Seminary, Subjectivity, And The Centrality Of Scripture: Reflections On The Current Crisis In Evangelical Seminary Education -- By: Scott J. Hafemann

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 31:2 (Jun 1988)
Article: Seminary, Subjectivity, And The Centrality Of Scripture: Reflections On The Current Crisis In Evangelical Seminary Education
Author: Scott J. Hafemann


Seminary, Subjectivity, And The Centrality Of Scripture: Reflections On The Current Crisis In Evangelical Seminary Education

Scott J. Hafemann*

As the most recent issue of Theological Education makes clear, theological education in America is in turmoil.1 The journal reports the findings of the first major study of the Doctor of Ministry degree program in American seminaries. But the lack of consensus about the nature, purpose and evaluation of the degree that it reveals merely signals the severity of the underlying identity crisis that plagues seminaries today as a whole, since the D. Min. is widely agreed to be a continuation and extension of the seminary’s basic degrees and curriculum. As Faith E. Burgess put it: “We do not have any clear understanding as to what is ‘competence’ and thus we are not clear what we mean by the D. Min. degree denoting ‘advanced competence’.”2

Since seminaries today often do not know where they are going or where they think their students ought to go, it becomes virtually impossible for them to determine when someone has taken a significant step toward getting there. No one is quite sure, therefore, what the D. Min. really signifies, not to mention the M. Div., M. A. and M. R. E. Just what is it that seminary students ought to learn and be able to do, and how will we know if they have achieved it? Nobody seems to know for sure.

Walter Brueggemann’s contribution is certainly a step in the right direction toward solving this serious problem.3 His goal of stating “a case for theological education on biblical/theological grounds”4 is noble and needed. And his concern is well founded. The Church and its seminaries today seem to lack the courage to confront their culture prophetically with “an alternative reading of reality” derived from the Bible.5

*Scott Hafemann is associate professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Moreover, Brueggemann’s warning is also timely. Given the power of civil religion and the pervasive dominance of our culture’s false “reading of reality,” our new “script” as Christians must not “be generated out of our raw experiences or our good intention.”6 In society at large we are in a “crisis situation” in which “the reading of reality entrusted to us in the community of faith is in profound contradiction wi...

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