Adam Neder - Theology as a Way of Life: On Teaching and Learning the Christian Faith

T his book began as a paper for the annual Karl Barth conference at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2012. The theme of the conference was Barths book Evangelical Theology , which contains the lectures he gave during his only visit to the United States. search for books that could help me think seriously about teaching Christian theology proved far more difficult than I had imagined, which seemed strange to me. When so much theological education happens in classrooms, why havent theologians written persuasively about what goes on there? Shouldnt we have numerous good books about teaching theology? We have good books about education and teaching in general, about Christian liberal arts education, and about the history of theological education, but none written by a contemporary theologian about the art of teaching Christian theology. Yet without a compelling theological vision of what it means to teach Christian theology well, and without a clear awareness of its unique challenges and temptations, our instruction will be out of joint with the subject matter, and valuable opportunities will be wasted.

Eventually I decided that if no one else was going to write the book, then I would. Not because I think I am an especially good teacher. Anyone who claims to have mastered the art of teaching Christianity is a fool. No one possesses the necessary knowledge, wisdom, eloquence, or imagination. Only the self-deceived arrive at the end of a semester thinking a course went as well as it could have gone. Anyone who doesnt find it strange that he or she should be the one to stand in front of a group of people and talk about God is either deluded or hasnt thought very deeply about what is happening. No one has the power to make God present. Everyone persuades people to believe things that are not true. Every teachers life somehow contradicts the subject matter. At some point, every teacher leads students away from God.

I didnt write this book because I think I am an exception to any of this. Whatever authority I possess is merely the result of trying to think carefully about the difference Jesus Christ makes for theological education. If he is truly God and truly human, if he reveals God to us and us to ourselves, if through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things (Col. 1:20), then how should that influence the way we think about teaching the Christian faith? How do we develop a specifically Christian approach to teaching Christian theology? This book is the result of years of struggling with this question, however unsatisfactorily.

Please dont think this is false humility. I have been a professor at Whitworth University for the past sixteen years. Most of my students think I am a good teacher. I know that because they tell me so and because they write sweet things in their course evaluations. But But if teachers are incapable of accomplishing our most basic task, of achieving our most important goal, shouldnt that shape the way we teach? And if so, how?

Much recent thinking conceives Christian education as largely a process of socialization in which students are habituated into the Christian life through repetitive practices that lead to virtue. The approach is broadly Augustinian and has numerous strengths. James K. A. Smith is its most influential proponent. Christian education aims to reeducate desire through the cultivation of habit-forming practices that orient students precognitive assumptions about the world toward the kingdom of God.

There is much to agree with and appreciate in Smiths work, and our goals overlap significantly, but readers familiar with Smiths books will find themselves in a different atmosphere here. The core theological claim of this book is that Jesus Christ establishes the truth of human identity in his life, death, and resurrection. We are who we are because Jesus is who he is. That is an objective fact that is true about everyonea reality acknowledged and enacted by individuals as the Holy Spirit awakens and empowers them to discover and embrace their lives in Christ, to become who they already are in him. I introduce this position in the first chapter, and the rest of the book unfolds from there. Smiths thesis that we are shaped by our habitual liturgies seems clearly correct to me, and it is true that in a certain sense we are what we love. But in the soil of Smiths more traditional anthropology, becoming who we are means something different than it does to someone operating with the kind of christological anthropology that animates my work, and this leads to important differences in our respective approaches. I dont intend this as a criticism, and I dont think Smith will receive it as one, since we develop our anthropologies from such obviously different starting points. We need more people engaged in the kind of work Smith is doing, and I certainly have no desire to criticize him. In fact, I think our approaches mutually enrich each others in helpful ways.