For seminary graduates, summer is a time of transition, whether as a layperson in the marketplace, a fledgling academic, or a minister of the church. After all of the hard years of study, the impossibly short academic deadlines, and the brain twisting reading assignments that, God help you, you hope you never have to do again, you have finally acquired a new title: You are masters.

And you have learned the names of so many things along the way. You now know the difference between a Calvinist and an Arminian, and you know that the latter are not to be confused with the good people of Armenia, who live just north of Iran.

You’ve got Perichoresis in your back pocket. You’ve got the Great Schism on the tip of your tongue. You’ve got the Rule of Faith in one hand and a Rule of Life in the other. You’ve got mad exegesis powers and you know that homiletics is just a really fancy word for the art of preaching. You also know that only Germans whose last name starts with the ...