July 05, 2006 (Chicago, IL) — Cynical critics ask, what is the point of a seminary education that requires more time than people are willing to give, more money than people are able to pay, more disconnection from family and career than people are willing to tolerate, and that seems to be less than effective in equipping women and men for leadership and ministry?
Others express their concerns more specifically: the curriculum is specialized and fragmented, thus hindering the equipping of leaders; a coherent purpose and compelling vision for theological education are lacking; the effort historically to integrate the curriculum around theology has been lost; theology itself is undefined, fragmented, rationalized, and specialized; theory and practice are in perpetual tension; and education is not sufficiently concerned with learning.
Theological Education Matters traces four factors from the long history of higher education, that taken together form a potential threat matrix for the future of theological education: (1) How institutionalism influenced understanding of the nature of knowledge and perceptions of the role of theology. (2) How academic rationalism has shaped perceptions of the purpose of knowledge and the nature of education. (3) How professionalism has effected theological education and the church. (4) How the church and academy have understood and foster the desire to know God.
Initiatives rapidly coming to maturity may supplant or forever change theological education as we know it. However, if we do not make some attempt to understand at a deeper level the complex matrix of issues that affect theological education, even these initiatives will fall far short of what is needed.
Theological education does not equal school—theological schools are but one expression of theological education. It is likely that the more effective efforts in 21st century theological education will be international in scope, learning focused, deeply concerned about theological education in relation to a biblical ecclesiology, committed to service within society, and increasingly decentralized in structure and affiliations.
Theological Education Matters by Linda Cannell. © 2006. Foreword by Ted Ward. Published by EDCOT® Press for MorgenBooks. Available at www.lulu.com/morgen in eBook, paperback, and hardcover versions. A free “desk copy” of the eBook is available to those who agree to post a link to the book on their corporate or personal web site for a minimum of 60 days. Librarians and bookstores can contact Linda Cannell at lcannell@candospirit.org for access to discount editions of the book. Contact Linda Cannell at lcannell@candospirit.org for the “desk copy” eBook. A thumbnail of the book cover, the book description, and the URL to purchase the eBook will be included to assist the instructor in posting the book on their corporate or personal web site.
EXCERPTS FROM THE INTRODUCTION by Linda Cannell
After a few years of teaching in a seminary in Canada and realizing that its graduates were not surviving well in churches, I resigned and started a consulting ministry to serve particularly the smaller churches in Canada. As I recognized the deep problems of the church, the question became, what is the nature of the church as God sees it, and what if any relationship must therefore exist between the church and theological education? After ten years I responded to the encouragement of Ted Ward and accepted an invitation to join the faculty at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago. There I was once again confronted with the frustrations of working in an academic environment. The question then became, what is the nature and purpose of theological education? At that time several books on problems in theological education had appeared, most notably Theologia by Edward Farley. My reading was informative but still not satisfying.
About this time, Rich Mouw, president of Fuller Seminary, secured a grant to gather faculty representing different disciplines in evangelical seminaries to form a community of discourse around the question “What are the aims and purposes of theological education?” I joined this group partway into the process and met with its members for several years. Among other considerations, the problems created by the conventional fourfold model of the theological curriculum were discussed, and Friedrich Schleiermacher’s legacy was said to have contributed to these problems. Wondering to what extent Schleiermacher and the German university model were actually to blame, I sketched out an article to explore Schleiermacher’s vision. This quickly grew into a monograph when I began to wonder if the central problem in theological education was, in fact, the distortion of theology or the loss of a theological center. Then a larger manuscript emerged as research into Schleiermacher’s vision and the changes in theological method led to further research on when (and why) theology and spirituality ceased to be understood as of one essence. This search led to inquiry into the rise of academic theology and the effects of institutionalization and rationalization on views regarding the nature of knowledge. The question of how these factors contributed to the apparent compartmentalization of reason and spirituality in theological education led me to wonder, would rationalism and spirituality have a different character and relationship today if Eastern and Western mysticism had managed to sustain a productive tension beyond the eleventh century and into the thirteenth century, when Scholasticism dominated the universities?
Finally, deep concern for the future of theological education and the seeming impossibility of breaking out of centuries-old patterns led to a more comprehensive reading of the history of higher education from the patristic era to the present. This survey prompted a realization that the literature tends to critique theological education in relation to one dominant factor or in relation to two or three factors treated separately (e.g., the functionalization of theology, the need for in-ministry education, specialization of the curriculum, the need for spiritual formation, poor educational design, and so on). I became convinced that concerns about theological education need to be understood in relation to a matrix of factors that together contribute to the problems that beset contemporary theological education.
Chapter 1 briefly synthesizes critiques of theological education found in readily available literature and highlights two questions: (1) To what extent do a distortion of theology and the consequent focus of theological education on developing the functions of ministry (the clerical paradigm) constitute a sufficient analysis of that which troubles theological education? (2) To what extent has wisdom—typically embedded in theology—as the solution to contemporary problems been sufficiently clarified to be of use to twenty-first-century international theological education? Chapter 2 discusses four major factors distilled from the literature and the long history of higher education and suggests that these factors make up a complex matrix that troubles theological education. Chapter 3 warns that taken together, these factors form a threat matrix that continues to affect theological education and the accomplishment of the mission of the church in the world.
Chapters 4–7 provide historical background related to the synthesis offered in chapter 1 and the factors discussed in chapters 2 and 3. The final section, chapters 8–10, presents implications for seminaries seeking to renew their identity and purpose in the twenty-first century: What are the issues at stake for theological education to recover a focus on the church? How necessary is it that theological education be characterized by praxis and holism rather than by persisting polarities such as theory and practice? Can the seminary today recover holism and praxis within current structures and educational processes? To what extent can the seminary in the twenty-first century resolve the perceived tension between instruction and learning? How will the West respond to the fact that theological education is now international and increasingly decentralized? To what extent will the practices of theological education in its varied forms and contexts in many countries collaborate to serve the church and society?
The conclusion reiterates that this book does not propose doing away with the academy per se but points out that serious flaws embedded in the very life and structure of the university were copied, unwittingly in many cases, by divinity schools and seminaries. The question of whether society and the church need universities, divinity schools, and seminaries will not be answered by this book. The more pressing questions relate to what institutions of higher learning have become and what alternatives are possible for leadership development and theological education for the whole people of God.
My reasons for inviting Ted Ward to write the Foreword are important at this point. Ted has spent all of his career in formal education at the University of Florida, Michigan State University (MSU), and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS). His affiliation with two Land Grant universities reflects his lifelong commitment to education as service and as a lifelong discipline. However, Ted has also spent his career warning of the limitations of schooling and championing nonformal modes of education.
Early in his university career, he pioneered new models of teacher education in Florida and Michigan. While at Michigan State University, he was on call with the U.S. Agency for International Development to go anywhere in the world where there was need. For the tangible differences he made in less privileged countries he was given the Dag Hammarskjöld Citation for Service in Developing Nations, Uppsala, Sweden (1975), and later the Faculty and Alumni Award for Service, College of Education, Michigan State University (1986). His commitment to the health of family life resulted in an invitation to serve as consultant on moral values and family for the White House and the U.S. Congress, 1984-1987. On his overseas tours, he consulted with mission agencies and Christian leadership development initiatives to help them think through their particular responsibilities in the service of the church. His consultancies with Christian organizations, government agencies, and corporations are too numerous to mention here. However, his experiences and commitments have inspired many to consider more seriously the mission of the church in the world, and with that the purpose and structures of theological education.
LINDA CANNELL served churches and theological schools in Canada for about 20 years before joining the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois in 1990. There she was professor of education and directed the PhD in Educational Studies program. She is currently Lois W. Bennett Distinguished Professor of Educational Ministries at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.
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