The future of (UK) ministerial formation: some musings
I have been involved in a large number of (private) conversations recently around a broad theme of ‘ministerial formation’, where ‘ministry’ is widely defined. It seems to me that we stand at the threshold of a significant change: this is in part necessary, and in part possible and desirable. For a century, or nearly two, we (defined here as ‘British nonconformist churches’) have practiced a model of ministerial formation that centred on attendance at a residential college. This is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive: most candidates for ministry these days are married, potentially with family, and so moving house is a major upheaval; for colleges tied in to mainstream university programmes in England, there is a sudden increase of £6-9K pa in training costs that someone has to bear from this year as a result of the introduction of university fees. At the same time, the imperative that made college attendance necessary is receding fast. We used to train ministers on an apprenticeship model, a young aspiring minister studying alongside an experienced and recognised practitioner. That had to change as a result of the expansion of academic publishing: where once a thoughtful minister’s library could be nearly exhaustive, we moved to a situation where a major institutional investment was required to offer a library that was even adequate. Again, the development of academic sub-disciplines made the idea of apprenticeship to a single master implausible: those of us trained in Christian doctrine are acutely aware of our lack of expertise in Biblical studies, for instance. So a community of scholars, each with a different specialism, was needed – a college. Now, however, these necessities are passing away. In writing my recent Trinity book, I accessed 80-90% of the articles, and perhaps 40% of the monographs, online – probably I could have accessed 50% of the monographs online, but I still prefer working from a printed edition when it is easily available. I am very aware of the rate of advance of electronic publication, and (particularly given CLA permission to digitise material for course packs) the moment when an entire course could be delivered on the basis of electronic access to publications without any real compromise in quality was reached some years ago, if the course is offered by an institution is linked to a top academic library (this conditional is significant: academic e-publication presently works by selling big chunks of material for big money to big institutions; a specialist theological college should in theory be able to access a bespoke body of specialist material for a reasonable price, but those options are not currently offered in the marketplace). Similarly, there is no need any more for physical access to faculty. I have done doctoral supervisions, and even vivas, using something as basic as Skype; this is less than ideal, but an institution that invested seriously in web conferencing equipment and software could offer a student experience not far from that of the best campuses with only very infrequent requirement to attend. (Much distance learning is substandard: a good test is to look at the cost – here in St Andrews, we charge our DL students the same as we charge our residential students, because we offer them the same standard of programme; this was a revelation to me when I first discovered it, that it is possible to aspire to genuine excellence in every aspect of learning and student experience, even when working at a distance.) These same electronic opportunities change what is necessary in ministerial training. One conversation I had concerned people who had advanced to positions of national leadership very quickly on the basis of their abilities, but needed some better intellectual foundations to sustain a long and fruitful ministry. My first thought was the old ‘don’t give them a fish; give them a rod’ analogy – what such people need is the skills and language to access theological resources, not intensive grounding in theology; my second thought, though, was an extension of the analogy: ‘don’t even give them a rod, but introduce them to an expert fisherman’. I find myself regularly – certainly more than once a month – advising national church leaders with whom I have become acquainted on theological matters; some are quite highly educated theologically (doctorates…); others are less so; all share an ability to know when they are out of their depth and need expert help. That ability seems to me a crucial one now at every level of Christian ministry: there are plenty of scholars able and willing to help, but the minister needs a very clear awareness of what she doesn’t know. To add another factor...
Read MoreTwystematic Theology
Announcing an idea I’ve been playing with for a while: the whole of Christian doctrine, 140 characters at a time. I am going to attempt to post a complete outline of Christian doctrine (in a generally classical, broadly Reformed, Evangelical and Baptist mode – i.e., my doctrine…) through a succession of tweets. If this sounds interesting, please follow @twystematics, and/or head over to www.twystematics.org for more information. I plan to go live with the first tweet on Monday 2nd April. (Why ‘twystematics’? well, there is an established tradition of naming projects involving Twitter, and Twumma theologica just sounds silly…)
Read MoreThe place of theology in exegesis: reflections inspired by Kevin DeYoung
I have seen several references – all positive – on FB & Twitter to a recent blog post by Kevin DeYoung, in which he asserts that, for evangelicals, systematic theology is the result of exegesis, and then argues that theology should in turn shape exegesis. His point is a fairly standard one: all reading is shaped by our preconceptions, so allowing our theology to be involved is a good idea. As I say, people I respect have praised the post; I find DeYoung’s account of the relation of Scripture to theology inadequate, however. DeYoung begins: Systematic theology looks at the whole Bible and tries to understand all that God says on a given subject (e.g., sin, heaven, angels, justification). Exegesis is what you do when you look at a single text of Scripture and try to understand what the author–speaking in a specific culture, addressing to a specific audience, writing for a specific purpose–intended to communicate. Good systematic theology will be anchored in good exegesis. The sum of the whole is only as true as the individual parts. No Christian should be interested in constructing a big theological system that grows out of a shallow and misinformed understanding of the smaller individual passages. I don’t know of any evangelical pastor or scholar who disagrees with these sentiments. OK, I am an evangelical scholar, and I disagree with at least one thing DeYoung says – his opening sentence. Or rather, I don’t disagree with what it says, but it does not say so much that it is dangerously misleading. Theology is not primarily an exercise in collating Scriptures, although good theology is certainly attentive to that. In a sense, real theology is what you do after the Scriptures have been collated. On all interesting matters, the witness of the Bible is complex – on many it can appear contradictory. God is sovereign, but human beings are free to chose as they will; Jesus is one with the Father, but says ‘the Father is greater than I’; God created all things good, but the world is broken by the power of evil; a final judgement and separation will come, but God will be all-in-all, and every knee will bow; the list could go on and on… Theology is the task of coping with such complexity, and with the apparent contradictions. It is about the construction of conceptual schemes which enable all, not just some, of the texts to be taken seriously. The Trinitarian and Christological debates of the early centuries are deeply exegetical, in the sense that they turn on differing attempts to make sense of a (fairly quickly defined) set of apparently-contradictory texts. All the significant contributions to the arguments are essentially lists of proposed exegeses of texts, indeed. In each case, however, there is also the development of a conceptuality which will shape the exegesis, and offer exegetical possibilities that were not available before. A couple of examples: first, Hilary of Poitiers is completely concerned with exegetical arguments in his reflections of the Trinitarian debates collected in De Trinitate; however, as he becomes more familiar with the Greek debates, he realises that certain arguments are not helpful (dropping the old Latin ‘X from X’ arguments, for instance). In Book VII, he suddenly stops, and offers careful reflection on how God is named, and what ‘birth’ means when applied to the divine. This gives him a set of concepts which allow for more adequate exegesis of texts he has already considered, which he then turns to offer. Similarly, if we look at the Cappadocian theology that led to the Constantinopolitan settlement, it is about the development of concepts which will allow texts to be read better. This is true whether one agrees with Zizioulas that their core achievement was the development of a relational ontology, or whether one follows more recent historians of doctrine in finding accounts of how language applied to the divine to be central. At the same time, adopted concepts limit possible exegesis. This is true of those judged by the tradition to be in error – Eunomius has a neoplatonic account of language which makes him unable to accept anything like Nicene doctrine – and by those judged to be impeccably orthodox: Athanasius and Basil both work with a two-state ontology (the only possible ways of existence are eternal, necessary, divine being, and time-bound, contingent, created being; there are no middle ranks) which rules out a whole series of possible accounts of the Father-Son relation which were being explored by their contemporaries. Because of this, theology has to be attentive, and in a sense responsible, to those conceptual possibilities that are live in...
Read More‘Stirring dull roots with spring rain’
I’ve been thinking about Web page design recently, in connection with a couple of projects (one of which will go live in about a week, I hope; the other in the summer). I reflected that the design of this blog was not good in a couple of ways, and had been unchanged in over four years. So here’s a new design; I hope you like it… At the same time, I’ve added a couple of pages. ‘My writing’ and ‘My preaching and speaking’. Both are shameless marketing: links to places you can buy my books, or mp3s and even a DVD of me speaking. Comments on changes welcome; if you happened to be browsing this blog mid-afternoon, I apologise that the theme design changed repeatedly over one half hour!
Read More
Recent Comments