Recently, I was referencing Daniel Doriani’s commentary on James again. I have reviewed his commentary previously, and it is very good. He has a lot of pastoral wisdom, as seen by the following excerpt.
Here, Doriani exposes the tendencies of pastors or other teachers, to be too professional with the Bible in their own lives. His thoughts are worthy of reflection, which is why I’m sharing them with you here: Let me know what you think and if you agree that he strikes a nerve.
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…This seems obvious, but pastors and seminarians are prone to professionalize their use of Scripture, to read it to help every soul but their own. Let me offer a typology of the ways pastors can read Scripture.
When he is a new Christian, the future pastor’s reading is naïve and devotional. He devours Scripture, underlining virtually every word in his new Bible, feeling that God speaks directly to him with every word.
After a few years, the budding leader’s reading becomes sophisticated and devotional. He still feels that God is speaking to him in the text, but he has learned to read texts in their contexts. He reads Bible dictionaries and commentaries. He knows the translation strategies of various Bible versions and begins to use that knowledge to get at the original text.
The future pastor decides to go to seminary, where he becomes a technical reader. He reads Greek and Hebrew; he consults scholarly sources. He respects the distance between his world and that of biblical thought. His zeal to describe biblical history, culture, and language grows. He pursues what the word originally meant and perhaps neglects what it means today.
As ordination comes, our friend remembers that his study has, as its goal, the edification of the church. He continues to read technically, but now he shares his findings with the church. He becomes a technical-functional reader. His reading may be detached, personally speaking, but he stores and organizes his discoveries so he can offer them to others. While this phase may mark a partial improvement, he does not directly profit from his reading of Scripture.
He needs therefore to become a technical, devotional reader. Every technical skill remains, but he reads like a child, letting the word speak directly to his heart again. He gains what Paul Ricoeur calls a “second naiveté.” He is both technically astute and meek. He both receives God’s word and expounds it. In this way, he finds strength to endure trials and to check the growth of sin.
[pg. 50-51, James (Reformed Expository Commentary) from P&R Publishing]