That We All May Be One

As I continue my work as a life-long learner, I continue to be grateful for what was a really remarkable theological education I received at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois in the late 1960s into the 1970s. Never considered one of the Episcopal Church’s top academic seminaries, Seabury nonetheless had a solid history of preparing well trained and faithful parish priests. However, I have never believed that I received anything less than a top flight academic preparation as well.

I have been dipping back into Teilhard de Chardin who is experiencing something of a renaissance these days and I remember Professor Julian Victor Langmead Casserly waxing eloquently about the “Omega Point” and the “noosphere” as we read Teilhard’s The Divine Milieu and The Phenomenon of Man in his philosophical theology class.

In my work, many years later with the Lutherans, I was greatly helped by remembering and reflecting on the best course I ever had on The Epistle to the Romans taught by Professor Jules Moreau who made the theological concept of “salvation by grace through faith” fairly sing in his presentations, usually delivered without notes perched upon the corner of his desk. I believe we used Anders Nygren’s commentary as well as the classic by Karl Barth.

This week I opened my new edition of The Anglican Theological Review and began to read several articles on something called “The Theological Interpretation of Scripture” which is apparently gaining some ascendancy in the world of biblical scholarship today. And I remember an elective offered by Old Testament Professor Jack Van Hooser and New Testament Professor Fred Borsch entitled “Biblical Theology.” As I recall it was offered over pizza and beer at Fred’s house and explored a thematic approach to the whole Bible treating common themes like covenant and salvation and justice, looking for continuity across the centuries without for a moment neglecting the very specific contextual and historical contexts in which each of the authors worked. Back to the future?

I could go on and on including Professor David Babin’s enthusiastic introduction of the work then underway for a “new” Prayer Book and preparing us to use it pastorally in every situation as well as on Sunday mornings. David was also the best preacher on the faculty, delivering powerful but very brief “postils” as tightly constructed as a sonnet at every Friday morning Eucharist. He was, of course, homiletics as well as liturgics instructor and I have always been grateful for his encouragement and wisdom on the preaching life.

We were always counseled that the seminary task was not to impart a body of knowledge which would carry us once and for all through the years of our active ordained ministry. But rather, that they were providing us tools to become lifelong learners. I have tried to rise to that challenge and, on this All Souls’ Day, to give thanks for those giants who gave me those tools.

Laus Deo!

This entry was posted on November 2, 2017 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Blogroll, Church Life, Ecumenical, Emergent Church, Justice and Peace, Religion, Scripture, The Episcopal Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.