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Scholarship and Pedagogy
A practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians In the Higher and Middle Classes in this country Contrasted with Real Christianity, paraphrase (William Collins: 1833, orig. 1829), pp. 10-11.
In an age wherein it is confessed and lamented that infidelity abounds,
do we observe in them any remarkable care to instruct their children in
the principles of the faith which they profess, and to furnish them
with arguments for the defence of it? They would blush, on their
child's coming out into the world, to think him defective in any branch
of that knowledge, or of those accomplishments which belong to his
station in life, and accordingly these are cultivated with becoming
assiduity. But he is left to collect his religion as he may; the study
of Christianity has formed no part of his education, and his attachment
to it (where any attachment to it exists at all) is, too often, not the
preference of sober reason, but merely the result of early prejudice
and groundless prepossession. He was born in a Christian country, of
course he is a Christian; his father was a member of the church of
England, so is he. When such is the hereditary religion handed down
from generation to generation, it cannot surprise us to observe young
men of sense and spirit beginning to doubt altogether of the truth of
the system in which they have been brought up, and ready to abandon a
station which they are unable to defend. Knowing Christianity chiefly
in the difficulties which it contains, and in the impossibilities,
which are falsely imputed to it, they fall perhaps into the company of
infidels; and, as might be expected, they are shaken by frivolous
objections and profane cavils, which, had they been grounded and
bottomed in reason and argument, would have passed by them "as the idle
wind," and scarcely have seemed worthy of serious notice.
In Defence of the Imagination (Harvard University Press: 1982), pp. 2-4.
More disturbing than this wilful and self-indulgent use of language was the dismissal of the author as the creator of the work and the denial of objective status to the text. The author gave place to the reader, on the ground that the text has no existence as 'an object exterior to the psyche and history of the man who interprets it'. Since the reader may be any and every reader from now to the end of time, texts were to be regarded as susceptible of an infinite number of meanings, and, since no criteria were proposed by which any meaning could be rejected or accepted, were in fact meaningless. The critic, therefore, regarding it as impossible to fulfill what has always been regarded as his prime duty — to illuminate the author's meaning, now declared to be totally irrecoverable — created meanings within the void (le vide) of the text, or, to put it another way, imported meanings into a text that had no determinate meaning of its own.
C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man (1943), chp 2.
Lewis continues his train of thought from "Men Without Chests", criticizing the project of subjectivizing value. Lewis thinks the stakes are as grave as they can be: "the destruction of the society which accepts it". But immediately, Lewis notes, such grave consequences do not make it false. And besides, there are "theoretical difficulties" as well. Those who advocate the subjectification of value, in this case the pseudonymous Gaius and Titius, presume some greater end even as they undercut traditional values. "In actual fact Gaius and Titius will be found to
hold, with complete uncritical dogmatism, the whole system of values
which happened to be in vogue among moderately educated young men of
the professional classes during the period between the two
wars. Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it
is for use on other people's values; about the values current in their
own set they are not nearly sceptical enough." But if Gaius and Titius have some ultimate ground for value in mind, which cannot be so debunked, what might that be? Lewis considers whether "instinct" can ground human value, but notes that instinct is itself contradictory and cannot warrant the leap from is to ought. One will be inexorably forced back to some objective law that presents itself to our conscience as self-evident and obligatory. "This thing which I have called for
convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or
Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or
the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of
value. It is the sole source of all value judgements." ~ Afterall
C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man (1943), chp 1.
Lewis takes as his subject the thesis presented by two unnamed schoolmasters in what he calls "The Green Book": that our value judgments refer only to our own sentiments and never to any intrinsic worth in the objects we judge. He is concerned as to what this will mean for the education of English children, and this essay constitutes one part of Lewis' Abolition of Man, subtitled "Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools". In the authors' seemingly innocent and casual subjectification of value there is a subversive outcome: "I do not mean, of course, that [the schoolboy] will
make any conscious inference from what he reads to a general
philosophical theory that all values are subjective and trivial. The
very power of Gaius and Titius depends on the fact that they are
dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is 'doing' his 'English prep'
and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at
stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption,
which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence
unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy
which he has never recognized as a controversy at all." The Green Book's authors analyze a piece of banal and deceptive advertising. But, Lewis notes, the authors have effectively precluded any normative judgment of the ad, for a similiar judgment upon Johnson, Wordsworth, or Virgil could be no less an accurate description of a reader's sentiments, and there is no other quality to which to appeal. Lewis ends with this oft-cited poetic prose: "And all the time — such is the tragi-comedy of
our situation — we continue to clamour for those very qualities we
are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without
coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more
'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of
ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We
make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We
laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We
castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." His argument continues in "The Way".
~ Afterall
James K. A. Smith (Baker Publishing Group: August 2009), 240 pages.
Malls, stadiums, and universities are actually liturgical structures that influence and shape our thoughts and affections. Humans — as Augustine noted — are "desiring agents," full of longings and passions; in brief, we are what we love. James K. A. Smith focuses on the themes of liturgy and desire in Desiring the Kingdom, the first book in what will be a three-volume set on the theology of culture. He redirects our yearnings to focus on the greatest good: God. Ultimately, Smith seeks to re-vision education through the process and practice of worship. Students of philosophy, theology, worldview, and culture will welcome Desiring the Kingdom, as will those involved in ministry and other interested readers. ~ Product Description
Janel M. Curry, ed. (Lexington Books: November 2008), 186 pages.
In the past thirty years there has been a sea change in North American intellectual life regarding the role of religious commitments in academic endeavors. Driven partly by postmodernism and the fragmentation of knowledge and partly by the democratization of the academy in which different voices are celebrated, the appropriate role that religion should play is contested. Some academics insist that religion cannot and must not have a place at the academic table; others insist that religious values should drive the argument. ~ Product Description
"In Intellectual Neutral", in Passionate Conviction: Contemporary Discourses on Christian Apologetics, eds. Paul Copan and William Lane Craig (Nashville TN, B&H Publishing: 2007), p. 8.
The gospel is never heard in isolation. It is always heard against the background of the cultureal milieu in which one lives. A person raised in a cultural milieu in which Christianity is still seen as an intellectually viable option will display an openness to the gospel which a person who is secularized will not. You may as well tell the secular person to believe in fairies or leprechauns as in Jesus Christ! Or, to give a more realistic illustration, it is like a devotee of the Hare Krishna movement approaching you on the street and inviting you to believe in Krishna. Such an invitation strikes us as bizarre, freakish, even amusing. But to a person on the streets of Delhi, such an invitation would, I assume, appear reasonable and cause for reflection. I fear that evangelicals appear almost as weird to persons on the streets of Bonn, Stockholm, or Toronto as do the devotees of Krishna. ¶ Part of the broader task of Christian scholarship is to help create and sustain a cultural milieu in which the gospel can be heard as an intellectually viable option for thinking men and women. Therefore, the church has a vital stake in raising up Christian scholars who will help to create a place at the university for Christian ideas. The average Christian does not realize that there is an intellectual war going on in the universities and in the professional journals and scholarly societies. Christianity is being attacked as irrational or obsolete; and millions of students, our future generation of leaders, have absorbed that viewpoint.
William Lane Craig, Habib Malik, and Paul M. Gould, eds. (Crossway Books: October 2007), 208 pages.
In September 1980 Charles Malik gave a powerful talk on the need for evangelicals to reclaim the mind, and to reclaim the universities. It was published that year in a brief book called The Two Tasks. A century after his birth, a number of Christian scholars, including his son, commemorates Malik and his stirring address. Thus this book. Seven Christian thinkers, including Peter Kreeft and William Lane Craig, remind us of the crucial importance of what Charles Malik said on that September day. And it was indeed a vital message. I have pulled from my shelves that quite thin volume (a mere 37 pages) and reread that incisive message. Malik rightly said that the "greatest danger besetting American Evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism." He also said that the most urgent need is "not only to win souls but to save minds". He correctly noted that the universities are the real battle ground today, and we need to see Christ exalted there as much as anywhere else. ~ William Muehlenberg at Amazon.com
John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer, eds. (Michigan State University Press: Dec 1, 2003), 554 pages.
There are two controversies surrounding neo-Darwinian evolution - one scientific about Darwin's theory itself and the merits of intelligent design theory, and a second over whether our education system should expose students to this controversy. "Darwinism, Design and Public Education" is a stellar volume that will prove to be of great influence and significance in the years ahead, as this debate continues and intensifies. This peer-reviewed book collects several excellent essays that were previously available in separate, difficult-to-find publications, as well as some entirely new scientific material. Leading proponents of design theory, from multiple disciplines, are represented, as are some of the leading critics of design theory. ~ Seth Cooper
J. P. Moreland, Address at Christian Scholarship: Tensions and Contributions at The Ohio State University (1999).
Thoughtful Christians are agreed that an important component of
Christian scholarship is the integration of faith and learning, as it is
sometimes called. Because Christians are interested in the truth for
its own sake and because they are called to proclaim and defend their
views to an unbelieving world and to seek to live consistently with
those views, it is important for members of the believing community to
think carefully about how to integrate their carefully formed
theological beliefs with prominent claims in other fields of study. As
St. Augustine wisely asserted, "We must show our Scriptures not to be in
conflict with whatever [our critics] can demonstrate about the nature
of things from reliable sources."1 However, the task of integration is hard work and there is no
widespread agreement about how it is to be done generally or about what
its results should look like in specific cases. In what follows, I shall
do three things to contribute to the integrative enterprise: 1)
describe the relation between integration and spiritual formation; 2)
discuss current integrative priorities for the Christian scholar; 3)
analyze the epistemic tasks for and models employed in integration.
Thomas Nagel on Subjectivism said...
The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 6.
The worst of it is that subjectivism is not just an inconsequential
intellectual flourish or badge of theoretical chic. It is used to
deflect argument, or to belittle the pretensions of the arguments of
others. Claims that something is without relativistic qualification
true or false, right or wrong, good or bad, risk being derided as
expressions of a parochial perspective or form of life, not as a
preliminary to showing that they are mistaken whereas something else is
right, but as a way of showing that nothing is right and that instead
we are all expressing our personal or cultural point of view. The
actual result has been a growth in the already extreme intellectual
laziness of contemporary culture and the collapse of serious argument
throughout the lower reaches of the humanities and social sciences,
together with a refusal to take seriously, as anything other than
first-person avowals, the objective arguments of others.
"The Other Side of Evangelism", Christianity Today, 7 November 1980, p. 40.
Who among evangelicals can stand up to the great secular or naturalistic or atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship? Who among evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics? Does the evangelical mode of thinking have the slightest chance of becoming the dominant mode in the great universities of Europe and America that stamp our entire civilization with their spirit and ideas?... For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ Himself, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence.
"The Other Side of Evangelism", Christianity Today, 7 November 1980, p. 40.
I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. But intellectual nurture cannot take place apart from profound immersion for a period of years in the history of thought and the spirit. People who are in a hurry to get out of the university and start earning money or serving the church or preaching the gospel have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is vacated and abdicated to the enemy... It will take a different spirit altogether to overcome this great danger of anti-intellectualism. For example, I say this different spirit, so far as philosophy alone — the most important domain for thought and intellect — is concerned, must see the tremendous value of spending an entire year doing nothing but poring intensely over the Republic or the Sophist of Plato, or two years over the Metaphysics or the Ethics of Aristotle, or three years over the City of God of Augustine. But if a start is made now on a crash program in this and other domains, it will take at least a century to catch up with the Harvards and Tübingens and Sorbonnes — and by then where will these universities be?
"Christianity and Culture", in Princeton Theological Review 11 (1913), p.6.
[It] is based simply upon a profound belief in the pervasiveness of ideas. What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate. So as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.
C.S. Lewis on Loving Books said...
Surprised by Joy (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1955), 164.
One other thing that Arthur taught me was to love the bodies of books.
I had always respected them. My brother and I might cut up a stepladder
without scruple; to have thumb-marked or dog's-eared a book would have
filled us with shame. But Arthur did not merely respect, he was
enamored; and soon, I too. The set up of the page, the feel and smell
of the paper, the differing sounds that different papers make as you
turn the leaves, became sensuous delights. This revealed to me a flaw
in Kirk. How often have I shuddered when he took a new classical text
of mine in his gardener's hands, bent back the boards till they
creaked, and left his sign on every page.