Christian Education and Personhood (John Paul II series)

This is the last entry culled from the encyclicals of John Paul II. The following is from Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the encyclical that attempted to give a more Christian course to Catholic university education. Much of what he has to say is true of Christian universities in general. Try replacing the word "Catholic" below with "Christian" and see how much you agree with and how much you can learn from:

4. It is the honour and responsibility of a Catholic University to consecrate itself without reserve to the cause of truth. This is its way of serving at one and the same time both the dignity of man and the good of the Church, which has "an intimate conviction that truth is (its) real ally ... and that knowledge and reason are sure ministers to faith." Without in any way neglecting the acquisition of useful knowledge, a Catholic University is distinguished by its free search for the whole truth about nature, man and God. The present age is in urgent need of this kind of disinterested service, namely of proclaiming the meaning of truth, that fundamental value without which freedom, justice and human dignity are extinguished. By means of a kind of universal humanism a Catholic University is completely dedicated to the research of all aspects of truth in their essential connection with the supreme Truth, who is God. It does this without fear but rather with enthusiasm, dedicating itself to every path of knowledge, aware of being preceded by him who is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life", the Logos, whose Spirit of intelligence and love enables the human person with his or her own intelligence to find the ultimate reality of which he is the source and end and who alone is capable of giving fully that Wisdom without which the future of the world would be in danger.

6. Through the encounter which it establishes between the unfathomable richness of the salvific message of the Gospel and the variety and immensity of the fields of knowledge in which that richness is incarnated by it, a Catholic University enables the Church to institute an incomparably fertile dialogue with people of every culture. Man's life is given dignity by culture, and, while he finds his fullness in Christ, there can be no doubt that the Gospel which reaches and renews him in every dimension is also fruitful for the culture in which he lives.

7. In the world today, characterized by such rapid developments in science and technology, the tasks of a Catholic University assume an ever greater importance and urgency. Scientific and technological discoveries create an enormous economic and industrial growth, but they also inescapably require the correspondingly necessary search for meaning in order to guarantee that the new discoveries be used for the authentic good of individuals and of human society as a whole. If it is the responsibility of every University to search for such meaning, a Catholic University is called in a particular way to respond to this need: its Christian inspiration enables it to include the moral, spiritual and religious dimension in its research, and to evaluate the attainments of science and technology in the perspective of the totality of the human person.

In this context, Catholic Universities are called to a continuous renewal, both as "Universities" and as "Catholic". For, "What is at stake is the very meaning of scientific and technological research, of social life and of culture, but, on an even more profound level, what is at stake is the very meaning of the human person"(10). . . .

21. A Catholic University pursues its objectives through its formation of an authentic human community animated by the spirit of Christ. The source of its unity springs from a common dedication to the truth, a common vision of the dignity of the human person and, ultimately, the person and message of Christ which gives the Institution its distinctive character. As a result of this inspiration, the community is animated by a spirit of freedom and charity; it is characterized by mutual respect, sincere dialogue, and protection of the rights of individuals. It assists each of its members to achieve wholeness as human persons; in turn, everyone in the community helps in promoting unity, and each one, according to his or her role and capacity, contributes towards decisions which affect the community, and also towards maintaining and strengthening the distinctive Catholic character of the Institution. . . .

33. A specific priority is the need to examine and evaluate the predominant values and norms of modern society and culture in a Christian perspective, and the responsibility to try to communicate to society those ethical and religious principles which give full meaning to human life. In this way a University can contribute further to the development of a true Christian anthropology, founded on the person of Christ, which will bring the dynamism of the creation and redemption to bear on reality and on the correct solution to the problems of life.

By its very nature, a University develops culture through its research, helps to transmit the local culture to each succeeding generation through its teaching, and assists cultural activities through its educational services. It is open to all human experience and is ready to dialogue with and learn from any culture. A Catholic University shares in this, offering the rich experience of the Church's own culture. In addition, a Catholic University, aware that human culture is open to Revelation and transcendence, is also a primary and privileged place for a fruitful dialogue between the Gospel and culture.

44. Through this dialogue a Catholic University assists the Church, enabling it to come to a better knowledge of diverse cultures, discern their positive and negative aspects, to receive their authentically human contributions, and to develop means by which it can make the faith better understood by the men and women of a particular culture(36). While it is true that the Gospel cannot be identified with any particular culture and transcends all cultures, it is also true that "the Kingdom which the Gospel proclaims is lived by men and women who are profoundly linked to a culture, and the building up of the Kingdom cannot avoid borrowing the elements of human culture or cultures(37). "A faith that places itself on the margin of what is human, of what is therefore culture, would be a faith unfaithful to the fullness of what the Word of God manifests and reveals, a decapitated faith, worse still, a faith in the process of self-annihilation"(38).

45. A Catholic University must become more attentive to the cultures of the world of today, and to the various cultural traditions existing within the Church in a way that will promote a continuous and profitable dialogue between the Gospel and modern society. Among the criteria that characterize the values of a culture are above all, the meaning of the human person, his or her liberty, dignity, sense of responsibility, and openness to the transcendent. To a respect for persons is joined the preeminent value of the family, the primary unit of every human culture.

Simone Weil and Rootedness--Part 3

In the third part of Weil's The Need for Roots she reflects on how the French might be inspired to again love their homes and communities. I confess that I (often) find her overly idealistic, even contradictory, but she is worth listening to here. She is primarily concerned with the means that education possesses to cultivate the imaginative and moral sympathies of persons. She suggests that intimidation, false promises, simple suggestions or examples, or publicly sanctioned statements will not do the trick, that what is needed is the inspiration that comes through organized action. Yet having said this, she goes on to urge the use of inspiring words to reach the heart of the French people. She particularly recommends words that set forth the absolute good which pours from a sure faith in God.

The power of these words from God, she suggests, should be received in much the same way as a soldier receives a command--as an order of a superior. The other option is that of the technician, whom she believes to be subversive of true order and seeking false autonomy. A good command comes to both the mind and the feelings and has the shape of friendship, meaning there is a communique of trust to it. Thus, action "gives the fullness of reality to the incitations which have inspired it. The expression of such incitations, as heard on the outside, only gives them as yet a semi-reality. Action possesses a virtue of quite another order" (206).

Her vision for education, then, is one in which desire and example are married to living acts. We need faith more than realism, she says, and to see political action as spiritual rather than pragmatic. But, she observes, there are four chief obstacles in the way:

1. "our false conception of greatness;
2. "the degradation of the sentiment of justice;
3. "our idolization of money;
4. "and our lack of religious inspiration."

To begin to overcome these, Weil urges that the French revise and renew how they teach history, science, literature and philosophy, and religion. She insists that history should not be reduced to a Darwinian study of war, though war must be taught to do justice to the past. Instead, the gifts of the geniuses of art, activism, and sanctity must be taught, too. In literature, the "current of purity" must be studied, by which she means a healthy commitment to the integrity of the art on the part of writers. The modernist attitude of superiority in general must be jettisoned if the French are to recover true rootedness.

She places much more of the blame at the feet of modern science. Researchers are motivated by power and pragmatism rather than a love for the beauty and truth of the universe itself. As a result, they posit a world of complete determinism where force is the only political option, and in which technique is the overriding value: means without ends. "If justice is erasable from the heart of Man, it must have reality in this world. It is [modern] science, then, which is mistaken" (241). Pragmatism has polluted even the pure faith of Christians, who should know better, Weil believes. "A truth is always the truth with reference to something. Truth is the radiant manifestation of reality. Truth is not the object of love but reality. To desire truth is to desire direct contact with a piece of reality. . . . Pure and genuine love is in itself spirit of truth. It is the Holy Spirit" (250-1).

Weil, then, makes a move typical for her that I find problematic. She insists that Christians should understand God, not as someone who intervenes in response to particular circumstances, but as present in every event: "The sum of the particular intentions of God is the universe itself" (280). The world is, from one view, a closed system of determined action, while from another view, it is completely open to God's comprehensive control. . She goes so far as to suggest that we see the universe as entirely one of "perfect obedience" always acting in love. What we experience as "the blind forces of matter" are really a creature obedient to eternal Wisdom and love. Thus, the pain and suffering we experience are motivated by love and act as the punishment we each deserve that will restore us to faith and holiness.

At first blush, Weil seems to be setting forth the classic Augustinian understanding of providence, but her view would also seem to undercut prayer and regulate God to a Platonic being who does not respond per se to our individual requests. She urges a re-visioning of the world:

"The order of the world is the same as the beauty of the world. All that differs is the type of concentration demanded, according to whether one tries to conceive the necessary relations which go to make it up or to contemplate its splendor. It is one and the same thing, which with respect to God is eternal Wisdom; wth respect to the universe, perfect obedience; with respect to our love, beauty; with respect to our intelligence, balance of necessary relations; with respect to our flesh, brute force" (291).

If this were all she had written, I would accuse of her of promoting fatalism, but obviously, she believes in political action and reform. Nonetheless, her position would seem to render any prayer for these things at best moot, at worst as pragmatism under the cover of middle-class piety. To reach this position, she must, like Marcion, that ancient heretic, deny much of the Old Testament, and thereby, as Eliot points out in his introduction to the English translation, the very basis for the Church.

Physical labor, then, she concludes, is the most holy work because its daily tedium and suffering bring us closer to our deaths and thus force us to a place where repentance is truly possible. Weil concludes that "physical labor should occupy in a well-ordered social life . . . its spiritual core" (298). By ending this way, she offers a vision of the physical world in which place, work, family, and making are at the center of a truly human existence--one marked by gratitude, reverence, and connection with God, the land, and others.

I just don't see that such a vision need exclude the practice of daily intercession. A God who acts in direct ways to special requests can be the same God who guides the every action of his universe of obedient love.

God and Majors

Interesting summary of a study on whether one's major in college impacts one's religiosity:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/28/majors

Bridging the Two Cultures of C.P Snow--Part 4

So Snow held science to offer a this-worldly salvation, while Leavis in turn held to the humanities as the promise of salvation for the individual through culture. Is it possible for our students to partake of culture in a different way? Consider the following two areas of literary value: the nature of multicultural literature and the need for ecumenism in matters of taste. As to the first, I trust we are long past the canon wars of the 80's and 90's; however, one aspect of that later debate remains; namely, the question as to whether education in general, and the humanities in particular, function to free us from oppressive collectives or whether they must free us by acknowledging those communities of origin as essential to identity. Both, as we shall see, have their limitations. Charles Taylor in his famous essay, "The Politics of Recognition" notes that the politics of equal identity and dignity assume "universal human potential," as well as a concern with survival of the self. But increasingly this potential includes a politics of the equal recognition of one's identity group and of its survival. Survival policies seek to nurture--his word is "create"--continuing members (58).

Educational policies (such as canonical inclusion) work to protect collective identity from national structures that work against their continued importance. The difference-blind society, it can be charged, is actually highly discriminatory in its imposition of one kind of culture (43). Taylor notes, "The very idea of such a liberalism may be a kind of pragmatic contradiction, a particularism masquerading as the universal '" (44). We must face that even standards of worth are not transcultural (67). Taylor points out that by prejudging equal worth we already act on our Western standards as presupposing the correct ones. Ironically, our predisposition to finding all cultures of positive value actually flattens the actual horizons of encounter across cultures:

The peremptory demand for favorable judgments of worth is paradoxically -perhaps one should say tragically- homogenizing. For it implies that we already have the standards to make such judgments. The standards we have, however, are those of North Atlantic civilization. And so the judgments implicitly and unconsciously will cram the other into our categories. For instance, we will think if their "artists" as creating "works," which we then can include in our canon. By implicitly invoking our standards to judge all civilizations and cultures, the politics of difference can end up making everyone the same. (71)

I would contend that something like this happens in Arnold and Norton's treatment of culture as the religion of cultivation. Even if we bracket out the particular aspects of their life and thought that were highly prejudicial to non-Western societies, what remains is still a set of claims as to what constitutes cultivation and culture. They cannot step outside a particular judgment to what culture is, both in its pedagogical and purported descriptive summations. This phenomenon can be seen in the Snow-Leavis debate. Culture is judged by both authors in differing ways as salvific in that it imparts existential meaning (and or creature comfort) to help shore us up against a world "red in tooth and claw." One strand of history behind the discourse of salvation in Leavis and Snow is the creation of culture as a substitute for piety and the specialization of education into disciplines that undergirded, one could contend even helped create, science's disciplinary existence. They formed a subculture offering material salvation, of "more jam" as Leavis derided it. To judge faith as but one expression of the larger mythos of Kultur, indeed, perhaps even to accept "religion" as an ultimate sociological category, is to render it one humanism in the matrix of many.

As John Millbank has famously said, "The pathos of modern theology is its false humility. . . . once theology surrenders its claim to be a metadiscourse, it cannot any longer articulate the word of the creator God" (1). Either Kultur as anthropological culture or as incarnational history will function as the parameters for the others' meaning. Culture as a category of value already carries with it assumptions about the nature of humans, their purpose, happiness, morality, and so forth. Literary study defined as the study of cultural texts is not a neutral practice that is transferable from one social end to another.

This raises then the second issue: that of the possibility of an ecumenical view of beauty and art. If we do accept Christian faith as the point of functional discourse and not as an expression of Leavis, Trilling, and Norton's cultural salvation, can one avoid the trap Taylor has outlined above? Can a theological reading of a work of literature avoid flattening the work into a two-dimensional purpose? Can we remain open to the Other? Or as, Trilling admits in a sober moment, can we "no more escape from the cultural mode than we can escape from culture itself" (175).

Frank Burch Brown in his Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste has suggested that such an openness is indeed possible, though "even ecumenical and inclusive Christian taste must also be in some ways discriminating" (25). Art objects, Brown contends, do not entirely self-generate their own values. Religious texts, for example, are informed by theological readings and practices. More specifically, for our purposes, Christian taste has to be shaped by the virtues of generosity and of charity, of gratitude and being easily taught (193). Such taste begins with a set of community practices, humbles itself in learning a differing set of practices, and eventually reaches a point where the text in question may transcend those cultures of taste in unpredictable ways. Indeed, following Taylor, to attempt to predict how would be to already close down part of what can be learned. Such pedagogy does not preclude our own soteriology. Brown notes, "life typically finds various and surprising ways of turning religious" (251). However, Christian taste must be informed by the enculturation of certain capacities with certain ends in mind. Not any old culture will do. In his reflections on culture, T. S. Eliot warns that at the heart of both individualism and collectivism there is the temptation to idolatry, as well as demonization of opponents:

But for most people, to be able to simplify issues so as to see only the definite external enemy, is extremely exhilarating, and brings about the bright eye and the springy step that go so well with the political uniform. This is an exhilaration that the Christian must deny himself. It comes from an artificial stimulant bound to have bad after-effects. It causes pride, either individual or collective, and pride brings its own doom. For only in humility, charity and purity- and most of all perhaps humility- can we be prepared to receive the grace of God without which human operations are vain. (75)

And thus, literary culture and teaching of a Christian sort must have as its end a purpose other than simply freeing the individual from a parochial ghetto of the mind, more than empowering the individual by recognizing his or her cultural worth, or more than creating a socially useful literature that honors material matters of economic justice and of scientific invention. Each of these may have their place within a larger practice, but that caritas of taste must be cultivated with the end of loving God and neighbor.

As André Maurois has said, "In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others."

Bridging the Two Cultures of C.P Snow -- Part 3

The Humanities as Salvific Culture

From here on I would like to focus more on the literary side of this debate and the history that undergirds it.

Snow himself rightly understood that Trilling's "freedom from society" was at odds with his own social collective project (96). From whence comes this salvific mission for the teaching, indeed, the politics of the humanities? The mid-to-late 19th century was an important shift in pedagogy from the study of classics for language, logic, rhetoric, and general "mental toughness" to the study of the humanities as cultivating refinement and nobility of mind and eventually as new specialized academic disciplines. "One wonders how much Milton's prominence in literature classes after 1860 owes to his earlier ubiquity in rhetoric courses:" observe historians John Robert and James Turner, "if you could parse Paradise Lost, you could parse anything" (77).

This shift away from classical studies was due in part to the growing loss of a Protestant Christian cohesive vision of education before the Darwinian onslaught, but it was as much due to the in-flux of the German research model, The specialization that Snow would come to partially lament in the next century was required by the new sciences. The humanities ironically first arose in response to this division of knowledge. President Charles W. Eliot, for example, most noted for Harvard's move to the elective system, felt that the students needed some sort of civilizing influence to replace the old Protestant hegemony and looked to the humanities to provide it (81). Specialization at the time was an academic novelty because the classic, old-time college could not conceive equipping one student in a different fashion from another. Despite its adaptation at Harvard and the rise of Brown as the first American research university, the new practice was resisted at many colleges well until after 1900 precisely because it conceived of professorial loyalty as beholding to national and disciplinary organizations rather than to the local college and its surrounding community (Roberts and Turner chapter 5).

And it was precisely non-specialization that the humanities seemed to require. The realm of "culture" was handed the civilizing mission once accorded the senior capstone study of moral philosophy in the old colleges. In the place of its synthesis of Scottish Common Sense Realist philosophy, republican democratic political theory, and broadly evangelical piety, stood sympathy and feeling through an exposure to culture. Humanities instructors and scholars, like Charles Eliot Norton, held that cultural items--art, architecture, music, literature--revealed the spirit of a people; this had both objective and subjective qualities--it could be taught and it could be observed. Norton saw in the rise of the humanities three elements to replace the fading of Christian conviction:

1. the nurture aesthetic sensibilities through literary and artistic works;
2. the professorial linkages across cultural eras and times;
3. and the praise of European civilization as a kind of supercultural whole, though in all fairness Norton did not see Europe as the sole bearer of "civilization" (102-103).

Culture, however understood, became encoded with secular soteriological claims. Its purpose was to provide a comprehensive set of values, meanwhile leaving the physical condition of life to the natural (and eventually social) sciences.

As Turner points out, Norton substituted the vertical connection of humanity to God with a horizontal one of people to people (380). For Norton, the intuition of beauty was a product of human cultural progress. He understood beauty to be tied to moral desires, so that to cultivate one was to nurture the other. Imagination was at the heart of perceiving beauty; he saw this as an intellectual faculty obtained through "reflection, comparison, and remininscence" of images and other sense impressions (Liberal Education 382). In this sense, Norton's project represented the transition between other common sense realist claims for the moral sympathies and the eventually move to moral pragmatism. Turner claims that "Norton invented Western civilization" (384) in the sense that he put together a pedagogical and ideological program out of what others were suggesting piecemeal (384).

Yet at the project's heart were the conditions for its demise. Philology as the study, reconstruction, and interpretation of ancient texts formed the backbone of 18th and 19th century German university research and formed the basis for Norton's project. Philology was guided by cultural context and historicism (Roberts and Turner 97ff.); the first demanded a sense of the ancient culture's differences, while the second taught the constant change and evolution of cultures over time. In the end philological historicism within the humanities worked against anything like holism and eventually opened the way for a non-Christian soteriology to take its seat at the heart of university education, dismissing a unified or normative knowledge. It created a religion of cultivation, but one increasingly subject to emotivist ethics and relativistic truth claims.

By positioning ultimate meaning within the social and artistic milieu alone, it opened the door for William James' judgment of religion as capacity of supernatural feeling, but one without any final truth claims. For James, "Christianity makes sense only as disguised humanism" (Hauerwas 64). Prayer is only subjective authenticity and theological claims are only "over-beliefs" arising from religious feeling (66-68). There can be no final adjudication of what is true. Theologian Ernst Troeltsch would come to label this phenomena the "crisis of historicism" (119), one in which human culture could make only an agnostic gesture to the possibility of something beyond.

And this is what is at the heart of the Snow-Leavis debate. The two were, ironically, more in agreement than one might first think: both see the individual as primary and the conditions of life as finally oppressive and needing to be mitigated. Both also put something like an implicit trust in the humanities as offering the individual some surfeit from societal and biological meaninglessness. For Snow, however, only science can offer physical prosperity, which must be approached collectively while for Leavis and Trilling, the "criticism of life" offers a chance for freedom from the technopoly's oppression and operative conformity. Yet neither can reach a common basis for their pedagogical platforms. It is also highly questionable whether Trilling's attempt to adjudicate the two is any more successful.

Compare their assumptions with contemporary definitions of culture that Trilling recommended to his fellow Liberals in the 1940 Parisian Review, not for their "allegiance" but for their serious "consideration" (22). Historian Christopher Dawson and T.S. Eliot, whom Dawson influenced as part of The Moot and The Sword of the Spirit intellectual and ecumenical circles, held that culture and religion could not separated; indeed, a culture's without a religion was in the process of dying. Dawson held, "We cannot separate culture from religion any more than we can separate our life from our faith. As a living faith must change the life of the believer, so a living religion must influence and transform the social way of life" (Historic Reality 68). Religion, even if observed sociologically, is not one more sociological section of culture; it is not a sign system giving ritual meaning to otherwise material and psychological insufficiencies. Dawson charged that the material reading of history is not wrong to judge some "spiritual aspects of culture as conditioned by its material elements, but in the assertion of an absolute casual dependence of the former on the latter" (Enquiries vii). For Eliot, a people's religion and their culture are intertwined, perhaps really two aspects of the same thing, "culture being, essentially, the incarnation (so to speak) of the religion of a people" (101). Culture is "a whole way of life" (103) and a "lived religion" (104). But no people ever have a perfectly pure religion. Europe, thinks Eliot, has always been more or less Christian but not totally so. By incarnation, the, he means neither a simple relation nor an absolute identification (105ff.). Instead, he sees the two as operating in something like a tandem:

An individual European may not believe that the Christian Faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does, will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning. Only a Christian could have reproduced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche. I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian Faith. And I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. (200)

As we move into what many see as a post-Christian Europe, the jury remains out as to whether Eliot is correct.

What Trilling found attractive in Eliot's position was the promise of something beyond dialectical materialism of the Left: "What is meant negatively is that man cannot be comprehended in a formula; what is meant positively is the sense of complication and possibility, of surprise, intensification, variety, unfoldment, worth" (29-30). Trilling found in Eliot's politics the hope of a humanity not reducible to the Soviet overman nor the capitalist consumer. He approved in Eliot that "politics is to be judged by what it does for moral perfection, rather than the physical easement of man" (27). Trilling longed for something like a spiritual component to the human culture, even if was unable to conclude that "supernaturalism can aid us" (32).

Even if one finds aspects of Dawson and Eliot's historiography wanting, nonetheless, their insights leave those of us who teach literature in a confessional setting with a particular dilemma that I can only sketch in outline here: Can Trilling and Leavis' answer to Snow be our own? In light of the soteriological substitution each is making, should we be seeking to liberate our students from their cultural parameters? Likewise, what is the relationship between the cultures we study and the faith culture we consciously or unconsciously cultivate in our students' educations?

Bridging the Two Cultures of C.P Snow-- Part 1

Over the next week or so, I want to indulge in a little intellectual history. I want to explore a debate from the 1950s and 60s about the nature of culture, science, and the humanities. What I want to show is how even "secular" debates often mask religious desires. I hope you'll find this interesting.
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"We accordingly rejoice in the fact of the increased popularity of the university in both of its functions--that of culture and that of specialization"
--William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education (1898)

In his 1959 Rede Lectures, the scientist-novelist C.P. Snow argued that the intellectual world of the West had become bifurcated between the culture of scientists and that of literary intellectuals. While Snow purported to seek a détente between the literary academy and the scientific one, his sympathies were clearly with the later. "Industrialisation is the only hope of the poor," he charged,

It is all very well for one, as a personal choice, to reject industrialisation-- do a modern Walden, if you like, and if you go without much food, see most of your children die in infancy, despise the comforts of literacy, accept twenty years off your own life, then I respect you for the strength of you aesthetic revulsion. But I don't respect you in the slightest if, even passively, you try to impose the same choice on others who are not free to choose. (25-26)

In Snow's view, the literati who wanted to naysay a world of industrial progress are pampered and naïve at best. They exist in isolation from the world's need, living off the prosperity that science has brought their own nations. In his 1963, "A Second Look," Snow went further, painting the modernist school of Lawrence, Eliot and Pound as Luddite and Fascist all at once. He expressed incredulity and contempt, charging that those who dream of a pre-industrial world, really are ignorant as to what makes their own ease possible:

What is a machine-tool? I once asked a literary party; and they looked shifty. Unless one knows, industrial production is as mysterious as witch-doctoring. Or take buttons. Buttons aren't very complicated things: they are being made in millions every day: one has to be a reasonably ferocious Luddite not to think that that is, on the whole, an estimable activity. Yet I would bet that out of men getting first in arts subject at Cambridge this year, not one in ten could give the loosest analysis of the human organisation which it needs. (30)

Snow put much of the blame for this on an educational system arising out of Oxford and Cambridge that stressed over-specialization. The literary types simply never had enough mathematical training. Snow admitted that dangers could lie with natural science, as well, especially of the applied sort, but he felt the greater problem was with a culture of literature that denied applied science's promise for ending global poverty: "Literary intellectuals represent, vocalize, and to some extent shape and predict the mood of the non-scientific culture: they do not make the decisions, but their words seep into the minds of those who do" (61).

Thus, he envisioned a literary culture committed to the promise of applied science's technology, taking their lead from those who knew better how to mitigate the suffering of the physical world. "Changes in education are not going to produce miracles," he observed, but specialized education was a roadblock to a sympathetic public committed to such an expansive social hope.

Between the Rede Lectures and A Second Look, Snow had had cause to stop and consider the other side. His 1960 Godkin Lectures at Harvard, later published as Science and Government examined the inflated scientific council F.A. Lindemann had given the British government during World War II in regards to bombing in Germany. Snow wondered, "Will they say . . . we were wolves with the minds of men? Will they think that we resigned our humanity?" (Shusterman 27-28). He understood that especially in applied science, ethical reflection was a necessity, and he seemed to hope that the artistic culture might offer some help, but clearly he conceived this as one that takes its lead form the inevitable industrial, technological revolution.

While Snow himself was more interested in the larger social mileu within which higher education played a role, his claims about education nonetheless touched a real cord in the nerves of many academicians. His lectures set off an angry public contest, what one writer called, "the Great debate of our age" (Shusterman 25). Literary critic F. R. Leavis' 1960 Richmond Lecture “Two Cultures? The Significance of Lord Snow,” being the most infamous moment, was more a diatribe and a rant than a reasoned answer, so much so that it outraged even the literary set. He accused Snow's culture of science being nothing but unthinking materialism, where "no one will long consent to be without abundant jam, salvation, and lasting felicity to mankind" (59). Leavis' attack was in fact a response to The Two Cultures being used as a secondary school text and was given before a private audience. He only released the text publicly once it had been leaked by one of the attendees and had made its way into the papers.

Unfortunately Leavis' most insightful questions were obscured by the bile and dismissal of Snow's own abilities as a novelist. Nor did it slow down the public's interest in the lectures. By 1961, Snow's original work had already gone through seven printings. Leavis followed in 1966 with "Luddites? Or There is Only One Culture," insisting that human understanding, language, and the university function "as a focus of consciousness and human responsibility" (96) in imparting Western civilization to the next generation, so the humanities should be at the core of a college education.

Part of what makes Snow's and Leavis' polemics still worth reading is that they exemplify fundamental disagreements as to the sciences and the humanities' educational roles within modern society, and yet I will charge when seen from the vantage point of theological conviction, they are curiously alike.

They are, as I will argue this week, two competing soteriologies, seeking to free the individual in some way from an oppressive world of biological or technological necessity. Both seek a reform in education as a way of creating a new class of persons able to work social and moral change, yet both are blind to the spiritual dimension of the polis they seek.

Charity and the Politics of Honors

Caritas is the ancient Christian notion of love as concretely expressed in public and private actions. As a Latin term it almost functions as a cognate to the New Testament notion of agape. The two certainly overlap. Love (caritas, agape, call it what you will) can expose the hidden motives behind our attempts at honors, including that of academic programs.

Marilyn McCord Adams has observed that evils in life are not limited to questions of pain and morality. Esteem and disesteem make up a serious component in the way we value our lives: “[T]he category of honor centers, not on the evaluation of deeds, but on the sacred quality of persons," which is not to deny there is any relationship existing between conduct and honor. As a public and social system of regard, honor is something that is garnered because it is both owned by the person and given by the society. That universities regularly trade in systems of honor and shame: grades, awards, regalia, scholarships, and so on, should give us pause. As Adams further notes, honor (or shame) takes both “ascribed” and “acquired” forms: the former is given because of a person’s birth, class, or station; the later results from highly regarded deeds or misdeeds. The emphasis, rather than being on the quality of the actions themselves, however, falls on the person in toto. (The honors student is, well, more honorable, right?) We should not forget that symbolic systems of identity such as these are real matters of import for our students. Honor and shame have painful implications. The experience of even minor evils can disgrace a person, and that loss of honor can result in real anguish and humiliation. Psychic pain is as real as physical pain, and at times even more important for how it deforms and even destroys human self-regard.

Nothing about this understanding need assume the academic "innocence" of the “victims” who are "robbed" of self-respect. A poor performing student is a poor performing student. But our gifted students, the kind I tend to see in honors education, even more often have their reputations and self-conceptions tied to the academic system of rewards. The student in question may not think of himself or herself as a participant in a combative academy of honor, but something like that does continue to exist. A system of honor and shame takes place inevitably in an environment of challenge and riposte. Honor is a symbolic quality that must be maintained by the person in question. One either continues to gather and defend one’s honor, or one loses it. Any challenge--let us say, an average or poor grade-- to a person’s honor calls for some kind of response:

1. “positive rejection,” in which the person (or professor) making the challenge is deemed inferior and therefore unworthy of consideration at all;
2. “negative refusal,” in which case the person is now considered shamed--always a dicey approach in academics; or
3. “acceptance of the challenge” which can result in a war of wit (or arms) in a cycle of counter-challenges (Adams 109-110).

This pattern can take academic forms, even in a Christian environment that prides itself as a supportive atmosphere.

We need to take a long look at how their system of honor feeds into the modern social imaginary. The economic state of the West appears to be built more and more on a new pagan desire for libidio and power and for a stable control of human destiny; it wants to offer a revised salvation of personal prosperity and life needs satisfied. What kind of honor are we preparing our students to receive?

An eschatological structure, as I've discussed in the last two posts, can move in repentant or rebellious directions, moving toward or away from God's intended pattern of development. Offering a new millennium, the current libidinal world economy offers a false eschatology, narratives of sexual and consumerist salvation--an end to repression, an awakening to utter multiplicity of desire; the body as pseudo-sacramental hypersexualization able to endlessly buy and consume products of desire. The modern media and consumerist state functions as a secular soteriology which will not permit the claims of Christ as the only Lord (Caesar). Our modern social spaces are what Graham Ward calls cities of aspiration and desire; unable to offer a true community, they only manage autonomous individuals in their personal choices. "It is not good to eat much honey, or to seek honor on top of honor. Like a city breached, without walls, is one who lacks self-control." (Prov 25:27-28). Such a statement, I realize, sounds faintly puritanical and bizarre, maybe even unpatriotic, to modern ears.

To speak of the "politics" and "economy" of the Christian Church is to risk confusion because to speak of the Church (and the Christian university) as a counter-polis is to expand the definition of Realpolitik to a sacramental vision of virtue-oriented traditions. These traditions have the end of God's kingdom reigning over all. The libertarian society of atomic individuals, by contrast, is a truncated politics. The purpose of power and honor is forgotten; or worse, it is made into insatiable desire itself. To train our students for this, to make them leaders in such a system, is problematic. The church as public polis is really trans-political in the modern sense of that word, and the local and the small may reflect far better the kind of honor and worth we wish to train our students to undergo and to give away. In the same way the oikos of God, God's household, transcends our normal conceptions of economics as certain macro and micro-systems of human monetary exchange.

Admittedly, this seems like an uphill battle when we as Americans, for example, treat our educations as economic counters of the more limited kind, but we as global Christians have the gifts of congregation and scripture to counter them with. The cross of Christ is, after all, an apocalypse, a revelation of God's judgment on the powers that be. His stigmata are signs of compassion. Atonement makes our education both polis and oikos, politics and economy, but of a far wider place. The sacrifice and splendor of a cross-shaped teaching will be wasteful in its love for and on the students. The crowns of heaven we receive can be cast down at the feet of Jesus, and now we multiply honor when we freely pour it out in sacrifice.

We cannot squander what we cannot exhaust. The love of God is a generative principle within our pedagogies.

Creating a Culture of Advent

There is more than one way to talk about expectation and education. We should remember as Christian educators and students that we are a people "outside the city" still awaiting the full vindication of God on that last of all days, and even in that vindication we expect our academic service and ministry to be tried by the fire of Christ's judgment seat. Our programs, lesson plans, and papers will be purged. What will remain of my own, I wonder?

The season of Advent, for example, stresses not only the first coming of Christ, but also the second coming. It is a season about being prepared, and such annual preparation is good for our academic calendar-driven mania. Advent reminds us that we are called to waiting, to patience between the first and second advents of our savior. To wait is to remember how fragile our egos, how empty our claims for ourselves are, how partial our self-concepts are. When we wait, we may be left alone for a season, staring into the silence, unable to be propped up by another's friendship or false praise or kind mercy. When we wait, we may face temptations to be afraid, to fear that God will not act. When we wait, we also face the temptation to onui, to boredom and to cynicism. In the midst of our longing and our vulnerability, we may even be tempted to disbelief, to wonder if any of this that we hold to is true at all.

But this waiting, this "being put on hold" is good for us. In our flattened-out economy of instant everything, we need to learn to wait in silence. Silence is an important preparation for learning, a fertile field sowed in both peace and suffering. To create a culture of Advent is to place our honors and awards within the context of eternity, to see them as gifts to be given away. They are accolades in the academy that we sometimes achieve in sweat and tears and sleepless nights, yet they are finally still gifts--not paper and parchment we can hold on to forever. It is better to wear them lightly as Thomas, Archbishop Beckett secretly wore a hairshirt under his Canterbury robes. We either undertake this voluntarily or what we are left with is finally a far more painful separation. T.S. Eliot's masterful Little Gidding reflects on this strange choice of persecution or of apostasy:

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire (sec. IV).

This I admit seems entirely counter-intuitive to the mission of higher education. We are accustomed to the work of words and knowledge. To consider that our calling might deserve divine wrath seems offensive at best, and possibly sadomasochistic. Paul warns us, however, that "[w]e know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know" (I Cor. 8:1-2). We need to go without; we need to find ourselves alone; we need to be left with ourselves trembling before the throne of the Almighty Judge and before the Master of All Things.

During our waiting, we remember that we need Jesus to come and to tear down our career pretenses, to curse our pedagogical inadequacies, and to pronounce a warning to our inflated souls in order that we might be saved. Only when we give ourselves over to such a place can we receive the blessing of renewal that God has for us, including the form it must take in the academy. Only when we ourselves are aware of our own limitations, our self-deceptions, and our sin are we then prepared to extend the promise of God's good peace, his good wholeness, his honor to others. Only then can we begin to see our students and teachers as Christ sees them. May this prayer be our own:

May God be merciful to us and bless us,show us the light of his countenance and come to us.
May your ways be known upon earth,your saving health among all nations.
May the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.
May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide all the nations upon earth.
May the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.
The earth has brought forth her increase; may God, our own God, give us his blessing.
May God give us his blessing, and may all the ends of the earth stand in awe of him (Psalm 67, BCP)

Advent, after all, means "appearing." We are each to prepare our hearts to be images of God, to be an advent of Christ--an appearing of Christ-- in our circle of influence, wherever that may be. The nations need his saving health. If the primary ontological reality is participation (caritas), then a history based on power abuse is a partial history, a history of evil only as negation. We look for our eschatological bodies to be perfect and to behold the beatific vision. What we are is not lost but refined.

A culture of Advent is a culture of forgiveness, living in two times: the past offense and God's completed restoration held together but the later like a counterpoint revising the former's meaning. Our final unction is a pledge of our final healing. The beatific vision need not be understood as a static vision that privileges the theoretical disciplines over the applied as more reflective of the eschaton's final state. If the energies of God are active, ever circulating in love, then as the children realize in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, we can go forever "further up and further in."

Response to Online Education Post

I certainly appreciate your views on online education; however, the education system is not what it was over 26 years ago when I attended public school. Children are introduced to computers throughout elementary school these days. The penmanship of our youth today is evidence of the negative impact technology has played in the teaching styles of today.

The technological advances of today have also enhanced the opportunities to participate in distance learning. I have attended traditional college classes throughout the years; however, I prefer attending classes online. I find my university's online format structured and engaging.

I definitely think it is important to have a strong support system, but I also reflect on the intrinsic motivation that led me to return to school.

We all have different learning styles; online education isn't for everyone, but at least it provides a viable option to traditional learning.

Dawn Workman

Anxiety and Expectation

What does it mean to long for the end times, for the apocalypse? And why is it that all cultures seem to have some variation of a story about the end of life and time? Definitions are perhaps in order here. An apocalypse, first and foremost, is a narrative of the world, both present and to come. It tells a story of both what we long for and therefore, what currently we do not. Apocalupsis means an “unveiling” or revelation. In that sense, eschatological expectation still awaits decisive moments of victory, even if already declared. We are longing for an end to the wickedness, evil, and grief of the world. We look for the promise of judgment, as well as the promise of the universe made new and renewed.

Bernard McGinn's definition of apocalypse is fairly typical and quite comprehensive:

“Apocalypse" is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, in so far as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, in so far as it involves another, supernatural world.

Thus, apocalypses reach both into the future and into the heavenlies. They bring together the future ahead of us and the eternal above and outside of us. They long for the merging of the two: the holy and everlasting realm comes to earth, touches down into the time-bound realm to remake it in the image of the eternal.

Of course, it is possible to treat apocalyptic longing as nothing but a species of sublimated and anthropological longing. Just as something that humans do to help make this pain-filled world a little more bearable. Frank Kermode, for example, notes how apocalyptic thought nearly always operates out of the “fiction of transition,” the belief that the writer’s own era is a period between the golden past and the coming restoration. The present era becomes a saeculum, an era in providential history, subject at present to “intemporal agony” as it awaits its salvation. Such a conception of the age as a period of transition lends also itself to a feeling of pent-up waiting. One is continually denied what has been promised. Apocalyptic endings, in this view, always end in anger and frustration.

But surely the answer for Christians is not a refusal of the ending or a transposition of it into nothing but a small meditation on our personal deaths, as important as that can be. We cannot privatize the apocalypse. We hold out hope for God to judge this world and make a new heaven and earth not just for ourselves but for all creation--humans, other species, the ecosystems themselves.

An apocalypse is a theodicy (i.e. an answer to the problem of evil) and, therefore, a meditation upon one large aspect of the educational project as well. An apocalypse answers the problem of evil by tying a description of the world’s evil to hope in God’s actions and trust in God’s justice. It suggests that the problem of evil is answered by the decisive, future answer that God will give—an eradication of all that offends. Likewise, it trusts that the end result will be so decisive, so embarrassingly bountiful, as in some way to compensate or reconfigure what has come before. An apocalypse, even in its stark ash and blood of destruction and judgment, is finally an epistemology of abundance. God will not leave us to ourselves, nor will he leave the evil of existence without a flood of good that promises to drown (baptize, if you will) and cleanse the sin-stained world.

Thus, apocalypse is also a word for justice. As Stephen O’Leary observes, “Evil is or will be justified and made sensible in the ultimate destiny of the cosmos." Experientially in the present, an apocalypse is a theodicy because it offers the resources to name and manage evil's ability to unhinge the rationality of our lives. Life makes sense again when we understand at least in part what the end will be to the story. But an apocalypse is not just an existential moment of deep and dependent awareness; it is also a socio-psychological response and one that can be defensive in nature. Apocalypse operates as a “resistance to the powers that be," as Paul Fiddes puts it. And because it often gives voice to the disenfranchised, it challenges the “imperial speech” that “all is well."

Apocalypse is a call to social action and community formation, to praise and repentance. In short, to worship.

The Vanity of a University Education

"I said to myself, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.

For in much wisdom is much vexation,and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow." (Eccl 1:16-18)

Why, then, do we university professors, students, staff, and administration often fail in this Christian pedagogical project? We should begin by recognizing this implication of Scripture: The university is full of lies.

But, then, so is every aspect of human life. This ubiquity and immersion of evil is the meaning of total depravity: not that human beings are incapable of good, even great good, but that every aspect of our good is subject to corruption and that our “good” is inevitably mixed in its motives and ends. The language and lessons of paradox are profitably invoked before our attempts at the true understanding, the righteous act, and the sublime beauty. Sometimes the honorable and the dishonorable are impossible in practice to tease apart, as are the wise and foolish, the noble and ignoble, the selfless and selfish, and the attractive and repulsive. There is no perfect Christian education. Every university begun by people of faith is subject to the same forces of sin that infect everyday life. Thus, we must be willing to face the truth about our best efforts even in the name of Christ. All our efforts contain a measure of vanity. We should not be shocked to discover this worm at the heart of our pedagogical projects. Instead, such knowledge should force us back on God’s grace and mercy.

I would contend that Ecclesiastes is a good “prelude” to the Christian college or university and is especially instructive to honors students who strive, even expect, to thrive in the collegiate academic environment. It offers an astringent lesson on the failure of temporary happiness. The author of Ecclesiastes (hereafter Qohelet, meaning “teacher,” “preacher” or “gatherer”) invokes vanity (hesed) not just as an observation about life, but also as a judgment on its qualities. Hesed for Qohelet is the finding of evil in what we count as important and in what we suffer. The inevitable nature of death (Eccl 12:1-8) haunts our mirrors of self-delusion, and the limits of human memory haunt the shelf life of our scholarly reputations and our past students’ recall of our curriculum (Eccl 12:11-12; 8:13-18). The ephemeral nature of what we seek to attain and to retain is often invoked in satires on education such as Erasmus’ Praise of Folly or John Trumbull’s The Progress of Dullness, to name only two of multiple examples, but admittedly it is not a subject we are prone to return to. Critical realism suggests that we should.

Qohelet’s dissatisfaction with his various explorations of happiness is a sharp challenge to the promises by which universities sell themselves. He recounts the inevitable disappointment with pleasure, consumption, great works, ownership, power over others, possessions—monetary, aesthetic, territorial, sexual, even pleasure in work and in fame (Eccl 2). This is in part why the tradition of American education distorts the self as a basis and end for learning--because education is held out as the key to the promised good life, one built on all the above. Offering ourselves as a necessary step to career success may have a measure of truth to it, but we commit ourselves to an economy other than Jesus’ when we also tacitly suggest that this is the center of human meaning and purpose. "Since it is hard to market subversion, that creates a certain cognitive dissonance for colleges that retain the liberal arts ideal as more than a shibboleth," so says Merold Westphal. But at the same time, this negative potential is also true of a promotion of liberal arts as in itself being fulfilling.

Without the context and telos of the Christian eschaton, the liberal arts as career pursuits are also false gods subject to disappointment and human pretension. Qohelet treats work in a complex way—it is a burden and a labor, as full of conflict, danger, and the perversion of power, yet it is also a gift from God. This can be said of careers in academics and in politics, in business, in the human services sector, and so on. Work inevitably contains suffering, and that personal “happiness” is not itself a guarantee of anything, especially the condition of true blessedness which carries with it the deep joy of true happiness. Ordinary happiness is right and good, but it should not become a god, an attempt to escape the conditions of our existence as God’s creatures (Eccl 8:16-17; 9:7-12). The Christian university should offer a more full-bodied portrait of human existence and vocational fulfillment, including its sinfulness.

By themselves, career success and the liberal arts are both subject to the corruption of instrumentalism. Qohelet here, too, is instructive. We are all subject to nature’s limitations, to the seeming caprice of the world (Fortuna), to death. The university can overcome none of these, and we fool ourselves if we claim to be able. Ecclesiastes is a lesson that evil is not a question of systemic mismanagement or of an environmentally defective upbringing. Better organization and better education do not of themselves eradicate evil. To speak of the foolishness of the university may seem counter-intuitive to us, but we must recognize that its educational pretensions are finally empty. The disappointment surrounding portions of the postmodern multiversity is similar to the sage’s dark wisdom. Only when we come to understand deeply the failure of the university may we pursue a Christian education that seeks to align itself with God’s wise order for creation and the human person.

The misuse of academic power calls for Christian hospitality, as the economics of education must be chastened by Christian concern. As Jacques Ellul points out, “Our pursuit of money is infinite;” we can never have enough. Economic unrest is devouring in its service to the god Mammon. It is lost before death’s nullification: “The evil lies in the fact that money makes everything possible, yet it is nothing." In similar fashion, liberal arts, which in theory are for “nothing” but themselves, really become instruments of human pretension, a belief in career success, over-therorization as a tool for locating and creating illusions of order. “The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings. . . Of anything beyond these, my child, beware. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Eccl 12:11-12).

Qohelet’s wisdom, we should not forget, is not at the center of the canonical truths, but functions (as does all the wisdom tradition) as an expression of creational and covenantal purpose. To fear the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7). “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments” (Eccl 12:13).

The Formative Role of Congregational Worship

"Sunday morning is the practice of a counter-life through counter-speech" -- Walter Brueggeman

Our ethical lives, as I've suggested in a number of posts lately, are best understood in a narrative that has key moments; they are full of defining events, as well as continual movement and development. Our personal plots, our characters' origins, climaxes, and dénouements, occur within particular settings that give shape and meaning to our stories. This is assuredly true of Christian tradition. There is a direct connection between the practice of congregational life and liturgy and the practice of Christian higher learning. The pursuit of Christian education must have as its end the good of worship because worship restores the practice of university learning to its original meaningful good.

Debra Dean Murphy notes that in worship, we practice being a certain kind of person; the same is true of classroom learning. True knowledge is committed to action, practice, habit, even ritual. For the Christian, such knowledge is at the heart of worship--it is doxological, Eucharistic, and liturgical. We are learning "to live by the story that has called [us] into existence." We cannot be outside the Christian story to truly experientially know it; instead, we must practice it.

True education is performative and therefore, transformative. Nisi crediertis, non intelligitis. (Unless you have believed, you will not understand.) Communion with God and his people and the pursuit of truth are not separate for the Christian--conversion is life-long because the relationship with God and others is life-long. True knowledge, then, involves desire for the other and is dependent upon the other (i.e. God). The typical pattern of congregational worship teaches us an alternative language that helps us resist the fallen powers of this world, which are expressed as false worldviews and as false social structures. This congregational pattern is participatory--it involves learning a language and a bodily habit. It involves learning to see, imagine, and practice the world differently than how our culture sees and enacts it. According to Murphy, in place of planned obsolescence, self-dependence, and a "myth of scarcity," Christian worship offers a pattern of ritual return:

1. Entrance: Gathering for worship and opening worship initiates us into another way of understanding the world, by its nature deeply physical. Its liturgical space, rituals, and scriptural and traditional imagery set us apart as a separate community.
   
2. Proclamation and response: The church in worship seeks a Holy Spirit-guided, mutual discerning of the scriptures as the Word of God. The Bible rightly interprets the world, instead of the reverse. Preaching and teaching are acts of holy imagination. They are also invitations to a corporate knowledge that begins by abiding in the triune life of God.
   
3. Thanksgiving and communion: All prayer has a corporate, transformative aspect to it, but we need to do a better job teaching ourselves what prayer does so that it can truly shape our identities. In the same way the "prayer" of the Lord's Supper is an expression of the mystery of God and, therefore, is essential to our identities in Christ.
   
4. Sending forth: The act of ending worship, especially with a prayer of blessing or commissioning, reminds us that our worship is our ethic; it is our condition rather than simply a source of ethical reflection. We are called to live out on a day-to-day basis all that our baptisms (i.e. our commitments to Christ) imply, and this is a life of worship in all its aspects--including the work of worldview transformation, the sharing of the gospel, and the work of justice in all its expressions.

We are formed and shaped by the practices that we submit ourselves to intellectually, emotionally, intuitionally, bodily, and socially, yet this pursuit of worship through education is finally dependent upon the Creator who transcends us and yet freely offers himself in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. Glen Stassen and David Gushee have labeled this triune character formation which is social and sacramental, and therefore, which is obedient in its liturgical dependence, as "[p]articipative grace." The cooperation of God's people with the in-breaking of his eschatological reign neither claims for itself a works-based righteousness nor acquiesces to moral passivity. Instead, it is the evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit on the heart of the faithful Christian. It is centered on the kind of virtuous habits the Christian internalizes and practices. It cannot be isolated as a topic for discussion only; it must arise out of internally reflective practices and commitments.

The actions commanded by Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, for example, are spiritually formative--they remake our hearts and whole persons when we practice them in grace. "Character is shaped in community, and that means churches must be communities, not mere preaching stations. . . . [K]oinonia . . combines the meaning of community and fellowship with the meaning of service" (Stassen 61). It seems to me that such an understanding can be embraced by both Catholic and Lutheran, by both Calvinist and Arminian. The debate as to whether God's righteousness is judicially designated or covenantally received, as well as whether it is infused or imparted, justifying us before and/or during the process of sanctification, certainly impinges on this question, but all these positions can accommodate the practical reality that (to quote Bono of U2) grace "she travels outside of karma."

The Online Experience

This post comes from Rebecca Newton. She is a student in my online American Government course.

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In the ever evolving world of technology, it is evident that what once was, is no more. Life affords us what some would consider luxuries. The convenience to attend school online was not available a few years ago.

However, are we really better off? Maybe not. Face-to-face instruction has been replaced with virtual learning. But, I have to question whether we are garnering the same quality education that we would if we were in a traditional classroom. Most students look for that nurturing and "at a boy" encouragement that instructors provide. Also, instant feedback and constructive criticism is gone. Not to mention, research. The encyclopedia is obsolete. Now, we have the Internet. Although the Internet is faster and more up-to-date, it is not always credible. So, stepping out of the classroom has it's advantages and disadvantages.

I still remember my favorite teacher from high school that pushed me to do my best and helped me to recognize my true potential. That was sixteen years ago. She took extra time with her students, and that is what students need; no matter what age or environment.

So, with online, higher learning, do we sacrifice what is readily available at smaller community colleges or technical schools? I think so. It is not bad. But, we as students, have to encourage ourselves and use outside influences like family to push us to our full potential.

We have become complacent with the way things have evolved.

What Is Faith-Learning Integration?

A phrase we often use in Christian education is "the integration of faith and learning." What exactly does that mean, anyway? For professors, our area of study (such as literature, economics, history, ethics, politcal science, or theology--just to mention those represented by the professors who contribute here) shape the way we view the world, the questions we ask, and the answers we receive. Looking at the broad picture, unpacking the assumptions of a academic field, and digging deeper into its conversation and controversies requires that we learn to appreciate the models, applications, and pedagogy that our various academic fields demand. Professorship requires of us a certain examination of the foundations of our subjects, a certain mastery of the content, and a strong sense of how the field is divided into differing schools and approaches. Even this point should not overlook that differing fields and courses and teachers also take differing shapes. There is no one complete metapedagogy, that is no one complete way of teaching everything.

William Hasker in his "Faith-Learning Integration: An Overview" (1992) offers a helpful model for Christian disciplinary engagement, observing that the approach to the field has much to do with how compatible that the scholar perceives the subject in question to be with the teachings of his or her faith. Hasker suggests that a continuum exists between those who feel little tension and those who feel great tension. He gives these positions three names:

1. The compatabilist, at one end of the spectrum, assumes a fair amount of overlap between the ideals of the faith and the claims of the discipline; thus, “[t]he scholar’s task is one of showing how shared assumptions and concerns can be profitably linked." For example, a Christian psychologist might see a large amount of simple compatibility between current models of behavioral addiction and the Christian understanding of bondage. In this case, the practitioner would be more concerned with how best to apply their insights in a way that is faithful to the Christian offices of prophet, priest, and prince regent.
2. The transformationist, however, would go further because while a true or acceptable model is present in the field, it needs to be reworked “into one with a Christian orientation." Our Christian counselor might find in family systems models several key insights worth adopting, all the while recognizing that some of the theories fundamental assumptions are incompatible with Christian teaching on the family.
3. The reconstructionist, Hasker’s third category, must go even further: "the existing disciplines are so deeply permeated with anti-Christian assumptions of secularism, rationalism, and naturalism he has no choice but to reject them and to begin at the beginning in a radical reconstruction of the disciplines on . . . fully biblical foundations." Our psychologist might reject the field of evolutionary psychology as hopelessly built on naturalistic assumptions about human desire and sexuality and in need of an entirely new proposal as to analyzing the sources of said desire.

In each case, some aspect of all three approaches might be necessary.

Nicolas Wolterstorff in his book Education for Shalom has also analyzed how disciplinary engagement can contain potential points of deceit for the Christian scholar (or student), precisely because none of us want to live too long with cognitive dissonance. "Harmonization," Wolterstorff charges, is the temptation to revise the faith to meet the convictions of the discipline. The research specialist, rather than live in the tension between a doctrine of the embodied soul and current models of brain chemistry, revises her faith to a materialist position on personality.

Wolterstorff designates the word "compatibilism" in a different way from Hasker. The compatabilist scholar treats faith and field as applying to two differing areas of life; thus, they have little or no conflict. The same scholar decides now that the scriptures do not really speak to anything like physical anthropology.

"Delimitation," he argues, goes further by actually artificially limiting the scope of faith and field to achieve a similar lack of tension. The scholar, faced with biblical passages that would seem to mandate something like an immaterial, disembodied existence, reworks them as metaphoric language, while insisting that findings in brain chemistry are also only a language describing electrical impulses--a language of measurement rather than human existential meaning .

Any of these methods at times may be a legitimate response to the conflict. For example, the Christian may legitimately come to interpret a biblical passage differently given new findings in science. Delimitation may be justified at some level, and the perceived tension is the means to force us to see that. However, Wolterstorff worries that too often Christian scholars want cognitive relief without doing the hard work of disciplinary engagement. We do not closely examine the field's claims long enough to propose a new research model that outpaces the current ones.

What both Hasker and Wolterstroff want to show is that the relationship between Christian faith and learning and academic fields made up of many non-Christians and some Christians is a complex one. No one size fits all.

Pedagogy and Friendship

John Henry Newman understood only too well that professors influence students; the question is not if influence will take place but what kind of influence. He held that a pedagogy without the friendship of professor and student can only expect an environment of distrust and hostility: "An academic system without the personal influence of teachers upon pupils is an arctic winter; it will create an ice-bound, petrified, cast-iron University and nothing else."

Strangely, this is a result that many in the modern university not only accept as normal but practice as a virtue. The pedagogical practices inherent in Alasdair MacIntyre's encyclopedic method and the genealogical critiques may not know it, but they exist in ethical practices, though ones gone terribly array. Their methods of objective distance and power distrust have been made more believable by being offered in an ethical and pedagogical environment that reinforces their claims-- its very structure, at once supposedly objective yet lacking in anything like a curricular common vision.

Mark Schewn places much of the blame for this at the heart of the nineteenth-century German research institution, as well as the Weberian distrust of emotion and relationship in university education. Phillia, Weber holds, always pollutes the objectivity necessary for true research. But is this really the case?

Michel Polanyi observed that research is more intuitive in nature than is mostly admitted, and it is often passed along in non-verbalized ways to its new initiates. He called this "conviviality," the communication of true knowledge on the inarticulate level. Such knowledge involves a fair level of trust between teacher and student, and is therefore, essentially a-critical in nature. As such it is a tacit knowing: "We must now recognize belief once more as the source of all knowledge. Tacit assent and intellectual passions, the sharing of an idiom and of cultural heritage . . . No intelligence, however critical or original, can operate outside such a fiduciary framework."

The modern university by its overt distrust of friendship creates a world where encyclopedia and genealogy tragically seem true, though at the most human level they must continue to teach and research despite this, living off the cultural capital of intellectual honesty, collegiality, freedom of conscience, trust in rational discourse, scholarly discipline, a dependence on continuity with the past, even the desire for mentorship between student and teacher--all ethical practices which must be taken on faith, as Polanyi observes, even when honored in the breach.

Note how in Henry James' story, "The Figure in the Carpet" that once the narrator experiences knowledge as utility and as mastery, it soon replaces joy and delight in the love of learning:

[W]hat now occurred was simply that my new intelligence and vain preoccupation damaged my liking. I not only failed to run a general intention to earth, I found myself missing the subordinate intentions I had formerly enjoyed. His books didn't even remain the charming things they had been for me; the exasperation of my search put me out of conceit of them. Instead of being a pleasure the more they became a resource the less; for from the moment I was unable to follow up the author's hint I of course felt it a point of honour not to make use professionally of my knowledge of them. I had no knowledge - nobody had any. It was humiliating, but I could bear it - they only annoyed me now. At last they even bored me, and I accounted for my confusion - perversely, I allow - by the idea that Vereker had made a fool of me. The buried treasure was a bad joke, the general intention a monstrous pose (293).

Treating your education in a purely instrumental way is to succumb to the encyclopedia project of which MacIntyre warned, which only too quickly leads to the distrust and suspicion of genealogy. Such a disposition of mind and heart can occur in any educational environment, but the modern ethical chaos of individualism only lends it a deeper epistemic credulity. We have literally created academic structures that make the modern and post-modern assertions feel true, even as our humanity must struggle against them. As such, these structures are traditions who have hidden from themselves their former purpose for existence, living in a practice that once had the higher end of the love of knowledge from a dedication to the truth as the gift of God.

This current state of things suggests that Christian institutions of higher learning need to be cognizant and intentional about friendships between faculty and students. Learning is not just factual but intuitive and initiatory. Mentoring is often a two-way street because education is founded on the practice of submission, initiation, cultivation, and eventual contribution and clarification. As Jaroslav Pelikan reminds us,

The moment of truth comes . . . [as] the student begins to arrive at conclusions different from those of the master, as the largely unilateral power relationship of apprenticeship gradually yields, or should yield, in a healthy relationship--to authentic community and a deepening collegiality between teacher and student . . . it is a rite of passage filled with joy and fulfillment for all concerned, as well as with moments of deep anxiety.

What renders this "moment of truth" and "rite of passage" meaningful is a shared commitment to something like the academic ideal, a belief in freedom of inquiry as an essential aspect of our true humanness. As such, it demands of us personal virtues, fiduciary skills of trust and time, and they can exist for a season in systems of thought that mitigate against themselves.

Yet the cultures of encyclopedia and genealogy are finally pedagogically incoherent. These virtues cannot stand by themselves for very long. What they need is the larger theistic framework of the purpose of knowledge and of intellectual service to humanity to render their academic ideal an ultimately meaningful practice. Faithfulness in this context means an investment in others; it requires a certain speed--a slow listening and speaking that "hears" the tacit dimension in the other person. We all have favorite teachers in our lives, and those of us in higher education can each recall very significant professors who shaped our future callings, answered our questions, guided our thinking, assuaged our doubts, and disturbed our complacency.

In a Christian context, we need the hypergood, the telos, or final end we are pursuing set before us always, what the Westminster Confession so lovingly made proverbially:

Question 1: What is the chief and highest end of man?
Answer: Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.

Our Fragile Selves & Unction

Lauren Winner recently coined the phrase "aromatheology" to describe Susan Ashbrook Harvey's Scenting Salvation, an account of Patristic worship and theology as being multi-sensory. What I like about the term is that it reminds us that our senses, made by our Creator, belong to our Creator. The pedagogical emphases on multi-media education need to transcend the pragmatic, as well as practice a careful discernment. The shape of a medium is its message, as Marshall MacLuhan used to warn us. The changes that each new technology brings to the human person are not de facto worthy of being embodied nor do they all guarantee good learning. Instead, they often contain a curriculum and a means of formation hidden in what they offer. Sound and sight, touch and taste, smell and our sense of gravity are another way our embodied existence must be understood for truly effective pedagogy And yet not just by using differing media for a media-glutted generation; rather, what is called for is a renewal of what our sensory faculty are actually for--the divine presence as meditated through the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty. Can we consider a pedagogy of scent and touch?

For example, imagining our deaths and imagining our healing is what unction is about. The oil of anointing is a reminder of our dependence and our fragility. We are like smoke or the flowers of the field. To be anointed for healing is to engage in a meditation on our inutility. We cannot heal ourselves. We are even led to ponder our deaths. This contemplation of the dust of mortality is not Liebestot, the love of death and macabre culture. Instead, it is being before doing. This is an insight we need to return to on occasion in Christian education.

We exist first and foremost for the primary calling of Christ to himself. As Os Guinness puts it, "Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to his summons and service." While I am not, of course, suggesting that every class begin with the physical anointing of our students' foreheads with oil (or ash)--amusing as that might be. I am suggesting that the physical, embodied nature of worship sacramentally prepares us for better encounters with the media of our classrooms, just as a worship that focuses solely on the inward experience of our students courts gnosticism and media deception, mistaking bells and whistles, sexy effects and sounds, for true transformative learning. We need to be sensitive to whether the aroma of our teaching is indeed a pleasing sacrifice to the nostrils of God.

This is as good a place as any to reflect on the place of prayer in learning--classroom, lab, in private, etcetera. Prayer is not a disavowal of the bodily life or the life of action, for contemplation and action are intimately tired together. A sacramental ethos of learning always stresses the participation and presence of learning, so our prayers in the classroom ought to be tied to the actual practice of teaching and learning we plan to undertake. They should not be vague, pious offerings that treat the spiritual life as somehow functionally divorced from learning. They should be recognitions of our utter dependence upon Christ the Logos for any real learning.

Lenten Pedagogy -- part 4

As Christ's faithful bride, as his priests for this world, we are called to extend hands of mercy to those in need. This is a high calling wherever it is practiced. I have often toyed with the idea of introducing a speaker by talking about his or her character qualities, by calling attention to what God has done in a person’s life despite himself, or by calling attention to the testimony of love from those nearest her. Of course, such doesn’t easily fit the genre of introductions, and it could come across as too precious.

Likewise, there are certain virtues in showing gratitude to someone for their accomplishments, yet how do we work within an academic hierarchy of honors, awards, and padded vitas while remembering that the Man of Sorrows had no place to rest his head? John Mogabgab has written,

Far from removing us from the messiness of the world, spiritual formation plunges us into the middle of the world's rage and suffering. It was to this place of pain and bewilderment that Jesus Christ was sent as a visible image of the invisible God . . . Through us love is extended to the furthest recesses of human sorrow and need. God's love for the world--in us because we are in Jesus Christ--becomes a sign of hope and a source of transformation in the world.

This to me seems a profound statement of what Christian education in general, and honors education in particular, should seek to accomplish. Service learning cannot truly be effective without formation in the spiritual disciplines that form our capacities. If we wish to serve as the imago dei, we must embrace the sacramental nature of our confession and discipline. Service learning to be truly sacramental must grow out of baptism and communion, vocation and the nuptial meaning of our bodies, and it must be the product, as well as the instrument, of repentance.

Lenten Pedagogy -- part 3

Consecration is an important element of Christian education, especially when we are tempted to look for greener pastures during the stressful times of grading and writing that every semester brings. Gerald May puts it this way:

Consecration means dedication to God. It occurs when we claim our deepest desire for God, beneath, above, and beyond all other things. We may not understand the full meaning of consecration: the ups and downs, the joys and agonies of the journey that must follow. And certainly we will be unable to grasp the overarching cosmic meaning of our small assent, the joy it gives to God, the deepening love it will bring to humanity, the . . . covenant it has enriched. But our yes comes from some bare recollection of all these things. In a tiny space our hearts can say yes.

Confession and spiritual mortification call us to self-examination that we may forget ourselves and to alms-giving that we may gain great blessings. Monks often take a vow of stability, pledging to stay in the place their life has been planted. While I am certainly not arguing that professors or students should never change universities, I do think we need to acknowledge that certain aspects of our growth require the suffering of endurance and the humility of choosing perhaps the lesser of places, at least in some academics' estimation. Calvin sees a similar kind of stability in the very vocations we are called to by God:

The last thing to be observed is, that the Lord enjoins every one of us, in all the actions of life, to have respect to our own calling. He knows the boiling restlessness of the human mind, the fickleness with which it is borne hither and thither, its eagerness to hold opposites at one time in its grasp, its ambition.

Therefore, lest all things should be thrown into confusion by our folly and rashness, he has assigned distinct duties to each in the different modes of life. And that no one may presume to overstep his proper limits, he has distinguished the different modes of life by the name of callings. Every man's mode of life, therefore, is a kind of station assigned him by the Lord that he may not be always driven about at random. (Institutes 3.10.6)

While Calvin’s model is perhaps more static than our lives necessitate, there is a real truth to this; namely, we are tempted by selfish motives that drive, even infect, our noble callings. This native presumption of the fallen mind can only too easily be attested to in education, so the gift of stability has much to pedagogically commend it. When we train in God’s kingdom, we are not training for ourselves alone, but for the needs of a hurting world, and this is true of the end and purpose of our teaching and the Christian educational project as a whole.

This training includes a counter-cultural approach to success. We need, I need, a self-check each time I blanch before those teaching at Yale, Princeton, or Oxford.

Lenten Pedagogy -- part 2

Having authority carries with it its own spiritual dangers. Leading carries the temptation to forget our dependence on others. As a teacher, one can easily become accustomed to students doing what you say or agreeing with you because you control the grade.

We need a practice of self-confrontation. We need to confess our sins, remember who we are, and most importantly renew our dependence on the larger work of the kingdom of God. The classic disciplines of the Church—fasting, prayer, study, corporate worship, silence, service, and so on--when we engage in them, we do so not to punish ourselves in unhealthy ways, but so that we might better conform to the person of Jesus. Such practices are a call to holy exercise. As Paul says, “I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.” There are, of course, good ways and bad ways to exercise.

Richard Swinburne has noted that in the Christian faith a Lenten principle is deeply pervasive. Human beings have trouble rightly ordering their desires; we take things that are good and turn them into idols. We hold on to what is simply ours to steward. We take too much of what should be shared. We hoard when only a little is needed. This is why scripture teaches that Christians must fast, give to those in need, and learn to suffer the little irritants of life. This is also why we at times may be called to endure the death of some of our most cherished dreams and desires. We must at times intentionally frustrate those desires because they influence us more than they should.

Even those things that are otherwise good can not always be indulged. We must enter the desert of the spirit so that we may receive the wellsprings of life. This is certainly true of the kind of discipline and decision-making that are necessary for effective study and scholarship. We limit part of ourselves, that is we consecrate ourselves in order to be changed by God, so that we may truly partake of all that is his.

Lenten Pedagogy -- part 1

Humility in education is not just being open to other viewpoints, nor is it just having a measure of tentative assertion to one's own beliefs, it is also an awareness that God's truth is a gift we must bear with responsibility and a gift we must be faithful to with our whole selves. Pedagogically, this means we must balance fidelity to the current truth with openness to the new truth, hospitality with house-cleaning, so to speak.

Mark Schewn observes that "[m]uch of what passes for laziness or the proverbial "lack of motivation" among today's students really involves a lack of humility, stemming in part from a lack of piety or respect for that aspect of God's ongoing creation that manifests itself in works of genius." This is one reason a regular practice of the confession of our academic sins is worth considering as part of our public collegiate worship. Lent and learning are closely tied. Repentance, in all its forms and its formational nature, calls us to change not only in what we hold to be true, but also what we are that prevents the full-bodied nature of learning to take place. Public (and private) confessions of sin are more than acts of lament; they also involve the placing of ourselves within the estrangement, loss, forgiveness, and restoration of the gospel. This is what makes them sacramental.

We often do not give much thought to how our own character impacts the nature of teaching. As a professor, I must admit that I need Lent because, frankly, I am tempted by the position of being a Christian instructor of others. This job is my joy, but the joy of doing good also carries with it a secret worm in the delicious fruit. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote,

The [self-]awareness on which Jesus insists is intended to prevent us from reflecting on our extraordinary position. We have to take heed [in order] that we do not take heed of our own righteousness. Otherwise, the 'extraordinary' which we achieve will not be that which comes from following Christ, but that which spring from our own will and desire.