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                                                                                         On the Christian Teacher

Unlike the Christian theologian, the Christian teacher assumes the truth of the Christian witness and therefore acknowledges the sole primary authority of the apostolic witness. She or he also acknowledges the secondary authority of the scriptural and traditional formulations of this witness, including those acknowledged as substantially normative by her or his own institutional church, because or insofar as their witnesses are authorized by the formally normative witness of the apostles.

Even so, the Christian teacher is precisely that – -- a teacher; and, like any other teacher, she or he is charged with the distinctive responsibility for furthering understanding – -- in this instance, understanding of the decision called for by the Christian witness. She or he discharges this responsibility by clarifying the self-understanding, or understanding of existence, for which the Christian witness calls each person to decide and then explicating its implications for life-praxis, which is to say, belief and action, secular as well as religious. In this connection the Christian teacher is at pains to take account of the full range of alternatives for responsible choice, given the assumption and acknowledgements acknowledgments on the basis of which she or he functions as a Christian teacher. This means that she or he seeks to clarify other live options for self-understanding and then to develop their implications, also, for both religious and secular life-praxis.

In all of this, the Christian teacher primarily addresses the question of the meaning of the Christian witness; accordingly, as much as she or he naturally has to interpret and reformulate the witness the church has already borne so that it will be credible and fitting in the new life-situation of her or his students, she or he is primarily concerned to discipline and reform the witness that the church now has to bear – -- beginning with her or his own teaching – -- so that it will above all be appropriate in this same situation.

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It should be clear from this that, while the responsibility of the Christian teacher, like the different responsibilities of the Christian preacher and the Christian theologian, could only be carried out by a human person, the phrase, "the Christian teacher," refers, in the first instance, not to any person as such, but to a certain responsibility – -- very likely one of several responsibilities – -- that a person may be charged with carrying out. In other words, this phrase properly designates an office; and this means, among other things, that its proper use fully allows for the possibility that no person could fill the office so designated without also filling certain other related offices by carrying out their distinctive responsibilities.

It will be clear enough from what has been said here that neither the Christian teacher nor the Christian preacher could fill her or his own office without in some way, or to some extent, filling the other's office as well. But it is no less clear, for reasons I have explained at length elsewhere, that no person could carry out the responsibility distinctive of either of these offices of actually bearing Christian witness without also carrying out the responsibility distinctive of the Christian theologian for critically reflecting on it – -- in such a way, namely, as to address not only the question of its meaning but also, and not least, the question of its truth.

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