Note: During the interview, Kitty Blackburn referred to particular writings about theological education. After the interview, she clarified the references so that (where possible) links could be provided to those writings.

Editor: What was your initial response to reading the transcript of the meeting?

KB: I was actually quite pleased. My first goal was to make sure that Derek was given enough space to teach the way that any professor deserves. But, beyond that, I thought that we had a meaningful exchange that touched on a number of topics that are crucial to understanding the very essence of theological education.

Ed: What topics do you have in mind?

KB: I was thinking that we touched on issues such as fragmentation, the clerical paradigm, and even the telos question. These have formed the backbone of the debates about the "aims and purposes" of theological education -- debates that David Kelsey has summarized in a book called "Between Athens and Berlin."

Ed: Those sound like technical terms, or terms with a history. What do you mean, for example, by fragmentation?

KB: Fragmentation is a short-hand for what may be the most difficult issue facing theological education today. The term goes back to Edward Farley's key essays. He showed that the theological curriculum was divided in the nineteenth century into at least four pieces: theology, biblical studies, history, and practical disciplines. Each of these disciplines has its own internal logic and its own standards. And a professor's primary loyalty has to be to her discipline (rather than the larger aims of the school) because it is the discipline that determines the standards of success and thus arbitrates tenure and promotion.

Ed: So why is fragmentation so bad? That just sounds like a description of how theological education works.

KB: Fragmentation is a problem because we in theological education have designed the curriculum as a piece-meal collection of each of these disciplines. Students learn each field but they never get a sense of the whole. The opposite of fragmentation is integration. In an integrated curriculum, students can readily see how, for example, their course in history and their pastoral care course complement each other -- how they contribute to the same common goal or telos. As it is right now, we leave students to integrate the curriculum for themselves. So when Michael Lancaster says that students leave his class primed to ask theodicy questions, then we ought to make sure that other professors know that and that they provide space to deal with theodicy. I am afraid we don't do that yet here at KTS. And so students have to do the best they can to find the tensions -- indeed, the contradictions -- embedded in our curriculum and work through them on their own.

Ed: I know that students do indeed struggle to put the pieces together in a coherent order. One model I've heard students use is to say that a seminary education is not all that different from engineering school. That theology and bible are like math and science -- and that the practical courses are like specialized engineering applications like airplane building.

KB: Well, I have heard professors make a similar analogy. It is typically called "a linear move from theory to practice." And it is one of the few items of consensus in the "aims and purposes" debate. Almost everyone agrees that we cannot conceive of theological education as a linear move from theory to practice. Conrad Cherry in his book, "Hurrying to Zion," showed how prevalent theory-to-practice assumptions have been in the history of theological education. And Farley has certainly discredited the move as reductionistic. It reduces theology to some abstract thing that can have no concrete placement in the real world. And it marginalizes practical disciplines as devoid of theology. Indeed, he argues that all theological work must be at some level practical and that all practical work must justify itself as theological. So we have a common but discredited assumption that the curriculum can move from theory to practice. But we do not have a great many models for what theological thinking would look like when freed from these assumptions. Thomas Groome has tried to create such a model, as has Don S. Browning in his "Fundamental Practical Theology." But that is an area where theological educators still need to work.

Ed: You have mentioned the word 'telos' a couple of times. What does it mean in this context?

KB: The word 'telos' means, as I am sure you know, the end-point, the ultimate goal, the destination that justifies the journey. And one of the few consensus conclusions of the "aims and purposes" debate has been that theological education will never overcome fragmentation until there is some ultimate goal -- or telos -- that every course moves toward. There have been a number of different goals proposed. Kelsey thinks that the goal is "to understand God truly" -- he says that that is "what is theological about a theological school." But there are other models as well. Rebecca Chopp and other feminist groups like the Mud Flower Collective have proposed that the ultimate goal of theological education is doing justice. And you can see what the problem is. How do you have a debate? How do you stand up and say, "I am opposed to understanding God truly" or "Justice is not important"? So we are still casting about for the one destination that justifies the journey of theological education -- and until we as a faculty agree on a telos, we are probably doomed to fragmentation.

Ed: What is wrong with the obvious goal of making ministers? Isn't that why most students come to seminary, to become religious leaders of some kind?

KB: Well, that is what Farley means by the "clerical paradigm." The clerical paradigm refers to the notion that the best way to teach ministers to be ministers is to teach them to be proficient at the skills and activities that make up a pastor's life. So, you teach them to preach, to counsel, to run a meeting, and to teach the Bible. And you assume that to the extent that they do each of these well they are good ministers. The problem, as Farley shows in tremendous detail, is that the paradigm does not actually work. If you only teach skills, you get lousy ministers. They have no heart. They are automotans that can go through the check-list and, say, preach a technically pleasing sermon. But they have, in the end, nothing to say. There is no depth of thought, no working through the crises of faith that make faith strong. They end up like the seed planted in rocky soil. They prosper initially but soon wither under the heat of minstry. So you can see that the consensus on the clerical paradigm is pretty strong. In fact, Kelsey summarizes the telos question by saying that we have to find a telos for theological education but that telos cannot be teaching ministry skills.

Ed: Well, we have time for only one more question because I know you have to go. But I'd like to return to the Curriculum Committee meeting, if you don't mind. What do you think that Derek Concord needs to hear?What can he learn from this meeting?

KB: I should start by saying that I really like what Derek is doing, the direction he is going. When I first heard him talk about the course (last year when we were interviewing him), I kept thinking about John Dewey's premise that we learn more from reflection on experience than we do from the experience itself. And I think that Derek's class promotes reflection in new and innovative ways. And I want to applaud that. As far as what he needs to remember...Let me put it this way: I am a dean, I worry about faculty development. I worry that this innovative class is going to take too much of his time and he won't have time to write. I worry that, like Tom or Michael said, that he will get too infatuated with the Internet and try to publish articles to the Web without the benefit or legitimation of peer review. In short, I worry that the very path-breaking tendencies that we value in him will lead him in directions that jeapordize his tenurability. He has to walk a fine line between doing something new and doing something that his colleagues will recognize as important. But I want to support him in that effort -- because I'd rather have more professors trying new things than fewer.

Ed: Thank you for your time.

KB: And thank you for your interest.