{"id":948,"date":"2012-02-06T11:48:52","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T17:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/?p=948"},"modified":"2012-02-06T11:48:52","modified_gmt":"2012-02-06T17:48:52","slug":"theological-education-and-tomorrows-church-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/theological-education-and-tomorrows-church-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Theological Education and Tomorrow’s Church (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is part 2 of 3.\u00a0 Thank you for your comments to the first part of the essay.\u00a0 I am grateful for the encouragement and look forward to the ongoing conversation!<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Theological Landscape Today<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But if the news is good, what precisely is it about?\u00a0 To answer the question, let me step back to an event many of you remember because you were there.\u00a0 In the summer of 1967, a new magazine was launched, Mission<\/em>.\u00a0 You know its history.\u00a0 Some of you made it.\u00a0 The impression one has in reading the early issues now is just how uncontroversial they seem, especially during the early years.\u00a0 The academics and others who wrote it seemed to fit the basic theology of Churches of Christ rather well.\u00a0 (I leave to one side cartoons of Nixon as a watch salesman on Fifth Avenue!)\u00a0 Page 1 of the first number describes the journal\u2019s three purposes as \u201cto explore thoroughly the scriptures and their meaning,\u201d \u201cto understand as fully as possible the world in which the church lives and has her mission,\u201d and \u201cto provide a vehicle for communicating the meaning of God\u2019s Word to our contemporary world.\u201d\u00a0 One might object to the hermeneutics of translation (kernel and husk) implied by the statements or note that the world was hardly as homogeneous as the sentences imply, but, after all, journal prospectuses are not the usual venue for subtlety, and so we can overlook those faults, if they are faults.<\/p>\n

The curious and revolutionary part of the statement is that it seems to assume that we do not yet know fully what the Bible teaches and that the world as we experience it requires serious interpretation.\u00a0 Both of these assumptions would seem to be givens today, but of course they have not always been.\u00a0 This is why, within two years of the launch of Mission<\/em>, other Church of Christ leaders, also mostly academics, founded The Spiritual Sword<\/em>.\u00a0 Page 1 of the first number of that journal set its course (by which it still sails, alas) by noting \u201cThe church is faced with critical challenges,\u201d and promising to \u201cmeet these challenges,\u201d especially the \u201cthreat of Liberalism.\u201d\u00a0 Their \u201cdefense of the faith\u201d would \u201cmeet a specific and immediate challenge with a direct counter thrust of truth.\u201d\u00a0 The language of \u201ccombat\u201d (their word, not mine) pervades the journal, and in fact has until this day.\u00a0 So much for solidarity!\u00a0 And so much for reasoned discourse!<\/p>\n

Now my goal here is not to stroll down memory lane, especially since it\u2019s not even my own memory but a bit of history.\u00a0 I was just getting out of diapers when Mission<\/em> was founded and was being taught in 1969 to avoid sharp objects, spiritual swords or not.\u00a0 My point is, rather, to note that we have for a long time had different approaches to theological education.\u00a0 One sought to understand and engage the theological worlds of Scripture and whatever else we could manage, and the other believed itself to command Scripture and to be able to ignore all else, or perhaps better, to learn about it so as to convert it (rather as a general would know his enemy).\u00a0 It should be obvious with which approach my sympathies lie.<\/p>\n

If we are to take the first tack stated so well by Mission<\/em> and by my own teachers, we must ask where we are today.\u00a0 Only in this way can we \u201cunderstand as fully as possible the world in which the church lives and has her mission,\u201d and \u201cprovide a vehicle for communicating the meaning of God\u2019s Word to our contemporary world.\u201d\u00a0 This theological world differs very widely from that of the 1960s and 1970s, and the responses worked out then, I would argue, are almost completely irrelevant today.\u00a0 It seems to me that three significant movements inform Christianity around the world today, albeit in many subforms.<\/p>\n

The first is the critical reappropriation of tradition.\u00a0 The second is the reinvigoration of structures, especially the congregation.\u00a0 The third is renewed attention to spirituality.\u00a0 These strands cut across denominational and even religious lines, and they are in large measure responses to the moves of two generations ago as well as the profound corruptions that secularization, and I would argue the birth of a form of capitalism utterly detached from its own social ends, has brought.\u00a0 The theological models we worked out in the 1960s are ill prepared to deal with these movements, in my view, though we can do better.\u00a0 Let me explain.<\/p>\n

The Critical Reappropriation of Tradition<\/strong>. \u00a0Some of the most exciting work going on in theology today centers on the reclamation of the Christian tradition.\u00a0 At some level, this is a reaction to the 1960s attempts at \u201cmodernization\u201d and cultural accommodation to the secular city after the death of God.\u00a0 Whether we are speaking of a generous orthodoxy, or critical realist reading strategies, or canonical theism, or the missional church, a major impetus to contemporary theology is the attempt to correct what is widely perceived as an excessive accommodation to one of several forms of modernity.\u00a0 Thus we find a Sarah Coakley writing on the relationships between feminism and the Cappadocian notions of the Trinity or David Brown on the Bible and theological imagination or Nicholas Lash on hope after Marx, or whatever.\u00a0 The various post-critical reappropriations of the Bible are part of this move, as we see in the work of scholars like Ellen Davis or, on the Jewish side, Jon Levenson.\u00a0 But the task of reappropriation is much wider.<\/p>\n

It would be hard to overstate the importance of this move.\u00a0 It is also hard to know how a tradition like ours that began with an attempt to cut through tradition (talk about a self-effacing strategy!) to find a pure Christianity in the words of the New Testament should respond.\u00a0 To me, we should begin by acknowledging the utter failure of restorationism as some of us have conceived of it.\u00a0 The belief of high modernism in its Protestant expression that one could peel away layers of accretions to find the pristine core simply has proven intellectually untenable and institutionally unsustainable.\u00a0 Moreover, the focus on institutions and practices (a focus both conservative and liberal strands in the Stone-Campbell movement perpetuate) stripped of theological underpinnings has proven a serious error, not only because it ignores the interests of the Bible itself but because it seems to forget the role of the Bible as a trigger of the Christian imagination.\u00a0 In other words, the restorationism we inherited is radically reductionistic.\u00a0 It is based on a logical fallacy \u2013 the genetic fallacy \u2013 and it eliminates more than it preserves.\u00a0 It is an acid that dissolves too much.<\/p>\n

At the same time, it is possible to construe restorationism in different ways, perhaps even in the language of Alexander Campbell himself, who wrote in the Christian System <\/em>(p. 110):<\/p>\n

First. Nothing is essential to the conversion of the world, but the union and co-operation of Christians.<\/em><\/p>\n

Second. Nothing is essential to the union of Christians, but the Apostles’ teaching or testimony.<\/em><\/p>\n

Or does he [Campbell\u2019s imagined interlocutor] choose to express the plan of the Self-Existent in other words? Then he may change the order, and say,<\/p>\n

First. The testimony of the Apostles, is the only and all-sufficient means of uniting all Christians.<\/em><\/p>\n

Second. The union of Christians with the Apostles’ testimony, is all-sufficient, and alone sufficient, to the conversion of the world.<\/em><\/p>\n

Neither truth alone, nor union alone, is sufficient to subdue the unbelieving nations; but truth and union combined, are omnipotent. They are omnipotent,<\/em> for God is in them and with them, and has consecrated and blessed them for this very purpose.<\/p>\n

In any event, we need a serious discussion here. \u00a0Our goal must be to reimagine the ends of our movement.<\/p>\n

The Reinvigoration of Structures<\/strong>.\u00a0 One of the most important insights of the Stone-Campbell movement was its confidence in the local congregation and its belief that denominational structures, however light, should be tested by their ability to serve the local church in its most fundamental work.\u00a0 Perhaps we can take this congregationalism too far, but the basic orientation to the local community seems well-placed.<\/p>\n

At the same time, we cannot merely be content with considering how to maintain basically well-functioning congregations.\u00a0 Rather, ours is a time of renewal.\u00a0 The need for renewal and the reexamination of cherished beliefs and practices that renewal presupposes should point us to the shape and content of our theological curriculum, both in the congregation and in the school of theology serving the church.\u00a0 Shrinking congregations that are often mono-racial and increasingly out of touch with their neighborhoods and the spiritual needs of younger people (who often have no stake in the congregation\u2019s success or failure) pose a serious threat to the survival of our fellowship. \u00a0We need to be honest about that.\u00a0 Projects of renewal that draw on the best of our past and deepen our vision of our future require vigorous leadership, the training of which is surely the task of our schools of theology.<\/p>\n

Even more difficult will be the reclamation of a pan-congregational consciousness.\u00a0 The radical congregationalism that we inherited, which sees no legitimate structure between the local gathering of the saints and the ethereal Church Universal, provides us few resources for renewal except those intimately linked to sectarianism.\u00a0 Can we imagine a collective identity that is not simply tribal or nostalgic, that does not depend on fear, family ties, or inertia, but seeks a worthy goal or end game (telos, for the Grecophiles among us!) that contributes to the whole Church?\u00a0 \u00a0This is a question for all of us, and how we answer it (indeed, how we ask it) will profoundly shape theological education for the next generation or more.<\/p>\n

The Reclamation of Spirituality<\/strong>.\u00a0 The widespread, cross-denominational turn toward prayer, fasting, acts of service in community, and the ordinances of baptism and communion mark a significant change in the contemporary church and a much needed correction of the disembodied Christianity of much of the evangelical world, including some parts of Churches of Christ.\u00a0 Younger people seek to live as authentic servants of Jesus Christ, and those who enter ministry seek environments in which they can lead others to be disciples, not in which they will be caretakers of institutions they did not build.\u00a0 Too many of us seem increasingly to believe that the congregation is a place in which they must silently avoid controversy so as not to upset the sleeping generations of Christians present there.\u00a0 Such a view of congregations is too pessimistic, to be sure, but it has merit.\u00a0 In some sense, this wider spiritual turn reflects a deeper awareness of the emphases of Scripture itself and thus should be welcomed by a movement that sets such store by the words of the Bible.\u00a0 On the other hand, the turn also offers a major challenge to our churches, because the practices of Christian spirituality are often highly attenuated in most of them.<\/p>\n

I see this complex mix of desires and ideas often with my students.\u00a0 They long to pray, and they long to serve.\u00a0 They often have not learned to do so in their congregations or families.\u00a0 The school of theology must pick up much of that slack. \u00a0Doing so requires deep thought about curriculum, the formation of faculty, the relationships between congregations and the school, and other issues.<\/p>\n

On Theological Ends and, therefore Means<\/strong><\/p>\n

All of these changes, then, raise a key question: what is the goal of theological education?\u00a0 What is its end?\u00a0 How does theological education serve the church as it serves the Triune God?\u00a0 In what ways does our teaching of Scripture, church history, systematic theology, the history of doctrine, ecumenics, liturgics, homiletics, pastoral care, congregational leadership, and whatever else we think vital to a theological school work to form persons who can equip leaders to equip saints for ministries of justice, peace, and love?\u00a0 (And it is important to distinguish these means from the ends of our work.)<\/p>\n

There are perhaps three ways to describe the end of theological education.\u00a0 The first is doxology: our work should bring glory to God the Father who redeems the world through Jesus Christ and dwells in the church through the Holy Spirit in bringing that redemption to completion.\u00a0 Considered from this point of view, our work is thus a form of worship, a move of the human soul to the contemplation of God.<\/p>\n

The second word is mission: the church has a goal beyond its own self-preservation or even growth.\u00a0 The practices of theological education serve to form leaders who will help the church engage in its mission.\u00a0 Thus our old distinctions between missions and ministry or missionaries and ministers prove to be empty or even destructive.<\/p>\n

The third word, or rather phrase, is traditioned imagination: I mean by this that we who teach in schools of theology should induct leaders into a tradition that is not fixed but that requires by its very nature and history that its leaders find ways to help it develop faithfully as the work of God continues in our world.\u00a0 Thus church structures and the ways in which we create and disseminate theological knowledge (in the congregation and outside it) give shape, albeit temporarily and provisionally, to a corporate reality formed in communion with God.\u00a0 (If you want to connect these three items to the immanent Trinity in some way, that is your business, and I will not object, though I\u2019m not sure I feel much need to do so.)<\/p>\n

The point is that, however we articulate the ends of theological education, we should acknowledge that there are ends, that we should distinguish them carefully from means and measure the latter in terms of the former, that the ends do not revolve around the maintenance of the status quo, and that therefore, there will inevitably be tensions between our schools of theology and the rest of the church.\u00a0 Whether this tension is creative or merely tense will depend on our ability to foster the kinds of broad and deep conversations that have hitherto been very difficult in our movement.<\/p>\n

To be continued….<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is part 2 of 3.\u00a0 Thank you for your comments to the first part of the essay.\u00a0 I am grateful for the encouragement and look forward to the ongoing conversation! The Theological Landscape Today \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But if the news is good, what precisely is it about?\u00a0 To answer the question, let me step back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nTheological Education and Tomorrow's Church (part 2) - ACU Graduate School of Theology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/theological-education-and-tomorrows-church-part-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Theological Education and Tomorrow's Church (part 2) - ACU Graduate School of Theology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is part 2 of 3.\u00a0 Thank you for your comments to the first part of the essay.\u00a0 I am grateful for the encouragement and look forward to the ongoing conversation! 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The Theological Landscape Today \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But if the news is good, what precisely is it about?\u00a0 To answer the question, let me step back […]","og_url":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/theological-education-and-tomorrows-church-part-2\/","og_site_name":"ACU Graduate School of Theology","article_published_time":"2012-02-06T17:48:52+00:00","author":"Mark Hamilton","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Mark Hamilton","Est. reading time":"12 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/theological-education-and-tomorrows-church-part-2\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/theological-education-and-tomorrows-church-part-2\/"},"author":{"name":"Mark Hamilton","@id":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/#\/schema\/person\/d2dc7d7077423050634fd2d6052bdb6b"},"headline":"Theological Education and Tomorrow’s Church (part 2)","datePublished":"2012-02-06T17:48:52+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/theological-education-and-tomorrows-church-part-2\/"},"wordCount":2362,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/#organization"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/theological-education-and-tomorrows-church-part-2\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/theological-education-and-tomorrows-church-part-2\/","url":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/acugst\/theological-education-and-tomorrows-church-part-2\/","name":"Theological Education and Tomorrow's Church (part 2) - 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