The end of Koinos

Saturday marked the end of our Koinos 101 course. Those of us who persevered were handed our Certificates in Christian Foundations. It was fun while it lasted, this once-a-month encounter with theologians giving the ‘amateurs’ some perspective on theological thoughts. Each now bears the weight of knowledge back into the existential challenges of our congregations, wondering how we can use what we learned. I leave with my wallet a little bit lighter. It was difficult to restrain Stella from buying the pile of books, which were hard to come by in ordinary circumstances - scholarly books being what they are sometimes find the indignity of being ignored in your café-latte ambience of your Chapters and Barnes and Noble. While I am still catching up with the reading and lament my wife’s exhuberant purchases, I could not disagree with her: they are great treasures. I took the added burden of paying a bit more to earn credits towards a Masters degree. This required me to submit five book reports, do 750 pages of readings, and a final integrative essay in addition to attending the seminars. My final essay entitled Perichoretic Phronēsis: The Role of Theology in Church Life ended up at 38 pages with 2 pages of bibliography. “It might seem presumptuous of me to title my essay with the words, Perichoretic Phronēsis, as if I fully knew what the words meant. I am using the words in the humility of someone who has the joy of learning at the feet of trained theologians, and in their simplest meaning,” I began. Taken together, perichoretic phronēsis means the abiding reciprocal practical wisdom of theology in the service of the church. If there is one single lesson I took out of this course, it is this idea from Jonathan Wilson, “To address the church’s failure to critically examine its own faithfulness, theology is a prophetic call to return to the foundations of ministry in the biblical narrative and historic witness of the church. It seems we who are the church do not have a clear sense of what it is that we are to do as the church or why we do those things as the church.”
The course ended with a seminar with Miriam Adeney, Regent College Professor of Anthropology and Missions who gave us some perspectives on World Christianity. Her Theology of Culture speaks to my need to understand that not all aspects of culture are wicked, that the idea of imago deo exists in the goodness and wisdom of all culture, but we must also oppose the idolatry and exploitation of cultures.