94 - A Teachable Spirit: Recovering the Teaching Office in the Church

A Teachable Spirit: Recovering the Teaching Office in the Church

By Richard Robert Osmer

Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990. 298 Pp. $14.95

Mainline Protestant churches have been the focus of many recent studies as their role in current culture has shifted. Richard Osmer

96 - A Teachable Spirit: Recovering the Teaching Office in the Church

addresses one needed response: The revival of a vital teaching office. "The restoration of a church that can teach with authority... may be the pressing issue before mainline churches today."

This text is addressed to the teaching function of the Church focusing on three central tasks: determining normative beliefs and practices, reinterpreting normative beliefs and practices, and forming the means of education. Until the mainline churches face up to their need to carry out these tasks more adequately, they will be subject to the relativism inherent in individualism and the authoritarian reactions to relativism.

Part One invites mainline Protestant churches to create a "Third way" beyond the cultural traditions of modern individualism and conservative Protestantism. Central to the heritage of the Reformation churches is the nature of a piety that is characterized by a teachable spirit and the shared ecology of teaching institutions to engage in a nonauthoritarian understanding of teaching authority. "True authority elicits respect and attentiveness on the basis of superior wisdom and truth. It is essentially persuasive, not coercive."

In Part Two, Osmer explores the tensions between structure and spirit as the teaching ministry is identified in the Gospels and New Testament, through the catholicity of the early church, and into the Roman Catholic tradition. Then, Luther and Calvin are encountered in their effort to reaffirm church structures while maintaining the freedom of God's spirit. Models of the teaching office across the centuries are seen to be rooted in theological reflection that informs practice as well as action. This prompts reformers to bring theology and life together.

Part Three is the construction of a new paradigm for the recovery of the teaching office in the contemporary America Protestant mainline churches. Osmer's "Third way" constructs a dialogical teaching office where an educational ecology recognizes and relates three centers of teaching authority: centers of scholarly theological inquiry and clergy education (professional theologians and seminaries), centers of practical theological reflection and lay education (congregations), and centers of teaching and education on behalf of the denomination as a whole (representative leaders and bodies). Each of these centers has a relationship to all three central tasks of the teaching office. The interdependence of the centers and the tensions between transmission and reinterpretation within and between the centers are seen in a paradigmatic way. An educational process is designed through which a consensus toward a compelling vision of Christian life may begin to take shape. The need for the recovery of the teaching office goes beyond rediscovery of its tradition. It will require structuring present patterns of thought and action toward consensus formation, which the author differentiates from "issue" consensus.

Throughout the volume the problematic nature of theological reflection in the contemporary church remains central. Osmer understands

98 - A Teachable Spirit: Recovering the Teaching Office in the Church

it as the cognitive component of piety. His new theological paradigm is a construction of practical theological reflection that functions as part of the situation.

Formerly a professor of Christian education at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, Osmer now occupies a similar position at Princeton Theological Seminary. His doctoral work at Emory University is reflected in his use of Charles Gerkin's practical theology grounded in hermeneutic philosophy and James Fowler's work in faith development. He appeals to ordained ministers to become aware of the critical position they hold in the fostering of dialogue between the various centers of teaching authority. It is crucial they conceptualize their role. Osmer obviously does practical theology!

The whole book contributes to reopening a vital teaching ministry in the church. It is a "teaching" book in that it deepens understanding of a legitimate and needed teaching authority. How are our convictions to be expressed? Is the Protestant understanding of the "freedom of a Christian" without context? How shall we witness to authority that the horizons of Scripture and tradition bring to life in our times? The reader may choose another way to the rehabilitation of the teaching office, but the convictions for needed "consensus" should remain if faith and life are to be related to structures. The dialogue can continue: Can congregations fulfill their role in this paradigm? Etc...

NELLE G. SLATER

Christian Theological Seminary
Indianapolis, Indiana