Criticism,obedience and exile

I use Edward Said's essays on secular and religious criticism to explore the apparent opposition between university education understood as unfettered criticism and theological education understood as faithfulness to a specific tradition. I ask where theological education actually fits on Said's map, and argue that, in fact, it straddles the opposition he draws, such that it can properly be described as both traditional and critical, as both religious and secular. In the process, I suggest that such religious and secular theological education could appropriately consist of a mixture of ‘obedience seeking understanding’, a certain kind of ecumenism, and scriptural reasoning.