281 - The Seminary Enterprise: An Appraisal

The Seminary Enterprise: An Appraisal
James I. McCord

HISTORIANS slice history into pieces, such as the "distinct era," which Frederick Lewis Allen, in Only Yesterday, used to characterize the eleven years between the end of World War I and the market crash in 1929. Of course, there are continuing tendencies that cannot be so neatly compartmentalized, but the expectation is that we are at the end of a chapter today and that 1980 marks not only the beginning of a new decade but also the beginning of a new era in the life of the church and the nation.

It is anticipated that there will be less romanticism and a more realistic appraisal of the human situation, human need, and the resources to meet this need. There is the hope that we shall give up our middle class lust for apocalypse and determine to progress modestly into the future. Today the belief in progress is at bay, as Robert Nisbet reminds us in his recent volume History of the Idea of Progress. What has been lacking is the indispensable ingredient that only faith can supply. One welcomes the signs of a springtime of faith as an antidote to cynicism and despair.

I

If this is a turning point in history, it provides an occasion for us to look at the seminary enterprise and how it has fared during the past two decades. To the surprise of many, theological seminaries have survived the economic and spiritual turmoils of the 1960s and 1970s. Often accused of being detached from human life and experience, they have learned to equip their students for coming to grips with personal and social issues. The alternate institutions, urban training centers and metropolitan institutes, have become relics in their own time.

Revised and adapted, this Editorial appeared originally as an article in Theological Education (Vol. XVII, No. 1, Autumn 1980, pp. 53-58), the journal of the Association of Theological Schools, published at Vandalia, Ohio.

282 - The Seminary Enterprise: An Appraisal

It can be argued, I believe, that students now are better prepared professionally than ever before, and there are several contributory factors that have produced this level of preparation. The introduction of several behavioral disciplines into programs of ministerial preparation has lifted training from the anecdotal stage to the reflective. Students are able to evaluate situations in the light of comprehensive theory resting upon sound observation. They are encouraged to discover why certain lines of approach work or do not work, thus correcting habit with thought.

Field education has replaced field experience. Great efforts are made to train local pastors in the art of supervision, so that students' practical training is competently and helpfully appraised on a continuing basis. Although there still are not enough qualified supervisors to provide a profitable internship for each person, the number of positions continues to grow and at some point could approximate attested need.

The clinical training movement has provided experiences of service and self- examination that have transformed the life and work of many students. In addition, the movement has offered helpful models of supervision, and certain of its case techniques have found their way into the classroom.

In-service Doctor of Ministry programs, although intended for a different clientele, have had a derivative benefit at the Master of Divinity level. Professors, particularly in some of the classical disciplines, have acquired from contact with strong and effective pastors an appreciation for the professional aspects of ministry, and this has been beneficial for classroom teaching in the basic programs. This has opened a two-way street between church and seminary, pastorate and classroom, and has enormously aided the educational process.

There are other sustaining factors in producing a high level of professional preparation. Several academic programs exist primarily for the refreshment of practicing ministers. Although much of the work finds its focus in the practical disciplines, considerable attention also is given to developments in all areas of theological understanding. Emphasis is not upon research, but upon material that pastors should have available in order to serve competently in the contemporary world.

Extensive programs of continuing education have been developed, to provide renewal within traditional fields of knowledge and insight into new techniques. I believe that continuing education is the growing edge of theological education and that lifelong learning is a necessity for the minister. One of the most encouraging signs is the development of study leaves as a standard item in many ministerial calls.

II

If the professional dimensions of theological education have prospered during the past several years, it can be argued that theological faculties are contributing less to supporting the tradition. By tradition I mean the life and thought of the church across the centuries as the church has been formed, nourished, and corrected by the Holy Spirit. It

283 - The Seminary Enterprise: An Appraisal

is generally accepted that theological faculties have a dual role. In most denominations they have almost total responsibility for the preparation of ministerial candidates and for their continuing education. They also represent the only significant locus of theological scholarship available to the church. If the heritage of faith and knowledge is to be explored, expounded, and renewed, the principal work must be done by members of these faculties. In the absence of serious efforts at maintaining and revitalizing the tradition, the larger church is deprived of a distinctive contribution from the North American scene as a whole.

Let us look a little more closely at the factors that impede the theological task today. Educating candidates for the professional ministry has assumed an overpowering priority across the continent. Such students represent the dominant population of the seminaries, and their needs receive the greatest attention. Church funding of theological education is not uncommonly tied to Master of Divinity enrollment patterns, and many congregations are reluctant to support people in other programs of study.

Demands on faculty time have increased markedly since the 1950s. Many of these demands are educational in a strict sense: participation in a proliferation of academic and non-academic programs; supplementing the traditional lectures with small-group discussions for almost every course; providing counseling on personal and vocational matters. Other demands are quasi -educational, including service on an expanding number of committees either required or thought to be required to operate the institution effectively.

Academic doctoral programs, among the most effective stimuli a faculty can have for fundamental theological inquiry, have been severely curtailed. Years ago, the rule of thumb at Princeton University was that in order to provide a worthwhile major for an A.B. candidate, a department should simultaneously be offering work at the Ph.D. level. This is a counsel of perfection, but it points up the contribution that a research degree can make to the faculty as well as to the students enrolled therein. It is still the ideal that a seminary professor should be a teacher-scholar.

At least in the United States, there has prevailed for the past two decades a mood of anti-intellectualism. The churches do not, as a whole, look to their theologians for counsel in matters of urgency, and little provision is made to further the task of fundamental inquiry. Partly as a result, facilities for organized research in theology are woefully lacking. The sciences, technology, and now other areas of the humanities have established centers for inquiry at the most advanced level, where scholars have the resources to conduct investigations that could not be carried forward in their normal places of service. It is imperative to combat the notion that the Spirit works best through ignorance and innocence, and to reclaim the vision of faith seeking understanding.

Perhaps most fundamental of all, there has arisen within theological scholarship a sense of helplessness and futility, a suspicion that the tradition has little to say to the contemporary world. To some extent,

284 - The Seminary Enterprise: An Appraisal

this may be frustration born of the revolution in communication, which has made vividly present the needs and turmoils of lands and peoples far removed from our normal contacts. Interpretation of, and ministry to, the human condition thus appears to be an almost impossible task, and the temptation arises to heal the wounds of the moment.

This may, in part, account for the recent tendency of theologians to get caught up in the themes of someone else's creation: liberation, ecology, and a host of others, using them as interpretative clues for the substance of theology. Such issues are, of course, important in their own right, but examination of the tradition is not significantly enhanced simply by a flirtation with particular problems as they are presently understood.

Perhaps, then, it should not be said that this generation of theologians is particularly marked by a crisis of faith or a failure of nerve, but rather that it is confused and unsure concerning the real frontiers of inquiry, and doubtful about its role in the religious enterprise. And so long as the frontiers are identified with the next emergency or the next popular movement, to which the religious community rightly should speak, we will continue to-be miserable and ashamed-since the future cannot be predicted. Ashamed theologians are not infrequently dangerous theologians, since their guilt gets in the way of their judgment and prevents them from attaining distance on the questions before them.

III

We are not arguing for the immediate production of a grand summa that will nicely integrate all dimensions of the heritage, on the order of Thomas Aquinas. Clearly we are not at that point in history, just as the physical sciences are not at that point. Nonetheless, comprehensiveness and coherence remain the goal of the intellectual quest, and a constant theological task should be as integrated a presentation as possible of the heritage of faith. To use the first mark of the church, the tradition should be explored with a view to discerning its unity. As in the case of the concepts of "field" and "matter" in physical theory, where two or more aspects of the heritage appear essential yet irreducible, theology faces a special challenge to continue the task of clarification in the hope that a more comprehensive ordering may be found.

A second element of the theological task may be symbolized by the next mark of the church: holy. Divines have put the matter in many ways, and one of them is that "truth is in order to goodness." What we have in mind is not the conversion of inquiry into homiletics, but the realization that God's concern for humanity is fundamental to the tradition. Accordingly, a theological perspective is inadequate if it fails to deal with the anthropological question, in a context as broad as the dimensions of human experience, both individual and collective. As we have observed, some of the impetus for recent theological vagaries has been the desire to say something helpful to the human condition, in the face of inherited tradition that said little.

In the third place, a reflection on the tradition should be catholic, in

285 - The Seminary Enterprise: An Appraisal

the sense that it takes seriously the religious experience of the wider community of faith. This is not a plea for reductionism, but rather for critical examination of the diverse perspectives and approaches to the reality of God. Some interpretations of religious experience will not wash; they are the intellectual dead ends that appear in all fields of thought. Others may reveal dimensions of truth that have elsewhere been overlooked, and the whole is made richer by their inclusion. The enemy of catholicity is not dialogue but ideology, wherever practiced, which takes as normative the experience and aspirations of a segment of humanity, and ideology translates quickly into oppression.

Following the fourth mark of the church, constructive theological work also must be apostolic. If ignorance of the religious experience of our contemporaries is great, lack of awareness of the heritage of our predecessors is enormous. Religious communities today are marked by a certain collective amnesia, itself fostered by preoccupation with the uniqueness of the problems of the present. But we are not the only generation that God has addressed, and our ears are not necessarily more sharply attuned than those of our forebears. For theology to be authentic, it must take with special seriousness the insights and struggles of the historic religious community, and stand in an identifiable continuity with what has been thought and believed before. The task is not uncritical, and the tradition constantly must be renewed; but it cannot be abandoned. A well-known research center in the sciences not long ago was pressed for library space. As a way to resolve the problem, one scholar suggested in full seriousness that all books over twenty years old be discarded. Physics perhaps can work this way; unfortunately, in practice theology seems to do so, to its discredit and impoverishment.

IV

If what I have argued approximates the truth, then the path ahead may be illuminated by the analysis of the reasons for our present situation. While it is unlikely that there will be a reduction of pressure from the basic professional programs, steps can be taken-and are being taken-to expand the resources for theological inquiry at the most advanced levels. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that there will be an increase in the number of academic doctoral programs in seminaries across Canada and the United States. It is in this area, however, where cooperation among theological institutions can be most fruitful.

In whatever context theological research is prosecuted, a pressing need is for cooperative projects drawing upon two or more scholars in the same or complementary fields. If the theological paradigm stated above has any validity, the most significant questions of the tradition seldom can be handled by researchers working individually. This fact may shape the nature of sabbatical structures in many institutions. Rather than granting a leave for one or two terms, a school may find it more desirable to free a professor for several days each month over a period of a year or more. This might be the only way in which several

286 - The Seminary Enterprise: An Appraisal

scholars simultaneously could participate in a sustained program of research.

In a short-sighted approach, a new emphasis on inquiry into the tradition could be said to detract from the basic Master of Divinity curriculum. Already there are complaints that professors are away from the campus too often and are too inaccessible to students. Since the thirst for personal interaction on the part of seminarians is almost insatiable, however, it is unlikely that this problem can be handled fruitfully in any known way or with any finite expenditure of funds. What is of long-term importance is that Master of Divinity students themselves experience an environment in which the tradition is taken with utmost seriousness. Although they cannot be expected to engage in extensive first-hand research, they should be familiar with the broad heritage of the faith and required to bring it to bear on the issues of ministry.

As our Doctor of Ministry programs reveal, we know quite a little about the professional practice of ministry. Although there is more to be learned in this respect, particularly as regards the relationship between practice and the substantive matters of theology, the far deeper problem rests with our theological understandings themselves. At the present moment in history, our perception of the tradition in its essential dimensions is so dwarfed that it has less and less to say to the human condition. The rectification of this situation is the scholarly task upon which we should be launched.

As a potentially major contribution to this enterprise, there recently has been established in Princeton, New Jersey, a Center of Theological Inquiry, dedicated to the prosecution of basic research in all areas of religious understanding. Without sacrificing the insights that may be gained by scholars working independently, the Center is committed also to the sponsorship of interdisciplinary projects that could bring together on varying formats several persons whose continuing research finds focus in some important theme. Plans are rapidly moving forward for the construction of a Center building and the appointment of a distin guished director. When fully operational, the institution will be able to accommodate a dozen resident scholars at one time, together with two or three long-term interdisciplinary conferences. Appointments to the research staff, which may be for a maximum of three years but more commonly for one year, are made by the Board of Trustees of the Center, which has at its disposal the counsel of a broadly-based advisory committee.

Administratively and corporately separate from the Seminary and from other educational institutions in the community, the Center enjoys the use of Princeton's extensive facilities for organized research. The product of many years of careful planning, this new venture already shows promise for furthering the revitalization of theological under standing in our day.