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Toward a Critical Theological Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Ronald F. Thiemann
Ronald F. Thiemann
Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School
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Extract

One hundred and seventy years ago, on 17 July 1816, the Society for the Promotion of Theological Education in Harvard University was established, thus beginning a process that led to the founding of a “faculty of theology” or Theological Seminary at the University. Undergraduate education at Harvard College had by this time moved quite far from the founders' original concern to provide a literate ministry to the churches. By the beginning of the nineteenth century Harvard men were educated in a broad curriculum oriented more toward liberal education than professional training. So the theological faculty was created in order to provide specialized training for those preparing to enter the Christian ministry

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , January 1987 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1987

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References

* This essay was originally presented as my Inaugural Convocation Address at the Memorial Church, Harvard University, on 1 October 1986. My thinking about theological education has been significantly influenced by Farley's, Edward seminal Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983)Google Scholar. Although my constructive proposal is quite different from that presented by Farley, I remain indebted to his insightful analysis of the plight of theological education. My reflection on theology as a critical inquiry has been aided by Wood's, CharlesVision and Discernment: An Orientation in Theological Study (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985)Google Scholar and by Fiorenza's, Francis Schüssler presidential address to the Catholic Theological Society of America, “Foundations of Theology: A Community's Tradition of Discourse and Practice,” CTSA Proceedings 41 (1986) 107–34.Google Scholar

1 “Trustees' Records” of the Society for the Promotion of Theological Education (Harvard University Archives) 6.

2 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, “Deducirter Plan einer zu Berlin zu errichtenden höheren Lehranstalt (1807)” in Sämmtliche Werke (Berlin, 1846) 8. 97–204.Google Scholar

3 See Farley, Theologia, 83–84.

4 Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn in Sämmtliche Werke (Berlin, 1846) 3.535–624.Google Scholar

5 Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums zum Behuf einleitender Vorlesungen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977);Google Scholar ET Brief Outline of the Study of Theology (trans. Tice, T. N.; Richmond: John Knox, 1966).Google Scholar

6 Farley, Theologia, passim.

7 Ibid., 86.

8 Wright, Conrad, “The Early Period (1811–40),” in Williams, George Huntston, ed., The Harvard Divinity School: Its Place in Harvard University and in American Culture (Boston: Beacon, 1954) 27.Google Scholar

9 Willard L. Sperry, “Preparation for the Ministry in a Nondenominational School,” in Ibid., 272–94.

10 Levering Reynolds, Jr., “The Later Years (1880–1953),” in Ibid., 171–72.

11 Ibid., 172.

12 Ibid.

13 Maclntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) 207.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 175.