freedom,(authority,(and(the(imagination… · 2015-02-09 · 1...
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FREEDOM, AUTHORITY, AND THE IMAGINATION: A critical correlation of Maxine Greene’s aesthetic pedagogy with Christian Scripture and Tradition to Re-‐‑vision Practices of Bible Engagement for Spiritual formation of Teenagers
Graham Stanton
Student Number: 43421871
STATEMENT OF THESIS
The Christian church has traditionally emphasised engagement with the Bible for the spiritual formation of young people in the Christian faith. The Reformed Evangelical tradition, along with many others in the Christian church, considers the Bible to be divinely inspired and the final authority in all matters of Christian faith and practice. However, young people in Australia are engaging with the Bible infrequently and display low levels of biblical literacy. As a proportion of church members teenagers are under-‐‑represented in the membership of Christian churches relative to the Australian population.
There are approaches to encourage Christian spiritual formation among young people but which pay little attention to engaging with the Bible. Conversely, there are efforts to redress declining Bible engagement among young people have but which fail to make explicit how such increased Bible engagement would contribute to spiritual formation. Adult mentors of Christian youth face the challenge of how they might help young people personally appropriate the Bible as an authoritative text for spiritual formation.
This thesis proposes that that there is an imaginative work central to reading and responding to Scripture that can be employed as an effective approach to Christian spiritual formation among teenagers. Through a correlation of the aesthetic pedagogy of Maxine Greene and the theological aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar this thesis will show that by enabling young people to use their imagination in the way they read and respond to the Bible adult mentors are able to preserve the freedom inherent in spiritual formation without diminishing the authority of Scripture.
The aesthetic pedagogy of educational philosopher Maxine Greene provides useful parallels with this task of leading young people in reading the Bible: both share the same goal of individual and societal transformation; both share the desire to create learning spaces that promote questioning and dialogue; and both share an emphasis on freedom and personal agency. Insights from Greene’s aesthetic pedagogy have the potential to shape positive uses of Scripture as well as expose misuses in contemporary Australian youth ministry.
Balthasar’s theological aesthetics reflects on the beauty of God as a necessary starting point for assessing the goodness and truth of the Christian life.1 In short, Balthasar contends that human beings are unable to determine what is true without having engaged in living within that reality as something good; but we will not embrace the good without having first been 1 Balthasar’s major work is the theological triptych dealing with the true, the good and the beautiful: The Glory of the Lord: a theological aesthetics (7 volumes), Theo Drama: theological dramatic theory (5 volumes); Theo-‐‑Logic: Theological logical theory (3 volumes).
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captured by its beauty. Balthasar found in the science of aesthetics a ‘conceptual framework’ for his theology by drawing analogy between the beauty evident in created things and the beauty of God, identified as God’s glory. Balthasar’s theology provides a perspective on the Bible and the human response to the Bible that highlights the value of imagination and wonder.
Building on the insights gained from a correlational study of Greene’s aesthetic pedagogy with Christian theology, the thesis will propose a practice framework for using the imagination in guiding teenagers’ reading and response to the Bible for spiritual formation within the Christian tradition. This framework can then be shared with the community of practitioners in youth ministry (cf Wenger, 1998a; Wenger, 1998b) and encourage further development of imaginative practice in the use of the Bible in Christian youth ministry.
SITUATING THE THESIS
BIBLE ENGAGEMENT FOR SPIRITUAL FORMATION
‘Bible Engagement’ is a coverall term used by a number of Christian researches and agencies across the world to refer to how people read and interact with the Bible. The State of the Bible report by the American Bible Society (2013) lists various activities under the heading of Bible Engagement: reading print versions of the Bible, attending a small group or Bible study (not including weekend worship services), listening to audio versions of the Bible, listening to teaching about the Bible via a podcast, and reading electronic versions of the Bible via the internet, on smart phones or e-‐‑readers (2013, p.22). Bible Engagement is closely related to but distinguished from Bible penetration (ownership of and access to the Bible), biblical literacy (knowledge about the content of the Bible), and Bible perceptions (attitudes to and beliefs about the Bible).
Bible engagement and biblical literacy have declined in the USA, the UK, and Canada (American Bible Society, 2013; Bible Society, 2014; Hiemstra, 2014). Similar findings are evident among Australian young people. The National Telephone Survey that was part of the Spirit of Generation Y study conducted in 2005 found that, among young people aged 13 to 24, 5% read the Bible daily, 7.6% weekly, and 14.8% occasionally. 23.8% of those surveyed said they never read the Bible, but to this could be added the 49% of young people who were not asked the question about religious practices since they had indicated that they did not believe in God at all. From 2005 to 2008, of students surveyed in mostly independent or Catholic schools, 4% indicated they had read the Bible frequently in the previous year, 6% had read it occasionally, and 19% had read it once or twice (Hughes and Pickering, 2010, p.8).
One exception noted by Australian researchers was among reformed evangelical youth ministries: Bible reading practices were relatively frequent and biblical literacy relatively high. However, the researchers reflected that while the young people knew the Biblical stories and made some connections between characters in the stories and their own situations, most were unable to draw that information together into a vision of what faith was all about and how their faith was lived (Hughes, 2014).
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Niebuhr’s description of a Christian Endeavor meeting in 1927 expressed the challenge that continues to face youth ministry in Australia:
Dropped in on the First — Church of — on my way back from — University. Went into the young people'ʹs meeting before the evening service and found a typical Endeavor meeting in progress. Some ninety wholesome youngsters were in attendance. All the various tricks of a good Endeavor meeting were used. Several little poems clipped from the Endeavor World were recited at the appropriate time and some of the members contributed quotations from Scripture and from well-‐‑known authors. The leader gave a good but platitudinous talk. There was no discussion. My impression was that this type of meeting, if still held, would be very poorly attended. But here the facts belied my theories. So much the worse for the young people of the church. Only a very inert type of youngster could be satisfied with such a meeting, and only a very uncritical mind would accept the pious platitudes which filled it, without uttering a protest or challenging a dozen assumptions. (Niebuhr, 1980, p.103)
Niebuhr appealed to a poetic imagination that is ‘a way of arriving at truth by giving a clue to the total meaning of things without being in any sense an analytic description of detailed facts’ (1980, p.114). Niebuhr’s call for the use of imagination in reading and responding to Scripture is echoed in various contemporary authors. Andrew Root described Bible reading with young people as ‘a fundamentally imaginative activity (Root, 2012, p.102). Veith and Ristuccia have pointed to imagination as the way God ‘reaches us’ and that appealing to the imagination is ‘a way we can reach others’ (Veith & Ristuccia, 2015, p.18).
However, appeals to using ‘imagination’ in relation to ‘the Bible’ are complicated by the variety of ways different authors approach these two words. The reformed evangelical tradition has often displayed a reluctance to employ the concept of imagination because of its association with fanciful creativity. For example, Beale (2007) questions Hays’ (2005) use of the word ‘imagination’ because ‘the word evokes a fanciful creation of images that is more in the realm of artful possibilities than of absolute redemptive-‐‑historical realities that should shape people'ʹs thinking’ (2007, p.191). At the same time Beale suspects that Hays is likely to be using imagination to refer to a persons’ overall mindset rather than just the creative capacity.
It becomes necessary therefore to identity different ways the imagination is used in reading and responding to the Bible. An added challenge arises from the fact that appeals to the imagination are made from within a variety of theological frameworks that differ in how they regard ‘the Bible’ and the nature of its authority. Two writers may use imagination in the same way but apply it in different frameworks; others may work within the same framework but identify different uses of the imagination. An initial step in clearing the ground for this thesis is proposing a taxonomy that distinguishes various uses of the imagination in relation to the Bible.2
2 There is a broad use of imagination in relation to the way humans perceive the world around us. Coleridge defined the primary imagination as ‘the living power and prime agent of all human Perception’ (Biographia Literaria, ch xii). Warnock identified the use of imagination for perception as the power ‘to represent things previously experienced’ and ‘to construct images of a certain form, blueprints, as it were, for all future and possible reproductive images (Warnock, 1976, p.33). Used in this way imagination becomes an omnibus term for
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MAPPING THE IMAGINATION
Different authors employ the imagination for identifying connections, creating new connections, building empathy, and proposing alternative realities. These uses can each be understood as sub-‐‑movements of the overarching task of imagining a transformed life. The basic activity of forming mental images of what is not immediately present to the senses is involved in some way in each of the uses of imagination outlined here.3 The boundaries between these different uses of the imagination are less distinct than a diagram with hard edges allows. Nevertheless, we may diagram the relationship between the uses of imagination as follows:
Identifying Connections
We use imagination for identifying connections between various elements of the biblical text, and for identifying connections between the meanings we draw from the text and our experience of life.
Conceptualising metaphors and other literary imagery requires a work of imagination. Metaphor conveys meaning by taking aspects of something that is known and carrying them over to apply to something that is unknown. We use the imagination to construct the bridge that moves from image to concept. Ricoeur’s essay on imagination and the Bible extended the idea of a metaphor (‘the collision between two semantic fields in a sentence’) to apply ‘not only to words but to whole sequences of sentences.’ Imagination is used in the work of ‘metaphorisation’ that perceives ‘something else, something more’ from the connections of signification between isolated texts (Ricoeur, 1995, p.161).
This use of the imagination is at work in approaches to reading the Bible that are not ordinarily regarded as being at all imaginative. The ‘principilizing’ method seeks to identify various mental process including intuition and memory. How imagination is understood within the philosophy of perception is beyond the scope of this project. For the present purpose, when imagination is given such a broad meaning it loses any sense of meaningful application.
3 Garrett Green disputed the definition of imagination as the ‘image making’ faculty arguing that the way we describe imagination is itself metaphorical: imagination is not literally the viewing of mental images but a mental process that is somehow akin to viewing images (Green, 1998, p.93). This idiosyncratic definition is driven by Green’s central thesis that the imagination is a ‘paradigmatic (pattern-‐‑making and pattern-‐‑forming) faculty’ (1998, p.94). Pattern-‐‑making and forming in a holistic sense as Green proposed is included here under the heading of ‘shaping identity’; it is one use of the imagination, but not the sole use.
Imagining a Transformed Life
Building Empathy Proposing Alternatives
Identifying Connections
Creating Connections
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unifying theological principles in a biblical text, and then ‘to [re]state the [biblical] author’s propositions, arguments, narrations, and illustrations in timeless abiding truths with special focus on the application of those truths to the current needs of the church’ (Kaiser, 1981, p.152; see also Kaiser, 2009).4 Though this process is largely considered to be merely intellectual, identifying theological principles involves an imaginative work that identifies concepts drawn from the various elements of the text.
Andrew Root’s description of Bible reading as a ‘fundamentally imaginative activity’ (Root, 2012, p.102) seems to be referring to a similar use of imagination for identifying connections. With Barth, Root focuses his attention on how Scripture witnesses to God’s action in the world. The text of Scripture supplies the characteristics of the category of experience named as ‘divine action’; the work of imagination is directed to our experience in the world in order to connect those aspects of our experience that constitute divine action. Adult mentors invite young people to ‘read and imagine how the God witnessed to in this text is moving now, how this God is acting for and with you’ (Root, 2012, p.103). From reading Scripture we teach young people to ‘discern God’s action’, and ‘read the signs of the Bible in conversation with the signs of our context’ (Root, 2012, p.98).
Thus, while both Kaiser and Root apply the imaginative work of identifying connections to reading the Bible, Kaiser focussed on connections in the world of the text, Root on the world in front of the text.
Creating Connections
Alongside using imagination to identify meaningful connections in existing data we also use imagination to create something new. This use of imagination is particularly associated with the creative arts, such as music, art, story, poetry, and dance. Coleridge called this the secondary imagination—that human ability to draw from the elements or fragments of what has been perceived and reassemble them in order to create something new. By identifying connections imagination enables us to interpret an existing metaphor, and by creating connections imagination enables us to invent new metaphors.
The distinction between these uses of imagination lies more in the purpose of what is imagined than in the mental activity undertaken. Any act of conceptualising meaning is creative in some sense since it involves more than simple reproduction. The meaningful connections being identified in the mind is a new creation. Conversely, new connections are not created ex nihilo. Our imaginings are always combinations of pre-‐‑existing parts: we are able to imagine a seven-‐‑legged orange elephant, but we cannot picture an object in four-‐‑dimensional space or a colour beyond the visible spectrum. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful distinction to be made between using the imagination to interpret an existing construction such as a written text or work of visual art (identifying connections) and the imagination in the prior work of constructing such artefacts (creating connections).
4 This approach has been particularly pursued among reformed evangelical youth ministry in Sydney as the approach taught at the Katoomba Youth Leadership Conference, a large Bible teaching convention for youth ministry leaders.
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Using the imagination to create new connections is affirmed in the romantic tradition as ‘our gateway to God’, and the products of such creativity as ‘conduits for transcendent experience’ (Levy, 2008, p.10). Human beings therefore need to become attuned to the creative arts (Levy focuses particularly on music, art, story, poetry and ritual), ‘and engage with [our] imaginations’ (Levy, 2008, p.10). The imagination is a necessary overlay to whatever sense of revelation is discerned in Scripture or church tradition, providing the 'ʹongoing revelation'ʹ needed to prevent tradition from hardening into 'ʹa dead place of rote, lifeless mouthings and leaden practice'ʹ (Levy, 2008, p.104).
Gordon Kaufman argued that the Bible contains the creative imaginings constructed by human authors out of the mythological traditions of the Ancient Near East and first century Hellenism. The imagination brings together descriptive terms from human experience as ‘building blocks [for] putting together its conception’ of God (Kaufman, 1981, p.29). Since, Kaufman argued, this ancient imagination used forms for conceiving of God that are no longer valid (such as masculine language and patriarchal conventions), contemporary theology must engage in a fresh work of imagination to construct a concept of God that is able to make God’s presence in contemporary life intelligible (Kaufman, 1981, p.272). Taking a similar approach to Kaufman, Paul Avis argued that Christianity ‘lives from the imagination’ (Avis, 1999, p.8).5 This is true firstly in relation to the way the apostles and prophets expressed their experience of God in biblical metaphors, symbols, and myths; and then secondly, in a ‘corresponding act of ‘imaginative insight’ by which contemporary believers appropriate the Christian faith in contemporary experience.
The reformed tradition has focussed on the role of the creative arts in response to or directed by Scripture rather than in the reading and interpretation of Scripture itself (see Dyrness, 2004; Dyrness, 2007; Searle, 2008). Imaginative creativity encourages reflection on the personal appropriation of doctrine. Speaking about representations of the ascension in Western Art, David Brown noted, ‘because the artistic tradition is concerned to engage, there is much more emphasis on the potential relevance of the doctrine to the viewer, listener or reader, and so as much concern with the impact on us as on Christ’ (Brown, 2007, p.257).
Building Empathy
The imagination enables us to build empathy by imagining ourselves in someone else’s shoes. This capacity is particularly evident in the enduring power of stories in human culture. C. S. Lewis spoke of the value of reading literature: ‘My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented… Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality… in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself’ (Lewis, 1961, p.140-‐‑141). Research conducted among young adult readers has substantiated claims for the capacity of literature to enlarge human 5 Avis has a clearer place for the objectivity of divine revelation than Kaufman. Avis distinguished the idea of divine revelation from the social construction involved in human religion. The religious imagery evident in the Bible ‘did not fall ready-‐‑made from heaven’ but arises from an imaginative response to encountering divine presence. ’The phenomena of religion—beliefs, forms of worship, structures of organisation, moral codes—are human artefacts derived from revelation but mediated through human cultural perspectives’ (1999, p. viii).
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experience by allowing readers to encounter situations that are not part of their everyday lives, and to cultivate empathy and sympathy through identifying with characters and engaging with narrative (Osmer & Salazar-‐‑Newton, 2014, p.65).6
Hart explores the work of imagination in reading the biblical text by focussing on the interpersonal dynamic that operates when we understand written texts as the media of human exchange. Using the imagination for building empathy is needed to both discern and to indwell any written text. Even though cultural groups share a public language, no language is truly common ‘since the ways in which we deploy the language which we inherit and inhabit, and the sense of the things which we say…are marked…by other levels of our particular personhood’ (Hart, 2000, p.312). In order to understand the other we must pay attention to the subjective dimension of their communication as well as the objective ‘grammar’ of our common language. Engaging with the subjective dimension of communication requires an imaginative journey: ‘the nature of every bid for understanding of the other [is] essentially a journey of imagination in which we are granted the capacity to transcend the boundaries of our own particularity and to engage with otherness in ways which plot something of its difference.’ Transformation results when we eventually return to ourselves with our horizons broadened with our ‘self in some sense more rounded and complete through the venture'ʹ (Hart, 2000, p.316). If one takes the common Reformed Evangelical view that Scripture is a divine revelation, then the challenge is not only to engage with the human authors of Scripture but to also consider the personal interaction with God as the ultimate ‘author’ of this text.
Empathetic imagining is instructed in Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. For example, the fifth contemplation on the Nativity invites readers to place themselves within the biblical narrative and ‘with the aid of the imagination to apply the five senses to’ reflection on the incarnation and the nativity.’
Proposing Alternatives
Alongside using the imagination to see how things are for others (building empathy) we are also able to use our imagination to consider how things might be otherwise for ourselves. Proposing alternatives is to building empathy as creating connections is to identifying connections. There is an imaginative capacity used for entering an existing ‘story’ that can be distinguished, without separation, from the imaginative capacity used for creating a ‘new’ story. Ricoeur spoke of the way that reading fiction not only helps to develop identity (through an exercise of sympathetic imagination), but is able to ‘remake’ reality and lead to transformation:
Fiction has the power to “remake” reality and, within the framework of narrative fiction in particular, to remake real praxis to the extent that the text intentionally aims at a horizon of new reality which we may call a world. It is this world of the text which intervenes in the world of action in order to give it a new configuration or, as we might say, in order to transfigure it (Paul Ricoeur, 1983, p.185).
6 Osmer and Salazar-‐‑Newton reported on the findings of the Growing up with Harry Potter research project. Interviews were conducted with young adults who had been avid readers of the Harry Potter series as children and adolescents
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Brueggemann’s proposal of the Prophetic Imagination presents the ministry of Moses and the Old Testament prophets as an imaginative proposal of an alternative vision: 'ʹWhat the prophetic tradition knows is that it could be different, and the difference can be enacted'ʹ (Brueggemann, 2001, p.xxi). Moses imagined an alternative to Pharaoh’s oppressive empire. When this imagination was rejected by the Israelite monarchy, the prophets offered an alternative imagination to this ‘royal consciousness’ (Brueggemann, 2001, p.115). Richard Hays similarly emphasised the imagination in describing Paul’s readings of Scripture as ‘poetic in character’. Finding in Scripture ‘a rich source of image and metaphor’ Paul’s imagination proposes an alternative vision that ‘enables him to declare with power what God is doing in the world in his own time’ (Hays, 2005, p.xvi).
Brueggemann described the prophets’ intention in using imagery and poetry to ‘evoke, to shock, to tease, to play, to probe, not with certitude but with possibility for what has been, until now, unthinkable and unsayable’ (Brueggemann, 2012, p.25). This work of imagination encourages and enables contemporary readers to be ‘imaginers after them’ (2012, p.24). The prophets used their imagination to propose an alternative future by engaging our imaginations to build empathy so that in turn we might adopt their proposed alternative in the world as our own. In relation to Paul, Hays spoke of the result of observing Paul’s use of the Old Testament: we ‘discover a way of reading that summons the reader to an epistemological conversion, a conversion of the imagination'ʹ (Hays, 2005, p.x). The imaginative work that proposes alternatives is met with the imaginative work that builds empathy in order to ‘see what they see,’ and to perhaps see a new future for ourselves.
These uses of the imagination are central to the dramatic metaphor that views the Christian life as an improvisation of the biblical drama (Balthasar, 1988; Bartholomew & Goheen, 2004; Lash, 2005; Vanhoozer, 2005; Wells, 2007; Wright, 2005). This conceptualisation of Christian life directs Christian people to use their imagination to picture appropriate ways to participate in the biblical drama through improvising their role as the people of God – not making up whatever they feel like, but participating in the drama in a fitting way, appropriate to the overall drama and their particular place in it.
Imagining a Transformed Life
Imagining a transformed life draws on each use of imagination as sub-‐‑movements in an all-‐‑encompassing use of imagination directed to the whole of life. There is an imaginative work being done when we move from imagining various aspects of our experience through the experience of others, to adopting particular stories or visions as expressive of our overall identity. Instead of proposing how things might be otherwise in relation to discrete events in our life, we use our imagination to consider how the overall shape and direction of our lives could be different.
This encompassing work of imagination is central to Garrett Green’s proposal that Christian formation involves seeing the pattern for human life in relationship with God in the person of Christ. Christ is offered to us as ‘the image of God’ in the sense that his life is a paradigm of the faithful human life. The Christian goal of being ‘conformed to the image of Christ’ (Rom 8:29) involves ‘shaping one'ʹs life after Christ'ʹs life, patterning one'ʹs own living according to the pattern of his story, following the example of Jesus. The imago Dei is thus
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restored…in the “narrative shape” of the Christlike life'ʹ (Green, 1998, p.101).7 In this Green is echoing Balthasar’s description of Jesus as ‘the concrete categorical imperative’ and ‘the formally universal norm of ethical action’ as a result of Jesus’ life of faithfulness (Balthasar, 1986, p.79).
William F. Lynch spoke about faith in similar terms: ‘Faith… is a way of experiencing and imagining the world; or it is a world within which we experience or imagine. It composes it or, if you will, it recomposes the world according to its terms. For example, the beatitudes totally recompose ordinary appearance. To believe that the poor are blessed puts an entirely different light on things’ (Lynch, 1973, p.17). David Tracy’s analogical imagination operates in a similar way by drawing on ‘the always-‐‑already, not-‐‑yet event of grace named Jesus Christ mediated through the tradition’ as ‘the paradigmatic focal meaning’ for a Christian understanding of the ‘relationships among God-‐‑self-‐‑world’ (Tracy, 1981, p.425).
When Scripture is understood as providing the content of the Christ-‐‑conformed life, its function is similar to the concept of a worldview or social imaginary. Charles Taylor introduced the concept of the social imaginary to describe the cultural background of nations and social groups: 'ʹthat largely unstructured and inarticulate understanding of our whole situation, within which particular features of our world become evident'ʹ (Taylor, 2002, p.107).8 Unlike worldview language that carries connotations of an articulated theoretical construct, the social imaginary works primarily at the sub-‐‑conscious intuitive level of the imagination. The social imaginary recognises the way that the interaction of customs, stories, behaviours, language, images and environment is appropriated by our imagination in a way that often belies our ability to articulate what is going on. In the social imaginary we find ‘the way ordinary people “imagine” their social surrounding,’ and the ‘images, stories and legends’ they draw on which express ‘how things usually go... how they ought to go, [and] what missteps would invalidate the practice’ (Taylor, 2002, p.106).
Using Taylor'ʹs language, the sprawling collection of literature in the Bible presents the social imaginary of the people of God. The imagination looks to the stories, laws, songs, prayers, proverbs, promises, genealogies, letters, and visions of Scripture as the cultural world that shaped the people of God, including Jesus’ own life of faithfulness. The imagination wonders what sort of people tell these stories, sings these songs, prays these prayers, hope in these promises? And what sort of people would the church be if they were to do the same? ‘'ʹIt is precisely by responding to the various illocutions in Scripture—by believing its assertions, by trusting its promises, by obeying its commands, by singing its songs—that we become “thickly,” which is to say covenantally, related to Christ’ (Vanhoozer, 2005, p.68).
While this encompassing use of the imagination could be simply regarded as the cumulative effect of the other uses of imagination writ large, the point of distinguishing it is to connect
7 John Chrysostom spoke in a similar way of the life of the apostles: ‘You have a most excellent portrait. Proportion yourself to it'ʹ hom. in Phil. 12.3 [62.273], on 3:17 (in Hall, 2010, p.154).
8 Also labelled ‘mentalities’ by social historians. Dyrness distinguishes a mentality as a weltbild (world picture) rather than weltanschauung (word view). Mentalities are 'ʹcollective attitudes that emphasize unspoken or unconscious assumptions and a concern with the structure of beliefs as well as their content, especially as these take flesh in dominant metaphors and symbols’ (Burke, in Dyrness, 2004, p.13).
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with the whole-‐‑of-‐‑life transformation envisioned by Christian formation. Christian tradition regards the all-‐‑encompassing claims of Christ (Col 1:15) to call for an all-‐‑encompassing transformation (1 Thess 5:23) that requires an all-‐‑encompassing imagination that envisions Christ as the goal of transformation (2 Cor 3:18).
AESTHETIC PEDAGOGY, MAXINE GREENE
Positing a role for the imagination in Bible Engagement for the sake of spiritual transformation resembles the emphasis placed on imagination and social change in the aesthetic pedagogy of Maxine Greene. Greene (1917-‐‑2014), teacher and educational philosopher, was William F. Russell Professor Emerita in the Foundations of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Greene’s body of work includes seven monographs (1965, 1967, 1973, 1978, 1988, 1995, 2001) and a large number of articles, book chapters and occasional addresses. While Greene’s work was directed towards the reform of school education in the USA, Greene’s philosophy has also generated significant reflection from Christian educators. This is despite Greene’s secular Jewish background, which left her puzzled by the way her ideas were adopted by religious educators.9
This project will pursue three main topics of conversation between Greene’s pedagogy and Christian theology that deal in turn with the goals, means, and methods of education and spiritual formation. The goal of education/formation grapples with how we understand freedom; the means considers questions of authority in relation to the sources of ‘transformative power’, whether of works of art in aesthetic pedagogy, or the Bible in Christian theology; the methods focusses on the use of imagination in the way teachers might create environments that promote the aesthetic moment in relation to how Christian mentors create environments that promote spiritual formation.
These topics are particularly addressed in the first two sections of Releasing the Imagination (1995), dealing with educational vision, and imagination and learning (the final section deals with advocacy for social change). Given the focus of this thesis on developing a practice framework for youth ministry practitioners Variations on a Blue Guitar (2001) provides the opportunity to hear how Greene articulated her educational philosophy to regular classroom teachers. Greene noted in her preface to the collection that the essays contained there were not what she would have prepared for journals or advanced academic classes. Instead, each address aimed to 'ʹconnect with the thinking, the questions, the views of practice of elementary and secondary public school teachers'ʹ (2001, p.ix).
Describing Greene as ‘a religious educator’s religious educator’, O’Gorman (1998) identified a common religiosity with Greene via a liberal and existential definition of religion as effecting responses of duty and reverence. O’Gorman reflected on the theological or spiritual dimensions of Greene’s pedagogical approach and what this offers to the field of religious education. In a similar way Foster (2013) drew on Greene along with practical theologian Craig Dykstra to outline an approach to pedagogical imagination in the teaching and learning in theology and religion. 9 When Greene was invited to speak to religious education students at Loyola University New Orleans, she is reported to have ‘stood at the podium assuring the crowd that had gathered to hear her that she was not religious and was not exactly sure of what she was doing there’ (O'ʹGorman, 1998, p.235).
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Douglass (2013) drew on Greene’s work to provide concrete direction for faith formation practices among young adults. From Dewey, Douglass identified an aesthetic dimension to practical reason and argued that aesthetic participation is formative and transformative of faith. From Greene Douglass developed the value of creating art for young adults to express, connect with and be open to life with God. In her theological critique, Douglass noted the use of ‘transformation’ with ‘no qualifier or guiding norm’ in Greene’s work, and that there is therefore no sense of being transformed into the likeness of something, or someone, else. This presents a particular challenge to drawing on Greene’s work for the sake of Christian formation where being conformed to the likeness of Jesus is central.
Imagination and Transformation
The usefulness of the taxonomy of imagination proposed above can be tested by applying it to Greene’s theory of transformation through the aesthetic moment. Even though Greene was not a religious educator and developed her educational philosophy for secular education in America, her insights have often been applied to the concerns of Christian education and spiritual formation.
Greene presents the imaginative capacity as ‘the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise’ (Greene, 1995, p.19). Transformation is ‘partly a matter of being able to envisage things as if they could be otherwise, or of positing alternatives to mere passivity’ (Greene, 1988, p.16). In Greene’s aesthetic pedagogy transformation results from the aesthetic moment where an artwork makes demands on us and enables us to see the world differently (Greene, 2001, p.35). The aesthetic moment results from an ‘imaginative awareness’ that occurs in two phases. First, we must pay attention to the artwork on its own terms. This ‘careful noticing’ requires learning the symbol systems of this particular art form (2001, p.39). Such learning is enhanced by personal experience in using that symbol system. We will better learn to ‘read’ dance by participating in dance than by simply watching and listening to it being explained. Greene named the second phase of the aesthetic moment ‘illumination’. It involves being personally present to an artwork, involving ‘the savoring in inner time, the elaboration of what has been seen or heard, the seeping down’ (2001, p.31).
Using the taxonomy proposed above, Greene looks to release the imagination to propose alternatives by drawing on the imagination to identify connections in an artwork, enhanced by using imagination to create connections, and by dwelling on the artwork through building empathy. Greene’s ultimate goal is itself an imaginative vision of freedom; in Christian theology one way that freedom is found is in the Christ-‐‑conformed life. Precisely how ‘conformity’ can be true ‘freedom’ is a theological dialectic that must be explicated in a similar fashion to the dialectic between freedom and equality, freedom and authority, individuality and plurality that Greene examined in The Dialectic of Freedom (1988).
Greene’s work is particularly useful for this project due to the shared goals of individual and societal transformation: Greene looks to the transformation of society through the transformation of individual young people who are each given a voice in a democratic community. In a similar way youth ministry looks first to the transformation of the church through the transformation of individual young people who are given a voice within the life of the Christian community. Beyond the church, youth ministry is also concerned with the influence that Christian young people will have in their world. I also share the same primary
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method for reaching that desired future of working with adult mentors of children and young people whether school teachers or Christian adults (parents, mentors, youth leaders).
I also share Greene’s interest to create learning experiences for young people that move them out of the boredom that often characterises both school and church. Greene made frequent reference to Warnock’s conclusion regarding the primary purpose of education:
Without some such sense, even at the quite human level of there being something which deeply absorbs our interest, human life becomes perhaps not actually futile or pointless, but experienced as if it were. It becomes, that is to say, boring. In my opinion, it is the main purpose of education to give people the opportunity of not ever being, in this sense, bored; of not ever succumbing to a feeling of futility, or to the belief that they have come to an end of what is worth having (Warnock, 1976, p.202-‐‑203)
By this standard many youth ministries have failed in their educative task. Among the factors that discourage Australian young people from personally engaging with the Bible Hughes (2013) noted that the Bible does not engage them the way a contemporary novel does, and that many young people are not convinced that the Bible is relevant to contemporary living.10 The classrooms Greene imagines—places of conversation, questioning and dialogue—present an attractive vision to me of what a family discussion, youth group or biblical studies class could be like.
Resonances exist also between Greene’s vision of freedom and personal agency for students and my desire for young people in the life of the church. The often-‐‑silenced voices of young people need to be heard, and young people need to take part in the conversation of the church just as Greene looks for the contributions of school students to creating a brighter future for society. What Greene desired for classroom education ought also be the aim for practices of spiritual formation among young people in the church: ‘the pedagogies we devise ought to provoke a heightened sense of agency in those we teach, empower them to pursue their freedom and, perhaps, transform to some degree their lived worlds’ (Greene, 1995, p.48).
Greene understands freedom as opening spaces for persons in their plurality (1988, p.56). This is reminiscent of the freedom of the persons of the Trinity to remain distinct while also in perichoretic fellowship and affirms the value of personal agency and the role of open dialogue in pursuing spiritual formation. Developmental concerns make this particularly relevant for Christian ministry among teenagers. Further, just as the aesthetic moment can neither be predicted nor controlled, so also Christian theology recognises the sovereign freedom of the Spirit of God in the work of formation.11 This does not remove Christian leaders’ responsibility to pursue appropriate action, just as classroom teachers are not left with nothing to do but hope for a transforming experience to descend on their students. Greene’s directions for teachers to create the environments that make illumination more
10 I am reminded of the young person in youth group who languidly exclaimed, ‘I’ve already done Romans’!
11 ‘The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit’ John 3:8.
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likely provide a rich resource from which to draw guidance for adult mentors of Christian youth.
THEOLOGICAL AESTHETICS: HANS URS VON BALTHASAR
Hans Urs von Balthasar was a Swiss theologian (1905-‐‑1988), one of the leading Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century, and a towering figure in theological aesthetics. Alongside the significant mark his work makes in the theological landscape, there are two broad reasons that make Balthasar an appropriate conversation partner for this particular project.
First, Balthasar’s theological system has a clear focus on the lived experience of Christian life. Balthasar maintained that God offers himself to humanity not as an object of intellectual musing but to call human beings into relationship with him, that they might come to realise the work that God has for them to do (Quash, 2004). Balthasar’s emphasis on pursuing appropriate action within the ‘theo-‐‑drama’ (Theo Drama: theological dramatic theory, vols 1-‐‑5) has been pursued as a metaphor for Christian discipleship in various Reformed Evangelical authors such as Vanhoozer (2005), Wright (2005) and Lash (2005). Exploring the aesthetics at greater depth seeks to complement this more familiar part of Balthasar’s work.
Second, the way Balthasar conceives of Christian faith as a transformative engagement with the glory of God analogous to the way human beings are moved by a work of art has obvious connections with Maxine Greene’s aesthetic pedagogy. By pursuing a critical correlation between Greene and Balthasar this project will seek a ‘theological aesthetic pedagogy.’
In relation to the three main topics of conversation with Greene’s pedagogy outlined above, Balthasar has a similar focus on freedom, transformation and imagination. Freedom from control and manipulation is as much a feature of what is beautiful in nature as well as the beauty of God:
The quality of 'ʹbeing-‐‑in-‐‑itself'ʹ which belongs to the beautiful, the demand the beautiful itself makes to be allowed to be what it is, the demand, therefore, that we renounce our attempts to control and manipulate it, in order truly to be able to be happy by enjoying it: all of this is, in the natural realm, the foundation and foreshadowing of what in the realm of revelation and grace will be the attitude of faith (Balthasar, 1982, p.153)
An all-‐‑encompassing transformation is the result of the ‘transportation’ which Balthasar describes as the faithful response to the revelation of Christ:
This is a movement of the entire person, leading away from himself through the vision towards the invisible God, a movement, furthermore, which the word ‘faith’ describes only imperfectly... The transport of the soul ... must be understood not as a merely psychological response to something beautiful in a worldly sense which has been encountered through vision, but as a movement of man’s whole being away from himself and towards God through Christ, a movement founded on the divine light of grace in the mystery of Christ (Balthasar, 1982, p.121).
And it is the imagination that must be captured by God’s beauty in order to ‘see’ again:
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today’s positivistic, atheistic man, who has become blind not only to theology but even to philosophy, [needs] to be confronted with the phenomenon of Christ and, therein, learn to “see” again—which is to say, to experience the unclassifiable, total otherness of Christ as the outshining of God’s sublimity and glory’ (Balthasar, 2000, p.20)
By pointing to Jesus as the revelation of God’s beauty who reinvigorates childlike wonder and curiosity, human beings are drawn away from ourselves toward God and others. ‘In doing so, God’s beauty shapes and forms our imaginations, enabling human beings to flourish within society in creative ways for the common good of humanity’ (Garrett, 2011).
METHODOLOGY
PRACTICAL THEOLOGY
Practical theology is a ‘theology of practice’ that focusses attention on the interaction between theory and practice. Rather than simply being concerned with the practical implications of theology, practical theology begins with reflection on practice as well as ending with proposal for renewed practice (Cf Browning, 1991; Dean & Root, 2011). Practical theology seeks to engage with the theories ‘behind and within’ all human practice with a view to directing more faithful and effective practice in the future. Four key characteristics of practical theology are connected with four movements in practical theological inquiry (Osmer, 2008). With its starting point in practice, practical theologians engage in a descriptive task, asking what is going on in particular practices. Because practice is ‘theory-‐‑laden’ (Browning, 1991), an analytic task examines the practice as described, including drawing on non-‐‑theological knowledge, to develop ‘thick’ descriptions of Christian practice (cf Geertz, 1973). As a theological discipline, practical theology seeks to correlate insights from non-‐‑theological knowledge with the Christian theological tradition in a normative task, asking what ought to be going on in a particular situation. The aim of determining faithful practice involves a performative task, asking the question: how might Christian action be reformed or renewed in light of the theological reflection undertaken?
As a literary study this project is focussed on the interpretation of written texts. A central question in hermeneutics is the influence of the interpreter’s own perspective on the meaning discerned in a particular text. Gadamer rejected the suggestion that the prejudices of interpreters could be bracketed off from the interpretative process in order to generate an objective meaning of a text. Yet this is not to replace the meaning of a text with whatever interpretation might be brought by a reader: Gadamer recognised the necessity for interpreters to ‘keep one’s gaze fixed on the thing [being interpreted] throughout all the constant distractions that originate in the interpreter himself [sic]’ (2013, p.279). Rather than suppose we can ignore our personal perspective, Gadamer presented the hermeneutical task as a dialogue between the interpreter’s ‘fore-‐‑meanings and prejudices’ and the ‘alterity’ of the text, which ‘involves neither “neutrality” with respect to content nor the extinction of one'ʹs self, but the foregrounding and appropriation of one’s own fore-‐‑meanings and prejudices. The important thing is to be aware of one’s own bias, so that the text may present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one'ʹs own fore-‐‑meanings’ (2013, p.279). Where the interpreter as well as the text have their own ‘horizon’ of pre-‐‑understandings beyond which we are unable to see, the interpretive process seeks a ’fusion of horizons’ where a new entity is created out of the interaction between text and
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interpreter. This is a goal not a method: ’The fusion of horizons that is understanding is not an achievement consequent on proper method, but an event that depends on a conversation-‐‑like, dialectical openness toward that which we hope to understand'ʹ (Brown, 2012, p.114).
Building on Gadamer’s dialogical hermeneutics, Browning’s ‘revised correlational’ approach to practical theology sought a dialogue between the insights drawn from description of practice (descriptive theology) and the re-‐‑examination of Scripture and tradition (historical theology). What Browning labelled ‘systematic theology’ sought ‘the fusion of horizons between the vision implicit in contemporary practices and the vision implied in the practices of the normative Christian texts’ (Browning, 1991, p.51). For this dialogue to be ‘fully critical’ there must be at least an openness to ‘total discontinuity’ with the previous understanding of the Christian tradition (1991, p.220).
A commitment to a fully mutual critical correlation between insights from non-‐‑theological knowledge and Christian tradition can be problematic for a reformed doctrine of sola scriptura that regards Scripture as the final authority for all Christian faith and practice. Practical theology pursued within a framework that assumes normative authority of Scripture does not allow extra-‐‑biblical sources to critique Scripture itself. However, lest this theological commitment result in uncritical traditionalism it is necessary to distinguish between the Christian theological tradition as secondary reflection from the text of Scripture as primary source. Noting Calvin’s recognition of the authority of the early church councils only ‘insofar as they relate to the teachings of faith’ and ‘contain nothing but the pure and genuine exposition of Scripture’ (Inst. 4.9.13), Vanhoozer (2005) distinguishes between scripture as ‘norming norm’ and tradition as ‘normed norm’ (p.234). With this distinction in place, insights from reflection on practice (including non-‐‑theological knowledge used to interpret practice) and theological traditions (past and present) are located in the same theological category of being subject to Scripture: ‘A reformed practical theology therefore not only seeks a critical correlation between practice and theology but moves from that critical conversation to a re-‐‑reading of Scripture’ (Stanton, 2013, p.20. Emphasis original).
CRITICAL CORRELATION WITH GREENE
There is a useful parallel for this project in Ghiloni’s work on John Dewey, forerunner of Greene’s aesthetic pedagogy. Ghiloni’s project sought to use Dewey’s educational theory ‘as a heuristic device to develop the pedagogical strands inherent in Christian theology'ʹ (Ghiloni, 2012, p.3). This project seeks to do the same with Greene’s pedagogy in relation to the formational practices of the Reformed theological tradition. Ghiloni’s aim in relation to Dewey can be applied mutatis mutandis to this project in relation to Maxine Green:
Proselytizing Dewey is not my aim; however, my goal is to see what occurs when a Deweyan perspective is added into the theological mix. I am not going to present Dewey as the final arbiter in theological debates, but I am going to think with Dewey and through Dewey about theology. This book uses Dewey with an experimental attitude, not aiming to reiterate predetermined doctrines, but rather seeking to see what Dewey can accomplish (Ghiloni, 2012, p.10).
In the same way, pursuing a conversation between Christian formation and Greene’s educational philosophy must go beyond either adoption or adaptation. Adopting Greene’s
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methods for Christian ends implies too little respect for the holistic vision of the Christian faith. Christian spiritual formation is not simply a different subject area, as if we were applying aesthetic pedagogy to mathematics or science (cf Girod, 2007). Neither can Greene’s methods be simply adapted to a Christian context without diminishing the holistic vision of Greene’s educational philosophy. Aesthetic pedagogy is concerned with fundamental questions such as the goals of human society and the purpose of education not just teaching new skills for classroom activities.
Therefore, before we simply bolt Greene’s methods onto the pursuit of a Christian outcome, there is a prior stage of analysis needed. Practical theology recognises that action comes laden with particular theories and values (Browning, 1991). While practices like dialogue, silence, and questioning appear neutral, the way they are invoked and their intended purpose carry implications about what we believe to be the goal of human life and from where the power to reach that goal comes. Greene’s trust in the transformative power of the aesthetic moment places great hope in the human potential to imagine and work together toward a more positive future. Without such hope it would be difficult to see why anyone ought to pursue education at all, let alone give one’s life to teaching. In the Christian social imaginary hope in human effort is not entirely misplaced; yet to make human effort our sole ground for hope is ultimately futile. While I do not think that a Christian anthropology (particularly a hamartiology, the theology of sin) wholly undermines Greene’s methods, the correlational work of this thesis will need to grapple with the extent to which Greene’s humanistic optimism is decisive for her approach to teaching and learning.
A metaphor I have employed to picture this element of the project is of attending a conference on aesthetic pedagogy with a small group of Christian colleagues. As we listen to different presentations from Maxine Greene our conversation over the meal breaks reflects on what we have heard for our work in spiritual formation of young people in the church. The theological engagement with Greene’s philosophy will be ‘associative’ and ‘responsive’ in the manner pursued by Ghiloni in his engagement with John Dewey (Ghiloni, 2012).
PRACTICE FRAMEWORKS
The final stage of this project is to develop a practice framework for adult mentors to use in their ministry among young people to guide practices of Bible engagement.12 Continuing the metaphor introduced above, following the conclusion of the conference I head back to my own office and develop the thoughts gained from the conversations into a set of commitments and practices that will guide the way I operate in relation to Bible engagement with teenagers for spiritual formation. I offer my personal framework to others with a similar concern for encouraging holistic spiritual formation in Christian young people.
The ‘practice framework’ is a frequently used concept in social work to paint a picture of how a particular practitioner operates as a social worker. Connolly defines a practice framework as ‘a conceptual map that brings together, in an accessible design, the organization'ʹs approach to social work practice. It links the foundational philosophical and 12 While the thesis will include some reflections on selected passages of Scripture in order to further explain and offer a preliminary test of the usefulness of the framework, a empirical validation of the framework is beyond the scope of this project.
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theoretical underpinnings with the practice interventions used to support desired outcomes'ʹ (Connolly, 2007, p.827). Thus in relation to child protection services in New Zealand, Connolly articulates three phases of the work (engagement and assessment; seeking solutions; securing safety and belonging) and three core principles and four perspectives guiding practice in each phase (child centred; family-‐‑led and culturally responsive; strengths and evidence based).
Where Connolly has described a practice framework employed by a community of social workers (child protection workers in New Zealand), most practice frameworks are personal constructions that articulate the professional identity of an individual, painting a picture of how they operate as a social worker (Matthews, 2008).
The concept of an articulated practice frameworks is not limited to social work. Similar frameworks for practice have also been developed in fields as diverse as nursing (Moulster, Ames, & Griffiths, 2012), midwifery (Piper, 2005), aid and development (Shrimpton et al., 2014), business negotiations between American and Chinese partners (Prasad & Cao, 2012), business control practices (Kinkela & Harris, 2013), and new product development (Kahn, Barczak, & Moss, 2006). Common to each of these fields of endeavour is the interaction of theory and values that drive practice.
The emphasis on practice in a practice framework focusses on the knowledge and skills developed by social workers (and other practitioners) during the course of their work. Constructing a practice framework is attempting to make explicit the knowledge that is implicit in practice. Healy describes the process as a fusion of formal and informal knowledge and skills together with ‘tacit, or difficult-‐‑to-‐‑articulate, knowledge that can be built up through repeated exposure to practice situations’ (2005, p.216; cf Polanyi, 1962a; Polanyi, 1962b). As a result, practice frameworks ‘develop over time, through practice, and become increasingly useful to us for constructing unique responses in each practice encounter’ (Healy, 2005, p.216). Practice frameworks recognise that practice is not only driven by theory and values but also critiques and shapes theory and values. Practical theology also recognises the dynamic interaction between theory and practice making the practice framework a fitting construct for this project to aim at.
Healy also notes that by articulating our framework we are better able to share our approach with others. We will also therefore be better able to critique and develop our practice: ‘to understand the weaknesses of our framework for practice and this can provide directions for further development of our framework and future learning'ʹ (Healy, 2005, p.219).
A parallel to this project can be found in the ‘Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education’ developed for colleges and universities in the US (Chickering and Gamson, 1987). The seven principles were grounded in an underlying view of education that sought to distil findings from research into the undergraduate experience (Gamson, 1991, p.5). Serving their aim to provide a resource for those university faculty members who would be ultimately responsible for improving undergraduate education, Gamson noted her concern to avoid ‘the long list of recommendations’ usually found in the appendix to official reports, as well as ‘general theories of student development and learning’ (Gamson, 1991, p.6). The principles needed to be ‘accessible, understandable, practical, and widely
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applicable’ (Gamson, 1991, p.7). Following the positive reception of the seven principles, a self-‐‑assessment inventory was developed (Gamson and Poulsen, 1989).
In a similar way, this project is responding to research into the adolescent experience related to Bible Engagement and is grounded in an underlying approach to Christian theology and spiritual formation. This project is aimed at enabling the adult mentors (parents, youth leaders, teachers) who are ultimately responsible for guiding young people in the church in their engagement with the Bible. Therefore, I intend for the practice framework developed to be accessible, understandable, practical, and widely applicable. Depending on the reception of the proposed framework, future research may consider refining and validating its usefulness, and even developing an self-‐‑assessment inventory.
OUTLINE OF THE THESIS
Introduction: Describing the Problem
Outlines an approach to spiritual formation as conforming to the image of Christ, and a theology of the ministry of the word as means of grace and therefore the primary resource for Christian formation. Research revealing declining Bible reading, biblical literacy, and biblical imagination among Australian young people establishes the need to reconsider established practices of Bible engagement. Offers an initial explanation for why appealing to young peoples’ imaginations is the major research interest noting the apparent conflict between the importance of imagination and Christian appeals to an authoritative text. The introduction also introduces practical theology as the methodology for the project and outlines the tasks of critical correlation and the development of a practice framework.
1. Methodology
Presents the approach to practical theology being taken in this project together with a rationale for why this approach is appropriate to the research question. Outlines the stages of practical theological reflection to be undertaken and the steps of critical correlation between Greene’s aesthetic pedagogy and theological sources. Defines and describes the concept of the practice framework and justifies this as an appropriate goal for the project.
PART I: IMAGINATION AND BIBLE ENGAGEMENT
2. Imagination and Scripture
Outlines a taxonomy of different ways that the imagination is used in relation to reading and responding to the Bible, with a particular concern for clarifying how the various uses might fit within a Reformed Evangelical framework. Provides conceptual clarity around the various ways the imagination might be understood and the ways it can be used in relation to Scripture.
3. Using the Bible in Christian Formation
Noting the interest on ordinary readers (Village, 2007, 2013) rather than on theoretical hermeneutics, critically reviews existing approaches to reading and responding to the biblical text to shape Christian formation that are prevalent in youth ministry, with a
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particular focus on the role of the imagination in the process. Approaches to be examined include lectio divina, particularly as popularised in contemplative youth ministry movement; (Dean & Foster, 1998; Peterson, 2006; Yaconelli, 2006); Biblical theology as pursued in Australian evangelical Anglicanism (Goldsworthy, 2013); and certain innovations being pursued in the Alchemy Project (http://alchemy.community/), an experimental community of practice for Bible engagement with young people.
PART II: CRITICAL CORRELATION OF MAXINE GREENE’S AESTHETIC PEDAGOGY WITH BALTHASAR’S THEOLOGICAL AESTHETICS
A critical correlation of Maxine Greene’s aesthetic pedagogy with Balthasar’s theological aesthetics is developed across three chapters. Each chapter will begin with an outline of Greene’s pedagogy, followed by a theological reflection from the perspective of Balthasar’s theology (cf the structure used in Ghiloni, 2012). Each chapter concludes with a return to Scripture to discern a renewed articulation of explicit theology.
4. Education, Freedom, and Spiritual Formation
Examines Greene’s central concern for freedom as both the means and the goal of aesthetic education in relation to Balthasar’s understanding of Christian formation into the likeness of Christ and to the Bible as authoritative text. This chapter develops an approach to spiritual formation that emphasises the freedom of young people to make choices in their own spiritual journey, the freedom to make unique contributions to the life of the church, and the freedom of the Spirit of God in the work of transformation.
5. Art, Authority, and the Bible
In Greene’s theory transformation arises from aesthetic engagement with works of art. The transforming power of works of art lies in the personal expression of a previous aesthetic moment experienced by the artist and mediated in the art work. Transformation is essentially an inter-‐‑personal encounter. Balthasar’s aesthetics offers a perspective for considering the implications of conceiving of the Bible as a work of art. The power of the beautiful to capture without controlling the beholder suggests a way of resolving the dialectic between freedom and authority in spiritual formation.
6. Aesthetic cognition, Imagination, and Bible engagement
Reflects on Greene’s two phases of aesthetic cognition in light of Balthasar’s conception of faith and imagination. In Greene’s theory aesthetic cognition comprises of participant observation and illumination. Phase one focusses on learning the symbol systems of specific art forms so that a work can be read on its own terms (Greene, 2001, p.40). Variously described as ‘careful noticing’ (Greene, 2001, p.31), ‘faithful perceiving’ (Greene, 2001, p.45), ‘educated understanding’ and ‘enlightened cherishing’ (Greene, 2001, p.58), this foundational task of aesthetic cognition corresponds to the work of biblical interpretation that seeks to explicate this particular set of texts (cf Vanhoozer, 2005, p.247). Phase two allows for the moment of illumination, ‘the savoring in inner time… the seeping down’ (Greene, 2001, p.31) that opens the way for transformation. This phase of aesthetic cognition relates to the illumination by the Spirit and the exercise of wisdom in biblical interpretation and Christian living.
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PART III: RENEWED PRACTICE
7. Practice Framework for Transforming Bible Engagement
Grounds the principles developed in part II in a practice framework for Bible engagement among teenagers that promotes the role of imagination for Christian formation. The practice framework will be comprised of three parts: (a) a theology of guiding adolescent spiritual formation generally and the way they read and respond to Scripture more particularly; (b) the aims and hopes of the ministry of guiding adolescent spiritual formation; and (c) a set of ministry practices (with a particular focus on appealing to the imagination in Scripture reading) that align with the aims and hopes.
In order to clarify and provide a preliminary test of the usefulness of the framework, the chapter will include reflection on selected passages of Scripture chosen to cover a range of biblical genres and to include passages that are generally considered ‘problematic’ for spiritual formation among young people.
This chapter will reflect on three or four of the following passages:
A. Joshua 7:1-‐‑26 -‐‑ Old Testament narrative; involving themes of holy war and divine judgement
B. Psalm 109:1-‐‑31 -‐‑ Hebrew poetry; involving themes of imprecation and vengeance
C. Matthew 1:1-‐‑25 -‐‑ New Testament genealogy
D. Colossians 3:1-‐‑25 -‐‑ New Testament epistle
Conclusion
Outlines some of the implications of the proposed approach to Bible engagement, focussing on implications for youth ministry training. Includes suggestions for future research focussing on opportunities for testing the validity of the approach with teenagers.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE THESIS
This thesis intends to contribute fresh insights into practices of Bible Engagement with teenagers that will employ the imagination in order to pursue more effective methods of Christian formation in Australian youth ministries.
The thesis will also contribute to the work of reflection on the educational philosophy of Maxine Greene, following her recent death in May 2014. Now that Greene’s body of work is closed it is likely that there will be renewed interest in the internal structure of Greene’s thought as well as its implications for educational practice in schools and related fields. Theological reflection on Greene’s pedagogy will help guide ongoing use of Greene’s approach by Christian religious educators.
TIMELINE
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January 2015 -‐‑ Present draft of chapter 2 as an elective paper at the International Association for the Study of Youth Ministry conference
First Semester 2015 – Draft of chapter 3, and Greene sections of chapters 4, 5 & 6; Complete RELN9003
Second Semester 2015 – Draft of theological and biblical reflection on Greene of chapters 4, 5 & 6
First Semester 2016 -‐‑ Draft of Chapters 1, 7 & 8; Complete RELN9001
Second Semester 2016 -‐‑ Revise Chapters 1-‐‑8, write Introduction and Conclusion
December 2016 -‐‑ Complete RELN9002
January 2017 -‐‑ Submit thesis
STATEMENT OF THESIS PROGRESS
An initial version of Chapter 2 (Imagination and Scripture) was presented at the RELN9000 Doctoral Colloquium A in December 2014 and the International Association for the Study of Youth Ministry conference in London in January 2015.
POTENTIAL PROBLEMS
As a study of texts there are no external project parameters that are outside my control. There is no difficulty in accessing Greene’s bibliography and I have established contact with the Lincoln Center Institute and Teachers College, Columbia University, to facilitate contact with emerging scholarship and research in Greene’s thought.
Balthasar’s aesthetics (The Glory of the Lord, vols 1-‐‑7) are readily available in English translation. Even though no translational concerns have been identified in literature in relation to these works I have access to the original German texts and am in relationship with Balthasar scholars fluent in German who are able to confirm the accuracy (or otherwise) of critical passages.
Even though I am a remote student I have ready access to the online resources of the University library along with the services provided to remote students. I also have ready access to the extensive theological resources of Moore Theological College library in Sydney.
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Balthasar, H. U. v. (1986). Nine Propositions on Christian Ethics. In H. U. v. Balthasar, P. Benedict XVI, & H. Schürmann (Eds.), Principles of Christian Morality (pp. 75-‐‑104). San Francisco, CA.: Ignatius Press.
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Foster, C. R. (2013). Response: Pedagogical Imagination in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. Teaching Theology & Religion, 16(2), 125-‐‑126.
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