The Ecumenical Way of Learning

It is a Christian paradox that Protestants and Roman Catholics, separated in worship, are coming together quite naturally at the level where doctrine and theology are studied. Manhattan's Protestant Union Theological Seminary and Jesuit-run Fordham University are about to take the next ecumenical step forward by creating what may grow into a common graduate program in theology. Beginning in September, the two institutions will share libraries and accept each other's credits for graduate degrees; each school, moreover, will list in its catalogue five courses available at the other institution. As a start to ward an exchange of professors, Jesuit Robert Johann will lecture on Catholic moral theology at Union in the fall se mester; the following semester, Union's Tom Driver will teach a course at Fordham on the theology of Paul Tillich.

These two schools are hardly pioneers. St. Albert's College in Oakland, Calif., a Dominican seminary, joined with six Protestant divinity schools in the Bay Area to create the Graduate Theological Union (TIME, Nov. 6, 1964). Last year three seminaries in Dubuque, Iowa (one Presbyterian, one Lutheran, one Catholic), joined forces with the University of Iowa school of religion to form a similar organization, the Association of Theological Faculties.

Chairs for Catholics. A number of historically Protestant divinity schools have concluded that their faculties are incomplete without the presence of at least one Roman Catholic. Yale, which welcomed Jesuit John Courtney Murray as a visiting professor of philosophy in 1951-52, last semester had a Roman Catholic teaching at its divinity school: Carmelite Father Roland Murphy, an Old Testament expert from Catholic University. Harvard's divinity school has had a chair of Catholic studies since 1958; currently, the professorship is held by Jesuit Sociologist Joseph Fichter. Jesuit Biblical Scholar John McKenzie* is on the staff of the University of Chicago divinity school. Last summer the divinity school of Vanderbilt University created its own chair of Catholic studies.

Conversely, the Rev. Walter Brueggemann of Missouri's Eden Theological Seminary, a United Church of Christ minister, teaches Old Testament to nuns and laywomen studying theology at Roman Catholic Webster College near St. Louis, and an Episcopal priest, the Rev. Donald Winslow, is teaching early church history at Weston College, the Jesuit seminary near Boston. On the student level, seminaries are frequently nondenominational in fact, if not quite yet in name. Harvard's divinity school currently has 14 Catholic students, while Union has 17--including several priests and a nun. Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati has 28 Protestant ministers and three Jesuits in its doctoral program.

From Heresy to Insight. As a result of the ecumenical interchange, the seminaries have turned from indoctrination to information, treating the ideas of men from different faiths not as heresies to be refuted but as insights to be appreciated. Union's Driver, for example, expects to face the same kind of pro-and-con debate about Tillich's theology at Fordham that he currently faces at Union.

Many scholars, moreover, think that ecumenical experimentation has just begun. Dr. Lynn Leavenworth, director of theological education for the American Baptists, last November proposed a consolidation of Protestant--and even Catholic--seminary resources. "It makes no sense," he said, "to have Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal and Presbyterian seminaries. I am looking for the day when seminary graduates will no longer be headed for this or that church's work."

* Who last January became the first Catholic to serve as president of the predominantly Protestant Society of Biblical Literature, the nation's most prestigious association of Scripture scholars.

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