This post was written by Mark Hansard on November 5, 2007
In the September issue of Touchstone magazine, Perry Glanzer offered a thoughtful essay called “Course Correction” (unfortunately not available online) about religion departments. In a provocative series of questions, Glanzer argues for the discontinuation of religion departments.
He recounts a series of questions that he asks his students in the beginning of his religion classes: “What are professors trying to teach you to be in history classes?” The students dutifully reply, “Historians.” “What are they trying to teach you to be in a psychology class?” “Psychologists.” And so forth.
Then Glanzer asks, “Okay, what are we trying to teach you to be in a religion class?” Confusion abounds. “To learn about the historical and literary context of the Bible,” one student replies. Glanzer responds, “Why not just put this course in the history, classics or literature department? It sounds like we’re merely trying to make you historians or classicists.”
That’s a very interesting observation. After all, religion departments are not trying to teach students to be religious. Instead, students are trained to objectively study, from a sociological or anthropological perspective, what religious people believe.
Glanzer continues: “This difficulty reflects the problem with religion departments…They are built on the assumption that religion can be studied without involving a commitment to become a particular type of person who engages in particular practices.”
He goes on to describe that eventually, a student responds to his original question: “We’re trying to teach students to be theologians.” Glanzer points out that, if we were to study theology, we would be leaving “methodological atheism” or “agnosticism associated with ‘scientific’ methods” behind.
And therein lies the problem for the modern, secular university. Since “methodological atheism” (or agnosticism) is a requirement for academic research, theology classes are out of the question, as I have written before here. But why not allow Christian theology classes to be taught? Why exclude theology classes of any religion, Christian or otherwise? It can only enrich student learning and experiences to be taught theology from the inside, from a perspective that assumes that such theology constitutes knowledge.
I agree with Glanzer. If an academic subject does not have its own approach “one appropriate to sacred subjects,” it should be taught in other departments. Why pretend that students are learning religious practices when they are actually learning something else?
This post was written by Mark Hansard on October 8, 2007
Several months ago I witnessed a fascinating exchange between two scholars that gave me serious pause and has engendered much thought since. The setting was an interdepartmental faculty dinner with a lively and friendly discussion of ideas—Christian and secular. During the discussion time, several professors at this prestigious university noted that they had not thought much about building character into students. This was not something that the university encouraged them to do; hence it was not something that they thought much about.
A well-known minister who works with students on the campus, turned to a philosophy professor. The minister said, “I know students who are majoring in philosophy in order to learn wisdom—how to lead a good life. And they aren’t learning it in your department. Why is that?” The question was very congenial and friendly, as the two knew each other. But the minister was also truly curious.
The philosophy professor replied that he was not surprised, because what contemporary philosophy students are taught is logical reasoning and research methods, not actually how to live a good life. Of course, ancient philosophy was concerned with such things, but not so anymore. As someone with a master’s degree in philosophy myself, I understood exactly what he meant, and yet I felt a sense of profound disappointment. Why couldn’t philosophy departments do both? Why choose between good reasoning and research, or how to live a good life?
There is a curious lack of concern about wisdom in modern universities today. By “wisdom” I have in mind the Biblical and ancient idea that part of an intellectual education is how to lead a good life and how to leave an upright legacy. We see such thinking in the book of Proverbs. For example, “The lips of the righteous nourish many” (Prov 10:21), and in Proverbs 8:12, 19: “I, Wisdom, dwell together with prudence; I possesses knowledge and discretion…My fruit is better than fine gold…” Can scholars in the secular academy honestly say that they “nourish” others with their words, or that they impart “prudence” and “discretion” to students?
It might be objected, of course, that such is not the job of college professors, but it is instead the job of parents to impart such wisdom. Today’s universities classrooms are simply not structured to teach such things, nor are professors paid to teach them. I would be inclined to agree, except that often the very intellectual ideas taught in such classrooms seem to undermine Biblical wisdom as we are describing it.
How, for example, can it nourish the soul of a student or encourage her to righteous action, if she is taught that moral ideas do not objectively exist but are merely expedient creations of various cultures? Such cultural relativism might be very useful to the study of cultural anthropology, and might bring handsome research grants to the department. But the student’s foundation for wise living is undercut and not replaced with anything solid. The fruit of such an idea in the student is a withered soul.
It seems to me that part of the “prudence” and “discretion” of which Proverbs speaks includes stepping out of the immediate, first order questions regarding research ideas and asking second order questions, such as, “Does this idea bring Glory to God and bring students closer to believing in Him?” “What could be the long term effects of such research if embraced by the culture at large?” God grant us the courage to ask such questions, and the courage to follow through with the answers.
This post was written by Mark Hansard on August 30, 2007
In a recent op-ed piece for Discover magazine called Peace Through God, computer scientist Jaron Lanier reflects on religion, pluralism, mysteries beyond scientific adjudication, and the meaning of it all. While he does not appear particularly religious himself, he proffers a number of recommendations about how people ought to be religious in our violence-strewn world. Since his thinking has much in common with the secular academy at large, I would like to comment on two points in his essay.
His first point is that we should celebrate and encourage a diversity of complex religious beliefs because this would constitute a “violence-avoiding arrangement,” healthy in a pluralistic democracy in which we would prefer to avoid violence. He thinks that often, traditional religions are “clannish” in the sense that there is concern about who is “in” and who is “outside” the group, and this can cause violence (although to his credit, he does not claim that all religions are this way, and he chastises Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett for claiming that all religious belief is harmful). As expected, Lanier mentions the Hebrew God as an example of a “clannish” one.
He then goes on to say that we should encourage religious belief, even when it appears silly, if it breaks up the “clannishness” of traditional religion(s), because this would be the best way to avoid violence. His example is an apparently new religion in which the worshippers pray by chanting in binary language (zeroes and ones, the language of computers). Why should we be against such belief, he says, as long as it makes God complex enough not to interfere in the real world, and not to interfere with scientific discovery? (Only a small-minded person would believe that God actually interferes in the space-time universe, or that believing in him might have scientific implications).
Note again that we run up against the question of what knowledge is, whether it is possible to have religious knowledge. By recommending that we create our own religious beliefs in order to avoid violence, Lanier assumes there is no such thing as religious knowledge; we only have beliefs which we can create and follow for ourselves. But why should we assume that? Like many scientists, he believes science can step in and tell a religious person where she has erred, but he does not give such a person equal opportunity to critique scientific beliefs. Lanier’s view is an insult to the informed Christian who knows that Christian theology makes claims about knowledge—that it at least claims to describe reality in some way.
Curiously, Lanier goes on to recommend religious beliefs that “are concerned only with things too big to be framed by science.” He explains that mystery in the universe provokes “wonder,” and that certain questions may never be answered by science(!) His examples: consciousness, the source of mathematical truth, and what happened before the Big Bang. His admission here is significant in that it limits science to answering only the questions that science is designed to answer.
But Lanier goes on to define spirituality as “one’s emotional relationship with unanswerable questions.” How can one have an emotional relationship with a question? His attitude reminds me of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos musings about the “wonder” and “awe” which the universe inspires because it is vast and mysterious. The problem with this view is that once we revel and glory in “unanswerable questions,” we are delving into a relationship, not with the questions themselves, but with the fact that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. It’s not the questions, it’s the implications of the questions which are intriguing. After all, what did happen before the Big Bang? Why is the universe so huge and we are so small? We don’t have emotional relationships with such questions, but with their implications which lead us—dare I say?—to worship (if not God, then the universe itself). The problem with Lanier is he embraces such questions while studiously avoiding their implications.
This post was written by Mark Hansard on July 21, 2007
In my second post on Julie Reuben’s The Making of the Modern University, I described her observation that the acceptance of Darwinism ushered in a new philosophy of science and resulted in rancorous conflict between science and religion. The uneasy truce that resulted was to teach religion instead of teaching theology in the modern university. In chapter 3 of her book, “The Open University,” Reuben describes the philosophy of education that resulted from the new philosophy of science.
This new educational philosophy, according to Reuben, was an emphasis on the new science as a way to teach students how to think. Thus, every student was to learn “habits associated with the progressivist conception of science….openness to new ideas, reluctance to accept opinions on authority, and interest in empirical verification? (65). That is, every discipline in the new university was “scientized” and “empiricized” as a way to help students to learn to think. This new scientific emphasis unified the modern research university around a method rather than a core curriculum that had unified the older, college model. The “open university,” then, was a university that pursued new ideas unfettered by Christian theology and verified with as much scientific and empirical precision as possible.
Two other changes occurred to bring about the “open university.” First, since the core curriculum was abandoned and it was impossible to require students to learn something in every subject, electives were emphasized as a way to broaden the number of disciplines taught and allow for depth and specialization in more fields than before. Thus it was left to students to choose which subjects they wanted to study. Note that the unity of knowledge in the university was lost. One could now be considered “educated,” but not be required to know a certain subject(s).
Second, for the first time research was emphasized as the priority for the professor. The student was to learn the importance of research because the professor modeled this in the university. A corollary to the new research emphasis was academic freedom, the freedom to pursue research and ideas unrestricted by dogmatism or creed. An emphasis on tolerance was a logical outcome, since every researcher was free to pursue her ideas, and they would be accepted with the proper amount of empirical evidence.
Notice that the new educational philosophy rejected authority as a source of knowledge, and emphasized academic freedom as the other side of the coin. Since professors were freed from ecclesiastical authority, they could pursue whatever research they wanted. Clearly this emphasis is still with us today. But should the Christian reject ecclesiastical authority or Biblical authority outright? Isn’t part of walking the Christian life placing ourselves under the authority of Christ and the Church? What does this mean, then, for academic freedom and the Christian? I am not sure I have the answer, but I wonder if we think of the two sides of this coin as incompatible not because they really are, but because historically that is the way it worked out in the 19th century. Could it be that the conflict between science and religion has narrowed our view so that we assume submission to authority and academic freedom don’t go together? For example, could we pursue our research unfettered, and then submit the results to the Lord and to his Church? What would that look like in your discipline? Can you think of other ways to pursue both?
Part 1 Part 2
This post was written by Mark Hansard on July 9, 2007
In my last post on Julie Reuben’s The Making of the Modern University, I described Reuben’s view that the 19th century belief academics held in the “unity of truth” was obliterated by the advent of Darwinism and the subsequent demise of natural theology. In chapter 2 of her book, “Science and Religion Reconceived,” Reuben explores the effort, in the 30 years after Darwin’s Origin of Species, to harmonize Darwinism with Christian theology in order to maintain the unity of truth and the integration between science and theology that had reigned in natural theology for so many decades.
What is fascinating about Reuben’s account is that the unity of truth was not immediately abandoned, nor was it believed that science and theology were irreconcilable. Instead, an eventual failure to harmonize the two to the satisfaction of both parties eventually led to the abandonment of theology in favor of teaching religion in universities instead.
According to Reuben, Darwinism brought with it a new, revolutionary view of science that viewed scientific knowledge as imperfect but progressive, always seeking to correct itself through further research and experiment. The new science relied on hypotheses, theories, even imagination as it attempted to explain the world, and a good scientific theory would have practical, measurable results. This was opposed to the previous Baconian view of science that viewed the scientific enterprise as purely inductive, generalizing from meticulous observation to scientific laws. Scientific truths under Baconianism consisted of the certainty of memorized lists of static classifications. Baconian science fit well with natural theology because the scientific laws implied a law-giver. Thus, when theologians attacked Darwinism, they often did so on the basis that it was unscientific because it did not follow Baconian method. But the new view of science eventually won out, and by the 1890’s, very few scientists were Baconians.
The triumph of this new philosophy of science precipitated a crisis regarding how to reconcile Christian theology with Darwinism and thus maintain the unity of truth that the old natural theology had held together. Scholars struggled to reconcile Darwinism and Christianity in a way that would maintain the authority and value of both. Some argued for “separate spheres” of knowledge, in which scientists studied the natural world and theologians studied the supernatural world (sound familiar?). In order to maintain this distinction, some argued that much of the Bible was figurative and not literal, thus it expressed spiritual truths through myth. Others claimed that if theologians would just “give up their dogmatism” and adopt an “openness of scientific inquiry,” the conflict between science and theology would go away. The growing number of agnostics argued that theology dealt with an “unknowable, mysterious power” that science could not study. But few scholars on either side bought into the separate spheres talk. Conservative theologians thought it denigrated traditional theology, while scientists thought it unnecessarily treated scientific theories which dealt with unobservable phenomena as out of bounds.
Eventually scientists came to view theology as a meddlesome interloper who made a priori pronouncements about truth that simply got in the way of free inquiry and scientific advancement. Theology would have to be abandoned if the new, modern university founded upon the progressive philosophy of science would be allowed to pursue scientific research unfettered. But how could this be done, while maintaining the importance of Christianity? According to Reuben, the solution of scholars and administrators “was to distinguish theology, defined as a mode of inquiry and a set of doctrines, from religion, which was left largely undefined as sentiment, experiences, ritual, and ethical values” (57). Thus, universities abandoned the teaching of theology in favor of religion in an attempt to allow science unrestricted horizons to pursue, while allowing Christianity to maintain its importance in university life. Curiously, it was thought that applying the scientific method to the study of religion would strengthen, not weaken, Christian thought and moral virtue.
But exactly the opposite occurred. Notice what had been lost. Theology is a knowledge tradition, which purportedly carries authority because it consists of truth claims that carry weight in describing the real world. However, in teaching religion, the knowledge conveyed was not about doctrines of God, man and salvation, but instead a set of propositions about what religious people believed, how they worshipped. In short the study of religion conveyed knowledge about how religious people acted apart from asking the question of whether their beliefs were true. Theological knowledge, and with it moral knowledge, was permanently lost. Instead of strengthening Christianity with science, the new religious studies departments actually weakened Christianity by taking away its authority, an authority that is based upon knowledge. Not surprisingly, administrators could not get students to be interested in their new religion classes.
What can we learn from this? While this is an obviously complex subject, in my view at least two observations are in order. First, it is imperative that we view theology as a knowledge tradition if the secularization of the modern university is to be reversed. We can help bring this about simply by treating theology as if it constitutes knowledge, and pursuing our research accordingly. Second, we need to understand that when we advocate the integration of theology with research on the modern campus, some scholars familiar with the history of science will bridle, assuming that we are advocating a return to ignorant 19th century views of science and outdated models of how universities ought to be run. We need to reassure such colleagues that we are not advocating an overthrow of the research model of the university, nor are we advocating a return to now discredited scientific views. Instead, we are simply asserting that, in the modern research university, there ought to be room for Christian scholarship which views theology as knowledge, and even allows moral wisdom to have the authority of knowledge behind it.
Part 1 Part 3
This post was written by Mark Hansard on May 29, 2007
I have begun reading Julie Reuben’s The Making of the Modern University, and Reuben’s book (so far) is a fascinating look at the secularization of the university in the 19th century. The book is based on insights from the sociology of knowledge, thus it is really a historical study of the sociology of the secularization as it occurred.
The first chapter, entitled “The Unity of Truth,” explains the educational philosophy of the early 19th century, and how it fell apart near the end of that century. What caught my eye was the robust view of knowledge that professors and university presidents believed at that time. According to Reuben, they believed not only that all knowledge in different fields could form a coherent whole, but also that its pursuit would lead to a good and more virtuous life. All knowledge led to better action. In fact, she says, university leaders at that time believed that the “the good, the true, and the beautiful were interconnected, and that successful education promoted all three together” (12). All knowledge inevitably lead to worship of God and an understanding of his wisdom.
Part of this 19th century construct was natural theology, which in this case was not merely the admission that design was detectable in nature, thus pointing to a Creator. It consisted of stronger claims such as: the harmony of nature reflected God’s wisdom, that the more we understand of nature the more we can understand God’s character, and that, as one professor put it, “the knowledge of God, derived from the study of nature, is adapted to add greatly to the impulsive power of conscience” (20). In other words, a study of nature would strengthen virtue in the student.
This view of natural theology was of course obliterated with the Darwinian revolution, and threw universities into a crisis of what sort of educational philosophy they would now embrace. Darwin highlighted the view that nature was “red in tooth and claw,” a savage contest in which only the fittest survive. It was difficult to see the beauty and harmony in such a struggle. Thus, natural theology was dead, and the idea of the unity of truth with it.
Certainly, the 19th century view of natural theology was incorrect, because it didn’t take into account all of what was observable in nature. There is, of course, much disharmony in nature, and it is no doubt a huge exaggeration to say that we could understand moral truths and God’s character from nature (it seems that the Fall, in such a system, is forgotten. And it’s important to note that, in rejecting this view of natural theology, it isn’t necessary to conclude all natural theological arguments are untrue).
Yet, I can’t help thinking that somehow, too much was thrown away. We no longer have “universities” in the sense of a unity of truth coming from a diversity. We really have “diversities,” plain and simple, in which the ideas taught in most departments contradict the ideas taught in others. There is no coherent educational philosophy today that unifies the departments together as a whole.
But even more serious is the loss of belief that moral knowledge is possible. There is no wisdom (in the ancient sense which Plato and Aristotle discussed) in the universities today, because there is no way to know what the good life is, how life ought to be lived. Such things, since they no longer constitute part of the curriculum, have simply been lost. Is it any wonder there is so much moral confusion among us?
I do not pretend to have the remedy to this situation, as complex as it is. Clearly there are many parts to a solution. But it does seem to me that part of the solution is taking Scripture seriously in the integrative task. If Christian thought doesn’t constitute knowledge, how is it ever to be taken seriously in the academy? If we don’t do something, who will?
Part 2 Part 3
This post was written by Mark Hansard on April 10, 2007
What are the implications of Huxley’s Brave New World for academia, as we see aspects of his utopian (actually dystopian) society sprouting in our culture? In Part 2, I mentioned that our increasingly private virtual worlds are separating us from the real world and each other, as well as exacerbating the idea that one cannot know truth. In Part 1, I mentioned that the free market is pushing genetic engineering into the forefront.
In a post this short, all I can do is briefly suggest areas for further thought in which teaching and research might have an impact on these ideas currently germinating in the culture.
First, it seems to me that there are several things Christian professors might do to stem the tide of virtual worlds and confusion about truth. One is that we ought to demonstrate by our words and actions in the classroom that we believe truth exists and is knowable. Here I am speaking not simply of Christian truth, although that would be included, but the idea that truth in general is knowable and worth pursuing. Students should pick up from the way we teach and our assignments, that we believe most of our positions, whatever they are, constitute knowledge (not simply mere opinion). For example, when considering the question of whether Shakespeare actually wrote Shakespeare, we assume that there is an actual answer to this question, even if we are not sure what that answer is, and students would pick up on this.
In addition, it seems to me that the use of media in the classroom ought to be used thoughtfully and sparingly. For example, assuming that truth does exist and is knowable, we would want our students to be forced to think logically and critically during the semester, which requires time for reflection that is far away from media distractions. If we rely too heavily on Hollywood media in the classroom or in assignments, they will think emotively, not linearly in a way that is necessary for critical thinking and logical reflection (They would think emotively because most of the information they absorb from media is image based, not linearly or logically derived. It seems to me emotive thinking encouraged by image-based media is part of the “dumbing-down” of the culture). For example, we might be able to get students more interested course material if we made it available as MP3 files for their ipods (Princeton has recently experimented with this). If students listen to lectures or audiobooks, they are forced to think linearly as they process the information, just as they are when they read.
Finally, regarding genetic engineering, it seems clear that in many areas, the market is not going regulate itself regarding what is ethically desirable. Careful thought ought to be given to how much babies should be “designed,” if at all, given God’s personal creation of each individual in the womb (Psalm 139:13-16. See more of our bioethics posts). It seems to me that, in our classroom teaching in genetics and bioengineering, the ethical issues ought to be raised and perhaps discussed and debated among students, at the very least. Perhaps we could carefully and thoughtfully interject our own thoughts on the ethics of such practices for the students’ benefit, once we have thought them through.
No doubt there are many more implications of Huxley’s book for academia than are mentioned here. What are other ways that a “Brave New World” could be avoided?
Part 1 Part 2
This post was written by Mark Hansard on April 5, 2007
In my last post on Brave New World, I mentioned that contemporary culture is listing toward a confluence of unbridled hedonism and increasing government parentalism, something similar, but not as extreme, as Huxley’s new society. Today I want to discuss another prophetic facet of Huxley’s story (This post contains spoilers. If you have not read the book and do not want the ending revealed, read no further).
In the climax of Huxley’s book, Mustapha Mond, a leader of Huxley’s fictitious civilization, explains the price to pay for creating a completely happy, pleasure-filled society. He admits that civilization has sacrificed truth on the altar of happiness. A whole society was created in which Shakespeare, William James, Cardinal Henry Newman, the Bible, and other great works of thought and literature are censored and unknown to the general population because it would interfere with their soma-filled, risk-free lives.
As Mond, explains (I should note here that Huxley’s society worships Henry Ford as the model of this new, mechanistic utopia):
“It’s curious to read what people in the time of our Ford used to write about scientific progress…knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value. All the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift…”
Comfort and happiness replaced truth and beauty. Are we already observing the beginnings of this shift in Western culture? It seems to me two aspects of contemporary culture lend themselves to this view.
First, we are increasingly living in a technological age in which our virtual worlds are more important than the real one. High-definition television, ipods, increasingly realistic video games, fantasy baseball, you name it, are separating us from the real world and real relationships. Why have a conversation with an actual person when one could, say, watch a DVD in the family SUV? Or listen to music on an ipod? Or chat online with Instant Messenger? Don’t get me wrong, I like the new gadgets as much as the next guy. But when technology can give us ever more realistic virtual worlds, what’s to keep anyone engaged with the real one?
When we combine these virtual worlds with the commonplace attitude among the young that everyone ought to believe what makes him or her happy, we can now see the beginnings of Huxley’s utopia. Truth gets pushed aside in the name of individual fulfillment. After all, who’s to say my virtual world isn’t actually the real one, and the outside world is actually the unreal one? Who cares? Besides, I can create my own virtual world through believing what I want to believe! Who are you to tell me that your world is the real one?
As Mustapha Mond says, “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice.” Indeed.
In Part 3 of this series, we will examine the implications of these cultural trends for academia.
Part 1 Part 3
This post was written by Mark Hansard on April 2, 2007
This year marks the 75th Anniversary of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and for many reasons, Huxley’s Orwellian story remains as relevant today as it did when he wrote it.
In fact, in two important areas, Huxley’s novel is remarkably prophetic. The opening scenes in which we are introduced to a genetic engineering factory, observing as new embryos are created, assembly-line style, with certain genetic proclivities to fit within their needed castes, are chilling. After embryos are created, named, and “bottled,” for example, they make their way on the conveyer belt to the “social predestination room,” in which they are genetically examined, chosen for their future caste according to the needs of the society, and carefully environmentally engineered.
While we are a long way from social and genetic engineering on this scale, we are taking our first steps toward such engineering through market forces already at work. Recently ABC News ran a profile of a woman in Texas who runs an embryo bank out of her home, in which she includes “Ph.D. sperm,” and eggs donated from “attractive” females with at least a college education. You can read about it here. There is certainly enough market interest to make such “designer babies” ubiquitous. I would be grieved (although not surprised) if eventually we saw the government design “aggressive” babies for use in the military. Huxley reminds us that such abuses are a realistic possibility.
Another thought provoking facet of Huxley’s story is the use of soma, a drug that the government uses to keep people blissfully ignorant and peaceful, “happy” at all costs. As one character admonishes a distraught friend, “What you need is a gramme of soma…One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.” Here he is repeating a mantra with which he was blissfully brainwashed as an unsuspecting embryo on a conveyor belt.
It seems to me these scenes are remarkably prophetic in that in contemporary American culture we see a confluence of unbridled hedonism and increasing government parentalism. These days it’s not just that every individual has a right to pursue happiness, it seems that the government is increasingly seen as the institution that must provide such happiness for the individual (e.g. making trans-fats illegal in New York restaurants—do we not have the ability to make these decisions on our own?). The use of soma in the novel allows the government not only to control the population, but to keep them happy and to protect them from themselves. Are we headed toward our own drug-controlled, parental society? Only time will tell.
One thing’s for sure. Every once in awhile, we all need a good dose of Brave New World.
Part 2 Part 3
This post was written by Mark Hansard on March 26, 2007
One of the more frustrating aspects of American culture, and the church in America, is a common misunderstanding of what it means to pursue knowledge. To most Americans, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is a luxury; there is a belief that only knowledge that has immediate practical value is worth pursuing. Thus, scholars who spend years contemplating beauty, or ethics, or the arts, or even physicists, who study subatomic particles or cosmology, are wasting their time because there is no immediate practical value of such study. Whereas studying business, engineering, computer technology — disciplines that have immediate marketable value — is more important.
I’m not a social historian, but I suspect this view results from a capitalist-driven economy in which making money, the practical result of much knowledge, is the goal. Why study something in which it is difficult to make a living?
But this view of knowledge is a serious mistake that could have far reaching consequences for American culture and the Western church. It is, simply speaking, a misunderstanding of the value of knowledge.
In philosophical terms, knowledge is an intrinsic good. That is, it is good in and of itself and has value in and of itself. This is a view that dates back to Plato, and his view was that knowledge is worth pursuing for its own sake. It is not an extrinsic good, a good that is instrumental to obtaining some higher good. Medicine is an extrinsic good. Taking medication is good because it promotes health; therefore health is a higher good for which taking medication is an instrumental means. Beauty, for example, is an intrinsic good, according to Plato.
In theological terms, all propositional knowledge is intrinsically good because it is a reflection of God’s omniscience (a proposition is, roughly speaking, a statement which is true or false). God’s omniscience has traditionally been viewed as perfect knowledge: he knows every proposition it is logically possible to know. Since God himself is the ultimate ground of all goodness in the universe, pursuing knowledge is a good in and of itself because it is a reflection of God. This was the traditional view of the Church as Greek philosophy was incorporated into theology by thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas. We human beings can fulfill the image of God in us by pursuing propositional knowledge, in order to be like him.
Is all knowledge good? No, there are some types of knowledge that are not good, and these are types of knowledge that God does not have. There is a difference between propositional knowledge and experiential knowledge. God does not have experiential knowledge of sin, because he has never sinned. He doesn’t have first-person experience of what it feels like to sin because he’s never experienced sinning. But he does know the proposition that “sin feels good,” or that, “performing sin x will feel a certain way y.” And it is good that he knows such propositions. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to empathize with our weaknesses.
All this brings us back to the pursuit of knowledge. In my view, an intellectual is someone who pursues knowledge for its own sake, not because it is of practical value. Thus, pure intellectual pursuit fulfills part of the image of God in us, and that is something worth doing, whether it has practical value or not. If we don’t pursue knowledge this way, not only will we miss fulfilling God’s image in us, but we will also miss practical applications of such knowledge years down the road that we couldn’t see as an immediate result of such pursuits.
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