The end of theological education – is wisdom the principal thing?

This article invites reflection on the theological purposes of the education of church leaders. It is conceived as a piece of practical theology that arises from the challenge to the Wesley House Trustees in Cambridge to reconceive and re-articulate their vision for theological education in a time of turbulence and change. I reflect on Wesley House’s inheritance as a community of formation (paideia) and rigorous scholarship (Wissenschaft); and on the opportunities offered for the future of theological education in this context by a serious engagement with both the practices and concepts of phronēsis and poiēsis and a dialogical understanding of biblical wisdom, as Wesley House seeks to offer itself as a cross-cultural community of prayer and study to an international Methodist constituency.