Review Essay, Keeping the Balance
Relating to people Theology students must also be careful about how they relate to and how they behave with other people. With all the knowledge they will be acquiring, it would be very easy for them to degenerate into insensitive bores and intolerable know-it-alls, “raising questions that no one else is asking” and putting people in their theological place! Field reminds the reader that doctrinal maturity is only one part of the Christian’s vocation. A good theological student will “maintain a humbly sensitive attitude towards others’ and learn to put their extra knowledge to the best possible use.
Keeping it all together: The dangers of specialism One of the fundamental dangers the theologian faces is losing sight of the Bible as a whole. “Even the average theological college course calls for a marked degree of specialization”. When the Bible becomes “fragmented” in our minds, it can also become disconnected from the practical and the devotional. Field shakes his head at the “theological boffin” who has allowed this to happen to him. A “Christian theologian is concerned with the communication of the whole biblical message to the world, as well as with the academic study of its constituent parts”. He warns us that “There will be many pressures on [theological students] to compartmentalize their lives, either by splitting away their academic interests from devotional and practical witness, or by erecting a barrier between their academic intake and their personal convictions”.
Pressure point 1: The academic and the devotional Keeping the devotional going, and keeping the academic and the devotional together, presents us with a special challenge. Theological students must remember that a university “exists to impart and further knowledge, not to convert souls or build up a Christian student’s devotional life”. It is “up to the Christians to recognise this fact” and “supplement their specialist academic training with disciplined devotional living”. Those studying theology “need more, not less, time for personal devotions”. Field makes some suggestions: the use of a devotional commentary and perhaps a different copy and translation of the Bible for devotional reading may help to make the “mental adjustment needed to look at a passage devotionally rather than academically” The goal, however, is “for individuals” to find out how “to integrate the two approaches to their own satisfaction, so that their devotional life is fed constantly with academic knowledge, and academic problems softened by being set in a context of humble prayer”.
Category: In Depth, Spring 2006
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