From The Living Church-
Turning Our Thought to God
By Joseph Mangina
We are entering a radically new era of theological education in North America. Christendom is dying apace. Students want a more flexible curriculum, tooled to part-time study and distance learning, forcing us to rethink the very idea of “formation.” Shrinking resources mean that everyone will have to do more with less, a goal that can be accomplished partly through the efficient use of technology. Students will be using e-readers in place of textbooks, and instead of essays they will write blogs. Seminary education will be dynamic, pluralist, ecumenical, and missional, the food in the refectory will be certified Organic purchased from local farmers, and all the coffee will be Fair Trade.
Or not, as the case may be.
There is always a certain degree of hyperventilating in academic circles about “new paradigms,” and theology is no exception. Of course there is a grain of truth in such remarks. We live in rapidly changing times, and some of the prophecies in my opening paragraph may even be accurate; though I, for one, would be loathe to see my dog-eared copy of the Church Dogmatics replaced by a Kindle. And I am often struck by how perduringly “relevant” old-fashioned theological curricula remain.
New paradigm or old, students still must master the contents of the Bible. They need to know the basic outlines of Church history and the “depth grammar” of the creeds. In my introductory theology course, I spend basically the entire first semester on Nicea and Chalcedon, trying to convince students that God is triune “all the way down” and that the Son of God and the Son of Mary are the same person. They are digesting all this at the same time they are taking challenging courses in Scripture, Anglican theology, and missional congregations.
More here
http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2010/4/5/theological-education-for-the-whole-church
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