Got caught up in lots of other stuff to be done, so didn't get the chance to post the second excerpt from Archbishop Rowan Williams lecture on theological education. here it is
"I think that we have suffered a great deal from visions and models of education that have not sufficiently directed us to the centrality of the body of Christ, as the theological theme, as that which more than anything else holds for us the newness of the new creation, the difference of where we are and how we relate. We have a very long way to go in making our Anglican church a coherent, communal, obedient, renewed family of congregations. And yet we share the reality given in Christ by our baptism, the reality of Christ's body. The theological education we need, I believe, in the Communion is something which will make that come alive for us, which will make us literate in reading scripture and doctrine and church history, which will deepen in us those skills of discernment that we need in respect of our own calling and the calling of others, which will set us free from being simply an ecclesiastical organisation preoccupied with policing itself in various ways which will perhaps make us a more effective servant of the world into which God calls us. The world in which God invites us to recognise him, respond to him, praise, be glad in him, a world which is on the way to becoming that new creation which is really the context, the locus of any theology worth the name."
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And not only in the Anglican communion. This entire lecture is a contemplative commendation of theological education as articulated doxology, thinking in the context of worship, wonder finding words to praise, and an obedience of the heart and mind to the mystery that calls us to attentiveness, attempted articulacy and when necessary to unembarrased silence as study stills itself into prayer.
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