The Advantages and Disadvantages of Seminaries

[The Liturgist]

A member in Word of Faith made a post which I felt warranted a reply, but since I am not strictly speaking a member of the Word of Faith movement, although I share their Wesleyan belief in Sanctification, which is actually of Patristic and Eastern Orthodox origin, I thought it best to post it here:

There’s a reason seminary’s are called cemeteries.

I have heard students call Seminary “Cemetary” but this tends to be resistance to the program of Christian formation and the sober lifestyle. A respectable seminary like Nashotah House or St. Vladimir’s or St. Joseph of Arimathea or Holy Trinity Jordanville provides a quasi-monastic life dominated by study, worship in the chapel, and cleaning or otherwise serving the community. It is not for the immature or for people used to the college campus lifestyle of parties, booze, drugs, frat houses and promiscuity. Indeed Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville is part of a monastery and some of the seminarians are novice monks.

Not everyone with a vocation will benefit from the spiritual formation of a seminary, because they may already have experienced such formation at another stage in their life; consequently, many churches, including the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, which operates Holy Trinity Jordanville, do not require seminary education; ROCOR for example offers distance learning programs. The Coptic Orthodox Church has only one seminary I am aware of, in Australia, and the Assyrian Church of the East likewise; a Coptic priest usually has a degree in accounting, engineering or some other technical field, and if selected for ordination by a bishop, spends what is called “The Forty Days” at a monastery, where they live as a monk and learn the music specific to priests, and other aspects of the liturgical practicum, which is quite complicated, yet very beautiful and filled with Christological meaning, in all of the traditional churches (including but not limited to high church Anglican, Lutheran, Roman Catholicism, at least where the Traditional Latin Mass is celebrated, Eastern Orthodox (Russian, Greek, Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Antiochian, etc), Oriental Orthodox (Coptic, Syriac, Indian, Armenian, Ethiopian, Eritrean) and the Assyrian churches).

So, in summary, seminaries are not for everyone, and there are good alternatives on offer from some churches. However, many people have benefitted from them, and I have the feeling that seminarians who resort to calling their house of formation a “cemetary” either do not have a real vocation to serve God as a pastor, presbyter, minister, priest, elder, preacher or deacon, or else are in the wrong program. One unfortunate reality is that too many denominations, particularly the mainline Protestant churches, require Masters of Divinity degrees as a prerequisite for ordination, which requires seven years of higher education, and those in a seminary can be particularly challenging for younger people.

I would like to see a return to the more ancient model, where the prerogative of ordination belongs to bishops, or senior pastors, who could determine the suitability of a postulant (someone who feels called to the ministry) and what type of education would best suit them, and I would like to see the return of less formal theological schools based on the ancient Catechetical Schools of Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, Edessa and Nisibis, where learned figures, modern day scholars of theology and philosophy in the tradition of Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Ambrose, Irenaeus, the Cappodacians, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Severus of Antioch, Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas, among others, would teach. To a certain extent this exists in some Eastern Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox monasteries, but to the extent it once existed in the West, at first informally, and later under the aegis of Benedictine monasteries and colleges for the mendicant orders of friars (Oxford began this way), it now has been subsumed into the system of higher education.

For this reason, I have an interest in the unaccredited Bible Colleges associated with evangelical and pentecostal strains of American Protestantism, even though I personally am disinterested in Pentecostal theology (although aspects of Evangelical faith do appeal to me, when harmonized with ancient Christianity). I would love to see a Bible College that was patterned on the catechtical schools of antiquity and jointly operated by traditional Lutherans, Anglicans, Eastern Christians and other liturgical Christians.

 

[dzheremi]

The Coptic Orthodox Church has only one seminary I am aware of, in Australia

Are you forgetting or for some reason not counting the Theological Seminary connected to the Patriarchate, (re)established in 1893? It's the first place I think of in terms of seminary education outside of a monastic setting. St. Habib Girgis taught there, and HH Pope Shenouda III is one of its more famous graduates. That one's based in Egypt, but has branches in Sydney, New Jersey, and Los Angeles. There's also the much newer (est. 2015) Coptic Orthodox seminary in Sweden, St. Ignatius.

So there are at least three. (Not sure if we can also count the Institute of Coptic Studies, since it teaches a lot of things that priests-in-formation also learn during the 40 days in the desert, probably most notably Coptic hymnody, its musicological studies being headed at its founding by the illustrious Dr. Ragheb Moftah and its lessons staffed at one time by the keeper of Coptic Orthodox chant, none other than moallem Mikhail El Batanouny. And just to round things out: according to Wiki, Iris Habib El Masry taught Coptic history there. Man, what a dream team!)

 

[The Liturgist]

Are you forgetting or for some reason not counting the Theological Seminary connected to the Patriarchate, (re)established in 1893? It's the first place I think of in terms of seminary education outside of a monastic setting. St. Habib Girgis taught there, and HH Pope Shenouda III is one of its more famous graduates. That one's based in Egypt, but has branches in Sydney, New Jersey, and Los Angeles. There's also the much newer (est. 2015) Coptic Orthodox seminary in Sweden, St. Ignatius.

So there are at least three. (Not sure if we can also count the Institute of Coptic Studies, since it teaches a lot of things that priests-in-formation also learn during the 40 days in the desert, probably most notably Coptic hymnody, its musicological studies being headed at its founding by the illustrious Dr. Ragheb Moftah and its lessons staffed at one time by the keeper of Coptic Orthodox chant, none other than moallem Mikhail El Batanouny. And just to round things out: according to Wiki, Iris Habib El Masry taught Coptic history there. Man, what a dream team!)

I forgot about it, embarrassingly.

 

[Tolworth John]

I would like to see a return to the more ancient model, where the prerogative of ordination belongs to bishops, or senior pastors, who could determine the suitability of a postulant

Personally I think every person who goes to any form of formal theological training should be sponsored by their home church. That it should not be possible for someone to go to theological college without a reckomendation from their church.


The purpose of these colleges is to prepare people for further service, an advance from the service they are already doing in their home church.

 

[The Liturgist]

Personally I think every person who goes to any form of formal theological training should be sponsored by their home church. That it should not be possible for someone to go to theological college without a reckomendation from their church.


The purpose of these colleges is to prepare people for further service, an advance from the service they are already doing in their home church.

That’s a common first step for a lot of people, since not starting with a recommendation from your priest, pastor or minister, and then in a church with an episcopal polity like the Anglicans, the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, it really helps, especially in the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian churches, to have the backing of your diocesan bishop. If you have that, you might get your tuition paid for in part or in full via diocesan scholarship grants and related programs, and you are likely to actually get ordained and installed in a parish. If you just go through seminary without the endorsement of your bishop bishop and/or the senior pastor of your local church (you need both endorsements if you have a bishop), you could get stuck spending years as a church secretary, at best. Also if you get the wrong degree. I know a very intelligent theologian from the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod who was refused colloquy because he made the mistake of getting a Masters in Theology rather than the standard Masters in Divinity, or MDiv, that is like the MBA for pastors in the US, to use a vulgar analogy; perhaps I should call it the MFA, since great industrial, graphics and apparel designers increasingly get an MFA from places like Art Center in Pasadena and the New School in New York City.

 

[Fervent]

A lot of collegiate seminaries are cemetaries because there are a lot of individuals whose faith is based on a narrow understanding that even the slightest bit of critical analysis will leave them without a foundation. Unfortunately reactionary theological conservatism dominates protestant theology and is littered with simple denials rather than wrestling with challenges to faith like the scholarship that's been done in text criticism and historical criticism. There's too often a greater concern for doctrinal conformity rather than authentic spiritual experiences and personal witness to Christ's glory.

 

[Paidiske]

Personally I think every person who goes to any form of formal theological training should be sponsored by their home church. That it should not be possible for someone to go to theological college without a reckomendation from their church.

The purpose of these colleges is to prepare people for further service, an advance from the service they are already doing in their home church.

I think there are two separate things being conflated here. One is academic studies in theology, and the other is formation for ministry. For those of us who go on to ordained ministry, ideally we do both of those things in an integrated way; but it is perfectly possible for people to study theology for their own interest, and not go on to anything in particular with it. There were many such people in my classes. (I even recall one atheist student who was studying some theology as background for her particular PhD in philosophy).

Certainly it is the norm, in my experience, that in order to be accepted as a candidate for ordination, one needs references from one's home church. This was a problem for me because my home church wouldn't recommend a woman, and I needed to move parishes once I began to discern a vocation.

Personally, I very highly value the excellent theological education I received and am unimpressed by arguments that we shouldn't require formal education for those who take up ministry in the church; but the question of exactly what and how much needs to be studied is perennially complicated by all sorts of factors.

 

[Bob Crowley]

I hadn't thought about it but obviously "seminary" in Catholic terms is male only. That said, women are freely able to study theology and philosophy at the Australian Catholic University (ACU).

That is not to say women are excluded from ministry - they just can't become priests. Women are very active in the church.

In Brisbane (Queensland) the Pius XII Seminary is either on or adjoins ACU land. Originally the whole complex was a seminary, but with the need for a university site and I presume declining vocations for the priesthood, the land was developed into a university with an onsite seminary.

I occasionally daydream about doing a theology / philosophy course or subject there, but it's far too expensive for something I most likely would never use.

I have done a couple of very short term courses in the city developed by ACU, and if you look at the following link the coordinator of the sessions was usually (if not always) Dr Sr Maeve Heaney VDMF, and I remember Rev Dr Anthony Mellor as one of the speakers. But they weren't intensive courses - just L Plate stuff.

Home | Holy Spirit Seminary

 

[Paidiske]

I hadn't thought about it but obviously "seminary" in Catholic terms is male only.

Maybe not as much as you might think? I was in a lot of classes with Catholic ordinands. The academic study is often done ecumenically.

 

[Bob Crowley]

Maybe not as much as you might think? I was in a lot of classes with Catholic ordinands. The academic study is often done ecumenically.

The "seminary" would be male only, but I think they would do a lot (if not all) of their academic training at the ACU next door, which of course would be open to anybody.

 

[The Liturgist]

The "seminary" would be male only, but I think they would do a lot (if not all) of their academic training at the ACU next door, which of course would be open to anybody.

Eastern Orthodox seminaries like St. Vladimir’s are usually open to women; women get a postgraduate degree in theology from them. There are also classes for Presbyteras (which could be translated as Priestesses), who are the wives of Presbyters (Priests). Only bishops are required to be celibate (or if married, continent, but married bishops are extremely rare; almost all bishops, excepting Chorepiscopi, or Choir Bishops who are mainly found in the Oriental Orthodox (specifically Syriac Orthodox in Malankara and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church) and Assyrian/Ancient Church of the East; a Choir Bishop cannot ordain people to major orders but can ordain readers and psaltis (singers) and acolytes, and in the Church of the East they can reconsecrate churches and altars, which is useful because minor mistakes, like if your sandal falls off and your bare foot touches the altar (which is the entire nave, behind a curtain that is opened during the liturgy), or if you inadvertently pour olive oil into the Chalice rather than wine, or make any number of other liturgical mistakes one might consider minor, Assyrian altars become deconsecrated and you have to send for a bishop, or a chorepiscopus; the ability to ordain readers makes Chorepiscopi particularly useful, and my friend Fr. George the priest at St. Mary’s Assyrian Church of the East in Los Angeles is a Chorepiscopi).

 

[Archivist]

I think there are two separate things being conflated here. One is academic studies in theology, and the other is formation for ministry. For those of us who go on to ordained ministry, ideally we do both of those things in an integrated way; but it is perfectly possible for people to study theology for their own interest, and not go on to anything in particular with it. There were many such people in my classes. (I even recall one atheist student who was studying some theology as background for her particular PhD in philosophy).

Certainly it is the norm, in my experience, that in order to be accepted as a candidate for ordination, one needs references from one's home church. This was a problem for me because my home church wouldn't recommend a woman, and I needed to move parishes once I began to discern a vocation.

Personally, I very highly value the excellent theological education I received and am unimpressed by arguments that we shouldn't require formal education for those who take up ministry in the church; but the question of exactly what and how much needs to be studied is perennially complicated by all sorts of factors.

Our United Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg offers both a Master of Divinity degree and a Master of Arts degree. The first is for those wishing to be ordained, the M.A. is for those who want to pursue advanced religious study without ordination. Both degrees are open to both men and women.

 

[The Liturgist]

Our United Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg offers both a Master of Divinity degree and a Master of Arts degree. The first is for those wishing to be ordained, the M.A. is for those who want to pursue advanced religious study without ordination. Both degrees are open to both men and women.

I believe California Lutheran University also has this.

 

[Paidiske]

The "seminary" would be male only, but I think they would do a lot (if not all) of their academic training at the ACU next door, which of course would be open to anybody.

I think most of the ordinands go through CTC (Catholic theological college) rather than the ACU. Or at least, that was what I understood when I did some classes at CTC.

 

[Bob Crowley]

I think most of the ordinands go through CTC (Catholic theological college) rather than the ACU. Or at least, that was what I understood when I did some classes at CTC.

I went looking for Catholic Theological College. It seems to be based in Victoria, and mainly around Melbourne, which is where I think you did your own training.

I had another look at the Pius XII Seminary website at Banyo in Brisbane, and it appears there are lecture rooms in the seminary complex. But I'd be surprised if they don't tap into at least some subjects in the Theology and Philosophy course offered by the ACU "next door".

Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at ACU

If I think about it, I'll ask one of the priests how they do their training at the seminary. That will be straight from the horse's mouth so to speak.