The End of Theological Education

Ted A. Smith’s The End of Theological Education is best read as a sustained reflection on the question, “What time is it?” Amid the many changes—and challenges—that are before theological education, is it a time of unshakeable decline, or is it a time of renewal? For those who inhabit, study, and serve in theological education, how does a sober assessment of the times shape common work and calling? And if theological education is to remain theological, which is to say, if the individual and institutional movement that comprise it somehow continue to participate in God’s work, how might a measured assessment God’s time order individual and institutional work and witness in the current time for theological education?

This volume is the latest installment in the “Theological Education between the Times” (TEBT) series, a project funded by Lilly Endowment and directed by Smith. While this volume picks up themes from previous books in the series, it offers its own slant, considering the question of the times for theological education by staging an argument according to two measures of time. First, it considers the question historically, suggesting the forms that guide theological education have changed in the past, and so they can change again. Second, Smith approaches the question of time eschatologically, arguing God is always the proper end of theological education. Accordingly, the book’s title, The End of Theological Education, simultaneously draws attention to the changing form(s) of theological education, presaging the “end” of certain expressions of education and formation, and the unchanging end of theological education: God.

Three movements advance Smith’s argument. The first movement, which includes the introduction, chapter 1 (“Consolidation”), and chapter 2 (“Individualization”), provides a historical analysis of the organizational forms that have guided religious life and theological education in North America. Smith notes how the colonial period gave rise to a new organizational form, the seminary, which became an anchor institution for a period of associational life. Nevertheless, forces of individualization and polarization have decoupled individual and collective life from existing associational orders. This has a two-fold consequence for theological education. First, it leads religious leaders to pursue alternative sources of formation and credentialling beyond theological education. Second, it renders the host of adjacent institutions that surround theological education (e.g., congregations, nonprofits) as optional associations that are determined by individual preference and an individualized identity. The consequence, as Smith notes, is a fundamental recalibration of the social, moral, and theological imagination that grounds contemporary institutional life.

The second movement provides a constructive appraisal of the moral and social imagination that is required for faithful action in the in-between times that occasion the TEBT series. Chapter 4 (“Renunciations”) outlines the way(s) of life that must be renounced in order to avoid propping up an unraveling social order. Smith specifically identifies white settler colonialism, professional status, professional debt, and professional reason as governing imaginaries that require individual and collective renunciation. Chapter 5 (“Affordances”) articulates a series of contingent possibilities that provides pathways for alternative forms to emerge to support the future of theological education. Smith is careful to describe affordance as “a set of concrete, historically contingent, morally ambivalent forms that make possible a range of actions” (169). When considered within the chronology and economy of God, as Smith proposes we read the times, affordances such as authenticity, shifting demographics, ministry beyond professions, complex institutions, postprofessional solidarity, and leaderful movements provide sites to discern pathways for the future of theological education.

There is a third movement, however, that extends an invitation for collective reflection and imagining a new social order. It surfaces in an aside in the introduction, when Smith writes: “We need to make a leap to new institutional forms” (15). It then appears later at the rhetorical fulcrum of his work in chapter 3 (“Unraveling”), as Smith combines his historical analysis with a historical appraisal to draw attention to the peculiar times we are in. Later, in a sermon titled “The End” embedded in the middle of the volume, Smith appeals to Jeremiah’s vision of time to recalibrate the contemporary crisis/es in theological education. Finally, a concluding reflection, “For Further Thought,” invites readers to engage in the collective and (re)creative work of reading and working together amid the contemporary fractures and possibilities of theological education. While this invitation is presented in a textual form, it seeks to create the social, linguistic, and imaginative detritus out of which new forms of theological education may emerge.

Smith’s work offers a timely contribution to research in theology and religion at a period of collective discernment about the shape of North American religious life. It can and should be read alongside other works that have provided a grammar to imagine the conditions for alternative educational and social horizons. For example, Edward Farley’s Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education (Fortress, 1983), Ada María Isasi-Díaz’s En la Lucha/In the Struggle: Elaborating a Mujerista Theology (Fortress, 2004), and Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons: Fugative Planning and Black Study (Minor Compositions, 2013) all provide distinct and fitting comparisons because each composition seeks to constitute a new collective that is able to imagine alternative institutional, educational, and moral horizons. At the same time, Smith’s argument invites readers to adopt successively more of the frame he proposes with each movement of this work. For example, readers may appreciate the historical analysis, but may not be willing to accept his assessment of the crisis that informs his constructive appraisal. More significantly, responding to the third movement may require both a willingness to be unmoored from the simulacra of stability existing forms provide and adopting a series of commitments that cast one upon the waters of human contingency in relation to the activity and possibility of God.

If The End of Theological Education is a sustained reflection about what time it is, the final words draw readers beyond the three movements of Smith’s argument, inviting them to consider the forms of faithful action the present time invites, and possibly requires, in theological education. While readers may wish for prescriptive solutions and suggested next steps, Smith resists the reassurance such provisional pathways may provide. Instead, his book models an ordinary form of faithfulness anchored in four practices: telling a compelling story, gathering others for shared work and witness, loving the institutions you inhabit, and attending to God’s presence. These practices have grounded theological education in the past, and they can be sites for encounter and new imagination once again. For Smith, although what lies on the other side of the present unraveling is unknown, the abiding love and desire of God remain the chief end of theological education, and this end is the sole hope for the future of theological education.

Dustin D. Benac is the director and co-founder of the Program for the Future Church at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary.

Dustin D. Benac

Date Of Review:

February 27, 2024