Resident Theologian
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Christian ethics
This spring semester I’m piloting a course in theological ethics for upper-level students at ACU. Wednesday this week wrapped up our fourth week as well as part 1 of the course. To begin the work of synthesis I wrote up a series of ten theses on Christian ethics and distributed copies to the class. Here’s what I wrote.
This spring semester I’m piloting a course in theological ethics for upper-level students at ACU. Wednesday this week wrapped up our fourth week as well as part 1 of the course. To begin the work of synthesis I wrote up a series of ten theses on Christian ethics and distributed copies to the class. Here’s what I wrote:
Christian ethics pertains to followers of Christ.
The community of Christ-followers is the church.
The church is thus the context, audience, and agent of Christian ethics.
Christian ethics is for “the world” in the sense that those outside the church are invited to visit and to join the church; but the church does not expect the world to live according to Christian ethics.
The church is the teacher of Christian ethics; the Spirit’s pedagogy or “moral epistemology” is housed there.
The vehicle or living source of the church’s teaching is its sacred tradition, governed and normed by Holy Scripture, inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit.
Human beings develop good character, or virtue, through belonging to the common life of the church, which is centered on the corporate worship of God.
If ethics is about flourishing as a human being, then it follows that knowing and worshiping God is the height of human flourishing; our final end is friendship with God.
Virtuous character in community is ordered by and to imitation of an ideal or exemplar; in the case of the Christian community, the one truly human being worthy of imitation is Jesus Christ: he is the pattern or paradigm of “the good man.”
In sum, therefore, Christian ethics is about:
journeying in and with the life of the worshiping community of the church toward the eternal life of the triune God;
learning the moral life in humble obedience to the church’s teaching;
developing good character over time and through practice by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit;
and, ultimately, being conformed to the image of Christ.
Experiments in Luddite pedagogy: dropping the LMS
This semester I wanted to experiment with teaching my courses without the use of an LMS. For those unfamiliar with the term, LMS stands for "learning management system," i.e., an online program for turning in assignments, communicating with students, updating the syllabus, inputting grades, etc. Some of us used Blackboard back in the day. My campus uses Canvas.
Now, Canvas is without question the best LMS I have ever encountered: intuitive, adaptable, not prone to random glitches and failures, useful for any number of pedagogical and technological ideas and goals. So far as I can see, after 15 years or so, the technology has finally caught on to the vision of using the internet well for teaching purposes, a vision ahead of its time one to two decades ago, and which probably, as a result, led to a lot of wasted time and self-defeating habits.
But, you might be wondering, if Canvas is a good LMS, why did I want to experiment with not using one? Here's why.
1. I want to be intentional in my use of technology, in my life and in the classroom. My campus is an LMS-supporting and Canvas-deploying atmosphere. I've never heard of anyone even broaching the topic of not using it, or even of using it as minimally as possible. The presumption is not that one ought to decide whether to use an LMS but how. I wanted to test that presumption.
2. I have many colleagues who are not only tech-savvy but pedagogically creative, even brilliant, in the ways they put Canvas to use in their courses and in their classrooms. I am not among them. Partly for philosophical reasons, partly for pragmatic reasons, I simply do not put Canvas to maximal use. Indeed, in most of my courses I put it to minimal use: sometimes exclusively as an online home for the syllabus and for students' grades. Which raises the practical question: If that's all I'm using it for, why use it at all?
3. My diagnosis of students—a diagnosis I share with them, since the diagnosis applies to our culture more broadly, and since some of my classes try to tackle the problem head-on—is that they are overly reliant upon, even addicted to, screens: above all their smartphones. Part of my move toward (so-called) Luddite pedagogy is that I don't want to contribute to that addiction if (a) there are alternatives and/or (b) that contribution would not justify the additional screen time it would require. In other words, if I'm going to ask, encourage, or (Lord help me) mandate that my students be on their devices more than they already are, then I had better have a very good reason for it. Do I? Do we?
4. The three greatest "needs" addressed by an LMS are communication, syllabus, and grades. All other uses, so far as I can see, are optional: each professor is (or should be) free to employ it—or not—to whatever further pedagogical ends she has for her course. But those differ per the nature of the class, the character of the instructor, the style of assignments, and so on. What then of those necessities?
5. Communication is most simply dealt with: I communicate with my students face to face, in class, or via email. Communication via LMS has only ever seemed to me like one more thing to add to all the other modes of digital communication in one's life (text messages, Google Chat, Slack, Facebook messaging, Twitter DMs, Instagram DMs, on and on). I only know if someone has messaged me on Canvas if Canvas alerts me by email. Why not just cut out the middle man?
6. I understand the desire for an online syllabus. I prefer not to have one, but for those who do, I would go one of two ways. Either Google Doc—which is simple, accessible, and revisable—or a one-page blog post, preferably on one's own domain (examples: Alan Jacobs; Jeffrey Bilbro). Moreover, I discovered that my students were (a) ignoring my verbal instructions about assignments and scheduling in favor of what Canvas told them and (b) ignoring the syllabus PDF on Canvas in favor of what Canvas's schedule of upcoming assignments told them. It turns out that form isn't content-neutral and the medium is the message (ever and ever, amen): students have been trained by LMS programs since middle and high school not to read or even to listen and instead to consult their online home page for course guidance. If the home page says jump, they jump. If it says nothing, they know there's nothing to do—even if the professor or the written syllabus says otherwise. So this semester one of my experiments was the lack of a Canvas home page "consultation" device: they had to read the paper syllabus I handed out to them as well as pay attention to what I said in class. A novel concept, no?
7. Immediate and ever-ready access to grades is both the greatest expressed desire on the part of students and that which has caused me the most worry about presumptive usage of LMS in higher education. Students and professors talk as if the absence of such access is a cause for anxiety in an already anxiety-ridden generation. My observation has been the opposite. From what I can tell, immediate and ever-ready access to grades does not alleviate but rather generates and increases student anxiety. Students' default settings on Canvas—which they have not only on their tablets and laptops but, naturally, on their smartphones—sign them up for email alerts and push notifications for any and all changes to the grade sheet, including changes to other students' grades. For though they can't see others' grades, they can see the average grade for an assignment, which changes as others' grades are entered or modified. Now, students, like the rest of us, are already addicted to their phones. Add to that the ever-present possibility that grades might be entered, or start being entered. Add to that receiving push notification after push notification updating the average grade for a course assignment, prior to receiving one's own grade. It's a recipe for stress. And even if, on the instructor side, you do your part to minimize all those alerts, students can still go online and check their grades at any moment, calculating their (incomplete and rarely predictive) average and comparing their individual grades to how their peers did (on average). I am flat unpersuaded that this is a good thing.
So I opted for my little experiment (with support from my chair). What have I done, and how has it gone so far?
1. Each student receives a printed copy of the syllabus the first week of class along with detailed verbal commentary by me. I also email a PDF to everyone in the class. I'm not a "revise as we go" teacher, so any changes are minor (e.g., no class on X day because my kid is sick, etc.).
2. I communicate in class or via email (or one-on-one in office hours)—full stop.
3. All assignments are completed or submitted by hand or in person: quizzes are taken in class without the use of laptops or phones; papers are printed out and turned in during class; there are no online class discussions; etc. Reasonable exceptions are permitted due to ability, availability, emergencies, and so on, but these are the norms.
4. One of my courses uses a bunch of scanned PDFs of chapters and essays. I simply uploaded all of them into a university Google Drive and shared it with the students in the course.
5. As for grades: This proved the biggest experiment of all, though it's merely a throwback to the way professors did things for decades before the advent of LMS. I keep a spreadsheet for each class where I input grades, absences, etc. The students' names are in a random order, and each student has a (privately assigned) number. At the end of each week, I print out the spreadsheet, minus their names, and post it outside my office. (This is the FERPA-approved method.) Students know their grades are updated weekly, and can come by anytime. They received their confidential identifying number by individual email early in the semester, and their grades remain anonymous that way. For my smaller courses (seminar-like in numbers), I bring the spreadsheet to class when I return major assignments like papers.
6. Why this route for grades? First, to undercut the anxiety of alerts and notifications. Second, to remove one more digital temptation for perpetual checking and refreshing: "I wonder if he'll update them online now? I wonder if he already has? I'll go ahead and check." Third, to motivate me to grade in a timely fashion. Fourth, to encourage students to come by my office and, if they have questions about grades, to ask me questions then and there rather than via email the moment grades are posted online. Fifth, to routinize the giving and posting of grading so that it's not a pall hovering over my head at all times, but has a structure and rhythm within the work week.
7. So: How have students responded? Without a single complaint. Not one problem. Now, we're in week 10 of 15. Perhaps there will be some students who organize mass protests at the end of the semester for one reason or another. I solicit anonymous feedback mid-semester, and that is where I got the idea to bring the grade sheet to my smaller classes when papers are handed back. But otherwise it's been smooth sailing on the student side: no missed assignments, no botched communication, no "but Canvas said!" I'm honestly still a bit shocked that there haven't been a few more complaints or requests for online grades: I told them up front that it was an experiment, and that I was open to revision or reversion if it didn't go well. But I've seen no resistance on their side whatsoever.
8. And on my side, it's been one long victory march. I've deleted my Facebook account, I've reduced Twitter to ~30 minutes on Saturdays, I severely limit my time on email, and now I'm not spending hours on Canvas when I could be doing something more productive with my time. Again, the point isn't that any and all LMS usage is evil or time poorly spent; it's that such usage ought to be intentional and purposeful. For me, it had become one more digital box to check, not a positive contributor to my pedagogical goals or my students' well-being. I have colleagues who use it well and I have other classes in which I too use it (hopefully well enough). But as for this semester, the net benefits have been manifold. Less time on the laptop, less time online, more time for other work tasks, and more timely and efficient grading. Win, win, win, win.
9. The question now is next semester. This semester I have all upperclassmen in elective courses. Next semester I'm teaching a one-week intensive in January, another elective for upperclassmen, but also a freshman survey class that is lecture-based. The intensive course relies on Canvas both before and after we meet, so I will probably keep it (though I suppose I could drop it if I solved the problem of how to give them their grades apart from the LMS grade sheet). But I'm disinclined to nix the LMS for the freshmen, for two reasons. First, they're coming from high schools where they relied on an LMS, especially for grades, and at this stage the lack of one might freak them out. Second, I have productively used online discussion posts for an assignment in this particular course, and unless I think of an alternative, I'm loath to drop it. But since I'm new to this experiment, and since it has gone so well (even better than I imagined, if I'm honest), I might keep trying to think creatively about what it would mean to go LMS-free across all my classes.
We shall see. More reports to come from my haphazard attempts Luddite pedagogy. Until then.
Now, Canvas is without question the best LMS I have ever encountered: intuitive, adaptable, not prone to random glitches and failures, useful for any number of pedagogical and technological ideas and goals. So far as I can see, after 15 years or so, the technology has finally caught on to the vision of using the internet well for teaching purposes, a vision ahead of its time one to two decades ago, and which probably, as a result, led to a lot of wasted time and self-defeating habits.
But, you might be wondering, if Canvas is a good LMS, why did I want to experiment with not using one? Here's why.
1. I want to be intentional in my use of technology, in my life and in the classroom. My campus is an LMS-supporting and Canvas-deploying atmosphere. I've never heard of anyone even broaching the topic of not using it, or even of using it as minimally as possible. The presumption is not that one ought to decide whether to use an LMS but how. I wanted to test that presumption.
2. I have many colleagues who are not only tech-savvy but pedagogically creative, even brilliant, in the ways they put Canvas to use in their courses and in their classrooms. I am not among them. Partly for philosophical reasons, partly for pragmatic reasons, I simply do not put Canvas to maximal use. Indeed, in most of my courses I put it to minimal use: sometimes exclusively as an online home for the syllabus and for students' grades. Which raises the practical question: If that's all I'm using it for, why use it at all?
3. My diagnosis of students—a diagnosis I share with them, since the diagnosis applies to our culture more broadly, and since some of my classes try to tackle the problem head-on—is that they are overly reliant upon, even addicted to, screens: above all their smartphones. Part of my move toward (so-called) Luddite pedagogy is that I don't want to contribute to that addiction if (a) there are alternatives and/or (b) that contribution would not justify the additional screen time it would require. In other words, if I'm going to ask, encourage, or (Lord help me) mandate that my students be on their devices more than they already are, then I had better have a very good reason for it. Do I? Do we?
4. The three greatest "needs" addressed by an LMS are communication, syllabus, and grades. All other uses, so far as I can see, are optional: each professor is (or should be) free to employ it—or not—to whatever further pedagogical ends she has for her course. But those differ per the nature of the class, the character of the instructor, the style of assignments, and so on. What then of those necessities?
5. Communication is most simply dealt with: I communicate with my students face to face, in class, or via email. Communication via LMS has only ever seemed to me like one more thing to add to all the other modes of digital communication in one's life (text messages, Google Chat, Slack, Facebook messaging, Twitter DMs, Instagram DMs, on and on). I only know if someone has messaged me on Canvas if Canvas alerts me by email. Why not just cut out the middle man?
6. I understand the desire for an online syllabus. I prefer not to have one, but for those who do, I would go one of two ways. Either Google Doc—which is simple, accessible, and revisable—or a one-page blog post, preferably on one's own domain (examples: Alan Jacobs; Jeffrey Bilbro). Moreover, I discovered that my students were (a) ignoring my verbal instructions about assignments and scheduling in favor of what Canvas told them and (b) ignoring the syllabus PDF on Canvas in favor of what Canvas's schedule of upcoming assignments told them. It turns out that form isn't content-neutral and the medium is the message (ever and ever, amen): students have been trained by LMS programs since middle and high school not to read or even to listen and instead to consult their online home page for course guidance. If the home page says jump, they jump. If it says nothing, they know there's nothing to do—even if the professor or the written syllabus says otherwise. So this semester one of my experiments was the lack of a Canvas home page "consultation" device: they had to read the paper syllabus I handed out to them as well as pay attention to what I said in class. A novel concept, no?
7. Immediate and ever-ready access to grades is both the greatest expressed desire on the part of students and that which has caused me the most worry about presumptive usage of LMS in higher education. Students and professors talk as if the absence of such access is a cause for anxiety in an already anxiety-ridden generation. My observation has been the opposite. From what I can tell, immediate and ever-ready access to grades does not alleviate but rather generates and increases student anxiety. Students' default settings on Canvas—which they have not only on their tablets and laptops but, naturally, on their smartphones—sign them up for email alerts and push notifications for any and all changes to the grade sheet, including changes to other students' grades. For though they can't see others' grades, they can see the average grade for an assignment, which changes as others' grades are entered or modified. Now, students, like the rest of us, are already addicted to their phones. Add to that the ever-present possibility that grades might be entered, or start being entered. Add to that receiving push notification after push notification updating the average grade for a course assignment, prior to receiving one's own grade. It's a recipe for stress. And even if, on the instructor side, you do your part to minimize all those alerts, students can still go online and check their grades at any moment, calculating their (incomplete and rarely predictive) average and comparing their individual grades to how their peers did (on average). I am flat unpersuaded that this is a good thing.
So I opted for my little experiment (with support from my chair). What have I done, and how has it gone so far?
1. Each student receives a printed copy of the syllabus the first week of class along with detailed verbal commentary by me. I also email a PDF to everyone in the class. I'm not a "revise as we go" teacher, so any changes are minor (e.g., no class on X day because my kid is sick, etc.).
2. I communicate in class or via email (or one-on-one in office hours)—full stop.
3. All assignments are completed or submitted by hand or in person: quizzes are taken in class without the use of laptops or phones; papers are printed out and turned in during class; there are no online class discussions; etc. Reasonable exceptions are permitted due to ability, availability, emergencies, and so on, but these are the norms.
4. One of my courses uses a bunch of scanned PDFs of chapters and essays. I simply uploaded all of them into a university Google Drive and shared it with the students in the course.
5. As for grades: This proved the biggest experiment of all, though it's merely a throwback to the way professors did things for decades before the advent of LMS. I keep a spreadsheet for each class where I input grades, absences, etc. The students' names are in a random order, and each student has a (privately assigned) number. At the end of each week, I print out the spreadsheet, minus their names, and post it outside my office. (This is the FERPA-approved method.) Students know their grades are updated weekly, and can come by anytime. They received their confidential identifying number by individual email early in the semester, and their grades remain anonymous that way. For my smaller courses (seminar-like in numbers), I bring the spreadsheet to class when I return major assignments like papers.
6. Why this route for grades? First, to undercut the anxiety of alerts and notifications. Second, to remove one more digital temptation for perpetual checking and refreshing: "I wonder if he'll update them online now? I wonder if he already has? I'll go ahead and check." Third, to motivate me to grade in a timely fashion. Fourth, to encourage students to come by my office and, if they have questions about grades, to ask me questions then and there rather than via email the moment grades are posted online. Fifth, to routinize the giving and posting of grading so that it's not a pall hovering over my head at all times, but has a structure and rhythm within the work week.
7. So: How have students responded? Without a single complaint. Not one problem. Now, we're in week 10 of 15. Perhaps there will be some students who organize mass protests at the end of the semester for one reason or another. I solicit anonymous feedback mid-semester, and that is where I got the idea to bring the grade sheet to my smaller classes when papers are handed back. But otherwise it's been smooth sailing on the student side: no missed assignments, no botched communication, no "but Canvas said!" I'm honestly still a bit shocked that there haven't been a few more complaints or requests for online grades: I told them up front that it was an experiment, and that I was open to revision or reversion if it didn't go well. But I've seen no resistance on their side whatsoever.
8. And on my side, it's been one long victory march. I've deleted my Facebook account, I've reduced Twitter to ~30 minutes on Saturdays, I severely limit my time on email, and now I'm not spending hours on Canvas when I could be doing something more productive with my time. Again, the point isn't that any and all LMS usage is evil or time poorly spent; it's that such usage ought to be intentional and purposeful. For me, it had become one more digital box to check, not a positive contributor to my pedagogical goals or my students' well-being. I have colleagues who use it well and I have other classes in which I too use it (hopefully well enough). But as for this semester, the net benefits have been manifold. Less time on the laptop, less time online, more time for other work tasks, and more timely and efficient grading. Win, win, win, win.
9. The question now is next semester. This semester I have all upperclassmen in elective courses. Next semester I'm teaching a one-week intensive in January, another elective for upperclassmen, but also a freshman survey class that is lecture-based. The intensive course relies on Canvas both before and after we meet, so I will probably keep it (though I suppose I could drop it if I solved the problem of how to give them their grades apart from the LMS grade sheet). But I'm disinclined to nix the LMS for the freshmen, for two reasons. First, they're coming from high schools where they relied on an LMS, especially for grades, and at this stage the lack of one might freak them out. Second, I have productively used online discussion posts for an assignment in this particular course, and unless I think of an alternative, I'm loath to drop it. But since I'm new to this experiment, and since it has gone so well (even better than I imagined, if I'm honest), I might keep trying to think creatively about what it would mean to go LMS-free across all my classes.
We shall see. More reports to come from my haphazard attempts Luddite pedagogy. Until then.
16 tips for how to read a passage from the Gospels
This semester I am teaching two sections of an entry-level course for freshmen of all majors on the Gospels, focused on the Gospel of Mark. This week I gave them 16 tips on how to read a passage from the Gospels, which I thought I'd share here.
1. Characters
Whom do I meet in this passage? Are they named? Are they central or peripheral? Why are they here? What are they doing? Have I met them before? Will I meet them again?
2. Places
Where does this passage take place? Does it take place in one place or multiple places? Does it tell me where, or leave that unknown? Is the location important to the action? Does the action take place between places? What has happened in this place before, historically or biblically?
3. Concepts
What concepts or ideas are mentioned? Do I know what they mean? Do they have a specific meaning here? Does the author define them for me, assume I know what they mean, or want me to wonder what they mean? Is the concept a new one or one that predates this passage? How can I learn what it means?
4. Action
What happens in this passage? Who does the acting, and to whom does something happen? Is the action good, bad, or something in between? Does nothing seem to happen? Why might there be a passage in which nothing at all seems to happen? How does this small action relate to the larger action of the book as a whole? How does the action affect or change the characters involved?
5. Speech
Who talks? About what? Is there a single person who speaks with authority, or is there some kind of exchange between two or more people? Does one of them, or do both, learn something from the exchange? Is the topic spoken about new, challenging, bold, unique in some way? How do those who hear it respond? Is the speech for them alone or for others, including the reader of this text? How do you know?
6. Problem/solution
Is this passage addressing a problem? Is it identified, or left implicit? Is the problem resolved in some way, or left unresolved? Who resolves it? Do all the characters accept the resolution? How does the proposed resolution affect them? Is the problem limited to the characters in the story, or to potential later headers of the story?
7. Echoes of Scripture
Does the passage interact with the Old Testament in any way? Does it quote it? If so, does it name the book cited? Does it cite a single text or combine multiple texts together? How does the text quoted inform or illuminate what happens in this passage? Is the OT text cited by the characters INSIDE the story, or by the narrator OF the story? To what end or purpose? If the OT is not cited, but alluded to in some way, why? And if it is not alluded to explicitly at all, but the action in the passage is similar to the action of a story in the OT, why might that be? Would the characters in the story have realized the similarities, or are the similarities the result of the way that the author of the passage has crafted it? If the latter, why might the author have done that?
8. Genre
What kind of text is this? Is it a story about something that happened in the past? Is it a parable? a letter? a poem or a song? moral teaching? How should my reading of the passage correspond to the kind of text it is?
9. Tone
How does the passage sound? Is it leisurely? Eloquent? Happy? Angry? Urgent? What about the passage makes it feel or sound that way? What happens in the passage that might help explain its tone?
10. Perspective
Whose perspective is represented in the passage? One of the characters’? Multiple characters’? Does the author presume to know what some or all of the characters are thinking? How could he know? What “angle” or “slant” on the action is the narrator taking, regardless of characters? What does he want you to notice, to see, to hear? What does he therefore ignore as a result? What details has he included intentionally—and what details has he perhaps included unintentionally?
11. Audience
To whom or for whom does this text seem to be written? Can you tell from the passage in question, or from other passages? Based on the presumed audience, how can that help you understand what’s going on in the passage? Are you, at least by extension, part of that audience, or are you an outsider? How does that affect your reading?
12. Purpose
What appears to be the intended purpose or purposes of this passage? Why did the author write it? What would or should result if the right people were to read the passage the right way? What does the author want to happen as a result of this passage having been written and communicated to others?
13. Implications
Whatever the author’s goals or intentions, what are the implications of this passage? What follows from it? In particular, what follows for some central biblical realities: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, gospel, church, discipleship, faith? If the passage you are reading is true, then what must therefore be true about God, or Jesus, or the gospel, or faith?
14. Then/now
Since this text was written at a different time and place and in a different culture than ours, what meanings might it have had then, separate from its potential meanings now? In turn, what meanings might it have now, regardless of what meanings it might have had then? And how might the meanings then and the meanings now be related?
15. Context, context, context
ALWAYS ask yourself: What are the relevant contexts of this passage? Within the book of which it is a part, what has happened just BEFORE and just AFTER this passage? What happens at the beginning and ending of the book? How does this passage relate to them? Does something very important happen in this passage, or immediately before/after it? What about the context of the Bible—how does this passage relate to other passages in other biblical books? What about historical context—what was happening at the time in which the passage’s story happened, or at the time in which the passage was written? What about cultural context—what aspects of the culture in the time make an appearance in the passage? What about theological context—what theological questions and conversations does this passage interact with? What about church context—how does this passage relate to the life, mission, worship, and ethics of the Christian community? What about moral context—what does this passage suggest about the good, about how human beings are to live in the world? So on and so forth.
16. The study notes are your friend!
Finally, use the notes in your study Bible! Read the introduction to the biblical book you are reading, and read the footnotes at the bottom. And preferably also consult a commentary on the book, at least when you have big questions about any of the above—especially context.
1. Characters
Whom do I meet in this passage? Are they named? Are they central or peripheral? Why are they here? What are they doing? Have I met them before? Will I meet them again?
2. Places
Where does this passage take place? Does it take place in one place or multiple places? Does it tell me where, or leave that unknown? Is the location important to the action? Does the action take place between places? What has happened in this place before, historically or biblically?
3. Concepts
What concepts or ideas are mentioned? Do I know what they mean? Do they have a specific meaning here? Does the author define them for me, assume I know what they mean, or want me to wonder what they mean? Is the concept a new one or one that predates this passage? How can I learn what it means?
4. Action
What happens in this passage? Who does the acting, and to whom does something happen? Is the action good, bad, or something in between? Does nothing seem to happen? Why might there be a passage in which nothing at all seems to happen? How does this small action relate to the larger action of the book as a whole? How does the action affect or change the characters involved?
5. Speech
Who talks? About what? Is there a single person who speaks with authority, or is there some kind of exchange between two or more people? Does one of them, or do both, learn something from the exchange? Is the topic spoken about new, challenging, bold, unique in some way? How do those who hear it respond? Is the speech for them alone or for others, including the reader of this text? How do you know?
6. Problem/solution
Is this passage addressing a problem? Is it identified, or left implicit? Is the problem resolved in some way, or left unresolved? Who resolves it? Do all the characters accept the resolution? How does the proposed resolution affect them? Is the problem limited to the characters in the story, or to potential later headers of the story?
7. Echoes of Scripture
Does the passage interact with the Old Testament in any way? Does it quote it? If so, does it name the book cited? Does it cite a single text or combine multiple texts together? How does the text quoted inform or illuminate what happens in this passage? Is the OT text cited by the characters INSIDE the story, or by the narrator OF the story? To what end or purpose? If the OT is not cited, but alluded to in some way, why? And if it is not alluded to explicitly at all, but the action in the passage is similar to the action of a story in the OT, why might that be? Would the characters in the story have realized the similarities, or are the similarities the result of the way that the author of the passage has crafted it? If the latter, why might the author have done that?
8. Genre
What kind of text is this? Is it a story about something that happened in the past? Is it a parable? a letter? a poem or a song? moral teaching? How should my reading of the passage correspond to the kind of text it is?
9. Tone
How does the passage sound? Is it leisurely? Eloquent? Happy? Angry? Urgent? What about the passage makes it feel or sound that way? What happens in the passage that might help explain its tone?
10. Perspective
Whose perspective is represented in the passage? One of the characters’? Multiple characters’? Does the author presume to know what some or all of the characters are thinking? How could he know? What “angle” or “slant” on the action is the narrator taking, regardless of characters? What does he want you to notice, to see, to hear? What does he therefore ignore as a result? What details has he included intentionally—and what details has he perhaps included unintentionally?
11. Audience
To whom or for whom does this text seem to be written? Can you tell from the passage in question, or from other passages? Based on the presumed audience, how can that help you understand what’s going on in the passage? Are you, at least by extension, part of that audience, or are you an outsider? How does that affect your reading?
12. Purpose
What appears to be the intended purpose or purposes of this passage? Why did the author write it? What would or should result if the right people were to read the passage the right way? What does the author want to happen as a result of this passage having been written and communicated to others?
13. Implications
Whatever the author’s goals or intentions, what are the implications of this passage? What follows from it? In particular, what follows for some central biblical realities: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, gospel, church, discipleship, faith? If the passage you are reading is true, then what must therefore be true about God, or Jesus, or the gospel, or faith?
14. Then/now
Since this text was written at a different time and place and in a different culture than ours, what meanings might it have had then, separate from its potential meanings now? In turn, what meanings might it have now, regardless of what meanings it might have had then? And how might the meanings then and the meanings now be related?
15. Context, context, context
ALWAYS ask yourself: What are the relevant contexts of this passage? Within the book of which it is a part, what has happened just BEFORE and just AFTER this passage? What happens at the beginning and ending of the book? How does this passage relate to them? Does something very important happen in this passage, or immediately before/after it? What about the context of the Bible—how does this passage relate to other passages in other biblical books? What about historical context—what was happening at the time in which the passage’s story happened, or at the time in which the passage was written? What about cultural context—what aspects of the culture in the time make an appearance in the passage? What about theological context—what theological questions and conversations does this passage interact with? What about church context—how does this passage relate to the life, mission, worship, and ethics of the Christian community? What about moral context—what does this passage suggest about the good, about how human beings are to live in the world? So on and so forth.
16. The study notes are your friend!
Finally, use the notes in your study Bible! Read the introduction to the biblical book you are reading, and read the footnotes at the bottom. And preferably also consult a commentary on the book, at least when you have big questions about any of the above—especially context.
Teaching ecclesiology: topics and readings
This fall I am teaching a course on ecclesiology for upper-level undergraduate Bible and ministry majors. It's a long-standing course I took over from a recently retired professor of New Testament, who was kind enough to share his syllabus with me as a foundation on which to build my own. Here's the final breakdown of weeks, topics, and readings. It's basically set, so I won't be changing or adding anything at this point—and I'm already demanding a lot from my students—but since this is a course I'll be teaching repeatedly in the coming years (as the Lord wills), all manner of feedback, recommendations, and shared wisdom from similar courses is welcome.
The two required texts are Gerhard Lohfink's Jesus and Community and Alexander Schmemann's For the Life of the World; the two suggested texts are Rowan Williams's Why Study the Past? and Everett Ferguson's The Church of Christ.
The two required texts are Gerhard Lohfink's Jesus and Community and Alexander Schmemann's For the Life of the World; the two suggested texts are Rowan Williams's Why Study the Past? and Everett Ferguson's The Church of Christ.
Week 1: Introduction:
Theology and Ecclesiology
Aug 29:
Robert Jenson, “What Systematic Theology Is About”
Aug 31: Gary Badcock, “Theology &
Ecclesiology”; Ellen Charry, “The Art of Christian Excellence”
Recommended: Everett Ferguson, The Church of Christ, Introduction; Rowan
Williams, Why
Study
the Past?, ch. 1; Nicholas
Healy, Church, World, and the Christian
Life, chs. 1-
2; John Webster, “Evangelical
Ecclesiology”; Kathryn Tanner, “The Nature and
Tasks of Theology”; Mary McClintock
Fulkerson, Places of Redemption, ch.
1
Week 2: Election and Covenant
Sep 5: Bryan
Stone, “Israel and the Calling Forth of a People”
Sep 7: Michael
Wyschogrod, “Divine Election & Commandments,” “Israel, Church, & Election”
Recommended:
Gerhard Lohfink, “Why God Needs a Special People”; Leslie Newbigin, “The
Logic of Election”; Sang Hoon Lee,
“God in the Jewish Flesh: Michael
Wyschogrod’s Theology of Israel”;
Katherine Sonderegger, “Election”
Week 3: Israel and the
Nations
Sep 12: Lohfink,
“The Characteristic Signs of Israel” (selections)
Sep 14: Lohfink,
Jesus and Community, ch. 1
Recommended:
Bruce Birch et al, A Theological
Introduction to the Old Testament, chs. 9-10;
Wyschogrod, “A Theology of Jewish
Unity,” “Judaism and the Land,” “Faith and the
Holocaust”; Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, 72-81
Week 4: Jesus and the
Twelve
Sep 19: NO
CLASS
Sep 21: Lohfink,
Jesus and Community, ch. 2
Recommended: Ferguson, Church of Christ, ch. 1; Stanley Hauerwas, “Jesus: The Presence of
the Peaceable Kingdom”
Week 5: Pentecost and Ekklesia
Sep 26: Lohfink,
Jesus and Community, ch. 3; Francesca
Aran Murphy et al, “Ecclesial Faith”
Sep 28: Amos
Yong, “The Acts of the Apostles and of the Holy Spirit”; Willie Jennings, Acts, 27-40
Recommended: Ferguson, Church of Christ, ch. 2; John Howard Yoder, “The Original
Revolution”; Hauerwas, “The Church as
God’s New Language”
Week 6: Paul and the Gentiles
Oct 3: N. T.
Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said,
ch. 3
Oct 5: Wright,
What Saint Paul Really Said, ch. 5
Recommended:
Ferguson, Church of Christ, ch. 3;
Lamin Sanneh, “The Birth of Mission: The
Jewish-Gentile Frontier”; Hauerwas, Resident Aliens, ch. 4
Week 7: Church Fathers
and Councils
Oct 10: Williams,
Why Study the Past?, ch. 2
Oct 12: Creeds;
Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian
Thought, chs. 4-5
Recommended:
Jenson, Canon and Creed, chs. 1-5;
Jeffrey Cary, Free Churches and the Body
of
Christ, ch. 6; Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea, ch. 1
Week 8: Middle Ages and
Christendom
Oct 17: Oliver
O’Donovan, “The Obedience of Rulers”
Oct 19:
O’Donovan, “The Obedience of Rulers”; Thomas Aquinas, commentary on the creed
Recommended:
H. Richard Niebuhr, “Christ Above Culture”; Peter Leithart, “Rome
Baptized”; Tanner, “Christian Culture
and Society”; Hauerwas, “A Christian
Critique of Christian America”
Week 9: Reformation and
Scripture
Oct 24: John
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, I.6; IV.1; Decrees of Trent
Oct 26: Kevin
Vanhoozer, “Scripture Alone”; Jenson, “Sola Scriptura”
Recommended:
Williams, Why Study the Past?, ch. 3;
Jenson, “The Norms of Theological
Judgment”; Webster, Holy Scripture, chs. 1-2; Fulkerson, Places of Redemption, ch. 6;
Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, chs. 1-2
Week 10: Baptism and Sacraments
Oct 31: Schmemann,
For the Life of the World, ch. 1;
appendix 2; Calvin, Institutes,
IV.14.1-6;
Charry,
“Sacraments for the Christian Life”
Nov 2: Schmemann,
Life of the World, ch. 4; Yoder,
“Baptism and the New Humanity”
Recommended: Calvin, Institutes, IV.15; Keith Stanglin, “Concerning Rebaptism”; Jennings,
“Being Baptized: Race”; James McClendon
Jr., Ethics: Systematic Theology: Volume
1,
265-269; Augustine, Confessions, Book IX (selections)
Week 11: Eucharist and
Communion
Nov 7: Schmemann,
Life of the World, ch. 2
Nov 9: Calvin,
Institutes, IV.17 (selections)
Recommended:
Gustavo Gutiérrez, “The Church: Sacrament of History”; William
Cavanaugh, “The True Body of Christ”
Week 12: Ordination and
Polity
Nov 14: Calvin,
Institutes, IV.3; John Howard Yoder,
“The Fullness of Christ”
Nov 16: Jenson,
“The Office of Communion”; Frances Young, “From the Church to Mary: towards
a
critical ecumenism,” 313-342
Recommended:
Ferguson, Church of Christ, ch. 5; Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Life Together, ch. 4;
R. Alan Culpepper, “The Biblical Basis
for Ordination”
Week 13: Unity and
Ecumenism
Nov 21: Yoder,
“Imperative of Christian Unity”; Young, “From the Church to Mary,” 342-357
Nov 23: NO
CLASS: THANKSGIVING
Recommended:
Gunther Gressman, “The Unity We Seek”; Robert Cardinal Sarah, “In Search
of the Church”; Unitatis redintegratio; Peter Leithart, “The End of Protestantism”;
Gerald Schlabach, Unlearning Protestantism, ch. 1
Week 14: Mission and
Witness
Nov 28: Bryan
Stone, “Evangelism and Ecclesia”;
Emmanuel Katongole, “The Sacrifice of Africa:
Ecclesial
Radiances of ‘A Different World Right Here’”
Nov 30: Schmemann,
Life of the World, ch. 3; Marva Dawn,
“Worship to Form a Missional
Community”
Recommended:
Ferguson, Church of Christ, ch. 6; Stone,
“Martyrdom and Virtue”; Brad East,
“An Undefensive Presence: The Mission
and Identity of the Church in Kathryn
Tanner and John Howard Yoder”;
Katongale, The Sacrifice of Africa,
ch. 7; Lumen
Gentium; Yong, “Christian Mission Theology:
Toward a Pneumato-Missiological
Praxis for the Third Millennium”;
Michael Goheen, “The Missional Church in the
Biblical Story—A Summary”
Week 15: Worship and
Prayer
Dec 5: Dawn,
“God as the Center of Worship: Who is Worship For?”
Dec 7: Schmemann,
Life of the World, ch. 7, appendix 1;
Jenson, “How the World Lost Its Story”
Recommended: Ferguson, Church of Christ, ch. 4; Williams, Why Study the Past?, ch. 4;
Bonhoeffer, Life Together, ch. 2; John Webster, “‘In the Society of God’: Some
Principles of Ecclesiology”; James K.
A. Smith, “Practicing (for) the Kingdom”;
Tanner, “Commonalities in Christian
Practices”; Ernst Troeltsch, “Conclusion,” The
Social
Teaching of the Christian Churches;
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline,
141-148