David Bentley Hart on Theology as an academic discipline

This makes me feel so much better... David Bentley Hart points out that theologians should never have holidays, really:

...theology requires a far great scholarly range than does any other humane science. The properly trained Christian theologian, perfectly in command of his materials, should be a proficient linguist, with a mastery of several ancient and modern tongues, should have a complete formation in the subtleties of the whole Christian dogmatic tradition, should possess a considerable knowledge of the texts and arguments produced in every period of the Church, should be a good historian, should be thoroughly trained in philosophy, ancient, medieval and modern, should have a fairly broad grasp of liturgical practice in every culture and age of the Christian world, should (ideally) possess considerable knowedge of literature, music and the plastic arts, should have an intelligent interest in the effects of theological discourse in areas such as law or economics, and so on and so forth. This is not to say that one cannot practice theology without these attainments; but such an education remains the scholarly ideal of the guild...

He's right of course... theology is a meta-discipline in many ways. Very interesting to think about in the light of current debates about theological education.

The Common Room episode 2

David Hohne and I have a gasbag about theology and what it is good for:

What is Theology?



We realised afterwards that we forgotted to say that theology is about God... oops.

The state of education... hmm...

Something has changed in our educational culture. When I say 'our', I suspect that this is true of most Western countries, but since what I am going to say is anecdotal and observational, I restrict myself to those systems with which I have some experience, namely, Australia and the UK. Some of these changes are undoubtedly for the better, or inevitable because of technological advances, so this is not a 'grumpy old man' list!

I am finding it hard to nail down, so this post is a necessarily inadequate attempt. I am hoping for responses which deepen this. So, here goes:

1. There seems to be a far greater expectation that educators are 'service-providers' and students (and, where relevant, their parents) are 'clients'. The economic paradigm is corrupting at almost every level - though it is understandable given the huge price of education.
2. Whereas in the past, students had to find their own articles and materials, and make their own way in attempting assignments, today there is an expectation that a task will be clearly spelt out with accompanying notes, and that specific articles will be provided direct to the student. Research in the library seems almost redundant.
3. Knowledge of 'learning styles' has led to great student/parent awareness of teachers not addressing the different learning styles. On occassion, students even refuse to learn if their 'learning style' is not catered to!
4. Teachers at secondary and tertiary level are weighed down with administration and reporting.
5. There has been a strong reaction against exams as a form of assessment. The advantage of exams is that they are the least labour-intensive form of assessment from the point of view of teachers - meaning they are free to care for students in other ways.
6. Vocational training has almost completely triumphed over the old, humanist-style (and Christian-endorsed) broad-based education in subjects which cannot be justified by appeal to 'relevance'. Like Latin, for example. Knowledge is almost never now seen as an end in itself. The complete victory of pragmatism?
7. The postmodern to turn to perspectival approaches to texts means that students no longer develop basic skills in interpretation and exegesis of texts in their own language. Year 12 students are taught how to give a Foucauldian reading of a website, but not how to read it. (And hey, I like some things about postmodernism!) They are equipped with suspicion, and not naivety: and I think the latter is essential for good reading. The former only gets in the way.
8. History is bunk, as far as contemporary education goes.
9. We don't put up with people who are bad teachers (on the face of it) but great thinkers. And yet some of the best educational experiences happen with such people.
10. The emphasis in high school on a final, standardised test/assessment has led to the dumbening down of educational standards, because of the need to compare apples with oranges. It also leads to very assessment-stressed students at tertiary level. Anxiety about assessment is palpable.
11. Memorisation of anything is now just not done.

Any more?

Top Theological Research Centres?

A colleague wrote:

I need a list of the top theological libraries / research centres in the world. This does NOT refer to the building but to the collection and resources and facilities for research.

I would appreciate it if, just off the top of your head, you would list what you understand to be the best 10 in the world. No need to try and put them in order of importance, just a list. You do not need to try and justify the selection as all I need now is a list of possibilities.

I replied (in no particular order):

Oxford
Cambridge
Princeton
Aberdeen
Tubingen
Vatican
Yale
Duke
Durham
Edinburgh
King’s College, London

What would you say? My ignorance of the European scene is quite profound of course...

Training and hiring

In the New Yorker - an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell about trying to predict who will be right for the job. He focuses in on NFL Quarterbacks and the teaching profession. And he focuses on the fact that success at training levels (or college football) is no indicator of success in the actual profession. His essay has important things to say about how we train ministers of course, too.

He writes:

In teaching, the implications are ... profound. They suggest that we shouldn’t be raising standards. We should be lowering them, because there is no point in raising standards if standards don’t track with what we care about. Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before. That means that the profession needs to start the equivalent of Ed Deutschlander’s training camp. It needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated.

Simply touting 'high standards' and 'rigour' for no good reason is pointless unless the standards track with what we think is most important. When he says 'standards should be lowered' he is speaking of entry requirements - and I don't think the training itself should be at all compromised. It is however worth asking if what is asked of students, and therefore measured in them, is any helpful indicator of how they will go as ministers.

Shapers of Contemporary Protestant Theology

Introducing - an important course offered to fourth year students at Moore College!

Shapers of Contemporary Protestant Theology is a reading and seminar style course which seeks to give the student an orientation to current themes and debates in theological thinking. This is in part at least to help the student conduct some self-analysis about their own theological thinking, its context and the influences on them. To do this, we will be narrating the story of Protestant theology in the last two centuries with special reference to four main thinkers: Schleiermacher, Newman, Warfield and Barth. Each of these thinkers is both an individual of immense and original influence on theological thinking, and also representative of (roughly speaking) 'schools' of theological thought within Protestantism. What is also of significance is that each of these thinkers is trying to do Christian theology in a faithful way in response to the modern world of the industrial revolution, the rise of the nation state, the Darwinian revolution in science, the politics of tolerance and charity and the inevitable progress of human culture.

Schleiermacher is of course the representative of the turn to 'feeling' and experience over and against the rationalism of Kant; Newman (who of course ended up as a Roman Catholic, but whose influence on Protestant/Anglican thinking is ongoing) turns to the church and tradition; Warfield is the orthodox Calvinist, and an American as well; and Barth represents the single most impressive attempt to reposition Protestant orthodoxy within modernity.

We see some themes beginning to emerge even from the planting of these four stakes in the ground. What is the place of academic theology vis a vis the church? What role can scripture plausibly have in modern theology after the fact of the rise of biblical criticism? What can theology say about politics in the modern world? What is the response of theology to the rise of science?

Here is the reading list:


Schleiermacher, F.
The Christian Faith. 1821. Repr. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999, 52–93; 11–19.

Newman, J.H.
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, 93-178

Warfield, B. B.
‘The Church Doctrine of Inspiration’. The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948. 105–165

Barth, K.
Church Dogmatics, I/1. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956, 125-186.

Church Dogmatics, II/2, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956,145–194.

Moltmann, J.

Theology of Hope. London: SCM, 1967, 15–36.

Pannenberg, W.
from Revelation as History. London: Sheed and Ward, 1969, 123–158.

Gunton, C.E.

Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, London: T&T Clark, 2003, 3-18


Torrance, T.F.
"Theological Realism." The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 169-96.

Wiles, M.
Working Papers in Doctrine, London:SCM, 1976, 1-17; 180-193

Packer, J.I.
“Hermeneutics and Biblical Authority,” Themelios 1.1 (Autumn 1975): 3-12.

Frei, H.
Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays, Hunsinger & Placher eds., New York: OUP, 1993, 94-116.

Lindbeck, G.
The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Lousville: Westminster John Knox, 1984), 73–90

Williams, R.
‘On the Unity of Christian Truth’ in On Christian Doctrine, Oxford: Blackwells, 16-28

Milbank, J.
‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’, in G.Ward (ed), The Postmodern God, Oxford: Blackwells,1997, 265-78

Horton, M.
Covenant and Eschatology: Divine Drama, Louisville: John Knox, 2007, 1-19

Vanhoozer, K.J.
The Drama of Doctrine, 1-30

Knox, D.B.
Selected Works, Vol 1, Kingsford: Matthias Media, 37-50, 73-95


Robinson, D.W.B.
Selected Works:Vol 1, Camperdown: ACR, 230-53

(about 550 pages in total)

Full-text notes and pedagogical practice

I am a theological lecturer. I believe in the content of my course material.

Since I have returned to teaching, I have had repeated requests from students for full-text notes of my lectures.

I have refused these requests, on the grounds that I do use a text-book and allocate set-readings, and that my lecture 'notes' are not of publishable standard. The notes are actually for me, as a prompt to my oral delivery of the course content.

Futhermore, I think giving out a set of full-text notes is not that way I want to teach. I think it encourages 'bulimic learning' - the rote learning of information for an exam which is quickly forgotten. I would like to encourage what they call 'deep learning' - and to regard the lecture itself as not an injection of information but an educational experience.

Am I missing something?

In praise of academic administration

In my days as a postgraduate student one of the things I enjoyed not being a part of most was the process of academic administration - the meetings and chores that inevitably crowd into an academic teacher's life and prevent him/her from doing what he/she feels called to do - teach students, research, publish and so on. Academics often wish they could be freed from the grind of admin in order to do the real thing.

Today was the marathon meeting of our academic year at Moore, the famous post-exams 'Board of Studies' meeting. It is 8 hours of hard slog, for the most part. Meditating on the process when I was supposed to be thinking about something else, I realised that the nexus between academic administration and academic knowledge (in the best sense) is tighter than it feels. It just isn't true that they have nothing to do with each other. Governing the process of teaching and learning depends heavily on - and in turn informs - teaching and learning itself. The ordering of education is in itself educative. While the process can be more or less pleasurable, it is still part of the business of academic thought to which academics are called.

The history of the university depended on this observation: that knowledge was united and its various parts ordered to one another in a certain way was at the heart of the medieval university. And theology, of all the disciplines, held the honoured place - 'the queen of sciences'. The university, as much by its structures and by its location and communal disciplines as by its curriculum, upheld and reinforced a view of knowledge.

It doesn't make it more pleasant, but hopefully makes it feel more purposeful!

What the best college teachers do

Well we have arrived in sunny Sydney. For those not in the know, I am about to resume teaching Doctrine at Moore Theological College here in Sydney. Having now travelled to and fro upon the earth, I remain convinced that, pound for pound, it is a world-class college in which to pursue training for ministry. Working among these colleagues is a amazing privilege. But teaching such students is sublime - they want to learn! Crazy, huh?

So, in preparation, I have been reading up on pedagogy. The most inspiring book I have found to date is Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do . It is a good book because it focuses not on classroom techniques but on the attitudes that great teachers have towards the process of learning. The insights of the book are numerous: for example, that students are less motivated to learn by extrinsic factors such as exams and assessments and most motivated to learn when the intrinsic value of the subject is itself the motivation.

That is not to say that these educators settle for a kind of 'learning for learning's sake' philosophy: not at all. They are also concerned to connect what the teach to 'real' life.

Furthermore:

Highly effective teachers design better learning experiences for their students in part because they conceive of teaching as fostering learning. Everything they do stems from their strong concern for and understanding of the development of the students. They follow few traditions blindly and recognise when change in the conventional course is both necessary and possible. (p. 67)

Innovation, but not for its own sake, in other words.

I also like what he has to say about what great teachers expect from students. They expect that every student can learn - they don't foster elitism, nor do they seek popularity by making the course 'soft'. Neither do they think they are setting a high standard merely because they pile on the work.

Lectures - for or against?

A while back I wrote about what makes a good lecturer.

I have been thinking - and reading - again about lectures and their place in tertiary education, and especially in the preparation of Christian ministers. Most seminaries I know of have a very heavily lecture-based programme, with few tutorials or seminars, if any. In contrast to university teaching, which is usually a rather sparsely arranged timetable of lectures, seminaries crowd their days with alloted teaching hours. Partly, I speculate, this is because of a view of theology as not only a method to be demonstrated but a body of knowledge to be passed on in an authoritative way by recognised teachers. Also, theology is such a composite of disciplines - language, history, text-interpretation, philosophy - that it is hard to leave anything out of the programme, or to allow for an option-based course of study.

But, speaking from my experience as a student, I found lectures a largely very frustrating and slow way to learn, unless the lecturer was peculiarly good. It is particularly inefficient if the lecturer feels he/she has to cover everything in a particular course, because the lectures are replacing the role played by a text book. Further, a lecturing style that depends on the questions of students loses impact with large classes. And, frankly, I am not interested in the ignorance of my fellow students (and neither are they in mine!). In theological colleges, lecturers are often too nice (believe it or not!) to students and pander too much to their worst vices (especially by catering to their passivity in learning...).

So: lectures - for or against? What are lectures good for? When do they work, when do they fail? What can a lecture give that you can't get from a book in less time?

Learning the biblical languages

Now, don't get me wrong here: in principle, I am in favour, strongly in favour, of trainees for pastoral and teaching ministry being made to learn Greek and Hebrew.

In practice, I have yet to see how this actually works. Learning a language to a proficient level is extremely time-consuming for most students - Hebrew especially so. My own experience of three years of studying Hebrew in the context of a busy theological degree was that, while I could pass the course well, I don't think I was ever able to get a 'feel' for the language such that I can use it. It was useful of course to learn something of the atmosphere and fluidity of the language, and to gain an insight into the Hebrew mind - but for all that effort I think the results were paltry. And the opportunity cost was high, too: I could have been reading more and more widely in theology and history. My bet is that hardly any pastors would use Hebrew on a regular basis. So, was the time well spent? I am not convinced.

Greek is easier and more containable, of course, but still: the hours that an average student spends on Greek will be far and above the value it grants. Mostly we do not reach a level of Greek that enables us to make independent translational and interpretational decisions. We turn out to be still reliant on lexicographical sources.

In addition: a little learning is a dangerous thing. Teaching some Greek and Hebrew to students can give them a false confidence as to their ability to read the text in the original in a sensible way and come to useful, interesting and sound theological conclusions. It can give them the sense that now the text has been decoded, there is no more work to do. The tendency to make lexicography into theology (to use Gordon C's phrase) is the fruit of this.

So: let's have a discussion about the Biblical languages and their value for theological training for most pastors! How can they be taught so that a level of proficiency can be reached? Is it worth persisting, and why? Convince me!