Writing Guide - Foreword

This Guide is intended to provide a how-to approach to graduate theological research and writing in general. More particularly, however, it is concerned with research and writing in the context of Anderson University School of Theology.

The style of writing advocated in this Guide is, in our judgment, in keeping with that which is standard in the field of "formal," technical writing at its best. That is, writing which passes the tests of simplicity, accuracy, economy, and clarity. We are fully aware that much formal writing, particularly in theological circles, is overly-complicated, lacking in clarity, and full of jargon and gobbledygook. What may be good ideas get lost in thickets of semantic fuzziness and hopelessly run-on sentences and paragraphs.

Good formal writing, in our view, need not be stiff, labored, or boring to read. It can be creative, direct, and vigorous – even to the point of possessing some literary merit. Research scholars need not be stuffy, unexciting writers whose only literary merit is to be found in the final period of their manuscripts.

We are concerned that graduate theological students develop skills in the use of language, both in spoken and written form. It is often assumed in our educational theories that one may develop a high degree of skill in verbal communication without developing any significant writing skills at all. Such a notion is not substantiated either by accepted linguistic theory or critical observation.

Inasmuch as speaking and writing are closely related skills, it follows that those who write poorly speak the same way, no matter how rhetorically impressive they may be. Eloquence alone is no guarantee of accuracy and clarity. It may, in fact, be only "sound and fury" signifying nothing of any great importance.

We commend you, then, to the art of good writing. To develop good writing skills is, at the same time, to develop a solid foundation for good public speaking skills. One does not say things well if they are not clear and easily understandable to those who listen.

This Guide is concerned not just with writing, however. It is also concerned with research. In our approach, the primary stress is on the second syllable, rather than the first. Thus, re-SEARCH, not RE-search. Our concern is not merely one of pronunciation, but of focus. In other words, research is concerned more with searching than with covering the same ground endlessly covered by others or beating the same bushes beaten to death by generations of re-searchers.

We recognize, of course, that a great deal of information has been inadequately or wrongly interpreted. To look at the same information again from other theoretical perspectives is an important scholarly pursuit. Having confirmed the relative adequacy of the data themselves, the researcher then seeks to produce a better interpretation of them.

But the primary function of the research scholar is to dig out information that has not been gotten at before—at least, in any depth. Such information may fill in gaps in our knowledge—which are legion—or demand that we rethink some of the things we are so confident we know. It is often that very confidence that prevents us from entering more fully into the vast cosmos of knowledge which surrounds us and is within us. The researcher of high moral character will thus struggle to push back the horizons of our collective knowing.

Research, then, is not the process by which we seek to "prove" what we already believe on other grounds to be true. Our concern, rather, is to find out what is going on and why and to come to a congruent understanding of it. And that is risky, for it may lead us in unanticipated directions and to uncomfortable conclusions. But the honest researcher faces these squarely and reports them as fairly and accurately as possible.

Our position, then, is avowedly liberal, in the best sense of that word. Albert C. Outler refers to this as "the refreshing liberal spirit," the temper and attitude of "openness, tolerance of critical, honest inquiry, a firm insistence upon public evidence and rational argument, and . . . a sense of the immorality of uncritical credulity" (1985:6, italics ours).