Ambassadors of Christ

Commemorating 150 Years of Theological Education in Cuddesdon 1854–2004

Mark D. Chapman, Mark D. Chapman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351959414
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

Ambassadors of Christ commemorates 150 years of theological education in Cuddesdon with a collection of substantial essays. It begins with a discussion by Mark Chapman of the revival of theology and education in the early years of the nineteenth century. This is followed by essays by Alastair Redfern on Samuel Wilberforce as a pastoral theologian and a revision by Andrew Atherstone of Owen Chadwick's Centenary History in the light of more recent historical research, bringing the discussion up to the 1880s. For the first time, Ripon Hall, which merged with Cuddesdon in 1975, receives a thorough and detailed historical treatment by Michael Brierley. Mark Chapman then discusses the 1960s under Robert Runcie, and a final chapter by Robert Jeffery deals with the theological and churchmanship issues which emerged from the merger. Two marvellous sermons preached at College Festivals by Michael Ramsey and Owen Chadwick are also reproduced in appendices. This special commemorative volume will appeal to past and present students as well as specialists in nineteenth and twentieth-century church history and all those interested in ministerial education and spiritual formation. Â

Chapter 1

Living the Truth: Cuddesdon in the History of Theological Education

Mark D. Chapman

The Rise of Theological Education in the Nineteenth Century

There was always something inherently vague about theological education as it developed in the Church of England in the nineteenth century, at least when it is compared with models on offer elsewhere. Where German and American theological curricula were highly structured and often resembled other forms of “professional” education, the character of Anglican theological education was more usually described in terms of the assimilation of an ethos, the ownership of a tradition and the development of a way of life or a pattern of being, rather than being primarily focused on the education of the “clerical practitioner”.¹ Furthermore, Anglican theological education has traditionally been rooted in the praying life of a religious community rather than in the purely intellectual atmosphere of the university. Indeed, as this opening section shows, it was the perceived failure of the university as a religious community that led to the development of theological colleges in the Church of England in the first place. What will be shown is that Anglican theological education provides a good example of what Edward Farley called “theologia”,² that is, a conception of theology rooted in the practice of the church. This chapter discusses this model of education as it has developed in the Church of England, particularly at Cuddesdon, its counterparts in the early church and in the present day, as well as addressing some of its inherent problems. It concludes with a vision of a possible direction for the future.

Things developed very differently elsewhere. In Prussia, for instance, the rise of the modern university and the reform of the theological curriculum under the influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), the first professor of theology at the newly-founded University of Berlin, was to focus on the historical and philosophical knowledge and skills base required for the practice of ministry. In his short classic, Brief Outline on the Study of Theology of 1811,³ he justified theology in terms of the practical tasks of ministry. “Theology,” he claimed, “is a positive science [which itself is] a compass of scientific elements which do not cohere as though they formed a necessary part of scientific organisation as a result of the idea of science, but rather to the degree that they are required for the solution of a practical task.”⁴ Similarly, theology was “the compass of academic knowledge and skills, which unless possessed and used, there could be no leadership of the church or a church government”.⁵ Theology was no longer the science of God, on the medieval model, but instead was the theory behind a practical task. Indeed, without the practical ministerial orientation of theology “the same items of knowledge cease to be theological and each become part of a different science”.⁶

For Schleiermacher, then, the study of theology in the university was primarily the acquisition of historical knowledge and a set of practical methods, analogous to the learning of medical or legal theory, for the clerical practitioner, and is justified in terms of the functional requirements of an indispensable activity of the modern state – the need for the “cure of souls”.⁷ The minister, like the lawyer or the doctor, learns a particular tradition, works out its “historical” essence (using ordinary historical tools), and then passes this on, using the techniques of practical theology. Unlike the alternative model of theological education, which was developed in most Anglican theological colleges in the later nineteenth century as will be shown below, Schleiermacher’s is an extreme example of what might be called the clericalisation of theology whereby a specially trained leadership is equipped with a distinctive professional knowledge and a set of skills to perform a particular function in the church and state at large: theology is defined in terms of ministerial practice and thereby becomes a “technical rationality” rather than a spiritual discipline. This becomes clearest in Schleiermacher’s famous description of the ideal clergyman:

Imagine the concern for religion and the scientific spirit united, for the sake of theory and practice, in the highest degree and in the most perfect balance, and you have the idea of a “prince of the church”.⁸

In many ways things could not have been more different in England. There was no undergraduate study of theology as a distinct and separate discipline: as one writer comments, compared with Germany, “the Church of England was uniquely uninterested in theological training for its ministers”.⁹ Whereas in the protestant churches in Germany from the Reformation onwards a degree in theology had been a general requirement for ordination, in England all that was needed was a simple arts degree. At the same time, however, at least in Oxford, a modicum of theological study, together with subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles, was a requirement for all degrees, making the university a confessional establishment. At the turn of the nineteenth century, for instance, knowledge had to be shown in the Gospels in Greek, the Thirty-Nine Articles, as well as Bishop Butler’s Analogy of Religion. On this model of theological study, the system of thought on which it was based was fixed and final, and did not allow for even a limited degree of critical study. Critics like Sydney Smith might have questioned such a limited understanding of theology, but other influential figures were prepared to defend it. Thus Edward Copleston, Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, and afterwards Dean of St Paul’s and Bishop of Llandaff, could write:

There is one province of education indeed in which we are slow in believing that any discoveries can be made. The scheme of revelation we think is closed, and we expect no new light on earth to break in upon us … We hold it our especial duty … to keep strict watch around the sacred citadel, to deliver out in due measure and season the stores it contains, to make our countrymen look to it as a tower of strength, and to defend it against open and secret enemies.¹⁰

On the one hand, theology was a closed system which did not allow for critical thought, and, on the other hand, it was a requirement for all students, whatever they might be studying. Not surprisingly, given its compulsory status and limited content, it was not always taken seriously (just like obligatory chapel).

While there were many efforts to improve the status of theology in the 1830s and 1840s, which led to the foundation of several new professorships, the compulsory element of theology in all Oxford degrees seemed increasingly anachronistic, even if it was not finally abolished until 1931.¹¹ Following the Royal Commission which reported in 1854 and which led to the Oxford University Act of the same year, there were huge changes in the ecclesiastical presumptions of Oxford and a sharp decline in the numbers of graduates entering ministry. The Act itself, while not completely removing all religious tests, abolished subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles on matriculation and graduation. In the Archbishop of Canterbury’s report on The Supply and Training of Candidates for Holy Orders (which eventually led after the First World War to the introduction of the General Ordination Examination and the requirement for all ordinands to spend a period in a theological college) Dean Church was cited as evidence of the need for a non-university theological education:

It is necessary to remember that the University, as the Commission left it, is virtually a secular institution. The Divinity Professorships are still held by Priests, but the University is not concerned as such, either with maintaining, or developing, or arousing a desire for Holy Orders.¹²

Although Newman, Keble and Pusey had fought to ensure that Oxford University remained – and here it resembled their model of the apostolic church – a religious institution subject to its own form of authority and not to an apostate parliament, the forces of change were inexorable.¹³ As late as 1853 in his response to the Royal Commission on Oxford, Dr Pusey claimed that theology was something quite distinct from other subjects and simply too sacred to be studied academically. He insisted that it was wrong to study the “history of doctrine”, because it had no real history, “the faith having been, once for all, made known to the inspired Apostles, and by them inserted in Holy Scripture, and committed to the Church”.¹⁴ As the century progressed, however, theology became simply one subject alongside the others, rather than a fundamental aspect of all higher education: the Oxford Honour School of Theology was finally established in 1870. By this time even Pusey had changed his mind, supporting the move in the hope that it might act as a bulwark against a more critical theological method.

The growth of Anglican theological education was in many ways a form of resistance to this gradual secularisation of the universities. It provides an alternative response to the German model which sought instead to accommodate theology to the modern university by redefining its character as a practical and historical discipline.¹⁵ If theology as the science of sacred knowledge and as the presupposition for all other knowledge could no longer find a home in the university, then it had to look elsewhere. By deliberately creating an atmosphere of holiness and withdrawal – virtues which appeared to be moribund in the secular universities – the first theological colleges, pre-eminent among them Cuddesdon, were to assist their students in the complex process of the discernment of God’s will through the life of prayer and discipline. Under the influence of the Oxford Movement, high spiritual ideals and independence from the world were consciously adopted as a witness against the decline of the university as a religious institution. While this new form of theological education might be a symptom of the increasing professionalisation of the clergy, which has been noted by many commentators, it should also be noted that the area of professional specialisation was in what might be called “affairs of the chancel”, and it comes as little surprise that it was accompanied by widespread architectural and liturgical reform. Where the secular role was declining, the religious became increasingly important.¹⁶

Henry Parry Liddon, Samuel Wilberforce’s choice as first vice-principal of Cuddesdon Theological College (founded in 1854), and later to be Pusey’s biographer, offers a shining example of a second generation Tractarian instilled with the sense of seriousness, and with a high vision of a form of theological education quite distinct from its secular counterparts.¹⁷ The proper study of theology required holiness of life, and simply could not be properly undertaken in what he later described as a “secularized university”.¹⁸ Even Cuddesdon’s location proclaimed something of these lofty spiritual ideals: where some dioceses had sought to establish theological colleges in the cathedral close in conscious imitation of a medieval ideal,¹⁹ it seemed to Wilberforce far better to build a college in a (relatively) remote country village location. This isolation would serve to instil a sense of spiritual discipline among the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge who might have sullied their minds by dabbling in methods imported from Germany. Clergy were to be educated not among the temptations of the modern city, but in a quiet village dominated by the church – just as it had been in the middle ages, when much of the village was part of the estates of Abingdon Abbey.²⁰

In a sermon preached at the Cuddesdon College Festival in 1868, Liddon summarised what he understood to be the purpose of this new form of theological education:

A theological college endeavours, so far as human agency can do this, to give the tongue of the learned, the power of spiritual instruction to the future ambassadors of Christ. … It would fain teach them to listen, morning by morning, for the Divine Voice, explaining, deepening, fertilising within them the truth which is thus committed to their guardianship.²¹

On this model, theological education takes place within the broader context of a life committed to prayer and discipline. Here Liddon outlines the goal of theological education by drawing on what he calls the “God-taught wisdom” (sophia theodidaktos) tradition of the Greeks. Knowledge was not a matter of the assimilation o...