This post was written by Chris Gadsden on February 18, 2008
John Coe, Associate Professor of Spiritual Theology and Philosophy at Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology (Biola University), once lectured on this subject in class. I grasped it in a small way then, but it is becoming more real to me now as I journey further into the dark waters of graduate work. The pull, the siren call of academics is incredibly potent. But Coe’s words have been for me like the cords that kept Odysseus bound to the mast of his ship. The following is a smattering of Dr. Coe’s thoughts on this weighty subject.
· The temptation to find our identity in what we do is a form of idolatry. Rather than glory in our ability to achieve, we must despair of our attempts to fill our empty selves with affirmation and recognition from others. Despair is part of repentance.
· Our vocation, whether in the university or elsewhere, wants to exalt itself as master and lord over us. We must despair of our training, our expertise, our reputation, etc. These things must be servants and the center must be Jesus Christ.
· There is a deceit of excellence – calling us to give ourselves to our discipline or our work. “Don’t give yourself to your discipline. Give yourself to becoming more alive to God. Don’t be charmed by excellence,” says Coe. Our colleagues, those who trained us and those over us tend to foster this idolatry — they violate as they were violated. The university itself tends to overwhelm us with an intellectual or academic focus because that is the insidious spirit of academia. In the midst of all the wonderful gifts the university has to offer, this spirit works its subtle art in our souls.
The following is a prayer exercise (from Dr. Coe) designed to help us examine our hearts in this area. The bulk of time should be spent in an attitude of listening and receptivity, trusting God to respond to your questions, rather than trying to “fix yourself.” The exercise may take about 1 hour.
· First 20 min., “Lord, what has been my attitude in the past about my education?” Did it seem like a waste of time? Was I driven? What was my attitude about my research, teaching and writing in grad school?
· Next 20 min., Explore your attitude right now toward your profession. What draws you to it? What motivates you in your research? How do you feel about teaching? How many publications should I have each year? What is my relationship with my colleagues and administrators? Do I need their approval? What about those professors who don’t like me? Should I be here, working this many hours?
· Last 20 min. – Ask God to help you in word only to despair over some things you need to despair over. This may not be deep change, but at least a confession of intent to despair. Do I need to despair over my research, my profession, my colleagues’ approval?
This post was written by Chris Gadsden on August 20, 2007
“Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!? says Gradgrind, “Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals!?
[Even though Sissy’s father was a horsebreaker, and she had lived around them all her life, she was a bit perplexed at the demand for a definition and had been speechless. The schoolmaster turns to another student, a boy named Bitzer.]
“Bitzer,? said Thomas Gradgrind. “Your definition of a horse.?
“Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.? Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
“Now girl number twenty,? said Mr. Gradgrind. “You know what a horse is.?
This passage from Dickens’ Hard Times illustrates beautifully the spiritual myopia that so often plagues us in the academy. Gradgrind was in the business of facts, empirical data, and couldn’t be bothered with anything else. Of course Sissy knew what a horse was, better than anyone in that room, but her knowledge was of a different sort. She was accustomed to looking past the physical details and beholding the soul of the thing.
Integration is not merely an academic enterprise. It is a profoundly spiritual one, requiring spiritual eyes. One of my favorite examples of such other-sight is found in the life of 18th-century poet Christopher Smart. When Smart observed his cat sunning himself, he saw more than the cat. He penned the following:
For I will consider my cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the living God.
Duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance
Of the glory of God in the East
He worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body
Seven times round with elegant quickness.
For he knows that God is his saviour.
For God has bless’d him
In the variety of his movements.
For there is nothing sweeter
Than his peace when at rest.
For I am possessed of a cat,
Surpassing in beauty,
From whom I take occasion
To bless Almighty God.*
Where others saw felis silvestris catus, Smart saw an ambassador of the heavenly kingdom. Smart saw God in the most mundane of things. This passage is my favorite:
For the flowers are great blessings.
For the flowers are great blessings.
For the flowers have their angels,
Even the words of God’s creation.
For the flower glorifies God
And the root parries the adversary.
For there is a language of flowers.
For the flowers are peculiarly
The poetry of Christ.†
Where others saw only rosa damascena trigintipetala, Smart beheld the Word of God.
You don’t have to write poetry in order to look past the cells, the molecules, the quanta, the notes, the letters, the graphs, the curves, the subjects, or the media. To see with other eyes and escape the soul-killing myopia that scholarly work so often engenders is a simple thing. All we have to do is pause now and then in our busyness and let God show us the beauty and poetry of even the smallest jots of creation.
I close with a stanza from the mind of Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush aflame with God.
But only those who see take off their shoes.
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.‡
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*Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno, c. 1760, first published in 1939. These are selected lines from the poem that were set to music by Benjamin Britten in 1943 under the title Rejoice in the Lamb.
†Ibid.
‡Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Aurora Leigh,” book vii.
This post was written by Chris Gadsden on August 15, 2007
Sometimes examples of integration are hard to find. After all, one may be in a field or a sub-discipline where there are few other Christians. And so little thought has been put into the questions of integration within specific disciplines, one often finds that they are in an unexplored country.
What are not lacking, however, are examples of the right spirit, or attitude, or perspective concerning the task ahead. While many of our exemplars hail from the land of fiction and fairy tale, they display wonderfully rich lives of faith and calling. First, I will tell you one such story, and then I will explain how the story can instruct us in the university.
Our first hero is a simple man named Giovanni, who gained great fame as a juggler. Traveling through the Italian countryside one summer afternoon, he had a chance encounter with two monks. Giovanni shared his small meal with them, and entertained them with his juggling act. They told him that his juggling brought glory to God, but he just laughed and went on his way.
At the end of his life, Giovanni could no longer amaze the crowds, and found himself homeless and taking shelter in a church. The sanctuary was filled with people carrying beautiful gifts, but he didn’t understand why. Then a villager told him it was the birthday of the Holy Child, pointing to the statue of Mary with Jesus on the altar. Giovanni had nothing else to offer, and so he decided that when the church emptied that night, he would juggle for the wistful-looking Child in his mother’s arms.
That night, even in his old age, he gave his most brilliant performance. A monk spied him, and thinking it sacrilegious, ran to summon the priest. When the monk and the priest arrived, Giovanni lay dead on the floor. But as they turned to look at the statue, the Holy Child was smiling.*
The monks Giovanni met that one summer day were right. His juggling brought great glory, and pleasure, to God. This is true for any gift or ability that God has given us – even in the academy. When you make discoveries in the laboratory, God delights. When you solve recalcitrant equations on the chalkboard, God delights. When you bring a young mind to new knowledge in the classroom, God delights. When you offer fresh insight to others in your field, God rejoices over you with singing.
C.S. Lewis said that being a Christian isn’t so much about doing new things as it is about doing the “same things one had been doing before, one hopes, in a new spirit.”† So watch that you aren’t deceived by the monotonous repetition of your labor into thinking that it is of no consequence to God. Every pen and keystroke, every lecture, every note played, can be holy. “The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman [or professor] become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that being offered to God, of being done humbly ‘as to the Lord.’?‡ So like Giovanni, make an offering of your gifts and work, and render yourself a “Clown of God.?
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*The story is from Tomie dePaola’s delightful children’s book, The Clown of God.
†“Learning in War-Time,? from The Weight of Glory. (Macmillan, 1980: p.23).
‡Ibid, p. 26.
This post was written by Chris Gadsden on August 8, 2007
Challenging my orthodoxy and my faith in the Scriptures, my young-earth friend posed this question: “Aside from the scientific arguments, why would you not interpret Genesis 1 & 2 literally?? Hmmm. I stumbled and bumbled my way through a sketchy explanation, leaving him and me disconcerted. Had I compromised the authority of the Bible? Our exchange launched me into a deeper exploration of the creation account, resulting in the same conclusion, but with an untangled biblical justification. However, a question still bothered me. Is it wrong to adjust our theological beliefs in the light of scientific evidence? I believe the answer is “no.?
Warren Brown (Professor of Psychology at Fuller Seminary), whose standpoint on integration I do not necessarily share, suggests what I think is a rather helpful model for understanding such quandaries. He calls it the “Resonance Model? of truth.
Imagine yourself seated at the center of an array of old-fashioned radio receivers. In order to hear clearly what is being broadcast, you would need to tune them all precisely to the same frequency. (Or I suppose you could shut off all but one.) It wouldn’t at all do to have one tuned to the Lone Ranger, and another to Buck Rogers. When they are all tuned in concert, the sound waves resonate with one another. If we hear some distortion (assuming a good signal), we simply find the offending unit and twist the knob until it steps in line.
As the analogy goes, discerning truth can be done in much the same way. The contributions of the various disciplines are like the array of radios – Scripture, science, philosophy, experience, tradition, etc. Each transmits to us information and knowledge about reality. I don’t think it strange to expect, as St. Augustine and others have, that they could be tuned to speak in perfect unison. Their collective resonance would confirm the truth. If all truth is indeed God’s truth, then this is just what we would expect.
So, by this model, what should we do when the Scripture “radio? and the science “radio? are out of synch? Isn’t our Scripture “radio? always in perfect tune? Yes and no. As a card-carrying evangelical, I hold that the Bible (the autographs) is without error in all that it affirms. The trick, oftentimes, is in discerning what it affirms. The Bible is inerrant (the “yes?); our interpretations are not (the “no?). So the hermeneutical enterprise is analogous to working that big black knob on the receiver, straining to tune in to Our Master’s Voice.
But how do we know when it needs adjustment? One guideline could be this: when there is near universal agreement on the clear teaching of Scripture, it may very well trump all other “radios? and remain as is. On the other hand, when the passage in question is unclear or the subject is not biblically ubiquitous, we may be open to tweaking our interpretation. Case in point: the eventual harmonizing of Scripture with a Copernican solar system. In this way, the various sources of knowledge in our world work together to lead us to the truth.
I believe that the Resonance Model can serve as a heuristic in other thorny integration cases as well. When the “experts? in some discipline seem to hold a position that may be in conflict with other “radios,? we can examine each, one by one, seeing which one needs adjustment. And with resonance as our aim, and a firm commitment to the authority of Scripture, we can bring revelation, reason and the empirical world into harmony.
This post was written by Chris Gadsden on July 18, 2006
Eugene Peterson, in his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, describes his aversion to the use of the word “dysfunctional? in referring to human beings: “Machines are dysfunctional but not souls; bicycles are dysfunctional but not children; water pumps are dysfunctional but not spouses. The constant, unthinking use of the word erodes our sense of worth and dignity. . .?
The words and concepts that we use to describe and imagine our world matter, and matter deeply. One way of living out a Christian worldview with regard to our academic research is by employing (whenever appropriate) the rich terms and concepts given to us in Scripture, rather than the thin, utilitarian concepts of the world. We don’t want to be drawn into the spell of secularism by playing on its conceptual turf.
For example, Peterson (with reference to Wendell Berry) cites another insightful distinction between creation and environment. In terms of promoting conservation, the idea of creation is infinitely more fecund than that of environment. Environment is a generic term, and it separates us from our surroundings. Creation brings humanity and the earth together on common ground, as it were. We are part of creation, and we are made of the same stuff as the rocks and trees – the dust of the earth.
Reacquainting ourselves with biblical words and ideas not only refreshes our soul, but invigorates our research as well, calling up a repertoire of complex and deeply meaningful categories with which to frame our discussions of the world. After all, if we are pursuing truth, where could we find a truer terminology than in God’s written revelation?
This post was written by Chris Gadsden on June 12, 2006
Recent research concerning the effects of prayer on health (specifically, recovery from bypass surgery) concluded that prayer had no significant effect. Was this project a brave attempt to show the connection between faith and science, or a misguided endeavor that exposed the delusional nature of religious belief? Neither.
While I salute the S.T.E.P. researchers for their courage and intentions, I am disappointed by their fundamental misunderstandings of God and prayer. (I assume that their goal was not to prove that God answers prayer, but rather to find out if doctors ought to be incorporating the variable of prayer into their prescriptions.) Integration can go wrong when we have a faulty grasp of our own worldview. This is why it is critical for Christian academicians, no matter what their field of research, to possess a thorough knowledge of their faith.
So where, exactly, did they go wrong? They failed to understand this simple truth: prayer has no causal power. No experiment was needed to show this, because theologians have taught this for two millennia. Prayer, or any act of asking, does not operate according to the laws of physics or any other empirical principle. This is why my two-year-old son feels quite free to disregard my repeated entreaties to “please share your cookie.? My asking is nothing more than that – asking. The power to comply lies solely with the agent being asked.
Richard Swinburne, Emeritus Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford, has written an excellent piece (from an angle different than mine) explaining why this study was misguided from the outset. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, skip to the last section (4 paragraphs) for a lucid analogy that drives the point home.
This post was written by Chris Gadsden on April 11, 2006
A professor friend was baffled at my suggestion that there may be limits to scientific knowledge, for instance, that certain kinds of depression may never be explicable in strictly neuro-chemical terms. How can I say this? Because I believe that human beings are composed of a material body and an immaterial soul, which implies that some mental disorders are at least partially caused by mental (non-physical) events. He persisted in asking how I could make such a claim without any scientific evidence. Here’s how I do it: I bring everything I know to the table. In other words, I know many things, and only some of them have come to me by way of science.
Alvin Plantinga, in his essay, “Advice To Christian Philosophers,” puts it this way:
“In trying to give a satisfying philosophical account of some area or phenomenon, we may properly appeal, in our account or explanation, to anything else we already rationally believe- whether it be current science or Christian doctrine.?
As Christians in any field of inquiry, we may bring science, theology, philosophy, even our intuitions or any other legitimate source of knowledge to the table. Knowledge is knowledge. Science and theology are not different kinds of knowledge, they are two different sources or ways of arriving at knowledge. Science is not the uber-knowledge, standing as judge and arbiter over all other disciplines. If we seek a guide, Reason and Faith would serve better in helping us discern truth from error.
What is the implication of this? When engaging in my discipline, I do not have to cordon off my beliefs about God, about human nature, or about morality. Similarly, when I study my Bible, I do not have to keep my biology or psychology in the back room. Let each source of knowledge brought to the table be given the common courtesy of credulity – innocent until proven guilty.
This post was written by Chris Gadsden on March 13, 2006
Integration can go both ways. As Christians, we seek to wed the theism of the Scriptures with our academic pursuits. Non-Christians, too, can ply their craft in the milieu of their worldview. John Cage, who was probably a Zen Buddhist, sought to create music that reflected his own view of reality, which was essentially atheistic.
Prior to the 20th century, most composers believed that the universe was inherently ordered and significant, and their music reflected this. Music had meaning – it was a means of communication. Cage believed that communication through music was impossible; we are better off simply echoing the randomness and indeterminacy of nature. This was Cage’s ultimate reality. As Jackson Pollock did in his painting, Cage employed chance to “create” his music. If everything we know in the world is ultimately the product of chance, then music composed in this way is more real or true than the artificial constructions of Bach or Mozart.
Inevitably, Cage’s philosophy was merely a whim of convenience which he applied only in his art. An avid mycologist (mushroom collector), he admitted that he could not employ his methodology of randomness to his hobby. He commented, “I became aware that if I approached mushrooms in the spirit of my chance operations, I would die shortly.” Siphoning off meaning and purpose from a theistic worldview, Cage lived as if there were such things as order and purpose when it suited him.
When it came to music, however, Cage sang a different, albeit atonal, tune. His worldview was fully present. But quite ironically, his efforts to generate meaningless music resulted in compositions that were pregnant with meaning and communication. The project of meaninglessness is itself meaningful – it says that the universe is a certain way, or that music should be done just so. Cage’s implicit integration resulted in explicit expression.
For the Christian, the expression of Truth in our work – whether it be painting, writing, or laboratory research – should always be present in our minds as part of the goal, part of our calling. Like Cage, we can never fully escape the manifestation of our worldview in our work. The question we must ask is, “What sort of worldview is being manifested; what am I communicating??
(For a sample of Cage’s Sonata II, click here. For Winter Music (1957), click here.)
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