“Theological” “Education”: On Some of the Seminary’s “Theological Education” Concepts

A seminary is the wisdom center of the life of the church for the purpose of faith seeking understanding. As such, a seminary is a place where the faith of teachers and students seeks understanding and where they do theological reflection.

“Theology” is from Theologia

“Theology” having gone through theological reflection is theologia (theological wisdom), the concrete display of a belief. Not only is theological wisdom man’s propositional cognition of God, but it is also an intuition of faith. It is also an engagement and action of affection and the formation of the moral life. On the one hand, theological wisdom comprises the virtue of a life of faith. It demands not only clarity, coherence, and comprehensiveness in thinking but also honesty, fairness, patience, abstinence, and friendliness in the cultivation of virtue. On the other hand, the highest ideal of theological wisdom is the formation of spirituality. It is closely related to obedience and following Jesus Christ, and is also associated with worship, church music, Bible study, sermon preaching, prayer, witness, care, education, leadership, work, and life practice.

From another perspective, in order to pursue, cultivate, and practice”theological wisdom”, seminary teachers and students have to know themselves and the world. They need to know God, experience God, and fear God. Then, they must pull together their understanding of the Bible and the faith and value in the Bible to form a vision in order to understand reality. It is through this vision that we discern tradition, culture, and those elements that bring about human oppression and distortion in the world. It is also through this vision that we can further discern what the truth is and affirm man’s mode of living and his responsibility. Such a vision can put different objects together to form a coherent and meaningful whole so that they can be analyzed and their differences examined. As James Gustafson points out, theological education is precisely needed to examine and understand the formation of a theological perspective, the difference between good and bad values, the determination and internalization of value, and the spiritual formation of the human soul.

In fact, since New Testament times up to today, the church expects her leaders to be filled with theological wisdom, be role models by word and by deed, and to voice out and live out the gospel with a life of holiness. These expectations of church leaders lie not only in what they can point out that needs to be done, but also in what they can discern to be good and outstanding. In this way, a church leader can be an outstanding leader if that leader has theological wisdom.

“Education” Is the Remaking of a Disciple Community

The germination and growth of”theological wisdom” takes place in the midst of a disciple community.

Since the Diamond Jubilee Anniversary of the Seminary in 2011, our teachers and students have always talked about HKBTS as a”disciple community”. The word”disciple” (mathetes) can be translated as”learner”. A”disciple” takes the exhortation from a teacher as he follows and inherits his teacher’s teaching. However, the teacher cannot regard himself as an”expert” by forgetting that a teacher is also a disciple, his life has not reached full maturity and he ought to learn to act as a disciple all his life.

As a disciple of Jesus Christ, the teacher must know more about Jesus Christ, about his feeling, thought, and action. Knowing the mode of his feeling, thought and action is to have the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, to know the heart (phronein; Php 2:5) of Christ. The heart of Christ is a heart of wisdom, a heart that is filled with life’s practical wisdom. In this way, at the Seminary, everyone ought to receive guidance. Students are learning, receiving guidance from God and teachers; teachers are learning too, receiving guidance from God in the community of teachers and students. Altogether everyone grows in an environment conducive to receiving guidance from God and man and together learn the wisdom of Christ and adopt Christ Jesus’ attitude. The best mode of theological education is a discipleship education.

To realize such an education, teachers must authentically become disciples of Jesus Christ. They need to understand biblical truth, to be molded by God, to lead a good life and cultivate a pure soul. Indeed, teachers must have a pure heart in order to understand biblical teaching. Furthermore, teachers must have a good moral character and pass on biblical truth through their character. Powerful preaching of truth passes on to students by way of the teachers’ character because students expect their teachers to embody the belief and faith that they preach.

The teacher’s character is contagious. If a student is molded by teachers of great moral character, that student stands a high chance of becoming a pastor with good character. If a student is molded by a teacher who is honest and upright, that student stands a high chance of becoming an honest and upright pastor. On this basis, students can follow their teachers’ footsteps and learn from and with someone who has mastered biblical hermeneutics, church history, systematic theology, ethical thinking, preaching, missions, pastoral care, Christian education, worship, church music, and who are teachers leading a good life and having a good moral character.

This kind of education is called”disciple education” which is a process of remaking—a process of lifelong learning. In this process, man learns to pay close attention to God’s word and to experience the renewal of spirituality, emotion, thought, attitude, intellect, faith, and ethics.”Remaking” is a holistic learning where the whole person is totally involved in the process. “Disciple education” is different from the kind of learning which takes place in other departments, for example, mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, and architecture. Students in these departments can put aside their personal problems most of the time and then learn their subjects”objectively”. But in a seminary, teachers and students are called by God to live in a world filled with ambiguity and suffering while facing the issues of birth, death, and meaning. Hardship, loneliness, disorder, and sin are not only the situations students face, but are the real living conditions that teachers also face. Both teachers and students experience the hardship, loneliness, disorder, and sin of human existence. However, they live in the promise and reality of God’s grace. These are the subject matters that teachers and students need to learn throughout their lives because they are existential problems of life. Therefore, on the one hand, the remaking of theological education is a work of the intellect, being academic and objective; on the other hand, it is over and beyond being”objective”, prompting the learner to enter into conviction and action. It must take place in a person’s life. It is mystery and grace. In addition, the remaking of theological education is a process that is made possible through the dialectic between reflection and experience. Some students need to begin from the experience of practice in order to enter into thinking; some other students begin with textual reading, abstract analysis, and thinking in order to enter into experience. Therefore, a learner not only gains insight from reflection of the intellect, they can also gain insight from action. Reflection is closely linked with practice as it cannot do without experience.

“Theological Education” Is the Molding of a Disciple Community of Worship

What is more important is that this kind of mutual rapport of reflection and practice takes place in the context of a community. The necessary condition of remaking is”community”. Members of the community think, feel, and act together so that their lives go through remaking together and experience the renewal of the heart and practice. In this community, members learn to fear God, love God, celebrate the redemption of life, practice forgiveness, entertain strangers, adore truth, and abhor sin. All the remaking takes place through community worship.

The Seminary as a disciple community will ultimately become a community of worship. The theological wisdom of the seminary takes place within a fellowship that focuses on God and worships God. The ultimate context of theological education is worship: Through thinking about God who is the only God, we strive to enable our lives to mature; through fearing God and knowing that God is the only one that we fear also enables our lives to mature. In the seminary, worship takes priority; it is through worshipping God that the remaking of our lives is made possible. In worshipping God, we can mold our own community.

In worshipping God (one of the scenes is the Morning Chapel), both teachers and students experience God’s word together. Teachers not only study material about the biblical text in the office, but read out and preach the Bible in the context of worship. At the same moment of worship, teachers and students together listen to and read the Bible, engaging in the story of Christ together. When the Bible is preached, the Bible is regarded as the story between God and man and not a lonely, personal story, nor is it something only related to the information about ancient Israelites or the content of their faith. Preaching a sermon is no longer the job of individual pastors. Instead, the practice of preaching is an activity that belongs to the action of a community. In preaching a sermon, the sermon message of the preacher becomes an event that takes place in the whole community of faith. In this way, through seminary preaching the seminary community collectively recognize the plain sense of the Biblical stories.

In this way, through worshipping God together, not only can teachers and students experience the word of God together, but this can also go further to enable the churches to reflect on the authority of scripture. Teachers first help students experience the word of God by worshipping together. Then students will later become pastors and teachers in the churches after graduation, and they will point the way out for those brothers and sisters perplexed by absolutism or relativism (relating to those issues such as the authority and truth of the Bible). From this we see that the seminary and the church are closely interconnected: The remaking of students and teachers enables members of the community to have theologia, being imbued with power and conviction in speaking the language of faith for the purpose of serving the churches. While serving in churches, students can understand their faith right at the moment as they practice serving God and man. The seminary needs to become part of the church, to shoulder the responsibility of what a seminary should do: To understand our faith in different contexts, amongst which the most important is worshipping God.

In the last six years, HKBTS has continued to stress the germination of theologia, centering upon cultivating pastors who have both good spiritual life and theologia. HKBTS’s “theological education” is to train pastors’ theologia through rigorous academic study, professors coaching students with their own lives, the seminary community’s communal worship and prayer, the daily fellowship of the communion of the saints, the training of the spirituality of the pastor’s role and ministerial skills, the character formation of oneself and others, and through our commitment to moral responsibility. This wisdom includes training in a special mode of thinking and the formation of a distinct life disposition. In this way, HKBTS’s”theological education” is the formation of a disciple community. It is the formation of a disciple community of worship. We have joyfully stepped onto this pathway, blessed by divine insight and support, and kept growing and heading toward the educational mission of the Seminary’s 65th year, and inheriting the historical call of the Leung Kwong Baptist Divinity College for the 85th year.

Aug 2015