TF Torrance: The Difference Between University and School
Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Frame of Mind: Reason, order, and openness in theology and natural science (Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard, 1989), 129. "The fundamental ethos of a university is different from that of a school. In a school, instruction and learning are the prime functions of teacher and pupil, and the objective is some prescribed standard level of knowledge and competence in various subjects. In a university, on the other hand, all this plays only a subsidiary role, for the prime task of students is to engage in inquiry, and to learn as they pursue their inquiry under the ultimate authority not of the university teachers but of the truth itself. Correspondingly, the university lecturer is not an exalted schoolteacher but a thinker and researcher to whom the student is, as it were, apprenticed in academic and scientific inquiry." Given TFT's distinction between university and school, where might we place and MDiv program at a seminary? My...