I find your post quite thought provoking Kent! James, Don, G and others, your responses helpful in guiding my thoughts on this. As one who is dabbling in theological education at the moment I have been investigating my own pedagogical method and now have more food for thought.

How the post and thread of spoken to my heart at the moment is the need for a educator to carefully and lovingly peel away theological, biblical, cultural, and historical assumptions about their beliefs and expose what lies beneath to the examination of the Spirit. This is a very critical process in education and one if done wrongly, or even rightly with the wrong spirit, can lead to damage. I just met a man who asked me why does it seem that his friends who go off to theological education come back skeptics rather than joyful servants of God? Oh, the difficult task of each of us who desire to educate others! Truely, this task before us all cannot and will bring glory to God if we do not, in all humiliation, come before God empty in need of His presence and Spirit to say anything worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

What I find of great worth as a novice educator myself, is the charge by Kent to pluck up the courage to expose our beliefs to the dividing sword of Scripture, or more accurately, the Spirit for refining. The educator, with the loving hands of a smith, needs to be willing to enter into the “shoes” as it were of the student to know when to pull them from the fire, to shock them in the water, and to put them back in the fire. John of Cross comes to mind as he elucidates how God brings us into the Dark Night in order to strip us of our vestments, theological and actual, in order to draw us into a deeper understanding and relationship with him. Is this not the task and challenge to each of us.

In a way Kent I find your charge exciting, terrifying, and all together impossible! But praise be to God whose strength is made perfect in our weakness! I look forward expectedly to the rest of your posts and the subsequent dialogue. James, Kent, Kyle and others, you have no idea the impact of your thoughtful, transparent posts have on others – Keep it up!

Your presenting question for this dialogue should lead us to consider how theological educators and theological education function AS (not “with” or “alongside”) formation. Once spiritual formation and the role of “formators” are isolated from theological inquiry in any way (and there are a number of subtle ways that happens – fodder for another line of conversation, I suppose), dangerous results follow. One example among many is that we polarize “knowing,” “being,” and “doing” or theological education, formation, and mission. Is there genuine formation into Christ’s image that is not intricately interwoven with love of neighbor and all that that involves missionally? Is not a missional life intrinsically formative? Are we not acting theologically in the mix of all this?

In a post above, someone made reference to embedded theology. As we might all admit, we’re all theologians and always doing theology. I think one task of the theological educator is to be a guide who helps people do theology well. That is not exactly the same thing as imparting theological language and categories and affirmations, though it’s mighty difficult to teach theology without those. Sadly, those are often mistaken for the theological task itself – a sad and fatal mistake.

Any thoughts on this?

I agree that this kind of deconstruction is necessary, but it is only an act of love if the students are led from error to truth, rather than from error to nihilism. I experienced this same stripping my fundamentalist/dispensational upbringing but there was no active attempt by those early professors to fill the remaining void with the gospel; it was just left a void. I’m picturing a demon getting seven of his friends and finding an earlier vacated room well cleaned and empty, ready to be re-inhabited.

Adam, glad to hear you are heading to Aberdeen! I hope your experience their will be as positive and challenging as mine.

Kent,

I am unsure about this statement:

What this is NOT: leading students to fearful places is not a trusted professor or figure of ecclesial authority leading theological neophytes off the cliff-edge of their belief system…Instances of this (and, sadly, they are not few) evidence nothing more than powerplays by insecure educators seeking self-approval in their ability to unsettle their students. There is no love in this.

I tend to think that some students (and here I will invoke those thousands upon thousands of students inhabitating Christian liberal arts colleges in the States) will need to be led off the cliff of their belief system, if such a system includes things like those bewildering “literal” renderings of Revelation, hoping that Providence gives them enough hints and signs to find “the right one,” thinking that Christianity is primarily the story between their individual souls and God, and especially by pointing out how Americanism constantly and implicitly informs their Scriptural hermeneutic and in fact usually triumphs over Scripture.

Robbing students of these beliefs would not be “powerplays by insecure educators seeking self-approval in their ability to unsettle their students,” but acts of love.