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9.2 Theological inqu iry and theological education Charles M Wood

Vision , discernment and theological edncation Wh.ile the .terms 'vision ' and 'discernment' may be used primarily to deSIgnate mtcllectual aClivitin characteri'tic of theologica l enquiry, the .terms may also be u,ed in two other imponant Sense s. They can de,., gnate the capacilies for those activities. and they Can designate the~r prodUCIS. T~us we may speak. of vi.,ion as a personal quality which. a person . ~ 'ght po"ess Or strive for, mean ing by 'v ision' the capacIty to enVISion ; or we may speak o f someo ne 's vision of the Christian faith . meaning the gene ral understanding of it which he or she has allained and might articulate for us in a sununary account, or perhaps tn a mu lt.ivolume written ',y stematic theology'. We may praIse so.meone's dlS~ernment, meaning his or het ~apacity for imight mto pan'cula r 5lluatlons, or we may refe r to the discernme nt which SOmCOne has of a panicular situation, meaning the actual appraisal of it which that pe rson has made. In their range of senses, these two term s resemble the mnre general ~~rm 'judgement ", of which vision and discernment are both types: .J udgemcnt · can refer to the activity of j udg ing, to the capac ity to Judge , or to the ?utcome. In the Same way , the term 'theology' Can deSignate the actlvtty of theological enqu iry (its primary sense), the theological capac ity or habitus (the so·called subjective sense), or the results of theologIcal enqUIry. for e xamplc , theological judgements or proposals (the so·called object ive sense). In its Own way t~e theological .h abitu,- is also a product of theologi . cal enqUiry; that IS, the capacny and disposition for theology is developed through active panicipation in it. JUSt as many other abili. ties and aptitudes a re gained and strengthened thrOllgh exerci," . Th~ologkal ~ducation i, essentially just such a panicipation in theological enqUlTY, ordered to the acqui,ition of that comp le x set of Intel lectual and persona l qualities which go to make up what we might std l call the theological habituJ'. Keeping in mind thcsc two different ,orts of products of theo logical enquiry , the 'objective' and the 'subjective', wc might thcn distinguish between two uses of theological enquiry. Let us call one its normal use, and the other its educarional USe. Its normal usc is the allainment of consiMred judgemcnts conce rning Christian witness . One normally engages tn thcol?gical rcfleetion in orde r to answer a question concerntng that Wlt:lCSS. It may be a broad question, for example, as

to what the substance of the Christian witness really is, or it may be a much narrower question, for example, as to how tli at witness might be most approp riately enacted in a panicular instance. As a ro le, ~uch judgements, both the broader and the narrower variety , have implica· tions for action. Christ ians ordina rily engage in theologica l reflection for the sake of their own Christian practice; their reflection ha~ a M liberative character. The educational use of theological enquiry also involves the making theological judgements, and also has a practical intention ; but its more proper aim is not the fonnation of j udgements, but the formation of judgement. Its impact upon Christian practice is indirect. It informs practice by equipping the practitioner nOt with ",ady -made delibera· tive judgements hut rath~r with the capacity to make them, The educationa l use of theo logical enqu iry then is subordinate to its normal use, it is a ' practice' whose pu rpose is to develop an aptitude for the practice of enquiry. These two u",s are not m utually exclusive, of course. As with ""y enterprisc in wbich increased competcnce is gained with experience, so in theology one 's education continues as one pursues the enquiry, even when education is no longer onc "s primar)' intention. Likew ise the theological judgements one makes in the course of anaining a basic thcological competence, whi le they are not the primary aim at that .'tage, are still significant judgements which may have profound bearing un one ' s understanding of the Christian faith, one's practice of Christian witness. and one' . conduct of theological enqui ry fwm that point onward. Generally 'peaking, involvement in theological cnquiry always yields both 'objective ' and 'suhjective' results. Still there are times when a person's focus will be primarily on thc atta inment or sharpening of theologic al abilit ies , and time, when it will be primari ly on finding anSWerS to theological questions. Identifying the first sort of foeu, with the 'edu cational ' use of theological enquiry may seem an arbitrary restriction, since there is no denying that finding ansWers to theological questions (here , the 'normal' use) has often been regarded as the main purpose of theological education, or at least of the theologica l pan of what we conventionally ~all 'theolog ical education '. On thi s view, one studies thcology in seminary in order to figure thing s out, to arrive at a sct of judgeme nts about the ,ubstance of the Christian witness which one may then use as a foundation (a 'theoretical' foundat ion . perhaps) for one ' s subsequent practice of mi nistry . No doubt some attention must be given to the question of how such judgements are to be Illade , but the 'how' is of les s immediate conccm tha n the ' what' . The important thing is to emerge with ' a theology' , that is , with an obj e<:tive under· standing of the content of the Ch ristian faith which can serve as the basis for one 's preaching, teaching, counselling, etc . From thi s angle professional theologians, for example, one 's teachers in seminary, may seem unduly preoccupied with the ' how' , and unhelpfulJy insis-

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tent on raising questions of method, rather than concentrating on the maner ~t h. OO. Their insistence that it is their function to help one learn how to think rathu than ...hal to think may look like evasion; and their refusal to regard preach~bility as the crite rion of good theol. ogy lIUIy come across as a poor ~ fcnce for their unwillingness or inability to make their work practically I"<:levam. Teachers as well IS $lUdenlS have so'""times operated on the implicit ISsumption th3t the principal aim of theological education is ~o furnish studems with a body of objective knowledge. When 'cover, Ing the I1lIIterial ' is the major objective of a course, or when exami".l ions 11"<: df:signcd primarily to test studf:ms' familiarity with the material 'co~red ', or when a curriculum is shaped by I simill.r tnQIivation 10 e~pose $I.udents to everything they are likely (0 need to know about in the cou rse of thei r (UtUI"<: employment . onc: may l"<:aWn. ably SU$pet1 Ihat such an assu mption is at work , Studf:ms can bardly be buhed for coming 10 share it, or at leaSl for Tttognising it and coming 10 terms wilh it as I fact of academic life. (The Sludents m.ay alw be unable to find mudl correl.tion between the mastery of objective knowledge which is upected of them in various courses and lhe contpelences they nc:ed to acquire fo r their future employmem, and may there fore conclude that lheological education is largely a mean. ingleu e~ereise, a tr ial to endure On the way to ministry which has little to conlribute 10 prepa ration for that ministry ~ xcept perhaps a sehooling in patience and the eoollrance of frustratio n. ) This prevalent working assumpti on concerning Ihe aim of th~ologi­ cal education is a powerfu l half·truth. It is not simply mistak~n. becau ~ cCrl~ inl y onc of Ihe proper. desi red resulls of a theological education is an enhaneed understanding (in the objective sense) of Ihe Chrislian witness; a vision. however tentative . of it. nature. cohe ren"" and implications. a grasp of gene ral princip les relevant 10 Christian practice, a set of reflective judgemenlS on variollS significant ques. tlons. Wc wOllld normally and righlly regard a person who emerged from I cour\1C of theological training with 00 such understanding a. mi!>l:ducaled. It is highl~ unli kely that . pe rson co\lld develop compe. :e"CC in Iht'Ologi<:.! enquiry wilhout forming so ,"" theological Judgements along tile way. One learns to make judgemenlS chiefly by making judgemenlS. and then eu mining thei r grO\lOO' and implic.a. ~ions, reflecting on one's performance. and trying aga in. 1bose JudgemenlS are admiuedly provisional and heu rist ic. especially at the earlier stages of one's involvement in the practice; bUI to attempt to suspend judgement .llosethcr is 10 abstain from participation in the process through which judgement is learned . It is. however. I mistake 10 regard the formation of such judgemenlS as the principil/ aim of lheological education_ JudgemenlS are instead boIb lhe means and the by·produet of the achievemem of tbat principal aim, that is, the formation of judgement. Their close a~soci. al ion with thal aim helps 10 acCOUnt for the common tendenc~ to

mistake lhem for it. that is, 10 Ihink that the acquisilion of' a theology' (in Ih~ objective sense) is the goal and crilerion of a theological educa· tion . While the pos~ssion of a set of theological judgements may indicate theological compe tcnce , il is not by itself an ahogethe: :eli. able index. since there are many ways of coming to possess op,nlons other than Ihrough a process of carefu l, C[iliCltI reflection. Onc's theology may be inherited, or ae«ptcd on the authority of one's teachers, or collected al random. The pre$su re of academic o r ecclesiastical expectations may force a premature closure to judgements withoUI the reflection which they righlly need, and even withoul 10Y clear sense: of the problem to whil;h a given judgemem is supposedly a 5Olution. JudgemenlS adopted under these tonditioll$ often lack supplenc:ss and vitality . Since lhey bavc been acquired al se:cood-h.and ntlter Ihan fOll\1ed for oneself, their poMClSOI is apt to have hulc feeling for lhe degree of fi nnncs.s Or tentaliveneu with which they should be held. and may be poorly equipped 10 engage in Ihal ongoing reappraisal of one', judgements whicb is onc mark of imelligent conduct . And 10 the extent thal they have been prompted mOle by external pressu~s than by onc's own live internt in the queSlions to which lhese are answers. lhese judgements Ire likely to have only a ceremonial function . They can be trOlled out when an opinion is solicited. but they do n.oI belollg 10 one's own actual deliberations. Thus one might (c~cn sincerely) profes~ a firm adhe~ne~ to the doctrines of Ihe Trinity and the [ ncam~lion. after a cursory inspection. witholll those doctrines ever coming to fllnetion as working judg~' OIents in one's thought and eonducl. It is not Ihe mere possession of'a theology' that is the measll re of a Iheological education; it is rather onc's abi lity 10 fo rm , revise and cmploy theological judgem~nts that counts. Vi sion ~nd disce rnment arc exhibited in practice . So far, tile thesis thallheologicai ed ucation is essemially an engagemcnt in Iheological enqui ry fo r the purpose of dcveloping and wenglhening the capacity for thal enq ui ry has simply r..:en assen ed. It has wmc initial plausibility. 10 be sure. If theology IS properly an activity. then learning theology mUSl, One would suppose. mean learn· ing to engage in that aclivily, and oot . for example, simply becoming acquainted with whl! its practitioners have done or said. Just as learning lennis means learning to play tennis. and learning arehl~ectu~ ,""ans achieving the compelence to be an arehitec1. '10 learn.ng an ~nquiry such as philosophy or theology meall$ learning (0 conduct the enquiry. o r becoming a compelent enquirer. And in most su~h instances. lhe principal way 10 learn is 10 practise in a context tn which the necessary fCSOOrces are m.ade availl.blc, training in the peninent skills offered, conSlntClive criticism of one's auemp!S to provide. and so fonh . aUI lheologieal education h.as OOt always been SO underslood. There are Ihree Other prominent understandings of the enterprise wbich mighl be rega rded as ahernal;vo:s to this onc . Each has a subslantial

"' tlistory Ind COnll!mpol'lry presence, and eactl tlas a plausible claim to tile title, Two of tllem, the older two , are . "ociJled with what the present accoum hu treated as the two sc<;ondary senses of the term 'theo logy', the subjective and the objec tive; the third, morc modern alternative i~ associated with the post-Sehleiermac:herian fate of IIle ~erm , ThaI is: theological education mIIy be seen as I process of 'spir_ Itual format IOn ' (to (:boose one popular designation for this ente~rise); it may be regarded a5 the tr"'",mitllll of tradition, the teach]ng and learning of doctrine; or it may be viewed u a course of professional tra ining for the tasks of (:hu rch leadership, In the first case, the focus is upon the subje<:tivity of the learner. In the second, it is upon t,,", obje<:live content being learned_ In the third, i1 is upon Ihe functions of minislry . The understanding of theological eduClttion which this art icle s«ks \0 commend might tH:.SI. be developed and defended by considering its relationship to each of these alternatives. Theo logica l ed uca tion as spir it ual rorm atio n Theological education has sometimes been underslood to consist essentially in a process of spiritual formation. Whit the future prieslS and paSlors who are its r'Cipienu need most. in this view. is n04 objective know ledge of the Christian tradit ion, nor professional skill in the performance of the tasks of leadership, though the relative importance of both of Ihue need nOl be denied. but rather a thorough selr·knowledge and self-pos""-'lion as Christians . Church lcadets need not be ·saints·. but they need to be persons who truly understand themselves in the light of the gO!pel, and who are able to nurture a $imil.ar self-u nderSlanding in others. It Is a dear awarene ss and appro. p",uQn of one', own ChriSlian identity. the bringing of one's Own life under tl>< judgement and grace of God, which is the fundamental requisite for church leadership. Theological education, then. is essentially a continualion and deepening of the ordinary process of Christian nurture or spi ritual fomtllt;on, in which the re10u rces of the tradition (and perhaps Other resource s as well , for eumple. from contemporary psychology) are brought to tH:.ar first upon one'. own self-undemanding and then, supplemented by more explicitly functional or professional tnlining. upon the task of helping othets 10 appropriate lhe g~l. Th is view of t,,",ological educJ.tion as pe[!;onal forrrultion i. common to both 'catholic ' and 'ev. ngelica!' traditions. though the idiom. the unde rstanding of the process, and the means may vary considerabl y. It has liberal versions, heavily informed in theory and tccllnique by current JC<;ula r psychologies ind philosophies. as wdl.s conservat,ve versions in which the Iraditional means of gfllce and the tflldilional vocabulariei and practices of spi ritual direction are employed without too much allemion (at least of a positive kind) to other reSOurCeS. To some repre,en latives of both the liberal and the conservntive versions,

lhe understand,"g of Itleology and of theological education advocated in this article may appear 10 be quite wide of the mark. From some conservative standpoints Christian format ion and criti,,1 enquiry are simply irreconcilable enterprises, and a theologiclI l Mucati on taking the form of a training in Crilical enquiry would be destructive of the very cause il profes.sc:s 10 serve. From other standpoints within the same basic o rientation lhe relationship betwetn Christian formation and crilical enquiry may be seen as one of mu!Ual irrelevance , if not ntutual hmti!ity. Opposition i. frequently assumed t>etwcen crit ical thinking and the Ilate of mind appropriate 10 failh . Faith is said to come through Jubmi"ion to lhe rcvealed word of God. which in turn invol....,s an acl<nowlcdgemcm of the weakness and deceitfulness of our own understanding . True lbeologieal understanding, the theologicalltabiuu or the inlellulus fidei. is a divine gift . not a huntan achievement; it requires a 'conversion of the intellect'. in which our ordinary way. of thinking arc transformed under the impact of a new knowledge of divine things . The insiMenee of lohn Gerhard and others that the theological habitus is. special gift of God was lillked to a recognition lhat human beings in their present fallen .tate are not naturally inclined to genuine knowledge of God . A disposition for that knowledge has to be created, and cont rary inclinations subd ued. 'All right knowledge of Gnd', wrote lohn Calvin, 'is born of obedience. ' I Given this situalion, "il;cll reflection upon theological matlets might well appear to be comrary to the spiril of humility and receptivity which is necessary for any genuine acquaintance wilh God's word and will. The conviction that faith and critical enquiry are essentially opposed is often rooted in an identification of critical thought with prideful sel f-assertion . Intellectual humility in this view emails lhe surrender of one's independent judgeme nt: unquestioning acceplaroce is the intellectual fonn of. proper self-denial . Some writers in this t""'ition have advocated not merely a conve[!;ion, but. lacrirlCe of tile imell'Ct as a condition for the reception of divine truth .1 But one need not think of crit ical enquiry as intrinsicall y sinfu l in order to doubt ils tllCological worth. The point can be made mOre positively by messing not the natural (:orruption of the human mind but rather lhe nccess;ly of faith to undetstanding: a critical attitude is inappropriate for Ihe purpose of Christian formation, in Ihis view. because il involves a suspension of commitmenl. a detached, objective approach, rather than the 'engaged' Stance necessary to a knowledge of God . Critical distance may be call ed for in ()!her arus of life; but in theology at leaS! understanding follows commitment. Ansclm's Proslogium is frequently cited in Ihis conne<;tion: 'For I do not seek \0 understand that I may believe. but I believe in order to understand . For this also I believe, that unless! believed, I should not understand. 'I The rOUte to theological understanding. it is said. is nOt criticism but faith. Concerning Ihi. alleged opposition between faith and critical

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"' enquiry. tWO things mUSl be said. First. it is clear Ihat theological understandin, ~u il"(:s personal engage"",n!. This is nothing uniq ue tQ theology. Undcriland ing in fony field presupposes a maslery of tile conceptS involved, and. if one does not al""ad), posse •• the relevant concepts, lhi s generally requicclO some appropriate form of training of experience, One must no! assu me. competence 10 imerprct oT 10 judge whatever one encounters: that competence mU SI fir't be gained. One must be willing 10 allow oneself 10 be a ffected by Ilia! which one wishes 10 understand; 10 have onc 'l capacities extended. one's visio n enlarged, one's W2yS of uperiencing the world challenged or cnrichOO, If. fo r c..ample, I ""am 10 unders\.llod w hat JOmeone has said about the work of a certain compose r. I must know something abou t musk and about ia interpre tati on. Otherwise. although lhe comments may appear to me lO have some sen"" I will IlOl be in a position to uOOerStand them. ('Mcndelssohn is. I suppose:, the most umragil: of composers'. wrote Wittgenstein.· If I know more or less what tr"8edy is, I can 'Mke something of that judgement, even if I know nothing of Mendclssohn or of music. But what might it mean to call nuaic tnlgic or untragic? How is a compose r 'untragic'? I will not understaoo Wittgcnstein's remark unti l I see how it expresses a musical judge· ment; and for that, I will need some understand ing of music.) Theology is not unique in demaOOing personal involvement of il.l learners. But such involvement is especially clVCial here because $0 many of the conaplS used in Christian witne$s. 'c reation', 'sin'. 'grace" 'hope' and so fOM, are what we might call e:as/e fl/iDI conceptS, llIat is, COOCCptS which are instruments for self-undersl anding. This may not be all that these concepts are. That is, their meaning may not be exhausted by thei r relevance to the illumination o r ttansformation of sellhood . But whatever else they may also be, they are 'self-involving' in that ,. grasp of them requi res (or , perhaps better, amounts to) a cenain capacity to understand oTltJt/fby them. S This is why tMological enquiry and theological education Imy rightly be seen to involve something alo", the lines of 'spiritua l fonnation" whatever one's intention . Some ... ch proceu of coro:;cptual developmem is not antithetical 10 critical theQlogi ca l enquiry, but is in f~ct a coOOition for it, since one may not properl y cri ticise what one does not understand .6 Unfortunately. however, it is also the Cllse that one may not always recognise 0flC', lac k of understanding. I may /hiTl* I am qua lified to interpret and criticise Wil1genSlein's cOlllments about Mendelssohn , or Paul', statements about the death and resurrection of Jesus ChriSt, simply bcc:nse I am able to connect SOme meaning with thei r word. and make some sen", of what they say. Thi, leads to the second thing to be said. Not only does Critical theological enquiry requ ire 'formation'. that is, the acquisition Qf Ch rist ian co ncepts; this 'formation' , if it is tQ be: responsible . al so requires critical refl ection. One mu,t test ooc's understanding; Have I, for example, really underSlood wmol Paul understands Christ's death to mean? I might simply take

someone ', word for it or trust my own hu nches. SUI if I do , I will be in a poor position tQ juslify any claimt I may want to advance concerning the rightness of my understanding. And without raising some other self-critiCII questions, I will be similarly ill-prepulXl to vouch for its validity in other pertinent respect~. or likewise for the validity of any witnesS I may offer on the basis of that underStanding. Criti"l enquiry. far from being a manifestation of rebellious pride, is itself in this use an act of obedience. There is ,. crucial diilinction to be noted bet ween questioning God 's word and asking whether something really il God', word ; between denying or resisting what one knows to be the truth . aOO asking whether SQmething i. in facI true; and between refusing to act respon· sibly and deliberating upon a responsible course of action, The familiar assoc iation Qf a critical spirit with impiety Or immorality is made easier by a blurring of these diStinctions. Admittedly. raising critical questions can be a way of evading commi tment by postponing • deci,ion indefinitely. Qn., can ask questions from the wrong motives, and subvert the Ime spirit and .ims of eroqu iry as much by a se<:m ing interest;n il as by an open hostility to it. But such abuse does not negate, but rather o nly underscores, the impon ance of a right use of enquiry in the service Qf one's commitment. Chr;,tian theological enquiry properly uno;krtaken is normally an exen:ise in sel f-criticism; Is what we propose to proclaim really the Christian witness? Is what I wanl tQ believe and usen really WOMY of belief? Is this I:Ontemplated act a fining witness in this sit\LI.tion, or is the ehu rch mere ly performing an exercise here wit hout attendi ", to the c in;umstances1 It is through participation in such ",If-critic.l enquiry, in all the requisite dimensions and phases, that one is truly 'formed' in that undc rilandins of faith which cQnstitutes the theological habi/us. Theological 'formati on' , then, is something quite different from mere iOOoctrination or habituation. 11Ic: theological hDhilus iOIIglll is not a ' habit' in the popular modem SCDK, tmot is, thoughtless, repet itive beh .... iouT. Be ing re flecti ve is not a habit in tmot sense. If we heard someone described as 'habitually self-critical', we wQuld no doubt think of that person as having an unreflective and probably unhe althy tendency to self·denigration . Genuine se lf-criticism. or crit · i<:al thinking genenlly , of the son we have as soc iated with the theological task is hardly a matte r of h.bit . It is rather. matter of bringing to consc ious scrutiny behaviour Which might otherwise be gQverned by habit. or convention, o r uro:;onsciou$ motives, or various other factors. The old concept of habitus is considerably broader than our cy rll'nt 'habi t', however . h co mbines a sen", of 'capaci ty' with a ~cnSt of 'disposi tion', as the treatment of wi sdom as a hDbilus readily illus trates. Being wise takes mort: than a yearning to be wi",. o r a firm resolu tion to acl wiStly; a CtlpQCiry for intelligent decision and action is also required. At the same time that capacity alone does not make

'" One wise, for one may have Ihe capacily and fail 10 elttrc ise it . We would not sa y of a person (except in jest) ' He's wry wise, he juSt never aclS like il.' 'Scing wise' cnlails exhibiting llutl wisdom fairly consiSlcnlly in onc 's conducI; il is a matler of di~position Or le ndency as well as of ahi lity . Perhaps 'aplilude ' , wilh ils ,ombination of ' abilily' and 'inclination', comes clo<e r now to conveying Ihe <en<e of habitus lhan does 'habit ', Bul it may not yet go fu enough . Being unCClive or being crit ical is mOre like a 'characler-trail ' lIum a skill. John Passrnore has observed: 'To call a person ·c ritical w it 10 characterise him, 10 describe his nature, in I sense in whieh 10 describe him, .imply, as "capable of analysing certain kinds of falJacyW is r>ot to describe his nalure ." Certainly being cril ica l involvu ~k ills and ab ilities of var ious sorts: it evcn involvu habit s (for ex~mple, Ihe habil of following certain rou tine investigalive procedures , once il has been eSlabliShed Ihat these are or may be the pertinenl procedures, without having to r«onsider each Slep: o r II a more elemenl.,y S1l18e , the habits associated wilh reading and wriling a language), SuI there is also lhe nutter of disposition . 'Being crit ical' qualifieS the self: il is a delenninalll of lhe sort of perwn One is, Con versely the Wrt of person One is he lps 10 determine the extent to which o nc is likely 10 \lecome crilical or refl ect ive. To pIIt it another way: learning to be critical invol ves a kind of self-formalion or self-I ransformation, The pa rt icular ways of be ing c. ilical which con'lilulC theot be reduced 10 Inallers of lechnique or routine , This is partly because the necessary competence in each dimension or phase of the enquiry requires the acquisition of whut Passmore calls ·open C~pac il ies', in which complete mastery is OUI of Ihe queslion because Ihe enquiry continues 10 develop in ways which cannot always be anticipated and which call for imagiIWion and inventiveness,' And il i$ partly because learning 10 exereise these Cll*=itic$, learning theological judgemenl, lcarning to discern and 10 envision, i. indee
resoureu, or 81 leaSI 10 provoke more reflection co ncerning tho$e dimensiQfl$,l1 In any case it is clear thal thC<)logical educalion can be properly regarded as -formllion', so long" certain long-standing mi sconceptions concerni ng the relat ion of ·fom,ation' and critical enquiry are removed, and so long as il ;s rcmem\le red Ihat Ihc forma.lion soughl i. pre<,:isely tM formalion of the critical aptitude of lheological judgement, There is no reason r>ot 10 regard su, h an .ptilude.s a divinely-bestowed habilUS, and to describe the palh to il as I path of pnyer, medilation and lesling, and 10 lSSOC iate it closely with lhat an ilude of honest and obedient sclf_re<:ognition and openness 10 lhe tnJlh which the Iradilio n calls 'repemance ', In facI, lhe re is good reilSon to do so: namely, 10 counteract Ih e frequently resurgent false and dange rous characteris.tion of failh and critical enquiry as warring forces, one of which mU$1 ullimalely vanquish the other , TheologiC-III education as tno nsmiual or tradit ion Conce rning the second allemative depielion of theological eduellion mentioned above, that is, theological eduC'lion IS Ihe faithfu l tran, mission of tradition, some of Ihe relevam patou have already been m~de earlier in discu",ing Ihe role of -objective' theology, or Iheologkal judgemenls, in the proceu of learning Iheological judgement . It was
I

'" maste ry of the doctrinal sulmance of the Chri Sli~n wilne.. i • ...,en ItS !he indi!opensable Centre of educlH;on for church leadenhip_ This may be exhibited in an emphasis on biblicll $ludies of an expository sort, Of on dogmatics, or perhaps on the history of doclrine, Of on SOme combination of the !hree. The pastor or (llhe r (:hurch leader whom rh is educltion is intended to ~ip is supposed to be'one who knows ' , on.: who knows the bib le Or knows the doctrine, and who is an authorita_ live teacher or preacher largely by vi nue of thi. knowledge. Even apart from such strand s of the Christian tradition in whiCh objective tradition figures so prominently in the design of theological education and in the undemanding of church leadership, there is scarcely a strand in which it is nOl given some attention. (And even where it i. dominant, it is rarely in so le command. Concerns for 'formation ' and for professional competence are also u"ually apparent, in some measure.) In any ""tling, the question is likely to be raised of tile form this 'traditioning' should responsibly take, in the Context of tlleological education. That qu estion might beSt be formulated as a qllellion of the role of doctrin~ in Iheological education. 'Doctrine ' in rhis usage refen to Whll Ihe chllrch teacbes_ Applied broadly, it cOven everything which might be regarded as 'church teaching', from the decisions of ee...rmnical councils to the <:onlents of all of LaSt SlInday' s sennons and church 5(:hool lessons. Here we an: concerned wilh a stricter lIuge, in wh ich 'doctrine' "'fers only 10 what . panicllla' church body formall y and officia lly sets Ollt and autllorises as a nonnative Malemenl of, o r guide to, the Christian witne ss. (What constitute, 'formal', 'official' ~nd 'authoritative' teaching varies, of course, from church body to churCh body, For some, there are reasonably explicit i
cising and reforming doctrines than at reflecting critically upon the actual perfOfma1l(;e of witness. The theological preoccupation with doctrine is understandable, given the role doctrine is supposed to have in the di rection of wimess. Perhaps the problem has nOl been SO mllCh the fact as the natu", of this concentration: Iheology has typically been concerned wilh the cOIII~nl, to the neglect of the funCTion. of doctrine . If SO , the solu tion is not to shi ft Ihe (oo:;us from doctrine to some other Irea. but rather to hroaden the focus $0 IS to bring into view the way doctrine acrually s.erves (or fails to serve or might beller serve) as an instrument for the regulat ion of the church', existence. That is, it the prac/ical dimension of th eOlogical ",flection upon doctrine which most need, strengthening. And if practical theology is conceived, nOt a~ a phase of theology wh ich follows sys tematic theology (where the conce ntration on doctrine i~ mOSt pronounced) and deals with the applic ation of its reslIlts. but rather, ItS this article advocates, as a coordinate dimension of that single enqui ry which is Christian theol ogy, and indeed as a constituent part of 5ystematic theology, il may become easier to take its distinct i~ question as to the fU1l(;tional aptness of doctrines seriously. This is not to say that theology can legitimately restriCl its anention 10 doctrine, leaving lhe aclua l practice of witness aside; il is to suggest rathe r that Iheological reflection upon the practice of witness will be consider3bly enhanced if the practical dimension is already engaged at the doctrinal level. In any case the encollnter with doctrine plays a ~ey role in theological education. It is largely through those paradigms or principles of Ch ristian witne" known as 'doctrines ' that lbe sludent has access to the substance of the Christian tradition, that is, to the heritage of earlier judgements and propOsals as to what con
'1

the very activities which can k"",p a tradition alive , namely, those exercises of judgement and imagination by which it can be cleansed and renewed and filled to new circumstances, Traditions like persons stand in need of repentance; and theological enquiry, when it is a genuine, serious effort , can and shou ld be an imtrument of self-criti_ cism for the tradition as well as for the individual. As church theology. it is the church',1 own self-examination with respect to the adequacy of its attcmpts to bear the Christian witness , In this enqu iry church doctrines, those principle> by which the church intends its ordinary activities to be guided . are themselves interrogated as to their adequacy as guides. It is through such an interrogation of doctrine. as distinguished from a passive recep tion of it. that persons COme to that mastery of the doctrinal heritage on which the continuity of a living tradition depends. For example. only by understanding how the doctrine of the Trinity representS norITllltive Chri.tian witness concerning the rcality of God (as.uming that it does) will one be e nabled to respond intelligently to proposals for its revision. rcconceplion or replacement. Only by being able to distinguish what is essential to that doctrine from what be longs merely to the circumstance, of its formulation i, one in a position to adapt it to new circumstances. Only by see ing what makes it , till a fitting principle for the conduct of Christian witness in onc's Own situati on will one be able to make apt use of il. Or (to abandon those assumption. for the mOment and to entertain their riva ls). only if one is able to distingu ish normative Christian witness concerning Goxl from the doctrine of the Trinity will One be free to consider alternatives which may have a greater claim to validity in any or every re'peCL In any CaSe it is through critical reflection on the doctrinal heritage that we arc able to make it our own and to make ourse lves il.S respon,ible bearers _ An understanding of theological education as an education in critical enquiry is therefore nO! " riva l to an understanding of it as the appropriation of tradition. It is clearly in tension with some more or le" self-destructive versions of the lauer understanding; but it is JUSt as clearly the key to a more genuine. if more radical, realisation of its aims. Theological ed ucation as professional education for min is try A, for the third alternative mentioned above, the view of theological education as essentially professional education for the tasks of ministry. its relationship to the undemanding propo sed here is formally different from the previous twO relation,hips considered. In each of those cases. we found that each of the understandings being compared implied the other: an education in theological e nquiry is , in some sense. 'formation', and 'formation' involves 1carning to be critical; an education in theological enquiry implies the appropriation of tradition, and any adequate appropriation of tradition involves the use

of theological judgement . In this third instance, however, the relationship is not one of mutual implication. It.s character might be bri.tly stated thus: 'theOlogical education' is not ncce_"arily professiona l education for ministry. but the heart of proper professional education for ministry is theological education, meani ng by 'theological education' an education in theological enquiry , One may properly seek and obtain a theological education without any intention of preparing for church leadership of any sort; but one may not properly preparc for church leadership without acquiring theological competence _ The first half of this proposition might be readily granted by anyone who has n()! simply identifted theological education with professional training for ministry. regarding lbe former term as merely a quaint holdovcr from the days when such training did .omehow centrally involve wmething called ·theology'. That is . if there slill is a coherent enqu iry by that name. if it is not JUSt a collective term for lbe group of studies , whatever they may be, which go to make up ministerial education, then presumably it makes sense to call training in that enquiry 'theological education" even lbough that might not be the ordinary usage of the term, It is lbe second half of the proposition which requires more explication and defence. at least in the typical American Protestant seminary sctti ng where 'theology' appears to occupy a relatively small segment of the curricu lum. and to be one of its more problematic ~omponents when one thinks in tenns of its relationship to the whole. How can education in theological enquiry be the key to training for church leadersh ip? Theological education is the cultivation of theological judgement. It is the acquisition of the habitus for those activities named 'vis ion' and ' discernment': activities such as the imaginative grasp of the Christian witne ss in its unity, the assessment of onc's own distinctive siruation as a context for witness. and the testing of actual or potential effons to convey the go'pel. The dynamic and developing character of these aetivitie, was stressed in that account, Vision and discerntnent a re nO! merely routine performances _ They require intelligence. sensitivity. imagination and a readine" to deal with the unforeseen. It is preci,ely this iulb;/us which is the primary and indispen.able qualification for church leadership. if 'church leadership' itself meanS anything more than the routine pe rfo rmance of established functions_ Recall Edward Farley's observation on thi~ score: 'The more the external tasks themse lves are focused on as the one and only relos of theological education. the less the minister becomes qualified to carry them out.· " This is because the tasks of ministry require a judgement which transcends technical mastery. Schleiermacher recognised lbig clearly when he made the 'technical' aspect of theological study dependent upon those disciplines which . in his view , are more peni nent to the development of such judgetnent , that is. his philosophical and historical theology, in wh ich one learns to grasp and to compare the essential character and lbe actual present realit y of Christianity as

I a basis for deliberalion upon wluu is 10 be dono:. Bm how is soch judgemenl !O be formed in the comcxl of the preSCrlt typical curriculum, and how is its fomlllion relaled 10 Ibo: more su;cdy professional UpeclS of eduealion for minislry"i 11 would help 10 begin by expanding our view of lhe place of · theology · in the theological curriculum. This does nol mean inc ru sing the number of courses required in Sys lem.uic theology or enhancing their pre.tige
sional elemenls of educllion for miniSlry are nOl simply malle rs of lechnique to be taCked on where convenient. They are rather besl scen as sp«;jieQ/;on.s of the broader theological enquiry . Thai is , here (in relation. for inslance. to onc·, understanding of the paSloral office as a whole . o r 10 the task of preaching. or of administ ration) the enquiry into what constilules valid ChriSlian witness is made
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9.3 Emerging issues and theological education Rebecca S Chopp

Introduction

•

Much of the malerial written on the present and fmure situation of thcological education addrcsses the question of the self-identity of theological education given Ihe present structure or thcological disci plines .' I want 10 ask a different question for theological faculties to wrestle with in Ihe fulure, thc queslion of what theological education contribme~ through i" dual loci in inSlilUlions of religion and know ledge, My queslion i, a decid. dly pragmatic way of asking aixmt the aims and purpose of theological education. 2 To answer this queSlion I want to analyse the conleXl of theological education in relation !O the modern structure! of rel igion (church) and knowledge (universily) , The fundamental argumem of thi' pap"r is twofold: first. that Iheological cducalion has been caughl in the ambiguous gap between the modem ordering of knowledge and reli gion. and second. thal Iheological education needs, in the future, to anwd to th~ production of heterogeneous discourses. and the COrre· sponding development of imag"s and r~sources for substantive community that is nurturing of human flourishing , In sum. I want to sugge't that all of Ihe work that wc do. work defined best as Ihe produclion of discou rses - talking. writing, lecruring. preaching _ needs to break away from ilS troubled loyalty to mod. rn rules of knowledge and religion and concentratc ils energies on the needs , in Our situation , of learning!O aid human flourishing through the production of discourses of multiplicity and multiple discourses , My argument develops in th ree parIS . First. I analyse Ihe modern ordering of knowledg~ and religion . an ordering which also occurs in Ihe division between what it i, to be a man and what il is to be a woman. and Ihe division between Ihe public and the private. I suggest how theologica l education has had to live in the gap between know ledge and religion , contained through
knowledge in modernity. ~ology must retrieve the works of modern theo.logtallS .... ho found ways to press the ambigu ities in the ordering but" must do so, first. by examining modern tl>eology's loyalty to I~ dommant o rder . The loyalty is mOSI k~enly (eh in forms of assump. t,ons that though margmal persons, wom~n and persons of colour may be let into tbe position of ·knowe,·. they do nOl bring an}1hing that cou ld be called 'knowledge' from their lTlIIrginal positions. In contrast . [.argue that the pre...,nce Of marginaJised pcrsons in the midst of t~loglcal education provides the possibility for upanding forms of dl~ourse. Yet. we .can do th is in theological education only by allendlOg 10 what conStllute. community. for din of theological u.ndersta~l.ng Imphed ,n my COnte xtualisation of tl>eologieal educa. tlon. ~UlI~lng upcm .Charles WOOCtion to his The
lahour and yalue. and. on the OIlier hand. the I1lO(Iem division of tbe public and private. where public ;nterests are .c~annened throug~. the market place and private interests .• uch as .ehglon, an ~nd t rad~lIon, are left as optional choicu fo r the individual. In the pubhc. the clllzen of modernity is the labourer . the masler of hi story. while in the private. Ihe individual i, Ihe consume r of cultural y~lue, such as an. religion. tradition and family. Knowledge In tbe pubhc realm becomes formed through a scientific. instrumentalist view while in the priVlte realm . flith ;s transcendenllli...,d or existentialised, as prior to or outside of the conditions of knowledge. Faith, ",hethe r it he in the thcological fonnulations of Banh and Schleiermacher or lbe religious piety of helieYers in New York and Kansas. ;s assumed 10 be largely prelinguistic, or other than lingui stic, prior 10 or ou tside of action and kno wle
whal il was no4: woman, rC/igious, Ihe privale , As IIIe idenlily of knowl~ge depend5 upon il not bc:ing ",l igi0\l5, man depended upon nOl bc:m~ woman. aod Ihe public depended upon rIOt being Ihe privale, ~hat IS Impomnt 10 ~ in Ihi. patriarchal eodificalion of Imowledge IS tile strucrural relallon of subJeclJV1ty. polilics and knowledge Ihal fom:ed a unuy of man, knowledge and the public thrOugh a kind of dU,ah.uc dependency on WOlll<:n, re ligion and the privale . (n all of th's. to uSe a phrase of Debora)1 Cameron 's, 'men Can 00 men only if women arc unambigUOUiJy women',' ' This patriarchal codifieat!on of knowledge c",lted all "'TU of prob. lems fo,. theology ,and Chn$uanu y, For if knowledge was located in the publoc realm, 'n the subjecl position of while men, Christianily was located in the ,p r!va~e realm, in the subject position symbolised by w~n, Thus ChnsuanHy had to sltape il5 esseoce in the rules of lhe p"" ate, Ihe sub~1 posi~ion of women and ilS knowledge in the terms of the ru le~ of Ihe public, lhe subject posi tion of men , The problem for theologlc,al knowledge was th at man/woman, Imowlcdgelreligion, the, pubhclpnva,le was re lated Ihroug h a kind of dependem dua lism , in wh Ich Ihe IdentI ty of Ihe first te nn de pended upon the OIhe r bu l also ~pon no( bei~g Ihe Othe r: We could thus e~pand Ihe Camer~n quota. lion co ncemmg men beIng men only if women are unambiguously wome~. by uying, ~nowledge can be knowledge only if religion is u~blguou.ly rehglon, and !he public can be lhe public only if !he ~nvale IS unambIguously Ihe private. Supposedly there was a 5epaTII' lion" a gap, between me,n and '''omen, Imowledge and ",ligion. the pubhc ~nd pnvate but In reality Ihe gal' was a very ambiguous tcnuous relat io~, for men depended upon women for prner"Jlion: nU ":iure , careta~Ing, and know lcdge depen de d upon religion for moti. vaHon: acSlheUC~, ca re for the pan of existence not ral ional and obJecl l v~ , and Ihe !":'blic depended upon the private for sU
e xpression. men enjoy lhe public role of being in tile subject !'"Iili~n that is most able to reneel 0" religious expe rience and express'?" wl~h detail and precision , But Schleiennacher $etms 10 worry ,Wll~ th" 'rule' Ihat failh is to women as knowledge is to men, suggesung ID lhe early pAn of Ihe dialogues that div isions of women and men are not elernally fixed, lncleed. Schleiermacher renders prob!emau~ any rigorous division between men and ,women, knowledge ~nd faIth by figuring the unity of religious e xperl e~ee a~d exprc~Sl on 10 the shape of fir>! • child, Sophie, and then a qmte childlike man. JOSl'f, both ef whom e ~p ress their religiosity by ,inSing, Schleiennacher's poenc mode, rather than by speaking . As one (:ommemator hu re<:emly put il, '~re is no quesuon that the Chrim..as E'-e Dialogu~ seems to favour .impLe. ehildlike experience o~er abstract theoLog~al refie<:· lion. Or thaI, It leasl in this tnt, women a~u more sUlled 10 tlte fonncr, while men . re inclined 10 lhe lallcr.' Schleiermache r adheres to the modern formulalion of religion and knowledge. of women aod l1-", n but he does SI) in the context of calling inlo question Ihe eternal d iv i; ions of men and women , refiguring knowledge o r the ability to do abstract reflection on a sliding scale rather than through separate sphe res, and alloll.'ing a man to rep resent the relurn to the origin of all reflection, a posi1ion usually repre,erued by WO~n,1 Schlelermacher does nm expli(:it ly crilicise Ihc modern fo~ulauon of ~n and k,no w, ledge. women and religion. but he rt:nders II problemauc and avaIlable for questioning . Vet today SehLeiermacher ·s probL~m.lic $et,,?s ll~st a commo~· pl ace crisis as we deal constantly w.1h compeung ~ubJects aod them discourses , and compeling claims as 10 whal eonsllluteS k.'>owledge, The ru les a. 10 Wh~1 conslilute. and who com rols the dommant pos,· tion in the CQun of rCason are no longer li S clear as when Schlei ermacher tried u, render Ihem somewhat problemat ic, On the o ne hand, the narrow definilion of knowledge is breaking apan due to factors iocluding lhe philosophical critiques of knowled,g e, the t~chno­ logical transformation of knowLedge, lhe renewed IntereSt tn the relalion belween knowledge and elhies in public policy, military and s<:iemific research .nd in Ihe public and private educational syStemS, On Ihe other hand, lhe multiplicity of subjects, lhe diversily of language pffiCS, Ihe pluralism of discou rses mn~s iocreasingly Ihat the subje<::ls of knowledge are nO! one, but plu ral. , Besides the explosion of know ledge and the awareneSs of multlplc discou rs.es of !:oowledge, there is anot her main difference between our day and Schleiermacher's: Ihe loss of belicf in major myths of moder· nity, tO The myths were lhe fundamental ":,)1h. of meani~g, lhe narralive orderings Ihl supporu:d lhe defimuons and practices of modernily , fo r our analysis We can consider IWO: one. lhe myths of lhe whole, that an lhe pans fit together. and 'lCCond, lhe myth of p rogre~s, Ihatlhe spi ril o r the lrue meaning win be rulised in hi~tory , Thc narralive of lhe whole anOW5 for lhe ordering of pAns and h,erar·

chie" while the_ myth of ~ origin allows for correct meanings and pras functioned to oppress and repress other discourses and subjects. The recent work of Jean-F rancois Lyotard brings this iuue into sharpest focus nnd, I thin k, expresse s Ihe cUrrent cri,i, of pol!tics, language and .ubjeclivhy. LYOlard analyses Ihc problem of a umversa l rule of judgement which forces all other discourse. tn define themse lves in it. terms, tenns which do DOt count as legi timate thc conce rns of other diliCOUrses. L)'OIard hu coinec eonfhct that opposes them is d~ in the idiom of one of the paniu while the wrong suffe red by the Othe r is not signified in that i~iom'-'l. ~ proble m with modernily, with its belief in thc gre~1 narrallves, WIth li S rules of knowledge , power and imerests , with its roles of tru. public and private, men and women, with its definition of ~nowledge, i. Ihat it allowed only one idiom, tru. pat riarehal codificaIton of knowllXlge, for the adjudication of all claims. and thus ruled ou.t .of. COUrt thc cili"',' Ind .voices of all Otru.t1. Irldeed the present eml5 IS deepl~ Intertwlne~ ~llh the problems of IIow not to adjudicate through one dlscou r~ ot" .d,om as the universal rule of judgemem but how 10 explode tile dIfferences, how to hear other voices. how 10 learn ~o ];"" with multip.1e di$(:ou .ses and multiple 10'1)1$ of be ing human. It IS thus the quesllon of I pluralism which cannot be adjudicated thr?ugh twin myths of the whole and of prOgress, but a pluralism in wh.,ch we. must learn to live and flourish , This is Ih e crisis facing us; 11 IS the Issue of our meaning, our flourishing, OUr su rvival. It has many dif':erent expressions: can we k now through liturgy, can we hear ~ mumng of other religi~~s, can we ~earn to do economic trading WIth II>c Japanese , tru. B"~lhan., the ChlDese without foreing them to agree to our story ~f wllokncss and idenlity, can we find ways fo r men and women to Itve together where public and private _re not sexsegregaled, can we find way' for Afro-Americans. whites and HIspanic! in public ed~cati~ and ch~reh education to learn history through the use of mulllple IDterpretatJOD$ of hi5l0 rical events , do we

know of God as an uhimale giver of openness 10 pluralism or tbe closu re and o rdering of multiplicity? I """m to call this che need to learn to live and flourish with hete rogeneous discourses . This is • very aw"wlld and clumsy term . The very thought, Ihatthe«: is no uoive rsal rule of judgement, no one final discourse to !.ellle all cl aims, i, quile troubling to us all, even the most post-modern among us! We want to cli ng , despite all the eloquent pleas from the anti-foundatio ni.t " to a belief that wc can all t al k ~ n the !;llIIIe voice, or at least find an unambiguoui form of rauorulhty to adjudicate all our diverse claims. So, perhaps it is best to keep with the awkwardness of the phrase 'the need for heterogeneous discOUrses' since the ""ry awkwardness remindS liS thIu OIIr lask is to find new ways of speaking and liv ing wjUt differelKe. and multiplici ties. This does not mean lhat "ie are Left forever in our tight lillle language game s, for language ilself has I ce rtain OJl"""'"'s, an, ~bility to connect , 10 change , 10 transform. If we give up Ihe ablhty ~f language to gain the true essence of a thing, we Can gain the rru.toTl cal function of language 10 work toward commun ication, agreement, tran,formation. To live with heterogeneous discourses, which is today the crisis for both politics and wbjectivity, requires that we find wayl for discourses to be open, for communities to nurture differences Ind solidarity, for each of us 10 Learn that the 'other' has neithe r 10 be exactly like liS or exactly the opposite of us. New form. of dl scollfSO' and new forms of community When fac ing the crisiS of heterogeneous discou r~e., theology ha~ a role to play in both its locu s as a form of 'ma rginal' know ledge in modernity and in its site as already containing a pluralism of know ledge. Let me consider each in turn. .' . . Certainly tlleology, u discourses of knowledge .n Chns1lanllY, holds a marginal status in the modern ..:ademy and in knowledge in general. Nowbere is this SO se!f-evident IS in theologic al education and the academy , Rel igion is the one are. that the well-educated person doesn't have to know anythi ng a~t, presumedly be<.:au.se there isn't anything really to 'know '. Indeed, In some of my favQunte theorists, theology is presented as something akin to numerology, superstiti on and magical thinking. One of my favourite thinkers, an expert in semiotics, art history, Mau;$! theory, literary thwry and J>Sychoanalytic theory, seems to think that when she can label some' thing .. theological, she has proved .it I.S false or not ~o be taken seriously. A basic reuon for the marglDaltty of theology .s the ~ fi n­ ition of knowledge, and its relation to intere sts and power of damlDant .ubject groups . Yet inside theology we have laboured imense.ly 10 poim out the something more or the something orher at tbe hmllS of modern knowledge. Take, [or instance, Schu\>ert Ogden's e..ay 'Tbe

reality ofGoo', aoo Paul Tillich's section on rnoon and revelation in his. Systtmm;e 17J~oIogy, volume [,Il In very different ways both lexls ,,?Jnl 0111 thal al lhe Iim~u, or. in lhe very possibilily ~f modern d,scourses of knowledge, IS a dnve and a need for a larger view of knowledge , One way 10 pursue OIIr theological lllalysis of lhe need for helCro. geMOIIs diseOllrses, is 10 form OUr arullysis of discourses of 1Olion of the refkctivc pl'3ctiuoner. all can be read as tryinS 10 push al the definilions of k?"wledge. We must unCOn~t theological explorations of mu ltiple dl~ounes from Iny metlnarralive of lhe ordered whole or Ihe real i. ~uon of an original meaning outside of any historical con.ltitution. ~ln.lly, we .'nust. rethink the work in theological educalion thus far in light Qf an lmagmanve COnstrual of p... ctices such as litu rgy, prayer and ~e arts, C~n. wc ~nd way$ 10 live with the different ways of knOWing In ChnSllan Wltl'lCS S not ordering around a centred whole or unpacking to. o~ lrue mea~ing but around Ihe ponibilities for p"rfor. maUve practice m COmmunny? We, in theology, are particularly well !ocaled for a.oaly,;ng and critiCising closure of knowledge, Ihe order1118 of plurailsm, Ihe hierarchy of difference in discourse and we have ~1;Ources to ~gin exploring ways of living, sp"aking, enjoying, flour,shmg amongst heterogeneous discourses . . YCt if we have much to offer the world in tcrms of living commu. nlty With hetcrogeneoo~ diseourses, we also hllve much to solve in tc r,:,~ of ou r own problems with prohibiting discourses of certain .ubJecl" If the first set of problems, the acceptance of heterogeneous dlScour~e5 , has to do with. unconnecting our selves from the myths of modernity, the SC«lnd has to do with rcsisting the power,lmowlcdge_ inlereSls relations of modernity tlllt have so inscribed modem ~eolog~al education. The place I see this most painfully is the prooi_ bm?" In IheoloSicl1 education for lhose occupying the subject posmons of the 'Others' of modernity, persons such as women blacks UispaniC5, Asians, to multiply the di!lCOU~ and to cKpand the para: meters of knowledge . It is In irony, isn't it? As much as lheology has found ways to criti~ise.the boundaries of knowledge in modernity, il has fou~ ways to. tnsugate lhe boundaries within its owo practices. Then!"."C8,' educa,u~. by I~ large, has tried to address this problem by lelltllS others ,", by gIVing them elective courses. by including occaslcmal lectures Qr books Or voices in fOUndalional courses . But theological educat ion has r.iled 10 see lhe proble=tic hinted al by

Schleiermacher: religion, knowledge, women, men cannot be ordered or contain«! within Ihe discourse of modem knowledge . What women threalen, in theological educalion, is the very definition and legm,?a. lisation of knowledge , and ilS complex relations 10 dominant orde".ng of p"lities and subjectivity. The prescnce of women a~d other ma~gm· aliscd groups provides I position from which ~o r,es lst the .domlnanl relatioos alTlO)llsst p"wer, koowledge and materoal llltere~1S m moder· oily. Such de-«nlred positi"'" aho PfO~ide ,;paces III which 10 discover and creale new ways, forms and IdIOms of knowkdge . Whal is before us is no easy taP::, for to learn to live with openness and helerogeneous diseounes. with sp«irocity and difference withoul the nsumption Ihat we are III the same underneath or there is a whok we can all fit intQ r«[uires Il'IOre than jU51 rmdinS new ways of speak· ing of difference and spec ifieily. FOI dis<:ourst!i. as I have already pointed OUI, are dependcnl upon and bound to com.~niIY: and the Que5lion of finding new discoutSC$ of human flounshms, IS closely related III findins new forms of community_ The quest to dlseov.er and create new forms of ~ommun;ly . ones ""hi~h live on and !lOUTISh the heterogeneity of discourses. may be the grealest political slruggle of all. Mndels of community N-SCd onlhe myths of true mcamng, where if we alllllk long enough we will agree with the one~ in power. or on the myths of the whole where diffe rence is hierarchically.order.ed, models of community based on rules and roles wherc ce"am subj ect posiliQII$ legitimise certIlin powers. will simply no longer scrve the needs or the world. The Quest for new forms of communily in relation 10 the flourishing of helerogeneou5 discourses, is a moral, a cognitive and a personal problem. It is a moral problem, for in the present world economy we mU$1 Icarn to live in community in which our culturc i~ no longer the big brother or cven the major actor. It is a cognitive problem becau.se Qur modern theories of knowledge are bascd on modch of commumly which do not ea$ily yield 10 diversity and diffe rence on a l~aL I::, alone a worldwide scale. It is a personal problem, for subJecllvlly m our culture is closely tied to belonging to a homogeneous community. and to ucluding others in order to secure our identity. These problems arc our emerging inues in world, chu«:h and Iheologlcal ed~ati",, : the problems of how we can discover and creale ~w ~orms of human flourishing. Indeed, one of the most urgem e~rgmg Issues is IQ f()fm theological eduCl.tion in rcl.li"" 10 the church m the world. The laS! powerful expression or this is found in H Richard Nlebuhr's The P"rpou ofr/t~ Ch"rch and lrs Millissry . " .. The value of Niebuhr 'S The P"rpou ofrhe ar"n;h oM lu M",Ufry is not in terms of his own material reading or inuges, but in showing us how necessary the ploce" of givinS a theological account Qf church and world is ror Iny discussion of theological education. When Niebuhr goes aboul wggesting what theological ed?cat i~n, shOll~ be, he enlers I process o r describing the church and Its mlnl$lty m the

present situItion. Out of this desc ribed comext. Niebuhr pr~s the defi nilion of the church as the subjective pole of the objective rule of God aJld develops his l1OIion tMt the purpose of the church is to increase the love of God loo neighbour. Tbc theologica.l accounl begins in a desc riplion of the situatioo, lIIoves to a signifying Or valuing of lCrms, and goes on (0 offer a substantive purpose for the church in the world. then al lows Nicbuhr to develop hi, d iscussion of the aims of theological ed ucati on ar(lund a certuin web (If meaning, a set of values. a $ubst~nt ive interpretation of what the chu rch and theological education ought to be IlDout. Tbe greatesttcmplation we face in theologiCal eduClltion is to ignore what Niebuhr·, book teaches us: !be ne<;CSSity of a theological I naly. lis of our situation. and of a theological CQfIS\nlCl of what the chu rc h ought 10 be. To fOllow Niel:>uhr's process, it seem. to me, is to make lltcQlog y in oor . ituation provide networks of meaning (or the possi. bility of communit y. Let me identi fy how onc such construct of the ch urc h in the wo rld might be deve loped. Begi nning at Niebuhr ', point of giving an imerpreta tion of the churc h in the world, we mi ght !ly: the church is the vis ible sig n of God's invisible grace. Two te rmS need spec:ial elabora. tion: as sign the chureh has I basic signifying function, l'$\lI.blish ing discou r'l(:S aoo practices 10 make possible the real isalion of g race; and grace. for which we can use JoIIallll Baptist Mel"" term, is lhe way of living d ifferently, underslanding (rom thc material analysis developed Ihus far Ilmt living differenlly means devel<;>ping forms of community which nu rture helerogeneous discouf"ies. t! The church', role ;$ to constitute the communilY of the failhful and to modcl such co mmunity in and for the world . Theological education thus se rvcs the church and world by prep,oring persons 10 live in and signify 10 Ihe world the po.ssibi lity of such community. Theologic al warrants from doctrines such as creation, offe ring a new imc rprelation of lhe relation amongSt chaos, creativity and diffe r. ence, and eeelc:siology, woold suppor1this construct. The values, or le rms of signif"II'alion, would be those of opennes.s, difference and transformalion, synlbolised not only in crealion and ecclesiology but al$O in Ihe cross and resuruction a> well as what JOrgen Mohmann calls the history of the T rinity. t6 1'he future of th f(l lolO' and education What I have argued for, thus far, is a cenain contUtualisation of meo. logical discou rse. that is, an understanding of ill form aoo func:tion in the broad social real il y of which il is a pt.rt. My argument has 50nle suggestions for how theology and education might be eonslrued in the present context, gi~n agaio that we concede to my pragmatic queslion of wlmt theological education can do in the presenl situation. Let me spell OIlt how I understand the implicatiOlls of m~ argument . fi rst in

nd cond in terms of the shaJX of terms of the shape o( theolog~ a se , ble locus in the notion education. My ..gument findS lIS .mOSI comf~n:a of Chrislian wilness tl A. 1 or heol ...... ' as critical re/"kcllon mto the vahdlt y . ' -'" ood· ~··0tI and DuurnrMm. as elaboratcd in Charles W S lIS! . the process of critical understarKI Wood·, argumem . theo OIly .s nd . d menl into . b which he meanS reflective awareness a JU ge . . . enqUIry. y . h Y particular wttness \s the validily ?f ,Chris.lian Wi~~g S~~ti w~:t ~~ co ntend that the issue valid as Chnsllan w.t~ss .. ,e . 'a resent ruli ty or an idea for at stake is h?W in a IllSto;,cal r:r~~. ju~ged is Ch ristian witnCiiS. the future IS figured, o~. oot boIh a subjective side, a T heology iocludes: a~ :na~iCUI~tion of faith, hut is itself an lt~r.us, and an obJec~~ve':~ec;jon and judgement on Lhe rullure of acllv.I! , a process . Wood's definition I wam to elaboratc three Chnsuan wnoess. O .ven .. f' I urnent b q· ims concerning theology In hght 0 my rg . "F " 1 ·,1 ,.pl.in what 'criticlll' enlails in light of my argumcn , Lh· ngs. a way 0 r lTSI, Wl . h. r A s Wood notes the term means lIIany t . h L us "' . . I I · cs But itdoe sso w.l tn be ing. a style. of T.e flecl ion,. partic.u ar ~C~t~n;~uth~ \)<:st skills and abili. Ihe prese nl sn ualtOn: th~t IS• .~ lmt '0 de ·ned within a particular n lies. the ntOit fillmg .d'Spos ttlO " It rm. ndentanding the cond;. s.ituation. Critic.I.;.:.~r.e;r t~c:,;lrt~~~ri~[e: but al.o the criticism of lionS for the pass. " y. .. Th.s seeond sense of critical, what

w,:

:r~m!~!t:~h,r~t~~~~es~lf~;a~~i~: !e~ :':&£~~bea: wishes of Ihe

Ig~,

plaYbl:~

in this notio n of Marx's inlo \io~,1 h~\i~~U tl~: u':d<:~:ore the political realily of whal we W se. I ... I . Our very standards of wh al coums u nde rs\an~ 10 be cn(tcabeene'l~:~~· to the need. and inlerests of the day. and doesn t counl mdus~ h r struooles and wishes of oo r situation h~ve If as I have comen e , t e '= d·scourses loo the 10' do with issues of pluralism. of ~~rl~g;'":~~cal' such wishes aoo need for new forms of commumly, t . . ' . Il>eoloo;t"al vide the context for emerg.ng ISsues m ..... strugg~es m~t ~ro . the future will nOl only consider ill own paSt ~,::~o~~t, :~I ~':Sl, presem ·and fllture of the church and world

11

needs to

in which il lives and 10 which it tries 10 spea!;emed with prospeCtive Second. Wood states that theo~ogy 15 co . \9 activity. wi lh the fu lure, in Wood s own words . Tbeolosy h., continuaLLy influenced the Chri.'ti.n ,ra~n.as '!;.!:'~~ . I· 1"1 from theulOSical reflecuon MVc n InC pcmpe<:""" activity .. wIlh .ts h,,""Y. Given a situalion in which norms are stable aoo secure, critical

'" enquiry InlO Ihe future would be largely a building Or corrective emer_ p,,~. over~ing th~t all thing! develop as planned. In a simation in whIch there is a crisis ,of norms and values, prospective activity takes on what Se.yla Benhablb has called an amicipatory-ulOpian critique,:!O Theology. In the future, may be an ilCtivilY thalteaches Us to envision the future differently, to dream and have vi.io",. as mu
have been privatised or sentimentalised in many of Ihe practices of theological education, Today when we face the cri,e' of values. koowledge and power, what is required. It leJst in pan, is a new aeSlheli( funding. a way of knowing ,hat will be productive of new forms of human flourishing. This will inelude images and discourses of communilY. new visions of .... hat il is to be hu .... n, new terms for rebllionships. history. freedom. God. new notions of de,irc and knowledge. Education. for the future. must emphl.li'" Ihe ability ID envision. to produce tile aesthetic images and metaphors lital fund knowledge, y.llles. communily_ In conclusion. I have been arguing litat emerging ;,;sues for theological faculties should be fonnubted through a cenain lheology of culture. If Ihis be so. then Plul Tillich might well be called on for hIS lestimony to tbe continual need for such a theology of culture. [n an eMaY on church education_ Tittich maintained lital education always contains three aims : the technical. the inducting. the humanistic. The technical provides lools and techn iques. lbe inducting brings persons inlO the guild, lbe humaniStic develops human potentialities. Throughoul ils history. Tillkh believed. Christian tradilion stlllggled with how these aims were realised and .elaled in particular si\1lations. Till ich's o.... n view led him to belieye that in his situation, the nalure and relation of the inducting and hu .... n;"ic aims were in great conflict, as Ch rlsti~n education wreStled with the modern world view and traditional symbols and mylhs. While we have not yet ",uled the quntionli thaltrOllbled Titlich's day. our situmion presse, anothe r sel upon us. a set that cat1s the form of each aim into question .s well as the relations between Ihese aims. And yCt Tiltich's final words in hi. essay. 'A theology of education ', still hold promise for Our deliberations on emerging inues for thcological faeulties. 21 The problem of the church school i. more than the proolem of a p.rticutar educltional .im. It i$ the problem of the ~latjon of Christi.nity and culture ae ..... lty and Christilnity .nd education e,pecially. The problem is infinite .1Id mu$l. be solved aglin in every generation. Within thi, f.ame. thc cburch school i. like • ,,,,,0.11 1.bor.to
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9.4 Ca n vinue be ta ught? Education, cha racte r and the sou l

Da vid Tracy T he or ilins of " -tStcr n cd uu tion However diffICult the questions of character and theological education in oor period, it may still be helpful at ti~s to dilltanu oorselves from them by returning to the origins of both education and character for weste rn culture itself. Thi s may sctm a luxury if 001 a distraction from the I'C'rpluities of the prt$Cnl. And ~t, it is 001_ In fact, our pre""nt diffICult ies have been well illuminated by !>everal works of recent years: espe:..:i,lIy by &lward Fa,lcy's Sludy of the material unity of /lIro1og/o as an intellectual and TTIOf;II habit (a. virtue); by the !levual proposa15 for practical theology u tht most demanding and most needed fo rm of theology for OUr moment; by the illuminating studies of the role of narratives for community and I'C'ro;onal identity in the works of Ham Fre;, Alisdair Mldntyre, George Lindbeck and others; and by the clear and promising programmatic stu dy of Ch';.•/i<:," ltIenliry and Thtologlcal £dllcQfion by Jo""ph C Hough Jr and John B Cobb Jr,l The lut-named work. in my judgement, nicely sUlTUTlilrises the three most IlCcdcd elements for a solution: first. the ru.ed to rethink theologica l educat ion in relationship to sustained reflectio n on the 'whole Chril;!ian sto ry" of God's act ing in the world creative ly and re(\(:mptively: ~cond, the need to rethink that story in 'tbe globa l eonte~t' thu s demanding. impliCitly. a 'crilical correlation' model for the mode of enquiry that i~ theOlogy; third, the need to prOJl(>ie new models of 'practical theology' and the mini~ter as 'practicallheologian' in order to reformu late not only the theological curnculum but the nature of theological education itself. In , conte~1 where works or such high calibre and promise already e~i~l, it makes good sense 10 foclLs on the further question of education and character . The more I reflected on this question_ the more it seemed to me fruitful to n::turn to n::f1ection On the origiru; of Western educalion itself: the Alheru; of SocralC$, the great tragediaru;, and Plato. For here one may find nOl only tbe origins of !he problems of education and character formation in ou r culron:: but alliQ a cu llural and PQlitical situalion uocaMily like OUr own. The intellecrual situation of Socrates was parlous: the great threat of the sophists, for Socratc$-Plato, was as much moral and religious as it was inleJlecroal. For the sophists (espe:..:lally PtOIagoru) cl,imed that vinue could be laught, but ta ught not as a pnui$ but I~ I luhne, a technique of

success in any particular community the sophist happ<:o<:d upon. Even the great moral exemplars of Greek culture (Homer, Hesi~ and the great tragedians. in sum. 'lhe poets') could not funcno.n 10 such a corrupt situa tion, as transformrllive of character towards ~I.nue .and.the good. Moreover, as such Il\.lllySl! III Thucydide~ (and, by ,mpllCallon, Plato him""lf) make clear , the earlier heroic age was in s.ha mb~s as a relilllt of the degradation or political life in an Atheru; rurned lOto an imperialist power. The political disaster of Sicily, as much as the moral disaSler of the treatment of Melos, and the imdlecrual disaster of Plato's own failed educationat eXl'C'riments in Sicily, united to expose I situation where education muSl be rethought ((both ch3TllC~er and yjnue Ind inlellectual enquiry were to transfonn the commuruty and not merely technically inform Or merely entenain it . Contemporary fOCial scientific analyses of ancient Athens. moreaver, have correctly increased our sense of the full extent of the ~ral and intellectual dilcmsnas faced by those first educators of v,n ue: lhe economic real ity of a slave-population; the s)'Stemic di~IOl"tion of the role (mort: accu rately, non-role) of women in that society: the unde rstanding of the ' others ' 15 'barbll riC'. . As libe ral ion, political .nd feminist theologies have pcrsuaSlvdy argued, M Christian theologian shuuld already be alert 10 !hese laller distonions in all their systemic and. yes, .inful actuality. As all elassinl theolollY (lIS Ihtologi(J) can also note, !he cu llUra~, intel1ectu~l, mo ral and religious sysu:: mic di!lortions of sophi.tic behef. and poht ical iml'C'rialism render a new model of education for character (a paideia in Werner Jaeger" 1 some) crucial. It is exactly th,s nee~, I believe, which gave binh to the weste rn notions of liberal educatIOn. hQth the ora l practice of Socrates and the writu::n di alogues of Plato , as well as his founding of the first 'academy' 1 have argued elsewhere thal our own 'post -modem age· is best chuacterised as 00<: of increasing plurality and a heightened sense of the radical ambiguity of all our t" ditions. Alllhe 'grand narralives', including the Ch ristian narrative, are rar more plural. e~en hetcrogeneQU$ Ihan we realised . I have also argued against droppmg a concern .... ith '~haractcr' altoge ther and contenting ourselves with Bakhtin-like or Dcrrida-like nolions of oor history as a mulli-voiced text. And yel 1 ,dmit to a ccruin hesitation hcre. On the one hand, lhe notion of character can function to introduce the ootion of 'I'C'rsonal idemity' tOO soon by assuming, 100 easily. that our communal narratives ~re more like the .grand narratives' of the great nineteenth century reahsl$ and less like the modernist 'epiphanic' narratives of Woolf, Proust and Joyce, or even the .nti-eoherence heterogeneou~ post -modem e~l'C'rimems in am;-narn.tiye of Borges, Naboko~ or Marquez, . 'The word 'character' and its communll and narrauve demands's, I believe, at once eminently relrievable in i!.'l classic sen$CS f~ Aristotle Ihn)Ugh Jlne Austen . At the very same time, 'character '. If not IlsO subjected to IiIlspicion, Cln tOO easily align itself w,th

".

m

pr~cise ly the prob lem mo,! of Us now ~dmit to be Ihe problem of OIlr culture: that diSlinelive form of 'individualism'S() weU portT~ yed by 2 Bellah er and so well c~araclcrised as Ihe ~nlraJ templal;"" of the European and No rth Amer,can chur(:lM:s and semi!I.J.ries by Cobb and Hough .

m.

For IIIose reasons I have. in these reflect ions. returned to another la rgely forgonen word 10 try 10 uOOersland oor dilellUllll better: the word 'soul' (or psuclll). [I is this 1'10«1 wh.ich is a1 the hean of the enl_erpr~se of enqui ry, dialogue and education for Socrates and Plato. h IS 111'$ real ity of sou l, Iransforme.:l by Paul iruo a new Ch ristian anthropology and transformed in myriad new ways by Christian educators fro~ Clement and Origen and ",u!"stine through Bem:ud , Th?mas Aquma,. Eckhan. Teresa of Avii. and John of [he Cross wh,ch seems 10 me mote promising for rdle.::tion OD education and cha~er . The historical-lheologiul category of 'sou l', to be ""re, needs 115 own suspic ions (espec ially on soul-body relalionshiJl$). BUI Ihanb 10 ,u,h post-modem Ihinkers ' 5 Julia Kri!>leva aDd Olhcrs (upecially femi~i5") , Ihe category 'sou l' has a beller chan,e, I bcheve. of free Ing us from the individualism which plagues us. Thereby. refleclion on educ'lion and the soul may also free uS for lhe ?OIion of 'a subj«t-in-procus' which theoiog ical education as both 1dentlfiably Christian and genuinely open 10 our presem glomi m mut may well need, Wh y that lIUIy be so is a longer story than the one I atlemp! here. For the moment , it seems imperative to remrn to this weSte rn j()llrney of educalion as I training of the soul in Soc rale. and Plato. Fnr there. I have come to bt:lieve, is whue educalion as we know it al i15 beSt was first conceived and there ili where the unbreakable link between educa tion, properly conceived. and character (recooceived I!i a training of the sou l) was first forged . EduClItlon and the lIllul in Socrates- Plato DWltctic, dialogue and mylll The firsl candi
there is only the mode of enquiry which . a. refleclive. demand. a constant eumining of all ou r anumptions. opinions. \>elid . . . There lre, Iherefore. dialectical scientists (now named 'phllosophers of scicnce') and non -dialectic al sciem ists. There are dialectical underslandings of piety (Eulhypllro ). jUqU iry_ The Iou of the dialogue in modern Ihoughl is a loss, I believe , n01 merely

". of I~ ~"",-x.ampled. anistry of ~I form as eM:mpli fying genuille enquIry In Plalo. Ctcero. Augustine. Ikrkeley and Hume. II is also. loss ~r one cru<;i.1 w.y 10 remind all genuine enquirers that the formal treanse or esso.y comprised of written a'llument$ may be: le •• faithful 10 the subs~nlive and self-revelatory demands of all face-ta-face encoumers. The eiMch"s, as the cron·examination of the enquirer in face-toface conversalion. is. for PlatO-Socrates. thc manifestation of whether onc ?,eans what onc say, and can give rClSons defending that meanmg. In more expJicit terms. the ~iel1chlU reveal5 whether or I"lOl logo~ is pr....,nt in the enquirer's soul. It is always the 'soul' of the e:nqurrer. as we shall see below, that is ultimately .r stake in all dialecutal e~Ulry,. In _genre terms, a dialogue can cxemplify this substantIve eX'SletU,a l struggle better than. formal treatise Can. In tcnns of enquiry. ~ 'dramatic' cbaracu.r of any face-to-face dialogue aUDws for both a wider range of probing enquiry and a grealer manifestanon 10 aU panicipanlS of the .tau. of lheir charac ter, the pre,ence or ab~ence of 'Iogos' in their 'Du ls, their commitment Or lack of such for the 'examined lifc', and the rdatiOnIle's lost dialogues. I am ~hanJrfu l that. we do pos~S$ Plllo:, • .for there """ tin find dialec~icll enquiry in all liS eomple~Ily_ ambtgully, open-endedness and sometimes confu,ion. I do IXIt regret !he loss. if they ever e~illed of the 'unwrillen doctrines' of Plato. for I bclieve that his dialogues function bellcr than a.fonnal treatise as an indirec t cornmunic,ltion of I life of genuinely d,alectical enquiry . To ~escribe the elmchlls method a. Ihe lisn of dialectinl enquiry in Plato IS n<>l to dISparage the other signs also there, including the laler s'.gns for mlcl argument which Aristotle, wilh filler logical skills and hIS extraordinary clarifying genius. later refined. In Plato himself, Dne can find the procedures Df generalisatiDn, definilion and division in his ~rl~ and middle dialogues and the same both uSoed .nd reflected UpCIn ,n hIS later. relatively non-dialogical dialogues. like lhe Sophisl. the Thetleul"S and. above .11. the Ptlrmenidu. It is nolorious that Plato. however much he praises dialcctic and the

phlloSDphic life. nowhere actually defines dialeclic ~ith the p~isiOll he brings to bear on all his Dther fundamental questtOlls. Even ID the famous section on -dialectic' in Book VU of the Rep"blic, the reader is made to understand the importance Df dialectic. even. it can be ..id, to feel its impon through Plato's anis1ically wondrous and philosophically dialectical way of relating hi. parable of the cave, his ,imile of light. and his image of the 'divided [ill"". But even . here , w: a~e nOt given a definition of dialectic analosous to the defi?lllon of JU,sllce. This. to be SUIll. is a puzzle. but onc worth dwelllllg upon. For tf all dialectic is refie<:tive enquiry on fundamental iuu,,", if dialectic shows its refie<:tivwcss by addreuing :;w.umpliOlls and gfOundS for any prac tice or belief , if dialectic functions best in puson_ta- pe rson sustained tro<s-eltllmination via the elendtus melhod and secDDd-bcst in wriuen dialogues which exemplify ntII only the argument$ but !be inter~1I and characters of the enquirers (the logol in their souls or lIS absence), if even II!CmplS al definition, generalisation and division .are genuine but nOl the sole exemplificaliolli of all di alectical enqutry, then it follOWS that explicit arguments arc al$D imponam but nOI the sole exemplifications of dialectical enquiry. Another exemplification (and onc to which such conununication-thoeorislS as Habermls and Apel would do well to give funher renection via PlaiD) is Dne lit.at ~ theologian can avoid , the question of myth. Is myth e~er an e1e.mpltfication of dialectics? If SQ, how? If not, why not1 nlls central ISSue, which has haunted contemporary theology like a guilty romance. haunted PlatD is well. espcdally whenever he turned dialectical enquiry to the most fundamental ques1ion of all: the naNre of the whole as thal whole can be underslood by the dialeclical thinker allempting to educate her or his 'sou 1" . The dialogue form. to repeal, .seemS uniquely qualified tD manifest dialectic-in-action in written fonn. This is the case, not merely through the artiSlry which is clearly PlatD's . Indeed. whether Pla~o's model of di.logue i, bshioned principally on the model of the mtme or the drama is I moot poim, In either case, Plato's disCDvery of this form allows him to show the true drama he observed in SocraLeS ' the drama of the philO$Ophic SOII1 in conflict with others and, often, with the other in itself. On this reading, therefore, it is a maller of philosophical and educationa l and nol melllly artistic import for Plato to have fashioned the dialoguc form. For dialogue not only nicely exemplifies the questionand-answer method of face-ta-face Socratic cross-examination. DiaIDgue also exemplifies dialec tic-.t-wDrk in the elenchI'S melhod and in such refinements Df that mode of enqu iry as argument. on defini~ion, gene .... lisatioD and divi.ion. Dialogue is a~so a fDnn eapabl~ .of revealing !he souls of the charac\ers in the enqutry. In more fam,har contemporary terms, dialogue is geallld 10 reveal the existential sel funderstanding of the enquirers Dr, more exactly, the emergence of a subject.in-process. a soui. 11 is this laller surch that is at the hean of

, Placo's entire work ,and tlull mokes h~m so clurly a contemporary of alJ those late twenueth-cemury enqu'rers concerned to com inue tbe tradnion of dialectical reason in Plato's sense as well as in AriSlode'$ clarified .modes of .~IIUment . In dialogue one can show enquiry at wor.k wh,lc also relallng trull enquiry di rectly 10 our primordial existent,al se lf-understandmg: Q( the .elf as intrinsically re lational' related to itself, 10 society. nature and the whole. ' rio t drama of (lo t soul

Plato'. princip,al word for Such exis!ential sel f·understanding is psuchl o~ soul. Amidst a!1 t~ schola~ly debate. on Plato 's understanding in dIfferent COnteXl$ on dlffererll. dI alogues On ' """,I', this mucb I believe is cle~r: be.sides iu: other func:tioru (for example on ~If-mo~~ment) th~ tUrn soul IS a dlrcct analosuc of what a m~ rn like BultnulJU! or Og,den means by existcntial self-understanding or a post-mode rn like Kmtc:,' .means by ·subjeCt·in_proce,,·. To be sure. like Ogden (or in th cl ~ dtstlllct wa ys, Voege lin and Lonergan). Plato's interen in this cxistenllal S? lf~undersllndinll is deeply informed by his belief in the d.fferenll.auon of . consciousness tha!. occu rs to a philQ50phic soul eng~cd on dIalectIcal mquiry. For Plato, as hi, flrnoUS attack on the mimetic 'poeu' shows. o~ the philosopbic drama of the soul occurs (as it ~id, for him, in Socrates). then even 'dear Homer' and the llreat tragedJans (even Aesebylus to whom he otherwise IC"Cms ro similar) become inadequate as accounlJ of our 'soul~·. The emergence of Socrau=,. the emuge nce of dialectkal enquiry, has trans:orme~ the $Ou.1 from it' internal conflictS $0 well po rtrayed by the poetS, espeC Ially the great tragedians, Acschylus and S~ho.:les . To understand 'soul' prope rly. we must replace their mImesIS of those conflicts with the new drarllll of the $Oul the mime,is of the idea in the emergence of Socrates. aut hefo"; one assumes that this is proof of the 'rationalism' $0 often charged 10 the Greek Socratic Enlightenment one needs to rencct further on the drarllll of the 'soul' in the Platonic di alogues. The most convincing CI~ for the charge of rationalism could be made if one examined only the Phatdo where the rotiarlal character of the soul is sternly po rtra yed. But even there the figure of Socrate s, the p~cscnce of myth, and the open-ended nature of the enquiry-indtaloguc form IS far more co mple~ than this familiar readinll suggests . ~utthe m~ncr of the 'soul" for Plato is complicated by ~veraI factors In other dlalogue.l : for eUmPH:, the tr'panite ·divi.lion' of the soul into rational, spirited and appetit i ~e 'pans' in the Republic and the PIr~rus and, above Ill, lhe microcosm-m.ocrocosm analogue that dommates Plato's dia10sues in the Republic (50\11 and polis) and the Timatus (soul and COlSrroos)_ The tripanite v~w of the sou! can he read IS • challenllC 10 any

'"

pur-ely rationalist understanding of the 'soul' _ For it is one thing to cla,m (as Plato clearly does) that the 'ntiona l" is the spark of the di~ine in the human and, once diffe.entiated as philosophic reason employing dialectics. the rational pari of the soul should justly rule the othe r parts which Cause the inner conflicts of the soul. It i$ quite another mallcr to cl~im . as traditional .ationalists do, that conscious reason alone is ~ufficie nt for existemial S/: lf-undcrstanding. This laller position. however familiar to many readi ngs of western notions of enlightenment Ind however devastating in its effects upon modern individualism. is nol Plato·s. Reason i, the Ire" h<JPC': but only. reason that can faithfully (that i •. dialmicaUy) acknowledlle ilS own pou ibilities, complexities and limits. H~ver unsenled some forms of Platonism may he by the discovery of the reality of the unconscious in Freud and Lacan, by the 'dialectic of enlightennx:m' of Adomo and Horkheimer. or by the fragile character of 'reason' in post·modern thought . the se discoveries. On my reading. complicate but nardly devastate Plato's own account of the sou l. Reason acknowledges its own possibilities by engaging in genuinely dialectical enquiry. This surel y. as OUr prior section urged. i, 11 the heart of the Platonic corpu., early. middle and la!e, and at the hea" of all the Platonic successors in ~em educational theory, from Aristotle on argument to modem communicltion theoriSts. But relson, a. dialectical re
'" themselves. The poets for Plato can only mimeticaH y describe the confusions of the S()ul in the individual and !he pOlis while alS() ' projecting' thi' confusion on thei. amhmponlOrphic ponrai!! (>f the gods , To be sure, the traditional myths and the 'poets' contai n great truths worth ret rieving , But, for Plato, we mUi! dcmythologisc thcm whene"". W<' find ou~lvcs in a situation ,o f pOlitical decadenee (which Plato clearly co mmicrs the Athens of hts day or e""n the carlier p.,riclean JlC'riod) or in I situation o f intcllectual decadence where even the g reat p~ilM Or JlC'rsuasion thcme of Aeschylu$ can become a t".""sty o f true pe ..... asion (viz. persuasion-without_enqui ry into lhe trum of things) o f the new rhetorical persuaders, the sophists , TIler<: can be little doubt thlt Pllto, like every dialectical theologian, d<)es not hesitate to demythologisc when either the sitll.lltion (Athenian pol itical and intellectual decadence) or the tradition (anthropomorphic portraits of the Olympian gods aCling as badly as decadent humans, blasphetrl()Us portrayals of the gods demand ing bribes, materialiMic accounts o f the whoic and Ihe divine) demands il. PlalO ~eerienee of a depth where the soul ",mehow 'plIrtic ipates' in o. 'imitatcs' tbe whole and the divine can come in several ways: through refleclion on ems as a di"ine gifl (as in the Symposium and the Pluudf1l.<): through reflection on IhatI(J/OS as providing the clue to the truth of the philosophic life (as in the Phaedo or the Myth of Er in the Republic); thmugh the manifestations of new works of an diselosive of the strul and ils kinship with the whole (as in the mimesis of lhe philosophic strul which is the eemral drama o(lhe dialogue form); or through new,

'true' m~lhs wh ich diI.Close the soul as panicipaling in or imitating the cosmos itself (1$ in the great philosophy of myth in the T1rnaews wherein cosmos and Klul can only be undemood together), True enqui ry (dialectics), 11 true persuuion, is driven by the divine power of erns that manifests the soul'. pal1icipati<m in lhe divine and the whole, Enqui ry and JlC'rsuuion withoul 10"" arc 1$ he lplesli for PlatO as eros without true enquiry , and true JlC'"" ... ion is inevitably decadent, That the philosophic life is the (mlic life par excellence is, for Plalo, the central clue not only 10 the eros which drives e""ry strul in myriad forms , It is Il$o the central clue to that mode of enquiry and ptl'Sllasion which drives the phi lo!Klphic wollO its own depth where il recognises tlllt it plIrticipatc$ in the whole and the di vine through III its ero, from physical passion to the 'divine madness' wbich is a gih of the gods 10 the poets and &«TS, the doimtm which drove Soi:rales 10 hili cllling, and the faithfu l, cros-driven enqu iry of the dialecticians_ The dialectical JOUI , Ihus impelled by 10"" and differ<:ntiated. by true reason, evemually finds itKl f ,omJlC'lIed 10 acknowledge lhe lruth o f myth and art , Even withoulthe backing of Pl alO's Con1r<wersial interpretation o f allllmlli$;J, Ihis posilion can be warn.nted ()fI Plal()flic g rounds. The warn.nt is this: in the g reat myths and the great works o f art, the lOUl discovers itsel f by discovering, acknowledging its own panicip.otion in and imitation of the whole and Ihe div ine . At the !lame lime, the cosmos and the divim: are the ceotral clue 10 the psyche, Whethe r Plato inv enled or di scovered the greal myth of creation of the Tirnaews rema in s I rt100I point , But that Plato accords so"'" trum S1atuS to that m~th see ms incontroven ib le, One can eilher dismiss tile m~th of the creation in the TinuJew. as the Slrange famasy of an old and disillusioned philosopher or accord it Ih. kind of truth Plato did: the truth of any great myth or any greal work of l-n that manifests the truth of the intrinSic kinShip of soul and cosmos, This lruth the dialectician was already led 10 acknow lcdge in her or his enquiry upon love and pcrwasion, This truth the dialectic ian turned dialeclical mythologiser and anin can now a.cknowledge .new by recounting me myth aI a 'Jikel~ Story'; its li ke liness is not in its details but in its central insighl: the kinship of wol and cosmos, Dialectics can acknowledge even when il cannot dialectically ground thiS ulti ma te tfUlh , Diale<.:tiC5 can turn to the traditional myths a nd poetli and retrieve this truth from their COI'Ifuscd (because anthropomorphic and IlOl philosophically diffcrenlialed) mimetic ;tCCI)UnlS, Diale<;tics can lead the enqu irer to find persuasi"" any 'likely acc""nl' o f what dialectical enquiry "Iionally ackD(>wlcdges but !leVer g round,; Ihe reality of the divine, the reality of cosmos and S
Plato, I belicv~, ~ootinuc5 to persuade because there is a wholc in his te~18 which we later 'footnotu' can only glimpse: a eomrniunem to tht singular differentiation of co nsc iousness that is western philosophic reason: a rendering of tl'M: Socratic oral performance of cross-enmination into the wrillen tC;l1S of the d ialogu",!: the refinemem, within the encompassing genre of the dialogue. of the need for .rgumem, for eltnchws , (or definition, geoeralisation. division, and subdivi sion , even, potent ially, for those refinemems of argumem and ilS COnditions of polsibility elaborated by A.utotle in one way and by Toulmin, Habermas and Osden in modem t~mtI; the insistence on the need for theological enquiry on the fulllbmemal question of the whole and our e~5tentia l relationship to that whole u a mode of enquiry demanded by dial«lie al reuon it$Cl(; the ability 10 provide an aniSliephilo:sophie rende ring of u istemial selr~onlCiousne .. in its full comple;lity from rational differentiation 10 il, acknowledgemem of Ibe eros driving all n\le enqu iry; the de fence of the trulh of an and myth 1 5 evoking commitment without romanticiSm and with an insistence on much r>eceuary demylbologisinS, provoked by all true enquiry. The educational conclusion is SOUnd: conunilme m and action 001 open to enqu iry is blind; enquiry not open \0 commitmem and action is emply. Enquiry and action. like education and the roul, rise or fall together . Th ~

T imaeus

The Timn.t US remain s, I believe. nol only the most influential leXI in the history of Christi an thl,:ology but th. Clearest example of one of Plato'~ many uses of myth. Mo re e xactly. 'myth' is no longer only lhc .... o rk of the ~IS and sophim who functioned prior to the emergence of dialectic al e'lquiry, as it often is in the 'aparetic' early dialogues (fo r e ~ampl~, Ibe use of mylh by Protagoras in tm PrOlagoras). MoreQver. myth . for tbe TimMIIS, is not only in the middle or at the end of dialosues .... hen dial~tical thinking has already begun (for example, in lhe Repllblic). Rather , in tl'M: 'Timn.eus, myth pervades the dialogue a5 a whole 50 that one could almost name this relatively non, dialogical dialogue by the senre 'myth' rather than dialogue. And yel such • 'Dlming' wou ld not be accurate e;lber. despite the delight that later Christian neo- Platonists found in this greal myth of creation which seemed to them 50 resonam wilb the Hebraic-Christian myth of a CrUtOr-Gnd in Gencsis. Rather Ibe 1i~ws remains a dialogue, however alypical, in$Of.. as hell' myth and d ialectic. dial«lie and myth. interpenetrate Ibrougboul the whole te Kt-asPlatonic-dialogue. Even in the main body of the 1e~t. where Timaeus is almost the sole speaker and the other interlocutors liSlen but do IlOl quest ioo in the familiar Socratic way. lhe dialectical cbaracter of Ibe whole reading of the myth assures that we find here not merely a formal treatise nor a pure myth. bUI an odd fo rm of dialogue where

myth and dial ectics seem always-already together 10 assure the move ment of enqui ry . This is especially the case in the great ' new ,tan' of the entire enquiry of Pan 11 (47E-49A) where lhe errant cau se or ne«!ssity (onon ki) enters to complicate thl,: ponrail and where re ..on (MIIJ) muSl learn to pers.uadc (ptit/ri) necessity 10 bring about order. On tl'M: one hand, this !W!w tmme, as Comford observes. is resonant to tl'M: greal ~il/ri) Ibeme of the condusion of the Crilios. On the other hand, the introduction of Ih is ne"" and dialectically necessary compo-nern of 'ne<:essity' is a dialeclial a.dvance in the CJ'KIuiry (similar moves occur in the mythiC-dialectical notion of the 'receptacle' and the moll' strictly dialectical hut mythically eontexrualised notiOl\$ of the 'Jamoe' and the -diffe rnt '). Above all. 1ho: great persuasion theme recalls not only the e:
'" 'yeSlcrdlly' and finds no need to repeat its dialectical subtl~ ties here, he is here to listen, ~ 10 speak further: in addition. the mere recall of the discourse can remind the reader that dialectic. i. necessary for a proper unde~tanding of any myth. including th~ highly dialectical myth of Timaeus which shall encompass the wnole t~X1. Third. in 198- 208: Socrates' ~uest. lhe city Slxrates ha. earlier described in a city of !he idea. How could it function in realily. especially!he reality of war? For lhat one need. to rurn \lOI to philosophers lik~ Slxratcs (much !en to the 'poetS' and 'Iophin~') but \0 philOSQpher-stlltesmen liice Timaeus. Critias, and Hennocrat~s. Fourth, in 2OC-278 : the initilll responses of first Hermocrat~s, and !ben Critias to Socrates' request ~m initially strange: Critias, as a result of an dfon of (Platonic?) recollectiOn of a stol)' he heard in his youth (2S E-26C) lells the Egyptian tllle of SOlon. This amazing myth. of an Athens wh iCh OI>(:e was great and indeed seems to be the Athens in a.ctuality of Socratcs' citY'in-idea. functions well to re<;all two s.alient fa.c1S aboul the n,,",e~$ IS a whole: fint, dialectics resulting in Ihe city of \he Idea. and myth (disguised as history) can work tog~ther to train the SO\[I: !«ond. the true epic, grealer even than Homer·s. would be the epic of that poli$, !he epic of the idea which could show now in the Pf.st, the city of the idea a.cruaUy existed. A true an, one formed by th~ philosophic soul. could wr ite that epic. Soc rates (itoniclllly?) cannot. Bu l, lJ the great dialc;;tic ian, he can lisle n and I~arn withoul lhe icind of funher qucstioning which he ordi narily fell obliged to give to all the earlier pre-philosophic ·potlS'. He can. mOre precise ly, on onc condition: lhat the poel-mytholog iser is al.0oI: of Genesis! Timaeus, we are sbown, is indeed • rute dialectician. for he knows (290 ) that to telithe Slory of the cosmos we can only hope for a Jik~ly story: likely, because like the tik&!, the incarnation in becoming of ~e idea, whic~ the cosmos is. Dialectics can lead u. 10 glimpse the ,dea. Only a likely story can lead us funher: to render the idea (of COSLTlO$, of pol is. of 1IOU1) aclual in the statc of incarnate becoming modelled in the ideas which we are and where wc discover ourselves

10 be in kin~hip with the cOSmOS. At thal lX'i nt , the liicely Slory can begin. It is, I think. a good beginning to a good rnythical-diale<:tieal crealion i.LOry . Such a curious cornbinalion of myth and dialectic in mutually critical cOrrelllion is an odd genre. to be sure: it is sometimes called theology. In a scnse, the cOmmunily of~nquil)' in the West liv~s through lhe power of the great Socratic ideal for true education. classically expressed in the saylllg , .~ unreflectiv~ lif~ ;,. not wOnh living.' All communitics of commitmcm and faith add to that classic Socralic ideal of lhe western community of enquil)' the equally important thought : 'and the unlived life is \lOI wonh "'fleeting upon'. This addition is, of C
,~bjf(f_in_procen

Of all tM educational institutions. the ministry prollranune school~ of theology are those singular inStitutions whe re action and thought, academy and chuo;h. faith and reason, tbe commu nity of er>quiry and lhe communily of commitment and fllith are moSl explicitly and systemalicany broughl tOllc!he r . For any OT>C who enters a semiOll ry Cl1le r~ primarily wi th Ill(: goal of action, the go.ol of lhe practice of ministry in and for the community of Ihe church and people _ 0 "" entl:fS 10 be educated . in the hope of finding a community that unites both thoughl and action to he lp uS to find our way to b01h lhe 'rellcetive life' suggeSled by Socrates and the 'l ived life ' proc laimed by Jcsus. As Plalo taughl us, I life of enquiry has its own dema nds, lhe demandS of Wh l l Bernud Lonergan nic~ly eaU, the pure. detached, disinterested. unrestricted desire 10 know. But th~ re is a further insight which lhe community of faith has to teach. For the eras of enquiry, as Augustine reminded lhe Platonist. of his day. i, it""lf driven by our commiunents, OIIr f.iths, our loves. To icnow the truth of Augusline 's great insight. amor me"s, pond.... meum, is 10 know what ullimalcly drives the li fe of reflection in a community of enquil)' rooted in I community of commitment and faith: our ideall;, OUr hopes. ou r loves. For the community of faith. lhe church, is that community where deSpile its fauhs. even Sins, God', word is yet preached, Gnd'. story of redemption and crealion is yet reflected upon and appropriated by lhe ' souls' of III Christians who have joined them!iClves to thal multivoiced narTlltive, God', sac ramc:nt5 are nuode pre",nl anew, God's people aHempt to live OUt in action and eommitmeru a life of faith working through love and justice in a global eonte ~t. In lhe comrnu-

'"' nily of failh each person individually and Ihe whole people as a communilY aHempI. now well. now poorly. 10 make God's own slory. Ihe $Iory of God's pure unbounded love for all crealion diSClosed in the slOry of the people of hra.l and lIlal Icsu s who i. !M Chrisl . become their Slory as well. The life of lhe mind (;tn1101 live alolle. As Aristode insisted. only gods lOO hcasu can do thaL Ralher. 10 Ihink is to COIlverse willl !M cla.. ics: to convcrse wilh lhe dauks is 10 join lhe communilY of enquiry of the hving and lhe dead. h is 10 r«ognise thal we too Can and musI be<:omc part of tbal cOtlversac.ion . In t!\llh. we are that conversation. Nor does the life of failh live alone. Wc live thal life because past communities of faith passed it on 10 US. ChriSlians know !he decisive n.arralive of l esus Christ because OUr tradition has seen lit to pass along. 10 hand over this healing. transforming. gracious JI'OSsibiHty 10 us. As my histori<:al colleague Martin Marty ha. wriuen. 'Cbristianity is always one generation away from e~tinct ion. ' We too mUSt recognise that what conversalion is to the life of u.., mind. SOlidarity is 10 the life of action. The Christian community of faith is a tradition which has lived by sharcd disclooive and tral1!formative meanings for almo" two lhousand years. ChriSliaru find Ihat those sh~r.d meanings have expressed themselvCl through the centuries in an explosively pluralistic way as each generation attempted 10 think and live them as its own. And in retrieving Ihal reality each generation added ~omc new classic po.. ibility. $omc ncw insight. some new retrieval Or suspicion and often retrieval of forgouen, even repressed memo ries of th is extraordinary story through suspicion. witness. way of life. As we e~pe rience more deeply the pluralism or our Christian community, we are likely in Ihe future to turn yet more fully to thosc who are Ihe privileged ones of the ancient prophets and of lesu< Christ. the poor. the oppressed. the marginalised. th. forgotten OneS. They are the ones whose present and future voice the Chri.tian gospel calls us to hur. This truth of the Chri"ian failh seems to me more powerfully realised in lhe modern seminary than in the semina ry of my day . And their voice. if listcned to. Can be(:ome Our voice as well. Some have suggested. with a sense of retignation. perba", even quiel despair. that even the future is I10C what it used to be. Yet Ihe tmth is, it never was . For at Ihe hean of lhe Christian revolution of consciousness is the insiSlence that the fUlure c.armot be a mere u/os. a working out of what already is . The future. for the Christian gospel, is ad,·tnlllm. that which is 10 come. the new. Ihe une~pected. judgeIDCnt and threat. gtft Ind promise from God and God's di ..~re in history and nature. A theological educltion. grounded in continuous searching of the Christian classks. C$pecialty lhe bible. open 10 the demands of enquiry becomc the demands of retrieval. critique and suspicion . can

become again a school fo r Ihe Iraining of the souL That is how theological education began. That is how. I believe. it needs to see itself again . Olherwise even OUr noble contemporary attempts t~ t~ach 'vlluu' and ·character·formation· may become trapped agam m a mere individu alism. To rethink theological eduution in our increasingly pluralistic and ambiguous global conte xt is to rethink a~ well. OOt the ·individulli.ll · model of the purely autonomous self of Enlightenment modernity. OOt even. primari ly. !M classic nolions of identity-formation through character of Aristotle and hi. sUCcessors. It is Ilso 10 retrieve. criliully. suspiciously even at limes. but ru,lly. the Christian SQU I as the su bject-in-process of the Christian idemity.

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10. Theology, education and the university The conviction th at the ological educatio n is ce ntral to the educa· tio nal work of lhe seminary or Divinit y School is not in itse lf controversial, in spite of con tin uing disagrecments a'oout its natu re and objectives. The place of theological education in the university u such, howeve r, has been st rongly challenged for many yea rs. One influent ial school of thought has maintained that there is a place in the uni ve rsity fo r Re li gious Studies but not for Theology, pa rt ly on the basis tha t the fo rmer is said to be charac terised by ~ 'scientific', 'objective', and 'neutral' methodology which the latte r is deemed to lack , but which is conside red normati ve for responsible intellectual e nqui ry. In Brila in, whe re the re a re depa rtments of Theology, of Religious Studies. and of Theology and Religious Studies. d i ~cu ssion s of the place of theological cducation in the univer>ity reflcct the fact of its historic presence; I but in the United States, the point of departure for such disc ussions is thoc fact of its historic absence, given that unive rsity depanmenls of Religion are ultimately the product of the constitutiona l sepa ration of church and sta te. The unicles in thi s sec tion. wh ich question the institu tional marginalis.ation of theological reflcction, presuppo se the specia l challenges of the Ame rican contcx.t. 1 Stephen Toulm in, in 'Theology in the context of the universi ty', first publ ished in Theological Educa/ion, 26, 1990, pp. 5 1-65 , obse rves that the question about the place of theology in the univcrsit y is ~n ins titu tional and an intellectual qucstion at the same time. Sk.etching the history of the relationshi ps between theQlogy ,lTld Ihe university. he argues that theology allied itself tOO closely to the foundational ism of Desca rtcs aoo his successors. But with lhe fall of foundationalism, in ou r own time. it is possib le to return 10 ' a practical conception of th eol· 08Y'; and because 'the cen tral, distinct ive conccrn of theology is precisely with the interrelaledness of things'. theology should have a unique contribut ion to maJr::e to the ' transdisciplinary di alogue' of the university today. Edw ard Farlcy ident ifies and critici ses the ' techoomania' of th e modern uni vers ity in gene ral. and argues, from his coneep-

tion of 'the educated pe rson' , that what it requi res is 'a new hermeneutical sclf-eon$Ciousncss', Religion. in panicular. being 'culturally spccifr<: and concretc', 'a distinct ive dimension o f human experience'. and involved with issues of ' truth and reality'. is such 1hat its study Il:quires the use of the hermeneuti cal pr inciples of ·concreteness'. 'expcrientiality', and 'reality' - and analognu s principles are, in fact. essential to any kind of se rious study. Without such principles, religious studie~ and theological studies ali ke arc distoned. The conclusion, there· fore, is {hat the ~ims of religious studies itself. and of the study of anyone plInicular rel igion . can only be realised with the aid of a theological hennene . nie of rdigion . Far ley's 'The place of theology in the study of religion' is from Religious Studies Wld Th~logy, 5. 1985, pp. 9- 29 . ' Tbeology: universily and chun:h. Is a synergism possible?', by Claude Welch. firsl appeared in Phi/o.wphy and Theology, 3, 1988. pp. 5-23 . Welch be lieves that the interests of the university, especially in relation IQ the study of religion, and Ihe interests of the chu rch. in its theological enquiry, can and do coincide to such an extent that it is poss ible to talk of 'synergism'. The question of the re lation of Christianity to OIher religions, Welch argues, is the pa rad igm case: of this possibility. since the major cont ributors to th is debate are , and must be, both historians of religion and theologians. In one cr itical area, therefOIl:, thcre is a syne rgist ic relation between the university and the church, which , Welch hopes, will be n:plicated elsewhcre. Professor Stephen E Toulmin is currently based in Ihe Centcr for Multiethnie and Transnational Studies at the University of Soutncrn Cali fornia , Los Angeles, USA. Professor Edward Farley is Professor of Theology at the Divinity School. Vanderbilt Unive rsity. Nashville, TellllCssce, USA. Professor Claude Welch was formerly Professor of Historical Theology at the Graduate Theological Union, Bcrkc!ey, California. USA. ~.

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10. 1 Theology in the context of the university Stephen Toulmin The institutional and InlcUcctual qUC~IIQns The question 'What place doe~ theology have in universitie. today?' can be addressed from twQ di fferem dir«tions . On the onc !land,. we can treat it as an insrifUlional question: 'What are the relatlOl1l between unive rsity dcpanments or ""tIooll of theology, and tM othl:r $Chool~ or dep.anment~ alongside which they work? Has theology.,for instance. a place in undergraduate collegu of Ans and Sclences1 In many Nonh American universities, the subjec~ is taught Qn the undergraduate lev~l, in mt>st cases only .s an e~ccuve subject. and usually under a pseudt>nyrn like 'Religious Studles': at Northwestern, for example. the College of Ans and Scienc~s has. a depanment of History and Literature of Religion. Alternatively, IS the proper locatlOll of DepanmenlS of Theology in the graduale ""hoo!? T<:> the eXI~m that philosopbicaltheoLogy, cornpan.tivc: religion and the like prov:~ fields for Qriginalll:$Urch on an advanced level. they have a pl~e m graduate training . Or is the central place of ~I.ogy a profeSSIonal one, associated with thl: . raining Qf prieslS and mmlste,,? In t~at case, the subject would pre-eminently be taugh,t as Law and Mtxllcme Ire taught, within the framework of a profuSlonal school. Questions about the academic lOCUS of theology ~y .also have an imelltCfual sense, Instead Qf asking about the adnllmst ra"on or ~rgan· isation Qf unive rsity in"itutioos. we can ask about the stand,ng of theology. as a field for research and dl:b.ate lLon~side. even overlapping the fields of philosophy. anthropology . blOlQgy or, whatever , HoW' far can theology look other contemporary disciplines ID the cy.e? How do its central intellectual concerns compare andlor cc:nn:ect .Wlth those Qf mOre established discipLine, in the a.cademic world, m el~her the sciences or . he humanities? About thi~, thl: spcctmm of poIJlble views rangeS from a grandiose extreme, of r.ceing theQlogy as a faundational discipline, in which all other subjects should be grounded: to the more cynical extreme, of seeing th~t>!ogy a1 ~ 'pseudo subject or 'oon ~ubject", and theological doctrmes 15 disgUIsed mane rs of personal preference. . AI first sight, these institutional and intellectual aspects ~re quote distinct, and even 5Cparate. Yet that .ppea~e i~ nu;;lead~ng .. task of deciding whether ao organisational niehe exms on unlVersltlCS for the study of theQI<>gy, and it so. w!lat, c:an hardly be tackled without at the same time. addll'uing the ques\!on Qf the mteUectual

T.ht

uanding of the lubject. To the extent that we regard theology al that body of doctrines (or 'dogmas') that are the inlellectual foundation and/or justirlCalion for a J»;"icular kind of religious life and practice. wC make t])e subject a Ih~uriclll field of sludy. which is seen as conceptually prior to. and more basic tiuon, paSIOral theology. for the JlI.me reasoru; that biology is conceptually prior 10. and more basic than . medicine. Cooversely. to the extent that we treal theology, fint and foremost. as a prac/ical (though not c~clusively pallarlli) discipline, we make it harder to separate the intcllcctu~l critique of doctrines from issues of lilurgy or stewardship, counselling Or homiletics, That being .so. attilude, to the bona /ides "nd serio.",,,, •• of theological corx:epts and i.. uc~ arc discuSled alongside , and in eonju llCtion with, administrative issun. Those to whom thc lifc and practice of religion a"" the conte~t for all truly theological i"ues will be readier to choose a 'profe ..ion.1 school' model of organi sation; those to whom doctrine is 'foundational' will give theology a narrower and more 'academic' niche in university organisation. These generalisations may be eit])e. a commemary on the preseru Slate of affairs, or clse a wider , hiSlorical commentary on the thanging panems of academic organisatioru; to be fOund in different culrures and historical periods. Looting ~t the varied academic roks that theology has played at diffc""nt times and places is I useful prelude to re5lating the issues confroming Nonb AmeriUn theological ""bools at prescnt. let me begin with an historical overview, and defer the mOre practical questions for theologiaJ\$ in the context of diffe rent kinds of colleges and universities. Focusing fifS! on ..,.,ucrs of history. we may SCI up somc broad temporal subdivisions, marking p"riods during which such mallors were dealt with diff~rently, ei ther way we slice it . in
stood among the CUSlomary 'facullies' of lhe university alongside Medicine and Jurisprudence. !>hilosophy embraced the fundamental ani and sciences that formed the ",'v;um and qundri,';um of general education: bul these were S«'n as preparation for professional training in the three J»;rallel professions of l,.aw. Physick and the Chureh _ (That division of learning is embodied IrchilCClurally in the Ol.d $.:;hools at t])e University of Odord, w])ere the entrance 10 each trad, tional 'school' stands on onc or anOlhe. of the imerior walls of the Quadrangle.) Institutionally. from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. the theOlogical learning requi""d for entry imo the chun:h thus existed alonglide and on the same footing is the medical and legal learmng required for entry into the other IWO chief professions. So conceived, theology was a prOdicll/ discipline; iti contem was independent of (and in many ways amedated) the theoreticKI ans and sciences. Since lhe uniyers;tie~ of Europe were initially' schools' for training lawyers. doctors and priests, they were the repositories for the besl scholarship in 'nIeology.as well IS in l,.aw and Physick. but were noc yel commit ted to the intellectual priIMCy of a 'systematic' theology ai a foundational lh~ry, distinct and scperlIC from practical or pastorll thc(llogy. Rather, the more that the medieval ""hools, follo,,:ing Thomas Aquina., organised different fields of Slody along Imel derived fr01Jl Aristotle, the more committed they became to inte'Pll'ting pnctical disciplines as f'oeld s for phronlsis (0' 'prudence') ratbe r than for t~ qislemi (0' 'theo""tieal grasp-) of astronomy and geometry. To this day, indeed, the mOSt serious miS""jdings of Aquinas come from seeing him, as a philosophical th<:Olngian. as commmed to a theoretical . rather than paSloral view of the subject: whereas he was, in actHI faeL. as much a maSlcr of the rhetoric of Cicero and Quimilian as he was of the logical analyses of the Platon;sts. Up to t~ time of the Council of Trent. then, intellectual debates in the unive ..ities in t~ middle ages and Ihe Renai.sar.ce were eonducled against the background of a general cultural coosensus. The inteHectual culture of western Europe embodied I shared unders"nding of Christian belief, • liturgy which was largely taken over from lraditionlll Judaism, and a rcpcnory of theological concepts. many of which could be discussed on an equal basis with Islamic ""holars, 100. W])en Aquinas writes of the tent ral concepts of moral and general theology as accessible 10 thinke.s from any (""ed or culture: via t~ rmio nmwrlllis, this i. not Wffie kind of European pa.ochlallsm. SUII less cultural impe rialism. It ""nCCts the fact that. fnr medieval scholars. pre-Christian and no,,-Christian writers, _""ch as Aristotle and Cicero, made fundamental comributions 10 ethic., politic, and tileology. which were incorporable inlO Christian doctrine with rational confidence. After the late si~lccnth century, this changed. The politico-theolngical confrontation betWeen Counter Reformation Catholics .nd

dogmatic PrOtestantS broke down the earlie r theological consensus. No longer could one maintain the scholarly agreement betwe..n theolo_ gians from different reliSious communitie. that maintained the flItional confidence of pre~ious «n!Uriel. With the mid-se~enteenth centu.y, questions of doe/rint. which were earlier open to intellectual specu lation and debate, were transfo.med into maHers of dogma. to be seuled authoriuuively by church autho.ity, and cealied to be open to ques_ tioning or speculation. (Thus. the intellectually imaginati~e traditi"" of Swmmos gave .... ay to the magisterial production of pedestrian M~"a/~.) Meanwhile. in the universities, tbe rise of philosophical llIu<.>nahs.rn aner Rent Descanes offered an alternative but quite sepa. rate path to Philosophy, which only no .... set a.ide its Aristotelian heriusc of rhetoric and practic.l philosophy and commined itself to Iogic ...... nalytical methOOs modelled on those of geometry. TIle re$lllt; ng ' New Philosophy ' defined the intellectual backg round against Which arose systems of political ideas, from Toomas Hobbes and John locke to Jean-Jacqucs Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson. which were later appealed to, in both tbe Freneh Republic and the United Stares of America. as justifying a separation of church and SMe. So from [he la[c eighreenth cemu ry on, educated Europeans and North Ame ricans found it impOssib~ to treat Th<.:ology as on. par wit h the Iot:<.:ula r di5Ciplin.. of Law and Medicine. On thei r view of religion. Ihe.e could be no eff~cli~e consensus in theology as there still was in jurisprude nce and medicine. After 1800. these diffcreroces becam<: eVen more marked. The inc reasing confideroce of the physical S<.:ic nces seemed to undermine the claims of theology ever more .~dically; and in the ear ly twentieth c.e~t ury this P'OCC£i cu lmi nated in the emergence of a sc<;ular positl ~Ism, ma ny of whose proponents used th e very word 't hcolog ica l' as a synonym for' empt y' or . meaningless> . A< the 1980s come to an end, the striking feature for our purposes is i new . bility to challenge the whole development of modern ttleo logy and phi losophy. from late se~enteemh century rationalism to early twentieth century pOsiti~ism. Li ke Ludwig Wittgcmtein and Man in Hcidcgger (.~ Richard Rony reminds ~s) John Dewey has critically questioned the intell~tual heritage of philosophical rationali~m, and open..d a road by whK:h we can move back toward both a more p rae. lieal visi"" of Phi losophy. and I 1lI0re pa.toral programme for Theology. The sense of sUllosphcric despai r that many readers carry away from the absolute ideal ism of F H Bradley and the systematic [heology of Karl Banh has turned out. on thi~ ~icw. to be only a nalUral sense of 101$. in reaction [0 this recognition that the more ~ndiose. the?retical ambitions of the se~cntecnth century were mISconceIved," [he first place. If the critical position of these major philosophers is well founded. it opel1$ up the chance for theologic.l iswes (at any r.le, theologic.1 issues of cenain kinds) moving closer m the centre of the .cademlC debate within the univelliities of the fUlure .

Th roughout ttle three ce mu ries beg inn ing with Ihe end of the Thiny Years War in 1648. acco rdingly . the academic cuhure of the European and Nonh American univc r$ity took fo r granted a ucular ideal of learning deri~ed finally from the theologically neutral rati ..... nalism of DeSClnes' DisCOf< rse logical' o r vice ""' sa. Both our courses ~re organised around the historical evolution of these: historically crucial issues. Nor were they conrUled \0 the ways in Which such iuues arise in Ihe Christian world: they also extended back to clauical, pn:..(;hri$lian Greece. and 1lC1"O!;II the line dividing Judaism from Christianity. Above all. we concentrated on giving a satisfacto ry accOUlll of the different phtues in the history of western philosophy: classic.1 and rntrisuc (Hellenistic) thoughl, a medieval period which ..,...ived claS$Ical idelS. the early modern period of the Renaissance and scientific revolution, and the 200 yean of mature natunl science and po5t- Kantian ("critical") philosophy. Only wirh this

basic narntive of WeStern cullural history in mind could One give a proper ac<;O\Inl of the cemral iuues that have arisen, and still arisc, in either science or religion , That same narrotive is still (in my view) the grou~work of liberal learning and, in ilS reconstruction, Iheol08Y Can contribute much maleri.I, both in paranel wilh and overlapping the results obtainc4 in other academic fields, Nor is the current shifl in philc»ophkal method, away from alw.racl theory .nd toward concrete narrative, an thal recent: it is foreslwlo~, for ex.arnple, in CoJlingwood's discussion of absolute presuppos;lions in his NI £ssQy 011 MClaplrysic:il and The IdM of NQJurC,l As CoJlingwood saw maneu, there is no way to give a formal, universal analysIs of 'causality ' , for example, lhat is relevant to all stages in their hislorical development; rathe:r Ibe changing patterns of thoughl about 'causalily ' need to be documented in historical terms, SO as to bring to light Ihe genealogical links among OUr varied 'causal' concepts, and lhe pragmalic considerations Ihat have led 10 lheir differenlialion . It is clear in retrospecl Ihat CoJlingwood recognised some I»Isic point. that mosl professional hislorians of science d id noI yet umlerstand_ From the 1930s to the 1%Os, research On the intclleclual developmenl of Ihe nalUral sciences was mainly wrillen by historians who wCre influenced, either by lhe antiphilosophical stance of George Sa.non, or by the positivism of the contemporary philosophy of setence, or by boih. Even Jllrgen Habermas' argument connecting ' knowledge' and 'human intereS15' assumed thal we can know in universal terms, what legitimate 'human interests' the ",iences 'can se rve; and rheological interests werf not included among them. Yet, if we look ba,k from the prCS<.:nt to the controversy ~ tween Leibniz and N~wton to be seen in the Lcibniz·Clarke correspondence, or at lhe WIdespread acccplance of Newtonian ideas between 1690 and 1750 it is clear thlt what was al stake for educlltcd Europeans was as m~ch the ch ance of reconlilructing an intellectually defensible the<.>dicy as it wai a nythi~g in ~he ~aili~ick of twentieth cemury physical theory. [n pursUtng th,s hIStorical agenda, wc sh()
existing intere sls in the Hell enism of the eastern Mediteffanea~. and the debate about the legitimation of Christian pracuce was thus III new intclle<:tual directions. All a re$\llt, Christian Theology emered an ambiguous alliance with Greek philosophy. and ever since tile ideas and doctrine. of Christi~nity have been expoS«! to theoretical critique from philosophers fo r inr~",ai re
Thit contraSl between the modes of discussion typical of "'Iigious debate in tN: (practtcal) Jewi$}! rabbinical and (theorelical) Christian traditions came to .. head mosI strikingly after the Reformation, n(llI.bly with the theologieo>political confrontations provoked by the Council of Trent. Arguably, p",_Rdormation Christian theology shared much wilh medieval rabbinic!; the: case analyses undenaken by moral theologians within Christian elhics were basically similar to tho~ u~d by rabbis in framing their own response on lhe basis of lhe Torah . Even in Aquinas, there is much thaC is best underslood by placing it ~k in the rhetorical, no! thi: analytical tradition in philosophy. Aftcr 1620, however, the loss of an earlier consensuS about the basic world piclure, Che horrors of the Thiny Years War, and lhe failure of communication bctwun Protestant and CatholiC theologians, were an occasion 10 look for neutu!. rational - or 'Iog;cal' methods of thought and analysis, open 10 re flective thin ke rs from any hackground. This was the sourct of philosophical rationalism; and. m the renewal of European society and cu lture after 1648, the hi~lOry of theology bceame tight ly, if not fatally, bound up wilh the fate of that ratiOnlllism. In medieval Europe, the re was rOOm fo r many cQCxisting viewpoints or traditions of Christian thought and practice: from th. scventeentb century, by COntrUt , the ruling ambilion was to 'p rovc' the cem ral ideas and thescs of theology 'irrefutabl y'. Hence, the transformation of Cltholic doctrine into dogmll: hence, also, Leibniz's appell to the Principle of Sufficienl Reason as a criterion for establi.hing an unchallenged cote of ecumenical beliefs _ This conversion of theology from an advcnturous speculative task, u in the Sumlll
'" given che doccrinal aspects of Christi~nity (~pislbnHthror;(1) !i«ond place to the demands of Christian life and ptactice (phronisis/praxis). Subscq~ent challenges to Canesianism. from Immanuel Kant in the late eighteenth ~enlUry to Dewey Or Rony in OOr own day, have ur>dcrm.ncd the mtelle.;tual programme of """,t·Reformation theology and . the personal sclf confidence of theologians alike. Schle,ermache r's hermeneulics WIS an inte lligible eX/ension of Kant's critical progl"llmme for philosophy; $(I the twentieth century theologi cal deln.!e has focused ovem1~h on eslllbl ishing the ·yery possibility' of • I"lIlIo~lIy defensible religiOtl$ belief. (Recall Kant' s queslion , whethe r any rational enterprise is iibullalipl mOg/im, 'possible in che fil'Sl pia«' o r 'in principle· .) Fo r those who arc still mired in the C.nesian t..dition. the Kem ingly · rltional' SllltllS of the sc iences makC$ religion problemalic. not "ice veno; and , as a result, HaDs Kiing le<:tu res on 'Science and the problem of God '.· !>OI (as wc might expect from a belteve r) on 'God and the problem of Science'. Theology in trallsdisc: lpll na ry d Lld OJlue What, then. is ncw ill our present situalion? At ill; hearc (I argue) is the return to a pracll·col conception of theology which had been central to histori c Ch ristianity, at least up to the time of the COIIocil of Trent. From this point of view. theo logical issues cannot be de fined in abstracc , de<;onte~tualisc:d terms; the issues of theology arisc. and its c.on,cep~s ~ rc m~anin8ful. only when related co the 'forms of religious hfe wnhln whIch they have a point, and which they presuppose. In Ihi<. of c~u"e. clley are no, different from thc iss ues and concept" of mathemat,c s and natural SC tence, let alone in contrast 10 those ideas. As Willgenstein used to insill, co llectively in telligible concepts of any kind can acqui re shared meanings, only to the e~ICnt thatthey are us.ed and understood by people who operale within Lebensformm, Or 'forms of life', which are thcms.elyes sufficiently shared' the word 'in nir:s s' is.u r>de.rs,cood by baseball cogno..::enti in way.th~c are only margInally Intelhglble 10 fins and players of cricket . and viu W'rsa. We ~an effecci.vely uOOernand the theological principics of Hasidic J~dalSm. hlam lc Su ~sm or Quakerism, accordingly, only if we recognl!lt how the pI"lIcllCe of these variecies of Judaism, Islam and ~hri~tianity ;, distillCtive; just as we Can master the quantum mechan_ Ical Idea of complementarity only by 1"CI;0gnising how, in acrual practice, the physics of Wemer I-Ieisenberg and Nils Bohr differs from all earlier physics, So construed the term ·theology' cannoe be read as the name of a oeparatc d isctpline which exisu alongside , and on a similar basis 10, other academie disciplines . Thai would be to make il the product of SOme prior abst~tion by which ' theological· issues were disr;Ifg•• islled and SqKl,"!,/~ from those of systemat ic botany Or French literatu re . R"her. I$SUCS of theology exisc. and arise. ot/he base of I!!

abmact academic di scipl ine s equally. Ju st as problems in the physical Iheory of relacivilY ca n be discusse
(If)

Only one comment nee4s adding. By this step. we join hands .with lhe hUnlllniSlS of the latc Renai ssance:. from E.-asntus up 10 Montl.lgne, all of whom understood the inevitability of complexity Bnd uncertainly, and welc fIOt tempted illlo the 'dead end' of I"lItionalism . . Al this poinl , we can return to the institutional and organisalt~l issues we began with , The administl"lltive Slructure of che: universIty today , I1 least in the United SlIIteS, is. tribute t~ the end.urin~ power of ralionali sm. Most departmenlf are still organIsed and ident,fied by • commitment to the imerests of some indiv idua l discipliuc, conceived of .. not merely dininCl, but also separate , from other parallel disci-

pJine ~; the cen tral concern or academics is tQ explore the ramifications

of tho:;.e sepa rate inheritw disciplines , A. we approach the year 2000, we IncreasIngly recQgnise the limi/alio~s Qf that conc..ptioo. On ID()re .od more levels, any exclu~ive preoccupation with the rami fication. of "'parate disciplines .ppears p')Sitions of differem disciplines, and thc assumpuons i~volv~ in separating thcm, we are increasingly led into a. Iran.Jd'l~pl~nary d,alogue , of a kind to which theology has a distinc. live coornbullon to make . As I argued elsewhere. the practical ideas embodied in the ecology ,!",,,,,me,,,, in contraSI to the biological sdmu of ·ecology· h.ave llIl Inescapably lheologtcal colour and significance. In panicular. deci . "ons abou.t ·~nv~ronmental impact· and thoe like involve judge"",rus o f relall"., pnonty In the overall 5<:heme of things : weighing the imerests of hUJruln beings against those of redwood trees. smallpox viruses, snail danen and nawral beauties. Many people. it is truc. eyaJual~ Ihese choices in ulililu lan tenns, balanc in8 thoeir prospective benefilS for preSCOI and fUlU re human bemgs. But .uch utilitari an calculaliOIlS are inhcrelltly limiled: it is 110 longer self-evidenl IOOay th.al Ihe aims and intereSls of human bllillgs, whelher IIOW Or in tile remole futu re can wholly oulweigh tlmsc of otlle r creatures with whic h we share thi~ planel. As Christophe r Stone nrgues, such vulnerable creature, as redwood Irees Can be ~aid to have legitimate 'imerests' and deserve. in principle, 10 have 'standin8 · ill the judicial and polilkal arenas. Human beings may feel sober con fidence that their OWn affair~ have a serious importanc e, from a cosmological vi~wp
beings for what they ·make of themselves' , . For the pIlrpose of prllCtice, IIOt least in p.astoral counselling. the affective unity of tile human personality (at least. in its unfr.gmenled. non·schizoph renic state) is, surely, a primary datum; sO u,:"e~'t.ood. lhe social. cultunl and other characteristics of the human Ind,v,dual are so Jrulny abSlr.ct features, when conside red ill isolation fro~ that unity. Rather than lea"., que~tiOrL$ about ·pcrsonalily dIsorders and thei r care to the discordant diversity of ~ychiatrisls. psychoanalyst •• cultu r.l anthropologists and ethnomethodolQgists alone. lhe ch.alJeng~ arises of bnngtng older theologicll concepts to bear on the uJ'lderstandillg of our cu~nt mental amicliorL$. Ideas li ke ' g.rac~· , ·humility' . ·conscience· and ' wilful i8oorance' refer to expmnr~'QI realities. on which the ....o rk of psychiatrists. culm ral anthropey must be ready to sit dowlI .... ith colleasues from all relevant disciplines. with confidence that they Can discuss such issues as rquals. No discipline has a monopoly on tllese issues; in Ihe nature of the case. indeed. they 0;10 1"101 blllollg to any single discipline. Rather . uovel forums are needed. whcre people from difrerem backgrounds can d iscuss 'the beSt that has bllen thought and s.aid' about these malte" ill any field. One thing i. true in the case bolh of cosmolog ical que~tions aboul tile Scheme of Things, and of confessional questIOns about consc ience. lhe unity of personality, and human IinilUde: the cemral. diStinctive conce rn of thcnlosy is p recisely wilh the inurrelaltdnt.<.< of thing~ that. for 3SO years, the focadcmy has preferred to. keep upara/e. Those years. however. wen: dominated by a ralionahsm lhat wc have now put behind us, Rece nt writers on moral practice a rC rev ivillg o lder arguments a\>out the Just War . or the ethics of usury. for the light they th row on current qucstions about nuclear weapons and third world deht. In other parts of theology, too. our conceptual inheritance from unier times. especially before the fatal cOllfrontatioll between radical ?rotCSllnts and Counter Reformation Catt>
'" side Law and Medicine ; Ihe central conttpu of Divin ity were taughl alongside those of Physic k and Jurisprudence. To this day, the crucial e of theology too, We koow for SUre from pnclic.aleaperience, he .a)'$. Ihot chiCken is good 10 eat; only lUbsequenlly can we ask why, in point of theory. on whal condition s and in what respects, this i. the case . In the same way. without a """nd grasp of the prac/ical force of te rms like 'negligence' .nd 'strict li~bility', wc can!"lOt e\'Co po~~ the cross-cuhural and crou-jurisdictional q~stions of the social sciences; for eumple. ' Why do English eouns not accept the notion of ~ ... ricl liability"?' or 'Why did the early medieval Teutonic tri\>cs ignore issu es of knowledge and negligence in assess ing damages for persona l injury?' Similarly, in theology : only a """nd grasp of the traditional ideas of 'grace' and 'conscience' allows us to fn.me meaningful questions about the theological variations among Ihe style. of rel igious life and practice in different societi« and cultures. So. in Ihis field. wmething of lasting value may be achie ved . if cu llural anthropologists pay as much attention to Ihings a sound, historically informed teacher of systematic theology can clIplain, as is at present the case ",ee vu.M. lbe central place that theology has phlyed in Ihc history of western philoilOphy and science makes a """nd. hiStorically informed account of the traditions of religious lhought and practice in western Europe and North America as central a. ever to the mi.sion of the university today.

10.2 The place of theology

In

the study of religion

Edward Farley IDlroduction Our topic is the place of theology in llle teaching of religion in colleges and universit ies , TIle in\lc has been on the sccne sillCe World War n .t What keeps it hefore us? [ must confess a cc ruiD confusion and ngueness about what happened in the plI.t deCide in departments and programmes of religious studies across the cOllntl)' .2 I do not pouns fi~~ dala a~ to ,!"e criteria operative in faculty building, the pre$Upp05~hOIl5 whIch "'for.m the way the s(Udy of religion is parceUe.
is what might be called the conventional way of formulating the relation between theology and religious studies . . Ae<:ording to the conventio nal fonnulation. religious studIes nameS an inclusive programme or department which explores and \Ca~hes rcligion according 10 the canons of univel"lity scholarsh'p." .G,~en tbel>< canon1. no single religious faith can claim primacy Or pnoTlty, and religion it$Clf m\lSI he inte rpreled withollt special pleading and under universal scholarly crileria. ll>eology, on the other band, presupposes a specific religious community as its selling. a com~u ­ nity which in the past has hindered and even persecu~ ~n,~erslly sciences. In addit ion. the almost exclusive educational IOStJtUUon of theology is the professional sehool for clergy education. Further •. ~e grounds of validily and verificat ion of theology are nOl ulllv~ .... hsne but eSOte ric. private and aUlhori13rian. The code words for thIS apparent incompat ibility of f(:ligious studies and theology are obj«tivity and neutrality. Some of tile literatu.e of the 19505 and 1960s ~.ew lhe li nes th is way and the n Il"8ued that the university ;n its commItment to the autonomy of reason needed the radical monotheism of the Ch ristian vision.' It seems clear that tlK ~onventional vie .... offcrs us only a pseudoproblem. There are no h'storieal grounds. theQ"'tically Or historically, fo r refusing 10 teach specific hiilorical .eligions. for '"stance Buddhism o r ludaism. Religious studies has done that ~ll 31011g. Hence. the legitimaor.:y of teaching any specific religious faith is not in question. Nor are there grounds. theoretically or historlcal~y. for affirming an incompatibility between advocacy and ",holarsh,p . No university would tolerate teachers of Ihe 19th-eemury novel. of exper· imental psychology. of Mar~i st political science who are ullerly neutral toward and ullerly disengaged from tneir subject matter. who see it as having no importance. I 1 making no realily claims . The university ~ iSunle$ that the tcacher,SCholar is engaged with. affe<:ted by lind enthusiastic a bout IlK subject. For this rca,?n not many modern universitie s would see D T Suzuki as unquahfied to teach Buddhi sm because he is I Buddhist. or Karl Rahncr unqualified to teach Christianity because he waJ a Catholic priest. Accordingly. there never have been S13led valid grounds for the exeommunication of Christian st\ldies fro m religious studies or of scholar-theologians who happen to be in some sense Christian believers. This is ~hy th.e problem of theology and N::1igious st\ldies cnt a!i two ineompal1bles IS I pseudo-problem. Both advocaor.:y and historical speeificity are wellentrenched principles of university teaching.The conventiotUll way of form\llating the problem of relating theol · ogy and religious studies is pan of our history. Given ~ receru prevllen<:e of neo-oT1hodox theologies, and the nttd to ~ta1D acade· mic credentials for the SI\ldy of rel igion, it does oot surpn$C us . At the ume time the controll ing elemem in this conventional view is lbe politics of religious stu dies. tile conditions to be met to obtain

en tratlCe into I~ university, Accordingl y, I have expounded the co nventional view of tne problem only to IIY it to ..,SI and to proce..d to a_her and much broader foundation . . Thi.' broader ~iew a.ppro,achu the problem of the place of theology In rehglous studIes pnmarlly as a problem of what it means to teach religion in lhe university. If thal ean only be dctennined, the contri. bution, irrelevlnce Of compatibility of 'theology' to religious studies may become apparent. Since me teaching of ..,Iigion in the uni""rsity depends in part on onc's analysis of tbe aUrn, trends and problems of the mo;dern .un~versi~y, the. route of 1hc anal~is will develop as ~01l0~$. 8egonnm;& wl1h a bn ef depiction of currem universit y educa_ tKln, 11 then ConSlder$ the nature of religion il'iClf, and the nature of theology, especially in relation to ilS frequent caricatures. On these grounds it proceed$ 10 the teac.hing of religion in the university and, finally. to tbe role of theology on the tuching of religion. Technoma nia and the academy I shall 001 use lhe hackneyed lerm, crisis, 10 describe the present .;rualion of highe . educalion, If the tenn is u!.able at all, il might dese ribe the nU.d for I c . i~is in higher education. Crisis It least suggests ImpendIng and possIbly redempHve change. The larger society mayo r may not be in a crisis. It doe~ seem to be on the threshol d of a cultu ral dark age, the reSult of a t.ap modern SOCiety has set for itself." The villains are frequently nominated: the international nation.'taIe system: the con~umer Cu lture as co.. el~te of the modem multi-national eorporation: wO. ld populalion growth ou t of cont.ol. Whatever the cu lpr il, powe.ful Imd pervas ive historical fo .ces have generated not only new tcchnologie~ on which most SOC ieties now depend, but a new technological meOlality . In Ihe past, culture watchers have ~omplajncd of Ihe domina~e of scientific paradigms and thei r impoverishing effee.t ~n e~ucalJon and cul1u re . BUI . the tec hnological mentality mu,t be d lSllngUlShed from scIence. If scIence reflects passion for know1edge,. the ~ire to .Unde.ntand. the technological menrali ty is the OPPOS 'te of SCience. smee 115 thrust is toward the ordering of corporate life. Tbe result is that reality comes to mean data, and data means ~uantir>ed i~formation pertinent to Ihe ordering (controll ing, recordIng , defendIng, . storing. organising, interpreting) of corporate life. S~h .. the SOCIety and age to which the uni versity must justify its e ~ IStencc and from which draw its support . ~nyooc who has to do WIth the modem universily knows that iu baSiC de~ree prog~me m.y not haY(: yielded an educated person. O~serv~1I0~S of ~I' son have been around for a long time. The unlVersny IS desc rIbed as a multiversity WIthout unity o r overall aim. Or it is said to divide into two cultures of science and humanities with lillle relation belween them. (Th/U cultures might be more accurate if athlctiC$ is included.) If it is lhe case that In educated person is only

rarely the product of the modern university. Ihis may have something to do with the way it renccts the general societal identification of reality with data. The technologi~al mind·set is widespread in tne university, 001 in Ihe sense that its faculty members think of them· 5C1~es IS technicians. but rathcr thalthei. model for 'scholarship' is a di$Ciplinc or ilCieoce whose credenti.ls and criteria are quantifiability and objectification. Thus we have data·oriented ..,search and teaching sctting criteria of scholarship for lhe social seiences. and establishing .ubtle paradigms of inte rpretation in hislOry, philosophy. literature and so forth , I do not Want 10 euwrate this point, 10 so belabour it that tbe uniY(:uity i. depieted as possessing a single milieu. It simply appears to be the use that educated persons are only rarely the product of the university's basic degree prngraOUTl<' and the main reason appears to be the dominaoce of the technological mind-set as a paradigm of scholarship and teaching_ What do we mean by an 'wu<:alcd person'? I can only offer some b. ief suggestions as to whal il might mean. whal a modoern ver~;on of Greek paidtUJ might be. Consider the following five marks. First , an edutated pe rson is sufficiently exposed to a plurality of experience. and modes of interpretation as 10 be sd f-tonscious in his o. her responses, d«isions 100 polities. Second, this !>elf-conseiOll,ness has a e. ilical dimension , It is a self-consciousness about ~vidcnce, and what constitutes the establiShment of a claim. the grounding of a tradilion or poliey. Thi.d, this critieism ..,flects th. capacity to look behind things and beneath things, 10 respond not just to surfaces and face values. Looking benuth is characteristie of the Freudian hermeneuti cal revolUlion as applied to th e individual and the Marxist hermeneutic as app lied to the torporate. Fourth, the educated person is sel f· conscious in hi s or he. sene ral existence in sociely. in the exercise of disce . ned obligation. In other wo.d, the pe rson knows enough about the workings of local and large. societies to interpret ~rilically i"ues of social pruis. Fifth. Ihe educated person i. sufficiently introduced to the heri\.lge of cultural aceomph.lhment. (in lileratu..,. music. ans, cte.) as to enjoy aesthetic dimensions of experience: beyond those which .re commercially aoo faddishly orchest rated. This is the hedonistie. aesthetic dimension of education. In other words the tOlal im!»C1 of lhe various type$ of knowledge and modes of thinking which occur in university education has uperiential , pluralistic, henne""u,ical. critical. rational, political and aesthetic dimensiom. The educated person is thus shaped I certai n way , and this shaping i. not simply the production of capaciues of technical functioning but the evoking of way. of e~sting in and interpreting realily. I realise the tentaliveness of such a list . I offer it only to illustrate a serious point, that edtK:a.tiOll in its most genuine sense has 10 do with capacities of responding to and inte rpreling the complexities. lhe various dimensions of reality. The universily', current drift towa.d a dat.-oriented mind-set and its failu.e 10 educale can be turned about only by I new hcnneocutical

"" sc lf-consciousnes~. Thai is to say, lhe university needs broader, more

flexible paradigms of interpret_tion if;1 i. 10 Ix an occasion and envi. ronment of genuine edueation. Dimensions or ..... 1i.:iow;neM

Since 00' exploration concerns rdigiOUS studies and theology, the frequently posed que$tion of IIM: nature o f rdigion is unavoidable. Thtre a", those wllo would sel lQ reSI both lhat question and the term, rdigion. tO Sympalhel i(: as J am !O lhat view, I reu that tht loss of a uni fying term, religion. would simpl y turn the whole discussion over IQ the dala-orien\C(\ mind-Kt and !he view lhat 'religion' may OOt e xist btu data about religious Ixlla ... iou r does_ TIle value of Willred Canlwcll Smitll'$ warning is ils critic Ism of religion as a kind of reiftcd historical enlily behind OIhcr reified hi
piety. The institulional-co rporate as""ct of religion originates concomitanlly with thc person~l·individual aspect since the constroal of the nature of the infinite horizon always occurs in conneclion with language, symbol s. mYlhs. procc • ..,s of traditioning which preserve these things. rituals which enact them. aoo so forth. If wc are 111 an.y way close 10 c huacterising religion here. we can cordude that reli gion does pose a real issue. that is to say. an issue of trutb and reality . Tbis issue is simply the cha racter of whatever constitutes, empowers. orders. founds or even asuult$ !he comprehensive environment (world) o f the hutlUln being . On the basi~ of Ihis ou trageously brief analysis I see three aspec1s Or dimensions o f religion which are $0 constilulive and per;asive th.a1.IO ignore any o roe o f them would be to dislort ..,riously the t~t.rp.retatJo.n of religion. The firsl aspect is that about " 'hieh relig'on Llself ,s serious. which grounds its seriousnes., nal"TlCly ill; concern with lruth and reality. This il lbe issue of the nalure of the uhimate horizon of human existenr::e. We Cln call il the is'IUC or aspect of t .... nscendence . The l«Ond aspecl is religion as a possibilily and actuality of human experience. Religion expresses a diSlillCtive way in which the human being is a human being . cope s with a dangerous environment. and Slrives for the meaning or Ihings. Presupposed here are ceruin w~ys that tbe human being is temporal and spatial . linguistic and imenu!>jeclive. Expressed here are ways lhe human being e~periences il..,lf as problematic. vulnerable. d~n8crous and cvil. The", things name what could be called the amhrop