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Baker Publishing Group - W. Pazmino Robert

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110 pages

English

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A topic of frequent discussion in religious education circles is the relationship between theology and practice. How does Christian theology work itself out in the teaching ministries of the church? Noted Christian education thinker Robert Pazmiño contemplates this debate and offers a contemporary overview of the messages theology brings to Christian education. Sensitive to today's expanding global culture, God Our Teacher reaffirms the essential role theology plays in developing educational practices and conventions, and carefully fleshes out what it means to use the Trinity as a model for ordering educational thought and practice. This book will be welcomed by all those involved in fostering the growth and development of Christian education.

Sujets

Christian theology

Philosophie et théologie

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 novembre 2001
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441206411
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0634€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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© 2001 by Robert W. Pazmiño
Published by Baker Academic a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
eISBN 978-1-4412-0641-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.
Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Dedicated to Wanda Ruth Pazmiño, my wife and life companion
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction

1. God For Us: The Trinity and Teaching
2. God Despite Us: Sin and Salvation
3. God With Us: Jesus, the Master Teacher
4. God In Us: The Holy Spirit and Teaching
5. God Through Us: The Church and Teaching
6. God Beyond Us: Our Future in Christian Education

Conclusion
Appendix: Crossing Over to Postmodernity: Educational Invitations
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Other Books by Author
INTRODUCTION
Ultimately, life and theology come down to God and us. Therefore, the ultimate questions about life can be viewed in terms of our relationships with others and our communion with God. For Christians, the essential relationship of life is that between God and us. In this relationship, God serves as the ultimate teacher, our teacher throughout eternity. An interest in God as teacher is re-emerging in discussions of education. In a chapter from his recent work titled God’s Wisdom , Peter Hodgson insightfully traces the history of theological thought on this theme. [1]
The Christian faith claims that God is most wonderfully revealed in Jesus Christ and in the continuing revelation of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, God’s revelation is the starting point for our learning. We begin in chapter 1 with a discussion of the core distinctive of Christianity the Trinity. The Trinity discloses a communion as God the Father, Son, and Spirit reveal for humanity and all of creation the essence of life in its fullness. A further claim advanced in this work is that the Trinity is an organizing theological theme for the theory and practice of Christian education. The vitality of Christian education depends on the theological roots of the Trinity. These roots require thoughtful consideration and application to teaching practice.
The importance of knowing God as teacher finds warrant from a surprising source. Job’s friend Elihu poses the basic question for Job and all of us: “Who is a teacher like him?” (Job 36:22). The implication is that there is no teacher like God the Father, Son, and Spirit. They have taught humanity since time began. So the biblical record affirms the Triune God as our ultimate teacher.
The relationship between God and us is explored in the following pages through six terms of relationality or communion that serve as connectors for each chapter. These six prepositions for, despite, with, in, through , and beyond provide the terms to wrestle with the implications our communion with God has for the relational ministry of Christian education. Prepositions serve to address the vital connection between God and humanity, between God and all of creation. They serve to partially disclose the grammar of relationality inherent in creation. Emphasizing relationship is appropriate in the light of the centrality of the Trinity in Christian faith and the place of covenant in Scripture. Covenant sets the terms of our relationship with God. Each of the six relational terms also provides a connection between Christian theology and the ministry of teaching. Each term provides an entry point into traditional theological loci: the Trinity, sin and salvation, Jesus Christ as incarnation, the Holy Spirit, the Christian church, and the consummation. [2] In more formal theological categories, the six chapters explore aspects of theology proper, harmartiology and soteriology, Christology, pneumatology, ecclesiology and missiology, and eschatology.
For each chapter’s theological explorations, I assume the perspective of a practical theologian focusing on Christian education, a perspective I trust will offer insights for the crucial ministry of teaching in the third millennium. Without attention to Christian education from a theologically informed perspective, the Christian church is subject to cultural isolation and eventual extinction. That alternative fails to be faithful to the call to love God with all of our minds. As teachers of the Christian faith, we need our minds to be theologically informed, formed, and transformed. A lesser commitment fails to give glory to the God who desires to be our teacher in this life and in the life to come.
Writing about God as teacher is an audacious task that calls for humility. In reviewing the original outline for this work, Julie Gorman shared two insightful suggestions. She suggested adding chapters on God above us and God through us. In light of her response, I renamed chapter 5 “God Through Us” instead of my earlier thought of “God Among Us.” Through suggests a more active focus on ministry and mission in the church. Julie’s suggestion of God above us is, I hope, a spirit embraced in all the chapters of this work. The human art of speaking and writing about God is presumptuous and fraught with danger. Nevertheless, a faith stance struggles for understanding, recognizing that God is ever and always above, below, and all about us. This is what the Apostle Paul shared with his audience in Athens:
The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said. (Acts 17:24–28)
In God we live, move, and have our being. Any attempt to write about God must recognize God’s mystery, being above us as wholly other and transcendent. This faith stance honors God’s sovereignty and offers insights that require further dialogue and response. I share this in the spirit of recognizing God above us, yet wonderfully revealed in Jesus Christ as Paul shared with his Greek audience: “While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30–31). The incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ bear witness to God’s active teaching of humanity leading to the consummation of creation.
Though several of my previous works considered the theological basics in Christian education, this book makes that task explicit. It gathers up insights from my earlier works and explores new ground. It proposes that theological basics provide the constitutive framework for teaching practices. In particular, I suggest that the Trinity provides a theological ordering that enables those who teach to imaginatively engage their ministry. The shared life ( perichoresis ) of the Trinity invites those called to teach to embrace the mystery of living in the world with a vision of God’s future. Teaching, like other practices of the Christian church, requires celebrating the already of God’s fulfilled purposes while awaiting the not yet. The dynamic life of the already and not yet finds expression in the teaching ministry of Jesus, which is the topic of chapter 3. The heart of this work resides in the third chapter where teaching is incarnated in Jesus’ exemplary ministry.
In my earlier works, most explicitly in Principles and Practices of Christian Education , I identified two underlying forms and two organizing principles for Christian education. The two forms are the educational trinity of content, persons, and context, and the five-task model of proclamation, community formation, service, advocacy, and worship. The two principles are those of conversion or transformation and connection. [3] In this work, a third form and third principle emerge from my theological considerations, which, when related to my earlier writings, serve to introduce the underlying structure and theological passion for what follows.
In relation to forms, my idea of an educational trinity affirms a rootedness in divine trinitarian life with a corresponding concern for orthodoxy in educational thought. My identification of a five-task model of proclamation, community formation, service, advocacy, and worship affirms the dynamic of the church’s mission in the world and a concern for orthopraxis in educational practice. My introduction of a third Chalcedonian form affirms both the order and ardor or passion of relationships between our primary identity in huddling with God (differentiation and particularity) and our mission of mixing in the world as God’s people (unity and universality). Chalcedonian form in education embraces the concern