My Gran was a self taught daughter of a miner and the mother
of miners in Allanton near Shotts. She taught me to say “A slight inclination
of the cranium is as adequate as a spasmodic movement of the left optic to an
equine quadruped devoid of its visual capacity”
Once I had learned it by heart
and recited it she said, “James, you are expostulating far beyond the
exuberance of your own verbosity and your aristocratic language is too superior
to my diminutive sarcastications – so please, be quiet!”
Gran didn’t say that
with a twinkle in her eye. She didn’t do twinkles – she said it with a glint, a
kind of steely “I dare you to answer back” look.
At the end of last Session our leaving students bought a
hoodie with their personal motto on the back. Mine had the claim “I’m a
sesquipedalian”. A lover of big words
Theological education is about learning big words – obvious
ones like hermeneutics, eschatology, epistemology, these are the secondary ones; others like Gospel,
Jesus, grace, sin, faith are of primary and defining importance. Words are big not because of their length or syllable
count. It’s the content that makes words large, expansive and vast.George Herbert's poem "Agonie" begins with this verse:
Philosophers have measured mountains,
Fathom'd the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk'd with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains
But there are two vast,
spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.
An entire theological and philosophical syllabus is
contained in those two words, sin and love. But all the other big words we learn
to use in theological thinking and discourse, are the tools we use to understand,
to analyse, to apply and with the aim of living the Christ life as Christians
who can give good reasons for the hope that is within. Though often our
vocabulary is over-strecthed by the vast realities of the Christian Gospel, the
words we use help to give clarity to ideas which in turn shape and form vision,
and train the mind to think precisely, critically and creatively about Gospel, culture and
church – about witness, mission and discipleship, and how those double threefold
strands weave into a whole and holy Christian life.
Two books I have lived with for a year or two couldn’t be
more different yet they exist between the same covers of the Bible,
Ecclesiastes and Colossians. As Christians we exist between the two poles of “all
is vanity” and “He has made all things
one, reconciling to Himself all things, making peace by the blood of the cross.”
So a theological education which aims at formation for
ministry holds the place of tension between culture, church and Gospel. The
goal and the focus of spiritual and intellectual energy is on equipping and
enabling students, working with them and for them, deepening understanding,
sharpening thinking, helping explore gifts and experiences in their lives. And
then to support them in enabling and appropriating these, to integrate them, to
take hold of all they are and make it a living sacrifice as they are
transformed by the renewing of their minds and conformed not to our culture but
to Christ. So they become powerful conduits and efficient conductors of the
Gospel, bridge people who understand the connections and disconnections between
Gospel culture, and church and who speak
and think always and everywhere, with Christ on the Horizon, the Colossian Christ in whom all the fullness
of God was pleased to dwell.