Abstract
As several authors point out in this book, mentoring is a new arrival in terms of theological jargon: there is no direct equivalent in either the Hebrew or Greek of the Christian Bible, nor in the Christian tradition down to the late twentieth century. It is, however, a fashionable word in certain North American management circles, and this has prompted the editors of this book to commission a series of essays exploring the scope for fruitful dialogue between theology and secular theory. Inevitably, the result is a mixed bag, with some outstanding chapters, such as Walter Brueggemann on ‘Mentoring in the Old Testament’, David Bartlett on ‘Mentoring in the New Testament’, and Luke Johnson on ‘Mentoring in the Roman Catholic tradition’. Other papers are less successful in moving towards fresh insight and often seem to provide simply summaries of key ideas from, for example, postcolonial, feminist or womanist perspectives.
Brueggemann, as always, is provocative and challenging. He suggests that the nearest equivalent to the idea of the mentor in the Hebrew Bible is the role of the (mostly patriarchal) teacher who passes on the fruits of experience from one generation to the next. He applies the idea first to aspects of creation theology in the Wisdom tradition before turning to three potential models he finds in the relationships between Jethro and Moses, Moses and Joshua, and Eli and Samuel. Bartlett is rightly critical of the way in which Jesus has been appropriated as the ‘supreme mentor’ in some evangelical circles, and turns to Paul as a more helpful model with his call to ‘imitate me, as I imitate Christ’ (1 Cor. 11.1). Johnson’s essay on the role of the religious orders as a school for spiritual growth is both a critical and thoughtful reading of the Catholic tradition and a measured warning to the Church to find new structures for promoting Christlikeness in a post-Vatican II world where the monastic tradition appears to be in near terminal decline.
Many of the other essays report mostly on personal experience, rooted in different committed perspectives, yet the crucial ‘So what?’ question at the heart of critical theology often seems to be lacking. Martin Marty picks up on the importance of this theological edge in his afterword, alongside a number of other perceptive comments. One other small point: the book would have benefited, perhaps, from stronger coordination between the authors – for example, Bartlett’s point about jumping too quickly to the modern idea of ‘Jesus the mentor’ is simply ignored in a number of later contributions.
So the reader is left wondering just how successful is the attempt to appropriate mentoring as a theological concept. As the editors acknowledge, the agenda has been set primarily by the considerable body of recent management literature on the subject, and this renewed interest in reciprocal support and mutual learning is certainly to be welcomed. But the way in which other management concepts have been imported from the secular world, such as the fixation on leadership in the Church Growth movement, is perhaps enough of a warning to caution against the uncritical assimilation of ideas thoroughly rooted in secular assumptions about human relationships. This project, perhaps, would have benefited from a more thorough theological anthropology shared and debated by all of the contributors.