M. James Sawyer

My goals as a professor of systematic and historical theology/ church history and mentor of students involve:

1) Grounding the students in the historic faith of the church, 

2) Making them aware of the richness and diversity of the orthodox Christian and Protestant heritage, capturing their imaginations with the transforming power of the grace of Christ, 

3) Inspiring students to truly make the faith their own by teaching them how to think and take personal responsibility for their faith, so that they may vitally apply it in the situations which face them in life.

4) Challenging them to incarnate their faith rather than intellectualize it-so that they might be living epistles, known and read by all.

To flesh this out a bit more, I am convinced that the major responsibility of an instructor is not primarily telling his/her students what to think, but in teaching them how to think.  This involves giving them a theological method that equips them wrestle with the evidence, and come to their own conclusions.  Additionally, instilling a theological method in the students equips them to engage new theological questions that arise and be confident of their own ability to find answers.  

This emphasis on method arose from my own personal experience in both my undergraduate education and my seminary experience.  In both cases my theology classes were taught from the perspective of a precommitment to the system (in this case dispensational-premillennialism with a Calvinistic soteriological bent).  I received notebooks full of professors’ answers but was never taught how to get my own answers.  As I did Ph.D. work in historical theology my study moved outside the perspective of my tradition and I was captivated by the multifaceted richness of the common heritage all Christians share. 

I made a two-fold commitment at that time that in my career as an instructor I would commit myself to the priority of the historic faith over narrower denominational traditions with their pet doctrines, and secondly,  I would endeavor to equip my students with the tools to get their own answers.

As a consequence my presentations in class are heavily historically and exegetically based giving the exegetical basis as well as the historical outworking of the doctrines in the life of the church.  I personally gravitate toward high level synthesis rather than detailed analysis and as such am very concerned that students grasp the larger contexts and movements that gave rise to particular understandings.

Additionally, because my desire is for students to come to their own conclusions on issues, I do not share my conclusions with them until after they have wrestled with the issues.  I do not want their conclusions to be biased by a desire to agree with the professor.  In evaluating their work I look not primarily for agreement with my own conclusions but for honest engagement with evidence and well thought out reasoning to support their conclusions.