The Pneuma Review » learning

Workshop of the Holy Spirit: An Invitation to Theological Education

Rick Wadholm — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 22:00:18 +0000

Doug Strong and Jess Bielman, Workshop of the Holy Spirit: An Invitation to Theological Education (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022), 152 pages, ISBN 9781532689093.

Doug Strong and Jess Bielman offer this short volume intent on reimagining and reoffering an ancient medieval metaphor (the “workshop”) for contemporary practices of theological education that are integrative of the life of the academy and the church together. The volume proposes to take readers on a journey of recovery. Chapter 1 introduces the ancient construct of “apprenticeship” as a means of education in theology and ministry that is intentionally hands-on and oriented around a relationship of discipleship rather than simply courses taken independently with hopes that the student will gain integrative mastery on their own. Foundationally this is a call to mentorship that is facilitated via Spirit-empowered transformational experiences in community, discipline, and vocational holiness and wholeness.

Could the ancient construct of apprenticeship—hands-on and relational—be a model for education in theology and ministry?

In chapter 2 “Craftsmanship”, Strong and Bielman propose that the “craft of the kerygma” (the proclamation of the good news of Jesus) is the product of their proposed model of the workshop of the Holy Spirit. Students are apprenticed into this proclamation work through means of smaller groups taking time toward genuinely sharing life together. Chapter 3 addresses the ways in which guilds were formed of co-laborers within a particular craft that provided support and nurture toward mastery. This is also proposed for ministerial training in seminaries that emphasis life in the Spirit (in community) “is the place from which ministry flows; life in ministry is not the axis on which your life in the Spirit spins” (75). Chapter 4 carries the reader forward into the image of the journey-man/woman as a means of rethinking the interplay of praxis and ministry. This chapter takes up the spiritual disciplines as “tools for the work” of transforming the journey-man/woman (Scripture, prayer, community, worship, Eucharist, fasting) toward creating a “rule of life” (114-116). Chapter 5 concludes the volume with a proposed move toward mastery as one also trains up others and serves the Church well. This mastery is always under the mastery of the Spirit as “ongoing companion,” “creative inspirer,” and “signpost to the future reign of God” (132, original emphasis).

A change of vision for theological education is needed.

While Strong and Bielman make much good use of this medieval metaphor it seems it may be more a repristination of an ancient practice that was itself faltering and not simply replaced by falsely driven ideas and practices. The ancient guilds organized around workshops only pertained to specific fields of study (production of goods as a trade, for example) and never pertained to all fields of study or development (the ancient professions of medicine, law, and divinity; p. 29). Furthermore, the “masters” were practitioners themselves as they took on students. This meant that specialization was always limited and becomes highly restrictive toward developments beyond that which is expressed in localized practices. Perhaps this image works best for those very specifically within theological education seeking only to give themselves to particular forms of vocational ministry but does not open the way for those who may pursue more advanced research levels of education. While the language of Philipp Jakob Spener drives the metaphor as the workshop of the Holy Spirit shaping the ministers, this imagery belongs to an era of disciplines that fit the times as they were shifting and may miss potential for modern models that themselves may speak into the very foci of Strong and Bielman. Granted that any metaphor is not meant to be carried too far beyond its intent, yet this metaphor may at some level undermine the very purposes of the project however praiseworthy and necessary for the day. A change of vision for theological education is needed to address the issues but also to work toward total transformation into the image of Christ Jesus by the Spirit of God.

For the student and those they serve, theological education is supposed to bring about personal transformation into the image of Christ Jesus by the Spirit of God. However, most theological education tends to function as a business and a cognitive intellectualist project.

Several weaknesses bear mentioning. Despite being in the title of the volume, the idea of the “Spirit” as integrative and foundational seems to lack in development throughout this volume (where other works take up such a task, see Amos Yong and Dale Coulter, The Holy Spirit in Higher Education: Renewing the Christian University [Baylor University Press, 2023; Editor’s note: see review by Rick Wadholm Jr]). To be fair, the Spirit is mentioned often, but in many ways, this stands only for some unnamable contribution or role rather than explicated within any sort of explicated pneumatological bases. The Spirit functions almost more as a feature of chaos to the structures of institutions (eg, 132; which may be the case, but is not always the case). Another weakness is ways in which this volume may not weigh its sources as well as it should, but simply takes up sources that wrote spiritually and pietistically without due accounting for the foundations behind their writings and at times misrepresenting them. This is exemplified in claiming Henri Nouwen was an “Anglican priest” (76) rather than a Catholic priest. This lack is technically part of their aim to speak from and into a broad spectrum of the Church, but it makes for an unequal hodge-podge approach more than an intentional integrative approach. Finally, the turn to “workshop” takes up the language of commodification rather than what seemed the aim of the volume in humanizing by the Spirit to transformation and conformity to the Son of Man. This is exemplified not only in the language of “workshop” but the language of “tools” used to shape us and then naming the spiritual disciplines. The disciplines are formative but calling them “tools” (87-89) turns this from transformative personal engagement with the Spirit, into manufacturing metaphor that dehumanizes. While this does not seem the intent, it becomes the implication.

Despite the noted issues with this volume, it still offers a refreshing rethinking of the moves within theological education that have tended to turn it into business and a cognitive intellectualist project rather than the personalizing and transforming Spirit empowering encounter it is meant to be for the sake of the individual, the Church, and the world. This book might function well for a group of professors, administrators, pastors, and students to read together over several weeks of discussions centered around the journey into the “workshop” re-storying proposed. As such it might just offer the “academy opportunity to make it a place of spiritual and intellectual flourishing for the sake of the church’s health” (144). May it be so.

Reviewed by Rick Wadholm Jr.

Publisher’s page: https://wipfandstock.com/9781532689093/workshop-of-the-holy-spirit/

Preview Workshop of the Holy Spirit: https://books.google.com/books?id=SyKcEAAAQBAJ

Heidi and Rolland Baker: Learning to Love

John Miller — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 12:20:48 +0000

Heidi and Rolland Baker, Learning to Love: Passion, Compassion, and the Essence of the Gospel (Bloomington, MN: Chosen Books, 2013).

The missionary ministry of Heidi and Rolland Baker is widely known and their stories of miracles throughout Mozambique are legendary. In this book, the Bakers take the readers on a journey into the heart of the mission as they narrate their own story with their own words. The book is divided into four parts: passion, suffering, challenges, and the supernatural sustenance of the Holy Spirit. Overall, it is a delightful read that is amply illustrated by photos and testimonies.

Heidi Baker’s voice narrates most of the book as she tells her story to the reader, as if sitting in the comfort of a warm home. There is a repetitive (and convicting) theme that appears throughout the book: “if I don’t … then who will” (page 10 and many others). If I don’t go, if I don’t do, if I don’t speak, if I don’t help… then who will? Her point being, she is being compelled to go by the Holy Spirit because the need is so very great. This urgent calling is similar to the calling of Mother Teresa, who’s life calling reflects on the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 25:40, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

While the book is a testimony of the goodness and grace of God, it is also a report to current supporters and an appeal to potential supporters. Nevertheless, it is pleasing and heartwarming to read about the way God is moving in Mozambique.

Reviewed by John Miller

Publisher’s page: http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/learning-to-love/343201

Stanley Hauerwas, Working with Words: On Learning to Speak Christian

Timothy Lim Teck Ngern — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:45:52 +0000

From Pneuma Review Spring 2013

Stanley Hauerwas, Working with Words: On Learning to Speak Christian (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011), 322 pages, ISBN 9781608999682.

I recommend this book to all Christians, and especially to those in pastoral and the theological vocations. Like his other publications, the Duke Divinity School professor of ethics and theology asks poignant hermeneutical and theological questions pertaining to Christian discipleship and witness. In Working With Words, Hauerwas shares his vision, approach, and experience as a pastor-theologian writing for the Christian public. His goal is to paint a vision of God with discipleship and witness in mind. And because he addresses life’s puzzling complexities honestly, this volume will be a good companion to his Hannah’s Child, a memoir of his theological autobiography.

The book has three parts, and Hauerwas writes seven essays for each section. Most of the essays are either public lectures or church sermons that he had shared in recent years. A few other essays fill the gaps for this compilation. Part 1 addresses disciplines for those learning to speak about God. These disciplines include reading, hearing, seeing and naming God amidst evil. Part 2 explains the Christian language of love for a) dealing with greed, b) discerning the Christian body, c) engaging the reality of “finite care[s] in a world of infinite need” (154) and d) explaining what it means for the church to be on a mission. In Part 3, Hauerwas co-writes (with a few theologians) on the lessons he had learned from some of his teachers. These teachers are political philosopher Charles Taylor, political activist-theologian Richard Niebuhr, and philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. He also include a chapter examining the friendship between political pastor-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Bethge, and a few chapters explaining some of the virtues that underwrites medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas’s writing of Summa Theologicae, contemporary Catholic Social Teaching, and contemporary Methodist theological ethics.

Love is often slow, painful and difficult.

What can we learn from Working With Words? Hauerwas provides an exemplar model for those who desire to live faithfully to the gospel. He proclaims that “naming God matters”. The gospel should not be expressed in ways that exclude society nor should it be presented so inclusively that it fails to witness to message of the cross before a watching world. The gospel should show hospitality to strangers in the name of Christ (185-186). However, and ultimately, “only God can name God”; no Christian has and knows God as we think we are able to (80-81). Friendship with God is not a relation between co-equals; we are always the poorer partner ever in need of God and his goodness (74-77). The discipline of seeing the splendors of God often require that seers set aside or at least subjugate conventional ways of seeing, so as to embrace “a totally reconfigured kingdom” perspective (58-59). For instance, Hauerwas recommends silence as a valid response to genocides, like Rwanda and the Holocaust; he explains that one can only know sin (including the sins of society) in light of divine grace, even though evil is often expressed in idealistic and utopian terms (21, 32).

Rightly Understanding God’s Word: Learning Context, Part 2, by Craig S. Keener

Craig Keener — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 22:02:48 +0000

Part of the Rightly Understanding God’s Word series by Craig S. Keener.

As appearing in Pneuma Review Fall 2003.

Take a course on biblical interpretation with New Testament scholar, Professor Craig S. Keener.

Continued from Part 1 in the Summer 2003 issue

Paragraph Context: Checking yourself

13. What is the “word of God” (or “word of Christ” in most translations) in Romans 10:17? Does it specifically refer to the Bible in this case or to something else?

14. According to 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, when will the gifts of the Spirit pass away? What is the immediate context? (cf. 12:31; 14:1) What is the function of 13:4-6 in the context of the whole letter to the Corinthians? (You may save this question until our study on book-context if you wish.)

15. Is faith in Hebrews 11:1 oriented toward receiving something in the present or toward receiving it in the future? (Start back around 10:25 and read through 12:4.)

16. Revelation 3:20. When Jesus knocks at the door, is He trying to get someone converted? To whom is the verse addressed?

17. When God “gave” his Son (Jn 3:16), does this refer to giving Jesus at His birth in Bethlehem or giving Him to the world when God raised Him from the dead? What does “giving” the Son mean in context?

18. When one seeks first the kingdom, what things are added to one (Matt 6:33)?

19. Who are Christ’s ambassadors in 2 Corinthians 5:20? Whom are they entreating to be reconciled to God?

20. Some people say that the “witnesses” in Hebrews 12:1 are the dead watching us from heaven. But in the context of Hebrews chapter 11, does “witnesses” refer to those who watch us or to those who testified to the truth of God’s claims?

21. Some people claim the promise that no weapon formed against them would prosper (Isaiah 54:17). Is this a guarantee for every individual Christian or for God’s people as a whole protected by His plan for them?

22. Does Proverbs 23:7 mean that whatever we think about ourselves will come true? (“As a person thinks in their heart, so they are.”) Or does it mean something else? (Read 23:6-8.)

23. Does Psalm 18:7-15 refer to Jesus’ second coming? Read 18:4-6, 16-19.

24. Who is the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley in Song of Solomon 2:1-2?

25. In Matthew 18:18, what does Jesus mean by “binding and loosing”? Does He refer to how to treat demons here, or does He refer to something else? (Read especially 18:15-20.)

26. What is the “coming” to which Jesus refers in John 14:1-3? Does He refer here to His second coming or to something else? (Read 14:4-23, and perhaps 13:36-38.)

27. This final question may be the most difficult one. Read Isaiah 7:14 in context (especially 7:10-16; 8:1-4). In the immediate context, to whom does this newborn son refer? (If your conclusions may disturb you, don’t worry; we will clarify them below. But it is important for you to grapple with the text intelligently in its context first, and not simply to interpret the passage according to how you have seen it used elsewhere.)

13. Saving Faith through the Gospel in Romans 10:17

Some people quote Romans 10:17 to support repeating Bible verses to ourselves aloud: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Of course, repeating the Bible to ourselves is important (if we understand it in context). But those who quote this particular verse to support this practice have neglected the context of Romans 10:17. Paul argues that no one could be saved unless they heard this word, this message of Christ (10:14-15), the “report” of the witnesses (10:16), the “word” in their mouths and hearts (10:8-10). Faith could only come from hearing this word, the gospel of Christ (10:17). In contrast to Hebrews 11:1, where “faith” in context means persevering faith, this passage refers to saving faith. One can’t get saved till one hears the truth about Jesus. This verse doesn’t directly address reciting Bible verses.

Rightly Understanding God’s Word: Learning Context, Part 1, by Craig S. Keener

Craig Keener — Thu, 10 Jul 2003 22:17:53 +0000

Part of the Rightly Understanding God’s Word series by Craig S. Keener.

As appearing in Pneuma Review Summer 2003.

Take a course on biblical interpretation with New Testament scholar, Professor Craig S. Keener.

Chapter 2: Learning Context

Although all of us officially recognize the importance of context, most Bible readers still ignore it in practice. You may be an exception, but do not be too disturbed if you are one of those readers unfamiliar with the actual context of many of the passages we cite in this chapter. I have cited these passages purposely because I have repeatedly heard these passages taken out of context, and my students are frequently surprised when they actually read them in context. Although we may think we read the Bible in context, too often we read the Bible in light of how we have heard others use those same Scripture texts. Whether those interpretations are new or old, they cannot take priority over what the text itself says in context.

You need not agree with our interpretation of every example cited below, but these examples will suffice to illustrate how frequently we have ignored context. They should also illustrate how context makes a difference in our understanding. In no instance are we challenging specific doctrines people have sometimes based on these verses; we are challenging methods of interpretation. (If some texts in context do not support a doctrine, the doctrine might still be defended if other texts support it.) You will learn context principles best if you actually work through the passages yourself before reading our interpretation of them; this way you will recognize what students in my classrooms usually recognize: when most the students come to the same conclusions independently, they recognize for themselves how clear the point of the text is.

We begin with some brief examples of context within verses, but the emphasis of this chapter will be on broader levels of context.

Context within Verses

Traditional English poetry balances sounds with rhymes, but ancient Hebrew poetry balanced ideas instead. Most translations place the poetry of Psalms and most of the biblical Prophets in verse form. (The King James Version did not only because translators in 1611 had not yet rediscovered the idea-balancing pattern.) There are different kinds of idea-balancing, or parallelism, in texts; we mention here only two of the most common. In one kind of parallelism, the second line repeats the basic idea of the first (sometimes adding or replacing some details)—for instance, “Happy is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path traversed by sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers” (Ps 1:1). In another kind of parallelism, the second line is an explicit contrast with the first; for instance, “Ill-gotten gains do not profit, But righteousness delivers from death” (Prov 10:2, NASB).

You have perhaps often heard the expression, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Prov. 29:18). But what does Proverbs mean by “vision”? Does it just mean having a good plan for the future (the way some of my friends had preached it before they realized the context)? Does it mean that a driver who needs glasses might run over someone if she drives without her glasses? Because most of the Book of Proverbs is a collection of general principles rather than a sustained argument, the verses around Proverbs 29:18 do not help us interpret the verse very well. The other half of the verse, however, does provide some context. “Where there is no vision, the people perish; but happy is the person who obeys God’s law” (Prov. 29:18). The second half of the verse parallels the basic idea of the first half: visions and the law are both sources of God’s revelation, sources of hearing from God. In other words, “vision” does not refer to mere natural sight; nor does it merely refer to having a plan for the future; it refers to hearing from God. The Hebrew term translated “vision” here in fact relates to dreams, revelations, or oracles, which confirms the point: God’s people needed the Bible and genuine prophets who had heard from God to guide them in the right way.