Theologians and Utilitarians

Neil Postman begins his Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology with a retelling of Socrates’ tale of Thamus and Theuth. Thamus is the king to whom the inventor Theuth comes to show all of the latest, cutting-edge technology. Among his many creations is writing, and Theuth proudly proclaims that he has thereby improved memory. But the wise King points out the error of the inventor’s exuberance:

“O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility [sic] of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories….” (1)

Postman’s point in commenting on this tale-and indeed the basic point of most of Postman’s instructive work-is that technology is always a mixed bag: “[The King] gives arguments for and against each of Theuth’s inventions. For it is inescapable that every culture must negotiate with technology, whether it does so intelligently or not. A bargain is struck in which technology giveth and technology taketh away.” (2)

We should begin a discussion of “distance learning” with the reminder that almost every technological innovation has both costs and benefits, simply because this reality is so often forgotten. Proponents of a new tool quickly become “technophiles,” while opponents of the tool often sound like Luddites. (3) Let’s begin then with the acknowledgement by all parties in this debate that there are two extremes to be avoided: It is possible to have either too much or too little technology in education.

In spite of all the benefits of an oral culture, the book is surely an invention that even the most technologically skeptical among us doesn’t regret. As anyone who has ever played the party-game “Telephone” knows, it is unlikely that the theology of Romans 5 would have been accurately transmitted by word of mouth. On the other hand, technology worshippers sometimes think that technology is itself the savior, able to redeem us from all ills-including the “ill” that we have bodies which are limited to one place at a time. Once we’ve admitted that there are two possible errors, we can begin a less zealous and more thoughtful discussion.

Our Changing Times?

We hear that these are changing times so frequently that we forget to distinguish between things that are and things that are not actually changing. Advertisements, especially, shout this nonsense: “The new Dodge-it’s about change.” Clearly our age has engineers who stand on the shoulders of last generation’s engineers, who stand…, etc. When we are talking about vaccinations or other medical technology, few of us lament the changes that time has brought (even though some evidence suggests that certain diseases mutate in response to medical innovation). Similarly, most of us are pleased that the survival rates from accidents improve as cars are built more soundly (even though the work in increasingly efficient factories is often more dehumanizing). Finally, most of us appreciate the improvements in early nineteenth century saw-mills which created the two-by-four, and thus enabled the modern “balloon frame” house. This innovation made it possible for more than merely the rich to enjoy warm and dry shelter (even though there is an aesthetic cost to the mass production of homes which has displaced regional materials and diversity). (4)

In our globalizing age, the main change about change is that it seems to come more rapidly than ever before. We need to distinguish, though, between heavenly things and all of the earthly things just mentioned. Technology’s domain is the earthly. It is even an implication of God’s direction to his creatures in the cultural mandate of Genesis, and much technological change is, on net, beneficial. But in spite of all this change, at least two things do not change: human sinfulness, and the consequent need for the Church’s proclamation of the work of Christ. Our tools for subduing nature may change, but our human nature does not. No matter what the marketers may tell us, there is no salvific technology. Perhaps surprisingly, this assertion must be restated when talking about “Christian” inventions just as much as when talking about run-of-the-mill creature comforts.

There are now predictions by a Texas mega-church that their pastor will soon be preaching in multiple locations at once on Sunday mornings by means of hologram technology. As outrageous as this may sound, hasn’t it been common practice since the radio’s invention for people to “forsake the assembling” (Heb. 10:25) of the local congregation because they think they can get all the sermon’s benefits from home? While more of us may have an intuitive skepticism about technologically aided preaching, we are less likely to question the costs of adding more technology to our education. Now we need to ask whether the technologies which enable “distance learning” really give as much as they take away.

What Is Distance Learning?

When institutions-and for the purposes of this article, seminaries in particular-talk about “distance learning,” they generally mean one of three things: 1) Classes for credit taken by means of a computer; 2) The establishment of an “extension campus” which is typically staffed by teachers who drive or fly to the remote site from the home campus; or 3) A class schedule which enables students who live far away from the campus to come to the school for compressed classes, usually for one week, three times per year.

What all three of these variants share in common is that the student does not have to leave his or her home and move to the campus where the faculty and the rest of the student body are physically located. Because of either transportation technology (which enables faculty or students to move to and from classes rapidly) or communications technology (which enables faculty and students to communicate without being in the same place), the student does not have to withdraw from the world to go to school.

Technology has made this possible, but technology cannot tell us if this is actually a desirable thing. Unfortunately, many evangelical seminaries seem to be merely assuming that possibility equals desirability. Consider the following statements by seminary presidents discussing the future of theological education in a recent issue of Christianity Today: (5)

“A lot of people want a theological education, but they can’t uproot themselves and their families and come live here. We’ve taken some things we’ve learned through our doctor of ministry program and developed what we call a summer/winter program….It worked so well that we developed an external studies, or distance-learning, program that can be done at the convenience of the individual. People receive an edited lecture and the complete notes and textbooks. And they can always call and talk to the professor.”

“We have five extension campuses: [in cities A, B, C, D, and E]. They make theological education available to people who can’t uproot and come to us.”

“We used to see people seek formal education, then take up vocational ministry. Today, it’s more common to take up ministry and then seek formal preparation. Subsequently, we have developed several degree programs designed for practitioners. We have what we call an in-ministry M.Div….They come to campus for three weeks, twice a year. The rest of their instruction is done with interactive computing, with telephone conferencing, with E-mail, video-a whole variety of media tools.”

“Technology has destroyed geography. This is exciting, because it opens up new opportunities to engage persons in both theological education and evangelism.”

“We’re going to fit our schedule to meet student needs as much as possible-not try to get the student to fit our schedule. That was a big shift.”

Seminary advertisements which appeared in the same special section of Christianity Today exclaimed: (6)

“You want to strengthen your ministry skills. You’d like to earn a master’s degree. But your schedule is packed. There’s no time for classes, day or evening.Not to worry. The modular Master of Arts Program at [X] School is tailor-made for people like you. This innovative program allows busy professionals to earn a graduate degree in Christian Ministry or Missiology while continuing their full-time positions.”

“Here’s how it works: you spend three one-week sessions a year on [X’s] campus for a period of three years. You gain practical knowledge. And after each one-week session, you apply your knowledge on the job….”

“So if you think you’re too busy to take a graduate program, give us a call.”

“Preparation for a total ministry takes total person training. This is why at [Y] Graduate School, we integrate a Total Person Training philosophy into our programs. We don’t just give you book knowledge, we give you the personal, spiritual and practical knowledge you need to be prepared for ministry in the nineties. [Y] offers a modular program, Master of Arts in Ministry, and a resident program, Master of Arts in Biblical Studies.”

These statements and ads raise many questions that space prohibits considering fully, such as: How could students possibly have time to study if they don’t have time to attend a class, “day or evening”? Should institutions of theological education really be finding ways to accommodate the more common practice of people going into “ministry” without having had any training, thereby legitimizing the practice? What exactly are “ministry skills”? What is the “spiritual” knowledge that is to be contrasted with “book knowledge”?

As important as these questions are, this article focuses instead on the aspects of the presidents’ statements which seem to imply that it is unfortunate that our bodies are limited to one place at a time: If only we could be both at home and at school at once; if only I could be working at my job and reading in the library; if only one could be at church and watching the football game. The implication is that learning is great, but going to school is not. I suggest, on the other hand, that the benefits of formal education include not merely receiving the data or content that is studied, but also the critical distance from the world, from the cares of the moment, which enable meaningful reflection on the content.

From New England College to American University

To think more intelligently about the relationship between the protected community of learning and the broader community (that is, the world), it is helpful to consider the changes that occurred in American higher education between 1865 and 1910. One of the best books on the subject is historian Laurence Veysey’s The Emergence of the American University. Simply put, there was an institution which existed in 1865, the typical New England college, which was not that different from the Harvard established by the Puritans in 1636. These colleges were initially founded to train men for the ministry. The Calvinistic theology was watered-down over time, but the ministers who ran the colleges generally continued to believe that rigorous study of the classics was the best means to the interrelated ends of mental discipline, moral stability, and religious orthodoxy. But they also believed that fulfilling their mission required much more than just what occurred in the classroom. With paternalistic control that might make us nervous, they governed their campuses as enclaves from the world. A college was not just another place with a different kind of business; it was a different kind of place. (By contrast, the discussion of seminary presidents highlighted earlier talks about the “delivery of theological education”-as if it is a “product.”) (7)

At the other end of Veysey’s study (1910), there exists a different institution, the modern American university, which is surprisingly similar to the universities we know today. He explains that there are two basic differences between the old college and the new university: purpose and governance. For reasons too numerous to explore here (ranging from post-Civil War northern economic organization, and the democratization of American culture, to American conceptions of both German romanticism and German particularistic research), (8) there was great pressure both inside and outside the academy for the college to evolve as the other cultural institutions around it were evolving.

While not every actor fits neatly into the categorization, Veysey finds four basic views among academics about the purpose of higher education. First, the conservatives in the reform debate primarily defended the old college. Though they were not opposed to all change (especially if their descending social status could be stabilized or elevated in the process), their conception of a “university” was little more than a college with a larger library. Their willingness to change was generally limited to the methodological (the recitation was regarded as tedious)-though they were also aware that some innovation might be required to respond effectively to thinkers such as Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley. (9)

The three remaining schools were all comprised of reformers, though their aims diverged widely. One must not underestimate, though, the value of the “idea” of reform, and the inspiration derived from the word “university,” even where ideas and words were not clearly defined. In debate with the conservatives, advocates of change of every stripe often looked-even to each other-like allies. Veysey names these three schools practical service, pure research, and liberal culture. (Though this typology could be pushed too far, it is also possible to view these schools as expressions of the typical minds of the social scientist, the natural scientist, and the [theologically liberal] humanist respectively.)

Understanding the ways in which the world shaped the visions of these various reformers gives us a better sense of their objectives. The tentacles of the general culture entwining the utilitarian (practical service) and liberal cultural schools are easy to identify, while cultural influence upon the advocates of pure research is harder to isolate. Successful businessmen provided the metaphors for the utilitarians. (10) Liberal culture’s advocates were often motivated partly by the fear that Darwin’s triumphs would lead the naturalistic study of everything, including humanity, to displace entirely the humanistic study of humanity; the “lower” would thereby undermine the “higher.” (When conservatives liberalized-both theologically and in terms of academic reform, as the two frequently coincided-they usually joined the broad learning/liberal culture school.) (11)

The proponents of pure research, though harder to understand, were still partly shaped by culture-just not American popular or high culture as evidenced in the other two groups of reformers. While engaging in some psychological analysis, Veysey argues that the years that most of these researchers spent in Germany completing doctoral work (at a time of a very low cost of living) were a source of nostalgic inspiration. Recalling the intimacy of time spent in seminars with “master” teachers, these idealists (in the popular rather than the philosophical sense) were often willing to forgo marriage and meals for their research, and they spoke of research as both “the very highest vocation of man” and “a kind of scientific missionary work” even when they were not referring to technological or utilitarian application. (12)

Ultimately, the vocational (practical service) and research proponents defeated the conservatives and the defenders of the liberal arts. Put another way, the applied and pure scientists won the day over all humanists, old and new. The peculiarities of this victorious coalition translated into challenges for governing significantly more complex than the managing of either vision taken individually. Directing this new institution was no longer a matter of prudently selecting the best means to an end, but rather one of managing both competing factions inside the institution and perceptions of these debates outside. Consequently, the scrupulous early nineteenth century theologian/moral philosopher serving as president, who viewed the executive role as an important one but rarely as a comprehensive calling, was generally ill-suited to the demands of a new office with greater affinity to the populist politician and the industrialist marketer than to the colonial preacher. (13)

The new president was less a teacher and more a businessman. The introduction of the typewriter (technology is always a mixed bag) and the presidential staff (to send more letters than one man could write) signaled the increasing importance of fund-raising-hence, of crafting what is happening inside the institution with an eye to how it will look outside the institution. The presidents’ “rooms” and the professors’ “studies” were transformed into “offices.” (14) The school became less a haven, and more a business. Students (customers?) were increasingly credited with knowing what they needed, so the curriculum grew looser, affording more student choice (and allowing professors to differentiate themselves by means of narrower research). So rose the elective system and the proliferation of departments we know today. (15)

The faculty committee system, which one might think was a means of ensuring that the faculty retained some power in the tension with a more powerful and distant “administration,” actually often had the opposite effect. Even if unintentionally, the administration’s organization of an entire web of faculty committees often made the teachers look like a bureaucratic mess, and thus made the solitary executive look all the more competent. “The administrator tried also, from time to time, to present bold schemes … that cast the administrator [himself] as a genuine ‘leader’ at the same time he ‘consulted’ with others.” He would “gamble” by expanding his institution before he had the money to pay for it, and then see “whether benefactors could be goaded into alleviating the consequent plight by responding to the ’emergency.'” (16) As the administrator’s “natural role” became “politician,” one scholar complained: “The men who control Harvard today are very little else than business men, running a large department store which dispenses education to the million. Their endeavor is to make it the largest establishment of the kind in America.” (17) Even if this was a bit overstated, it was clear that the presidents became more responsive to public opinion generally and to business models particularly. The university was “his” university, and the “faculty member had become a hired man” rather than a part of what defined the school. (18)

Theologians and Utilitarians

How does this history relate to the current debate in the seminary community about distance learning? First, higher theological education has not been insulated from the changes that have occurred in broader higher education. I am not suggesting that there were or are definitive answers to the questions of purpose and organizational structure at either general or theological educational institutions. Nonetheless, as Americans generally, and as evangelicals particularly, we need to be especially aware of the insidious ways in which efficiency-concerns-or utilitarian thought processes-come to dominate all other concerns and all other ways of thinking. The successful businessperson or entrepreneur easily becomes the model for all other callings-administrator, professor, pastor, etc.

Let’s be clear, though, about what is not being said. I am not making the theologian king and the businessperson servant. (I am all in favor of having a businessperson run the faculty meetings!) Instead, I argue that every Christian should give theological thinking priority over every other sort of thinking-business and technological and utilitarian thinking included. It is not that those who are professional theologians should rule, but that theological categories (including a theological anthropology which reflects on the nature of the whole person, body and soul) should frame our thinking about all other spheres of life.

The heirs of the Reformation have an excellent track-record for not allowing grace to eradicate nature. All legitimate callings are affirmed. Ours is not a desperate God, helplessly lamenting all of the lost going to hell because some doctor is faithfully loving her neighbor by comforting the body instead of doing the “higher” work of foreign missions. Affirming all callings, though, does not preclude the doctor (the one using the tool) from telling the medical technician (the one providing the tool) which scalpel she needs for the incision at hand. Similarly, doesn’t it make sense that we ought to employ theological categories to determine if given tools or technologies will aid the task of theological education?

The proper sort of thinking should be superior in each sphere. The problem is not that businesspeople think pragmatically about a given business issue. Rather, the problem is that evangelicals (be they businesspeople or theologians) often think about theological questions with utility concerns foremost in our minds. Not all questions are about management or science. Nonetheless, Christian managers and scientists, just like professional theologians, are called to think theologically about theological matters. Elders, for example, are not all professional theologians, but they are surely all to govern the church with theological thinking.

We need to determine if we first approach the question of which tools theological education needs with our theological hat on or our technological (utilitarian) hat on. Ours is a culture that worships tools. We’re so intrigued with computer graphics that we’ll gladly make a movie without a plot just to show them off. There is little harm in that (after all, it is entertainment), but great harm in altering our sense of what education is just because we have new tools.

Propositional and Experiential Knowledge

Another frequently overlooked distinction in this debate is the one between experiential knowledge and propositional knowledge. Communications technology can certainly transmit propositional knowledge. We can and do learn from books on tape and from magazines like this one. And we have already affirmed the value of books. In no way should this article be construed as an attack on any of these forms of media.

But there is also experiential knowledge. The theme of this issue of MR is “matter,” and thus, it makes sense that we recognize the material forms of knowledge. Sexual knowledge is of course one of these forms. Christians are not Platonists; no amount of “book-learning” or cognitive knowledge can replace the experience of sex. It is an act, not an idea.

Many things combine propositional and experiential knowledge. For instance, a night at a concert cannot be reduced to a cognitive understanding of what is happening in the musical score. Nor is the evening merely the sound. It is the sights and the sounds, the theory and the unfolding of the events (the “liturgy”) of the entire evening, from getting ready, to going, to returning home. The same might be said of a dinner party. A school is like these things. It is not simply about the transfer of data from a source to a recipient. People are not computers, or mere minds. We are minds in bodies. “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” The voice of my teacher is not an irrelevant, accidental property; it is the instrument-the human instrument, not simply the constructed tool-by which he explains the fallacy of my argument to me as we meet on his porch.

The school is not higher than the world, but it is different than the world. The school is not an end in itself, but it is a protected place to which one withdraws to gain the critical distance which enables preparation for a meaningful return to the world. The school has a culture, and the experience of this culture is a part of the knowledge that one gains in an education. Our word for school comes from the Latin word for “leisure.” We draw back from the demands of the moment, in leisure, at a school, to prepare. “Alma Mater” was a title for Roman goddesses meaning “fostering mother.” It was only later transferred to schools. It is surely more than coincidental that both the school and the Church are referred to with these feminine/motherly terms. These institutions nurture us; they are havens. Recall Augustine’s assertion that God is our Father because the Church is our mother. And the Church is an assembly; it is not merely cognitive content. Similarly, the school is not merely what is learned, but also the assembly of the faculty and student body, living and growing together in a community of learning.

But, the critic might argue, haven’t I simply hijacked a general discussion about learning and made it particularly about schools? Yes and no. If you want to talk about the benefits of this magazine or of cassette tapes of lectures or of books, I’m happy to agree that these are benefits of technology, and that they do promote “learning” at a “distance” from the place where the teaching is occurring. For these benefits, I am grateful.

But our discussion here is really about formal education-that is, education working toward a degree. Our discussion is about what the model of education should be. The model should be embodied, fully human education, where there is personal contact between teacher and student. Distance learning is solitary learning. Proponents of computers and planes can talk about students phoning teachers all that they want; the reality is that teachers and students who are in the same place can eat together, walk together, and talk together. This is the ideal context for truly human education, and it should be our model. This is what today’s seminaries, at their best, are. And they shouldn’t cease to be what they are to become something less than what they are. They are schools (which combine propositional and experiential knowledge in a physical community), and they shouldn’t become merely an institution which “delivers” cognitive data. (19)

To reiterate, I am not underestimating the value of other sources of teaching such as this magazine (I work for it after all!). However, the type of learning that one derives from this education is necessarily supplementary. It is insufficient by itself. One should not get a degree from a magazine, or from a set of cassette tapes-even if there are prepackaged tests that come with it. The professor needs to know the student, and to hear the student struggle to connect one locus of theology to another. (Additionally, why isn’t more of this fully embodied teaching taking place in the local church? Maybe if the seminaries focused less on “practical theology,” and more on actual theology, pastors would be better able to undertake this teaching themselves.)

Certainly arguments can be made in favor of the locational freedom enabled by bringing the education to the student. I am aware that many students work their way through school. But the fact remains that a future minister/theologian needs the best education possible for such a high calling. If the one who wants to serve actually wants to serve, then the education he needs is the education that will be best for his congregants in the long-run, not what most easily secures him a degree. Mine is not an elitist argument; it is an argument that says that the future minister needs the best education possible-for others’ good, more than his own. And the best education is the embodied education. I want my future minister to have known his teachers, face-to-face. Though it may surprise the technology enthusiasts in the debate, most of the defenders of the school do indeed think that education is more than merely “book learning.”

However insufficient these facets of the argument may be, they are yet superior to the arguments which start with a possible technology and construct a use, rather than starting with a genuine need and finding a tool or remedy. And this is the case with many distance learning advocates. (Other, more frightening, alternatives are that the seminaries are starting with different needs-money and/or power-and working backward to possible solutions to these needs. As Gordon-Conwell Professor David Wells has argued, though there are of course exceptions to the rule, it is difficult to believe that the Doctor of Ministry degree, one of the older distance learning programs, was really initiated to facilitate the love of learning. It makes seminaries lots of money, and it buys many clergy more professional standing. (20) Similarly, the cynic might wonder if the desire to have extension campuses in half a dozen cities isn’t just a desire for the big and the powerful, even if we baptize it by calling it a desire for “influence.” (21) )

Ours is a culture obsessed with time. We worship the present and ignore the past. Most importantly, we don’t want to waste any time. Every minute must be “productive,” and “multi-tasking” is a means to this end. Yet, though obsessed with time, we disdain space. We want to “destroy geography.” But affirming matter-that is, affirming God’s good creation-is to affirm the limits of nature. And our bodies are limited to one place, and our minds are generally limited to thinking seriously about one thing at a time.

Our future pastors need to withdraw from the world to prepare to serve the Church and world, precisely because they can’t think about theology and utility simultaneously. They need to learn theology exclusively for a time. “It has often been observed that higher education, technically advanced education, is able to make a nuclear bomb or some other weapon of mass destruction, but that only a liberal education provides the means to decide whether to use such weapons.” (22) Socrates expressed a similar sentiment when he had King Thamus tell Theuth that “the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility [sic] of his own inventions.” Let evangelicals similarly say that our theological ways of thinking ought to prevail over our utilitarian ways of thinking as we evaluate the distance learning technologies.