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Theological Education via Plato’s Allegory of the Cave By William J. Carl, III, Ph.D.

From “Resources for American Christianity” http://www.resourcingchristianity.org

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION VIA PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE

by William J. Carl III, Ph.D.

As I make my way like Alice through the Wonderland of books and articles funded by Lilly Endowment’s ambitious project to promote research on theological education I feel like I’ve slipped into an ongoing conversation that has been occurring for some time now in a special Internet Chat room. In this Chat room I find administrators, professors, trustees, pastors and educational specialists all feeling their way toward some elusive but edifying truth about what Ed Farley calls Theologia while at the same time bumping around in the dim light in search of better ways to train pastors and educators for ministry in the twenty-first century church. The idea of feeling our way in the dark evoked in my thinking the image of the cave, which brought to mind Plato’s creative allegorical piece on this subject as well as Joseph Campbell’s mythic musings in his well-known hero’s journey.

What I’d like to suggest is that we do some pedagogical spelunking at a mytho-poetic level as we explore together where theological education is heading these days, and what some of the best minds think about it. Some believe it’s drifting aimlessly like a ship without a sail while others see it lurching along blindly on its own sapiential inertia down a dark tributary in some deep and ancient cavern. My guess is it’s a bit of both. To get a running start on this grotto exploration let’s review first Plato’s evocative cave tale and imagine where and how we see students, professors, administrators, and pastors hidden in this odd story. Heidegger, Campbell and the Bible will then deepen our inquiry and lead us into some intriguing implications for theological education. Clear your head now and open yourself to the possibility of thinking more “right brain” and less bureaucratically about the whole enterprise and experience of pastoral pedagogy. Making Our Way Through Plato’s Cave You remember the story. Let me simply paraphrase it. Plato has Socrates talking to Glaucon about truth by distinguishing between those who are enlightened and those who are unenlightened. But he does so with a metaphor. Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine people trapped in an underground chamber like a den or a cave (is the cave the seminary and divinity school or the pre-cognitive, pre-seminary theological education that goes on all the time in local parishes and homes?). Along the width of the cave is a mouth open towards the light (a hint of the possibility for liberation, conversion and growth intellectually, theologically and spiritually). The people in the cave are shackled together in such a way that they can’t turn their heads and look behind them. They can’t even see each other. They can only look ahead to the cave wall in front of them (blackboard, whiteboard or PowerPoint screen?). Higher up and behind them is a

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blazing fire, which they cannot see, but a fire that casts a light their direction (the dim light of early childhood theological education). Between them and the fire are puppeteers (parents, pastors, college professors and seminary administrators) who are making motions which flicker as shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. In addition to the puppets’ shadows the prisoners see on the wall the darkened imagery of vessels, statues and the figures of animals (the blurry ambiguity of a childhood theology, pieced together with dream, image, story and experience á la James Fowler’s initial “stages of faith”). Glaucon wonders about the strange picture Socrates has described. Socrates points out that the prisoners are like all human beings trapped in our own preconceived notions of the way reality really is. Like the prisoners we see only shadows and reflections of reality. We don’t even see ourselves as we really are since the prisoners are looking straight ahead and not to the left or the right. If a voice cries out we suppose that it is the voice of one of the shadows on the wall. That’s how distorted our reality is. But, continues Socrates, imagine that one of the prisoners gets free, stands up, turns around and sees what’s really going on (liberated by a new idea a professor offered in class one day or a new thought uncovered while reading a textbook). What would that prisoner’s reaction be? At first a sharp pain from the light in his eyes, eyes which up to now have only been adjusted to seeing shadows. If he tried to describe this new phenomenon of “seeing more” to others they would say that what he is observing is only an illusion (like first year seminary students coming home for Christmas trying to share what they have learned the first semester). And indeed he would wonder himself. When his instructor asks him about the puppeteers and objects he sees before him he would wonder whether they were real or the shadows he had grown up with. Then if the prisoner were asked to look directly into the light, what would his reaction be? More pain and discomfort, certainly confusion and disorientation. It’s just too much to take in at once (typical first year student anxiety and unsettledness, which can lead to anger toward the school and disappointment in oneself, even a questioning of one’s call). So he would no doubt turn back to the familiar images dancing on the wall, which seemed more real and more comfortable to him than what he had just seen behind him. But imagine if further he were dragged forcibly up a steep and rugged ascent until he is now brought into broad daylight (first with new classroom insights that are transformative and then perhaps in an internship and finally following graduation day in that first call to a parish), would his pain not be even greater than before? Of course, replies Glaucon. He would have to adjust to this new light shining on him and all creation before he could be able to see and understand anything around him. Little by little though he would begin to see everything in this Upper World, but only in stages: first as shadows, then reflections in the water and finally as the objects themselves. Eventually he would realize that the sun provides the light for all of this and he would be able to look at the sun itself and finally begin to understand that it is the sun which gives the seasons and the years in the Visible World. When he remembers his friends in the shadow world of the cave congratulating each other on how well they can distinguish the shadows and name them, would he not feel pity for them (an educational phenomenon that can lead to academic arrogance)? The answer of course

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is yes he would. And if he returned to the cave would his eye-sight not be dim and wouldn’t his fellow prisoners make fun of him for ever leaving in the first place? (Consider professors who take sabbatical leaves in parish settings or clergy who do extended continuing education in the academic setting.) And wouldn’t they conclude that the ascent into whatever light he thought he entered was a total waste of time? And if anyone else ever tried to get free wouldn’t the rest want to put him to death (new ideas seem dangerous to those still stuck in the cave)? Glaucon agrees that they would. Socrates then goes on to explain the allegory by concluding that the cave is the prison-house of our own illusion while the release and the journey upward, painful as it may be, replicates the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world where the idea of the good is the ultimate vision. Once prisoners have reached this upper, intellectual world it is hard for them to descend from such a “beatific vision” back into the world of the shadows in order to share what they have seen. Socrates points out that “certain professors of education” mistakenly think they can put knowledge into the soul, knowledge that was not there before. We know this is wrong because the capacity for learning is already present in the soul (the implications of this idea for theological education are significant and will be noted later). Indeed, the goal of education is to cause a conversion, a metanoia, as quickly as possible but not by trying to implant the ability to see since that already exists in all human beings. What does this mean? It means that those who have escaped the chains of the shadow-world, climbed the rugged ascent to the True Light, experienced that light and the idea of the good, have a responsibility to return to the cave, risking everything by braving ridicule and possible ostracism in order to share the True Light with those still enslaved to a shadow view of reality in the universe. (Note by the way, that the series of movies called The Matrix follow this pattern of insight from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Neo is the prisoner who is freed and returns to free others trapped in The Matrix.) Heidegger’s Interpretation: Finding the Truth or Unhiddenness In Martin Heidegger’s The Essence of Truth: on Plato’s Cave Allegory (London, New York: Continuum, 2002), Heidegger distinguishes between the typical view of truth as propositional correctness and the Greek understanding of avlh,qeia (aletheia) or unhiddenness. Heidegger notes that the Greek idea of truth as ‘unhiddenness’ is less like the German word for truth—Wahrheit—or the Latin word veritas and more like the German word for innocence—Unschuld—in its formation since the German language negates the word for guilt—Schuld—to create the word ‘innocence’ or ‘not guilt.’ So truth is not simply the linguistic correspondence between what is said about a thing and the thing itself, but the uncovering, the revealing if you will, of that which is hidden. What the Greeks call unhidden or true is not about propositions, sentences or knowledge but about beings themselves as seen in the world of humanity and in the work of God. Since Heraclitus reminded us that all beings love to hide themselves, and resist ‘unmasking’ at all costs, this experience of finding the unhidden is particularly challenging. Heidegger shows that this older idea of truth as unhiddenness gets intertwined in Plato’s thought with the concept of truth as correctness in his examination of Plato’s allegory of the cave (pp. 6-9).

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Heidegger divides his commentary on this ancient allegory into four distinct stages, the first being the “situation of humanity in the underground cave.” His point here is that the prisoners do not even recognize what they see on the wall as shadows. To them the dark figures dancing before them represent unhiddenness or truth as they know it (pp. 17-23). Take into consideration the place of many parishioners whose understanding of God and the whole theological encyclopedia was arrested for most of them at the teenage level or younger. Perhaps they took a Bible survey course or a history of religions class in college. Maybe they read a book or two on theology or spirituality. Some of them even feel ‘called’ to the ministry but arrive their first year shackled together to their fellow students whose understanding of the unhiddenness of the divine enterprise is limited to the flickering images that dance in their minds as they stare in the same direction at a dark board in a classroom with a shadowed professor pacing back and forth in front of them—a professor who has just emerged from her own dark corner of the cave to teach this class. Perhaps they hear what the professor is trying desperately to communicate to them in a voice that echoes across the ages in some ancient tongue (Hebrew or Greek) or via some silhouetted biblical or historical figure from the past. At first, they don’t get what is being said to them because they are processing the words and phrases coming at them through the prism of their childhood theological caves (many an old church sanctuary and darkened nave approximate Plato’s image of the cave). So the move from shackled pew to fettered desk is not a large leap for most students. They sit and they listen assuming that the shadows before them represent the unhiddenness, the revelation and the reality of God. (Some might even compare this dark experience to that of the cold, cavernous Nibelheim in Wagner’s Das Rheingold where Alberich, ruler of the Nibelungs, that race of dwarfs that languishes in the depths of the mountains, forces the gnomes to dig gold for him and make whatever he desires. See Henry W. Simon, 100 Great Operas and Their Stories, Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1960, p. 415.) Heidegger moves next to his second stage: “the liberation of humanity within the cave” (pp. 23-29). Perhaps we should identify this stage as ‘the aborted emancipation’ or ‘penultimate liberation’ since the deliverance is only partial at best. But at least it’s a start. There’s always one student who ‘gets it’ before any of the others—one who has a ‘eureka’ moment early on in the term. And the professors see it in her face as her shackles clunk to the ground and she ‘stands up’—there’s that avna,stasij (anastasis) resurrection word—she stands up and begins to ‘look around’ and take in a panorama she’s never seen before. As a former Greek professor I used to love watching these little serendipities when certain students began to ‘stand up’ and see the real flame that fueled their academic fires as different words and phrases began to ‘make sense’ and they began to ‘see more’ than they’d ever seen before. They began to understand that what they had previously thought was the unhiddenness or truth about God and life was only an illusion at best.

But, this moment of emancipation almost always causes both cognitive and emotive dissonance like the end of a Khatchaturian Toccata, one of Bertold Brecht’s plays or one of Jesus’ parables. With new insight and enlightenment come pain, disorientation and self-questioning. The student begins to wonder if she can trust her own eyes. After all, there’s often a huge disconnect between the shadows she grew up with and the light that has been the source of those shadows. How hard it is to let them go. The problem for so many students is that the

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liberation from the shackles happens too quickly, thus the need for three or four years to let new ideas begin to develop naturally and at their own pace. For theological educators this dilemma may be a gentle reminder that students should be exposed to what they can handle in measured phases. I suppose that’s what the ever-present curriculum review is all about. We’re constantly tweaking the curriculum as a way to try to get this first liberation right. Heidegger notes correctly that the mere removal of shackles rarely brings ‘genuine emancipation’ since it “remains external and fails to penetrate” to the student’s inmost self. Thus the deliverance fails because the student fails to comprehend what is really happening to her. We might point out as an addendum that faculty can also get ‘stuck’ staring at familiar shadows on their curricular walls and resist real change to the deep structures of theological education because the change might be too painful and disorienting. Barbara Wheeler and Ed Farley identify this dilemma in the Introduction to the book they edited: Shifting Boundaries: Contextual Approaches to the Structure of Theological Education (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991).

Heidegger moves on to his third stage in Plato’s cave: “the genuine liberation of humanity to the primordial light.” The emotional pull back to the safe, fettered shadow world may be strong for students, but when astute professors see that beginning to occur they grab the students by the scruff of the neck and shake them hard as they begin to drag them up the ascent of the soul to the True Light above. Again pain and discomfort accompany the whole educational process. What is the goal? It’s evx o`do,j or exodus—the way out. Why? Because this whole thing is a journey, a journey of the soul in search of God. David Kelsey outlines this point better than anyone in this comprehensive book titled To Understand God Truly: What's Theological About A Theological School? (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992). Kelsey points out correctly that the “dominant metaphor for coming to understand God is a ‘path’ or ‘journey’ up through the levels of meaning in the cosmos until one grasps God” (p. 38). What does this journey involve? It involves growth and development of one’s understanding of God, not just intellectually but spiritually as well in the Hebrew sense of soul as nephesh, in other words, all of who you are. But, notes Kelsey, God is not immediately available to us. Thus we can only 'apprehend God's presence' in many odd and various ways (p. 166).

Professors push, pull and drag students (sometimes kicking and screaming) into God’s presence; in other words, into the Primordial Light. This act of academic violence presumes the traits of courage and will within the students, and a certain amount of gut-level energy on the part of the faculty, otherwise none of them will make the journey to the light without great effort along the way. Bursting out into the True Light is even more disturbing and scintillating than ‘standing up’ and seeing the fire in the cave—that passion of academia—for the first time. The True Light is blinding at first, overwhelming and finally illuminating as one’s eyes grow accustomed to the brightness of new ideas: ideas of the common good for all, ideas of a God who seeks us and will not let us go, ideas that bring freedom as we begin to comprehend the meaning of ‘being in itself’ and our place in the universe. As students approach the painful, liberating, excruciating Light that enlightens everyone and everything they begin to see what they have never seen before. Heidegger calls the truth we encounter in this journey the “levels of unhiddenness outside the cave.” And what are those levels? They are ‘idea and light,’ ‘light and freedom’ especially through a brightness that brings a transparency, which helps us see God,

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ourselves and the world, and liberates us as beings to be what Heidegger calls ‘more beingful’ (pp. 32-47).

This violent entry into the True Light, a kind of baptism by fire, is something every student has to go through in order to find herself. The true nature of one’s being cannot be established in the cave. Eventually we have to leave it to ‘find ourselves’ and ‘our reason for being.’ As a former professor I realize how easy it is to get too casual or bored by this whole process and forget that every single student is making this traumatic journey somewhere in his/her tour of duty in and out of the cave. This is ‘soulful’ stuff we are encountering that cannot be taken lightly. The interesting thing is that sometimes faculty members find themselves re-taking the journey with the students as they also seek ‘to understand God truly’ year after year.

Administrators and staff also need to recognize the depth of the experience that students are confronting every single day. Their goal as part of the Theologia Community is to support both faculty and students in their annual journey up the steep hill of the cave to the Primordial Light and also realize as they worship, live and grow spiritually within the community they too find themselves on the journey, becoming more ‘beingful’ and ‘soulful’ in their attempt to comprehend the Light. In so doing, they also find the truth, the unhiddenness about God for their community and their lives revealed in the blinding, liberating Light that gives them ‘reason for being.’

Finally we come to the fourth stage: “the freed prisoner’s return to the cave” (pp. 58ff.) How easy it would be to stay up above in the Light and never go back to the previous world of shadows and caves; never return to the people who still live in ignorance. For one thing they won’t be very happy to see you with all your illuminating ideas (which they now suspect) and your challenge to them to change their ways. In fact, they might even try to kill you for all your trouble (think about Neo in The Matrix movies who, after his liberation, tries to come back and enlighten the others who are trapped there). According to Plato, that’s exactly what happens to the Liberator of the Prisoners. Plato calls this liberator the philosopher, or filo,sofoj, the lover of wisdom who has “the drive and inner necessity to understand beings” ‘in themselves’ and in their entirety. The philosopher is the one who sees the truth in all its unhiddenness and is compelled to share that truth with all who do not yet see it or comprehend it, even if it means losing her life in the process. The philosopher exposes herself to the possibility of death in the cave, which is a sobering thought in itself (pp. 60-61). Why would anyone go through the trouble of getting a Ph.D. in order to teach only to lose herself in the process, indeed experience a kind of death by giving all of who she is to her students and to the church in order to bring them to the Light? Why indeed?

The answer is that she, as the Liberator of the Prisoners, has a moral responsibility to bring others to the Light. I wonder how many administrators, trustees, donors and alums fully appreciate that fact. I wonder how many of them understand the risky, daring thing professors do year after year as they open themselves up to the beating the church and the world gladly give them for ‘unmasking the idolatries’ that flicker about on all our cave walls. Plato’s ‘philosophers’ are courageous and some would say ‘foolhardy’ to charge back down into the cave. The reason cave-dwellers don’t want to see them coming is that cave-dwellers have made

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it a game to align themselves with this philosophy or theology and that, forgetting that their real purpose is not to major in being ‘philosophical’ or ‘theological’ or ‘spiritual’ or the cleverest sophistical preacher around, but to get themselves to the True Light. The true philosophers and professors come barging back into the cave kicking over the stalagmites of personal or group ideologies that keep people from coming to the True Light. They come back shattering the stalactites of petty allegiances that keep people from loving each other. They speak with authority as they empower public ministry as Jackson Carroll reminds us in his excellent book As One With Authority: Reflective Leadership in Ministry (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991). True philosophers and professors do this because they have a moral responsibility to do so.

Picture Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with good news and bad news, but in both cases the kind the people below weren’t very happy to hear. Think about Jesus coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration when his vice presidents for Academic Affairs and Institutional Advancement wanted him to remain up on top safely away from the fray and the madding crowd. Or consider Dietrich Bonhoeffer who could have easily stayed on the Mt. Olympus of Academia in America, but chose instead to return to the Nazi cave as a Liberator of Prisoners. All of them eventually met their deaths as did Socrates whom Plato no doubt has in mind in this part of his allegory. Why would anyone want to teach in a seminary or a divinity school with this kind of track record? Who needs it? Professors do so because they have a true calling to be liberators and provocateurs, and no one is going to stop them. For perspective on this critical approach to teaching in seminaries with a prophetic ministry read Peter Paris’ “Overcoming Alienation in Theological Education,” Rebecca Chopp’s “Situating the Structure: Prophetic Feminism and Theological Education” and Mark Taylor’s “Celebrating Difference, Resisting Domination: The Need for Synchronic Strategies in Theological Education” in Shifting Boundaries (Wheeler and Farley).

“How do the liberators liberate?” asks Heidegger. They don’t do it by talking with the prisoners in the language of the cave or with reference to the norms, grounds or proofs of the cave. No, instead they liberate the cave-dwellers “by laying hold of them and dragging them away” (p. 62). I remember feeling that way in my first Homiletics class with George Arthur Buttrick when he took us all by storm, burned away all our childish cleverness, knocked us off our high horses and led us to the Light, a place he had clearly been to before himself many times. The experience was painful, exhilarating and overwhelming all at the same time. Buttrick was doing what professors are supposed to do—challenge and motivate. When they do, good theological education is definitely taking place.

So what would Heidegger say about theological professors and their role in Plato’s cave? Their role is to unmask students who are hiding behind their own theological preconceptions and to push, even shove, them up and out into the Light, which illuminates both good and bad, both idea and freedom, and helps us see Being-in-Itself, which defines our essence and our existence according to the revealed truth and unhiddenness of God.

But, in order to understand more fully how all this happens for the student let’s go even deeper into the cave with Joseph Campbell as our guide.

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Campbell’s Mythic Approach to the Inmost Cave Bill Moyers made Joseph Campbell famous with his television series titled The Power of Myth. Christopher Vogler did the same among budding novelists and screenwriters as he examined Campbell’s conclusions on myth in the context of great story-telling and classic movie-making, especially in the Star Wars trilogy (Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 1998). Vogler unearths both Jungian depth psychology and Campbell’s hero’s journey in his exploration of a trek that is hidden in the psyche of every human being. To paraphrase Buckminster Fuller, Vogler and Campbell are not trying to copy Nature but to uncover Nature’s principles. In other words, the hero’s journey is ‘not invention but observation of what is already there’ (p. ix). Vogler and Campbell have provided the secret to cracking the code of deep structural myth and archetypal story-telling, which relate in subterranean ways to the tumultuous voyage seminary students experience in the labyrinthine world of the theological school. What both Vogler and Campbell understand is that the human experience of life itself involves a journey that takes the hero or heroine on a roller coaster ride once they realize there is something more than the Ordinary World to which they can go to experience ‘true being.’ Early on the hero gets ‘the call’ to leave Ordinary World to enter Extraordinary World to complete some great task that will fulfill his destiny, purpose and life mission. He has to decide first whether or not he really will leave and take on this new adventure. That in itself is a painful process. Consider lay persons in the Church ‘feeling a call’ to ministry, thus leaving behind the more comfortable, seemingly secular world to which they have become accustomed. Campbell has a whole chapter (in his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949) on the “Refusal of the Call” where he quotes Francis Thompson’s famous poem, The Hound of Heaven (p.60): I fled Him, down the nights and down the days: I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Here is the young or middle-aged person resisting the ‘call of God’ as long as she can. It’s a classic part of the heroine’s journey, according to both Campbell and Vogler. Early on, the heroine meets with the Mentor (God in the Garden of Eden, Mentor for Telemachus in The Odyssey, Merlin in the Arthurian legend, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, Obi Wan and Yoda in Star Wars and so on). The Mentor represents the Self in the anatomy of the human psyche, that nobler, wiser part of every person. But, for the budding seminary or divinity school student-to-be the Mentor is probably some older person to whom that student goes for advice and counsel—pastor, priest, teacher, coach or colleague. This is a crucial part of the ‘call’ process because what the student is longing for is permission to resist the call, some

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reason to turn away from it. And yet, often the Mentor does not accommodate but instead confirms the call, which ignites the journey. Initially, the heroine must cross the first threshold successfully passing by the threshold guardian, some troll (or admissions committee) whose role is to keep as many people from getting through as possible. These threshold guardians, the true gatekeepers of any academic institution, can also appear in the form of beginning Hebrew and Greek classes (or Basic Anatomy in medical school or Contracts and Torts in law school) as the early obstacles and pitfalls set up along the way to keep the heroine from achieving her goal. She will also confront other tests and enemies on her journey through Academic World. Then comes the heroine’s ‘approach to the inmost cave.’ For Campbell the cave manifests itself in many ways. In his book Thou Art That (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001) Campbell reminds us that the idea of birth in a cave is very old. Re-telling the birth of the god Mithra, lord of light in ancient Rome, Campbell outlines its similarity to the Nativity scene and the birth of Christ on the winter solstice. “The cave has always been the scene of the initiation, where the birth of the light takes place. Here as well is found the whole idea of the cave of the heart, the dark chamber of the heart, where the light of the divine first appears. This image is also associated with the emergence of light in the beginning, out of the abyss of the early chaos…” (p. 65). So for the seminary student the cave is the place of birth, trial and initiation, the beginning of light and enlightenment. The great caves of the later postglacial periods were devoted to rituals that dealt with guilt, fear of revenge and rites of atonement, propitiation and magic as they watched shadows and images flicker on their cavernous walls. The caves in that time “…were sanctuaries of the men’s hunting rites and of the initiation of boys both into manhood and into the ritual lore by which the good will of the beasts on whose lives the human community depended was to be maintained” (Alexander Eliot with contributions by Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, The Universal Myths: Heroes, Gods, Tricksters and Others, New York: New American Library, 1976, p. 48). Campbell also associates the first part of the hero’s journey with another cave—the belly of the whale (The Hero With a Thousand Faces, pp. 90-95). So Jonah’s refusal to accept the call, his being tossed overboard then swallowed up by the great fish and his baptismal regurgitation onto the shore are not too different from the experience of the typical seminary student. Campbell and Vogler call this part of the journey the ‘approach to the inmost cave,’ where the student will encounter ‘supreme wonder and terror’ (Vogler, pp. 145-157). Not a bad description of the first eighteen months of seminary. Campbell gives example after example of heroes and heroines being swallowed up literally and figuratively in legends from Eskimo, Zulu, Greek and Irish cultures. In each case there is an initiation and an ordeal. Here is where Campbell’s cave intersects Plato’s in the student’s experience of theological education. In each one the cave is part of the journey. The ordeal comes when something or someone (usually a professor) pushes the student to ‘stand up’ and confront the light even if it is only the penultimate light that causes the flickering shadows on the wall. As in

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Plato’s model so in Campbell’s the experience of ‘seeing the light’ is painful and disorienting. If the student is really brave the light is also re-orienting. But unfortunately the ordeal has only just begun. As the student wrestles with the meaning of the light (Campbell calls these the stages of “dealing with temptation in its various forms,” “confronting your shadow self,” and “atonement with the father”—Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader) the student tries to resist what she is learning and returns to old patterns of thinking and behaving, but the new mentor will not allow it. The professor, seeing the student beginning to ‘slip back,’ an action which will cause an abortion of the whole adventurous journey, takes hold of the student and jerks her along to the real heart of the matter, what Campbell calls The Ordeal. What is the secret of the Ordeal? It’s very simple—heroes must die in order to be reborn. Seeker, enter the Inmost Cave and look for that which will restore life to the Home Tribe. The way grows narrow and dark. You must go alone on hands and knees and you feel the earth press close around you. You can hardly breathe. Suddenly you come out in the deepest chamber and find yourself face-to-face with a towering figure, a menacing Shadow composed of all your doubts and fears and well armed to defend a treasure. Here, in this moment, is the chance to win all or die. No matter what you came for, it’s Death that now stares back at you. Whatever the outcome of the battle, you are about to taste death and it will change you (Vogler, p. 159).

If that isn’t an apt description of a seminary student’s experience I don’t know what is. As the student is dragged up the ascent of the hill by a new mentor, and then is thrust into the Primordial Light, she in essence ‘dies to an old life’ and is ‘reborn to a new one’ after which she will never be the same. This is the crisis but not the climax of the story or the educational experience, not by a long shot. In many ways, it is only the beginning. In major myths and traditional story-telling there is not just one ordeal but many. The same is true for students slogging their way through the cave of theological education. There are many tests and ordeals along the way and each student encounters these ordeals in his/her own particular way. Too often we tend to think these challenges occur in assembly line, conveyor-belt fashion. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Each student’s experience is unique.

What happens next in all these stories is ‘the refusal to return’ (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, pp. 193-196) simply because the view from atop the mountain outside the cave is too good to leave. The light, although blinding, disorienting and re-orienting, is too good to be true. And the dangers of returning to the cave are too great. For some seminary students the cave represents the local church because the vision of both the penultimate light and the Primordial Light come while they are in seminary. The return to the cave to share what they have learned while in the light is like graduation and entry into the parish ministry where many lay persons are still chained together to their pre-conceived notions about God as they stare at the same old cave wall. It’s hard for some seminary students to return since they know that a collision of cultures is about to occur.

For ministers who have seen a deeper light once they have spent some time in a parish the return to the cave of the seminary and divinity school can sometimes be difficult. Professors who leave the dark corners of their comfortable cave to take a sabbatical leave in the parish

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where they see the Primordial Light of ministry in action sometimes experience ‘re-entry withdrawal’ when they return to the theological school.

Add to these feelings of reticence Plato’s insistence that the one who returns to the cave to share new learnings from the Primordial Light runs the risk of being killed by cave-dwellers who don’t want to hear the new ideas or concepts, and we begin to understand why characters in these mythic stories have a hard time going back. The road back is never easy or pain-free. For some ministers this return may involve a new resolve to the adventure after years in the ministry. Some may think it’s time to give something back after hitting a plateau or approaching burnout. Some may go to teach or enter the mission field as they leave the comforts and discomforts of the Primordial Light. There is still something to be accomplished. God is not finished with them yet. For professors this may mean leaving Academia somewhat permanently and returning to the world of the parish where the cave-dwellers there may or may not welcome their ‘enlightened’ ideas.

Campbell reminds us of the adventure where Odysseus’ ship tears apart on the Island of the Sun—the island of highest Illumination. “If the ship had not been wrecked, Odysseus might have remained on the island and become, you might say, the sort of yogi who, on achieving enlightenment, remains there in bliss and never returns. But the Greek idea of making the values known and enacted in life brings him back… That’s a model story of the earthly hero’s attaining to the highest illumination but then coming back” (The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, ed. Betty Sue Flowers, New York: Doubleday, 1988, p. 135).

According to both Campbell and Vogler, a final ordeal often occurs at this point—a kind of death and resurrection—that creates a totally new personality whose ‘self’ has now been given over completely to the service of others (consider the experience and example of such heroes and heroines as Moses, Jesus, Gandhi and Mother Teresa). In this way the seminary student has now experienced a complete character arc and to quote the apostle Paul is “a new person altogether.” In The Matrix movie series, the hero, Neo, must return to save those who are blindly chained together because redemption for them means re-entry for him. The same is true for the theological person whether seminary student, professor, administrator, trustee or pastor or priest in parish or hospital setting. Redemption always means re-entry, and that is never easy.

Interestingly enough the Bible, to which we turn now, also affirms this thesis. Bumping Into Walls in the Bible A few years ago I remember one week telling my wife that I was working on a sermon on the blind man in John (9:1-41), which I titled “Bumping Into Walls.” One night after she had gone to bed, I was making my way from the kitchen in our house through the living room in the dark. Now, I’ve walked through that living room thousands of times in the more than twenty years we have lived there. But, periodically the furniture gets moved around. Sure enough I ran right into a side table that went sprawling across the living room floor. Whatever came out of my mouth at that moment brought my wife staggering from the bedroom, flicking on lights with these words on her lips, “Are you already working on your sermon?” Bumping into walls is

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something we all do; it is certainly something that biblical characters did, and something that seminary students and theological educators do every day. Consider the blind man in John 9, who was ‘blind from birth,’ which may be symbolic of the human predicament we all bring to the enterprise of theological education. When Jesus’ disciples pose the justice question about whose sin caused the man’s blindness, his or his parents, Jesus says that that is the wrong question altogether, which is nothing new—the disciples often went around asking the wrong questions. Jesus says in reply, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed to him.” In other words, we all come into this world chained together like the prisoners in Plato’s allegorical cave and it’s not really anyone’s fault that we find ourselves in this predicament. In fact, until someone shows us we don’t even realize how little we actually see. But then the Light of the World, the one we Christians call the Christ, grabs us and drags us through a baptismal ordeal—incarnational mud on the eyes and a good washing in the pool—which opens us to the Primordial Light, and suddenly we see things we have never seen before. In theological education professors play the role of this profound and provocative rabbi who taught in a way no one had ever taught before. Barbara Brown Taylor offers this vivid description of the revelatory ordeal: In the imaginative act, we are grasped whole. Revelation is not a matter of thinking or feeling, intuiting or sensing, working from the left side of the brain or the right. It is a shocking gift of new sight that obliterates such distinctions, grabbing us by our lapels and turning us around, so that when we are set back down again we see everything from a new angle. We reason differently, feel differently, act differently. Imagination does more than affect us. It changes our lives (The Preaching Life, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cowley Publications, 1993, p. 46). The problem of course comes when students who have been recipients of this new experience in the light try to return to the cave with their new found ‘insight.’ For students, ‘returning to the cave’ often means going home to the churches from which they came. No one really buys what happened to the blind man so they give him a hard time. They keep asking him questions about what exactly happened to him and how he had received this new way of seeing, this new perspective on things. When he tries to tell them about the true light that enlightens everyone no one really wants to hear it or believe it. Over and over again the Pharisees and others interrogate him but to no avail. His life has changed and he knows it and no one can talk him out of it. So, as with the liberated prisoner in Plato’s allegory who returns to the cave to share the joy of his new insight, they drive him out, which brings the Primordial Light (Jesus) into their midst asking the blind man if he understands what has happened to him and the change that has occurred. The blind man does indeed understand and lives a new life. But, the Pharisees still don’t get it. Sometimes administrators know how the blind man feels when they have “seen the light” of educational change that they believe needs to occur. Perhaps they have been on a sabbatical retreat on Mt. Sinai, looking at what they are sure is a kind of Primordial Light and return with

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some new ideas, some new ways of doing things at the seminary or divinity school. But, sometimes the reaction of the faculty can be nearly pharisaical. I remember what it was like when I taught in the seminary (Pittsburgh and Union, Virginia). I remember wanting to be left alone so I could focus on my teaching. Like most faculty members I didn’t want to keep fiddling with the curriculum and tweaking the course offerings. Curriculum review and reorganization often felt like someone shining a bright, blinding light in my eyes while rousting me out of my comfortable little corner of the cave. Sometimes the ideas for change were good ones and sometimes they weren’t. Not everyone who comes down from Mt. Sinai is Moses. But, there were times, as hard as it was to admit, when I realized that pedagogical change was necessary. Like the man who liberates the prisoner in Plato’s cave, Ed Farley and others have for years been calling for change in the whole approach to ecclesial training. “The accumulated and unexamined presuppositions of theological education have enjoyed their dark corners long enough. They are moldy and outworn and they have exercised hidden control too long. The institutional structures they created are too often oppressive, irrelevant and ineffectual. It is time then…to uncover and assess the deep presuppositions and dominant paradigms which determine how the unity and aims of theological education are understood.” (Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education, Eugene Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publisher, 2001, p. 201) Farley tossed that lit stick of dynamite into the pedagogical chat room and sent many scrambling for cover. But nearly two decades of Lilly-funded research have spawned some really creative responses to Farley’s challenge much like the international dialogue generated by Max Stackhouse’s groundbreaking work in the late 1980s titled Apologia: Contextualization, Globalization and Mission in Theological Education. (Grand Rapids Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988). For all of us involved in theological education, these challenges have sometimes brought to mind Jacob one dreamy night wrestling with his shadow self at the Jabbok River, trying to figure out what direction to go next. Some educators have felt more like Elijah trapped in the cave scared to death of Jezebel who wanted to destroy him because of his radical ideas for academic alteration. Elijah had shaken things up in the world of theological education in his day and had retreated to what he thought was a safe place—the cave—where he could hide from having to face anyone who might disagree with him. But the Primordial Light in the form of a still, small voice would not allow him to remain in the cave. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” said the whispered voice of change. “Don’t be afraid to defend the progress you have ignited. Get on with it now.” Joseph’s cave and ordeal was the pit his envious brothers tossed him into and the Egyptian prison in which he found himself later. Why did they attack him and try to get rid of him? Because he was a visionary with too many new ideas. “Here comes the dreamer; come let us kill him and thrown him into one of the pits.” Thus the risk and the danger of returning to the prison to bring liberation. Even though biblical characters spent their lives bumping into the walls of the cave, whether in exile or not, prophets like Isaiah understand the need for epiphany, no matter how dangerous: “…we wait for light and lo, there is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in

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gloom. We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes….” (59:9b-10a). But, in the very next chapter the prophet proclaims, “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” (60:1-3) Earlier in chapter 42:7 Isaiah reminds the returning exiles that their role is to be “a light to the nations, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.” And when that light comes, that new insight about how to do theological education, at first (as with the prisoner in Plato’s cave) it’s blinding, disorienting and uncomfortable. Consider Paul on the Damascus Road. No wonder he says in I Corinthians 13, “We see now only through a glass darkly.” No wonder the whole experience of wrestling with theological education and how to do it for our time is like the hero’s ordeal in Campbell’s mythic journey. The right way to go does not come easily. But eventually it does come as ‘amazing grace’—“I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see;” and when we see the right way to go, our job as administrators, teachers, trustees, students and pastors is to follow the path that lies before us. Implications of Plato’s Cave for Theological Education Several observations can be drawn from this ancient philosopher’s tale that should stir both reflection and action as we consider future directions for seminary and divinity school education in the twenty-first century. (1) First, we begin this mystical journey understanding that theological education is a lifelong process where ordinary, sensible lay people do something very odd—they make the crucial decision to leave Ordinary World and prepare to move into Extraordinary World, which some call seminary, in other words, the cave of intense, focused theological training. Even the process of “hearing the call,” getting up the courage to talk to one’s pastor or priest and one’s ecclesiastical governing body about it, all the time hoping they won’t laugh right out loud, is nerve-wracking enough. It’s an experience that approximates Campbell’s hero’s approach to the inmost cave, which begins as early as baptism and those first Sunday church school classes. It’s an experience that involves saturation in pre-cognitive spirituality, which is the result of hearing years of sermons, prayers and songs in the liturgy where one’s personal theological perspective is continually being formed and re-formed. So what do we do with this piece of information? Remind ourselves with a healthy dose of humility that there is only so much that we who administer and teach in seminaries and divinity schools have to do with the education of students for ministry. I remember years ago while teaching at Union Seminary (VA) I took a turn serving on the Admissions Committee. At every meeting we looked carefully at each potential student’s academic record and experience in the church, extra-curricular activities in their undergraduate education, and their participation in the community and the world. At one point in the process the President said, “You realize there are two things that we in the seminary have nothing to do with that are absolutely crucial to ministry: one is you have to be smart and the other is you have to like people.” That line hit me

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like a brick. He went on to elaborate: “We can teach students the biblical languages, how to think theologically and ethically, what has been said and done before in the church, all the skills for preaching, teaching, counseling, evangelizing, administering, etc., but we can’t make students smart and we can’t make them like people.” In other words, students either arrive with enough intellectual ability and enough ‘people skills’ to do ministry or they don’t. Nothing the seminary does really has much to do with these two crucial aspects of ministry. What does that tell us? It tells us that theological education is a lifelong process and the theological school is only a small part of that larger ongoing journey that takes a lifetime to complete. It also reminds us that students need to have both an internal sense of call—they really feel in their gut that God is calling them to ministry and haven’t just been patted on the head and been told that all their lives; and an external sense of call—other people who really know them and can be honest with them think they have the gifts and skills for ministry, i.e., they have the IQ and the academic discipline as well as the genuine love for others or EQ —emotional quotient (in other words, we don’t have to tell them that the “PC” they saw in the sky really stands for “plant corn” and not “preach Christ”). Seminary and divinity school professors can’t make students ‘smarter’ or make them ‘like people’ any more than they already do when they arrive. But, if students do come to the theological schoolhouse with these two important characteristics already ingrained in their personal makeup then professors can help them amplify and fine-tune what is already there.

I would simply add to this telling observation one more obvious characteristic that students either bring to seminary or they don’t, another crucial trait that is a prerequisite for a fruitful and fulfilling ministry. That characteristic is a love for and deep relationship with God. David Kelsey is right when he reminds us that ‘understanding God truly’ is what a theological school is all about. But when does this process of ‘understanding God truly’ begin? Long before the students arrive on campus. Again, as with intellectual acumen and people skills, seminaries and divinity schools only help develop and amplify the spiritual life that students bring with them. This is not to say that growth and maturity in the spiritual journey do not continue at the seminary (they often do). But it is to say that students need to bring a real love for God and an interest in ‘knowing God more truly’ in order to do ministry effectively. Stackhouse puts it poignantly when he says: “This is not to suggest that the mysterious, the poetic inspiration, the prophetic charisma, the intuitive insight, and the pre-rational leadings of the spirit are irrelevant to theological education. Indeed, quite the opposite. It is to say that precisely these are to be taken with utmost seriousness. These are the sensibilities of much that is religious. These are what often move the souls of people and, if nonmaterialist understandings of societies and cultures are to be trusted, what shape the destiny of civilizations.” (Apologia, p. 212).

(2) Seminary students arrive at the seminary or divinity school, having caught glimpses of eternity, but find themselves still trapped in their own spiritual preconceptions. They are chained together like the cave-dwellers in Plato’s allegorical tale. Every year my Summer Greek students at Union Seminary (VA) always seemed to feel that way. Professors and tutors spend half their time trying to liberate these students imprisoned by their own misconceptions about God and the world. At first all that students catch are the shadows and reflections of ecclesial education—mere snippets of Hebrew, Greek, exegesis, theology, church history, ethics, homiletics, liturgics, Christian education, pastoral care, administration, evangelism and missions flickering on the wall. They have to take these odds and ends and piece together their own

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theological education for themselves. This is nothing new because they have been in the process of quilting their own theology together throughout their whole lives. These snippets flash before them here and there like vaporous, elusive silhouettes dancing on classroom walls. Sometimes they get so enamored with the academic apparitions shimmering before them that they forget there is a purpose to this educational process. There is a telos or end-point to all this madness. Only when a professor releases one of them to see the deeper structural foundations of all they are learning (the fires that illuminate the past) do the students begin to understand, but not completely because it’s too easy to slip back into their old patterns of belief and behavior especially when things don’t go well in their lives or their ministry. For example, consider the action of the heroine, Leonora, in Verdi’s opera, La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny) set in Spain and Italy. Leonora, thinking her lover dead, disguises herself as a monk and makes her home as a hermit in a cave near a monastery so as not to give her identity away. Burnout and depression in the ministry can lead many ministers back into the anonymous safety of the cave. (3) Intense, focused seminary training represents the ordeal in the cave as students confront their shadow selves and their darker sides, and begin developing their self-understandings as ministers. Tests, exams, papers, evaluations, CPE and internships are all part of the ordeal. Showing students the light of new ideas is painful for them at first because it often causes temporary blindness and disorientation, sometimes resulting in bruised psyches. Learning how to deal with constructive criticism is a crucial part of any student’s theological education since ministry can be pock-marked with lay critique of one’s performance as part of the maturation process. Professors who know how to help students deal responsibly with this important part of the learning experience understand well their role as teachers in the faith. In addition educational challenges to preconceived and sometimes misguided theological ideas, challenges that occur in every seminary and divinity school, often cause a collision of cultures. Consider the clash between prophetic ministry and pastoral ministry. Both are important as students develop their own ministerial styles. That’s why Peter Paris’ article (“Overcoming Alienation in Theological Education” in Shifting Boundaries), mentioned earlier, is so important. In the same way, the collision between evangelical and social ministry cultures can create cognitive and emotive dissonance (For help with this phenomenon read Theological Education for Social Ministry, ed. by Dieter T. Hessel, New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1988). The critique of Liberation, Feminist, Womanist, and Third World theologies on western, male-oriented theological perspectives can contribute to the ordeal that students experience if students actually open themselves to these new forms of Primordial Light. Stackhouse’s important work on contextualization, globalization and mission in theological education also provides a significant resource on the effects and the benefits of this kind of critique (Apologia). The point here is that large tectonic paradigm shifts of the type Thomas J. Kuhn illuminated in his classic work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, are occurring in theological education whether we like it or not. Administrators, trustees, faculties, seminary graduates and church governing bodies need to take seriously the impact and effect of the ordeal on students who access graduate theological education in our time.

(4) We understand the power of modeling as we get in touch with the Mentors who have formed our ways of thinking and acting. We tap into the pastors that lie dormant inside the students. Students already know how to preach and teach. Plato comments on this

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phenomenon as Socrates reminds us how “certain professors of education” mistakenly assume they can put knowledge into the soul, knowledge that was not there before. We know this is wrong because the capacity for learning is already present in the soul. It’s hidden inside us waiting to be released. This is the whole idea behind teaching techniques such as those propounded in books like The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey. We already know how to play tennis, says Gallwey. The tennis instructor’s goal is not to “teach” us but to elicit from us what we already know. Presumably we have watched others play tennis in person or on television. Patterns of proper strokes are already registered in the hippocampus of our right brain. What Gallwey believes is that we need to get in touch with those correct mental images in order to play correctly. The same is true for ministry. It’s important for professors to help students get into touch with the models who have gone before them, preachers and teachers they have watched from a distance all their lives. These are their true mentors even if they weren’t aware of it. Professors help students find the preachers, teachers and pastors hidden inside them. Just as Michelangelo found a David hiding in that slab of stone, so faculty members need to locate the mentors and model clergy hidden in every student, and help the students open themselves up to what is already there as they form their own pastoral identities.

But, professors should also remember that they are functioning as models as well. When I lecture on this idea at healthcare institutions and medical schools I usually emphasize how important it is for medical school professors (as they lead students on rounds) to see the whole patient and not just to look at the clinical side of things, viewing patients as uninteresting appendages to very interesting diseases. Medical school professors who model real care for the whole patient have a larger impact than they realize on the future of healthcare. Seminary professors also ‘model’ for students whether they realize it or not. They participate as do former pastors in becoming Joseph Campbell’s ‘mentors’ for the students. Thus it’s important for professors to get out into the light by taking at least one sabbatical in a local congregation at least once in their academic career. That’s why many churches around the country are developing Scholar-in-Residence programs where professors come for a semester or a school year, living within a parish community, working with the clergy as part of the pastoral staff. Inside this cauldron of living ministry professors can hammer out their theological treatises. That is not to say that there is anything wrong with going to Cambridge or Oxford at other times to reflect and write (one certainly finds a kind of Primordial Light in those places as well). But, at least one sabbatical in a career should be taken in a parish setting. Using Plato’s image of the liberator, sometimes it takes bold and persuasive presidents and deans to persuade faculty members to go up the hill into the light of the ‘real world of the parish’ to encourage this sort of sabbatical experience. Professors who enter this kind of Primordial light often find it to be painful at first. Talk about a collision of cultures! But, once they get there and spend some time experiencing the wild, swashbuckling and endearing world of the parish, some wonder if they really want to return to the cave. But, they do; and when they do they bring several things back to the seminary: new ideas, fresh approaches to teaching, a better appreciation for what they are sending students out into, and a new view of themselves as pastors, mentors and models.

Consider the story of the prisoner during the French Revolution who had a Bible smuggled into the prison. Every day for a few moments a small shaft of light streamed into one corner of the dark cell in which he and other prisoners lived. Every day at that precise time his

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fellow prisoners hoisted him up on their shoulders so he could lift the Bible up to the light and read a little until the light vanished. And every time the other prisoners begged him, “Tell us, friend, what did you read while you were in the light?” Professors returning from sabbaticals in parish settings find their colleagues and the students on campus asking this question: “Tell us friend, what did you discover while you were in the light?” In the same way, students return from internships with a higher readiness for learning. I remember teaching Homiletics to first year students who had never experienced work in the parish. They stared back at me with glazed eyes. It was like trying to teach people how to swim who had never even seen water much less been in it. But give them an experience in the Primordial Light of the parish for even one year as interns and all the sudden they knew what they needed to know! They return with all kinds of questions and the bright light of enthusiasm sparkling in their eyes. Students who hadn’t taken internships often found themselves asking returning interns and Pastors-in-Residence, “What’s it really like out there?” In the same way, professors who have been ‘out there’ in the Primordial Light have an extra glow about them that makes them better models for students who will soon be ‘out there’ themselves. So people trapped in The Matrix wanted to know from Neo what it was really like ‘out there.’ For more helpful information on the idea of professors as mentors and models for students read the following articles: Roy I. Sano, “Theological Faculties as Mentors of Ministers for the Church, Theological Education, Spring 1990, pp. 11-34, and Max L. Stackhouse, “The Faculty as Mentor and Model,” Theological Education, Autumn 1991, pp. 63-70.

(5) Simone Weil believes Plato’s cave reminds us that education is not so much about gaining wisdom and information as it is experiencing inspiration and formation (Gravity and Grace, by Simone Weil, New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1952, edited and arranged by Gustave Tibon, translated by Emma Craufurd), “Education is, according to the generally accepted view of it, nothing but the forcing of thoughts into the minds of children. For, says Plato, each person has within himself the ability to think. If one does not understand, this is because one is held by the fetters. Whenever the soul is bound by the fetters of suffering, pleasure, etc. it is unable to contemplate through its own intelligence the unchanging patterns of things.” (Excerpted from LECTURES ON PHILOSOPHY by Simone Weil based on notes taken by Anne Reynaud-Guérithault when Weil’s pupil in a French girls’ school 1933-34) The professor’s job then is to ‘un-fetter’ the students, not by pouring more information into them, but by releasing what is already there and ‘inspiring’ the students to get in touch with the deeper and profound things of God. Listen to David Kelsey on this subject: “A theological school is a community of persons trying to deepen certain abilities or capacities specifically in regard to God. They are engaged in a kind of growth. What sort of growth? The growth this community seeks is growth in its abilities or capacities to apprehend God’s presence. God is not at hand. God is not immediately available to be understood. Indeed, we cannot hope to comprehend God. At best we can hope to apprehend God’s presence precisely in the odd ways in which God is present.” (To Understand God Truly, p. 166)

Being liberated from our old preconceptions, learning new skills for ministry and being exposed to the unhiddenness of the Truth in its Essence (as Heidegger reminds us), the true light that enlightens everyone is more about being ‘inspired’ and ‘formed’ than it is about being ‘wise’ and ‘informed.’ It’s more about character and belief than it is about knowledge and expertise.

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Several theorists have wrestled with this dilemma in recent years. Henri Nouwen, Richard Mouw and Douglas John Hall make this point in their articles on character and spiritual formation within theological education, especially as they distinguish between ‘being’ and ‘doing’ (Nouwen, “Theology as Doxology: Reflections on Theological Education,” Caring for the Commonweal: Education for Religious and Public Life, edited by J. Palmer, Barbara G. Wheeler, and James W. Fowler, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1990, pp. 93-109; Mouw, “Spiritual Identity and Churchly Praxis,” Theological Education, Supplement 1987, pp. 88-112, but especially p. 107; Hall, “Theological Education as Character Formation?” Theological Education, Supplement I 1998, pp. 53-79.).

In order to unravel the ‘mind and spirit’ conundrum that eventually ensues from the typical ‘head and heart’ distinction, we turn to Jane Smith’s helpful observation that many students mistakenly see spiritual formation as something extra that needs to be added onto the experience of theological education. “Many of our students would argue that precisely what they object to in their seminary education is an emphasis on the content matters of the tradition to the exclusion of any attention to issues of spiritual formation” (“Spiritual Awareness and the Formation of Character,” Theological Education, Supplement I 1988, p. 83). Smith highlights the flaw in this argument when she notes, “To me such students are limited in their understanding of spiritual formation as somehow apart from the theological disciplines rather than an outgrowth of the study of those disciplines. If we accept this linkage of ‘socialization’ with spiritual formation, I would argue that we must also stress what I see as the necessary correlate, an appropriation that fuses the link between the intellectual and the spiritual, the head and the heart.” Professors who understand how to do what Jane Smith prescribes are ones who merge the mind and the soul in their teaching and their own learning. These are professors who evoke the Hebrew Bible within us all and bring it to life. They are the ones who stir up within us experiences with Jesus and the struggles of the early church that flicker on the wall before us. As Paul Riceour reminds us, we see ourselves reflected in the mirror of the text. We don’t interpret the text; the text interprets us. In so doing, as professors and students, we go into the Primordial Light, together, that is, as long as professors are continuing themselves to learn new things about God and the world.

(6) We encourage students to come back to seminary and divinity school after they have been out in the parish or hospital setting for a few years so they can learn more even as they share the light of the parish with others who have entered the cave and are going through the ordeal. Some work on Doctor of Ministry degrees or enter various Masters’ degree programs, while others simply return for annual fine-tuning in theology, preaching or other areas of ministry. In conversations on campus and preaching in chapel they become mentors for others in the cave. One of the jobs professors and administrators have is to remind returning students that they are mentors every day wherever they are in ministry. When I was teaching in the seminary and would lecture somewhere around the country, I remember different ministers coming up to me saying, “I wish I could teach homiletics.” My reply was “You already are in the ways you are preaching and sharing yourself with others both in and out of the pulpit.” If one takes the previous point about modeling seriously, one finds that the teaching of homiletics and other forms of pastoral and practical ministry are being taught all the time by clergy even when they don’t realize they are doing it. The modeling they are doing with faithful preaching and teaching

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is in many ways having an enormous impact on people in their congregations who are either contemplating going to seminary or are already there. That’s why it is very important to encourage pastors and priests of all denominations to continue their own education. We all need to keep learning and growing and sharpening our skills.

This whole concept of a learned clergy is supported by John Calvin’s idea of “Doctors of the Church” (see Robert W. Henderson, The Teaching Office in the Reformed Tradition, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967). David Steinmetz’s article entitled “The Protestant Minister and the Teaching Office of the Church,” amplifies Calvin’s point: “Humility is usually a virtue, but it is possible for humility to be misplaced. G. K. Chesterton posited a mythical people too humble to believe the multiplication table. It is humility for ministers to disavow that they have all the answers; but it is not humility to claim that they have no answers at all. The church has received answers to the great questions of life which it did not cook up and which it has a responsibility to transmit…the teaching office is an indispensable function of the ordained ministry, even in the most charismatic traditions. Implicit in the structure and curriculum of almost any Protestant divinity school, liberal or conservative, is a doctrine of the minister as teacher” (Theology Today, Spring 1983, p. 45). For a Roman Catholic perspective on the concept of clergy as teacher read Edward J. Frazer’s article, “The Teaching Office in the Church and Its Applications for Ministry and Theological Education: Questions for Discussion,” (Theological Education, 19:2, Spring 1983, pp. 27-32). Recalling Avery Dulles’ analysis of the diverse forms of magisterium in the history of Roman Catholicism, Frazer outlines the various approaches to the office of teaching: (1) patristic—‘representational’ seeking to build consensus at all levels of the church; (2) medieval—professional theologians who have true magisterial authority; (3) post-Tridentine—juridical, hierarchical and papal approaches; and (4) post-Vatican II—episcopal collegiality where the munus magisterii (or teaching office) gets applied to pastors, not just bishops (p. 27). Thus the need for all clergy to return to the theological school for periodic ‘tune-ups’ so that they can fulfill their role as ‘teachers in the church,’ modeling for seminary students who are still struggling with the ordeal in the cave, and in so doing, preparing themselves to return to the parish and share what they have learned.

(7) Parishioners need to be liberated from their own dark world of preconceptions. Some find themselves locked in a childish and immature faith. Read James Fowler’s Stages of Faith (Harper & Row, 1981) for evidence. Some are paralyzed, unable to move and grow. They are unable to move beyond the mere reflections about God and God’s kingdom that flicker on the walls of their own minds. Seminary graduates who have been trained in liberation and light are prepared to help parishioners deal with the ordeals of their own caves and enslavements, and move them into a brighter future planned in the Providence of God. As they do this it’s important for seminary graduates to remember how blinding the true light was the first time they saw it.

Seminary graduates challenge parishioners to learn more because deep down they want to anyway. I remember a world-renowned medical school professor in one of the churches I served saying to me one day, “You ministers learn all these biblical languages, exegesis and theology and then you either hold it back from us or feed it to us piecemeal. You know, some of us are pretty bright! We can handle a lot more than you think!” In one of my Bible studies I had been

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using a lot of Greek words, even teaching the participants the alphabet and how to read the words. One day one of the members of the group said, “Why don’t you just teach us the language?” When I asked if he was serious he replied affirmatively. Others nodded. So, the next fall I advertised to the congregation and taught a full-fledged New Testament Greek course that met for nine months every Wednesday night, exams and all. Ten persons signed up and at the end took the same Greek final I gave when I was teaching at Union (VA). For the next few weeks we were translating passages directly from the Greek text. For the next several years people from all over the Dallas/Fort Worth area came to take this course and many went on to seminary. Can lay people handle more than seminary graduates typically give them? Yes they can. As a result, for years we have been exposing our church members to scholars-in-residence, seminary professors on sabbatical leave who share their knowledge with lay people who are hungry to learn and grow in the faith. It’s been fun watching what the professors are learning from the parishioners in the interchange of ideas and experiences one gets in the parish.

Finally, seminary graduates need to learn how to help parishioners engage the world and become open to new ideas of liberation and social justice, which often turns into an ordeal in the church and can lead to struggle and painful conflict. But when handled with wise leadership, gentle understanding and the ability to listen, pastors and priests can move the people of God to a better place theologically, spiritually and practically. Read Richard Mouw’s helpful article on this subject: “Faculty as Scholars and Teachers,” (Theological Education, Autumn 1991, pp. 76-79).

This whole approach of liberating cave-dwelling parishioners for ministry in the world involves what Paul calls ‘equipping the saints.’ Why? Because the front-line of ministry is not the seminary or divinity school and it’s not even the parish as in the church building. It’s out there where lay people live and work and play trying to lead lives of Christian discipleship, following the one called the Christ who is going ahead of them into the world in new and surprising ways. Conclusion To summarize simply let me say that Plato’s Allegory of The Cave stirs our thinking about theological education as a lifelong process, which begins when we are very young and extends to the end of our lives. Plato forces us to think creatively about what we are doing in the educational process, especially when it comes to the subject of communicating matters that relate to the Divine. Plato pushes us to re-evaluate our hidden assumptions and preconceptions about God, ourselves and the world, and the ways we teach God to ourselves and to the world. This mytho-poetic approach to the pedagogical task before us has attempted to put us all on notice—trustees, administrators, faculty members, students, governing bodies, clergy (who represent the product of seminary education) and parishioners (who deal daily with the product and the results of what we have learned and continue to learn in the theological schoolhouse.) Plato, Heidegger, Joseph Campbell, certain biblical characters and numerous experts funded by Lilly’s ambitious project have called us all to re-think the ways we view theological training and see the specific roles each of us plays in this educational drama. To be sure, not every question

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has been answered or even raised. My only hope is that one or two ideas presented here will serve to keep the conversation going and lead us all to a better understanding of the task that lies before us as we move together into the future that God has planned for us all. William J. Carl III, Ph.D., is President and Professor of Homiletics at Pittsburgh TheologicalSeminary. Formerly he served as Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Dallas, Texasand Adjunct Professor at Austin Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas, as Associate Professor of Homiletics and Worship, and Instructor of New Testament Greek at Union Theological Seminaryin Virginia and Trustee of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

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