Theological Education:
Equipping the People of God – Matt 7:24-29.
By Amritraj Joshua Paul MTh II Yr
The CSI and Mar
Thoma churches have set apart this coming Sunday to focus on the theme of
“Theological Education: Equipping the People of God.” As people who are called and
are training for ministry, this theme ought to be taken with utmost seriousness
by us. The text given to us for meditation is Matt 7:24-29. From Chapter 5
onwards Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount, and by way of conclusion he tells
the people the story of the wise man and the foolish man, where both of them
built a house, the difference being that one wisely built the house by laying
the foundation on the rock, while the other foolishly laid the foundation on
the sand. When the rains, floods, and winds came, the house built by the wise
man stood its ground, while that built by the foolish man was washed away. If
we reflect on this story in the light of what Christ taught in chapter 5-7, the
lesson is not just regarding the laying of the foundation of our faith, but how
(the way, the process) are we continuing to build our faith, both individually
and as a community of faith. In the parallel passage in Luke 6:48, we are told
that the wise man even as he continues building (present active participle
masc. sing) is able to do so with confidence because he dug deeply and laid the
foundation on rock.
Paul reminds us in 1 Cor. 3:10-11 about the
foundation and the ‘how’ of the building process. For he tells us like a σοφὸς ἀρχιτέκτων – a skilled master builder – he laid the foundation, who was none other than
Jesus Christ. Regarding the how of building, Paul tells us that we must choose
with care – there is an element of caution in this admonition. An admonition to the same effect is also given
to us in Jude 20. It was a time when false teachings were slowly propping up.
In such a context Jude reminds the community of faith to build themselves up on
the most holy faith, prayerfully and in love.
How then shall we go about the task of
equipping the people of God – both with a sense of caution and a sense of joy –
so that as a community of faith, we may fulfill the purpose for which the Lord
has called us? Keeping Matt 7:24-29 as a backdrop let us consider at least four
trajectories along which we may reflect upon the relation between the Discipline
of Theology and equipping the people of God in our nation.
The Hermeneutic Dimension:
Hermeneutics is generally understood
as interpretation or translation. In simple terms it is all about meaning. If there is any area where meaning is most
desperately needed to be understood it is in relation to life. As per Johannine
theology in Christ was life and that life was the light of all people
(Jn. 1:3-4). John 1:18 tells us that Jesus Christ was the perfect
exegete who expounded the Father to us. The
Gk. word ἐξηγήσατο is an aorist tense, in the middle voice, whose nuance is not so easy to
define.
However we may qualify
the aorist tense here as a ‘consummative (culminative, ecbatic, effective)
aorist tense.’ The aorist tense is generally understood to denote the cessation
of an action. The consummative aorist tense on the other hand lays stress not
just on the completion (as against cessation) of an action, but also the
ongoing result of the completion of the action. In this context it would imply
that Christ not only expounded the Father to us, but continues his work of
expounding the Father to us. This understanding has strong theological
implications for practical ministry.
As
academicians we need to engage with issues that concern human existence and
familiarize ourselves with local categories and creatively think through and
articulate the meaning of Christ to our contemporaries. How does one go about
this? We need to interact with people, listen to them, observe situations, and
follow happenings (news – visual and print media). In short, we need to be in
touch with socio-cultural-economic-political-academic-religious reality.
The way we approach the
different issues of our times need a totally different hermeneutical approach.
We need to equip ourselves to look prophetically at our times and address
issues that concern our nation at large and the community of faith in
particular. What is expected of us is to relate the Word to the world. What is
needed is a relevant and dynamic method in the way we conceptualize and
practice theology. This concern for dynamism leads us to the second point.
The Aesthetic Dimension:
How do we understand theology in relation to aesthetics?
In simple terms aesthetics is concerned with beauty and art. Taking it beyond
beauty and art, it may be understood as being fascinated and awed by God. We
were recently reminded by Fr. K. M. George that Greek philosophers believed
that wonder was the beginning of philosophy. No wonder, with the available
categories at hand, they philosophized about almost everything under the sun.
Hermeneutics in a sense is more concerned with an interdisciplinary approach to
reality. However we must not stop there.
As Christians we also need to engage in intra-disciplinary reflections. It is
the interplay between the intra and inter disciplinary dimensions of our faith,
that gives us a strong footing to meaningfully engage our contemporaries.
The point is that when it
comes to the aspect of meaning, today many voices are crying out to be heard.
If one pays attention to them carefully, I believe that it can be a
life-transforming experience, especially in terms of understanding one’s own
faith. During my tenure in ministry while working among university students I’ve
asked them what is the relationship between our salvation and our studies.
Sadly, the common answer was to be able to study well, or to get
rank/first-class. It needs to be underlined that we confess our faith in Christ
not just to get rank or pass with a first-class. That is a poor conception of
our common salvation. Please note that I am not against doing well in
academics.
What we need is to get
things right here by a fine-tuning process. We need to develop in the words of
one of our faculty ‘the spirit of exploration.’ Academics should inspire a
sense of awe and wonder within us. I love the metaphor of the ‘horizon’ as
popularized by Anthony C. Thiselton. There is something mysterious about
horizons. The more we approach the horizon, the more it recedes. It is there,
we can see it; but at the same time, it somehow doesn’t seem to be there; but
interestingly we can go beyond what we thought was the initial limit/horizon.
God has God’s own ways of teasing our intellect. We study not just to get good
grades, but to gain in the words of the Moses ‘a wise heart.’[1]
We were also reminded by
Fr. K. M. George that today we have become mere consumers of knowledge. As a
community of faith, we need to ask ourselves this question – are we studying
for the common good of humanity, or for selfish gains? Again as we were
reminded by our faculty, added to the spirit of exploration, we also need the
spirit of humility. One word is enough to explain this – The Word (λογος). We all know the story,
who can explain it any better? When Christ spoke, people from every section of
society thronged to listen to him. Christ, the very wisdom of God humbles
himself so that we may gain the mind of Christ. Only a genuinely humble mind is
truly able to worship God in spirit and truth.
The Dogmatic Dimension:
From the hermeneutic to the aesthetic, we now come to the
dogmatic dimension. The word ‘dogmatic’ is often understood in a disapproving manner.
However it has a more positive meaning. Karl Barth begins his monumental work Church
Dogmatics with the assertion that “As a theological discipline dogmatics is
the scientific self-examination of the Christian Church with respect to the
content of its distinctive talk about God.” Later on in his Dogmatics in
Outline, he tells us that dogmatics is a ‘science,’ and not just an
ordinary science, but a ‘critical science.’
In a positive sense
Dogmatics means to make careful judgments or criticisms about the good and bad
qualities of something. In other words, there can be both a constructive and a deconstructive
side to criticism. Critical thinking is more holistic in the sense that it
takes into consideration every dimension – the cognitive, affective, cultural,
social, political, religious etc. dimensions in making its point.
In some Christian circles
the tendency is to be more apologetic regarding the Christian faith. Before we
go on to give a defense about our faith, we need to know what our faith is all
about. We mush shun the habit of giving readymade answers to questions raised
of our faith, and instead we must encourage and educate our fellow believers to
go deeper in the faith. Meaningful Christian apologetics is always governed by
an alert dogmatic conscience.
In the spirit of exploration we need to see how we can
give meaning to a particular discipline from the faith perspective and how we
can make our faith intelligible from the point of various disciplines and
communicate it to our peers sensibly. This is the challenge that we need to
present to the lay person. To be heard, we need to write and speak out in a
language that people can relate to and understand. For that to happen
successfully, we need to know in the first place what is it that we ourselves
believe.
The Ecumenical Dimension:
By ‘ecumenical’ it is meant the unity of the household of faith that
professes the crucified Jesus as the risen Lord of history and the cosmos. Unity
was part of the high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ – “that they may
be one.” The Gospel of reconciliation has to not only be heard, but it
must be seen as well. We bear effective witness to the Gospel by
powerfully demonstrating the Spirit of Unity. Today the tendency is to take a thin
‘slice’ out of Western or Eastern ecclesiastical history and make that
normative for the entire global church? Such an approach does not count for
good Christian witness. We preach only one gospel – and the content of that
gospel is Christ and Christ alone.
Conclusion:
As we pursue theological
training at this historic institution, may God give us the grace to reflect
along the hermeneutic, the aesthetic, the dogmatic and the ecumenical lines. May
God in God’s mercy strengthen us to equip the community of faith in this
nation. Amen.