Amos Yong and Dale Coulter: The Holy Spirit and Higher Education
Amos Yong and Dale M. Coulter, The Holy Spirit and Higher Education: Renewing the Christian University (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2023), 320 pages, ISBN 9781481318143.
Amos Yong and Dale Coulter bring to bear a fruitful and constructive offering in The Holy Spirit and Higher Education whose primary audience are those engaged in work and service at institutions found within the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. Not that this is their exclusive audience, but it is a helpful focal point for the intended audience. The volume is divided into two sections between the two contributors respectively where each voice may be heard (for those who recognize the writing styles) with three chapters each: historical (Coulter in chapters 2-4) and theological (Yong in chapters 5-7). Both sections offer some of the most constructive and fresh hearings in their respective areas of focus that this reviewer has engaged across the literature in both the history and theology of (Christian) higher education. The volume has helpful introductory and concluding chapters that summarize the project on both ends. Further, each chapter entails a succinct summation of the primary contributions of that chapter to the conversation.
A welcome construct utilized were terms/ideas to lead the imagination of each of the six core chapters of the volume. In the historical section by Coulter, he makes use of habitus, Bildung, and the Romanticist intuitive populism via the “triad of intuitionism, immanence, and progressivism” (in contrast to the “high culture” of liberalism and the worldview notions of Reformed approaches). In the theological section by Yong, he makes use of head, heart, hands and connects these in a pneumatologically attuned trinitarian construction for an integrative approach to Christian higher education. These ideas offer a way of remembering the movements made in each respective chapter of which the authors do hope to have some manner of “hook” to aid those who have read their works toward recall and entering into the imaginations of the writers and the world they have offered. The volume is not overly long (at 306 oversized pages), but likely many readers may find it a difficult read owing to the thickness of careful critical reflection demonstrated in the writing styles of both Coulter and Yong. In this way, familiarity with their previous work bears dividends toward understanding their particular articulations.
Yong and Coulter offer some of the most constructive and fresh engagement with the history and theology of Christian higher education.
Coulter’s offering of the Wesleyan Holiness storying of both Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism in relation to higher education may be a groundbreaking contribution toward rethinking the story of Christian higher education in general within the context of the U.S.
The rooting of this volume in the ecumenical turn of “Pentecost” (bearing the marks of Yong’s distinct contribution to the global Pentecost/al conversations) functions well as a metaphor and storying that naturally seems to lend itself to ecumenical dialogue (many thanks for the persistent work in this regard by Yong). This framing/orientation for this project avoids the political dynamics of much contemporary ecumenism and instead not only allows, but specifically calls for diversity (by and through the Spirit). This is not without difficulty in how one may in fact critique such diversities as somehow outside of such storying via Pentecost. However, this makes use of the chief storying of the Church all the while reminding Pentecostals (those identifying as such) of the ways in which this story is not their own unique possession but belongs to God’s work to set all things to rights. Coulter and Yong, thus, provide a way of constructive dialogic engagements between both Pentecostals and the rest of the Church via this storying of Pentecost as the Church’s story (and in turn, as that meant to be/become the cosmic redemptive story).
Rooting this volume in the ecumenical turn of Pentecost functions well as a metaphor and storying that naturally lends itself to ecumenical dialogue.
Another question is whether the “trinitarian” explanations failed to appreciate the decidedly Christologic offering in a turn to the Pneumatologic? While this perhaps opens greater ecumenical dialogue within the wider Christian traditions and among Evangelicals in particular, one may wonder if there is a loss for the internal Pentecostal dialogue between trinitarian and Oneness confessions which is so aptly engaged in the editorial epilogue of the latest issue of Pneuma by none other than Amos Yong himself.[2] It is particularly in the Christologic foci of Pentecostal confession (historic and contemporary rapprochement, e.g., the “Cleveland School” of Pentecostalism) as precisely a potential contribution to the wider Church. Though knowing that this volume is not for Pentecostals narrowly, but for institutions of the CCCU in mind particularly, means this volume is not meant directly to speak into the discussions among Pentecostals directly (though doing so throughout by way of integration of who the contributors are, their work, and the impulses of their socio-historical-religious locations).
Finally, if one sought a “how-to” approach, it is not offered in this volume (intentionally) as this is more pertaining the history, philosophy, and theology of higher education than to the practices of such. It is concerned with practices throughout, but not as a “how-to”. This is not to say no such examples are given. They are offered through the storying of part one and numerous examples of applications in part two. However, this is not a “how-to” book which would have severely limited the volume to time and place. Yet readers in higher education will likely find themselves saying “Now what?” Are there embodiments of the stories and theological ideals of Coulter and Yong that might serve as testimonial exemplars, at least in part, without simply repristinating such and allowing for the particularities of such as faithful in their respective contexts?
It is in these ways (among others) that this volume would serve well to be carefully read by individuals and (preferably in) groups across institutions of (Christian) higher education. The restorying is a key that needs to be taken up. If restorying fails to be appreciated and integrated, it will most certainly result in the failure of institutions of higher education. To be healthy, higher education must move well beyond assessments based merely upon head counts or the construction of new buildings and programs; and if the Christian story is true, education is more than an ROI calculation or a path to employability.
May this volume find a wide readership among all those concerned for the state and future of Christian higher education.
Reviewed by Rick Wadholm Jr.
Publisher’s page: https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481318143/the-holy-spirit-and-higher-education/
Notes
[1] Not least among the book, chapter, and article contributions being Yong’s Renewing the Church by the Spirit: Theological Education after Pentecost (Eerdmans, 2020). [Editor’s note: see the review by Carolyn Tennant]
[2] Amos Yong, “Afterword: Pentecostal Systematic or Constructive Theology: Many Models, Many Witnesses,” Pneuma 45.3-4 (2023): 466-475.
Category: Ministry, Spring 2024