On Ministers and Magistrates
Why Marketplace Leaders Should Study Theology
With gratitude to the faculty and staff of Westminster Theological Seminary. You conferred more than a degree. You imparted wisdom to carry into the Monday-to-Friday.
The Question Beneath the Work
Between startups, the thought struck me.
For two years, bound by non-compete and non-solicitation, I had no pitch deck, no product roadmap, and no board. For the first time in a long time, I had time. And in that time, a question surfaced that decades as an entrepreneur had never allowed me to ask. I grew up in the church. I had read widely in theology, philosophy, and technology. I had served in the Marines, built companies, and even helped plant a church. But none of it was enough. The questions about the Monday to Friday, questions about purpose, meaning, vocation, and the anthropology of what it means to be made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27), had no adequate answer in anything my professional formation had given me.
Those questions led me to study at Westminster Theological Seminary. Though I enrolled expecting to study Scripture and theology, what I encountered was not just theology but wisdom of a different category altogether. Calvin opens the Institutes with it: "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves." This wisdom is not akin to the philosopher’s ascent out of Plato’s cave. It is God’s descent into ours. It is relational and revelatory. The fear of the Lord is more than a preamble to wisdom; it is wisdom’s substance. Philosophy asks what the good life looks like. Theology asks who made it and why. At Westminster I began to see the world as God has ordered it, not as I had imagined it. The hard questions concerning Monday-to-Friday finally had a place to land.
At the master’s level, Westminster Theological Seminary offers four degrees. The MDiv forms the minister, called to Word, sacrament, and pastoral care. The MAR prepares the scholar heading toward doctoral work. The MAC equips the counselor. All three are well understood, each carrying obvious dignity within its calling. Then there is the MATS, the Master of Arts in Theological Studies, most often regarded as the degree for laypersons seeking personal enrichment. This is my read, not Westminster's. But I will make the case. The MATS is for the formation of magistrates, those entrusted with leadership in every sphere of civil and marketplace life. This instinct goes back to Geneva and before.
What Geneva Had in Mind
The vision of the Geneva Academy that John Calvin founded in 1559 extended well beyond the pulpit. The academy set out to form the whole leadership class of a Christian society, ministers, scholars, and magistrates alike. The law faculty, established by 1565 at the magistrates’ own urging, brought civic formation alongside theological formation under the same roof. Calvin had already settled the question in the Institutes: “civil authority is, in the sight of God, not only sacred and lawful, but the most sacred, and by far the most honourable, of all callings.” The magistrate’s office was a sacred vocation, recognized as such by God himself. And sacred vocations demand formation through the study of sacred Scriptures.
Subsequently, Calvin appointed Theodore Beza, a man with legal training, classical learning, and theological depth, as the Academy’s first rector. For forty years Beza was the soul of the institution. Both magistrates and pastors sought his counsel. He later founded the law faculty and brought the finest jurists in Europe to its lecterns. And under his leadership it became a place where the minister and the magistrate sat under the same tradition, formed by the same Word, accountable to the same Lord. In 1574 Beza published On the Rights of the Magistrate. The argument was simple and consistent with Calvin’s: the magistrate governs under God, is accountable to God, and answers to God before he answers to anyone else.
The Word Itself
Though I am pressing the word further, it remains consistent with the Genevan intuition. The meaning runs deeper. It is rooted in the origin of the word itself. The Latin magister means chief and director. Over the centuries, the word carried gravitas. Built on magis, the comparative of magnus, it names the one who stands at the head, sets the direction, and leads. Rome applied it to the dictator and the schoolmaster alike; the medieval university made it the Magister Artium, and the mechanical arts tradition placed it at the top of the three-tier ladder: apprentice, journeyman, master, where the master bore accountability for the next generation's formation.
Every leader begins as a follower. Over time, he learns, earns, and advances. And then one day he crosses a threshold. That crossing is the making of a magister. He is no longer accountable only upward. He is accountable downward, to the people whose formation is now in his hands. What he does with that responsibility shapes the people around him, the institutions he builds, and the generation that follows. Formation, passed on, becomes culture. For the magistrate, the shaping of a culture is one of the most consequential things he will ever leave behind.
No word in the English language quite carries what magister carries. Leadership comes close but falls short. Executive comes closer but still misses. The executive holds delegated authority, and his accountability runs horizontally and contractually. He answers to the board, the shareholders, the organization. The magister answers to God. His authority flows downward from the Creator, and his accountability runs upward before it runs anywhere else. An executive can be hired and fired. A magister carries his covenant into every room he enters, whether the boardroom, the lab, or the clinic. That is the calling and the Genevan intuition.
The magister formed by wisdom lives inside a story. It is the story of a King, his Kingdom, and his people, and it is told from Genesis to Revelation. He does not stand outside it as an observer. He leads from within it as a vice-regent, commissioned by the Creator himself (Genesis 1:28). Abraham Kuyper saw this clearly. There is not one square inch of all creation, he declared, over which Christ does not say Mine. Every sphere of human life has its own magister, and every magister answers upward to God before he answers outward to anyone else. Herman Bavinck pressed deeper. Grace, he argued, is not the enemy of nature. Rather grace restores nature. The marketplace is not secular territory that the Christian merely tolerates. It is the theater of redemption. The doctor healing, the engineer building, the mother nurturing are not simply doing their jobs. They are doing kingdom work, shaping culture and forming disciples from every sphere, until Christ’s return (Matthew 28:18-20).
Monday to Friday
The minister owns Sunday. The magistrate owns the rest of the week: the boardroom, the courtroom, the hospital, the laboratory, the trading floor. He carries the work of the pulpit into every institution the minister cannot reach Monday through Friday. The minister is called to proclaim the Word from the pulpit. The magister is called to embody it in the world. One is ordained, entrusted with the keys of the Kingdom in his hands. The other is commissioned, carrying the Kingdom into every corner of civil and marketplace life. Together, they extend the reach of the Gospel into every sphere of life that God has claimed as his own.
His commitment is to the Kingdom of God, and it extends beyond the present. He leads in his sphere, mentors those coming up behind him, and stewards the fruit of his labor for the generation that follows. All of it flows from the formation he received. And when the season of building gives way to the season of generosity, he remembers the wisdom Geneva gave him. He supports the next generation so they may receive the same. This is the theology of institutional faithfulness and the vision of Geneva. It is the conviction that every generation receives the tradition with care and passes it on the same way. The Apostle Paul said it plainly: entrust to reliable people what you have received, so that they in turn may teach others (2 Timothy 2:2). We received it as stewards and we pass it on as stewards.
The Master’s for Magistrates
At Westminster, the curriculum spans twelve courses across biblical theology, systematic theology, historical theology, apologetics, and more. The sustained attention to primary sources proved harder than most things I had done professionally. I read Augustine, Calvin, Bavinck, and Murray in their own words, which led to excursions through Hume, Kant, and, yes, Homer. Every primary theological source is grounded in the authoritative source itself, Sola Scriptura. You learn to read carefully, hold sources together honestly, discern faithfully, and synthesize what they teach into arguments you can lead and defend with conviction.
Of all the courses, two proved most formative. Bible Survey was more than a survey. It was my first encounter with Biblical Theology, the grand narrative, the seed planted in Genesis, the redemptive arc unfolding across every page of Scripture, culminating with Christ. The redemptive story of Scripture is large enough to hold every question the marketplace has ever put to me. Then Introduction to Apologetics deepened this further. Van Til taught me that reality begins with the creator-creature distinction, that all knowledge, all authority, and all accountability flow from the Trinitarian God who made what is and sustains it still. For the magister, that distinction grounds everything. It is the foundation beneath every decision he makes, every person he leads, and every institution he shapes.
However, wisdom runs deeper than the assigned reading and writing. It forms the whole person. The magister’s work and his worship are one life, held together by the God who commissioned him. The cultural mandate goes back to creation, survives the fall, and finds its fulfillment in Christ. It still binds every person who governs, builds, makes, and leads. The founder who grasps this leads differently. The nurse serves differently. The scientist discovers differently. The fear of the Lord is where wisdom begins (Proverbs 9:10), and wisdom is what the work of the Kingdom requires.
The Answer Beneath the Question
If you find yourself between seasons, with time you did not expect and questions you cannot shake, consider this the invitation. Geneva is waiting. The Word is older than your questions and more powerful than your doubts. And the God who called you to lead is the same God who calls you to be formed in the fear of the Lord, which is where wisdom begins.
Three years. Twelve courses. One summative project. One term at a time. It was a long journey. Harder than I expected. Better than I hoped. I am not the same person who enrolled; and very grateful to the faculty and the staff at Westminster Theological Seminary.
Why should marketplace leaders study theology? Calvin settled it at the beginning of the Institutes: nearly all true wisdom consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. Wisdom calls the minister and magistrate. She cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks (Proverbs 1:20-21).
Soli Deo Gloria.
References
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960. Book IV, Chapter 20.
Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Vol. 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ. Edited by John Bolt. Translated by John Vriend. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006.
Reid, W.S. "Calvin and the Founding of the Academy of Geneva." Westminster Theological Journal XVIII (1955).
Beza, Theodore. De jure magistratum (On the Rights of the Magistrate). 1574.
Kuyper, Abraham. “Sphere Sovereignty.” Inaugural address delivered at the founding of the Free University of Amsterdam, 1880.
Note: The masculine pronoun is used throughout for stylistic consistency with the historical tradition. The magistrate’s vocation applies equally to women who lead in every sphere of civil and marketplace life.
A note on my use of AI and writing.