This article is good advice for seminary students, too, with just two needed amendments:
(1) In theological circles, what the author characterizes here as secondary literature, i.e. highly specialized academic journal articles from the last 20 years, is really more tertiary or quaternary at best, and thus even farther removed from the great books and essential authors that one should read, especially when one bears in mind that prayer is truly the primary theological discourse of the faith and scripture is its primary literature.
(2) His characterization of nearly all the literature required for a vocation or professional education is substitutable or replacable by the latest and most up-to-date practical resource. But, while this is certainly true of programmatic helps and how-to resources in the field of ministry, as well as in the latest trends in, say, progressive political theology and biblical hermeneutics, etc., there remains that body of great books: Augustine's Confessions, Calvin's Institutes, Kierkegaard's Christian Discourses and Sickness Unto Death, Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship, are in no danger of ever being replaced. (I would like to think that one day Oecolampadius' Sermons on the First Epistle of John will be widely numbered among them.) Meanwhile, one thing the article makes clear is the requisite decision and resolution to slow down, actually read, and soak in the books and their ideas, and to do so on their own terms, giving them your firsthand engagement.
If I could add a third amendment, let it be this:
(3) Extrapolate and this reader's wisdom to life beyond college and seminary. Don't think it must be confined to that narrow "interim" between adolescence and adult responsiibility. This is one of the open secrets and blessings, often overlooked, of the pastoral office, or (as it should be called), the pastor's study. If you understand and structure your pastoral rule of life aright and take pains to communicate it to your congregation (so that they and your staff help you protect it), then you will find you are actually paid and expected to not just read scan the latest articles on techniques for ministry, but to dive deep into and inhabit the most important and essential texts of the Christian faith. It begins with daily reading of scripture, of course. But more on this in a forthcoming piece.
(1) In theological circles, what the author characterizes here as secondary literature, i.e. highly specialized academic journal articles from the last 20 years, is really more tertiary or quaternary at best, and thus even farther removed from the great books and essential authors that one should read, especially when one bears in mind that prayer is truly the primary theological discourse of the faith and scripture is its primary literature.
(2) His characterization of nearly all the literature required for a vocation or professional education is substitutable or replacable by the latest and most up-to-date practical resource. But, while this is certainly true of programmatic helps and how-to resources in the field of ministry, as well as in the latest trends in, say, progressive political theology and biblical hermeneutics, etc., there remains that body of great books: Augustine's Confessions, Calvin's Institutes, Kierkegaard's Christian Discourses and Sickness Unto Death, Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship, are in no danger of ever being replaced. (I would like to think that one day Oecolampadius' Sermons on the First Epistle of John will be widely numbered among them.) Meanwhile, one thing the article makes clear is the requisite decision and resolution to slow down, actually read, and soak in the books and their ideas, and to do so on their own terms, giving them your firsthand engagement.
If I could add a third amendment, let it be this:
(3) Extrapolate and this reader's wisdom to life beyond college and seminary. Don't think it must be confined to that narrow "interim" between adolescence and adult responsiibility. This is one of the open secrets and blessings, often overlooked, of the pastoral office, or (as it should be called), the pastor's study. If you understand and structure your pastoral rule of life aright and take pains to communicate it to your congregation (so that they and your staff help you protect it), then you will find you are actually paid and expected to not just read scan the latest articles on techniques for ministry, but to dive deep into and inhabit the most important and essential texts of the Christian faith. It begins with daily reading of scripture, of course. But more on this in a forthcoming piece.
