Theology > Everything Else?

I've heard many a pastor & theologian make a comment that, despite their best intentions, really irks me.

It goes something like this: "Theology is the Queen of the Sciences."

They're referring back to an adage used centuries ago by the founders of the original American universities, who wanted ministry preparation to be their most important goal. They saw every other field of study as ultimately existing to support & further the field of theology.

I respectfully disagree, for three reasons.

1. Perhaps most importantly, I see no reason for such a conclusion in Scripture. There is no dichotomy between sacred and secular, no higher versus lower callings.

2. Theology is an applied science. It draws on the resources of literary analysis (to be able to read the sacred text), history (to understand the context of the sacred text), philosophy (to logically reason through & assimilate the principles learned from the text), psychology (to analyze the concept of the human as developed by the sacred text), and the physical & biological sciences (to understand the metaphors & creation description of the sacred text). (There are probably other relationships that I'm missing.) If theology is a queen, then she is rather dependent on her subjects for her survival.

3. I think those who make such a statement are making the classic mistake of confusing the glory of God with information about God. Every field that humans study exists for the purpose of glorifying God in worship from His people. Reading a physics book is not an act of worship unless I respond to the God who created physics; in the same way, reading a theological book is not an act of worship unless I respond to the God described in it. The reformers, after all, longed for "the glory of God alone," not "the knowledge of God alone."

I would, therefore, like to submit the following revised version of this well-meant sentiment: "Doxology is the goal of the sciences."

Have you heard similar statements? How do you think Christian scholars should respond to such statements?

What is Christian Scholarship?

In the preface of The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, Marsden states that his purpose is to "take a step toward clarifying what the ancient enterprise of relating faith and learning might mean in the academy today." In so doing, he hopes to carve out a place of respect and welcome for Christian scholarship in the academy today.


But what is "Christian scholarship?"


It's a difficult question to answer. But it's an important one, as your answer to that question will color your responses to Marsden's ideas.


Here are a few possibilities:

1. Christian scholarship is scholarship about Christianity.
2. Christian scholarship is scholarship about topics that are of concern to Christians.
3. Christian scholarship is scholarship that seeks the goal of confirming Christian beliefs.
4. Christian scholarship is scholarship that is born out of uniquely Christian beliefs.
5. Christian scholarship is scholarship that seeks to understand the relationships between Christianity and other fields.
6. Christian scholarship is scholarship that seeks to clarify Christian beliefs.
7. Christian scholarship is scholarship that is conducted by Christians.

Do you see how each of these applies a different flavor to the term?


There's a similar problem, for example, in trying to define what physics is. There are many physicists whose work looks a lot like pure mathematics, or chemistry, or biology, or philosophy, or meteorology, or astronomy, and there are the folks who apply the principles of physics to social networks & economic systems. Ultimately, then, we define physics as what physicists do.


Based on that comparison, I'm inclined to support definition #7 above, with the understanding that implies, includes, and encompasses #1-6.

Thriving or Surviving?

Faculty Commons recently featured a My Ministry Minute by Joseph McRae Mellichamp entitled, "Going With the Flow – Or Following the Call?" He describes how, in hindsight, he had gone through much of his life haphazardly, rather than with intentionality. He says the difference was coming to understand his sense of calling, that he wants it to be said that he "used [his] position, [his] gifts and abilities, and [his] opportunity to impact [his] university and higher education for good and to reach [his] colleagues and students for Jesus."

I couldn't agree more.

I think another way of phrasing the contrast he makes is that it's the difference between thriving and surviving. I cheer every time I watch WALL-E (which is a lot) and hear the captain say, "I'm tired of surviving. I want to LIVE!" (These cheers are usually accompanied by flashbacks of graduate school.)

I hope that, as a professor, I help create opportunities for my students to thrive, and not just present challenges that make them content with survival. I want to help them live intentionally, and not just put more pressure on them to get by with the minimum.

How have you experienced the difference between surviving/going with the flow/getting by and thriving/following the call/progressing? How have you helped others thrive?

(Speaking of surviving, I just realized that I didn't make Tuesday's post an "Undergraduate Corner." Oops! Looks like I owe you one.)

Great Summary of Marsden

The Emerging Scholars Blog today featured a great summary of some of Marsden's key arguments in The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. If you don't have a copy of the book, read these quotes to whet your appetite.

Clearing Up Misconceptions

I think one of the services Christians in the academic world can contribute is to clarify misconceptions about the Christian faith. This opportunity comes about because

1. We're forced to deal with our own misconceptions if we're going to pursue our faith & scholarship faithfully, and
2. We're often given the opportunities to do so in situations we encounter every day.

Take, for example, my introductory physics class last Friday. Fridays in this class are somewhat lighthearted; the students work problems at the board and, time permitting, I answer questions from the week. We got onto the topic of living in a universe with dimensions that we can't see, and I made reference to A. Square in Flatland.

A. Square, I explained, is a square living in a two-dimensional universe who becomes persecuted by Flatland's intellectual/religious authorities for claiming that there is a third dimension that they are incapable of seeing. He knows of this third dimension because he has been visited by a strange being that calls himself a "sphere" that exists in a three-dimensional world.

One of the students commented that A. Square, therefore, is a lot like Jesus.

I said that I understood what the student was trying to say, but expressed my hesitation to agree. I said that a better comparison would be Galileo or Copernicus, and that I didn't think that Jesus was a good comparison, because Jesus did not so much claim to have a revelation as he did claim to be the revelation.

Did the student understand my clarification? I'm not sure. Will it drive him to seek out Jesus as a unique authority on life? I don't know. But I do think it's neat that Christian faculty have opportunities like that.

What are similar opportunities that you've experienced? How has God used them?

Justice, kindness, and humility, with a side of academic success

He has told you, O man, what is good;
   and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
   and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

I think about this verse whenever I write my syllabi for the semester, or when students request an extension of a homework deadline, or when I have to respond to an act of academic dishonesty. Managing a course well requires justice, kindness, and humility---and it often feels like pursuing one will obviate another.

It also makes me think of my annual faculty evaluation (and ever-building tenure & promotion evaluation), which has its own triad of requirements: teaching, scholarship, and service (plus the ubiquitous "collegiality" metric). I think that, ultimately, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking in humility are the keys to succeeding at those requirements; in other words, I have an arena in which to pursue the virtues that God wants me to develop, and I'll get good marks from my institution along the way.

A few textual thoughts:

1. I think it's significant that God calls for us to do justice, but love kindness. I think it helps us approach people & situations with the right attitude, and gives us an insight into God's character, as well.
2. Micah doesn't seem to think this triad is very weighty. "What is it that's so hard that God wants you to do?" he seems to be asking. "Why would you not want justice, kindness, and humility?"
3. In the context, Micah has just asked, "How will I come before God [in the temple] and please Him? How can I possibly bring enough to sacrifice [even my own firstborn] to satisfy Him?" Then he answers by describing how he should seek to live these virtues in his life in relationship to others; i.e., it's not how he performs in the worship arena, but in the workaday world and in the community.
   

Is evolution providing a new morality?

At the beginning of the semester, I sat in on a very insightful workshop session by Dr. Terry Doyle about Learner Centered Teaching (www.learnercenteredteaching.com). His thesis was based on ideas developed by Dr. John Medina, proposing that we need to rethink our teaching practices based on what we know about how the human brain works due to its evolutionary performance envelope. Medina says,

The brain appears to have been designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment and to do so in near constant motion. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1nMQq67VI)

Medina (and Doyle) goes on to claim that if we wanted students to learn in an environment that was "directly opposed to what the brain was really good at doing," we would put them in the traditional classroom setting. (Notice the contrast: Our students listen instead of solving problems; they see the same concrete wall every day instead of being in a changing outdoor environment; they sit still instead of moving. How many times have we seen students jostle their legs in that annoying fashion in the middle of class, much as I'm doing right now at my desk?)

Doyle then went on to describe what we should try to do differently: How we should improve the learning environment, how we should engage the students with activity, how even requiring exercise of our students would greatly improve learning, etc. And all of this was based on what we understand of how the human brain evolved.

Two things occurred to me as I was pondering this talk. First, Doyle & Medina are still figuring out the details of their new teaching scheme, as they still give lectures in the traditional format!

But second, these guys have formed a set of teaching standards---a set of "should" statements---based on an evolutionary worldview. Could one consider this set of standards to be a morality based in evolution? (Medina even titles his book Brain Rules.)

I point this out because, before the development of the Intelligent Design movement, Christians in the earlier half of the last century argued against evolutionary theory based on the idea that it could provide no basis for morality. (Hence the reason they failed at the Scopes Trial; the defenders of anti-evolutionist creationism of that day were unprepared to defend their position scientifically, and IDers have been trying to play catchup ever since.)

I think this observation brings us to an interesting question: Has the evolutionary worldview matured to a point where it is ready to provide its adherents with a morality? If so, what is this morality shaping out to look like? And how will Christians respond to this "evo-morality" when it disagrees with their own? What about when it agrees with their own?

(Note: I'm not asking whether you agree with the evolutionary worldview; I'm asking if you think the evolutionary worldview is poised to introduce a set of moral standards on its followers.)

What "Reformed Christianity" Used to Mean

It amazes me how words can transform meaning so drastically. Take "google," the sound uttered by the young son of a mathematician seeking to come up with a name for 10^100, now the name of a culturally savvy technology giant. Or take the word, "crash;" probably originally an onomatopoeia describing the sound of a tree falling (or the like), this word has expanded to include the failure of abstract or technical systems that are supposed to function, like the economy or a computer, which may not include a recognizable sound. Many words, it seems, gain meaning as time progresses.

Unfortunately, some words lose meaning, like "Reformed Christianity." When a Christian today says that they're "Reformed," they usually mean that they're a Calvinist--i.e., they agree with the synopsis of soteriology described by TULIP, which was formed as a clarification of an aspect of reformed doctrine in response to a group of dissenters.

But the reformed worldview originally was so much more than this. Being reformed meant that you believed that all of human experience was sacred, under the sovereign care of Christ. Being reformed meant you valued people being able to read God's word in their own language. Being reformed meant that you believed that the world was created good, the world was corrupted by sin, and that the world was being redeemed by Christ. Being reformed meant that you believed that the word "world" meant the physical "world" of rocks and trees and skies and seas, the "world" of human beings, and the "world" of cultures and institutions that those people created. Being reformed meant that you believed there was no separation of human life into sacred and secular.

Abraham Kuyper summarized it well when he said, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'"

That's what "Reformed" used to mean. I hope that we Christians in the academic world can reclaim at least some of this meaning, as our lives and ministries intersect with diverse people and institutions and ideas from all over the world.

Undergraduate Corner: Don't Make Jesus a Stranger

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

You probably saw the title to this blog posting and thought, "Yeah, I know; make sure I keep up my relationship with Jesus while I'm in college." Chances are, if you're reading this post, you are making an effort to keep up your relationship with Jesus while you're in college.

But I mean something else.

I'm referring to the tendency of Christian college students who have a near-insatiable craving to understand their faith better, and who dive deeply into even the most difficult writings of Scripture to better understand what it teaches, and to craft a seamless, clean-cut, unshakable personal statement of faith that summarizes what they believe the Bible says.


Okay, perhaps that last sentence was a little hyperbolic (that's the adjective of "hyperbole," not the mathematical curve), but you get the idea: Christian college students--the ones who grow in their faith during their college years--tend to dive into Scripture more than they ever have before. And it seems like they spend 99% of their Bible study time in Paul's letters.


Again, the 99% figure is a little hyperbolic. But when we're seeking to fine-tune our personal doctrine, we (college student or otherwise) do tend to spend a lot of time in Paul's writings. But that makes sense, right? Paul is certainly the biblical author who speaks most about doctrine and the need for doctrinal correctness. He's also one of the most straightforward authors, keeping his points pretty well-separated and usually saving his application points for when he knows you understand his doctrine; he's even got a few arguments that can stand up against that big scary atheistic professor you've got in class tomorrow.


Except here is the problem: I think that sometimes, we spend so much time and energy reading and understanding Paul, that when we return to the Jesus depicted in the Gospels (who didn't always speak about the need for doctrinal correctness; who didn't always keep His points well-separated; who wove doctrine and application together seamlessly; who spoke in stories instead of sophisticated arguments), He seems like a stranger to us.


Think of it this way: If your church's leadership announced they wanted to hire a new pastor, and invited their top candidate to give a guest sermon, with whom would you be more comfortable? A pastor whose sermon sounds like Paul, or a pastor whose sermon sounds like Jesus?


So, as we dive into Scripture to understand the Christian faith, let's not make Jesus a stranger.


When have you experienced this estrangement from Jesus of Nazereth, the Messiah depicted in the Gospels? How did you overcome it?

What about other authors of Scripture? Whose writings do you feel most uncomfortable reading?


Have you found a balanced way to read the Bible, where every author and every genre seems natural to you?

A Mathematical Model for the Questionable Sower

I recently revisited Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-23) and noticed a few things I had never noticed before.  Most of these observations were inspired by Andy Crouch’s interpretation of the story in his Culture Making. I’ll summarize them here in three points:

1.       This sower is rather questionable. On looking at his sowing techniques, one finds that he must be very young, very blind, or very stupid.

2.       This parable of fruitfulness, fruitlessness, and faithfulness applies to our everyday lives, and not just Jesus’ telling of parables or our outright preaching of the gospel.

3.       This may seem anticlimactic, but I think it fleshes out the picture Jesus is painting here: The Sower’s method and result make for a very interesting math modeling problem.

The sower is rather questionable. He is throwing seeds everywhere, including places where, in retrospect, it’s obvious that the seed couldn’t grow. Seeds landing among thorns and rocks are one thing, but can’t this guy exercise just a little care to not let seeds land on the road? Nobody practices agriculture like this (and I’ve spent my share of time around agriculturalists, and they don’t tolerate foolishness)! Picturing this sower scattering seeds carelessly like this, he must be very young, very blind, or very stupid. These are very odd details for Jesus to leave out!

The analogy, of course, is that, in the ministries we feel that God calls us to, we don’t know which endeavors are going to bear fruit and which are going to die on the spot. We can certainly keep developing the areas that look promising, but we can’t know a priori which endeavors are going to succeed or flourish.

This parable of fruitfulness, fruitlessness, and faithfulness applies to our everyday lives. Jesus’ immediate interpretation of this parable is Himself proclaiming the gospel via parables. Only those whose hearts are prepared like good soil, he explains, can receive the parables and understand them such that they bear fruit. “To the one who has [i.e., the good soil], more will be given [i.e., fruit]” (v. 12). He also indicates that this applies when we proclaim the gospel, for which we certainly don’t know when we will see fruit.

But I also think that the parable applies to our everyday lives, as well. Our lives are to be expressions of the gospel—including not just our “moral decisions” and our “conversation,” as a fundamentalist would stress, but the endeavors we pursue. For example, when I teach physics, or when my wife works with her team to prepare a proposal, those pursuits are to be expressions of the gospel. Not that we insert the Four Laws (or Seven Truths for you Piper fans) into our materials, but that we pursue them out of hearts that have tasted the goodness of God and want to see that goodness propagated across creation in as many ways as possible. That is, after all, what we were created for: to spread the image of God across creation (Genesis 1:28-30). We all have a lot of room for creativity in our lives. Even the line cook slaving away at McDonald’s for minimum wage has an opportunity for creativity, in how he treats his fellow employees, or what he volunteers to do, or how he stacks boxes, etc.

In a sense, the seeds of this parable are like seeds of creativity; we don’t know what will come of our endeavors, but (to use the old adage) we won’t find out unless we try.

The Sower’s method and result make for a very interesting math modeling problem. Suppose, for example, that the Sower starts out with 100 seeds (100 is easy to work with percentages). Because the seeds that land on the good soil bear a minimum of a 30-fold return, he only needs 4 out of the 100 seeds to land on the good soil in order to end up with more than he had before—that’s a 4% success rate. In our mindset, that seems unsuccessful, but in God’s mindset, it’s a tremendous success.

What that means is that when I feel discouraged in what I perceive to be a weak progression of the gospel in the world around me, I have to remember that God takes what looks like a few feeble seeds and turns them into a new generation of fruit, beyond what I could have imagined or thought.