The Scope of Our Art: the Vocation of the Theological Teacher

Christian Century, Feb 13, 2002 by Gabriel Fackre

The Scope of Our Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher. Edited by L. Gregory Jones and Stephanie Paulsell. Eerdmans, 268 pp., $20.00 paperback.

WHAT IS the vocation of the theological teacher? The "Cambridge Platform" written by New England Puritans in 1648 says, "The office of ... teacher is to attend to doctrine and therein to administer a word of knowledge ... given by Christ for the perfection of the saints, and edifying of his body." Comparable descriptions can be found in classic statements from other Christian traditions. If The Scope of Our Art is indicative, we've come a long way since then: no such systematic definition is readily available today.

The Lilly Foundation funded a gathering of a cross-section of theological teachers and administrators from seminaries, university divinity schools and colleges--Protestant and Catholic, mainline and evangelical, well-known schools and those in the outback--to explore the subject. The editors acknowledge that the attempt to articulate a shared meaning of the "office" appeared unrealizable and an autobiographical turn was taken. "Rather than producing a systematic definition of `vocation,' we decided to draw upon our diverse perspectives in a way that did not smooth out the differences among them." The volume is a "conversation," not a credo. For all that, it is a conversation worth overhearing by all who teach, in whatever capacity, in the church.

Animating the project are concerns about the "commodification" of teaching, the "maceration" of teachers by institutional tasks, the pressure of performance according to guild standards, and the disdain of intellectual work by the culture. All these factors erode the graces of "desk," "classroom" and "school," the categories by which the book is organized.

The question of "how" is focal throughout, dealt with often in personal narrative. W. Clark Gilpin ponders how doctoral education can respond to Emerson's counsel to foreswear the privatized career of a "mere thinker" for one that "breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts." Stephanie Paulsell, moved by the 14th-century Carthusian nun Marguerite d'Oingt's practice of writing as a spiritual discipline, offers guidance on how daily writing can encourage the "audacity and humility" necessary for one's craft. Paul Griffiths turns to reading as a spiritual discipline, with an illuminating threefold typology of reading--reading can be for technical mastery ("academic"), for the catalysis of pleasure ("Proustian"), or for that which "contributes to the reader's wisdom and that permits advance toward divine wisdom" ("Victorine," from Hugh of St. Victor).

Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, reflecting on a formative 1959 article in this journal, Joseph Sittler's "The Maceration of the Minister," considers her own struggle, representative of women faculty who have family as well as academic responsibilities, and argues for a kind of contemplation that lives redemptively with, rather than retreats from, "disruption, interruption and confusion." Rosemary Skinner Keller tells how her teaching has been enriched by a "vocational kinship with Georgia Harkness," pioneer woman theologian, drawing on what she has done in her winsome biography of Harkness. Susan Simonaitis reminds us of the power possessed by the teacher, how it can be abused or exercised responsibly by attention to the student "other" according to a paradigm of teaching as "conversation."

Paul Waddell describes his collision with the "intellectual and moral relativism" of today's undergraduates, who display loneliness, depression and indifference to "the God who fashioned them." He urges us to view teaching as a "ministry of hope." Lois Malcolm takes up her seminary's rethinking of its role in terms of an "apostolate," distinct from the confessionalist "abbey" and cognitive "academy" models, exploring how the best of the latter two can be brought together in an institution that is also aware of its social context and oriented toward mission. Michael Battle is clear about what a theological teacher in a divinity school is: one "whose work is to articulate God's presence on behalf of the Christian community ... so that we may help equip pastors and teachers for ministry," and he goes into "how to know God in our midst" through a communal practice of "apophatic ... ceaseless prayer."

Claire Mathews McGuinnis gives autobiographical evidence of how the monastic Rule of St. Benedict can provide stability and depth in the midst of the distractions and "quotidian tasks" of teaching so as to "find and be found by God." Frederick Norris, drawing on the record of Gregory of Nazianzus in the Cappadocian "hinterland," speaks for the richness and possibilities of teaching in schools in the "outback." Leanne Van Dyk explores as an institutional model her seminary's decision to orient its teaching to "the newly emerging missionary encounter of the gospel in the cultures of North America." Gordon Smith, reflecting on his experience as an administrator, makes a case for the importance of a school discerning its own corporate vocation. A refrain in the essays is the importance of "attention" in teaching and learning (Simone Weil's rumination on the topic is regularly cited).