Good learning calls, no less than teaching does, for courtesy, respect, a kind of reverence; for facts and people, evidence and argument, for climates of speech and patterns of behaviour different from our own.
Watchfulness is indeed in order, but endless suspicion and mistrust are not.
There are affinities betwen the courtesy, the delicacy of attentiveness, required for friendship;
the singleminded passionate disinterestedness without which no scholarly or scientific work is done;
and the contemplativity which strains, without credulity, to listen for the voice of God - who does not shout.
Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God, pages 10-11.
That's as good a description of learning and teaching in an interactive class as I have ever come across. Theological Education at its best is training in conversation and courtesy, forming habits of enquiry and friendship, encouraging an intellect both passionate and contemplative, inviting on a journey in good company to new places, and doing so at the summons of the Eternal God, in the company of the often unrecognised stranger who comes alongside us as Risen Lord, and our hearts burning within us by the fire of a Holy Love whose presence both consumes and makes new.
Such attitudes and dispositions don't come easily. They require a willingness to unlearn, to take the risk of relinquishing old certainties to make possible the discovery of new truth. They demand that we unclench our hold on unexamined assumptions and open our hands and heart and mind to the vast realities of God who cannot be tamed by our dogmas, nor contained in our theology be it ever so sound. In effect, such dispositions require faith not certainty, trust not defensive tactics lest truth unsettle us, a surrender of will and intellect to the One who leads us into all truth, who takes of the things of Jesus and teaches them to us, and a joyful freedom to dive into the depths of the grace and mercy and mystery of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Van Eyck's Adoration of the Lamb, despite the ambiguities of Renaissance ecclesial and patronage power games, infuses enquiry and contemplation with adoring prayer, focusing wonder and worship on 'the Lamb in the midst of the throne'. It is a powerful statement of the fundamental disposition of the theologian.
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