Theological education, deep people and the importance of a Glasgow fountain.

Still doing a lot of thinking about the relations and interactions between theological education, ministry training and personal formation. Competence based learning outcomes are currently the most significant element in criterion driven assessment in higher education. But are they sufficient of themselves to reflect the necessary balances of an education intended to achieve more than the desirable employable competences and student customer satisfaction?

Related to the search for demonstrable competences are questionable assumptions about technique, practice, and knowledge as information.   Here's one pastor-theologian's take on the tensions between theological formation, technical competence and an instrumental approach to vocation and vocational formation.

"An equally significant concern about the increasing role of techno-rationality in pastoral and theological formation blurs the boundaries with the management models akin to economic institutions. In this context, the ubiquitous techno-rationality in whose waters children grow up, teenagers mature and thirty-somethings swim extensively these days in this part of the world, is also present in faith communities. The communities of faith are malleable due to their de facto participation in both the good and ills of our culture.

All these habits are formed in close proximity to consumerism. Cyber-culture is an environment structured by technique-laden values and practices that foster information-intensive, technique oriented habits. [Quentin Schultze in Habits of the High-Tech Heart p. 18] is prudent to warn against "the lightness of our digital being" and its "cosmic and moral shallowness".  With it comes a quasi religious philosophy of what Shultze defines as "informationalism" – "a faith in the collection and dissemination  of information as a route to social progress and personal happiness". Such a disposition emphasises the "is" over the "ought to", observation over intimacy, and measurement over meaning. The result is promiscuous knowing which promotes instrumental habits while eclipsing virtuous practices…." 

(Kristine Suna-Koro, 'Reading as Habitus', in The Power to Comprehend with All the Saints. The Formation and Practice of a Pastor-Theologian, Wallace M Alston & Cynthia A Jarvis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009),

When Bernard of Clairvaux diagnosed the cultural and moral shortcomings of scholastic and speculative philosophy he used the image of the canal and the reservoir. The problem was too many canals and not enough reservoirs; the culture wasn't forming enough "deep people". The image comes back to my mind the day after the recognition of Robert Stewart, one of Glasgow's greatest local politicians. (The fountain pictured above is in his memory, and yesterday was unveiled in its renovated and restored glory – I'm going to see it this week). Stewart was the driving force in realising the visions of bringing safe and clean drinking water to a city ravaged by typhus, cholera and dysentery. The 25+ mile-long viaduct conveying the water to Mugdock and down into Glasgow was a stunning piece of civil engineering even by the standards of Victorian self-confidence. It is an example of conduit and reservoir in creative relationship; depth and dissemination; deep resources and widespread application. For the people in October 1859, it was drinking water on tap; but for it to happen it needed the deep reservoirs of a Scottish loch, and the equally deep reservoirs of human wisdom , moral urgency, humane compassion and persuasive rhetoric of a Robert Stewart. In other words it was done by the right balance of techno-rationality and humane wisdom. The first is assessed by competence and technical know-how; the second is evidenced by moral know-why. Contemporary education needs to recover the know-why, I think; we need deep people.