“I don’t know why I need all this theology. I want to be a pastor, not a theologian.” This student lament, or some variation of it, is well-known to those who work in theological education, particularly those of us who teach theology to students preparing for ministry. Common though it is, we should not lose touch with the oddity of this remark. After all, these are theological students in a theological school. Why do we need to persuade them of the importance of theology? Wouldn’t we be surprised to hear students in medical or law school questioning the need to study medicine or law? Yet for all its oddity this comment cannot simply be dismissed as a dodge by recalcitrant students. They are on to something. And they are not alone. We hear similar comments from people in our parishes, from search committees, church officials, board members and in discussions among faculty and staff within our schools. If we are honest, we have probably wondered something similar ourselves at times – even the theologians.

Like the young truth-teller in the story of the emperor’s new clothes, this student asks about what we may prefer to avoid: What is theology? What is its relation to the Christian life? to the work of the church? to the ministry? How do we teach and learn this theology and how do we know if we have succeeded? Our answers to these questions necessarily guide our work of teaching, scholarship, formation, planning, assessment and curricular design. More often than not, these answers are implicit, unexamined assumptions. This does not make them invalid by any means. However, in the spirit of the examined life we try to inculcate in our students, it is wise for us to reflect on these guiding assumptions periodically.

Over the last twenty years the North American theological community has done just that. The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) initiated this self-examination in 1981 with its “Basic Issues Research Program” that sponsored theological scholarship and regional forums on the nature and need of theology and theological education.^¹While the ATS gathered the fuel, the spark that set it off was Edward Farley’s Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education in 1983. With the significant support of the Lilly Endowment, the decade that followed saw extensive conversations and insightful literary exchanges yielding an impressive body of theological literature on theological education. While the bibliography is considerable, we can follow David Kelsey in identifying the major voices in the conversation: Farley, Theologia and The Fragility of Knowledge: Theological Education in the Church and the University; the feminist Mudflower Collective, God’s Fierce Whimsy; Joseph C. Hough Jr. and John B. Cobb, Jr, Christian Identity and Theological Education; Max Stackhouse, Apologia: Contextualization, Globalization, and Mission in Theological Education (reflections of the Andover Newton faculty); and Charles M. Wood, Vision and Discernment. To this we should add Kelsey’s own significant contribution, To Understand God Truly: What’s Theological About a Theological School? Though a genre unto themselves, it is also appropriate to include the 1996 revised ATS Standards of Accreditation as part of this literature. They are not only an important product of the conversation, they also contribute to our continuing reflection on the place of theology in theological education. Indeed one could argue that as we move through successive rounds of accreditation, the questions schools will be addressing because of these standards may be the most enduring and broadly formative legacy of this decade-long reflection.

David Kelsey and Barbara Wheeler capture the general assessment of this work when they note that in contrast to the tedious and

1 Barbara Wheeler and David Kelsey review this program in “Mind-Reading: Notes on the Basic Issues Program” in Theological Education 20:2 (Spring, 1984), 8-13.

soporific character of much of the literature on theological education, this set has a surprising “quality and freshness” containing “a far more exciting and original body of ideas and perspectives than we, and we would guess anyone else, might have expected.”^² As Kelsey observes elsewhere, “it is important for [this] literature ... to be widely understood and critically analyzed.”^³ This is particularly true for those of us charged with giving direction to theological education in our schools and beyond.

The purpose of this essay is to consider that literature and, even more, the issues it addresses, from the experience of Roman Catholic theological education. Many readers of this essay are quite familiar with this literature, indeed may well have participated in the conversation in various ways. Others (the number of which is increasing yearly) have come into theological education as faculty, administrators or board members since this conversation slowed in the mid-nineties. They may like to know how to get caught up on the discussion. It will not be this essay. This is not a review, critical or otherwise, of that literature. That has already been done and done well in several places. The most complete is David Kelsey’s book Between Athens and Berlin: The Theological Education Debate. His goals for the book are to give a fair and readable account of the literature, “to describe the debate’s internal movement and structure, and to draw attention to what is at stake theologically between contrasting voices in the debate, including what is at stake regarding the nature of theology itself”.^⁴ He succeeds admirably on all counts. Unfortunately, the book is currently out of print. A shorter, thematic survey can be found in Kelsey and Wheeler’s article, “Thinking about Theological Education: The Implications of ‘Issues Research’ for

² David H. Kelsey and Barbara G. Wheeler, “Thinking about Theological Education: The Implications of ‘Issues Research’ for Criteria of Faculty Excellence,” Theological Education 28:1 (Fall, 1991), 12.

³ David H. Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin: The Theological Education Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 3.

Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 4.

Criteria of Faculty Excellence.”^⁵Barbara Wheeler also provides a brief, helpful overview of the literature in her introduction to Shifting Boundaries.^⁶ If what is sought is less a summary of the discussion and more a stimulus for a similar discussion among faculty or others, Farley’s Theologia would serve well. The issues he raises and the proposals he makes prompted the previous discussion because they get at fundamental theological and ecclesial questions. Despite all that has happened in theological education in the twenty years since the book was published (instructional technology, distance learning, increasing part-time and second-career students, etc.), these questions remain current, vital and evocative. They would continue to reward consideration and generate meaningful discussion.

While we do not need to repeat the work done in those comprehensive summaries, we do need to recognize that it has been ten years since this conversation was at full volume. Thus an overview of the major themes of the literature is provided next as an introduction or reminder for readers who may find that helpful. Those already familiar with the literature or otherwise uninterested in such an orientation can continue directly to the commentary by clicking here .

Kelsey and Wheeler, "Thinking about Theological Education: The Implications of 'Issues Research' for Criteria of Faculty Excellence," 11-26.

Barbara Wheeler and Edward Farley, eds. Shifting Boundaries. (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991), 7-17. Noteworthy also is W. Clark Gilpin’s “Basic Issues in Theological Education: A Selected Bibliography, 1980-1988" in Theological Education 25:2 (Spring, 1988): 115-121. For a sense of the thinking as this conversation began see Leon Pacala, “Reflection on the State of Theological Education in the 1980's,” Theological Education 18:1 (Autumn, 1981): 9-43.

The most pervasive theme of this literature is the diagnosis that theological education is deeply fragmented, lacks coherence and is pursuing disconnected, even competing goals, some of which have but a remote connection at best to the life of the church. Theological education and theological schools lack a clear sense of purpose and often seem adrift, bobbing about aimlessly on the waves of cultural and intellectual fashions. As Farley puts it, theological education has become “an atomism of subjects without a clear rationale, end, or unity.”^⁷Farley’s contention is that this is a result of the disappearance of theology “as the unity, subject matter, and end of clergy education”.^⁸Theology has been displaced as the heart and goal of theological education by the professional preparation for ministry. Thus while it is clear that we have significant, often highly sophisticated ministerial education going on in our schools, it is not so clear that we still have theological education in any meaningful sense of the term. Hence David Kelsey’s question: “What’s Theological About a Theological School?” To be sure, theology persists in the curriculum, but, Farley contends, “in a very restricted way,” as one discipline among many, a specialized, even “idiosyncratic” aspect of the curriculum “available for certain kinds of students and certain kinds of ministers.” He concludes, “It is not too strong to say that the theological school will make little progress in understanding its present nature and situation if it overlooks the disappearance of the very thing which is supposed to be its essence, agenda, and telos” – theology.^⁹

One of the distinctive features of this literature is that it identifies the source and nature of the problems of theological education as theological. Given the volume of conversation prompted by this

Edward Farley, Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 16.

Farley, Theologia, ix.

Farley, Theologia, 44.

analysis, it seems that it touched a nerve among theologians and theological educators. This theological character also helps keep the literature from being dated. Its focus is not curricular design or pedagogical technique, important as those are, but the underlying theological questions about the nature of theology and its place in the life of the church and the lives of Christians. At bottom the question this literature addresses is the question of that student lament: Do we need a theologically educated clergy? Why? The church(es) and those of us concerned about theological education must face this question head on. Of course we all answer yes. We assure the student that theology is important because we need a theologically trained clergy. However, we are often hard-pressed to explain why. There are various explanations offered in this literature, which we need not rehearse here. The point is simply that the literature raises the appropriate, fundamental theological question and offers help in thinking it through to an answer. Perhaps its most important service is its reminder that only when we have addressed the question of the nature and function of theology can we address the questions of curriculum and pedagogy. After all, if we do not know what we are trying to do, we will have a hard time knowing when we have done it or how well we have done it.

How did theological education come to be in such a fragmented and incoherent state, so unsure of its identity and, at least in the view of some, so untheological? Here Farley sets the agenda for the conversation by laying out the standard history. In doing so he put the major issues on the table and set up a framework and vocabulary for much of the conversation about them.

Farley identifies two senses or genres of theology prior to the modern era. In one, theology is knowledge of God and the things of God. It is an intimate, organic part of the life of faith best characterized as “a habitus, a cognitive disposition and orientation of the soul”. The other sense of theology is as a self-conscious discipline of understanding the first knowledge of God.^¹⁰ While it is not always clear how Farley sees the relation between these two

Farley, Theologia, 35, 31.

genres,”^¹¹we can say that though they are distinct – and importantly so – they are not separated. Together they constitute a kind of wisdom. What makes them both types of theology is that they have to do with knowing. There is something to learn about God and the things of God and careful thought, disciplined reflection is part of learning it. “Theology . . . is not a sheer illumination of the intellect but comes through study”.^¹² Not everyone who knows God and what God reveals is or needs to be engaged in the second, more ordered (disciplined) reflection on that knowledge. However, this second and disciplined activity is understood to arise from and serve the first. Don Saliers captures the relation of these two well when he observes that “Theology is a way of understanding the One addressed [and known] in prayer.”^¹³ With the emergence of the university in the late middle ages, theology as a discipline (the second sense) becomes more formalized. However, the two senses of theology continued to work together and theology as an ordered discipline or science (in the Aristotelian sense) “did not displace the more primary sense of the term... as a practical habitus of knowledge whose end is salvation”. “Theologia in this period was still one thing, a sapiental knowledge, produced by revelation and the Spirit and extended by study”.^¹⁴

¹¹ This, I suspect, is part of what leads Joseph Hough and John Cobb to criticize Farley’s exposition of his concept of “theologia” for being “maddeningly elusive”[Christian Identity and Theological Education (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1986), 3]. While I agree it is elusive (as Socrates taught us, that is part of the nature of wisdom), it is not maddeningly so (though obviously many Athenians disagreed).

Farley, Theologia, 51.

Don Saliers, The Soul in Paraphrase: Prayer and the Religious Affections (New York: Seabury, 1980), 78. Recall also the well known aphorism of Evagrius Ponticus: “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly and if you pray truly, you are a theologian”[The Praktikos, trans. John Eudes Bamberger (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1970), 65]. While Saliers book is not part of the literature on theological education, its chapter on “Praying and Thinking” has much to offer any consideration of theological education.

Farley, Theologia, 39, 56. Kenneth Leech, in his study of the relation between theology and spirituality, sees a more significant, ominous, change in the nature of theology in the late middle ages, with the move of theology to the university: “from about the time St. Bernard (1090-1153) onwards, this unified understanding began to break down in the West. . . . Academic theology and spiritual experience [akin but

The focus of Farley’s history, however, is the story of theology in the modern era, which, at least by his account, is the story of the separation and transformation of these two genres. Essentially it is the story of how theology as a technical discipline supplants theology as habitus and wisdom. This has the dual effect of leaving theology in the first (and primary) sense to be understood as non-cognitive and theology in the second sense cut off from its source of life and its purpose.^¹⁵The story of this unraveling is fascinating and complex. We will not be able to review it here. We must content ourselves with noting the major elements Farley identifies, as they provide the diagnostic tools by which the current situation is analyzed. For the most part the debate about theological education turns on one’s assessment of these developments (positive or negative) and one’s proposed response to them. As Farley tells it, the major factors leading to the loss of unity in theology and theological education are the theological encyclopedia movement, Pietism and the Enlightenment with the rise of the modern university and Schleiermacher’s justification of theology therein.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, theological encyclopedias organized theology as a distinct field of knowledge comprised of particular sciences or disciplines. These disciplines were typically arranged in four broad areas that became the organizing scheme of the theological curriculum: scripture, church history, dogmatics and practical theology. Innocent though this

not identical to the two sense of theology distinguished by Farley] came to be seen as two separate zones, a disastrous split from which the Western Christian world has not yet recovered. . . . [T]he essentially mystical character of all theology came to be lost”[Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 175-76]. Gustavo Gutierrez makes a similar point in a different context, [A Theology of Liberation, trans. Inda Caridad, Sr. and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973), 4-6]. Max Stackhouse connects Gutierrez’ analysis with his account of theology and practice [Apologia: Contextualization, Globalization and Mission in Theological Education (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988), 153].

Farley and the literature that followed do little with the first consequence, the relegation of faith to the non-cognitive realm, but it is a consequence as important to theology and theological education as the second. One of the effects of this can be seen in much of the contemporary talk about spirituality.

seems, Farley maintains that it is “the most important event and the most radical departure from tradition in the history of the education of clergy”.^¹⁶What it amounts to, says he, is a shift “from theology viewed as a habitus, an act of practical knowledge having the primary character of wisdom, to theology used as a generic term for a cluster of disciplines”.^¹⁷ This is the fragmentation of theology that is the focus of Farley’s essay and of the ensuing conversation.

The Pietist contribution to this dissolution of theology as wisdom stems, ironically, from their concern for personal piety. Wanting “to correct any notion of the minister as primarily a knower,” they conceived theological study as “training for specific tasks of ministry”.^¹⁸ Theology here shifts from a practical habitus or disposition to the name for the divinely given content, a body of teaching, that is mastered through various sciences and becomes the basis for ministerial practice. It is the preparation for ministry – and ministry understood in terms of specific tasks – rather than any coherent understanding of the unity of theology per se that unites the increasingly disparate theological sciences. In this shift are the roots of the theory-practice dichotomy and our student lament. Once theology becomes a collection of truths (data) studied by theoretical sciences, bridging the ever-widening gap between the methods and results of these sciences and the practice of ministry becomes a problem. “Why do I need this theology?” When theology was understood more immediately as knowledge of God, as “a habitus of practical wisdom which attends salvation”, this question could hardly arise.^¹⁹

Farley, Theologia, 49.

¹⁷ Farley, Theologia, 81. For a somewhat more positive, organic reading of the Encyclopedias, see Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William Dych (New York: Seabury, 1978), 4-5. Significantly, however, Rahner also sees the history as one of increasing fragmentation, pp. 6-9.

Farley, Theologia, 41.

Farley, Theologia, 82.

The formative intellectual and cultural context for these developments, of course, is the Enlightenment with its championing of autonomous reason and correlative suspicion of authority. This was given institutional form in the modern (research) university, epitomized by the founding of the University of Berlin in 1810. As David Kelsey explains, this represents the establishment of a new ideal of knowing and of excellence in schooling, an ideal he designates as Wissenschaft in contrast to the older model of excellence as Paideia.^²⁰ In brief, Paideia is the classical process of “culturing” the soul or forming character as a means of acquiring wisdom or, in our case, the habitus of theology as knowledge of God and the things of God. Wissenschaft, on the other hand, is a method of coming to knowledge through critical, disciplined research into the new. In the spirit of Descartes’ methodological doubt, it confers rather than concedes authority and its conferral is always open to review. With Wissenschaft as the explicit guiding principle of the modern research university, it was unclear whether there was a place for theology, with its appeal to authoritative texts and in some cases authoritative offices and teachings. As Kelsey explains, each of these two models has a compelling rationale; they cannot be synthesized and, whether we know it or not, they are still very much with us.

In response to this challenge to theology’s place in the Enlightenment university, Schleiermacher, who wrote the founding document of the University of Berlin, offered a rationale for theology that has proven decisive for our understanding of theological education. For Farley and others it is a major contributor to the fragmentation we are now experiencing. In essence, Schleiermacher’s argument is that to promote human well-being, society needs an educated, professional leadership in religion just as it does in medicine and law. The scientific study of the Christian

Kelsey develops this distinction in To Understand God Truly: What’s Theological about a Theological School? (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992) and returns to it in Between Athens and Berlin. Athens is the symbol of Paideia and Berlin of Wissenschaft. Kelsey uses this as a framework by which to orient the major contributors to this conversation. Because it is so useful and captures so much in a brief compass, it has made its way into the standard lexicon of theological education.

religion (NB: not of God)^²¹provides the theoretical basis for this professional training. Hence a theology faculty as a professional school like medicine and law belongs in the university--and on quite secular grounds.

The price of membership, however, is steep. One wonders, looking back, how carefully we read the fine print. Kelsey describes the arrangement as “bi-polar,” noting that it “stresses the interconnected importance of two quite different enterprises – Wissenschaft or orderly, disciplined critical research on the one hand, and ‘professional’ education on the other”. The two are connected by a theory-practice rationale in which we move from data to theory to the application of that theory to ministerial practice.^²² We allow ourselves to be seduced into thinking that theology needs to be “theoretical” or “theory-like” to be intellectually respectable only to discover that it thereby has become irrelevant to all but other theorists. At worst, this is the end of it: theology is irrelevant. At best, and more typically, it sets up a structure in which, like other theoretical sciences (physics, chemistry), we need engineers or technologists to connect the pure science to practice. These technicians are the pastors and perhaps, as intermediaries, pastoral theologians. In either case, this is a long way from theology as knowledge of God, the knowledge we seek in our whole religious life, not merely in the academy. The disparate disciplines or sciences are united not by the desire to know God but by their common orientation toward clerical praxis, which, of course, is “external to the university, the faculty [and the discipline] of theology.”^²³

21 Here this conversation intersects with another recurring conversation on the relation between theology and religious studies. This is the force of Kelsey’s argument that “What makes a theological school theological is neither its various subject matters nor the scholarly disciplines it employs but rather its overarching goal: to understand God more truly”[To Understand God Truly, 109]. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza connects these two conversations in “Theological and Religious Studies: The Contest of the Faculties,” in Shifting Boundaries: Contextual Approaches to the Structure of Theological Education, ed. Barbara G. Wheeler and Edward Farley (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1991), 119-50.

Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 12, 22.

²³ Farley, Theologia, 87. Wood describes Schleiermacher’s contribution this way: “Instead of deploring the ongoing transformation of the theological disciplines into

To be fair to Schleiermacher we should note, as do most of the commentators in this conversation, that he also recognizes a substantive, even normative unity of theology in “the essence of Christianity” that it was the business of the theological sciences to uncover. Over time, however, this notion of a unifying essence fades and we are left with only the clerical paradigm to explain whatever unity can be found in theological education. As Farley observes, “twentieth-century theological schools in the United States simply have no material or substantial concept of the unity of the theological disciplines. What this leaves is the external-teleological approach, the clerical paradigm, as the one and only way of understanding that unity.”^²⁴

This way of conceiving the unity of theological studies, which Farley dubs “the clerical paradigm, is the rationale we tend to take for granted.” Kelsey points out that by this account what makes the education “theological is its professional pole, not its Wissenschaftliche pole.” In the end, it is theological because it is oriented “to understanding church leadership, not to understanding God”.^²⁵

With this the transformation of theology and of theological education is complete. Theology as wisdom has become the practical knowhow of ministerial work, habitus become technike. Theology as discipline continues but as one speciality among many (systematic

relatively autonomous critical disciplines, Schleiermacher regarded it as a promising development and attempted to help it along, meanwhile locating the theological character and unity of these disciplines neither in their method nor in their subject matter per se, but in their orientation to a particular purpose” namely, “equipping persons for the task of church leadership”[Charles M. Wood, Vision and Discernment (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 12].

Farley, Theologia,114, see also, 88-94, 114-115. This reading of Schleiermacher is developed more extensively by John E. Burkhart in “Schleiermacher’s Vision for Theology,” in Practical Theology, ed. Don S. Browning (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 42-57.

Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 23-24.

theology), rather than the unifying identity of the whole enterprise.^²⁶Rather than wisdom about God and the life of discipleship, theology is but one body of knowledge among a host of others competing for our attention – and this is just the seminary curriculum.

In the two centuries since Schleiermacher and the University of Berlin, these forces have continued to work on theological education and its self-understanding. Theological schools have not become research universities, but the Berlin model of Wissenschaft has become the operative model of excellence in knowing, scholarship and education. Specialization has increased. As we have learned more and more about more and more, faculty have had to become increasingly specialized to retain their level of competence and expertise. With this increased specialization, the disciplines have become increasingly distinct from each other and our knowing has been increasingly fragmented – and farther and farther removed from what any of us would recognize as wisdom.^²⁷ At the same time, within the clerical paradigm, the tasks for which we are preparing ministers have become more numerous and diverse and, in line with that, our understanding of ministry has become more professional, functional and less sacerdotal (though the former need not entail the latter).^²⁸ All of this is occurring within broad cultural forces of increasing secularization and decreasing authority of texts and office, which put their own pressures on how we understand and justify the church, the ministry and the study of theology. Hence the

See Farley, Theologia, 39. Hence it was not surprising to hear a candidate for a scripture position say that he was not a theologian; he was a Scripture professor. And this notwithstanding the fact that he was a priest.

For an intriguing reflection on fragmentation as a cultural phenomenon and how it militates against understanding and wisdom, see C. John Sommerville, How the News Makes us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1999). Pertinent to this reflection also, of course, is Plato’s understanding of dialectic, the highest form of knowing, as the ability to see connections [Republic, 537c].

See William Rainey Harper’s famous turn of the century essay, “Shall the Theological Curriculum Be Modified and How,” The American Journal of Theology 3,1 (Jan. 1899):45-66 and Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 49-64.

fragmentation of theological education diagnosed by this literature and by our student question: Why do I need this theology?

This analysis of our situation in theological education and how we got here has generated a range of prescriptions for how to treat it.^²⁹Not surprisingly, Farley argues for a recovery of theologia as the unifying goal and criteria of theological education. To cultivate the habitus of theology as wisdom, theological education would need to take on more of the character of classical Paideia or character formation as a means of knowing. This does not mean the rejection of Wissenschaft (that is hardly an option), but the rejection of its hegemony over theological education. Among the prominent, widely discussed contributors of book-length essays, Kelsey and Wood move in a direction similar to that charted by Farley. Kelsey argues that “the purpose of a theological school is to seek to understand God more truly and that a school’s ‘nature’ follows from this ‘purpose’.”^³⁰ It is this goal of understanding God that makes a theological school theological, not the goal of training church leaders. Of course, church leaders need to understand God truly but this puts these two goals in their proper relation. As Farley puts it, “Clergy education is not identical with theological education but is a special instance of it.”^³¹ Charles Wood proposes an understanding of theological inquiry as vision and discernment as an alternative to the standard “theory-practice” model that he, like many others in this conversation, find confused and misleading.^³² In his usage, vision is the capacity for grasping things in their wholeness, for seeing connections, and discernment is the grasp of the individual, the

In his review of the literature, Kelsey organizes the major contributors around the Paideia – Wissenschaft or Athens – Berlin axis [Between Athens and Berlin]. As he describes them, none of these proposals are simply Paideia or Wissenschaft, Athens or Berlin. All negotiate between them in some way.

Kelsey, To Understand God Truly, 15.

Edward Farley, The Fragility of Knowledge: Theological Education in the Church and the University (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 161, 177.

Craig Dykstra offers a trenchant critique of the theory-practice model and proposes a revised understanding of practice for theological education in “Reconceiving Practice,” in Wheeler and Farley, Shifting Boundaries, 35-66.

appreciation of differences. Here “Theological education is the cultivation of theological judgment. It is the acquisition of the habitus for . . . ‘vision’ and ‘discernment’.”^³³ In a very real sense it is learning to see.^³⁴

The strongest contrast in the literature to Farley’s general proposal is that of Joseph Hough and John Cobb. They maintain that Farley’s account of theologia, which has captivated so many in this conversation, “is too abstract and formal to give guidance for theological education” and that “even if it were fleshed out, it might be inadequate and even misleading”.^³⁵ They also disagree with the idea that the “clerical paradigm” is the problem. They explicitly defend the idea of the theological school as a professional school, the primary aim of which is the education of professional leaders for the church. The problem, they contend, is not the clerical paradigm, but “that the church has become uncertain and confused as to what constitutes appropriate professionalism. There can be no clear unity to theological education until there is recovery of clarity about the nature of professional leadership within the church”.^³⁶ The thrust of their book is thus to describe professional church leadership and how the education for this leadership can be reconciled with

Wissenschaft.^³⁷

Wood, Vision and Discernment, 93. Wood develops these ideas further in An Invitation to Theological Study (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994). Kelsey suggests that Wood may do the best job of retrieving “the strengths of both the ‘Athens’ and the ‘Berlin’ types of excellent schooling, without unintentionally subordinating one to the other” [Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 199-200].

For further reflections on theology as learning to see, click here.

Joseph Hough and John Cobb, Christian Identity and Theological Education (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1986), 3-4.

Hough and Cobb, Christian Identity and Theological Education, 5. Jackson W. Carroll contributes an extended reflection on the nature of ministry that attempts to “recover a valid meaning of authority” in an age ill at ease with the idea. As One With Authority: Reflective Leadership in Ministry (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991).

Hough and Cobb’s proposal has generated a collection of essays that grew out of a national conference on their work. The Education of the Practical Theologian:

Two other prominent contributions chart out somewhat different courses. Max Stackhouse, writing out of conversations at Andover-Newton on their work as a theological school, embraces a more traditional self-understanding. He accepts both the clerical paradigm and the theory-practice model. His concern is that theological education incorporate a greater pluralism and a more global perspective into its theory and its practice, while training students to be able to address matters of truth and justice: to be able to do apologia in the pluralistic world in which we live. Though his program is deeply shaped by a concern for praxis and justice, it also sees theology as a type of theory that can be applied to life. In this, Stackhouse’s position is a minority view in this literature, but, as Kelsey notes, it is likely to be the majority view among faculty, students and administrators in theological education.^³⁸

Finally, a group of women feminist theologians calling themselves the Mud flower Collective argue that the whole phenomenon of fragmentation in theology and theological schooling needs to be considered from a different perspective. Whereas Farley’s analysis and many of the responses that followed it see fragmentation as the dissolution of the subject matter of theology, The Mud Flower Collective and some others see it as related to cultural pluralism in the church, in theological schools and in the world in which we live. Here what is perceived as fragmentation may actually be the result of including more diverse voices and experiences in the theological enterprise which all would agree is a good thing. They question whether the unity of theology in the past, so idealized by some, may not have been purchased by excluding the voice of the other. As such it was inadequate theologically and educationally. The rationale and aim of inclusion, they argue, is justice, first and foremost, but also educational. “Real education and spiritual growth occur only where it is impossible to avoid the conflicts and tensions

Responses to Joseph Hough and John Cobb’s Christian Identity and Theological Education, ed. Don Browning, David Polk and Ian Evison (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989).

Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 190.

that rend our world and the lives of each of us.”^³⁹ In this economy, as Kelsey observes, “tension rather than harmony is the sign of health in theological education”.^⁴⁰

So what now is Catholic theological education to make of all this?

The Mud Flower Collective, God’s Fierce Whimsy: Christian Feminism and Theological Education (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1985), 203. Rebecca Chopp reviews the work of the Mud Flower collective and others as she argues for “adopting the perspective of prophetic feminism as a way of critically situating the roles of knowledge and religion in theological education” [“Situating the Structure: Prophetic Feminism and Theological Education” in Wheeler and Farley, Shifting Boundaries, 67-89. Many of the other essays in Shifting Boundaries also explore the need and implications of including other, historically marginalized experiences in theological education. This is also involved in Stackhouse’s call for a more global understanding of theology and theological education. On the issue of unity and pluralism in this literature, see Kelsey and Wheeler, “Mind-Reading: Notes on the Basic Issues Program,” Theological Education, 20,2 (Spring, 1984), 10-14 and Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 95-100.

Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 145.

Our task here is not to offer another general review of the recent literature on theological education but to consider what it looks like from a Roman Catholic perspective.^⁴¹ The general contention is rather obvious: This literature clearly arises from a Protestant context and has a consistent focus on that context. Nevertheless, there is much that Catholic theological educators can learn from it and perhaps some things that those in the Protestant world might learn from the Catholic experience. The first point to be made however, is just how Protestant, more specifically, mainline Protestant, this literature is. Absent from at least its major currents are contributions from the experience of not only Roman Catholic theological education but also that of the Evangelical, Pentecostal and Orthodox communities. The occasional contribution from theologians in these communities only highlights this point.^⁴² The vocabulary and sources used, the way issues are framed, the lack of reference to ecclesial structures or documents, and the diffuse sense of accountability and authority, not to mention comments such as

Some qualifiers are in order. First, Roman Catholicism and the world of Roman Catholic theological education is not monolithic. In addition to ideological or theological diversity there is organizational diversity with diocesan seminaries, pontifical schools, free-standing seminaries, schools connected with universities, in unions with other seminaries, associated with religious orders that manifest (or not) the particular charism of that order and schools that train lay people for full-time ecclesial ministry but not seminarians for ordination to the priesthood. Second, this is not the Catholic response to the literature but a Catholic’s response. I do not write here in any official capacity and do not presume to speak for the Catholic church or the Catholic theological community. Rather, I write as a Catholic theologian who has taught in Catholic institutions for twenty years and is now dean of a Catholic theological school.

See for instance the contribution of the well-known Catholic theologian Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Theological and Religious Studies: The Contest of the Faculties,” in Wheeler and Farley, Shifting Boundaries. An insightful essay that has much of importance to say to Catholic theological education, it understandably arises from and speaks to his context at Harvard more than that of a Catholic seminary.

“Seminaries prepare women and men for the ordained ministry,”^⁴³ all make it clear, at least to those of us in the Catholic world, that this literature does not have the Catholic situation in mind.

Farley acknowledges this at the beginning of the conversation, when he notes that his “narration of the career of theologia, at least after the Reformation, is almost exclusively Protestant”.^⁴⁴ In partial justification of this focus, he points out that “the theological encyclopedic movement” to which he links much of the fragmentation in theological education, “is as much a Catholic as a Protestant work”.^⁴⁵ With that nod of recognition, the Catholic world is mostly left out of further consideration, not only by Farley but by those who follow. Summing up the conversation at its close, Kelsey observes that “The participants ... have largely, though not entirely, been white male faculty members of theological schools that can fairly be described as ‘mainline Protestant’ schools. It is important to acknowledge ... that this is a major limitation of the discussion”.^⁴⁶Women, people of color, Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants have participated in the discussion but other than God’s Fierce Whimsy by the feminist Mud Flower Collective, no book-length essays on theological education have been published from other perspectives. The mainline Protestant character of the literature is especially evident in the various accounts of the history of theological education, particularly since Schleiermacher. Catholic schools and the dynamics of Catholic theological, cultural and ecclesial movements during that time are rarely mentioned and, most telling, never allowed to affect the fundamental narrative. Catholics are clearly other. The story being told is not untrue, but its rhythm seems out of synch with Catholic history for the same period.^⁴⁷

Max Stackhouse, Apologia: Contextualization, Globalization and Mission in Theological Education (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988), 30.

Farley, Theologia, x.

Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 2.

For Catholic variations on the story see Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for a Unitary Method, (New York: Seabury,

What is so striking about this, at least to this Roman Catholic, is not that the literature is mainline Protestant. After all, mainline Protestant theological education has a right, even an obligation, to address its own challenges for its own constituencies from its own resources, history and self-understanding. In doing so it need not always also address everyone else’s situation. Indeed, were it to do so, the diagnosis and prescription would undoubtedly be so generic as to be of little use to anyone. No, what is striking about this literature is not its focus on mainline Protestantism but the ease and extent to which the story of mainline Protestant theological education is identified with the story of theological education per se. There is little consideration of the possibility that the situation being described may be true of only the mainline Protestant world.^⁴⁸ It may have been assumed that what is true of mainline Protestantism is true for all but that assumption is rarely stated, and, as far as I could determine, never substantiated. Moreover, the occasional acknowledgment of particularity does not temper the sweeping nature of the claims. There is theological education without qualification, which is essentially mainline Protestant, and then there is “Catholic” theological education. And this notwithstanding frequent and profound discussions of the need to take seriously particularity and historicity. Kelsey and Cobb & Hough critique Farley for insufficient attention to historicity. The Mudflower Collective focuses on the need to attend to concrete relationships.

1977); Joseph Fitzer, ed., Romance and the Rock: Nineteenth-Century Catholics on Faith and Reason, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989) and T.M. Schoof, A Survey of Catholic Theology 1800-1970, trans. N.D. Smith (New York: Paulist, 1970).

Some contributors are more conscious of the Protestant focus than others. In commenting on the work of Catholic Robert Schreiter, Stackhouse notes the difference between the Protestant context and Roman Catholic seminary context [Apologia, 115-116]. Wood regularly qualifies his comments as referring to “Protestant ministry.” Browning and Polk, in their introduction to the collection of essays on Hough & Cobb’s book accurately refer to “the emerging conversation about contemporary Protestant theological education”[The Education of the Practical Theologian , xi]. Farley, summarizing Theologia in Fragility, says that it “interrogated and criticized current North American Protestant clergy education”[Fragility, ix]. On the whole, though, comments such as these stand out as atypical and, more to the point, they make little difference to the way the story of Protestant theological education is told as the story of theological education.

Hopewell and others discuss a congregational paradigm for theological education. Ogletree notes the need to keep in mind that “Action occurs in a particular social setting.”^⁴⁹ In this light, it is all the more surprising that there is so little attention to the particular historical ecclesial context for theological education.

In many ways the situation is surprisingly similar to that pointed out so trenchantly by feminist, liberationist and postmodern critics such as Foucault. The different voice, the voice from the margin, is either ignored or identified as other while the story of the dominant group, the group in power, continues to be told as the story of the whole. Applicable though it is, we Catholics must be careful how we push this parallel. “Margin” is a relative position. In many other contexts and many other discussions, Roman Catholicism makes itself the norm and everyone else the other. To the extent that it can be generalized at all, the Catholic experience, even in North America, is not like that of other marginalized groups. Most significant here is the memory, aspiration and theology of Catholic triumphalism. We cannot make this point without acknowledging that Catholics have been doing the same thing for centuries. This does not make it right, but it does add a necessary perspective. Here though our focus is on this particular body of literature. Our first and most general point about it is that while it speaks of theological education generally, it is clear from a Catholic perspective that it arises out of and speaks primarily to mainline Protestant theological education.

Nevertheless, there is much that Catholic theological educators can learn from this literature. In part because, for all its Protestant character, this story is also our story. The story of the fragmentation of mainline Protestant theological education since Schleiermacher is also the Roman Catholic story. The time line may be different. The Catholic seminary of the nineteenth and early twentieth century would no doubt have been quite different than the mainline Protestant seminaries of the same period.. For instance, in keeping

Ogletree, “Christian Social Ethics as a Theological Discipline,” in Wheeler and Farley, Shifting Boundaries, 216.

with canon law^⁵⁰the Catholic seminary curriculum through much of the 1950's was unified around the theological system of Thomas Aquinas (in Latin). This gave it a kind of unity and coherence Farley and others say was disappearing from the Protestant seminary. Also, Roman Catholic scholars were not officially allowed to use or teach the historical critical method until 1943 with Divino Afflante Spiritu. With the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) this changed dramatically. Since then, the story of Catholic theological education has recapitulated much of that recounted in this literature. Indeed, one of the critical questions facing Roman Catholicism today is whether “mainline” (liberal) Roman Catholicism is repeating the history – failures as well as successes – of mainline (liberal) Protestantism. Catholic theologians and cultural critics are only beginning to wrestle with this question.^⁵¹ The story of theological education since the Council is but part of this larger story. We would be foolish not to listen to and learn from the Protestant story including the story of theological education as presented in this literature.

While our differences and distinctive identities as churches are important, they should be approached in the context of our significant similarities. In general, our ecclesial identity is shaped by the interplay of our specific, ecclesial, theological traditions, our history, and our cultural context. As critical as it is to distinguish the theological/ecclesial and the cultural, we have come to realize that, like the wheat and the tares, they cannot be separated, at least not this side of the eschaton. The church is part of the culture and the culture is part of and shapes the church. Thus it is theologically as well as culturally significant that Protestants and Catholics in North America, specifically Protestant and Catholic theological schools, exist in the same culture. The days of the Catholic ghetto are past. Intellectually, culturally and in a host of other ways we are only beginning to understand, Catholics too are children of the

1917 Code, Canon 1366.2. The comparable, but very different reference in the 1983 code is canon 252.

One could see the polarization in the Roman Catholic world as comparable to the Mainline-Evangelical divide in the Protestant world. This may also capture elements of the tension experienced in many Catholic seminaries between more “evangelical” seminarians and more “mainline” faculty.

Enlightenment. We may have resisted it longer with various explicitly anti-modernist redoubts, but even in that we were being shaped by the Enlightenment, allowing it to set the agenda and define the terrain in which we worked. The socio-economic status of Catholics is roughly that of the general population. The opinions and practices of Catholics on most issues also reflects that of the general populace. We operate in the same increasingly secular culture with its changing attitudes towards religion, faith, church and clergy.^⁵²

Not surprisingly, the profile of students in Catholic seminaries and theological schools is similar to those in Protestant schools. There has, of course, been a dramatic decrease in the number of men studying for the priesthood over the last 50 years. But it is worth noting that if we compare males to males, mainline seminaries have also seen a dramatic decrease in their numbers. In their case, the decrease in the male students has been offset by an increase in the number of women preparing for ordination. While there are no women seminarians in the Catholic world, there is a significant number of women studying for the M.Div. or other Masters degrees in preparation for pastoral work in the church.

The most striking change in the student population’s profile is the increasing number of older, second-career students and of recent converts to Roman Catholicism.^⁵³This latter phenomenon is particularly intriguing. While Catholics tend not to think of themselves as a denomination, we are experiencing in our own way

With Catholic ecclesiology and the historic role of the priest in the community, this plays out in very particular ways among Catholics, particularly in light of the highly publicized cases of clergy sexual abuse and the official response to it. For a discussion of the effect of this on the priesthood and the seminary, see Donald B. Cozzens, The Changing Face of the Priesthood (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), esp. 111-25.

See Barbara Wheeler, “Fit for Ministry?” Christian Century (April 11, 2001), 1623 for a report on a recent study of seminary students. For a comprehensive study of students, faculty, programs and context of Roman Catholic seminaries and schools of theology see Katarina Schuth, Seminaries, Theologates, and the Future of Church Ministry: An Analysis of Trends and Transitions (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999).

the general weakening of denominational loyalty. As with most other churches, our pastoral leaders have historically been raised in the Catholic church, imbibing and being shaped by Catholic culture, what Greeley calls “the Catholic imagination,” from the cradle. They came to theological education not only with information but even more with an ear for things Catholic. They had a sense of the rhythm of Catholic life. Students without that lifetime of formation can bring a fresh look at things, but they can also be oddly off-key, out of synch with the communities they would lead. This opens up whole new dimensions of remediation in theological education with which seminaries are only beginning to come to terms. To prepare such students for leadership in the church, at least in the Catholic church, theological schools need to be more intentional than they have in the past about the formation of an ecclesial identity and judgment on proper practices. ^⁵⁴

Likewise, the faculty and administrators at our schools are increasingly similar. We have gone to many of the same graduate schools, belong to the same professional associations and attend the same conferences. We have learned and seek to put into practice similar ideals of academic excellence for ourselves, our students and our institutions. In both Protestant and Catholic schools, the faculty are less likely to be ordained, to have gone through a seminary formation program or to have been formed by significant pastoral experience. Their primary (if not exclusive) frame of reference for theological education is the academy, not the church.

These changes in theology, students and faculty necessarily affect the character of Catholic theological education, be it seminary or non-seminary. In general the effect has been to make the experience similar to that of Protestant theological education. Though it may play out and be described in slightly different ways, Roman Catholic students and theologians experience the same

Helpful here is Craig Dykstra’s discussion of the role of concrete communities in the formation of ecclesial and pastoral practices, “Reconceiving Practice,” Wheeler and Farley, Shifting Boundaries, 35-66. And this not to mention the number of broken, hurting students who look to theological schools as places of healing even more than places of learning. In general, any discussion of theological education, especially one that may highlight the role of paideia and formation needs to take seriously the circumstances of the students who show up at our door.

fragmentation of theology and dominance of Wissenschaft as our Protestant counterparts. Rahner makes this point rather poignantly at the beginning of his comprehensive systematic theology:

. . . the concrete theological disciplines as they are offered today … are too much scholarship for its own sake, . . . too splintered and fragmented to be really able to respond in an adequate way to the personal situation of theology students today…. Theology has in fact become fragmented into an immense number of individual disciplines, with each individual discipline offering an enormous amount of material, employing its own very differentiated and difficult methodology, and having very little contact with other related or neighboring disciplines. We must acknowledge this situation of contemporary theology soberly, and we may not build up our hopes that it could be changed by the theological disciplines themselves…. [E]fforts to establish contacts [among the disciplines] are obviously useful, but … can no longer overcome the pluralism [fragmentation] in theology today.”^⁵⁵

The theological and cultural environment for Catholic theological education is much the same as that for Protestants described in the literature. In response, Catholics have followed much the same path charted by Farley, invoking the clerical paradigm and the theory-practice model to understand and organize what we do in our schools.

It should come as no surprise, then, that there is much that Catholics can learn from this literature. Arguably its most important contribution is as a stimulus to our imagination. There is much in

Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Seabury, 1978), 6-7. Rahner attempts to circumvent this by distinguishing between a first and second level of reflection, with the plural theological disciplines operating on the second level. The idea of such a first order of theology, its nature, method, means of acquisition and relation to the disciplines is a matter that rewards extended reflection. I would simply note here that it is not unrelated to the understandings of theology toward which Farley, Wood and Kelsey are working.

our understanding of theological education that we take as axiomatic and normative that may not be. The clerical paradigm, the theory-practice model and the criteria of excellence designated as Wissenschaft are among the more pervasive of these assumptions. The analysis and debates in this literature disclose these assumptions and their influence on how we construct theological education and how we understand what we are doing. By rooting them in a historical narrative, the discussion reduces their necessity. It has not always been this way. Perhaps it could be different now. Beyond the specific proposals, this history opens up the possibility that there may be other ways to imagine and construct theological education. In the end we may determine that the alternatives proposed in the literature are not improvements and may choose to continue to do what we are doing. But this too would be a gain for we would then do it knowingly and intentionally, for solid theological and pedagogical reasons, rather than simply because we had not considered any alternatives. The process of rethinking, of imagining anew what we take for granted is a creative stimulus to our understanding of what we do and why. Catholic theological educators can benefit from this stimulus no less than Protestants.

Catholics can also learn from the pervasively and profoundly theological character of this literature. The striking thing about this round of the discussion of theological education, what makes it not dated as it might otherwise be, is that it focuses on theological rather than pedagogical or curricular questions. To be sure, matters of curriculum and pedagogy are critically important to the life and work of a theological school, but they necessarily follow from convictions about the nature of theology – convictions that often go unexamined in our pedagogical discussions. The great service of this literature is that it excavates and examines those theological convictions. As Kelsey concludes, “... the central crux, [t]he question that marks the point of divergence among partners to the conversation is this: What is theology and how is it related to human powers? Put slightly differently: What is it to ‘do theology’ and what do we have to do for people to capacitate them to do it?”^⁵⁶

Kelsey, Between Athens and Berlin, 189. Kelsey notes further that “It may be...that explicit and implicit differences about the nature of human reason are at the core of the differences in anthropology or views of what it is to be human that ...

This question would likely mark differences between and, more importantly, within our schools. One thing we can all learn from this literature is how fruitful – practically fruitful – these theological questions can be. What is theology? What is it that makes theological education, the work we do in our schools, theological? In pursuing these questions, we may both find and demonstrate answers to that student question of the importance of theology. We will also be reminded that those of us who lead theological schools – and not just our students and faculty – need to be theologians. Our schools institutionalize in concrete an understanding of theology, the life of discipleship, the nature and work of the church and its ministry. As we give shape and direction to that institution, we are making theological judgments. We should do so knowingly. Our judgments should be theologically informed. This literature can help Catholics as well as Protestants in making those theological judgments.

Catholic theological educators can also learn much from the answers as well as the questions offered in this literature. Particularly fruitful is the reclaiming by some participants of the ancient and honorific sense of theology as knowledge of God. Theology in this sense (what Farley refers to as theologia) is not merely the accumulation of information about Christian beliefs and practices but is more like a kind of wisdom about God, the ways of God and how this relates to the human condition. Wisdom, of course, is a virtue and by the classic reckoning is intimately related to one’s character, to the kind of person one is. In the literature before us this connection is made through the idea of habitus, “a cognitive disposition and orientation

underlie differences about excellence in theological schooling.”[Between Athens and Berlin, 188]. Though we cannot do it here, it would be a fascinating project to extend this line of thought to track the connections between basic epistemological-anthropological positions, basic theological positions and one’s views of education and theological education. For example, how does one’s theology of sin and grace affect one’s understanding of the knowledge of God and the work of theological education? William Adrian and Richard Hughes trace connections like this between the theologies of various traditions and their views of education generally, Models for Christian Higher Education: Strategies for Survival and Success in the Twenty-first Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997).

of the soul,” a knowledge of God and what God reveals.^⁵⁷ One’s disposition has to do with what one cares about, what one loves or fears.^⁵⁸ A disposition of awe, fear of the Lord, may truly be the beginning of wisdom.

We must not overlook just how radical this position is epistemologically and pedagogically.^⁵⁹ Far from the disinterested, objective knowing that is the ideal in Wissenschaft and much modern epistemology, the contention here is that one’s disposition as a knower, one’s loves, affect what one knows. To use Wood’s image of vision, what I love affects what I see. Significantly, this love, this disposition, is not only a prerequisite for knowing, it is also part of what we learn. Education as paideia would educate my cares, my loves, in order to teach me to see truly.^⁶⁰ What we must not lose sight of here, what we must not allow our fragmented, disjunctive worldview to obscure, is that this is not only a matter of how I feel about what I learn, it is about knowing and learning per se. It demands rigorous, sophisticated thinking using the best techniques at our disposal. Properly educated cares, “right-ordered loves,” in Augustine’s phrase, do not just orient our heart towards the good, they also orient our mind towards the truth and dispose us to know God.^⁶¹This is a compelling, even inspiring, vision of theology. It is a great service of this literature to remind us of it.

Farley, Theologia, 35.

Recall Plato’s point in coining the term “philosophy:” the love (philia) of wisdom (sophia). The difference between the philosopher and the sophist was not simply the wisdom but the love of wisdom. The sophist lacks the philia of the true philosopher. Without this love, one will not be a philosopher. So too, mutatis mutandis, with theology.

Here I follow Wood’s critique of Farley that theology (theologia) cannot be defined as habitus, because habitus is the capacity and disposition to engage in the activity of theological inquiry [Wood, Vision and Discernment (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 33-34].

For further reflections on theology as learning to see, click here .

Again, recall Plato and his notion that the ultimate form to which reason is oriented is the good. Or the medieval sense of the ultimate unity of the true, the good and the beautiful.

Inspiring as this is, however, it is not entirely clear what it would look like in practice to implement this model of theological education as Paideia. In many ways Catholic theological education has retained the goal of forming character as an explicit, programmatic part of its lexicon and practice, especially in seminaries preparing men for ordination to the priesthood. The screening process for seminarians considers the quality of their moral, psychological and spiritual lives, their character, as well as their intellectual abilities. In the seminary there is an extensive formation program that promotes and evaluates psychological and spiritual development along with the course work. However, the concept of theological education as paideia involves far more than a formation program to complement the teaching of theology. Indeed, Farley argues that the development of distinct “formation programs” by the pietists was one of the factors contributing to the dissolution of theologia as knowledge of God and theological education as paiedia.^⁶² No, the more radical claim being made here is that the separation between knowing and being, between what I know and the kind of person I am, between learning and formation, is a fundamental epistemological mistake. The fact that Catholic seminaries have strong formation programs does not mean we have avoided fragmentation. We may just have done a better job retaining one of the fragments.

But if this organic view of theological education as a form of paideia involves something more than having a good formation program, what is that more? Here the questions tumble out. The more concrete they are, the harder the questions are to answer. How do we educate students’ cares? How do we grade someone’s habitus? their knowledge of God? If wisdom is our goal, what does this mean for the content of our courses, for curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and scholarship? What kind of teachers do we have to be? What kind of schools do we have to be to promote this pursuit of wisdom in our students, faculty and administrators? What is the relation between wisdom and knowledge or information, paideia and wissenschaft? Experience teaches us, especially in this information age, that wisdom is not the same as information, as knowledge, nor

Farley, Theologia, 59-63.

is it the automatic consequence of accumulating information. And yet wisdom is not unrelated to knowledge. It is good to be informed and we expect leaders in the church to know the tradition and the theological ideas of leading figures in it, both dead and alive. So how does this knowledge relate to wisdom? These and many more questions like them are but a few of the issues that need to be addressed if we are to take seriously the noble sense of theology as wisdom and knowledge of God that this literature recalls for us. These are abiding questions that we cannot resolve here. For now it is enough to note that this literature raises them effectively and demonstrates how wrestling with them is part of the work of theological education – work that each of our schools needs to do in ways that are true to our distinctive traditions.

In addition to these major themes that speak to Catholic theological education much as they do to Protestant, there are others that play out rather differently in the Catholic context. Three of these we will consider here are formation, the relation of the school to the church and authority.

As noted above, the discussion of habitus and paideia has increased the appreciation of many for the importance of formation in theological education. The important difference between formation and paideia notwithstanding, from the Catholic perspective this still feels like vindication. Our Protestant colleagues are seeking to recover something we never lost and to learn from this traditional strength of Catholic seminary education. However, we must not lose sight of a significant theological difference in how we understand what we are doing or what we are forming in these programs. Jackson Carroll observes matter of factly at one point that the specialness of the clergy is not ontological but functional.^⁶³ While there are significant variations in how Protestant churches understand their clergy and the effect of ordination, this is probably generally true of the Protestant tradition. It is conspicuously not true of the Catholic understanding of the priesthood and ordination.

Carroll, As One With Authority, 187.

Consistent with Catholic sacramental theology, ordination has been understood to bring about an ontological change in the one ordained, not only a change in his function within the community. Once a priest, always a priest, even if one cannot function as such within the community.^⁶⁴ In Catholic theology and practice the priesthood has a sacerdotal character. It is a distinctive spiritual vocation with a priestly identity (in which celibacy plays a major role) involving the whole person. This identity is the primary integrating principle of seminary formation. This is what seminarians are being formed into. The driving question is not how do I function in the community but who am I as a priest? This is a very different context and goal for formation than we would see in a Protestant seminary. We should not overstate the practical significance of this theological difference. There is still much we can learn from each other’s experience, but the difference is not inconsequential either.

Having said that, we should add that this also raises significant questions within the Catholic world about the formation and identity of lay ecclesial ministers. Over the last decade or so one of the most noteworthy developments in Catholic theological education has been the dramatic increase in the number of people preparing for full-time, professional ministry as lay people rather than ordained or religious. While not ordained, we can, at least in terms of the literature being considered here, think of these lay ecclesial ministers as clergy. Much of what is said here about clergy and clergy education applies to these students, for they will perform many of the functions of clergy in their communities. However, this is precisely where the challenge arises for Catholic theological education. As noted, our theological education has focused on forming priestly identity, which is defined ontologically, not functionally. But if lay ministers are understood functionally, what is the identity into which they are being formed? This is very much up in the air. We are groping about theologically and programmatically

– even as we educate 28,000 lay people a year for ministry. Here the challenge facing Catholic schools, at least those that would educate lay students for ministry, is similar to that facing many

See Canons 290-293 and 1333-35 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. An example of the significance of this understanding of the priesthood is the decisive role it plays in the official argument against the ordination of women.

Protestant schools: how to develop formation programs that are faithful to our own tradition and to the needs of our future pastoral leaders. Though it needs translation into the Catholic context, this literature can help us see the importance of that task for our lay students and offers an ecumenical theological and historical framework for thinking about it. Moreover, Catholic theological educators will have much to learn from the experience and experiments of Protestant schools as we both develop and refine formation programs for our students preparing for particular functions within the church.

Conversely, we may be able to contribute a few cautions from the Catholic experience to our increasingly mutual reflection on formation and Paideia. One is that this focus on forming priestly identity can lead to an unhealthy degree of self-absorption. Those who teach in Catholic seminaries know well the sense among many students that theological education, if not their eventual ministry itself, is all about my vocation, my call, my priesthood, my identity as a priest. Hopewell warns of a similar phenomenon in critiquing the clerical paradigm, which he says promotes an “individualistic understanding of ministry” even to the point of solipsism and suggests a primacy of the students’ personal faith journey over the community’s redemptive quest.^⁶⁵ With all this attention on personal formation, one can forget that the church is concerned about the formation of its pastors not primarily for the sake of the pastors but for the sake of the people they will serve. Hopewell says this would be like someone in naval education forgetting that the point of the training is the welfare of the ship, not the welfare of the officers. The goal is to get the ship to port, not just the captain. One could argue

– rightly – that this self-absorption is a sign of a bad or incomplete formation program. Nevertheless it is a not uncommon outcome that we must guard against.

The Catholic experience also warns that we not overlook the many good things about a professional understanding of the ministry and the role of Wissenschaft in theological education. It is certainly true,

James F. Hopewell, "A Congregational Paradigm for Theological Education," Theological Education 21 (Autumn 1984): 62.

as this literature makes clear, that something important is lost if we professionalize the ministry in such a way that we lose the sacerdotal, mystagogical, vocational understanding of the clergy. This sacerdotal character is central to the Catholic understanding of the priesthood. Catholic theological education can take satisfaction in the fact that it has retained this vision. However, there is also a danger of thinking that the professional is somehow at odds with or opposed to the vocational and the spiritual. Carroll notes, for instance, that some Catholic commentators have been “sharply critical of the professional model of ministry... for neglecting the being of the minister in favor of instrumental skills.” He goes on to say that this is consistent with the pattern of theological education in the Catholic church since Trent, which “has given primary emphasis to forming the spirituality of its future priests” relegating “academic concerns and pastoral skills [to] second place”.^⁶⁶ Certainly this disjunction is false. Professional competence need not diminish sacerdotal function. Bumblers are not eo ipso holier or better priests. Theologically, the temptation to rely on spirit rather than the hard work of preparation is simply not consistent with the Catholic understanding of the interplay of divine and human agency, of the relation of faith and works.^⁶⁷ What many Protestant denominations take for granted in the professionalism of their clergy is something many Catholics have yet to experience. In that, the Catholic world could benefit from some of what these writers are seeking to correct.

A similar circumstance obtains with the call of this literature for attention to the spiritual quality of theological education, for paideia, a call with which I am generally in agreement. As noted earlier, this is a traditional strength that Catholic theological education has generally retained. What Catholic theological educators in particular must recognize, however, is the importance of the context in which we hear and heed this call. It means one thing in the context of a university-related divinity school where Wissenschaft dominates and the intellectual is practiced or regarded in a way that diminishes the

Carroll, As One With Authority, 47.

I actually had a former student, now a parish priest, say – without apology – that he did not give much time to sermon preparation but relied on the Holy Spirit in prayer before his Saturday evening Mass to inspire him.

spiritual – the context of most of the participants in the conversation we are considering. It means something different in an atmosphere of increasing suspicion of the intellectual, in which, as Timothy Radcliffe, Master of the Dominicans, puts it, there is “a profound fear of thinking.”^⁶⁸“The attitude of these students toward learning,” observes Schuth in her study of Catholic seminarians, “is that any new insight is a threat, so they avoid critical thought.”^⁶⁹ The studies of Schuth and others confirm what those of us who work in Catholic seminaries experience: this attitude is increasingly common and increasingly influential among students. Encouraged by some Catholic televangelists, some seminarians seek refuge in forms of ecclesial fundamentalism that seem to prefer the argument from authority (which Aquinas referred to as the weakest argument) to any other. In such an environment the critique of the hegemony of Wissenschaft and the call for reclaiming paideia could easily be misappropriated as a rejection of Wissenschaft and a retreat from the demands of rigorous thought ( misunderstanding paideia as not including rigorous thought).^⁷⁰

“The Wellspring of Hope–Study and the Annunciation of the Good News,” International Dominican Information, no. 337 (January 1996), 6. Quoted in The Changing Face of the Priesthood, 140. This of course is not limited to the Catholic world. Wood notes more generally that “From some conservative standpoints, Christian formation and critical inquiry are simply irreconcilable enterprises”[ Wood, Vision and Discernment, 84].

Schuth, Seminaries, Theologates, and the Future of Church Ministry, 77. She goes on to say that “The number of students – seminarian or lay – represented by this extreme type is, I believe, quite small. However, the impact they have far outweighs their limited numerical presence”[78]. See also her discussion of the “intellectual profiles” of students, 79-85 and Cuzzens’ discussion of “the intellectual crisis” among seminarians and priests [The Changing Face of the Priesthood, 139-141].

Ironically, this position perpetuates the Enlightenment assumption that serious, disciplined thought is linked to Wissenschaft, leaving Paideia to the arena of prayer and formation of priestly identity, with rigorous thought somehow opposed to that. One of the great services of this literature, particularly the work of David Kelsey, but also Farley’s historical analysis in The Fragility of Knowledge, is to remind us that rigorous thinking is not synonymous with Wissenschaft. We would do well to heed Stackhouse’s reminder: “Whatever else students and the churches may require of a theological faculty (and the list is sometimes long), if it is not a center for the formation of the mind through academic training, it will have failed in its primary task”[Stackhouse, Apologia, 142-3].

In this context it is important to make explicit what much of this literature takes for granted: A professionally competent clergy and hard-headed thinking, including that of the Wissenschaftliche type, are good things for theological education and, more importantly, for the church. A robust prayer life and a strong priestly identity are essential but they are not a substitute for thought or professional competence.^⁷¹ In general, this literature points out that some of the moves made in the last two centuries of Protestant theological education have brought problems as well as benefits. With a nod to the benefits, which may be so widespread and pervasive in the Protestant educational and ecclesial world as to be taken for granted as a base from which to work, it identifies the problems and recommends ways to address them. In some cases, the Catholic world – the church, not just seminary – has not experienced the problems to the extent recounted in the literature. But it has also not reaped the benefits. We may need to be more explicit about what the literature can take for granted in its context both so that we do not misunderstand what is proposed and so that we can continue to strengthen the quality of our ministry and our theological education.

Perhaps the most striking difference between the Catholic experience and that reflected in this literature is the relation of the theological school to the church. The literature includes numerous discussions of the importance of connecting theological education with the life and practice of the church. The most conspicuous connection, of course, is that theological schools train leaders for the church(es). Among the more intriguing themes of the literature, however, are the efforts to expand the connection beyond that clerical paradigm. This is done along two primary lines of thought.

Here Cuzzens makes the telling point that “Serious reading and study is intimately connected with the life of the spirit. The inner life of the priest who is determined to feed his mind is simply different from the inner life of the priest who doesn’t. There is a different quality to his prayer and contemplation...”[The Changing Face of the Priesthood, 139].

One, pursued especially by Farley and Wood, is to regard theology as an activity of the church as a whole, not just the clergy. This activity is localized or carried on in a particularly focused, disciplined way in a theological school.^⁷² As Farley puts it, “Theology and theological study originate in the religious community, since ‘theology’ in its primary sense designates the critical, reflective activity of the believer, and ‘theological study’ the disciplining of that activity.” “Clergy education,” he goes on to say, “is a special instance of theological education”^⁷³

The second line of thought focuses on congregations or how “the Christian thing” is lived out in “diverse Christian worshiping communities.” James Hopewell offers a very intriguing proposal along these lines as an antidote to the individualistic, potentially solipsistic temptations of the clerical paradigm. He proposes what he calls a “congregational paradigm” in which the theological school would shift from a focus on the cognitive and character development of the student to “ the cognitive and characterological development of the local church.”^⁷⁴ Kelsey builds on this idea in his proposal to use the life of congregations as the lens or horizon for focusing the various subject matters of the theological school.^⁷⁵ While many questions remain, this has the effect of connecting theological education with the church and holds the promise of shifting us from leader-centered communities to community-centered leaders.

See in particular Farley’s chapter “Can Church Education Be Theological Education?” in Fragility, 85-102 and Wood, Vision and Discernment.

Farley, Fragility, 175 & 177. Or Wood, “theological education is not necessarily professional education for ministry, but the heart of proper professional education for ministry is theological education...”[Vision and Discernment, 93].

Hopewell, "A Congregational Paradigm for Theological Education," 60. Hopewell points out that he is not necessarily arguing for a closer institutional alignment between the seminary and the church. “The mutually critical relationship between the academy and its ecclesiastical partner is essential for an education that seeks to serve the interests of congregations”[63f].

He designates this as the heart of his constructive proposal for understanding the nature and purpose of a theological school. Kelsey, To Understand God Truly, Part Two, 103-251.

In general, these are constructive, theologically appropriate, well-argued and important proposals that reward further reflection. However, for the most part, “the church” spoken of here and throughout the literature is either the abstract, generic idea of church or the congregation, neither of which fits the Catholic understanding of the church. Catholic ecclesiology does not envision a generic community, but consistent with its sacramental realism, always has in view a visible, historic, institutional community. Richard McBrien, in his extensive description of Catholicism, maintains that it is in this understanding of the mystery of the Church that “the distinctively Catholic understanding and practice of Christian faith most clearly emerges.”^⁷⁶ It is also here that the clearest differences emerge between this literature and the literature and experience of Catholic theological education.

In Catholic theological education the relation to the church is a very concrete, ever-present institutional and political reality. The governance and administration of the seminary are guided by canon law.^⁷⁷ The academic curriculum and formation program are shaped by the official “Program of Priestly Formation” which is developed by the national synod of bishops and approved by the Congregation for Catholic Education in Rome.^⁷⁸ Students who are preparing for ordination do not choose their schools on their own but are sent (and withdrawn) by their bishops or religious superiors who receive annual reports on each student. In addition to such structural matters, the theological content of a Catholic discussion of theological education would be informed by and make reference to various official documents such as Lumen Gentium on the nature of the church, Presbyterorum Ordinis and Pastore Dabo Vobis on the nature and mission of the priesthood, Sapientia Christianiana and Ex Corde Ecclesiae on the intersection of church and culture in

Catholicism, 2 ed. (San Francisco: Harper, 1994), 1198.

Canons 232-264.

National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Program of Priestly Formation (November, 1992). See also Norms for Priestly Formation, 2 vols (November, 1993) in which are collected various official documents on the formation of priests.

education and the “Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian” on faculty responsibilities in relation to the church. The absence of reference to documents or relations such as these is the clearest indication that this literature was not written out of the Catholic experience.^⁷⁹

As the church and its relation to the theological school is considered more concretely, the power dynamic in the relationship inevitably comes more to the fore. Consider: in the Catholic world the “local church” refers not to the congregation or parish but to the diocese under the direction of the bishop. A diocese, of course, does not stand alone but is part of a national synod and world-wide institution governed by the college of bishops and the pope and administered by various curial offices in the Vatican. The power differential between a theological school and the church here is very different than that between a school and a congregation or the church in the abstract. Moreover, we must not think that the power dynamic is only operative when the church has power. It is always operative. It is just that when the power differential is on the side of the school, we in the schools are less likely to talk about it or even to see it (as various feminists, minority and post-modern critics have pointed out in other venues). The discussions in this literature about theological education as a function of the church have one impact in the abstract or when we are imagining the church as a congregation. There are few circumstances in either case when the relation to the church could really cost much, when it would pinch the life of the school or its theologians. This relation to the church takes on quite a different texture when the church has an authoritative teaching office.^⁸⁰ It is

Certainly denominational seminaries in other traditions would have their own variations on this concrete relationship. Significantly, the literature contains little discussion of such relations and their implications for how we understand theological education. This could in part be because the particular situations are too diverse to be accounted for in a general discussion. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that most of the participants teach at non-denominational or multi-denominational university divinity schools with a generically Protestant self-understanding. Out of that experience it is not surprising that the relation to the church is discussed without reference to denominational political support and expectations.

Consider this from Pastores Dabo Vobis: “the living Magisterium of the Church and theology, while having different gifts and functions, ultimately have the same

one thing to talk of the need for theologians and theological schools to be accountable to the church as well as the academy. It is quite another when there are actual ecclesial structures for accountability such as there are in the Catholic church.

This accountability of theology and theologian to the church have moved from the abstract to the concrete in a powerful way with the promulgation and application of Ex Corde Ecclesiae and Canon 812: “It is necessary that those [Catholics] who teach theological disciplines in any institute of higher studies have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority,” i.e. the bishop of the diocese in which they teach.^⁸¹ There is nothing even close to this relationship of church and theological education discussed in the literature. To be sure, when this literature was being produced the mandatum was not the political reality it is now. However, the mandatum does not come out of nowhere. It is consistent with the traditional Catholic understanding of the relation between the theological school and the church. Schools and scholars are not free agents. They are part of a community of faith that makes their work both possible and necessary. Theologians serve the church by preparing its leaders, which would seem to give them certain moral obligations to the community whose leaders they are charged with training. Theologians also serve as theologians, by helping the community understand God and understand itself, its relation to God and to the world. In the Catholic arena, claims to speak on behalf of or in the name of the community are not self-authenticating. There is a magisterial, authoritative teaching office with the responsibility to rule on what is Catholic and what is not.^⁸² Teaching in Catholic

goal: preserving the People of God in the truth which sets free ... This service to the ecclesial community brings the theologian and the Magisterium into a mutual relationship”[#55, quoting Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian”].

The procedures for implementing this canon and other provisions of Ex corde Ecclesiae in the United States were promulgated by the U.S. bishops in May 2000 (The application of Ex corde Ecclesiae for the United States).

I don’t mean to suggest that this is true only in the Catholic world. It undoubtedly plays out, though in different ways, in some Protestant schools and traditions. This

theological schools is done in relation to this authoritative teaching office and this institutional church. It is this experience of theological education that is not reflected in the literature.

The significance of this difference notwithstanding, the very abstractness of this literature’s discussions of the relation to the church can be valuable in the Catholic situation – and precisely in dealing with the mandatum. As abstract and outside the Catholic world, this literature can help us reflect theologically on the principles of the relation of theology and theological school to the church. This reflection may be a context for bishops and theologians to discuss and perhaps even agree on the importance of a relationship. With the reassurance of that commitment, perhaps the two – school and church – can move forward together to determine how best to put that shared commitment to theology, to knowing God and the ways of God, into practice in our theological education and in the life of the church. In that context it should be clear to all why we need theology.

may be most evident currently in the schools of the Southern Baptist Convention. Significantly, however, this experience of a concrete relation to the church and its authority is also absent from the literature. It is interesting to read Farley’s reflection on the fall of the house of authority, Fragility, 124-29 with the Catholic situation in mind.

LEARNING TO SEE 83

(Addendum to Footnote 61)

What is theology? And how does one study it? Like many such basic questions, this one seems obvious until you actually try to answer it. There is much that can and should be said in answer to that question. I would like to call attention to three related features of theological education both in school working towards a degree and beyond as part of the life-long task of coming to know God and helping others come to know God.

Theological Education Is About Knowing God

That is the first, most obvious and most important feature of theological education: It is about knowing God. This seems fairly non-controversial yet it does imply an important and potentially controversial distinction. What we do here is nothing less than think, teach and learn about God. Our goal is not just to come to know other people’s ideas about God, but to come to know God. Do not misunderstand, this makes our task no less academically rigorous. There is much information to learn about the tradition, its origins, principles, meaning and development. There are practices of critical thinking, evaluation and judgment that must be mastered as a means to faithfully proclaim and interpret this tradition, this way of life, this knowledge of God, for the communities and the world in which we live. People rely on graduates of theological school to know

⁸³ This is a slightly edited version of a talk I gave at the opening convocation for Saint John’s University School of Theology•Seminary in 1999.

things, to understand theological issues that arise and to make informed judgements in theological disputes.

Moreover, learning what others living and dead have said about God is an important means of coming to know God. We can learn much from others’ experience of God, from their reflection, their insights and even their mistakes. This is one role of community and tradition. But to learn from them we must understand them and at times that is hard work. It demands hard thinking and long hours at tasks that are not always uplifting. And there will be times in the midst of that work when it will seem to have little to do with the theological goal of coming to know God. But there are also times when one’s spirit soars with the excitement and energy of the learning. When vistas of the grandeur of God’s love open out before us. But however we may be experiencing it at the moment, we must not lose sight of the fact that our goal throughout is not merely to acquire information about what others have said about God. Our goal is nothing less than coming to know God better and better, more and more intimately. Put another way, our goal is not just knowing about God; it is knowing God.

Looking Along and With the Tradition

A second, closely related feature of theological education as we try to practice it here is suggested by an image developed by C.S. Lewis in a little 4-page essay, Meditation in a Toolshed.⁸⁴Lewis tells of entering a dark tool shed on a sunny day and noticing a beam of sunlight shining through a crack in the wall. The beam of light with specks of dust floating in it was striking in the darkness of the toolshed. Looking at it made everything else darker by comparison. When he

In God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 212-215.

moved into the beam of light and looked along it out the crack in the wall, he saw leaves and blue sky, clouds and birds. But he no longer saw the beam. Looking at the beam of light he saw one thing. Looking with it he saw something else. Applying this to theological education, we can say that our primary task as theologians and students of theology is not to look at the tradition, as striking as it might be, but to look along or with the tradition at everything else. In this way, theology is like grammar. The point of studying grammar is not simply to learn to talk about grammar but to learn to speak grammatically about everything that comes our way.⁸⁵ So too, the point of studying theology is not simply to talk about Christianity but to speak Christianly about everything else: ourselves, the world, God. To be sure, in grammar and theology there are times when we need to look at the grammar or the tradition. But this is an unusual, derivative work of theology, and should always be in service of its primary task: helping us understand ourselves, the world and God Christianly.

The Lewis image also suggests an important corollary of this distinction: we need to move, to reposition ourselves,if we are to look with the light and see what it has to show us. In the toolshed, that is not a particularly demanding task: a few steps this way or that. In life, however, it can be very demanding. It may require nothing less than a conversion to come to see the world Christianly. Christianity says “Come, stand here at the foot of the cross and you will see the world truly.” We are called not merely to gaze curiously or even reverentially into the empty tomb, but to step into it and look out through the portal that reveals both God and world in truth.

This theme is developed by Paul Holmer in The Grammar of Faith (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978).

If I refuse to move, if I refuse to step into that tomb and its radiant light, I will not see the world it discloses. And there is no substitute. No matter how carefully or skillfully I look at the light, I will not see what it has to show me unless I step into it.

That step makes this knowing self-involving–and potentially very costly. We all know well the financial cost of theological education. That is not what I mean here. The real cost comes in the call to reposition our lives in order to see. Here there are no scholarships or benefactors. Each must pay his or her own way.

Most students in theological schools, of course, have already made that step into the light of revelation, the light of Christian faith. Now it is the task of theology to help students understand that light and learn to see more and more clearly with it.

Learning to See

This brings me to the third and final feature of theological education that we will consider: Learning theology involves learning to see. On the face of it, the idea that we must learn to see is rather peculiar. We are prone to think seeing is a simple thing. I just open my eyes and look. I don’t need to learn how to do it. And yet, if we think about it a bit, it may not seem quite so simple. Some of you may recall the first time you looked through a microscope at a drop of pond water. Chances are you were amazed at all you saw that you had never seen before. But I suspect it was also hard to know exactly what you were seeing. Was it sediment? Air bubble? Paramecium? A speck on the lens? With practice, you would (if you stuck with it) learn to see paramecium without thinking about it. Likewise, when I look at a field of row crops such as grow all around us,

I know that I do not see the same thing an experienced farmer sees. We could multiply examples but the point is clear: We often do learn to see and see truly what we did not see just by looking. So too in theology.

I learn to “see” the presence of God in the world, to distinguish true Gods from false Gods. I learn to see the other as my neighbor, as brother or sister rather than stranger or threat. I learn to see God in my neighbor, in those I work with in and out of the church, in the poor–and in the rich. Learning to see this way is rarely easy or quick and involves far more than acquiring information. It demands training, discipline, practice, attention, thought––what the tradition has sometimes referred to as ascesis. To learn to see God we need to be formed by the Christian community, by the way of life that is Christianity, by the practice of prayer, reflection, service and listening to the Word of God. In the end, if we would learn these lessons, there is no substitute for engaging in these practices. As with athletics, it’s one thing to know about the benefits of training and practice and discipline; it’s quite another to be actually formed by these practices. In the words of the beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” If we would see God, if we would come to know God–the goal of theology–we must attend to the quality of our hearts, our loves, passions and desires as much as our thinking.

It seems to this non-monk that in some sense this is the inspiration of the monastic life: the idea that how I live, the kind of person I am, might affect what I know or even what I see. In the practice of regular prayer, of lectio and conversatio, one can learn to see the presence and activity of God in one’s life more clearly. Locating a theological school in this tradition, as we have at Saint

John’s, means far more than having a chance to rub elbows with living monks or paying attention to monastic history. It means understanding theology– knowledge of God–as intimately connected with how we live–and how we love. It means understanding that theology requires educating our passions and desires as much as our thinking if we are to learn to see God truly. Studying theology in this way means learning to look with the Christian faith as well as at it for in doing so one learns to see God’s presence in the world, one’s neighbor and oneself. This is the grand enterprise of theological education.