Theological Education in a New Missional Era: A Personal Journey with Seven Theses

The author's personal journey in discovering, developing, researching and practicing adult theological education in the church is rehearsed, pointing out key learning moments along the way. Out of this praxis seven theses are offered that set an agenda for theological education in the new missional era in which the church finds itself.     

IMAGO DEI,DUALISM, AND EVOLUTION: A PHILOSOPHICAL DEFENSE OF THE STRUCTURAL IMAGE OF GOD

Most contemporary theologians have distanced themselves from views that identify the image of God with a capacity or a set of capacities that humans have. This article examines three arguments against the structural view and finds them wanting. The first argument is that the structural view entails mind/body dualism and dualism is no longer viable given neuroscience and contemporary philosophy. Against this, I argue that contemporary forms of dualism are able to circumvent such worries and are at least prima facie plausible. The second claim is that structural views end up disvaluing the human body and our relatedness. Here, I argue that neither the structural view nor dualism has such consequences. The third issue consists of various evolutionary worries that have to do with the lack of a clear‐cut boundary between human capacities and the capacities of nonhuman animals. As a response, the article argues that although there might not be a clear‐cut set of capacities that all humans share, we could still have a notion of human distinctiveness that is sufficient for the structural image of God.     

Equipping the Equippers: The Pedagogical and Programmatic Implications of The Christians' Callings in the World Project

When five theological schools realized (a) their graduates affirmed vocation as central to their theology and practice, yet (b) the parishioners of their graduates nevertheless did not feel called, they knew they had to do something. For six years, faculty teams from these schools conducted a variety of experiments in pedagogy, curriculum reform, and program development in order to train their graduates to equip all of God's people to claim and live their vocational identity in the world. This article introduces the identified challenge and necessary theological and pedagogical shift and then describes five of those experiments in greater detail.     

The Baltic Churches and the Challenges of the Post-Communist World

This article analyses and describes the recent history of the Baltic churches, their theological reorientation and the challenges they have encountered in the post-Communist Baltic society. The focus is on the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Lutheran churches whereas the Catholic and Orthodox churches receive less attention. It is first demonstrated that much has changed since the Second World War regarding the churches' membership numbers and their societal position. The article then pays attention to two phenomena that have caused much discussion not only within the churches but also among foreign observers: the fear that the Lutheran Church will surrender to the Catholic Church, and the quite opposite anxiety that the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod will grow too influential within Baltic Lutheranism. Finally, the author examines the way the Baltic churches have been involved in politics during the last two decades.     

Hidden Treasures in Theological Education: The Writing Tutor,the Spiritual Director,and Practices of Academic and Spiritual Mentoring

Mentoring is an important but often overlooked resource in theological education and students' academic and spiritual formation. This essay profiles the mentoring practices and postures of the writing tutor and the spiritual director as exemplars of academic and spiritual mentoring. An extended probe of this analogy affirms the integration of academic and spiritual formation as a core value in theological education; identifies mentoring in theological education as a hidden treasure fostering this integration and warranting attention as a theological practice; and re‐envisions the theological practice of mentoring under the traditional rubric of the “care of souls,” embracing the relational, educational, formational, spiritual, and rhetorical dimensions of this practice.     

PEIRCEAN APPROACHES TO EMERGENT SYSTEMS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Cognitive science and religion provides perspectives on human cognition and spirituality. Emergent systems theory captures the subatomic, physical, biological, psychological, cultural, and transcendent relationships that constitute the human person. C. S. Peirce's metaphysical categories and existential graphs enrich traditional cognitive science modeling tools to capture emergent phenomena. From this richer perspective, one can reinterpret the traditional doctrine of soul as form of the body in terms of information as the constellation of constitutive relationships that enables real possibility.     

A Theological Challenge: Coordinating Biological, Social, and Religious Visions of Humanity

This paper attempts two tasks. First, it sketches how the natural sciences (including especially the biological sciences), the social sciences, and the scientific study of religion can be understood to furnish complementary, consonant perspectives on human beings and human groups. This suggests that it is possible to speak of a modern secular interpretation of humanity (MSIH) to which these perspectives contribute (though not without tensions). MSIH is not a comprehensive interpretation of human beings, if only because it adopts a posture of neutrality with regard to the reality of religious objects and the truth of theological claims about them. MSIH is certainly an impressively forceful interpretation, however, and it needs to be reckoned with by any perspective on human life that seeks to insert its truth claims into the arena of public debate. Second, the paper considers two challenges that MSIH poses to specifically theological interpretations of human beings. On the one hand, in spite of its posture of religious neutrality, MSIH is a key element in a class of wider, seemingly antireligious interpretations of humanity, including especially projectionist and illusionist critiques of religion. It is consonance with MSIH that makes these critiques such formidable competitors for traditional theological interpretations of human beings. On the other hand, and taking the religiously neutral posture of MSIH at face value, theological accounts of humanity that seek to coordinate the insights of MSIH with positive religious visions of human life must find ways to overcome or manage such dissonance as arises. The goal of synthesis is defended as important, and strategies for managing these challenges, especially in light of the pluralism of extant philosophical and theological interpretations of human beings, are advocated.     

EARLY MODERN PROTESTANT VIRTUOSOS AND SCIENTISTS: SOME COMMENTS

The following essay is divided in three parts. First, while sharing in principle Harrison's hypothesis of an affinity between the sixteenth‐century Reformation and early modern science, it questions the connection between the latter and the Weberian “disenchantment of the world.” Second, it suggests a broader group of possible actors than that envisaged by Harrison in referring to virtuoso collectors and their cabinets of curiosities who are rather marginalized in Harrison's narrative. And third, it highlights (in agreement with Harrison) the physico‐theology of the second half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century and beyond as an important temporary fusion of religion/theology and science at a time when the new science was still striving for social and religious respectability.