Review Essay, Keeping the Balance
Pressure point 2: The academic and the practical Another closely related split can take place between the academic and the practical. Field reminds us that, for Jesus’ disciples, “theoretical learning was never divorced from practical training in real-life situations”. Whether through the Christian Union at university or the opportunities afforded at a theological college, theology students must find ways of keeping themselves “earthed”. “Academic intake” must be balanced with “practical output”. “As far as the Christian is concerned, academic study will bear proper fruit only when it elucidates, not complicates, God’s truth”.
Pressure point 3: Academic study and personal belief Another challenge is the possibility of a clash between the teaching emphasis of the theological department and the student’s personal convictions—especially if they are not studying in an all-evangelical college. Field does not believe this will be a problem for everybody, since some will “thrive on the cut-and-thrust of fierce theological debate”. Others however, may feel “unbearable lonely and oppressed” and may attempt to “find refuge in a Jekyll-and-Hyde approach to their academic courses”. With the pressure on, they feel they must either change their theological position or live in a mental dichotomy where outwardly they go along with the teaching but privately “attempt …to keep their minds intact from what they are inwardly convinced is rank heresy”. Apart from maintaining Christian fellowship, Field’s primary advice in this regard is that they “spend as much time as possible, preferably before starting the course, mastering the main tenets of their own position, particularly the doctrine of Scripture which is nearly always the main debating-point”.
Personalia Having acknowledged and examined the particular dangers a Christian theologian may face in approaching his studies, which may give rise to various problems, David Field suspects that, in the end, many of the “technical difficulties” actually experienced by students are often due to “problems of personal adjustment”. The appeal of a particular theological system may have more to do with the charms of a particular personality than the individual merits of the case. The supposedly victimized student may simply be unable to take criticism. In this final section of the essay, David Field exhorts students to behave like true Christians, being humble, gentle, patient and loving. We cannot successfully approach our theological studies if we are not prepared to approach life itself as imitators of Christ.
Category: In Depth, Spring 2006
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