Theology is shunned at Trinity Western University. We have no department of theology and only one faculty member that would be qualified to teach in such a department. Despite the fact that secular universities such as McGill offer a Bachelor’s degree in theology, Trinity Western University, one of the only Christian universities in Canada, does not. Ironically, If you want a diverse thelogical education at TWU, you will find it at the Redeemer Pacific, the Roman Catholic college on campus.

What we do have is a thriving Religious Studies department, which boasts a good number of Biblical studies professors who study the original contexts of both Old and New Testaments. You will also find TWU’s pseudo version of a theology degree called “Christianity and Culture,” (C&C) which is coordinated by the only full-time theologian on campus, Dr. Craig Allert. The name of this program implies that the degree aims at engaging culture from a Christian point of view. To Allert, however, the degree is equivalent to a degree in theology, because it is difficult to engage culture through a “Christian point of view” without first understanding what a “Christian point of view” is.

C&C, however, struggles to expand itself as a theological degree due to the fact that it is not supported. This remains so despite the fact that the courses offered within C&C have been some of the fastest growing classes in the Religious Studies (RELS) department. Since 1998, Introduction to Theology (RELS 160) has increased by 200%, consistently drawing in nearly 50 students per semester. Similar statistics apply to a number of C&C courses. The demand is evident, yet there still remains only one C&C faculty member. Most of the classes are taught by professors from other disciplines. The growth of the department mandates the hiring of another theologian, yet the repeated requests of the department for another faculty member have been to no avail.

Dr. Hans Boersma, a former professor at TWU, believes that the reason for the imbalance between biblical studies and theology is ultimately rooted in “the evangelical background of TWU, which emphasizes the Bible itself rather than theology. This attitude emphasizes the experience of the reader himself who directly approaches the Bible without any need for an interpretive theological framework.”

Not only is theology as a discipline neglected at TWU, but theologians seem to have been relegated to a private academic sphere. For example, a number of years ago the university drafted a document about creation and evolution.

“The first draft wasn’t good,” says Boersma, who sent his criticism of the draft to administration. The document was changed; however, the fact that the administration drafted this document without theologians demonstrates a general attitude that isolates theology from the very vision of the school.

“When you draft a document such as that,” says Boersma, “the first person you should turn to is the theologian. Administration should look to the theologians as the very people who can help shape the vision of the university, as well as its biblical and theological worldview.”

For Allert, Boersma, and other academics, this evangelical ”Bible alone” mentality is problematic. The Bible never stands “alone,” and none of us, whether we recognize it or not, approach the Bible without an interpretive framework. The Bible never communicates a transcendent truth that penetrates us without first being theologically contextualized, through interpretation. After all, the purpose of the Bible is to convey truths that are lived out by a community, and this itself is an act of interpretation.

Biblical studies, as the study of the original meaning of the texts is entirely necessary for a proper and orthodox contextualization of the texts today. However, this contextualization does not happen in an objective vacuum. It is the vocation of theology. Therefore, a reciprocal relationship ought to exist between biblical studies and theology.

The core requirements demonstrate otherwise. Students are required to take three biblical studies courses (including RELS 101/102) and only one other course, which can be taken from the Intercultural Religious Studies or C&C core. This means that a student may graduate from TWU without once having taken a theology course.

Biblical studies professor Dr. Kent Clarke recognizes that “the balance between theology and biblical studies is not there,” and agrees that the department needs to hire another theologian. Expressing his own uneasiness in regards to this imbalance, Allert argues that “biblical studies cannot work in a confessional institute without theology. The Bible is living and requires interpretation in the living community of faith. Therefore, good exegetes need to be good theologians.”

Perhaps the most critical issue facing TWU is the impact this lack of theology will have on the student body. We are, in some sense a post-evangelical generation. While evangelicalism is integral to who we are, our education exposes us to the “scandal of the evangelical mind” on the one hand, while vaguely introducing us to the richness of non-evangelical traditions on the other. Many of us find ourselves questioning some aspects of the kind of Christianity that has monopolized our sense of truth: namely, the popular evangelical paradigm of knowledge.

If our university, as an arm of the Church, is going to shape the foundations of our identity it ought to provide us with an education that allows us to find our roots in the history of theology. There is so much richness in our heritage that we are not being exposed to. Instead, we are made aware of the difficulties of evangelicalism, and are not given an alternative to grasp onto.

A rich theology and theological vision can be the very framework through which our questioning and our disorientation may be guided. Our faith will be better for it, and our evangelicalism richer. The university’s negligence of theology has created a fractionalized learning atmosphere, without a healthy crossroads of communal faith and scholarship. “Without theology,” says Boersma, “a Christian university is bound to fall into a sacred-secular dualist split, and lose what lies at the heart of what it means to be a Christian university.”