I just started reading Desiring the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith, where he argues that true Christian education should be primarily formative rather than primarily informative. That is true education should be aimed first at the affections and then at the mind. Having just completed my first year of seminary, I am convinced he is right. Simply teaching the Bible and its theology with no grounding in their affective dimension will never truly form character.
If this is so, how then does knowledge become more than knowledge? Smith argues it is through liturgy, through worship, that we are primarily formed. I want to make the most of my time in seminary, and for me that must mean growing in my affection for God and becoming more like Christ. To that end, I want to use writing as a means to “make further progress,” as a kind of liturgy. For me, writing about Scripture is a kind of worshipful reading. As Smith argues “we love in order to know” because we are lovers, we are worshippers before we are anything else. Writing becomes a means of participation, where I come to the text not simply as an observer, but as a worshipper.
When thinking about theological education, I have to ask my self, am I an observer or am I a participator? The accumulation of information demands only observation, whereas the formation of character demands participation. God calls his people to participation, and our participation with and in him is worship. We are formed by what we worship. We become what we behold. And as Christians if we would be formed by Christ, we must behold him, because by beholding him we, as Edwards wrote, “lay ourselves in the way of allurement.”
Writing this blog will hopefully serve as a way to lay myself in the way of allurement. Writing is a participation with the text, allowing the text to shape and form not only my thought, but my affections. In that way, I hope my thoughts to serve as reflections, a kind of shimmering surface that mirror back the truth of Scripture to myself and those that read. I want to write through the things I read and learn, so that I might be mastered by truth, instead of trying to become the master of truth.