Why Medical Schools Are More Impressive than Seminaries

Dear students,

One of Bonhoeffer’s major gripes during his stay in America concerned the unceasing prattling about “practical implications” that he encountered in his theology classes. He was dumbfounded by the students’s impatience to engage in serious theological discussions concerning, for example, Christology, and saw the automatic reflex towards the practical for what it often was—not an expression of spirituality and altruism, but rather one of superficiality and lack of virtue.

It was that biographical tidbit of Bonhoeffer’s life that came to mind as I read Stanley Hauerwas’s quip about medical schools being more morally impressive than divinity schools:

A person can come to divinity school today saying, “I am not really into Christology this year. I am really into relating. I would like to take more courses in CPE [Clinical Pastoral Education].” They are likely to be confirmed in that option by being told, “Right, take CPE, after all that is what ministry is— elating. Learn to be a wounded healer.”

Contrast that with a medical student who might say, “I am not really into anatomy this year. I am really into people. I would like to take another course in psychiatry.” They would be told, “We do not care what you are ‘into.’ Take anatomy or ship out.” That is real moral education if not formation. Why is medical education so morally superior to ministerial education? I think the answer is very simple. No one believes that an inadequately trained priest [or pastor] might damage their salvation; but people do believe that an inadequately trained doctor might hurt them” (Stanley Hauerwas, “Sinsick,” in Sin, Death, & the Devil, ed. by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, 9).

Food for thought, and then some!

Affectionately yours,
Dr. J.