following is an edited transcription of an interview that took place via Zoom.
Dr. House, you have written extensively about Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work in theological education. What is it about Bonhoeffer’s approach that captivated your attention?
I was spending time as an academic administrator and teacher at a seminary, and looking for models. In that search I probably read 40 biographies of people that I knew had been involved in seminary work. I was impressed with the following in Bonhoeffer’s work: first, there was a seriousness about theological study. They weren’t dumbing it down; there was a rigor to the studies.
Second, there was a strong emphasis on community worship and face-to-face contact between students and faculty, and students with students, that had been missing in my own seminary experience.
Third, I appreciated his serious ministerial study—what does it mean to preach, what is the church about, and how do you bring that down into things like sermons, catechesis, and pastoral care, with all of it integrated?
A lot of places have one or the other—we’re serious about studies or we’re serious about practice. Bonhoeffer was bringing this all together.
You have written, “Christians must base their work in biblical theology, not in current views of what is pragmatic.” How did Bonhoeffer’s theology shape his seminary vision?
Bonhoeffer’s theology and practice were very integrated to him—he opposed abstraction wherever he could, because it’s in the concrete living that our theology reveals itself. Christology is at the heart of it: who was Jesus Christ? The incarnation was central. God took on humanity, took on human flesh; the Creator is reconciling us to himself and to one another through his redemptive work.
So the incarnation means there must be a lived-out, face-to-face, community-oriented life—real relationships. Life Together talks a lot about that.
When Bonhoeffer wanted to shape seminary students, he really asked at a deeper level, “How did Christ do this?” Cost of Discipleship follows how Jesus called the disciples, shaped them, and sent them into the world. Bonhoeffer’s theology began and ended, really, with God in Christ and what it meant to be face to face with God himself.
And then Bonhoeffer asked a great question—what happens now that Jesus has gone? Well, he’s left his body—you and me and the other Christians. When we’re with one another, we’re truly with Christ.
What shifts in theological education have you observed over the decades? What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of these changes?
Forty years ago, I was making plans to go to seminary. The seminary that I went to was serious about good theological study, and the church paid for tuition; Southern Seminary was free for 3,000 students in 1980.
We went through a period of movement from the church to the academy to independent contractors, entrepreneurs. I find that to be a dehumanizing, depersonalizing trend. I particularly take offense for the sake of young ministers, because they’re on their own.
The question is, can we do serious study, or will we thin it out to just programs and practices? Or if we go merely the academic route, are we going to forget that we’re doing this for the shepherds of sheep? It’s about the people of God.
And with that, of course, the funding shift. The funding had gone from the churches to the GI Bill, now to student loans. You borrowed money for college, and then you’re facing borrowing money again?
We have enough money, I believe, to fund the people who are called to ministry. We don’t have enough money to make up, in seminary classrooms, what the church has refused to do in the way of serious teaching. Everyone’s out chasing enrollment to float the budget. I think we’ve got to be very careful. To have the right kind of support for the right kind of people? That’s inextricable.
You’ve described online education as “nonembodied, impersonal extension work.” How do you suppose Bonhoeffer might critique distance learning programs?
Four words—no body, no church. There is an essential, incarnational factor to Christian work. Extension work, as we’re all learning right now, is a fine emergency tool. As a typical way of doing things, it is not good.
You read the epistles, letters that were sent by Paul, carried by trusted people, who were there when they were opened and explained the contents. Paul, even when he knows it’s unlikely, wants to be with them. And John says things like, “I could say more, but I want to say it face-to-face.”
It’s as nonsensical to talk about disembodied pastoral formation as it is disembodied parenting, disembodied marriage.
Bonhoeffer was against ideologues and legalists. So he would say, look, if online options are available to us, the responsible thing to do is to use these emergency tools and to be grateful that we have them. But to make the emergency tool the norm is a mistake. Bonhoeffer said we need to have common worship. His students met daily for a hymn, two or three chapters of Bible reading, and another hymn.
In the incarnation we find God and man at peace and in fellowship. That gets proven out through our daily home life, it gets played out in our congregation, in our home group, and in our classes. We always start class with Scripture and prayer as a reminder that this is not less than an academic exercise, but it’s not just that.
What is the wreckage of not getting spiritual formation right? All the ministerial problems we’ve had throughout history, and that we have now. We need ministers to last a lifetime, seventy years. Do they have the practices to sustain it?
We are facing a worldwide pandemic, causing financial uncertainty and disrupting our ability to travel or even gather in groups. Yet Bonhoeffer’s various seminary projects unfolded against the backdrop of Nazi Germany. What do you think we can learn from him in our context?
I’m fascinated by how he was operating in 1938, particularly in Gross Schlonwitz. He spoke a great deal then about patient endurance, about getting under the load and walking with it. He had the students do Greek word studies in those subjects. He also talked about endurance and patience being the basis for hope. Unfortunately, a whole lot of his people never made it to 1945 and beyond.
The Gross Schlonwitz church today.
I’m thinking about Bonhoeffer a lot today; April 8th, a Sunday, was his last full day on Earth. The 75th anniversary of his death was this week. So what did he do in jail? When asked by a group, he led a short service, the week after Easter.
Patient endurance is taking care of the responsibilities in front of us.
Evil doesn’t ultimately triumph, though it lasts longer than we want it to. I think of the Gross Schlonwitz church, which I visited this summer. Germany held that ground, and invaded the Soviet Union from there. The Soviets came back through, drove a million Germans out, and oppressed the Polish people there until it was freed. So the patient endurance for that little town lasted about 50 years.
I believe that if we are patient and enduring and carry out the responsibility that God gives us to use our gifts, that will be the solution. We think our solution will be something huge—a vaccine. But the vaccine will probably be found by some researchers faithfully doing their job today, carrying out their responsibility. It will have big implications, but it will come locally, then globally, the way God has set up the world.
Jesus said over and over again, “Do not be afraid.” I take comfort in the fact that my grandparents lived through the Great Depression, through awful wars. Their testimony was, “God is able,” the testimony of Jeremiah and Jesus. We need patient endurance, without acting like there won’t be a cost.
I was just reading an article you wrote about Jeremiah “investing in the ruins.” You concluded, “We can invest in the ruins together. God does not promise us that biblical Christianity will win the day, if winning the day means evangelicals possessing prestige, power and influence. Dietrich Bonhoeffer ended his teaching career instructing eight people in a rural farmhouse, faithfully investing in the ruins. Investing in the ruins testifies that God reigns. The outcome of our labors is not in doubt.”
Jeremiah has been profoundly important to me. There’s this great little vignette in Jeremiah 32 or 33, where he’s got Baruch involved buying land as the Babylonian army besieges Jerusalem. Investing in the ruins.
Bonhoeffer and his students—you’ll notice in pictures, here they are in these outposts, marginal seminaries, and when it’s time to take their going-away pictures, they all dress up. It’s as big a deal as if they’re all graduating from the University of Berlin! It’s a very hopeful, almost heartbreaking thing.
Enduring with patience is the same as enduring with hope and faith, I think.
What do you see as the most hopeful trends for seminary education today?
I think it’s people like you guys, really. It’s also students that I meet who aren’t there because they want to be big denominational operators, or a big platform personality at a mega-church (or even at a small church). Who are saying, along these lines, “If the Lord would provide for me a church, that would hopefully provide for my family, it would be enough. It doesn’t have to make us rich; it doesn’t have to make us famous.” What they’d like to do is take care of God’s people the way they’ve been cared for.
It’s the humility; it’s the teachable spirit. These are Jeremiah 45 people. “Do you seek great things for yourselves? Seek them not.” They’re Baruch-types, Jeremiah-types, Christ-types. I’m encouraged by that.
When you invest in the ruins, you find the people that are there.
There’s nothing particularly holy about something being small or big. What encourages me about what you all are doing, is that you have churches wanting this to happen and supporting it, people who are willing to come alongside of it. Historically, in the history of seminaries, has sometimes it sunk to one student? Yes. Are there brothers and sisters around the world who are laboring under worse conditions? Yes. It’s not easy. I would just encourage you to do the right thing out of love.
Image credits: Paul House
Catherine Morgan serves behind the scenes at Tennent. She is the author of Thirty Thousand Days and Sparrow: Cultivating a Sabbatical Heart.