00:00:11.840 - 00:00:28.120

Thank you for joining us this afternoon for a second curry lecture. My name is a santa Todd and I served as assistant professor of christian ethics here at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. It is my pleasure to

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introduce to you this afternoon speaker. Dr ted a smith. Dr smith is associate professor of preaching and ethics at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta Georgia there he specializes in both practical and political theology. Dr

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smith also teaches in the graduate division of religion and is also affiliated with the Centre for the Study of Law and Religion. Yeah, it is no surprise that he teaches at one of the nation's top universities

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as there. He received his PhD sometime ago with distinction in ethics. Before that among Dr smith's many achievements, he received an MBA from Oxford With 1st class honours. Prior to Candler smith taught at Vanderbilt

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Divinity School where he served as assistant professor of ethics and as director of the program in Theology and practice there. It was the first time I was able to meet Doctor Smith where he functioned and served and

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continues to serve as my very competent and wise advisor . Dr smith was already doing groundbreaking work there with the lilly foundation around questions of theology and practice. The program was and continues to be a success graduating

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to date at least 10 classes of doctoral students and continues to go strong even after Dr smith's departure and reflecting on Dr smith's achievements and accomplishments. I think it's appropriate that we are able to call Dr smith

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a theological educator of the Not yet. This is a term I draw from asian american theologian for Mika Matsuoka, who argues that our generation needs theological educators of the Not yet. That is theological educators that

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are able to teach through uncertain times, facing an uncertain future, one who risked truth telling and Ernest engagement, believing all along that the redemptive power of God is released only when we meet God unprotected against

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the uneven and unyielding, stony ground of life. Matsuoka argues that God's redemptive power is released to us as costly grades and it is in this costly grace that we look into the unknown future. Certainly this

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is the case today. In his first lecture this morning, Dr smith introduced us to the current state of theological education as he describes it, caught somewhere between an age of the model M and the age

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of authenticity, between the seminary that teaches toward institutional office and that which prioritizes private vocation this afternoon. Then we look to Dr Smith yet again to teach us of an uncertain future in uncertain times. That

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is to be yet again a theological educator of the Not yet. I want to remind you briefly that immediately after Dr smith's talk At 3:30 p. m . there will be a coffee fellowship in the lawn

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right next to the chapel And at four o'clock there will be a moderated conversation in the library reading room . We want to make sure to invite you to both of these events, Dr smith. We thank

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you again for your words and for your presence. We look forward to your words this afternoon. Thank you. You please join me in welcoming dr smith . Okay, I appreciate that. Mhm. Uh

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huh. Thanks. Santa means a lot. I uh it's the second lecture of the afternoon and you didn't get any coffee between them. I'll find out who you were, who scheduled this. There will

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be a reckoning. No no no no. Here we go. The political significance of theological education. Yeah. I tried to argue in my first lecture that we're in the middle of a sea change in

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theological education. Deep and long term social changes are putting pressure on the established mode. What I tried to call model in one consequence of these pressures is that questions that have been relatively settled for a long

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time have sprung back open. They are again, living questions. So what I'm gonna do in the next couple of lectures is to take up a lot of these living questions, all of them matter.

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But the concerns of justice feel so urgent right now that I want to focus, first of all, and for an entire lecture on the relationship between theological education and justice. I want to think with you

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about the political significance of theological education and I want to think about that significance in two dimensions. First Justice within the school, Justice in the ways of school goes about its work. Justice in the way

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a school occupies the space allotted to it, and second, theological educations relationship to justice beyond the school . I mean, two things like movements, causes legislation polity more All right, So Justice within the

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school. First of all, modeling has a well established picture of what justice looks like within a theological school. I talked about this. The promise of model M is that students can move through the school

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, gaining resources of various kinds and then graduate to deploy those resources in leading an institution that works for the transformation of the world more materially model in presumes that theological education is a prerequisite to a day job

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and a pretty good day job, One that promises a middle class salary, stable benefits and most of all meaningful work, It promises the chance to make a living through living a life worth living that is

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a real good by any measure. And so justice within theological schools has often been understood to involve democratizing access to that good. Theological educators have worked hard to open up schools to more and more students from

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historically underrepresented groups let Pauli Murray in. And this work has been work for justice for a master's degree from a school like Austin or Candler has been a ticket to meaningful middle class work, sharing that good

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more widely, especially with those long denied. It then has been the work of justice. And so schools have been right, I think, to trumpet the diversity of their student bodies as evidence of their

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commitment to justice. But what happens when Model um , can no longer keep its promises? This morning ? I described a tightening job market. It seems to be getting only tighter. 2013 presbyterian outlook article

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noted that more than half of the congregations in the Pc USA have fewer than 100 members. That's a number frequently decided. It pointed to as a breakpoint for full time pastor. More and more presbyterian pastors

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to take just this denomination are serving in temporary part time and stated supply positions. There are bright spots , There are exceptions, you know them, but the aggregate numbers are not really in question. The

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problems are not confined to presbyterians. ATS reports an 80% placement rate in 2015 for Mdf graduates in church related vocations, but that 80% includes full time part time and volunteer positions, those less than full time

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, which means less than middle class positions are growing . And the placement rates for professional Emma's are lower still, and the numbers for academic rate, Emma's are lower still. It's not just that the job

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market is tight, it's that the wages of even those who managed to get a job in this in this age compared to the wages of others with graduate and professional degrees are declining. The median wage for

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a full time pastor in 2015 is 44,250 according to the US. Department of Labor. Now that number is substantial, it is Don't sniff at$44,000, but it is also below the median household income in

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the United States of$51,000 salary also needs to be read in conjunction with rising levels of student debt, debt levels have been rising for many reasons among them , the fact that church bodies have increasingly pulled back

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on their support of theological education, leaving the funding increasingly as a transaction between the individual student, the school, some lending entity and the state, which makes the whole thing go right. That federal backing

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, If you want to see a place where institutions have pulled back and the culture of authenticity is on the rise. You'd look at the way we fund theological education. It's right there. The most recent

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acts, data shows that the number of students graduating with debt, that number is staying about the same just over 50%, but the amount owed by those who do borrow, that's what's going up since 2008

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. The percentage of students borrowing$40,000 or more has gone from 15% to 24%. And in that same time, the average total educational debt of those who borrowed has gone from$27,000 to$36,800. I was

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glad to see Austin's ministers facing money program as part of a very important nationwide effort. And my kids will tell you that I am officially pro frugality. They describe this as cheap, but so I'm for

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these frugal means. But you don't you can't solve systemic funding problems with individual frugality. That's like saying that the real there was irresponsible borrowing in the housing crisis, but you're not going to fix the housing

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crisis by getting people to borrow responsibly. It takes systemic change. It's the same thing with the way we fund theological education. This all looks even more problematic when you break these aggregate numbers out by race

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and gender, The burden of debt falls heaviest on historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. In 2015, the average educational debt of African American students who borrowed was more than$46,000 and 32% of black non hispanic

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students over 40 graduating from an at school last year , graduated with debt over$60,000. Gender matters to 21% of single women over 40 graduating from theological schools last year had debt over$60,000. So there are

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all kinds of reasons for this, including larger levels of undergraduate debt and legacy endowments at seminaries that tie financial aid to membership in historically white denominations. But the bottom line is clear enough. The burden of

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debt is high and it falls on students in ways that replicate the very powers of racism and sexism. That admitting a diverse student body is supposed to rectify the numbers. I think I don't mean to just

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drown you in numbers today, but I think they make at least this minimal case. A degree from a theological school is less likely than it was in model. Ems heyday to punch one's ticket to the

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professional middle class. And that means that model ims classic version of justice within theological schools. just expanding access to the education offered by the school is looking less and less like justice. What then should we

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do? A couple of the most interesting conversations that came out of those consultations that I convened in 2015 suggests the shape of the, of the conversation or the question before us. Here is the living question

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. All right, Amos Young, who may know a fuller theological seminary, he made a powerful case for a whole new model of theological education, even if theological education as professional education kept its promises to

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individual students. Amos said it would not be the work of justice because when theological education is tied to a job and when that job is professional class, the whole enterprise is inherently elitist. Amos says it's

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only accessible to people who already have a bachelor's degree and poorer people who want to climb this ladder will find themselves deep in debt before they even get started on, quote unquote theological education. And they will

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learn very quickly that if they want to succeed in this world, they need to start speaking, moving and acting in different ways, ways that alienate them from the very communities that raised them. Is it

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any wonder the church is doing this is Amos's voice here. Is it any wonder the church is doing so badly with poor communities, across lines of race and all races? Is it any wonder? And

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we are doing badly at most. This model helps a few students rise up as individuals, and if it is no longer reliably doing even that it is not working for justice in any way, we need

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a whole new model says Amos. Well, this was convicting. All right, I heard this, and so I took it to one of the later consultations at Mundelein Seminary. I recounted it attributing it

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to Amos constructive theologian. Dwight Hopkins of the University of Chicago. Was there? Hopkins is one of the leading black liberation theologians of our time, and he patiently sat through this long call for a new

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model of theological education and the name of justice and he hated it. I've seen this before, Hopkins said, every time we start to make some gains , you change the rules. Hopkins is right.

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Every time he said, we start to win even just a little, you tell us, the game has to change is right. Non white racial ethnic groups are still significantly underrepresented on theological faculties, compared

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both to the general population and the church going population and the student population, by any measure, we are not there. But there have been gains around 20% of faculty in 80 S. Schools are now

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from historically minority ized racial ethnic groups. The number of students enrolled in MD. Programs represents even more diversity. There have been some gains gains worth preserving , Hopkins argued. And so he said, the

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challenge is not to tear it all down and start from scratch. The challenge is to figure out how to amend the present structures in ways that preserve real gains while easing unequal burdens. There's the, there's

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the question Young and Hopkins suggests different ways forward on the question of justice within theological schools and I think the great plurality of american theological education is going to allow room to pursue each path. What I think

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there is no room for is a complacent continuation of a pattern in which historically white schools pat themselves on the back for keeping themselves going on the debt of an increasingly diverse student body. This alone is not

00:17:27.610 - 00:17:42.330

work for justice. Not anymore. We can imagine faithful versions of the path that young recommends movements that establish a whole new models of theological education models that might be unhitched from formation for a professional job,

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and certainly from formation for this kind of upper middle class sort of job, they would be open to people of every education level, they would be really cheap and they would focus not on alienating people from

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the communities that raised them, but on forming people to serve those communities and others. The key, though, would be to make sure that the theological knowledge shared through these kinds of modes of theological education

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was connected to the material well being of poor and minority sized communities. I have in mind something like the outreach program that connected the Jesuits of the University of Central America to the base communities in El Salvador

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or the settlement houses in the United States, like the very early Skerritt Bennett, funded by the donations of United Methodist women that offered theological education and all kinds of other education and food and shelter and clothing

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to poor kids. In early industrial America, we can imagine modes of theological education that work for justice much more directly than any kind of professional education ever could. That's what Amos is asking us to dream

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about. At the same time, we can imagine faithful modes of theological education along the lines that Dwight Hopkins proposes, don't be naive. The United States has evolved in such a way that they're just,

00:19:07.590 - 00:19:19.440

is a place for professional education, there is a professional class, and if the number of jobs is shrinking, it is still still substantial. But a theological education as professional education is going to still be

00:19:19.440 - 00:19:33.370

work for justice, then it's going to take deep reforms like minimizing or eliminating debt for all students, raising money for scholarships that support students from traditions that are new to a school and working to expand support

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for job placement, especially for jobs, and they don't require ordination model M had pretty good answers to the questions of what it means for a theological school to work for justice in the way that it operated

00:19:47.920 - 00:20:02.260

itself. I think that answer was faithful to an extent in its day, but as that model comes under pressure as it's harder for that model to keep its promises. The question comes to us a new

00:20:03.440 - 00:20:12.670

if I have not given a single definitive answer, I at least hope I've sharpened our understanding of the question as it comes to us now, and I hope it's come to us with a little extra urgency

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. Justice beyond the school. Justice beyond the school model limb was born under the sign of the de facto cultural establishment of protestantism in the United States. The logic of the whole model presumed that the graduates

00:20:29.160 - 00:20:41.510

of theological schools would go on to lead institutions that had significant influence on politics, economics and culture. Thus, the Theological School could remember the model. It could work for justice by giving students resources that

00:20:41.510 - 00:20:56.740

let them lead these institutions in ways that work for the transformation of every sphere of society. This potential for transformation has been integral to the meaning and purpose of model in schools. But I think this model

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is breaking down in two inch of related ways. I spoke this morning a little bit about the first , a decline of the influence that church institutions can exert over other spheres. This morning, I reminded

00:21:08.880 - 00:21:22.480

you of Eugene, Carson blake, and what it meant for him to endorse that March in 1963, and asked you to imagine an analog. Now, I also think of 2003 when the United Methodist Bishops

00:21:22.600 - 00:21:33.600

sends a letter to George W. counseling him against proceeding with war on Iraq. Now Bush was a member of the United Methodist Congregation. These were his own bishops writing to him, he was, to

00:21:33.600 - 00:21:48.920

all appearances, and I believe quite genuine in his piety, but he disregarded the bishop's council. Indeed , he did not even feel a need to answer them. This decline of influence has happened not only

00:21:48.920 - 00:22:00.050

for ecumenical or quote, mainline Protestants. The religious right we saw in this last round of Republican primaries could not exert nearly the influence that it had in the past. It did all it could to resist

00:22:00.050 - 00:22:15.990

the nomination of donald trump and then gained whatever influence it has now, only by jumping behind trump at the last minute. Today's graduates of theological schools cannot expect to lead institutions that have the same kind of

00:22:15.000 - 00:22:30.040

this worldly power to transform society that previous generations of graduates had. The loss of this power can sometimes be obscured as we continue in established patterns again, to recall this morning, it can sometimes seem like

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nothing has changed. We're doing the same thing, but changing material conditions, changing network of institutional relationships like disestablishment, Cultural disestablishment changes the social meaning of practices. Even if we're doing the same thing,

00:22:45.870 - 00:22:57.920

we've always done the meaning of the practice changes. Let me give you an example. I was at a gathering of Presbyterian social ethicists, and we were talking with the stated clerk about the long pattern of

00:22:57.920 - 00:23:11.490

the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church, sending letters to the President. You may know this tradition. It goes back to George Washington, but what these let the practice might remain the same, but the

00:23:11.490 - 00:23:25.930

meaning of the practice changes. The first letter, that letter to George Washington, it means one thing when a body is just forming, when the letter is passing from one friend to another. Like that

00:23:25.930 - 00:23:37.340

letter that was passed to George Washington, that letter connects with an old friend and it announces the forming of a new group. Hey, we've got a general assembly. A letter sent by a stated clerk

00:23:37.350 - 00:23:48.470

in the middle of the 20th century, though, would have a very different meaning. This wasn't passed to a friend. It wasn't announcing a new group . This would be pressure from a social organization that

00:23:48.470 - 00:24:02.050

had to be reckoned with and deliberating about a letter in that sense, has yet about another meeting. The primary readers of a letter today are internal to the denomination. It probably won't be read by a

00:24:02.050 - 00:24:12.850

president at all. So why do we do it ? What's the meaning of this activity now? Well , when I press this question to one denominational official and then when I pressed some more, he finally

00:24:12.850 - 00:24:26.670

said look it's just part of the ritual of G . A. It's one of the things that we do because we're a denomination. It's one of the things we do as an expression of our identity.

00:24:26.840 - 00:24:41.600

It's a part of the politics of authenticity. It's not really about the transformation of society. I think that's right. The real meaning of denominational statements and stated clerks letters today is not the influence that they

00:24:41.600 - 00:24:59.190

might have to work social transformation. It's rather a ritual through which we as presbyterians discover, create and remember who we are. That activity may be worthwhile . It may be worthwhile, may even be something

00:24:59.190 - 00:25:11.920

we need to do. But it does not keep the promise of model M. To form students for leadership of institutions that will transform the world. A second shift that undermines the promise of model M is

00:25:11.920 - 00:25:23.200

more subtle. This is not the decline and influence of religious institutions, but the declining role of institutions more broadly. Again, the election of donald trump provides a case study trump did not come up through

00:25:23.200 - 00:25:37.350

the ranks of elected office. He did not mobilise the party. He had never held office before and he was opposed by most of the major institutions of his party and yet he won. This is striking

00:25:37.360 - 00:25:52.160

, but it should not come to us as a surprise for some time now we've seen signs of political energies shifting from institutions from labor unions, denominations, political parties, chambers of Commerce and the like.

00:25:52.240 - 00:26:07.500

Two more amorphous movements like occupy Wall Street. The Tea Party Black Lives Matter move on dot org. And the recent marches. These new movements often celebrate their anti institutional form. They refuse central coordination.

00:26:07.600 - 00:26:26.140

They share leadership in ways that prevent one individual from becoming a singular spokesperson. They don't have endowments and they are not failures of organization. These are intentional choices of movements committed to an expressive authenticity. Now

00:26:26.140 - 00:26:37.910

, this emphasis on expressive politics fits with the change that I mentioned in the first lecture from age of mobilization to an age of authenticity. In the age of mobilization. A theological school can work for justice

00:26:37.910 - 00:26:52.820

by training leaders of institutions, for institutions, exert that shaping power on every sphere of society. For the age of authenticity, though it prizes individual expression over institutional influence. It leads to what Charles taylor

00:26:52.820 - 00:27:06.480

calls a politics of mutual display in which what we're really doing in politics is we're engaging in political action to fashion and express our true selves. It's a letter to the general, to the President in which

00:27:06.480 - 00:27:18.950

what we're doing is figuring out our identity as presbyterians . Some critics of these modes dismissed them as ineffective or solipsistic. How many times did we hear that occupy was a failure because it didn't have a clear

00:27:18.950 - 00:27:33.720

leadership structure with clear goals. Another dismissed them as like self indulgent lifestyle. Politics. It's just ranting on facebook. It's click. Tiv is um it's not sustained, costly organized action for change. I

00:27:33.720 - 00:27:49.970

think those caricatures are too dismissive, but it is not yet clear just how these energies can be gathered for sustained transformative political action. So here's maybe a central part of this, of this part of the

00:27:49.970 - 00:28:07.520

lecture I would name as really one of the great challenges of our time figuring out how to gather these energies together for meaningful political change in ecclesial terms. We are in the middle of a shift that is

00:28:07.520 - 00:28:21.490

as basic as that from the parish to the self selecting congregation. And in political terms, we are in the middle of a shift like the one that happened in the 18th and 19th centuries. As voluntary

00:28:21.490 - 00:28:37.490

associations. Civil Society came to play this crucial role , mediating the space between individuals and the state. In each case, new kinds of social entities. The congregation, the voluntary society had to be fashioned

00:28:37.500 - 00:28:51.710

. I think we're in a similar time of transition now and we are working and waiting for these new social forms. There is that, I think is clear. That's our task. Mhm. Theological schools

00:28:51.710 - 00:29:04.510

that think they work for justice by training people to lead institutions with declining influence, I think, will deceive themselves and their constituencies. But what would new and faithful forms look like a school that still wanted

00:29:04.510 - 00:29:18.930

to influence? The wider polity might shift its emphasis from preparing people to lead institutions, to preparing people to join and lead these new expressive movements that might or might not involve a professional degree for, as

00:29:18.930 - 00:29:32.380

I said before, formal credentials, so necessary for the leadership of institutions, which happens through offices. They can sometimes get in the way of leading expressive movements, and it certainly would not involve training them

00:29:32.380 - 00:29:45.000

to write as if they were writing denominational statements on some issue. That's what the professor of christian ethics needs to think about. It. Might just saying it might instead, for its word to myself to

00:29:45.000 - 00:30:00.410

it might instead form people for community organizing or leading marches and other public demonstrations. It might be like the Highlander school, that hub of the civil rights movement, which drilled students on the theology and embodied

00:30:00.410 - 00:30:14.880

practice of non violence so they could occupy lunch counters and bus stations. You want meaningful theological, politically meaningful education, theological education. It happened at Highlander , which, so far as I know, is

00:30:14.880 - 00:30:30.050

the only theological school in the history of the United States to have an FBI dossier compiled owners, no matter how seemingly radical professors are, it would focus its efforts on work for justice on social forms that

00:30:30.050 - 00:30:45.450

don't require cultural establishment and do not presume that they will be able to work through the dictates of large and influential institutions. I think that version of working for justice beyond the theological school has real potential.

00:30:47.740 - 00:31:00.500

But I also think that the pressures on model m give us an opportunity to rethink some of its deepest assumptions, and the deepest of all those assumptions, is that theological education, perhaps even faith, even

00:31:00.500 - 00:31:15.740

church, even God, are important because they are means to ends that unfold within the horizon of this world. Is that true? Deep in model, lim is the assumption that theological education has primarily an

00:31:15.750 - 00:31:32.120

instrumental value. It's mostly good for something else. And if we are looking for better ways to organize theological education to work for justice in this age, we are not questioning that assumption. I think that

00:31:32.120 - 00:31:49.540

would be a missed opportunity. So, yearning yearning justice in this world always matters. This is especially true when schools are closing, students are crushed by debt and faculty jobs are dissolving into the gruel of

00:31:49.540 - 00:32:04.600

adjunct work. And now, when some of our students staff and teachers fear being deported, when all of our students staff and teachers have greater and lesser reasons to fear a militarized police force that will not

00:32:04.610 - 00:32:17.470

be checked by a department of justice. And when our president issues executive orders that grant legitimacy to some of the most hateful currents in our culture at time like this, talk of anything but political action with

00:32:17.470 - 00:32:36.070

this worldly impact can seem not just trivial, but decadent. We know what the purpose of theological education needs to be. We need theological education that empowers action for justice. We need theological education that is

00:32:36.070 - 00:32:51.090

action for justice. We need to put whatever theorizing theology. Izing or talk of tell us, we do in the service of a politics of resistance and emancipation. I feel this demand even more. I

00:32:51.090 - 00:33:01.120

feel judged by it convicted by it. And when I say convicted, I know what I'm talking about because I'm from the hometown of john Ashcroft and bass pro shops and the assemblies of God. I feel

00:33:01.120 - 00:33:14.600

convicted by it in the full resonance of that phrase . I think we must be willing to take stands that place. Whatever status we have at risk, we must be willing to give up the rituals of

00:33:14.600 - 00:33:28.840

respectability. Many of you have done these things and long ago. So here the preacher addresses himself with others invited to over hear with ears that suit their own histories. I think the times demand new seriousness

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from us, new willingness to risk new faith and energy for bearing witness in a time when the powers and Principalities of this age seemed to be ascendant. At the same time, I must confess, I

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worry about a call to put theological education in the service of even the best sort of political action. I worry about it because it invites an instrumental ization of theological education that I think betrays our best hope

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for this work. And in articulating this worry, I don't mean to renounce the political significance of theological education. On the contrary, I want to name this worry in part because of political concerns for I

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worry that our actually existing political goals, no matter how good they are, I worry they are too small. Two determined by systemic racism, too attached to middle class ideals. I worry that they are

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insufficiently radical, insufficiently utopian, insufficiently hopeful, insufficiently informed by and judged by the life, death and resurrection of jesus. And so I worry about making our theological reasoning about the purpose of theological education subject

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to our immediate political projects. Theodor Adorno is a mixed bag of a guide on this question, but I think his analysis of the right relationship between theory and practice can be instructive to us. Now,

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Adorno wrote the call for unity of theory and practice has irresistibly degraded theory to a servants roll. It matters here that Adorno had to run from the nazis . All right. But he says you can't unify

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theory and practice because it degrades theory to a servants role, removing the very traits it should have brought to that unity the visa stamp of practice which we demand of all theory became a sensors. Place it

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yet. Whereas theories succumbed in the vaunted mixture of practice became non conceptual. A piece of the politics it was supposed to lead out of it became the very prey of power theory. Theology talk of tell

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us can become in adorno. Those words degraded to a servants role when it is made merely instrumental. This is not just bad for theory. It leaves practice to become a piece of the politics. It

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is supposed to lead out of even the prey of power. We need tactics to make it through the night, But because the ends those tactics seek are embedded in an unjust order. We also need hopes

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that go beyond a better president and the reform of police practice and the guarantee of constitutional rights for all people, whatever their gender sexuality, race, religion or country of origin. This is a lot.

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But we need hope of another order. We need dreams of a heavenly city where whose gates are always open. We need beatific visions of a god who calls to us in love. We need parables of

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a reign of God, in which all the laborers are paid the same wage. Regardless of when they arrived in the vineyard, we need songs of a time when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and

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the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fat ling together , and a little child shall lead them. Theological education can nurture such visions. And so I think

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we need theological education that seeks to tell us that is not just a better goal, but a hope of another order. Saying that theological education should nurture such hopes should provoke an immediate challenge. Just whose

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hopes are you talking about? Who gets to specify the content of those beatific visions? From what social location are those hopes formed? These are the signature questions of our age, for we live in a

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time when we know there is no view from nowhere . Every view is a view from somewhere and that somewhere is shot through with interests of race, class , gender and more. Who can offer any truly

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transcendental hope? And if it's all already political, shouldn't we just name it so we can hold one another accountable for our politics. These questions grow out of a truthful recognition of the significance of social location

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, but it is also true that they can play and I would argue they have played right into the hands of a prevailing order in which and I'll ask here, you forgive the jargon and the ISMs that

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are about to roll off my lips. But I mean, um uh right. It has played right into the hands of a prevailing order in which neo liberal incrementalism, technocratic, managerial ism and nihilistic careerism

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collude to divide the world between them. When we use the knowledge that every view is a view from some very implicated somewhere to sweep the legs out from under profits, who would sing to us of other

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worlds. We end up endorsing the world as we have made it as if God had no better alternative . The recognition of the social location of all knowledge makes any talk of a transcendent hope problematic. That's

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right. At the same time, the loss of such visions consigns us to a world that has given up hope for deep change. That's right too. This dilemma has dogged me since I first started thinking

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about theological education and really thinking about much of anything . The institutional crises within schools and the wider political crises that rage right now, They've only intensified it . The key, I think, is not to

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try to evade the dilemma, but to live into it, even to intensify it and to intensify it for our students. Intensifying the dilemma means accenting both poles at once. We must be reminded constantly forcefully

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of the social location of our visions. At the same time, we must be reminded constantly forcefully of how much we need a vision that transcends all of our social locations. If we forget social location,

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we slip into one or another of the old familiar ideologies, and if we forget our need for a transcendent hope, we slip into the ideology of a third way realism, that is still even after a

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string of defeats these last 12 months, one of the signs of our times. If we forget the first poll, we can confuse our hopes with God's hopes, and if we forget the second Pole,

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we can confuse the limits of what we can do with the depths of what the world needs, remembering . Both of these at once puts us in an impossible situation, which is, I think exactly where

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we need to learn how to live. Learning to live in this space could be central to the formation the deep formation offered by theological education. It would mean learning in conversation with people different from ourselves and

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in critical reflection on our own positions, the particular charities and limits and failings of our hopes. But it would also mean learning in conversation with scripture and with the great teachers of the church in every era

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and in conversation with those already in the struggle and with our colleagues. The need for Gospel Hope. It would mean cultivating in students and faculty, a desire for a transcendent hope and the recognition that even

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our best efforts do not offer the hope we need . It would mean cultivating a yearning for the Gospel . Some might argue that such learning is itself the favorite posture of privileged tenured white male academics, for

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it allows us to wring our hands and furrow our brows and express grave concern and do nothing to change the structures that benefit us so much. But the yearning I am describing still takes action even bold action

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. It just refuses to be satisfied. Others might argue that such yearning is just nihilism in fancy dress . That would be true if I thought this were all up to us. But I don't If christian

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theological education has any value at all, it involves knowledge of a God who is more than just our thoughts about God and whose work for the redemption. Yeah, Clap to that too. That's right.

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If it has any value at all, it involves knowledge of a God who is more than just our thoughts about God and whose work for the redemption of the world is more than just the sum total of

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our actions. Christian theological education presumes that such trust is meaningful. More specifically, it presumes trust in one whose power is made perfect in weakness. In light of that trust, we understand our limits differently

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. In our yearning we are not bereft. Instead , I dare to hope that in our yearning our size are joined to those of the Spirit, who groans with all creation, with sighs too deep for

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words. And in that joining is the real substance of theological knowing. Having a right knowledge of our limits, then does not put an end to wisdom . No, the fear of the Lord is the

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beginning of wisdom, and it is the beginning of any theological education that is worthy of the name.