I’ve been perusing the most recent edition of Religious Studies News, the newspaper put out by AAR, and it has some excellent material. They have helpfully shared results to the EIS employment survey, and there are two special sections, “Focus on Getting Published” and the “Spotlight on Theological Education.” You can find the issue online here. Currently they don’t have the “Spotlight on Theological Education” available for viewing online, but I have contacted the editor and he has indicated that they will be posting it online either today or tomorrow.

I’d like to highlight an article in the “Spotlight on Theological Education” written by one of my Fuller professors, Jim Butler. In the article, “Teaching and Learning Scripture as if We Remember Why We Cared about It in the First Place,” Butler challenges the iconoclastic instincts that most professors have in regards to biblical studies. Since the professors (rightfully) see that their students have so much to “unlearn” about the Bible, they take it upon themselves to dismantle and destroy those cherished, but misplaced beliefs. Butler sees this approach as detrimental, and not likely to produce fruitful results:

But as I look back over 30 years of teaching I recognize how often such therapeutic “demolition” has unintended consequences. Some students, usually those of a more academic bent, are quickly won over to their professors’ perspective, and begin to acquire the critical tools that will distance them from the cultural womb that produced them. Others will buy into the educational process enough to gain a patina of sophistication, but, faced with the demands and predilections of the theological consumer culture, they will put together the nuts and bolts of their eventual practice in ways that are largely unaffected by their professors’ insights. Finally, a few others simply will become cynical about theological education, get the required degree, and then quite intentionally fulfill their professors’ worst fears by embracing and cultivating values that are now “battle hardened” against wool-gathering academics.

Butler’s approach to teaching (and I’ve experienced it) is more gentle. He suggests that the theological educator needs to develop the skill “to recognize and to imaginatively attend to the nexus of cultures confronting our students — the culture of their earlier formation and the culture of their anticipated vocational service.” In other words, professors should be more attentive to the situations of their students. He says that he’s also found that students are more likely to share these situations with him if he is “vulnerable enough to share my own path with them at times.” This is essentially giving he students the benefit of the doubt. Rather than talk down to students as if everything they believe is wrong (that’s my phraseology), educators should let the students know that they are in “common cause” with them. And if educators do this, respecting where the students have been and where they are going, the students “will often be more severe in their critique of poor theology than we could be, and more creative in finding constructive and hopeful alternatives.”

I think that Jim’s article is wonderful and true. I would like to add a caveat, however. I think that it is wonderful and true particularly with survey courses, and then, only with a certain portion (perhaps the majority) of the class. In my undergraduate education as a Bible major, in my opinion, we had a rather heavy emphasis on iconoclasm. And though I was a fundamentalist going into college (holding to the kinds of views that my professors would want to rid their students of), iconoclasm was just what the doctor ordered. I fit into that first category of students of a “more academic bent.” I think many Bible majors were won over to the perspective of our professors. I know of only one that held out as a staunch inerrantist to the end (from my class anyway).

So you might say that, for me, the damage was already done. When I came into Fuller, I was actually surprised at how gentle the teaching was. Compared to my earlier experience, it appeared that professors at Fuller were light on the demolition. They told more stories about how they came to their points of view and how they struggled with them. Before taking my first class with Jim, many people told me that he was “pastoral.” That turned out to be true. I looked on while he helped the students wrestle with theological issues related to, say, the authorship of the Pentateuch or the historicity of the exodus account. For me, though, it was an interesting lesson in how to interact with students, a lesson on education, rather than a lesson on the Pentateuch. I had already dealt with these issues.

What I see, then, is a choice. Educators have to choose which student to direct their approach towards. Will it be the “more academic” ones (not quite as “pastoral”) or will it be the ones in the middle, who are interested but not sucked in as easily (more “pastoral”)? I think that Jim has chosen the correct direction for those survey courses. One hopes that when a class deals with those root-level issues with which students wrestle, these students-in-the-middle will feel more confident about the foundational issues and will thus pursue the more complicated subjects on their own. For the upper-level courses, I think it is more appropriate to assume that students have dealt with these issues before and move on.

For people like me, who have already been Bible majors and now have taken survey courses all over again, it is an education in education. I have learned from different approaches to difficult subjects. But I have also learned information that was not highlighted, we have gone more in depth (as graduate classes should). I’ve also had professors that simply emphasize different things. One professor in undergrad may emphasize Greco-Roman backgrounds to the NT, while a professor in seminary may emphasize Second Temple Judaism when speaking of “background” to the NT. [I recognize the privilege of the canonical texts here--I am comparing a Christian school and a seminary after all] So it’s not like I’m falling asleep in class as all my money is sucked away into tuition bills. I am getting a good education. I suppose that you could say that, even though I’m not the target student for this gentler approach, I think that Fuller does a good job of balancing the “pastoral” educating with the information sharing and development of critical thinking skills. Even though I set it up as a choice between one or the other, then, I think it has to be a balance between the two.