Original Research - Special Collection: Structural subjects - Church History and Systematic Theology

Between the Scylla and the Charybdis: Theological education in the 21st century in Africa

Johan Buitendag
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies | Vol 70, No 1 | a2855 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v70i1.2855 | © 2014 Johan Buitendag | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 07 November 2014 | Published: 27 November 2014

About the author(s)

Johan Buitendag, Dean of the Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Department of Dogmatics and Christian Ethics, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract

The article reflects on the challenges of theological education in the 21st century and in Africa. Reputation, impact, success and funding have become the driving forces of the modern university. However, we are living in the 21st century and in Africa with a subsequent frame of reference that is holistic and faith-based. The article therefore argues for a multi- and transdisciplinary approach towards the nature of a university and recognition of the unique contribution theological education can contribute. Due to the inherently cooperative nature of theological scholarship, theological education could be able to avoid the extremes of the Scylla and the Charybdis, that is, fideism and secularisation, and therefore be able to survive at an academic institution. Both sectarianism and scientism should be avoided. Theological education in Africa needed to travel the same difficult road of theological faculties in Europe in the previous century.

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