why habit matters in theological education

A really interesting article on "new habits" got me thinking about the relation between habit and cognition, bodily practice in creativity and learning, and the limited ways we moderns have for thinking about knowing.  This is something I was just reading about in Charles Taylor's book, A Secular Age (yes, I'm still reading, trying to finish by the end of May.  I'm on page 618, so the end is near.) He wrote (p. 615) in a section on the long process of 'excarnation' in Latin Christendom:

"If we think of the three levels of human linguistic-communicative activity in its broadest sense: one of bodily habitus and mimicry, one of symbolic expression in art, poetry, music, dance; and one of prose, descriptive language; we can say that aboriginal religious life was mainly couched in the first two, but that the culture which emerges from modern Western Reform has largely abandoned these, and confines itself to the third.

The rationalist paradigm that took hold of professional education--and theological education as well--over the last two hundred years has overemphasized  detached cognitive reasoning.  It has also overemphasized the individual thinker in whose mind such reasoning takes place.  One of the reasons for common work (either in classroom settings or in a practical theology research laboratory such as I've described here) is that it allows for a richer conception of human thinking and communication to come to the fore. 

My next project has to do with an epistemology of professional practice, looking at ministry in particular, and the beginnings of the project are outlined in my chapter contribution to a new book in practical theology titled For Life Abundant, available now, (see ch. 11, titled: "Learning Ministry over Time: Embodying Practical Wisdom").  The ideas there are  woven through other chapters, too, and the concern is highlighted for further consideration in the book's last section titled: "In Anticipation" (isn't that a nice alternative to "conclusion" as if we'd wrapped up all that needed to be said . . . not!)

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Affirming the intelligence of practice

Texts and propositions alone cannot carry or communicate the knowledge of God’s grace in Christ that is at the heart of Christian existence. This lifegiving knowledge, which dwells in the bodies of believers and in the Body they comprise, is gained through forms of active and receptive participation that engage a wide range of human capacities. Likewise, the specific practices by which we respond to God’s grace — practices such as prayer, forgiveness and hospitality — bear knowledge of God, ourselves and the world that cannot be reduced to words, even though words are often important in helping us to learn and participate faithfully in them. Such practices embody certain kinds of wisdom and foster certain kinds of intelligence when engaged in serious and critical ways. The practice of Christian ministry also requires and imbues forms of knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence that include but reach far beyond mere cognition. Practical theology serves the church and the world by honoring and articulating such knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence as they emerge in actual persons and communities, and by considering how they might most faithfully be deepened and shared for the sake of abundant life. In doing so, practical theology seeks to clarify the intelligence of practice without reducing it, and to query its reasons even while acknowledging that it is impossible fully to comprehend either the concrete uniqueness or the Spirit-led possibility inherent in any given instance of practice. Like faithful ministry and discipleship, practical theology pursues the telos of a life-giving way of life in awareness that the means employed in doing so—the practices of faith, including the arts of ministry—are not merely tools. Rather they are both the goal and the path of the Christian life.

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anon, and +peace,

Chris