182 - Between Athens and Berlin: The Theological Education Debate

Between Athens and Berlin: The Theological Education Debate
By David H. Kelsey
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1993. 235 pp. $18.99.

The recent debate about the form theological education should take in the United States offers those concerned with ministerial education many

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places to join the conversation. The major reform oriented analyses, such as Edward Farley's Theologia, Joseph C. Hough and John B. Cobb's Christian Identity and Theological Education, and Charles Wood's Vision and Discernment- not to mention countless contemporary denominational studies and curricular revisions in particular schools-all seek to arrest our attention and enlist our support.

The theological education debate is important for the church and academy alike but is also sufficiently complex as to require a guide if interested parties are not to be too easily repelled or captivated by their first exposure to one or another of the advocates. Fortunately, David H. Kelsey, Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School (and a contributor to the debate in his own right as author of To Understand God Truly: What's Theological about a Theological School) has presented himself in this volume as a fair and gifted guide to those seeking to negotiate the literature. That said, Between Athens and Berlin is no mere guidebook, for what Kelsey has offered, in addition to readable synopses of books and their arguments, is a strong reading of the material through the twin constructs of "Athens" and "Berlin."

All North American theological education, Kelsey contends, is composed of some unstable combination of two classical versions of excellent theological education. The first, "Athens," takes as its primary concern issues of paidea or formation and finds its end in persons possessed of a lived Christian wisdom. "Berlin," on the other hand, holds in tension two goods, Wissenschaft (objective scholarship) and professional education for service in the church. Kelsey then uses these constructs to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the major contemporary reform proposals.

The most enjoyable and instructive part of the book comes where Kelsey offers a nuanced, though selective, history of higher education philosophy. He does this to show how Athens and Berlin have been adapted to the American context. As a result, one sees the power John Henry Newman has had over liberal education and paidea-centered education generally. (Liberal education in Newman's terms makes gentlemen, not Christians and certainly not leaders in the Christian enterprise.) One also learns how easily the Berlin model in the hands of William Rainey Harper, Robert L. Kelly, and William Adams Brown led to a proliferation of subjects taught superficially to would-be ministers, who were, in turn, merely expected to apply the results. Even the attempt of H. Richard Niebuhr (with Daniel Day Williams and James M. Gustafson) at mid-century to return integrity to a Berlin-oriented theological education by redefining theological education in terms of a theological end (the increase of the love of God and neighbor), thereby emphasizing the theoretical foundations of pastoral ministry, is seen to fall short of what is needed due to its uneasy relation of theory to practice.

Kelsey is at his best when he is dealing with the most formidable texts and those that pose the same questions he is using this book to probe. The proposals of Farley, Cobb and Hough, and Wood all receive first-rate readings. His treatment of the Mudflower Collective, though fair, is

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necessarily partial since they have not addressed the full range of questions in which he is interested. Likewise, his treatment of Stackhouse suffers as he spends an inordinate amount of time trying to fit possible interpretations of Stackhouse to his schema. Nevertheless, all of Kelsey's interpretative readings serve as foundations for several pointed lessons, which he offers at the close of the book, to those who would seek to reshape theological education.

This book deserves a wide audience. Who should read this book? Those persons who are just beginning a conversation with the theological education literature, those who have read it and want to compare their own synoptic reading of the key books with another's, and particularly those who are already pursuaded that one or another of the contenders has triumphed.

James Hudnut-Beumler
Columbia Theological Seminary
Decatur, GA