Paideia Education

In his book Between Athens and Berlin, David Kelsey describes what the term paideia meant in ancient Athens. He writes, "... 'paideia' simply named an unself-conscious educational process through which young free males were 'formed' by those virtues they would need in order to function as responsible adult citizens. The process involved the whole person." (Kelsey, 7).

Fast forward a couple thousand years and a Christian concept of paideia forms the basis of Dan Aleshire's vision of theological education. In his 2021 book, Beyond Profession, Aleshire proposes:

The goal of theological education should be the development of a wisdom of God and the ways of God, fashioned from intellectual, affective, and behavioural understanding and evidenced by spiritual and moral maturity, relational integrity, knowledge of the Scripture and tradition, and the capacity to exercise religious leadership (Aleshire, 82).

While Aleshire's definition seems like nothing new, he insightfully and carefully extracts certain terms from the definition to show how traditional Protestant theological education tends to omit elements of paideia. Here is the same description with a purely intellectual and academic focus: 

The goal of theological education should be [learning] the ways of God, fashioned from intellectual understanding, knowledge of the Scripture and tradition, and the capacity to exercise religious leadership (Aleshire, 98).

Notice a difference between the first definition and the second? Sadly, I think Aleshire is on to something when he describes typical Protestant theological education for pastoral ministry as being more closely aligned with the second definition. Thankfully, there is hope for a renewed future of theological education that can be more deeply rooted in paideia.