Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2017

reflection upon the Christian tradition.’ from ‘Theological Education and Education for Church 74 Journal of European Baptist Studies 17:1 (2017) Sabra and highlighted by this study of al-Ghazali suggests that further research is needed on how to develop practices of theological reflection for ministry that are effective within traditional societies. Might practices such as storytelling and Scripture interpretation explained through rehearsing the lives of saints and prophets hold potential? The educational expectations that inform the teaching and learning of theology are another implication of al-Ghazali's educational philosophy. Both faculty and students come to the act of teaching and learning in theological education with certain expectations informing their experience of that act. When their agendas differ, the resulting learning may take unintended turns. For example, Arab theology students with educational backgrounds shaped by traditional Islamic education may give more normative weight to the historical theology of figures in Christian history than is intended by an instructor trained in a non-Arab setting. When I, as a teacher, task students with rehearsing fairly the arguments of an early church heretic as a heuristic, rhetorical device, in my mind I am helping my students get inside the early church debates. In the learning experience of some students, I may be habituating them in erroneous belief. At least minimally, being aware of the possibility of differing senses of the normativity of the various sources of theology because of differing educational backgrounds allows an explicit dialogue about them to take place. The final implication I want to raise concerns how students, and perhaps faculty also, approach the practice of theological reflection, which has come to be central to the task of missional theological education. 114 Theological reflection guides students through a process of thick analysis of both their experiences in society and the traditional sources for Christian theology, bringing the two into critical dialogue with the purpose of transforming action. As a form of critical reflection, theological reflection relies on cognitive processes of critical thinking and reflective judgment on context and text. While this point needs further analysis, it appears that al- Ghazali’s educational concepts correspond to more eastern, synthetic approaches to critical thinking and reflection discussed in recent research on cognition and culture. 11 "' Al-Ghazali asserted the unity of knowledge and seemingly holistic, integrated, action-oriented education. In some sense, al- Leadership’, in Theological Perspectives on Christian Formation: A Reader on Theology’ and Christian Education, ed. by Jeff Astley, Leslie J. Francis, and Colin Crowder (Leominster: Gracewing, 1996), p. 310. 114 Robert Banks, Reenvisioning Theological Education: Exploring a Missioned Alternative to Current Mo