This post was written by Randy Newman on November 17, 2008
Several years ago I wrote that C.S. Lewis might be considered the “patron saint” for the Christian academic.
Lewis embodied that elusive combination of a keen intellect and a softened heart. He loved the Lord and he valued the mind. For him, there exists no conflict, tension, or disjuncture between the intellectual sphere and the emotional one.
Today I want to talk of someone else who serves as a valuable role model for us in this same way: Jonathan Edwards.
As the key figure in the Great Awakening that began in 1734, Edwards was the pastor of the Congregational church in Northampton, Massachusetts and a leading intellect of his day. Again, those two descriptions were not considered to be antithetical.
It is not my intention to present a whole biography of Edwards here. I simply want to encourage you to get to know him. Here are a few suggestions to help:
1. Begin by reading some of Edwards sermons. He is most accessible here. Because of language changes and the depth of his thought, reading Jonathan Edwards is difficult. But the sermons are far easier than his treatises.
2. Don’t begin with “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” While this is an excellent sermon, and one that is far different than the lampooned interpretations usually offered in high school social studies classes, I’d suggest you begin with “A Divine and Supernatural Light” or “Praise, One of the Chief Employments of Heaven” or “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence.”
3. Here’s an important emphasis of Edwards you must not miss: Loving and following God must engage both the mind and the “affections.” At Edwards’ time, he was responding to the Enlightenment’s over-emphasis on reason and intellect. In our day, Edwards serves as a helpful corrective against an over-emphasis on emotions and an irrational approach to spirituality. To the modernist and the postmodernist, Edwards’ writings imply “A plague on both your houses!”
Consider this section from “A Divine and Supernatural Light:”
He that is spiritually enlightened truly apprehends and sees it [God’s
glory], or has a sense of it. He does not merely rationally believe that God
is glorious but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart.
There is not only a rational belief that God is holy, and that holiness is a
good thing, but there is a sense of the loveliness of God’s holiness. There
is not only a speculatively judging that God is gracious, but a sense how
amiable God is upon that account, or a sense of the beauty of this divine
attribute.
May we today embrace, pursue, and enjoy our God with all our being and may we love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind.
This post was written by Randy Newman on October 21, 2008
In my last blog entry, I asked, “Is there an integrating force that joins evangelism and cultural influence?” I started to build my case for an answer in the affirmative. I’ll try to add to that here.
I’ll begin with an illustrative event. In the 1960’s Columbia Bible College in South Carolina faced a difficult tension. Their school had long been segregated, in part because the state of South Carolina required it to do so. While the consciences of some (but not all!) of their administration opposed racism and segregation, the legal issues were complex and difficult to overcome.
Their rationale is instructive. In addition to arguments about submission to authority, a larger explanation came from their views about the role of the church in society. Should Christians engage in politics or merely “preach the gospel?” CBC’s main calling, they maintained, was to prepare missionaries to bring the gospel to all the nations.
But what about black applicants who wanted to spread the gospel? What if they wanted the training CBC could provide? An insightful article that examines the historical and theological considerations of CBC’s administration can be found in Robert Priest’s chapter, “Sharing the Gospel in a Racially Segregated South” in his book, This Side of Heaven (2006, Oxford University Press).
Amidst cultural changes in the wider society and from some pressure from alumni, CBC did make radical changes to integrate. It is unclear to me whether they addressed the philosophical/theological issues behind the legal, social, and practical ones. Should Christians engage in political or social issues or just “preach the gospel?”
Again, I point the question toward the world of academia. Should Christian professors get involved in social issues on campus or just pursue excellence in teaching and evangelize when the opportunities arise?
One example may help focus my question. Recently a traveling “art show” came to a number of university campuses in the state of Virginia. It was
sponsored by a coalition of “sex workers.” These included strippers, prostitutes, and pornographers. The show claimed to have as its goal to raise awareness of and lift up the public opinion of a legitimate art form.
One university’s alumni called for, and ultimately received, the resignation of its president, due in part to his decision to allow the show on campus. Several other universities hosted the event with little or no objection from anyone (Christians, feminists, or law students. Prostitution is still illegal in the state of Virginia).
There are many other examples. In fact, I believe the cultural atmosphere on most campuses may be more influential in forming of students’ lifelong worldviews than the courses taught in classrooms.
Should Christians have worked against segregation at Columbia Bible College? I believe the answer is yes. Should Christians have objected to sex workers performing on state university campuses? I believe the answer is yes. Should Christians engage in efforts to promote social justice? I believe the answer is yes.
And I believe the answer flows from the same integrating principle. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. That love surely includes sharing the gospel. In fact, to do many other things to help our neighbors but to not share the gospel with them may be the most unloving thing possible.
But to not address issues of injustice, abuse, hatred, immorality, and other forces that surely will do harm to people, is also unloving. Christians must find their voices. Someday students of history will look at our day and age and marvel at our silence just as we marvel at the silence about segregation in the 1960s.
Part 1
This post was written by Mark Hansard on August 1, 2008
In the 1980’s the Christian College Coalition published the “Through the Eyes of Faith” series of undergraduate textbooks to integrate Christian thought with different academic disciplines. Ronald Well’s History Through the Eyes of Faith, published in 1989, is part of this series. Wells is a professor of history at Calvin College.
While quite dated now, Wells’ book, which is meant to supplement a secular textbook on the history of Western Civilization, gives a simple overview of Western history with an eye toward important ideas that shaped, or were shaped by, Christian thought. It connects a certain flow of ideas, beginning with Greek thought and running through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and Postmodern thought. As is the case with books of this kind, the specialist in any one of these time periods may be scandalized at its simplicity. Nevertheless, it remains a helpful introduction to the flow of Western ideas, as well as an analysis of these ideas from a Christian perspective.
For example, in his discussion of America as an Enlightenment experiment, Wells asks if “the American idea” of unwavering faith in progress, particularly material prosperity as a means to happiness, is really consistent with the Christian ideas of the Fall and personal satisfaction primarily through Christ. While there are a number of complicated issues here that Wells doesn’t have the space to discuss, he is at his best when he is questioning how such ideas fit within historic Christian theology. His aim is to prick the thinking of the undergraduate, and in that he is largely successful.
On the other hand, his philosophy of history leaves much to be desired, particularly as it applies to Jesus. In his third chapter, “The Historicity of Jesus,” Wells declares that the “historical Jesus” was a man who lived in Nazareth and was crucified by the Romans, whereas “Jesus Christ, ‘the risen Lord’” is known through faith. The “risen Jesus” is not particularly supported by history, because the Gospels were written by “people of the faith community,” and are not independent accounts (among other problems which he lists). While he declares that there are other ways to obtain knowledge besides empirical investigation (through the Holy Spirit, for example), Wells’ bifurcation here between the “historical Jesus” and the “risen Jesus” has the effect of rendering the “risen Jesus” something less than knowledge (or at least, something less than academically respectable). His view seems to “relativize” knowledge in that the “risen Jesus” tends to become merely one of many perspectives on Jesus.
But it is not at all clear that events such as the Resurrection cannot be adjudicated through historical investigation. While it is true that interpretation and subjectivity are part of what the historian brings to the process, it doesn’t follow that the Gospels cannot be investigated for their historical reliability, their proximity to actual events, and so forth (and in fact, a number of scholars have recently done just that, with positive results. See Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses or N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God). To take the Risen Jesus out of the purview of history seems to concede too much to the (unfortunately too common) secular presuppositions in the Academy.
This post was written by Patrick Rist on November 19, 2007
My Church History professor, John D. Woodbridge, was fond of saying, “Christianity didn’t begin with Billy Graham.” Dr. Woodbridge was making a statement about the dismal ignorance most evangelicals display about the history of Christianity.
Our lives often hover on the border of the chaotic. It’s hard enough to find time to simply read the Bible. How can one make a case for studying Church History?
Any church history text uses most of its first chapter answering that very question. Here are some reasons I’d offer:
• It is inspirational and offers perspective on one’s own problems. This is a common reason, but it really is true. There’s nothing like reading about earlier Christians being burned at the stake to make one realize that while your Department Chair may be a jerk, at least he’s not the Inquisition.
• It tells us how earlier generations of Christians read their Bibles. We may not always agree with them, but we benefit from understanding their struggles, and in fact, their practices often stand in judgment of ours. For example, we are often aghast at the strict rules surrounding Sunday observance in Britain and America in the 18th and 19th centuries. But is there not something to learn here? And while we cringe at what we label legalism, we are often blind to the “cultural captivity” of our own Christian practice. What would previous generations of believers think of the infringement of market forces into our faith practices – something so pervasive it is often invisible to us.
• Christian history helps us take seriously an important part of the Apostles Creed: the Communion of the Saints. Wherever we worship on Sunday, from an Anglican fellowship to a storefront community church, we are all connected to the all of the Church throughout the ages. We share this connection because we have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is real. It means that you have more in common with Ulrich Zwingli (who?) than you do with the unregenerate colleague with whom you’re authoring a paper. You actually share more with a converted former cannibal in Africa who died 90 years ago, than you do with most (or all) the people in your departmental meetings.
• This connection, or creedally speaking, “communion,” brings up something of a summation of what’s been said so far. The church actually consists not just of those living now, but those who have passed through the veil and are today awaiting the glorification of their earthly bodies. They are the dead, but if we take the scriptures seriously, we cannot regard them as ultimately dead. They are still part of the Communion of Saints, and although we cannot commune with them in the usual sense (and certainly not in the Ouija Board sense), Christian history allows them to speak.
As G.K. Chesterton said in Orthodoxy: “Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” Obviously Chesterton is speaking here of something a bit stronger than merely the study of history, but if we couple our study with creedal seriousness, the result is similar. Chesterton went on,
Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.
There are many good Church History books out there, including Bruce L. Shelley’s venerable Church History in Plain Language (ISBN 0849938619) and a new book that gives you bite-sized nuggets: The One Year Book of Christian History (ISBN 0842355073).
This post was written by Mark Hansard on October 16, 2006
In the October 9 issue of National Review, John J. Miller discusses the slow extinction of military history in major universities across the country. Historians who specialize in military history are retiring and not being replaced. At one university, Stephen Ambrose has donated more than $500,000 to endow a chair for military history that has yet to be filled, and does not appear that it will be filled soon. And years ago, a wealthy benefactor offered $1.5 million to Dartmouth to endow a chair of military history there, and Dartmouth refused.
It is, if one thinks about it, quite odd and surprising that a major research institution would turn down a $1.5 million endowment for any subject. If the purpose of the academy is the search for truth, why turn down the endowment? What ever happened to the quest for knowledge? Miller writes the situation is even more ironic considering books on military history sell so well, and college classes in military history are usually overflowing.
This seems to be another piece of evidence that the purpose of the secular academy today, while claiming to be “values neutral,” is really about instilling values into the lives of students. And these values are along the lines of a politically correct education that will create a certain kind of student with a certain set of moral beliefs. Miller interviews one professor who says that many scholars “believe military historians are always advocates of militarism.” Seriously?
Of course, war is a terrible, horrible thing, and ought to be avoided whenever possible. There have been many different Christian views of war in the history of the Church, and I do not intend to endorse a particular view here. But if we create ignorance about wars (which this would certainly do for a new generation of students), aren’t we doomed to repeat the failures of the past? Isn’t that the purpose of learning history—to avoid past mistakes?
This post was written by Randy Newman on April 24, 2006
Influencers shape each of us – whether we acknowledge it or not. Some of us, who see ourselves as more spiritual, might think that only Jesus and the Scriptures serve in this way. Perhaps. I think we’re more complex than that and find inspiration from a variety of places – some Biblical, some historical, some literary, some from within our families, and some from acquaintances we’ve made along the way.
Abraham Lincoln is one of my “historical mentors? for many reasons. Here, I’d like share two: His foresight and his depression.
(I know. You’re thinking of finding other blogs to consult – If I’m recommending “depression? as a source of inspiration, it can only go downhill, right? But please bear with me).
I should mention I’m not lifting up Lincoln as a model of Christian faith. I’ve read several evaluations of his religious beliefs and I’m convinced he is not the best model for growth in Christ-likeness. But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn other valuable insights from his life and words and apply them through the grid of the Gospel.
Regarding Lincoln’s foresight, I find strength in his willingness to pursue long-term goals at the risk (ye, almost the guarantee) of short-term losses. In 1861, Lincoln addressed the congress in something like a state of the union address. Remember the year: 1861! He told them, “The struggle of today is not altogether for today.?
Do these words not have weighty significance for us who serve in academia? Are there not intellectual fronts on which we struggle that may seem to some as mere academic intramural squabbles but could reshape peoples’ thinking down the road? Consider postmodernism’s infancy in the minds of a few intellectuals and then watch a rerun of Seinfeld.
Regarding Lincoln’s depression, I point you to a marvelous recent book, Lincoln’s Melancholy : How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk (Houghton Mifflin, 2005). Shenk is correct to make a distinction between depression and melancholy and perhaps I should have done likewise in this blog. Shenk exemplifies excellent scholarship of a historian, insight of a therapist, and a fluid writing style.
More than anything, the book offers hope (and I am well aware of the higher than usual rate of depression among academicians). The darkness of the soul we (yes, I am including myself) melancholic types experience can actually be the “fuel? for greatness, a wellspring for compassion, a crucible for deep thought, and a laboratory for personal transformation. Lincoln knew both his temperament and his struggles and aggressively pursued avenues of strength. His two favorites were humor and poetry.
Can you see far ahead? Can you search deep within? These are two qualities Christian scholars should long for, work towards, and pray in as they follow Christ.
|
