Recently, Zondervan has put out several “Advice to Student” videos featuring Bible and theological professors from around the world. As the school year begins, I thought I’d share some of these videos.
Keep the primary literature primary.
My seminary–Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
If you’re doing seminary without significant involvement in a local church, as the saying goes, “You’re doing it [sic] wrong.”
Over the past two years of seminary I’ve become more and more convinced of the church’s importance in my (and others’) seminary education. It takes a church to raise a Christian. And equally so, it takes a church to form a seminarian. As such, I am convinced that going through seminary without significant involvement in a local church (i.e., not just attending, but being involved in ministry) is incredibly harmful to one’s seminary experience and formation process.
Let me share with you at least three reasons why.
We learn a lot of valuable stuff in seminary. But seminary can’t provide us with all the training we need. (Get your Greek out!) It’s a para- (“alongside”) church organization, not a para- “this-is-all-there-is!” organization.
James K. A. Smith sets out to present a vision of what a distinctively Christian education should look like. Without discarding the importance of what Christians think (worldview), he argues that authentic Christian learning ought to focus primarily on the formation of Christian desires (‘social imaginary’). In short, Smith argues that Christian education is more about formation than information, more about what one loves than what one knows. Practically speaking, distinctively Christian education should mean much more than merely teaching what is taught at any other university, but just from a Christian worldview. Rather, Christian education should be fundamentally rooted in liturgical worship as that discipline which forms students’ desires. Thus, he describes this educational ideal as ‘ecclesial,’ rooted in formative liturgical worship.
Smith’s philosophy of education is based on an understanding of worship, which is rooted in a specific anthropology. Therefore, although his main goal is to present a philosophy of education, his work has much broader implications for areas such as anthropology and corporate worship.
Smith begins his case by presenting an anthropology, because one’s view on education (and worship) is intrinsically linked to one’s understanding of the nature of man. Whereas the prevalent Christian anthropology seems to view man as primarily a thinking or believing creature, Smith argues that man is primarily a lover or desirer. Man’s decisions and behavior is primarily oriented by desire, what he loves, a vision of the ‘good life’ and a corresponding longing for it.
As some say, “education gets in the way of learning.” Although this is not entirely true, since I must attribute much of what I have learned to my formal education, there is definitely much validity to this statement. I have found that some of my greatest learning experiences occur during the summer months. No longer am I told to study or do assignments on topics that are too basic and aren’t pushing me hard enough or are on topics I’ve studied previously and am therefore not learning much in studying them at an introductory level. Come the summer months I can hone in on topics that are weaknesses or vacancies in “my arsenal.” Again, I owe a ton of what I have learned to my professors, but as I like to say, if you can read you aren’t limited to living teaches. And with that, the dead teachers tend to be the best ones. Needless to say, I look forward to my Summer studies.
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Kirk E. Miller 