Become The Glory of God: A Graduation Speech

Polydoxy: Theologies of the Manifold, 2010

Life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it might display? (Virginia Woolf) To convey the qualities of an elusive, luminous halo: this may be the aim of theology, as much as it was the goal of Woolf's fiction. 1 It is, indeed, what has led me to the image of glory. Not the blinding lights of its triumphalist counterfeits, the reflection of gold, or the glamour of celebrity, but a quality inseparable from life in all its fragility and ambiguities. Displaying both light and darkness, this halo is perhaps like the almond-shaped auras of Byzantine iconography-also called "glories." 2 It is the spectral luminosity of ordinary things, neither irresistible nor self-sufficient, but incessantly alluring. It is often barely perceptible, yet sometimes disconcerting-even terrifying. The apparent aberrations of its depictions do not diminish a theologian's zeal to convey its varying, hazy radiance. Drawn by passion to the glory that flickers in the midst of everyday life, theology speaks of its "unknown and uncircumscribed spirit." This is a spirit that cannot be confined to neatly defined theological concepts or categories. And yet theologians persist in our weak attentiveness, "resolute" (Keller) in our attempts to describe it, however inaccurately and distortedly. We seek, with feeble words and images to express the inexpressible, in a multiplicity of voices, languages, and genres. An uncircumscribed spirit perhaps lured the words of Irenaeus of Lyon: "The glory of God is the human being fully alive." A celebration of these words lies behind the work of liberation theologians such as Elizabeth Johnson and Leonardo Boff, whose works express a passion for divine glory perceived in fully alive human beings. 3 Rubem Alves rewrites Irenaeus in his unapologetic theopoetics of the body: "The glory of God is found in happy people." 4 Perhaps we recognize the efforts to convey it also in Emmanuel Levinas's allusions to the "gleam of transcendence in the face of the Other." 5 These witnesses to glory are not expressions of writers who are distant from adversity. Quite to the contrary, they are the poignant confessions of those who have been touched by dreadful realities of injustice and cruelty: sexism, abject

2007

This book and the accompanying DVD lectures introduce new and prospective theological students to the strange and exciting world that faces them at Bible College and Theological Seminary as they seek to delve more deeply into the Word of God and prepare for Christian ministry. A Taste of Glory deals with some crucial theological and spiritual issues that students must engage with to make a success of their theological studies, such as: • What can I expect from my theological studies? • What makes theological studies so unique? • How do we develop theologically? • What kinds of knowledge do we need to acquire in theology? • What subjects do we have to study and why? • How do the various theological subjects interact with each other? A Taste of Glory also contains practical study skills material, such as: • How to develop an aggressive reading strategy; • How to read faster; • How to write a good assignment; and • How to master theological information.

2017

Following the theme of a conference held in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2016, this article explores the notion of “enabling students to live a beautiful life” as a possible end of education. A distinction is made between short-term, contextual aims in education and overarching, encompassing end(s) of education. Following Dewey, educational aims are considered to be manifold and to change over time within a sociocultural context, whereas a proper end of education, if such a thing exists, could be seen as “the best possible realization of humanity as humanity.” Drawing further on the work of R. S. Peters, who contests the existence of any final end of education other than education itself, it can be seen that proposing such an end can be a challenging undertaking. Nevertheless, this article argues for a possible humanistic end of education, building on Schmid’s philosophical concept of the art of living in conjunction with the German notion of Bildung and Aristotle’s concept of phron...

International Journal of Christianity & Education, 2022

Scholarly definitions of student success have become increasingly transactional and thereby reflect a specific form of modern utilitarianism. In this paper, we use a theological map to explore the terrain of contemporary student success scholarship and practice in an effort to re-imagine how the Christian faith might animate a vision of student success for scholar-practitioners. First, we review the current scholarly landscape, second, we show where it falls short. Third, we use the practical theological method to outline a theological vision of student success. Finally, we propose ways to bridge the gap between current practice and theological vision.

2012

By all accounts higher education-including Christian higher education-is in crisis. In A Theology of Higher Education, Mike Higton offers a Christian theological account of higher education, showing that the DNA of the university as a species contains uniquely Christian traits. Higton is Academic Co-Director of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme and Senior Lecturer in Theology at the University of Exeter, so he is well situated to offer this analysis, not least because of the explosive push-back being felt in the Oxbridge context. Instead of turning the book into "a diatribe, or into a melancholy, long withdrawing roar of retreating academic faith" (2), Higton crafts an argument meant to rehabilitate confidence in university education by celebrating what it does well, or could do better. Part I of the volume traces the evolution of the university through the histories of the universities of Paris, Berlin, Oxford, and Dublin. Typically, the tale of these great universities is construed as the shedding of the constraints of religious orthodoxy in favor of the emancipation reason offers, the triumph of reason over tradition and freedom over authority. Higton contests this myth, arguing instead that in genesis of the university, "reason emerges not over against Christian devotion, but as a form of Christian devotion" (13, emphasis original). Practices at the University of Paris, for example, could only make sense in the context of certain theological assumptions. "It was assumed that to discover that harmonious ordering was not simply an intellectual game, but one of the means (or part of the means) for discovering the good ordering of human life before God, including the good ordering of the social life. It was assumed, moreover, that this discovery of good order was possible only through a certain kind of conformity to it: the good ordering of the scholar's life in humility, piety, and peace-and this both as

Philosophy of Education Archive, 2014

Alexander Sidorkin offers a bracing yet remarkably balanced critique of the pose that so many us (educational scholars generally, perhaps philosophers particularly) adopt as we relate the realities of educational practice/policy to our sense of an evasive yet animating ideal. It is this engagement with the ideal that prompts his invocation of the historical and philosophical debate between iconoclasts and iconophiles, using that religious imagery as a model for understanding our own circumstances and potential salvation.

The Vocation of Theology Today: A Festschrift for David Ford, ed. Tom Greggs, Rachel Muers and Simeon Zahl (Eugene, OR: Cascade), 2013

This chapter asks what it means to speak, as David Ford does, of learning 'for its own sake' and learning 'for God's sake'. It looks at Jewish accounts of studying Torah 'for the name', at Newman's claims about learning as an end in itself, at Gordon Graham's recent retrieval of Newman, and then at Ford's own account, in which learning aims at wise delight and delightful wisdom.

Call to Worship 47 (2) 3-10, 2014

In 2013 the Presbyterian Church (USA) published a new hymnal, *Glory To God.* As the theologian on the committee that put this hymnal together, and as the primarily writer of the committee's Theological Vision Statement, I sketch here the vision that guided the committee in the forming of this new songbook.

2013

Effective or Wise? Teaching and the Meaning of Professional Dispositions in Education. Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education. Volume 447, 2014

This chapter argues that (1) we need refreshing and hopeful ways to think about education and that human joy, the deep fulfillment that ought to regulate the ideal of education, should never be replaced in our thinking by an over-riding preoccupation with the technical and the transhuman, but also (2) why this seems to be so difficult for us to do - especially these days. Why, for example, might a title like "The Joy of Educating" sound less than serious and professional to our ears when we know that without the promise of joy, not just education but many fundamental human practices would suffer, perhaps irremediably over the long term, by being reduced to a mere assemblage of tasks and procedures - albeit carried out effectively? This essay will explore how the refreshing and the hopeful is a morally necessary feature of educational discourse and why this should be taken very seriously at a time when educational discourses are being colonized by other powers that take a very different view. Of course, this is an ambitious undertaking to do in one essay and, needless to say, I will be relying on and referencing what I consider to be the most promising avenues that others have already developed to help me make my case. These avenues include existential phenomenology and feminism.