Teach Your Students Well: The Seminary and a Hermeneutics of Suspicion

In Freud and Philosophy, Paul Ricoeur argues that religious believers must be willing to expose their faith to Freud's hermeneutics of suspicion. Believers will not, following the encounter, be the same people with the same faith, but, according to Ricoeur, the alternative of avoiding the encounter is not a viable option. However, a philosophy of total exposure to Freud, or anyone else issuing a challenge to religious faith, can be difficult for seminary faculty to apply, pedagogically. Indeed, seminaries are expected to graduate into ministry, not individuals experiencing a crisis of faith or meaning, but rather spiritually rock-solid men and women. The temptation, then, for seminary faculty is to go easy on their students, but this pedagogical strategy inevitably backfires. Seminarians who are sheltered from Ricoeur's challenge may be rock-solid at the persona or surface level of human personality, but this is not, necessarily, an indication that they are individuated or integrated people of faith.