Where is Academic Theology heading?

Academic Theology as it is taught and studied in university faculties (AT in future) has changed progressively over the last 100 years.

It was once seen as the best way to prepare people for ministry, but is now frequently acknowledged to be almost irrelevant to that aim. University theology today is just not intended for that purpose. A senior academic theologian in a university department recently told me that if people wanted training for ministry they should look for it outside the universities, in institutions that aim to provide just that. This is a big change, and churches have not always caught up with the situation. For instance, some Anglican proposals for improving the training of ministers recently urged that there should be more academic theology insisted on for ordinands.

The Bible colleges, while getting their courses validated by universities, have distanced themselves largely from university theology departments. Denominational colleges, however, have still tended to push their students towards doing a university theology course for at least part of their time. All college course are influenced to some extent by the AT tradition. If, however, AT has today quite different purposes from training for ministry, should there not be a better alternative?

How the change happened

We need to ask why their courses are not seen, even by many in the universities themselves, as a good training for ministry and how this situation has arisen. There are several reasons. One is that the proportion of students in the university faculties who are intending ministry has fallen dramatically, and is now often only a very small proportion. Courses are geared more to those who are simply interested in theoretical ideas. Many of them are not Christians at all, and, for instance, have in some cases objected strongly to lectures opening with prayer, so that the practice has generally been dropped. That is symptomatic of the change, as is the tendency to make theology departments just part of a department of philosophy. The secular university authorities give a low priority to theology, and it has had to be stripped of any spiritual warmth and reduced to the study of the validity of the many opinions in the field.

Tradition

More fundamentally, theology in the universities has tried to conform to the rationalistic tradition of the academic world. That requires that the Bible be treated as if it was not fundamentally different from any other book and its teaching be subjected to the criterion of what is acceptable to the modern mind. Even relative orthodoxy can hide a basic dependence on a rationalistic theological system. That reduces everything to the mere world of human ideas. The foundational Christian conviction that God has spoken, and that the task of theology is first of all to understand better what he has said, fits badly into the intellectual climate of the modern university. As a history of the English Free Churches put it: the prophetic ‘Thus says the Lord’ tends to be replaced by ‘It may be reasonable to suppose’, with disastrous consequences.

When, as a result, theology is stripped of its spiritual and eternal significance it is very hard to hold on to the intense passion of the biblical writers or to burst into praise as they so often do when writing about even the most complex truths; as, for example, at the end of Romans 11. Academic theology, therefore, is spiritually dry and tends to shrivel up any enthusiasm for a gospel to be preached and lived out. Though it may produce lecturers, it produces very few good preachers, and the churches urgently need preachers who can make the Bible and its message live. The original aim of the writers, which was surely to do us good by confronting us with God’s revelation, is generally ignored, so that the Bible is taken out of its original context and is just a text.

Pressure to publish

Also in the universities the lecturers are under pressure to write for publication in books and journals, where their work should be acceptable to their often non-Christian peers. Even evangelical theologians tend to believe that they must write and teach as if from a rationalistic standpoint so as to make their work acceptable to the AT community. Funding for the department over the next few years can depend on such factors. This can result in the faculty being less interested in whether the courses are equipping the students for life than in the academic reputation of the department, and what funding it can attract. If staff do not publish in suitable journals, etc., the department will suffer.

The decline in usefulness to the churches of academic theology has been further accelerated by the fact that many of those teaching in faculties and even in colleges are not nowadays much involved in pastoral ministry. They have forgotten, or studiously ignore, the biblical writers’ urgent purposes. 100 years ago, many lecturers were regular preachers, or, in Scotland at least, simultaneously pastors of congregations.

Positive reasons

There are, of course, exceptions to this general situation and it does not mean that AT does not have value in other ways. I would welcome a better description of the role of AT than I am in a position to put forward, but I have heard four main positive reasons for asking students to spend years working at something that is not directly relevant to their future ministry.

Firstly, a good understanding of the text and its historical context is essential if we are to arrive correctly at the meaning. That is true and basic to all theological study, but it is not the monopoly of the university theological departments. People trained in languages may do better and colleges can do at least equally well. What is needed is not only the linguistic and related studies, but also an understanding of the truths being taught and how they fit together. But lecturers are now so specialised that it is rare for them to be skilful in relating these things to the overall teaching of the Bible.

Indeed, many do not believe that there is a coherent biblical theology. AT also tends to breed ‘a hermeneutic of suspicion’ where each passage out of its context could just conceivably mean something else. A minister needs an overall grasp of biblical truth as well as a good understanding of the texts. University courses hardly ever supply that. Indeed, even many college courses, where the academic side is stressed, are also sadly deficient here. Staff have all done specialised studies, even if only for a PhD, and have never put their learning together into any helpful ‘pattern of sound words’ as Paul describes it. Students have been fed with a string of bits and pieces, and several possible or impossible ideas on each topic. As one of them at an evangelical college said to me: ‘If you want to come out of the course with a clear evangelical framework of doctrine, you will have to supply that yourself’. The recent debates about substitutionary atonement illustrate this well. Some theologians do not seem to see the implications for other doctrines if that truth is denied.

Contextual research

Secondly, a scholarly study of the cultural, social and historical context of the period in which it was written can illuminate its meaning in fresh ways. You never know what such research may turn up; for example, suzerainty treaties and covenants in the times when the different books were written. If someone could spend several years studying the aorist tense in Greek it could prove illuminating. The churches do need scholarly work here, but the number of scholars needed is very small, and the results of such research can be passed on in condensed form in literature. Church leaders often read widely and collect what they need in books or on the internet. They do not need to have studied Greek philosophy, or be themselves learned in Near Eastern studies, but often benefit from others who are scholars in these fields. The universities hope to train up such scholars and colleges can only rarely give their staff the necessary time off from teaching, because they do not have the government funding.

Intellectually competent

Thirdly, theology needs to show the academic world that it is intellectually competent to stand alongside other disciplines. The credibility of the Christian faith must be established in these circles, and a small number of dedicated people is very important. We should honour those who have the gifts and have set themselves to recapture the ground for a truly biblical faith in the academic world. They should also provide some of the tools for theological education at more popular levels. Students, however, do not need themselves to go through most of the technicalities of such work, and there are very few openings for research and teaching in these fields. A PhD may be a good intellectual exercise, but very few of those even with PhDs in theology ever go on to do further research.

Apologetics

Fourthly, there should be an apologetic role. Future church leaders need to be aware of the different ideas that they will meet in the world, and are helped by having to do intellectual battle over these issues. That, however, is often better provided in some of the colleges. We have to ask if the debates that interest the world of academic theology are, in fact, the ones that many people outside the universities care about. Few university departments are able to help students to face the postmodern and relativistic fashions of today, the secular challenges to Christianity, or the real ethical problems that confront the local churches. You could ask someone what help his course has given him in talking to the sceptical thinkers of today, or in in ministering to the bereaved or dying. They come out of university in a situation a little like that of the medical student who complained that, while he had seen three coronary by-pass operations, which seemed largely irrelevant to being a GP, he had never been shown a patient with athsma.

Pastoral epistles

There is some substance in all of these positive values of AT. When it is well done, it provides the churches with excellent resources but, while it is a fascinating intellectual exercise, it is a big expenditure of time, money and energy if it is not a helpful preparation for any kind of ministry. It may help to train lecturers, but hardly any pastors and preachers, and simply to add on to it some courses on pastoral theology and preaching leaves the aridity of the main courses intact and potentially very damaging.

So my problem is this: what sort of theological study is most useful to the ordinary student, who has no aspirations to become an academic or to do serious research, but wants useful knowledge and skills? Others with the relevant experience can answer that better than I can.

The Pastoral Epistles give us much guidance on the matter, and I hope that the answer will not be too different from giving the student such a good knowledge and understanding of the Bible as will leave him as a ‘man of God thoroughly equipped for every good work’ (2 Timothy 3.17). That, Paul says, is the true function of the Scriptures when they are rightly taught in the churches.

Dr. Oliver Barclay,
one-time General Secretary of UCCF