F. LeRon Shults on fear in theological education...

LeRon Shults' book Reforming Anthropology is by turns enriching and annoying. Shults does not write lucidly I have to say; and like many American writers he seems to have to quote or cite everybody. But he is full of insight, too, including a chapter on 'relationality and pedagogical practice', where he writes:

I suggest that the ultimate remedy to the repression that keeps seminarians from transformational learning is to fear the only One worth fearing, so that they can overcome the fears of this world. For truly transformational learning to occur in seminarians, it is crucial for us to provide an integrative environment in which they see their intellectual task (theological exploration) as inherently connected to their relation to God (spiritual and personal formation) and to their ministry with the people of God (transformational leadership). p. 67

He argues that theological education should, of all studies, be an aesthetic exercise:

The aesthetic dimension in theological learning includes the pleasure and pain of the learner's life story, one's systemic and sensible relations to community, one's emotive and optative investment in the whole history of humanity, and of course one's experience of God. p. 69

It is fear, the psychologists tell us, that keeps us from learning. But the theological response to this is not the removal of fear, but the changing of fear's object. This is the conquering of other fears by fear of God. Fearing God in fact is the purest of fears, and is 'the beginning of wisdom': it is the purest pedagogical principle! Therefore, theological education ought to cultivate the fear of the Lord. Shults writes:

Human love of God includes the element of fear but it is transformed infinitely into the terrific delight of worship, not merely a worship that is ritualistically compartmentalized, but a doxological way of living in relation to the Holy that constitutes the whole of one's identity in the lived world. p. 74.

Wow.