I’ve always been suspicious of dividing things in two. Some of my earliest memories are of wanting the whole thing, but being told that my older brother and I had to divide it up. Cake. Candy bars. That last hamburger, sitting on the grill, begging to be eaten. Even Kleenex. Kleenex? Yes, we used them a half tissue at a time. After all, I was raised by the generation that sacrificed through the Great Depression. I would insist on the whole thing. Then I’d hear those dreaded words: “Boys, you’re going to have to divide it in two!”
My childhood selfishness aside, church life in the early 21st century is regrettably full of false dichotomies. And at San Francisco Theological Seminary, we are learning to resist and reject false choices that would require us to embrace only one side of a complex reality. Instead, our goal is to put our arms around the whole big mess that is life in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Liberal or conservative? Yes! We are all both, albeit in different ways and on different subjects. Small church or large church? Yes! God’s purposes for service to the world require both, and everything in between. Traditional or contemporary? Yes! Faithfulness requires the best of both. Reformed or ecumenical? Yes! Each requires the other. Theoretical, spiritual, or practical? Yes! Pastoral preparation cannot be comprehensive without all three aspects of formation for ministry, and others as well.
When theological education embraces the wholeness that God intends for the creation, it integrates spiritual, theological, and practical formation in preparing whole leaders for the whole church. This sense of mission is drawn from the biblical vision of shalom— wholeness, integrity–that derives from a Trinitarian apprehension of God’s boundless generosity. In such a vision, things that might otherwise be placed in binary opposition or competition with one other as zero sum games are instead held together in an essential unity that requires and embraces appropriate distinction and diversity.
I believe our Presbyterian theological seminaries are one of our most crucial resources for overcoming the false dichotomies that permeate church life today, as we prepare leaders who can hold things together that our culture persistently divides in two. Perhaps the most malignant and debilitating binary opposition we face on the contemporary religious landscape is the tendency to classify everyone we meet, every comment we hear, every book we read, and every church we visit on a dichotomizing spectrum that ranges from “Liberal” or “Progressive” on one extreme to “Conservative” or “Evangelical” on the other. It’s reflected in our tendency to try to figure out in every conversation where the person we’re talking to stands on that continuum, relative to where we stand.
Educating for wholeness means that instead–taking our cues from our gracious triune God–we prepare students with hearts, minds, and hands open to a genuine spectrum of theological perspectives. A spectrum is quite different from a continuum, though we sometimes confuse them in our language. A spectrum is displayed by the light. It is actually a manifestation of the light as it refracts the three primary colors into a brilliant bouquet of more subtle and complementary hues. The individual colors in a spectrum blend into and enhance one another. They don’t compete with each other or seek dominance over one another. They exist together as a whole that’s greater than any individual part.
One way our seminaries can reinforce this Trinitarian vision of unity in diversity is to persistently place before the church the pattern of Jesus Christ, the embodiment of God’s wholeness.
As we hold forth the generous economy of abundance that we embrace by faith in the limitless resources of this gracious God, let’s not settle for just a piece of this expansive vision. Let’s not be satisfied with fragments of God’s purpose for the creation. The world is desperate to see us holding together what the forces of evil relentlessly try to tear apart. In the name of the God we know in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, let’s insist on the whole thing.
PHILIP W. BUTIN is president of San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo and Pasadena, Calif.
