Mark Jones: "Where have all the theologians gone?"

Mark Jones opines on why evangelical academica isn't producing truly excellent theologians, in the old-fashioned sense of the term. Most interesting to me were the first two points: lack of command of languages and unfamiliarity with philosophical thought. He writes:

Not just the linguistic abilities, but the philosophical abilities of our older theologians were far better. One simply could not do theology at a high level if they did not have philosophical training. Aristotle is a must, if only to understand what theologians before the Enlightenment were talking about with their various concepts and terms. There’s a certain “language” of the Early Modern Period and you start to pick up on the various concepts and terms the more you read sources from which our divines were drawing from. In depth knowledge of St. Thomas is required if only to make sense of a lot of Reformed theology.

If you really want to feel bad about yourself, make sure to look at that Cambridge examination paper he links to.

Related: enjoy Michael Lynch's magnificent rant about the death of mastery of Latin in the academy.