In his recent work, The End of Theological Education, Ted A. Smith quotes H. Richard Niebuhr, et al. from the 1956 book The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry.
If many theological schools today seem uncertain about the context in which they are working and about the purposes they serve this may be due in no small part to the confusions present in that contemporary Christianity itself in which they participate. These internal conflicts are doubtless rooted in the perennial human condition; there is no way to eliminate by any single movement of reformation the temptations and the failures from which the last rebirth alone can set us free. But unless the forms in which idolatries appear at any particular time are illuminated and criticized there is no prospect for ultimate health. The critique of education requires the critique of theology and the critique of theology requires the critique of the Church. Such self-criticism in seminary and Church is always part of that total repentance which is the counterpart of faith.
