
Andy Crouch has written an article titled “The Future Shape of Theological Education” that I found to be insightful (HT: John Byron). He observes “…that few seminaries, as we know them now, will exist in fifty years.” This doesn’t mean there won’t be seminaries though, because “…seminaries as we know them now, with their tremendously diverse student bodies, globe-spanning technological capacities, and innovative programs of research and teaching, did not exist fifty years ago either.” Why are some seminaries (and divinity schools) alive even as others have disappeared? What will it take to be one of those seminaries in the future?
Crouch addresses this question from four angles: (1) The Transition to the Visual Age; (2) Generational Transitions; (3) Entrepreneurship and Leadership; (4) The Core and the Edge. To see what he says about these things read the whole article here.
Also, you may be interested in the following:
Peter Enns, Historical Criticism and Evangelicalism: An Uneasy Relationship
Stanley Hauerwas, The End of American Protestantism
Larry Hurtado, The Divine Name and Greek Translation; New Oxyrhynchus Manuscripts
Brian, thanks for this. It’s not clear how you find what you find but you often often great things. The Larry Hurtado link lead down a curious rabbit hole. He mentions P.Oxy. 76.5072, known as “un-canonical Gospel?” which lead to a familiar site for finding authentic ancient Greek (Oxyrhynchus Online) at http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/POxy/. This site has fragments and images.
At archive.org a translation of a fragment along with discussion about it, can be found (by Bernard Pyne Grenfell, 1869-1926; and Arthur Surridge Hunt, 1871-1934). This fragment is a story about Jesus’s actions and words not recorded in the canonical Gospel. Grenfell and Hunt doubt its authenticity.
However doubt about it’s authenticity is readily dismissed by A. Büchler in an article found in JSTOR entitled ‘The New “Fragment of an Uncanonical Gospel” (Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Jan., 1908), pp. 330-346). Büchler refutes Grenfell and Hunt by quoting Josephus to show that Grenfell and Hunt based their conclusion on false assumptions.
Quite a pleasant rabbit hole – so thanks again!