ABSTRACT
This chapter will briefly explore Christian learning as Christian formation, before attempting an interpretation of human learning in general from the perspective of Christian theology.
A distinction needs to be made at the outset between (1) learning about Christianity and (2) learning Christianity (or ‘Christian learning’). (1) is the proper aim of Christian studies in higher education and in ‘community’, ‘common’ or ‘secular’ schools where Christianity is being studied as part of ‘nonconfessional’ – that is, nonevangelical and non-nurturing – religious education. This seeks an empathetic understanding of the Christian’s beliefs, stories, attitudes, emotions and practices (including the social behaviour that constitutes the Church and activities such as prayer and worship). The learner adopts an observer standpoint, and the learning is inevitably oriented to another’s truth and their way of being and living. (2) learning Christianity, on the other hand, involves the learner in undergoing those cognitive, affective
and lifestyle changes that constitute becoming Christian (through evangelism leading to conversion) and becoming ‘more Christian’ (through Christian formation or nurture). Christian learning’s more common cognate, ‘Christian education’, may be defined, in its very broadest sense, as those processes (usually intentional and teacher-facilitated) that lead to the learning of Christian beliefs, values and attitudes, and dispositions to experience and act in a Christian way. As with all religions, this form of learning is of the essence of Christianity: not only in the personal response and appropriation of the individual, but also in Christianity’s social transmission down 20 centuries and across the globe. Religious traditions are often described as ‘communicative practices’; ‘tradition’ itself means that which is passed on and learned; and ‘doctrine’ is, literally, ‘teaching’. Christian theology is reflective discourse about the nature and activity of God, Christ, the Spirit, the
Church (including its mission, ministry and worship), Christian salvation and so on. It represents a major element within the cognitive dimension of Christianity. There are, of course, perfectly respectable ways of studying theology that are quite at home in secular educational contexts. Theology as an academic subject may be done by unbelievers, who learn and analyse (for example) how words like ‘God’ are used (Wittgenstein 1968: § 373). But can learners fully understand such religious concepts unless they also appropriate them, not just as a truth ‘one knows about, but something which one possesses and is possessed by’ (McGrath 1997: 78)? The root notion of theologia is, in fact, a religious one. It is ‘the wisdom proper to the life of the
believer’, concerned with and developing within ‘the believer’s ways of existing in the world before God’ (Farley, 1988: 88). This is what theological truth amounts to in a religious context and it is something that is fundamental to every Christian’s piety and vocation – unlike the later notion of theology as a scholarly discipline. Certainly, mere knowledge about God must be distinguished from knowledge of God (Holmer, 1978:
25, 189, 203), which is the first-person religious knowledge that ‘engages the affections and is embodied in the religious person’s life’ (Kellenberger, 1985: 179). Wittgenstein convincingly distinguishes between (1) the preliminary stage of learning about (the Christian) religion, and (2) this later ‘passionate commitment to [this] system of reference’, which occurs as and when the learner runs to religious belief and grasps it for herself. She then ‘seizes’ on the message of the Gospels ‘believingly (i.e. lovingly)’, and with a certainty that is characteristic of this ‘particular acceptance-as-true’. Wittgenstein calls this sort of certainty ‘faith’: ‘faith is faith in what is needed by my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence’ (faith, after all, ‘is a passion’). What combats doubt here is therefore redemption (Wittgenstein, 1980: 32-33, 56, 64; cf. Kerr, 1998: 77-78). Such a passionate adoption of religious belief shares many of the qualities of a moral commitment. (And
‘moral learning’, too, involves more than just learning about moral principles, virtues, dispositions and practices; it is a matter of learning to be moral and to practise morality.) ‘Coming to God is not a change of opinion, but a change of direction; a reorientation of one’s whole life’ (Phillips, 1988: 118). Religious commitment and conversion, therefore, often seem closely parallel to falling in love (Astley, 1994: 237-41; 2007b).
