Theological Education

This essay was published in The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology, edited by Christopher A. Beeley and Mark E. Weedman, for the CUAP Studies in Early Christianity (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018); this is the uncorrected proofs. Exploring the humanity and divinity of Jesus, the Son's relation to the Father, and the agency of the Holy Spirit, it is one of five essays suggesting Johannine contributions to trinitarian discussions in the early church.

This paper explores different stages of ministerial formation and training, and suggests markers to indicate the success or otherwise of such training. Noting the diverse and sometimes contradictory expectations placed on theological educators, it suggests that some of the tension may be reduced by adopting a realistic view of what can be accomplished at different stages of training, and if seminary and church view themselves as partners in ministerial formation, both before, during and after formal seminary training. Markers of success in ministerial training relate to the internalization of responsible, transformative knowledge implemented in life and ministry practice.

The article is devoted to the creation and development of the higher ecclesiastical school in Russia in the XIX — early XX century. More specifically it deals with the history of «The idea of the Academy» as the basis of this school. The topic is relevant due to the Russian ecclesiastical and educational reforms in the recent years. Having studied materials of the pre-revolutionary reforms of theological academies in Russia, the projects, analytical reports and discussions, the author shows the influence of Western scientific and educational models, on the Russian universities’ experience and theological schools’ experience and implementation of the “idea of Academy” at different stages.
Keywords: Orthodox Theological Academy, the history of the spiritual education.

Initial Evidence was the distinctive theology that was basic to a revival movement. At least that is the culture that I caught growing up.1  It is a doctrine discussed throughout the 20th century. There have been times that the issue caused discussion within a denomination. Usually a flow of writing followed. In the Assemblies of God there has been a steady production of tracts, pamphlets, and articles on initial evidence. It will be clear that this study focuses on North American sources, particularly on material from the Assemblies of God, U.S.A.

W tej pracy magisterskiej prześledzono obecność Ukraińców wśród wykładowców i studentów Studium Teologii Prawosławnej Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego i ich położenie w kontekście przemian polityki państwowej i kościelnej.
Wyjaśniono stan naukowego opracowania problemu, wyznaczono przyczyny i warunki stworzenia Studium, osobliwości jego funkcjonowania.
Rozpatrzono działalność profesorów Studium, którzy mieli pochodzenie ukraińskie, ich więzi socjalne, zainteresowania naukowe, wpływy i tym podobne.
Przeanalizowano skład studentów Studium, ich byt i działalność społeczną, proces edukacyjny i stosunki międzynarodowościowe.
Zrobiono wniosek, że Studium zostało potężnym centrum ukraińskiej narodowej myśli teologicznej swojego czasu i oporą dla rozwoju nauki ukraińskiej w emigracji.

The relationship between theory and practice refracts
differently in my journey in practical theology, during which
I moved from deductive to inductive approaches, and
from New Testament studies to practical ecclesiology and
religious leadership. This article offers a conceptual analysis
of the theory/practice relationship through the lens of three
major concepts that have marked my academic journey.
Embodiment focuses on our bodies as the empirical
and spiritual locus of human experience and knowledge.
Practices and theories emerge in our bodily engagements
with the world and one another. Identity formation is the
focus of learning processes that shape selves to create
personal, social and religious identities that enable us
to engage our social and religious worlds. Missional leadership is intent on discerning divine involvement in embodied faith practices in neighbourhoods, communities and contexts. The argument culminates in an agenda for theological education for the next decade.

Christians have encountered theological challenges from the beginning. Listening carefully to the voices that question and object had significant impact on the articulation of theology. In like manner, fresh theological insights come from making listening to today’s voices a priority.

Online Learning is, but the purposeful design of a holistic educational experience that;

a. prioritises transformation over EdTech,
b. envisions the integration of technology over segregated preferential use,
c. fosters marginal-control-design over banking-model
d. while acknowledging the importance of skilled and passionate human resource that augments the learning experience.

This article focuses on Online Theological Education in specific and will be of interest to theological educators and administrators.

In their 2013 paper, "A theory in progress? Issues in transformative learning theory," Taylor and Cranton were concerned that the theory of transformative learning has not progressed because there has been too much attention given to research on transformative experiences per se and not enough attention given to research grounded in primary sources. They identify three "central constructs": the place of experience, empathy, and the desire to change.

John Dirkx. a leading theorist in transformative learning. has focused on "soul" as a central construct. Rosemary Ruether engaged the discussion of "soul making" from a theological perspective and, while she did not use the term "transformative learning," she described soul making as "transformative metanoia," which she elaborates as a multi-dimensional transformation.

This essay joins a conversation with Dirkx and Reuther to examine four central constructs (experience, empathy, the desire to change, and soul) from a theological perspective in order to consider their implications for theological education.

Mission Round Table 15:1 (Jan-Apr 2020): 42-43.

In this insightful interview, Scott Callaham highlights key challenges issued in World Mission: Theology, Strategy, and Current Issues. The book was written not only for mission practitioners, mission agencies, and seminaries, but for all biblically- and theologically-engaged Christians. Covering themes not seen in contemporary books on mission, the contributors to the book are not merely advocating returning to the Bible as a guide for the theology and practice of mission (although these aspects of mission clearly need to be reformed) but are aiming for a complete rethinking of world mission that takes us back to the source—the Bible.

A New Understanding of “theology” - A New Understanding of “Mission” - Α New Understanding of “Theological Education” -  On "integral mission" sensitive to gender issues, and how to be taught in Theological Institutions.
A complete change of the traditional outlook of the curricula of the Theological Education are necessary: from a faith-oriented to aliturgical/mission-oriented curricula,
In addition, an authentic Christian Theological Education must be first and foremost relational rather than educational. A martyria/witness mission must be inter-related to liturgical rather than confessional/ dogmatic theology. The syllabus of teaching missiology must include the above mentioned characteristic.

This essay argues that the center of Quaker Faith and Practice is the immediacy of Christ; connected to the center are convictions regarding authentic worship, universal ministry, incarnational sacramentology, nonviolent peacemaking, consensus decision making and a witness to simplicity.

Web-supported and technology-enhanced learning can be effective in class as well as online. We now teach theology in a technology-saturated world. Technology allows the blending of online and face to face processes in what is sometimes identified as blended learning. Yet learning is always a blend of processes, proclivities, perspectives and personalities.
The questions addressed in this paper are: How might we learn to teach more effectively in the classroom based on our experience of technology, particularly online, often asynchronous, methods? And, How does a theological framework help us to shape our understanding and apply our experience?

Dieses Paper setzt sich mit Herausforderungen, Hoffnungen und Trends auseinander, welche die Schweizer Kultur betreffen. Die Beschäftigung mit dem kulturellen Kontext stellt eine Grundlagenarbeit zur Curriculum-Entwicklung theologischer Bildung dar, deren Ziel die Ausbildung von Christinnen und Christen ist, die sich an der Missio Dei beteiligen und so Kirche gestalten wollen, die für den lokalen Kontext relevant ist.

The article is devoted to the relations of the Russian theological schools — primarily academies — with the Russian Orthodox mission in Japan. These relations were not confined to the services of the academies' graduates in Japanese mission, but had another, less well-know yet important aspect - since 1880s, directed by Equal-to-apostles Saint Nikolas of Japan Japanese young people had studied in Russian theological academies and seminaries. I he author's attention is focused on this little-studied, yet important both for the history of Orthodoxy in Japan and the history of Russian spiritual school aspect of the topic under consideration. Based on a number of archival files the Russian theological academies students' names from Japan along with their master's theses topics, students' prior to theological academy background and after-graduation life were discovered.
The author concludes that educating Japanese Orthodox youth in Russian theological schools and their further service was associated with considerable difficulties. Despite it the training proved to be fruitful as it contributed to the concept of the Orthodox mission, conceived and implemented by Equal-to-apostles Saint Nicholas of Japan and intended to disseminate the Orthodox enlightenment in Japan through the Japanese who turned to Christ and received systematic theological education.
Keywords: Russian Orthodox mission in Japan, Russian theological academies, Equal to apostles Saint Nicholas of Japan

This course is dedicated to introducing students to the academic discipline of Theology. According to its Greek etymological roots, Theology—theos + logos—is preoccupied with “God-talk”, that is, applying the very human (and, thus, limited!) capacities of thought, speech, writing, and artistic composition to wrestle with some of the most enduring questions of ultimate concern: Is there a God? Who is He (or She or It)? Can this God be intellectually grasped or affectively experienced? If so, how? Why is there something and not nothing? What does it mean to be created by God? What moral obligations does such createdness entail, if any? How does an infinite, eternal God relate to or even enter into the finitude of created history? How are finite creatures to relate to this God in turn? How is there evil in creation if God is good? And so many more questions! Answers to these questions are not easily given, nor, some would rightly argue, are they given once and for all. For if indeed God is utter, endless mystery, then the task of Theology is always ongoing, ever meant to be taken up by new thinkers in new times and in new places.

In this course, we are going to join the long, venerable tradition of Christian Theology in order to ponder these questions with some of the tradition’s greatest minds. Through our readings and collective work, we will roam widely in this tradition with respect to chronology, geography, denomination, genre, and gender and state of life of the theologian. Too often in the past the academic study of Theology has limited its canon of texts to systematic treatises by ordained male clerics. Not so for this class. We will read and interrogate works by women and men; vowed religious, ordained, and lay; ancient, medieval, and modern; personal essayists, preachers, mystics, musicians, poets, painters, fiction writers, and much, much more.

The Pentecostal movement is facing an identity crisis. Any discussion of the doctrine of evidential tongues, if it is to be meaningful, must face this fact. This crisis is the product of an historical process which has been at work since the middle part of this century: the assimilation of the Pentecostal movement into mainstream Evangelicalism. This process of assimilation, although gradual and unobtrusive, has significantly impacted the theology and practice of both the Evangelical and Pentecostal movements. And, while it is the Pentecostal movement, which now
finds itself at a strategic crossroads of self-definition, the direction it takes will inevitably impact the broader Evangelical world. The following essay will seek to describe the origin and nature of this self-identity crisis, outline the central questions which have emerged, particularly as they relate to evidential tongues, and suggest how Pentecostals might constructively face these challenges.

In 1942, when students had no possibility to leave abroad, Dr. Matthieu Schyns formed a commission for studying Protestant theology in Belgium. In 1950, the French-speaking Protestant Theological Faculty started, followed by the Flemish- and Dutch-speaking department in 1954. The Dutch Reformed Church was one of the sponsors at the foundation. Currently, the faculty consists of 10 professors, 3 visiting professors, 5 lecturers, 8 scientific staff members and 2 scientific assistants. The Faculty’slibrary,oncestartedwith20boks,counts at the moment about 40.000 titles and 130 periodicals. A daughter-institution was founded at Butare (Rwanda).

Theological education can no longer operate according to a modernistic epistemology if it is to equip students to minister in a postmodern world. This article explores the possibility of developing a theological epistemology which does not blindly reflect the presuppositions of either modernism or postmodernism. It is argued that the theological notions of faith, hope and love provide a unique approach to truth that frees theological epistemology from fideism, fundamentalism and triumphalism. Faith renders theological theories vulnerable to being challenged by experiences of lived-through reality and alternative interpretations of that reality, while hope sets truth within the context of critical transformational actions based on relational commitments marked by love. A meta-theoretical model for theological education is constructed to indicate how this epistemological approach may be realized in educational praxis.

Many conversations about online theological education concern the feasibility of delivering particular courses or disciplines online. Much less attention has been devoted to the relationship between online delivery and theological education as a holistic formative enterprise. In this essay I invite further reflection on three such formative aspects of theological education that are under-theorized: education as a form of apprenticeship, the essential place of worship, and ecclesial formation.

While this article reflects my personal observations, I wrote it have chaired the Taskforce on Formation and Online Learning at the seminary where I teach.

The establishing of large churches in urban Metro Manila was a phenomenon that imperceptibly began in the 80s.  After more than two decades, these large churches had become a permanent, visible, and influential feature of the church scene.  It became a subject of interest to identify the leadership attributes of these pastors and to analyze the development these qualities.  Significant are the consequent implications to educational providers on leadership.
The purpose of the research is to discover the leadership qualities of pastors of large churches in urban Metro Manila, determine the development of these qualities, and define the emergent guidelines for designing a pastoral leadership development program.
The research design employed a mixed-methodology executed in three phases.  The first phase, quantitative and utilized two instruments, a Basic Demographic Survey and the Leadership Practices Inventory.  These instruments identified the leadership attributes of the pastors.  The second phase, qualitative and employed the Appreciative Inquiry interview questionnaire.  It analyzed the developmental process of the leadership attributes.  The third phase triangulated the combined data of the two previous methods.  It generated design elements for a pastoral leadership development program.
The selection criterion focused on member churches of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches that have a minimum of 800 attendees in their Sunday worship services and led by the same pastor for a minimum of ten years.  The criterion yielded a population size of 20 churches (N=20), sample size 19 pastors (n=19).  A nonrandom purposive sample circumscribed respondents that were information rich.
The leadership attributes, from highest to lowest, were enabling others to act, modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, encouraging the heart, and challenging the process.  Top 30%: the percentile ranking of these pastors.  The observer results, from the highest to the lowest, were inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, modeling the way, challenging the process, and encouraging the heart.  Grouped according to demographic variables, the ranking of the leadership attributes is rearranged.
The leadership attributes were developed through informal, non-formal, and formal education.  Six pastors have ministry-related doctorates, five have credentials from Bible colleges and other similar institutions, three have secular masters degrees, and everyone have attended some form of non-formal ministerial trainings.  Responding properly and intentionally to the developmental stages of the church further contributed to formation of leadership attributes.
The emergent guidelines on designing a pastoral leadership development program are expressed through the acronym LEAD.  Link the learners with their calling.  Enlist teachers based on recognized expertise.  Adapt relevant content and strategies.  Develop objectives in line with ministry.

The purpose of this paper is to discover possible benefits online theological education can have for a western cross-cultural teacher and remote local churches of Colombia.  However, in order to address this topic, the paper will also briefly evaluate the pros and cons of online education, its capability of contributing to spiritual formation, and its relevance to remote local churches.  In addition to the available academic research done in the area of online and cross-cultural education, this paper will also refer to the author’s experiences obtained from Seminario Evangélico Teológico Gozo Eterno (STEGE), an online theological education ministry of Iglesia Gozo Eterno in Siachoque, Boyacá, Colombia.  The goal of this study is organize the necessary ideas to begin developing a model that can be applied to similar micro-contexts.

This paper addresses the problem of the uncritical use of distance education strategies in theological education programs throughout the developing countries of Africa. Such a use of distance education ignores underlying historical and socio‐cultural differences between the educational situation in the United States and that in Africa. To address this problem, the paper first identifies and analyses certain major historical and socio‐cultural forces and trends that have shaped distance education in the United States. This is accomplished by means of a case study of Charles Wedemeyer and his influence on distance education. It then compares these forces and trends with those in developing African countries. It concludes that, when using distance education strategies, theological educators must critically take into consideration these fundamental differences and adapt distance education practices to the unique African context. Practical suggestions are then offered to aide the theological educator in responsibly implementing distance education in Africa.

This paper traces the roots of the modern hard line materialist evolutionism which appears to be taking control of the universities globally and the withdrawal of some Christian groups from the arena of public discourse to the realm of spiritual “certainty”. This “old old story” originates already in the Enlightenment debate between the Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant. In opposition to the dualisms entertained by beginning with conceptual knowledge or beginning with empirical knowledge, the position of Rudolf Schleiermacher
is re-envisaged. For him, the human being, as the locus of both conceptual and empirical knowledge, is the source of meaning which requires and transcends both. The paper explores the implications of this for the critical role of the Humanities in the university in general and theology in particular in the light of the social construction of reality.

These two volumes can be read together profitably. Both are revised Doctor of Missiology dissertations focused on the development of an Asian Christian theology. The differences are the contrasting methods and results that emerge from comparing the Lutheran Morse’s presentation of the United Church of Christ theologian, Kosuke Koyama, and the Methodist-Evangelical Hwa Yung’s development of a viable Asian Christian theology of mission.

The Article is devoted to one of the most complicated problems in the theological science of the XIX–XX: the use of historical methods in theological studies. In some cases, historical study of the theological issues was conducted in Russian ecclesiastical academies still in 1830–40`s, however, in the 1860’s. the concept of a special scientific research associated with the scientifico-critical methods. Russian theological science should be, taking into account the achievements and problems of Western science, associated with the use of the historical-critical methods, work out its position. In conclusion the author makes conclusions about the positive and negative results of the «historical-theological revolution» 1860’s. for Russian theology.
Keywords: orthodox ecclesiastical academy, theological science, historical-critical methods, history of dogma, biblical history, church history, historical liturgics.

“Trends in Theological Education at St Francis Theological College, Brisbane (1975–2010): A Participant-Observer report.” In From Augustine to Anglicanism: The Anglican Church in Australia and Beyond, edited by Marcus Harmes, Lindsay Henderson and Gillian Colclough, 133–45. (Toowoomba, Qld: Augustine to Anglicanism Conference/Anglicans in Australia and Beyond, 2010).

A talk given to the hierarchs, clergy, professors, students and guests of Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary, in Jordanville, NY, who gathered for the feastday of the school, that of the Three Hierarchs, Ss. Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and Gregory the Theologian, on January 30, 2017 (February 12, according to the civil calendar). 

The talk examines the two types of wisdom (ἄνωθεν and θύραθεν), the process of coming to the knowledge (επίγνωσης) of Truth, the work of a seminary, which is to create mystagogues, the presuppositions of dogmatic theology and knowledge, and the inrelation of dogma and ethos, faith and life.

«Achtsamkeit mitten im Leben», «Stressfrei durch Achtsamkeit», «Optimiere dein Leben durch Achtsamkeit», «Achtsamkeit in der Schule», «Achtsamkeit: Die neue Glücksformel», «Achtsam sprechen». Das sind nur wenige Titel von deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen der letzten Jahre zum Thema Achtsamkeit. Achtsamkeit (=Mindfulness) stellt ein exponentiell wachsendes Praxis- und Forschungsfeld dar.

Vorliegende Studie setzt sich vor dem Hintergrund einer globalisierten und digitalisierten Welt (Stichwort: VUCA) und theologischer Bildung mit dem weiten Feld der Achtsamkeit in Höherer Bildung auseinander. Nach einer kurzen Beschreibung des gesellschaftlichen Kontexts der Gegenwart und dem wachsenden Forschungsbereich «Mindfulness» werden Entwicklung und religiöse Hintergründe der heute verbreiteten Achtsamkeitspraxis inkl. ihrer Methoden und Wirkungen dargestellt und konstruktiv-kritisch gewürdigt. Anschliessend erfolgt eine explizite Auseinandersetzung mit Achtsamkeit in (höherer) Bildung sowie die damit verbundenen Anliegen und Ziele. Abschliessend werden die Erkenntnisse in Zusammenhang mit der christlichen Theologie und ihrer kontemplativen Praxis gestellt.

Als Praktizierender und Lehrender von Kontemplation / Achtsamkeit bewege ich mich als Autor zwischen Erfahrung und wissenschaftlich-kritischer Auseinandersetzung. Wie in der Studie deutlich wird, ist gerade diese Synthese von spiritueller Praxis und Forschung ein Merkmal der Achtsamkeit und ein solcher Standort für Lehrende der Achtsamkeit nicht ungewöhnlich.