What Is It That We Don't Like About Manuals?

Theological manuals are fantastic as reference books but less so as textbooks. They don't tend to be as theoretical as they could be, especially the moral ones. It's it's a bit much to be expecting them to do the kind of explaining that you were expecting from an owners manual. If you're going to expect students to get theory from the text they were reading then I don't think the manual suffice for that purpose.