Challenges For Catholic Graduate Theological Education (original) (raw)
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Catholicism 101: Challenges to a Theological Education. Six Perspectives - V
Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society, 2006
Education in the Catholic faith takes place on three levelsprimary evangelization, catechesis, and theology. Presupposing that the student has become a believer through evangelization and has learned the principal teachings of the Church through catechesis, theology engages in a systematic search for deeper understanding. In his 1998 encyclical on faith and reason-Fides et Ratio-Pope John Paul II defined theology as a "reflective and scientific elaboration of the understanding of God's word in the light of faith." The pope went on to say that to understand revelation and the content of faith, one must analyze carefully the texts of Scripture and the texts "which express the Church's living tradition." Theology has traditionally had a home in Catholic universities, though today some deny that theology belongs in the university at all on the grounds that it is dogmatic and uncritical. In the 19th century, Cardinal John Henry Newman, among others, brilliantly made the case for giving the discipline a prominent place in the university because it deals with a significant body of truth that has a bearing on practically every other branch of knowledge. Pope John Paul II, in his 1990 Apostolic Constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, taught that theology together with philosophy enables university scholars to overcome the fragmentation of disciplines and synthesize their specific contribution in the light of Christ, the Logos, the center of creation and of human history. "Because of its specific importance among the academic disciplines," he wrote, "every Catholic university should have a faculty, or at least a chair, of theology." Later, in an allocution to the most recent general congregation of the Society of Jesus, the same pope declared that the teaching of theology in Jesuit universities "must strive to provide students with a clear, solid, and organic knowledge of Catholic doctrine, focused on knowing how to
Dialog, 2011
In re-imagining theological education for the twenty-first century, Stortz examines two latetwentieth-century proposals for seminary education: ecumenical consortia and "clustering," or merging seminaries within the same communion. Given the relative failure of such proposals, she explores a "back to the future" move-a return of seminaries to the church-related colleges from which many of them sprung. The move might prove mutually beneficial on three fronts: helping the respective institutions with twin emphases on formation and professionalization, sorting through mission and identity issues, and facilitating a greater awareness of the global context which both theological and higher education serve.
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
Why write a paper on theological education for a small church-fellowship with five pastors and congregations that cannot even give their pastors a proper salary? Even though we are small, we need pastors. As the gospel is spread through the preaching and teaching of the word, we need laborers working in the field with the administration of the means of grace. Some years ago, I read Rev. Martin Diers paper on Parachurch organizations that he delivered to the OLCC Convocation. In it he wrote: There is not a single thing that church bodies or organizations do that a congregation cannot do. They may only be able to do it on a smaller scale, but with the help of the brethren, they can do much more, and do it more effectively than any synodical bureaucracy. 1 My goal with this paper is to take a look at how we as a small church-fellowship can work together to prepare men for the holy ministry both in our existing congregations and in other places, in order to start new congregations gathered around the means of grace administered by qualified pastors.
Theological Higher Education Befitting God: An Experiment
Christian Higher Education, 2006
Interdisciplinary education" has become a catchphrase among Christian educators, but what does such a practice look like in reality? The authors, a systematic theologian and a biblical scholar respectively, reflect on their shared experiment in teaching students the doctrine of God. Their findings invite a rethinking of the nature of theological education, from the point of view of both the epistemological virtues necessary for learners and the collaboration of disciplines as resources for learning. They call for scholars to strive to talk together across disciplinary boundaries in order to foster students who think in theologically sophisticated ways.
Kairos : Evangelical Journal of Theology, 2013
Since formal theological education is sometimes considered unnecessary, this article offers an apology of academic theological education, claiming that doing theology is not only the privilege of elite theological circles, but of all believers. If that is the case, then the discussion should not be focused on arguments for or against theological education, but on the questions of what kind of theology to do and how qualitative it should be. The author offers a short historical survey of the development of theology as an academic discipline, speaks about current challenges with which theological education is faced, and discusses its future. The author sees the future of theological education in the use of the Bible as the foundation for theology, in the importance of practice as the final goal of theological education, and in serving and helping the church to reach maturity and unity of faith.
Theological Education between the University and the Church
Journal of Adult Theological Education, 2013
This article examines the new 'Common Awards' partnership between the Church of England and Durham University, and asks what the University and the Church have to gain from one another in the area of theological education. I argue that the University can help extend the range of critical conversations in which the Church engages, and help form some of the intellectual virtues required in those who pursue this reflection. In return, the Church can help the University recognise its nature as a school of intellectual virtue, its need for insistent and pervasive discussion of the good that it does in the world, and its need to resist the pressures that threaten to thin its life down to technocratic rationality. I also argue that, for both the church's purposes and the university's purposes, the learning pursued in this partnership needs to be understood as deeply engaged with the life and practice of the church-as taking off from attentive description of that practice, and as returning to the refinement, extension and transformation of that practice, however long might be the journeys of abstraction and reflection that take place in between.