On Integrating Faith and Learning
An essay on the purpose of a Christian liberal arts education
by Sorcamford

The goal of education is not to simply teach knowledge, but to help God shape the soul to love those things which are lovely.


Summary:

Two most important influences on western culture: Athens (reason) and Jerusalem (religious revelation).

Origin and purpose of first universities: to know God and the world rightly through theology (the “queen of the sciences”) and proper use of reason. The joining of Athens and Jerusalem.

Influence of secularism in universities has been to lose the theological underpinnings of real knowledge, effectively separating faith and learning.

The purpose of the Christian liberal arts education: to re-integrate faith and learning, or Jerusalem and Athens.




A short history of the relation of faith and learning:
Starting with the cradle of civilization in Mesopotamia, and working through history to the point we find ourselves in today, there have been two major influences on us in the West. One came from ancient Greece, through Rome; the other came from ancient Jerusalem, through Rome.

The Greek influence, symbolized by the city of Athens, represents the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the mathematicians and early astronomers, the historians, playwrights, and of course the granddaddy of them all, Homer. From these come the various liberal arts of grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The Greek civilization was succeeded by the Roman Republic, then the Roman Empire, and the Romans copied and extended this Greek culture throughout the world.

Into this Roman Empire comes Christianity, extending, completing and transforming the ancient Jewish culture. The Jewish/Christian influence, symbolized by the city of Jerusalem, represents the idea of revelation: that the Creator of all things has actually spoken to us directly, revealing Himself and His plans for His creation to mankind. The assumption within this revelation is that mankind alone (to whom it is directed – no revelation seems sent to planets or bears…) has the mental ability to rightly comprehend this revelation. That is, human beings have the ability to reason about the revelation given. This ability to reason is the cross-point between Athens and Jerusalem, and almost immediately the early Christian church asked the question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” That is, what relation does Greek/Roman thinking have to do with Judeo/Christian believing? Or, what does learning have to do with faith? The Church Fathers (Tertullian -- who first asked the question -- Athanasius, many others, and finally the greatest of them, Augustine) addressed this question as they hammered out what was Christian theology and addressed heresies in the early church. We are deeply indebted to them for the church and the Bible as we know them, but also for how to think about God – that is, for the subject of theology. Theology was considered a science – the work of applying our reason to God’s revelation. There was in the end no contradiction between God’s words and our using reason to comprehend and apply those words.

In the Middle Ages, after a 1000 years of church history, the writings of Aristotle were reintroduced into western Europe. The result was a revitalized interest in the question of the relation of Athens to Jerusalem, or learning and faith. Rising to the occasion, theologians attempted to address how Christians did not need to choose one or the other – revelation and reason can work together without losing either the supremacy of scripture or the significant accomplishments of pagan reason. They simply needed someone to synthesize the two seemingly disparate views of knowledge. The result of their work was the birth of the Cathedral School, which ultimately served as the model for the first universities. In the university one studied the ancient liberal arts in order to know first how to think clearly (by proper use of language: Latin grammar, logic, rhetoric); and to understand the world around us (through the proper understanding of number: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). These basic tools prepared a student to undertake more extensive studies in law or theology, but were essential to becoming an educated person.

Universities were established in Bologna, Paris, and Oxford to begin with, then extended over the next 500 years into all parts of the world, including the new colonies of America, all with the idea that Christianity gives the right view of the world, and that through it human beings can be trained to think rightly about the world around them. Added to the curriculum along the way were the great accomplishments of the scholars, scientists, and artists who benefited from its tutelage, and these became the arts and sciences.

With the rise of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, a wave of secularism swept through the universities, and the theological underpinnings for reason were lost, even while the attempt was made to retain reason itself. Scholars didn’t see why theology and religion should limit the work of the scholar, and so slowly Jerusalem was eclipsed by Athens, and a secularized humanism replaced what had been a proper Christian humanism (the humanities are the study of the human experience in history, art, literature, music, and to a degree in the softer sciences of anthropology, sociology, and psychology – and as long as they are properly understood in light of Christian revelation they prosper).

With the secularization of the universities, Western civilization became more secularized, with the result today that most of the general cultural indicators show a loss of morality, virtue, and self-denial, but ironically also a loss of a belief in truth – even the hard sciences are now doubting whether or not things can be properly known. The Christian argues that the Medieval schoolmen had it right when they said that reason rests on revelation, and once revelation has been dismissed as superstitious, reason would not last long. Reason without revelation (Athens without Jerusalem) has had a run of about 250 years, and in the last 40 years has faltered. This is often called the death of Modernism (some people say that political Modernism was established in the French Revolution of 1789 and was deposed with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 – exactly 200 years), and what we are left with today is a post-modern world that has now lost both revelation AND reason.


What can a Christian College do?
The Christian liberal arts college is in a unique position at this point in history. We can reestablish a right understanding of revelation and reason and thereby reestablish both the place of the university and the place of a Christian worldview in the life of our civilization. The university has been reduced to offering elective courses combined into diverse degrees designed to attract students interested in preparing for particular jobs. If a student wants to become an engineer or a dancer, the university designs a series of courses that will prepare him or her for that career. As a result, there is little agreement among universities about what defines an “educated person”. The Christian liberal arts college claims to know what an educated person OUGHT to know – and this is somewhat scandalous in an academic climate that both doubts that anything can even BE known, and scoffs at the idea that there are some things that are more worth knowing than others. But the Christian liberal arts college has the history of the university on its side, and can reestablish ties with that tradition by asserting both theological truths (that Jesus did rise from the dead, that God has revealed Himself as a Trinity, that Jesus was both fully God and fully man, that human beings are made in the image of their Creator, that the course of history is Creation, Fall, Redemption, Glorification, etc.), AND that reason can further our understanding of reality (that there are natural laws that can be discovered by scientific inquiry, that applying the theological doctrines to the rest of life generates real knowledge of those areas – more on that in a moment).

At Crichton College, we have the opportunity to re-connect Athens and Jerusalem. If we take this job on, each of our scholars (faculty) will have to ask him/her self what does theology have to do with my subject matter? The reason for this is that each of our faculty has been trained by the university of the last 250 years – the secularized university that has continued to apply reasoning to the subjects generally without the benefit of revelation. So, our work is to properly re-integrate revelation and reason, or faith and learning. What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?

What will integrating faith and learning look like?
The Christian liberal arts college will be led by its faculty, which is doing the career-long work of thinking through the implications of theology for their fields. The psychologist will ask, “Assuming the Fall, what affect does it have on man’s psyche?” The scientist will ask, “Assuming that the universe is designed by a Creator, how is that design reflected?” or “How can the study of biology help establish or undermine the present theories of the origins of life?” or “What does the doctrine of the Imago Dei – the image of God in man – say about the limits of scientific inquiries such as fetal tissue research or cloning?” The artist will ask, “What is the purpose of artistic endeavor in God’s design for human beings?” or “How will creativity reflect God’s glory?” or the Business professor will ask, “How should God’s ethical laws be reflected in the workplace?” or “What happens to the Imago Dei when people are thought of as ‘human resources’?” Each subject, school, discipline, or division will be asking the question, “How do the doctrines revealed in scripture fit with our study of the general revelation of God in the Creation?” and “How can I apply the salt and light of the scriptures to my particular field to purge my field of the secularizing influences of the past 250 years, and set my field on a course that will further reveal the glory of God in it?” If our faculty would take up this challenge, and our marketing department would tell our community of our efforts, we would attract students who are enthused about this vision of education. Once students begin to come (as many have already) and their stories are included in our marketing work (just ask me about names!), we will begin to see our college become the tool our Lord wants it to be: a tool to reintegrate faith and learning in the next generations, and transform our culture with the Gospel by sending forth students to take up positions of significance in the various fields of endeavor in our community – not just to make a living, but to transform those fields with clear-headed application of a Christian worldview. Just think of what our culture would look like if not only our missionaries and pastors thought this way, but our artists, and our lawyers, and our shopkeepers, and our CEOs, and our social workers, and our bankers, and our mechanics, and our marketing directors all knew how to think in Christian terms about the culture they engage everyday. This would mean that we need to teach some very specific things (a core curriculum for Crichton College): Theology, the definition of a Christian worldview, philosophy, logic, rhetoric, languages (biblical and modern), the arts and sciences, and finally the majors. We would teach our students not only how to witness to their co-workers, but that they have Christian reasons for making films, and leading corporations, and repairing cars. They know why work itself glorifies God, and they trust that their needs will be met by God Himself, rather than by their own ambitions for more money. This seemingly utopian picture is only possible by the combination of God’s work of regeneration and redemption in the souls of our students, combined with God’s work of honing their minds to think His thoughts after Him in all the disciplines. The combination of these two things, faith and learning, is the work of the Christian liberal arts college.