Abstract:
To teach the Bible to students of theology at tertiary
level (university/seminary/(Bible/Mission) college) is at
the best of times fraught with difficulties. Combining the
initially often intellectually a-critical religious sentiments
of students with the demands of biblical/Old Testament/
New Testament studies as science (language skills,
exegetical methodologies, critical theories, hermeneutics
of understanding and of relevance) is characterised
by some difficulties, which lead to various and some
extreme reactions among students. The balance between
spirituality and exegesis is not always easy to maintain for
many teachers of theology. These problems are in some
respects compounded in Open and Distance Education
and Learning institutions such as the University of South
Africa, where direct contact with students and, hence,
spiritual formation (undertaken either implicitly or explicitly)
is limited and media-ted. Yet, new times also hold new
promises. This contribution outlines an intellectual matrix of these problems and dynamics, with possibilities
offered that align well with the more faith-positive cultural
sentiments currently dawning internationally, known as
post-secularism.
Description:
In a sense, all research does so: One cannot write about what one has not read, lived through or
critically reflected on. This intellectual biography is, however, more often than not hidden behind
the subject matter and the competences required to analyse one’s topic, but with an author’s self
often visible “between the lines”, as it were, for the careful reader to see.
