Theological Education and Emerging Anthropologies

The central message of the gospel is that God incarnate in Jesus Christ makes possible the restoration of our humanity.

How that message is received, understood, and articulated within each culture will depend upon that culture’s understanding of what it means to be human. While the understanding of what it means to be human may be placed in religious context, understanding a culture’s anthropology as more important that understandings its theology for communicating the gospel message. 

As importantly, it is in the anthropology of a culture that we will find God revealing God’s self within the culture. In the order of creation narrated in scripture God reveals to the first humans the natural order that includes themselves, their relation to that order, and their relationship to one another before God reveals God's own nature. Natural revelation, both in relation to the non-human and social orders precedes the special revelation by which God reveals specifically what it means to be human in relation to God.

This is ratified by the Incarnation, through which we learn that we cannot know God as God until we are restored to our true human selves by God incarnate as a human. Jesus' teaching and works, which focus entirely on restoring humanity, are one with his self-hood: making it possible to grasp that God is love. The disciples that would worship Jesus as the Christ would first know him as a human, and will naturally articulate the meaning of his divinity in terms of their how culture's understanding of humanity.

Because of its long history within the family of cultures called “The West,” and its formative role in shaping those cultures, the Christian theological interest in anthropology has primarily been in articulating the anthropology presumed to be found in scripture and continued in Western culture. Understanding how cultures outside the West construct the human person has primarily been a problem for missiology. And typically missiologists have been concerned with how the gospel addresses and reforms the presumed-to-be-inadequate anthropologies of those cultures.

The distinction between a supposedly normative Christian theological anthropology arising from what is sometimes called a “Christian” worldview and those anthropologies found in the diversity of non-Western cultures engaged by the gospel has always been problematic.

The central truth of Incarnation cannot help but be articulated within a particular culture’s anthropology, including those of 1st century Palestinian Judaism and later Greece and Rome. There is no identifiable Christian anthropology apart from that of the cultural environment into which Jesus was born and the first cultural environment into which it spread. Unless we take the fact of his birth as validating that worldview as normative and universal, which itself has little support in scripture, theological anthropology is inevitably a form of contextual theology.

Unfortunately the bitter fight with modernity waged by Christian evangelicals has led them to normalize this contextual theology and thus defend what they call a "Christian worldview." The superficial resemblance of this worldview with those of other non-modern cultures has then bolstered their claims that the so-called "Christian worldview" is actually universal, with modernity representing a dolorous deviation that must be corrected.  It is an approach as misguided as that of theologians in the liberal tradition that assume the ultimate universalization of the modern.

We now find that the anthropological consensus in Western culture is dissolving under the impacts of: 1. Growing cultural diversity in Europe and North America, 2. Rapid advances in the scientific understanding of the human person and, 3. Technological advances that introduce new possibilities for engagement among humans and between humans and machines. Moreover the process of globalization of Christianity, recognized as having taken place from the beginning, and which is now accelerating, challenges all claims from the West to possess or ever have possessed a normative anthropology. Global Christianity has multiple anthropologies, and from within each the gospel of God incarnate is necessarily understood in different ways.

This means that for theological education the missiological challenge to identify and relate the gospel to a diversity of cultures has become a central feature of the ministry of the church, and thus the pastoral leaders of the church. Standard curricula that place missiology or mission studies as a peripheral concern while continuing to privilege Western forms of theological anthropology are becoming increasingly ineffective in preparing men and women for ministry. Instead students need to be taught to analyze both their own culture and other emerging cultures (not least that of the emergent 2nd Machine age) in order to understand the fundamental meaning of Incarnation and how it is leads to the restoration of the fullness of human life.

Indeed, to go further, we must realize that a concern with philosophical theology, metaphysics, and systematic theology are  a product of a particular western and now modern cultural context, and indeed more specifically the culture of the intellectual elites who early on took control of the Christian church and imposed their particular interests on its theological endeavors. Which isn't to say they are irrelevant. They coincide with the cultural values of the rising educated middle class within which Methodism made its home in the 20th century and were thus a legitimate form of inculturation.

But even that culture is changing, and theological education must reckon with those changes or grow irrelevant.

In short, today and in the foreseeable future missiology as the basic inquiry into cultural context and how it influences the gospel need to take precedence over other forms of inquiry in seeking to articulate the meaning of the gospel in any and every particular place and time. They are the foundation of a theological education, for they alone provide a basis for comprehending how God's self-revelation in nature and society prepares for  God's special revelation in the contemporary world of ministry.

Theological Education and Social Responsibility

United Methodist theological schools have traditionally worked within a cultural system that assumed the value, and indeed necessity, of institutional engagement with the larger society both as a form of institutional responsibility and as a critical part of the pedagogy of preparing people for ministry in a socially engaged church. While this commitment remains unchanging, the modes of engagement must change in response to the changing cultural environments in which schools find themselves as well as the changing cultures within the churches their students will serve. 

As I suggested in the previous post, this first requires using the concept of culture as a key framework for analyzing the social situation in which a school finds itself. This doesn't displace other frameworks for social analysis, but it can help identify how to most effectively proclaim the gospel in its social context. After all, it is primarily culture that determines how societies understand themselves and adapt to their environment. Particularly in the complex cultural setting of contemporary US and global society understanding underlying cultural values and modes of influence will be critical to the faithful exercise of social responsibility. 

One aspect of this is grasping the complexity of US culture, particularly as it affects political values and affiliations. The work of Woodard in America's Nations is only one example of important contemporary efforts to map the complexity of the social terrain in which Christians bear witness. 

Another example is the rapid change and diminution in the role of traditional media in shaping the conscience of society, as well as the fragmentation of social consciousness abetted by the rise of new social media. Traditional means of shaping pubic opinion toward political decisions that accomplish social goals have greatly diminished in effectiveness, leaving institutions committed to these means without their traditional influence. In the case of the theological school this not only impacts the witness of the school, it impacts the effectiveness of the leaders they are training. 

We have seen this is the 2016 elections. In the period prior to the elections in my home state, Texas, there were an unprecedented number of political rallies opposing the election of Donald Trump and the implementation of his policies. The traditional media were flooded with messaging from churches and advocacy groups opposed to the policies of now president Trump. Yet in the end there was little evidence of impact on the final voting. Instead, as has been thoroughly analyzed, it was social media and non-traditional news that seemed to have been most effective in engaging president Trump's base and demotivating his opponents. Neither marches nor rallies, nor mainstream media blitzes seem to have been effective. 

By contrast the campaign of Beto O'Rourke for senate only two years later in 2018 used social media in combination with traditional block-walking to great effect in a near-defeat of Ted Cruz, who had been considered untouchable. This was at least in part because Cruz' campaign did not understand the emerging cultures of Texas and thus he continued to rely heavily on both the traditional media and messaging of his previous successful campaign.  

This is relevant to socially engaged theological education because schools have a responsibility to influence the emerging society of the 21st century toward Christian values, and because students need to learn how they and their ministries can be effective as change agents in society. This latter is in part an issue of ecclesiology, and thus a realm of contestation among theologians. But it is equally a matter of understanding effective communication in the wider cultural environment: a primarily missiological question that requires an understanding of how various forms of media function in different cultural settings. 

As an example: One important example of changing roles of media is a shift from messaging to conversation as a means of influencing individuals and groups. Traditional media place static messages in the public realm, repeating them almost endlessly to maintain and widen their influence. Social media allow and encourage conversation and engagement with a message. The most effective messages are not those broadcast most widely, but those which spread virally as individuals repeat them and draw their own social network into conversation. 

We have begun to understand that social media are ineffective when used as a megaphone to announce events or promulgate political ideas. They are most effective when those who seek to influence society can both initiate and shape an ongoing conversation that spreads organically through interlocking social networks. 

This is, of course, only the most basic description of how an emerging cultures influence institutional commitments to social engagement. The reality is both more complex and demands its own theological analysis. In the 19th century the debate over the "use of means" in evangelism was effectively short-circuited as Christians rapidly accepted the emerging cultural values. After all, they arose within a presumed Christian culture. Now, even as institutions and leaders must learn how to use social media effectively, the question of whether social media by its very nature promulgates values antithetical to the gospel must be considered. Again, this is a fundamentally missiological question with its own tradition of inquiry.

While the current cultural landscape can seem daunting the basic questions that need to be ask are familiar to Christians engaged in witness in new and complex cultural settings. Where in emerging or newly encountered cultures do we see the work of God in manifestations of God's Reign? Where do we find hostility to that reign that must be transformed by love? Such questions must not only be addressed to contemporary society, but to the means by which society engages in its own transformation. Only as we answer these questions can theological schools become effective agents of change. 

Theological Education in a Changing Culture

In an earlier blog I spoke of how the paradigm for higher education was shifting from "school" to "LMS," from place to system. One way to explore this change is to use various forms of systems theory that capture the complexity and dynamism characteristic of the larger cultural environment. 

One such approach is to understand the theological school as a cultural system in the midst of other cultural systems that make up its larger environment. This allows us to bring both methods of cultural analysis and cultural intelligence to bear on understanding and relating to these systems. And in considering the school itself as a culture system we also gain new means of understanding the dynamism of its relationships with these systems and use new analytical tools to address its inevitably internal frictions.

This is particularly important in the 21st century if we are to avoid adopting static solutions to dynamic challenges. I'll offer one example as a beginning for further reflection.

Theological schools, and indeed virtually all institutions of higher education are rushing to implement systems of online education. These appear a necessary response to rapid changes in number and culture of potential students and the value student culture places on accessibility and personalization, as well as the need for new pedagogical theories to address the ways these students best learn.

The problem with simply identifying "online" as a solution to the challenge of declining numbers of students and increasing competition with more "contemporary" schools is that merely going online risks creating a new set of static structures that cannot keep up with the changing culture of the potential student and student population. Within the school the implementation of such systems creates stress among existing faculty and creates conflicts over best practices in pedagogy.

As every theological school experiences, online courses may not best utilize faculty strengths or address the demands of credentialing authorities necessary to a student's ministry. In other words it may not be a ready adaptation to a changing cultural environment.

Thus a better way to view "online" is as a constantly evolving set of tools and pedagogical methods that expands the range of responses a theological school can offer to a changing cultural environment. Deploying these tools, among the many already available out of the long traditions of theological education, should involve looking at the actual cultural values of the student culture in a way that both acknowledges and honors those values, but also transforms them as the student is prepared for ministry.

Simultaneously a theological school must be constantly aware of emerging tools and the possibilities that they bring.

As an example of emerging tools, the advent of virtual reality and augmented reality as a medium of engagement.  Current implementations of online education have only the crudest forms of interaction among students, usually through written discussion forums. But it is already possible to create virtual classrooms in which students freely interact in a 3 dimensional space. As an intermediate step to this streaming 360 video can make integration of classroom lectures and online participation more engaging. Imagine the possibilities for making the classroom more accessible not merely as intellectual theater, but as a realm of real human interaction. 

In any case the kind of fully interactive and emotionally engaged relationships that need to be cultivated for the sake of effective ministry, while poorly addressed by "online" today may be addressed by emerging technologies in the very future. And to the extent that these emerging technologies become part of church culture then understanding them isn't merely a matter of theological school adaptation to student culture. It it a theological task rooted in understanding the missional meaning of "ex-carnation;" the driving of the spiritual from the physical associated with a growing wedge between the individual and society. Only a theological understanding of these can ground the adaptation of these technologies in the context of robust and culturally aware ecclesiologies.

In the meantime it would be best to adopt a pedagogical posture that allows constant adaptation to the changing environment in which theological education finds itself today rather than static adaptation of new technologies that themselves are in a state of flux.