Keynote Address by Dr. Michael Goheen, IAPCHE Member
IAPCHE Regional Conference
July 3-7, 2002
Károli Gáspár Reformed University
The Word of God and the Academy in Contemporary Culture
For
easy navigation on the web, the following sub-topics are “targeted:”
The Gospel: The Starting Point for Understanding the
Academy
Continuing Christ’s Mission in the Academy
The Idolatrous Spirit of Secular Science
The Historical Roots of Secular Science
Descartes and Autonomous Rationality
Our Postmodern Context: Objectivism vs.
Relativism
Testing the Idolatrous Spirit of Secular
Science by the Spirit’s Sure Word
The Christian Academy: Participation and
Opposition
Subversion: Recognizing Creational
Insight and Idolatrous Twisting
As followers of Jesus Christ
our thinking about any subject, including the academy, must begin with the
gospel. When Jesus emerged onto the stage of world history he proclaimed the
good news that the healing power of God’s kingdom had broken into the creation.
The power of God to renew the entire creation was now present in Jesus by the
Spirit. In his life this healing, renewing, and liberating power was
demonstrated in Jesus’ life and deeds, and explained by his words. At the cross
he battled the power of evil and gained the decisive victory. In his
resurrection he entered as the firstborn into the resurrection life of the new
creation. Before his ascension he commissioned his followers to continue his
mission of making the gospel known until he returned. He now reigns at the
right hand of God over all creation and by His Spirit is making known his
liberating and comprehensive rule through His people as they embody and
proclaim the good news. One day every knee will bow and every tongue will
confess that Jesus is Creator, Redeemer, and Lord. But until then the church
has been taken up into the Spirit’s work of making the good news of the kingdom
known.
For the purposes of this
paper four observations can be made on this brief summary of the gospel. First,
the gospel is a redirecting power. It is not first of all religious
doctrine or theology but the renewing power of God unto salvation. The gospel
has become the instrument of God’s Spirit to renew all the creation.
Second, the gospel is restorative,
that is, it restores the creation. The most basic categories present in the
gospel are creation, fall, and redemption. The gospel is about the restoration
and renewal of the creation from sin. In the history of the Western
church redemption has often been misunderstood to be salvation from the
creation rather than salvation of the creation. As the British New
Testament scholar N. T. Wright has put it: ‘Very often people have come to the
New Testament with the presumption that ‘going to heaven when you die’ is the
implicit point of it all. . . . They acquire that viewpoint from somewhere, but
not from the New Testament’ (Quoted in Lawrence 1995:16). Bound up in the
proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the understanding that Christ is
restoring and renewing the good creation that has been infected by sin.
Third, the gospel is comprehensive
in its scope. The gospel Jesus announced was a gospel of the kingdom. Surprisingly even though this was the central
category of Jesus’ proclamation and ministry it has often disappeared into
obscurity. The result has been a greatly reduced scope of salvation, limited to
humanity,[1]
even human souls.[2]
Scripturally, the kingdom is about God’s reign over his entire creation. In
other words, the kingdom stresses the all-encompassing nature of the salvation
Jesus embodied, announced, and accomplished. The gospel which forms the lens
through which we look at the academy is the power of God through which
the exalted Christ by the Spirit restores all of life to again
live under His authority and Word.
There is a fourth
observation: the church is essential to the gospel. That is, Jesus did not make
provision for the communication of the good news through history and in every
culture by writing a book as did Mohammed. Rather he formed a community to be
the bearer of this good news. Their identity is bound up in the words: ‘As the
Father has sent me, I am sending you’ (John 20:21). A mission to make known the
good news of the kingdom defines this community. And since the gospel is a
gospel of the kingdom, that mission is as wide as creation. The Contemporary
Testimony of the Christian Reformed Church in
The Spirit thrusts God’s people into worldwide
mission.
He impels young and old, men and women,
to go next door and far away
into science and art, media and marketplace
with the good news of God’s grace. . . . (32)
Following the apostles, the church is sent—
sent with the gospel of the kingdom . . .
In a world estranged from God,
where millions face confusing choices,
this mission is central to our being . . . (44)
The rule of Jesus Christ covers the whole
world.
To follow this Lord is to serve him everywhere,
without fitting in,
as light in the darkness, as salt in a spoiling
world. (45)
From this then we can draw
some starting conclusions about the gospel and scholarship. Education and
scholarship are parts of God’s good creation. They have been twisted and
distorted by human rebellion and idolatry. But the announcement of the good
news of the kingdom includes the academy within its scope. That is, part of the
good news is that God is renewing that part of human life to again live under
His liberating rule. Bound up in our kingdom mission is the call to witness to
this gospel in the academy. If we are faithful to the gospel in our educational
endeavours the gospel will be the renewing power that animates, directs, and
liberates from the constricting and debilitating power of idols that plague
scholarship in our culture.
But it might be objected that
in light of escalating global crises, it is irresponsible to give such
attention to this aspect of the church’s mission. Brian Walsh and Richard
Middleton succinctly press this question: ‘Some might argue that in the face of
such human tragedies as starvation, political oppression, and the threat of
nuclear holocaust, it is unconscionable for Christians to engage in the
frivolity of scholarship. Why engage in studies when the whole of culture is in
such a crisis?’ (Walsh and Middleton 1984:163).
Beyond the answer that we
must witness to the gospel in all of life, there are at least two important
reasons for this attention. The first is the power of the academy and ideas in
culture. Charles Malik has stated this strongly:
This great Western institution, the university,
dominates the world today more than any other institution: more than the
church, more than the government, more than all other institutions. All the
leaders of government are graduates of universities, or at least of secondary
schools or colleges whose administrators and teachers are themselves graduates
of universities. The same applies to all church leaders. . . . The
professionals–doctors, engineers, lawyers etc.–have all passed through the mill
of secondary school, the college and the university. And the men of the media
are university trained. . . . The universities, then, directly and indirectly
dominate the world; their influence is so pervasive and total that whatever
problem afflicts them is bound to have far-reaching repercussions throughout
the entire fabric of Western civilization. No task is more crucial and urgent
today than to examine the state of mind and spirit of the Western university
(Malik 1982:19-20).
Al Wolters has given us a
helpful picture of the power of scholarship in his article Ideas Have Legs.
He says: ‘Ideas have legs in the sense that they are not the disembodied abstractions
of some ivory-tower academic, but are real spiritual forces that go somewhere,
that are on the march in someone’s army, and that have a widespread effect on
our practical, everyday lives’ (Wolters 1987:1). He goes on to quote the
influential 20th century economist John Maynard Keynes: ‘The ideas
of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when
they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the
world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be
quite exempt from any intellectual influences are usually the slaves of some
defunct economists’ (ibid). Wolters gives examples of distinctions that
have made their way into common life and now unconsciously direct peoples’
lives. Ideas are important in the spiritual battle for creation. Ideas
will march in the battle for God’s creation either in the kingdom of God or the
kingdom of darkness. Christian scholarship and education will play a big part
in our Christian witness and in equipping Christian young people for faithful
witness in all of life.
The second reason that this
task is essential and strategic in the mission of God’s people is the
tremendous power and influence of secularized[3]
scholarship and science in our culture. In other words, secular science has
become a religious power that functions at the core of our culture shaping much
more than the university and sweeping even Christians into its current. The
Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd has stated this quite strongly: ‘. . .
science, secularized and isolated, has become a satanic power, an idol which
dominates all of culture’ (Dooyeweerd 1954:2). This is, to use the language
again of Malik, the spirit, the idolatrous spirit of the Western academy.
It would be good, then, to
examine the nature and roots of this idolatrous force. The assumption for much
of our history has been that scholarship must be free of personal belief
because its objectivity would be threatened by any presuppositions that issue
from religion. For much of our history the gospel has been excluded as an
animating and directing power. In his essay What is Enlightenment?
Immanuel Kant states that knowledge based on God’s revelation was ‘dangerous to
human adulthood.’ The dependence of reason and science on religion, he said,
was ‘most damaging and most humiliating.’ Scholarship must be free from dogma
and faith commitment. When this is accepted the gospel is seriously truncated.
It no longer functions as a restoring and directing power in the area of
scholarship. In fact, precisely this is strenuously opposed in the name of good
science and intellectual maturity. The gospel is considered an optional
religious extra for the spiritual dimension of life. The gospel is accommodated
to a more ultimate worldview and its area of influence is vastly reduced.
In fact, the ideal of
dogma-free scholarship is an illusion. What has happened is not that
scholarship has been liberated from dogma; rather one dogma has replaced
another as the formative power. Science has not been released from faith
commitments; rather another set of faith commitments has formed the framework
for the educational enterprise. In the clash of comprehensive beliefs, the gospel
has been domesticated. But more, this dogma of dogma-free scholarship is not
simply a matter of philosophical or theoretical presuppositions–although that
is included. At the deepest level these foundational beliefs are a religious
power directing and animating our culture including scholarship.
How did this dogma become so
widely established in our culture? We need to return to the remarkable
synthesis of Thomas Aquinas–a synthesis that has shaped the subsequent course
of western history. In his Summa Aquinas combined the medieval tradition
of Platonic Christianity with the insights of the more recently discovered
Aristotle. Augustine had been the architect of the medieval tradition of Platonic
Christianity. He had fused together two incompatible worldviews: pagan
neoplatonism and the gospel.[4]
Neoplatonism advocated an ontological dualism between a material realm and a
spiritual realm. The material realm was decidedly inferior, even evil, while
the spiritual realm was good. Thus neoplatonism depreciated this world in
favour of some spiritual reality. Augustine imported this dualism and much of
this otherworldliness into his own thought. Grace, instead of being the power
of God to renew the whole creation, was confined to a spiritual realm and
dispensed by the human institution that properly belonged to that realm–the
church. The task of reason was not to examine the creation in the light of
faith but to explicate and defend the revealed truths of Christian dogma by
means of rational analysis.
Aristotle made his way back
into the mainstream of European culture in the 12th century and this
precipitated a crisis.[5]
Reason in the medieval tradition had been primarily formally correct logical
thinking put to use in the service of theology. In Aristotle one encountered a
different kind of reason that included logic but also empirical observation and
examination of the natural world. How could this kind of reason be harmonized
with the long tradition that had depreciated the empirical world? Aquinas’
synthesis was an answer to this problem.
Aquinas is able to
accommodate Aristotle’s empirical rationality with an Augustinian otherworldly
emphasis by positing two realms–the upper realm of grace and lower realm of
nature. Knowledge of the realm of grace is theological; this comes as faith
embraces God’s revelation. This accommodated the medieval Augustinian
tradition. Knowledge of the realm of nature is philosophical or scientific;
this comes as reason examines the natural laws of creation. Here Aristotle is
given a place. Important for our considerations is the fact that in this scheme
faith and revelation are separated from the scientific examination of creation.
Unaided reason is capable of understanding the natural world apart from the
light of the gospel. Now Aquinas never advocated the total autonomy of human
reason. Yet his acceptance of the pagan Greek worldview –a worldview that
granted significant autonomy to the creation and humankind–plagued his
synthesis. Neither the full effects of sin nor the renewing power of the gospel
was brought to bear on human rationality. It would be left for later historical
developments to draw out the logic of this fateful union between the gospel and
pagan Greek thought.
The full autonomy of
scientific thought was effected under the power of post-Renaissance humanism.
The humanism of the Renaissance reacted against the otherworldly preoccupation
of the Middle Ages that seemed to miss major dimensions of what it meant to be
human. Scholarship in the Middle Ages was preoccupied with logic, metaphysics,
law, and theology. A new interest in the study of this world, already evident
in the high middle ages, emerged. This development in itself can be considered
good. However, in an attempt to break the shackles of tradition, superstition,
otherworldly religion, and ecclesiastical authority, there was a turn to the
humanism shaped in Greece and Rome. Renaissance thinkers not only recovered the
art and literature of the classical era, they also absorbed the pagan religious
spirit that exalted the autonomy and independence of humankind and the created
order. Here we find the seeds of a later full-grown autonomy of reason and
scientific thought. In Francis Schaeffer’s words, the realm of nature began to
‘eat up’ the realm of grace (1968:13).
The humanism of the
Renaissance was primarily a rationalistic humanism. That is, it was through
reason that human beings could achieve their autonomy, freedom, and redemption.
The scientific revolution aided the development of this rationalistic humanism
by furnishing a method that would enable autonomous humankind to realize its
purposes. The scientific method seemed to supply autonomous reason with a tool
to arrive at objective and indubitable truth. Rationalistic humanism had become
scientific humanism. The degree to which the scientific method had stepped
beyond its proper bounds in creation and had achieved an idolatrous status can
be seen in the words of Alexander Pope: ‘Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in
night; God said “Let Newton be” and all was light.’ The scientific method had
become the light of the world. Scriptural revelation and faith remained confined
to the spiritual, ecclesiastical, and theological realm as evidenced by the
words of Galileo: ‘The Bible tells us how to go to heaven not how the heavens
go.’[6]
At first this development of
autonomous reason was limited to a growing number of intellectuals beginning in
Northern Italy and spreading out over Europe. But in the 18th
century Enlightenment[7]
this belief in scientific humanism became widespread and the driving religious
impulse of European society. This was occasioned by at least three factors.
First, the clash between science and the church greatly weakened the church and
drove a wedge between the Christian faith and scientific work. The church was
obscurantist; it was unable to distinguish between the gospel and the mistaken
Ptolemaic form it had taken. Free enquiry appeared to lie in the direction of a
reason liberated from the Christian faith. The other two factors converged with
fateful consequences for Christian scholarship. On the one hand, the Newtonian
paradigm of science proved to be enormously fruitful. The tremendous success of
Newtonian physics seemed to lead to an agreement based in a common commitment
to reason liberated from the Christian faith. At the same time, the
fragmentation of the church in the Reformation spawned the religious wars of
the 16th and 17th centuries. These religious wars led to
an increasing skepticism about the ability of the Christian faith to provide a
centre for unity. The convergence of these two historical currents seemed to
shout ‘The Christian faith divides; scientific reason unites’ (Pannenberg
1989:11-19). Europe experienced a collective conversion to the directing centre
of scientific rationality. Secular science became far more than the object of
study within the academy.
Rene Descartes has been
called ‘the father of modernity.’ He exemplified a commitment to autonomous
rationality as the final arbiter of truth. Descartes was in his early twenties
when the famous Thirty Years’ War broke out in 1618. He would die two years
after it concluded in 1648. So he lived his adult life under the shadow of this
bitter religious war. Descartes’ attempt to articulate a method that would
afford autonomous reason the freedom to pursue truth in a disinterested fashion
was born, at least partly, of his revulsion occasioned by a blood-soaked
Christian Europe.
Descartes is a glowing
example of the growing confidence in autonomous reason that developed in the
modern period. What was relatively autonomous for Aquinas became absolutely
autonomous in Descartes. In the context of profound uncertainty (the
ecclesiastical and scientific tradition had recently proved unreliable–what
authority could be trusted?) and disillusionment (the religious wars),
Descartes sought a new foundation for knowledge. His foundation is rooted in
the autonomous rationality of the knowing subject. He made a rigorous
distinction between the knowing subject and the object to be known. If there is
to be true and reliable knowledge, we must engage in intellectual purification
through the process of methodological doubt. This methodological doubt enables
the knower to transcend all subjective factors and achieve total objectivity.
One builds a solid edifice of true knowledge by following a rational method and
subjecting all truth claims to reason alone. Method allows reason to rise above
all tradition, prejudice, opinion, authority, historical contingency, and
perception. In this way, the gospel is one of those subjective distorting factors
filtered out by a rigorous employment of method.
What is important about
Descartes is not the specific method he employed. Descartes would be quickly
and ruthlessly critiqued. Others would seek better methods and foundations. The
reason Descartes has been called the father of modernity is the legacy he
bequeathed to the Western world. His foundational belief in the ability of
autonomous reason to achieve objectivity and certainty through a method that
enables one to transcend all subjective factors–including religion–would
continue to function as a faith commitment, a dogma throughout the development
of the European worldview.
This faith commitment to
autonomous reason as the sole arbiter of truth has became widespread following
the Enlightenment. It has issued in a pernicious fact-value dichotomy that lies
at the foundation of our culture and permeates our theoretical work. Any truth
claim that can be proven by scientific rationality occupies the high ground of
public facts to be accepted as truth by everyone in society. Truth claims that
cannot justify themselves before the bar of scientific reason are relegated to
the lesser sphere of private values that can be held as personal opinions by
members of society but must not play a role in the public life of culture,
including education and scholarship.
When this dogma is operative,
the gospel is considered to be a matter of private belief but can play no role
in the public life we share together. Our scholarship and educational practice
must proceed on the basis of a shared, universal rationality in which all our
subjectivities–including our Christian faith–are filtered out by the scientific
method. Science shares in the public and factual domain of life while the
gospel is banished to the private realm of values. It is a confusion of
categories to speak of the light of revelation in scholarship. This, of course,
is devastating for Christian scholarship. The gospel is methodologically
excluded from the inner workings of scholarship. The gospel can no longer
function as a directing power that restores the academy. In the clash of dogmas
the gospel has been domesticated by secular science.
Today in our postmodern
context we hear voices that proclaim the failure of scientific reason to find
objectivity and certainty. Studies in anthropology, sociology, history,
linguistics, and philosophy have underscored the historical context and
relativity of human knowledge. Knowledge is no more than a social construction.
Our rationality is shaped by a host of social factors (tradition, community,
language, culture, collective subconscious, history, faith) and personal
factors (feelings, imagination, personal subconscious, gender, class, race).
There is no universal truth. The widespread recognition of Kuhn’s paradigm
theory underscores the growing awareness of reason’s fundamentally interpretive
nature shaped as it necessarily is by our context. Method, designed to raise us
above our context, is itself shaped by context and worldview. Our earlier
confidence in the capacity of autonomous reason to secure certain knowledge has
given way, in some sectors, to a debilitating sense of uncertainty, relativism,
and fragmenting pluralism.
This does not mean that our
confidence in scientific reason has been destroyed. Rather a cultural tension
exists at the heart of scholarship produced by this commitment to autonomous
reason as the sole arbiter of truth. This is a tension between a
continuing–albeit chastened– objectivism offered to us by the scientific method
and a relativism that appears to be the only legitimate option when one takes
into account all the subjective factors shaping knowledge.
An initial evaluation of this
tension in the light of the gospel would recognize both the insight and the
idolatrous twisting in both objectivism and relativism. Objectivism points to
the fact that there is a creational order that cannot be avoided in human life.
However, it does not recognize clearly that concept formation, as a responsible
human activity, is shaped by numerous subjective factors that cannot be
filtered out by method. But more importantly, it does not acknowledge that
there is a religious root to all human activity. Method cannot transcend our
subjectivity; nor can it rise above the religious impulse that shapes all
cultural activity including scholarship. Either the gospel or an idolatrous
power will be the directing power that shapes the academy. Relativism, on the
other hand, rightly points to the subjective factors that shape knowledge.
Unfortunately, it does not acknowledge that the deepest ‘factor’ shaping our
knowledge is religious. Worldviews and paradigms are not only a matter of
theoretical perspective shaped by historical, social, and cultural factors.
Rather the deepest formative beliefs are religious. Religion is not one aspect
of human culture alongside of others but a fundamental directing power that
shapes all of human life. Further relativism does not recognize that there is a
given order of creation that can be known and that there is a true Light in
which this creation can be known.
As followers of Jesus Christ,
who refuse to allow the gospel to be reduced to doctrinal tenets limited to a
spiritual, theological, or ecclesiastical realm, how are we to witness to the
directing power of the gospel in academic life? The third paragraph of the
Contemporary Testimony ‘Our World Belongs to God’ captures our call:
But rebel cries sound through the world:
some, crushed by failure
or hardened by pain,
give up on life and hope and God;
others, shaken,
but still hoping for human triumph,
work feverishly to realize their dreams.
As believers in God
we join this struggle of the spirits,
testing our times by the Spirit’s sure Word.
We join the religious struggle of the spirits that shape the academy
testing those spirits by the Spirit’s sure word. Certainly this will involve a
testing of the idolatrous spirit of secular science.
One way to describe the
stance of the academy toward secular science, in the words of Lesslie Newbigin,
is as a missionary encounter. A missionary encounter includes both a
positive relation and a critical approach to the academy. Since Christ
is the creator, sustainer and redeemer of the world, including its cultural
formation, we are called to love and cherish all its created goodness. As
members of a cultural community we are called to participate in its ongoing
development cherishing all the good things that are uncovered. As members of
the body of Christ we witness to the reality that Christ is Lord of all culture
including scholarship. Looking to the past we recognize much in the history of
western scholarship that is good and needs to be cherished and preserved.
Looking at the present we acknowledge our responsibility to participate in and
encounter the ongoing academic tradition within our culture. We join the
struggle of the spirits. Christian scholarship is part of a lengthy academic
tradition within Western culture that stretches back to the Greeks. Our task is
not to create an academic ghetto that isolates our endeavours from the broader
scholarly community. Stuart Fowler has put it well:
. . . We
are not called to establish closed Christian communities in the world, but to
penetrate as salt into the world. Our Christian communities deserve the label
‘Christian’ only so far as they facilitate penetrating this world in keeping
with Jesus’ words to his father concerning his disciples in all ages: “As you
have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).
It is valid to maintain Christian schools
and colleges as manifestations of our community in Christ. They are not valid
if they function within a closed Christian educational network. To be authentic
they must be open to other educational communities in the world around us. We
do not maintain our Christian integrity by isolating ourselves from the world
around. Rather, such isolation denies our calling and falsifies our witness
(Fowler 1993:24).
It is my sense that smaller
private Christian institutions need this reminder. We should not, and in any
case cannot, isolate ourselves from the questions, problems, theories,
institutions and traditions that are part of the academic development of our
culture. How the participation takes place is a matter of discussion; that
it should and will take place is given.
Participation is not the only
word that needs to be heard; opposition is equally important. Since Christ has
died to take away the sin of the world the church is called to oppose the evil
and idolatry that twists and distorts all cultural cultivation. Engagement in
cultural development demands a counter-cultural stance that resists the
currents of death in our culture. If, as Dooyeweerd has suggested, secular
science is not simply mistaken, but a satanic power, an idol that dominates our
culture, our task in the academy is to resist and embody the victory of the
cross over this power.
Lesslie Newbigin speaks here
of an ‘unbearable tension.’ The deeper we realize the apostate and idolatrous roots
of our culture, and how those roots nourish each aspect of academy, the more we
will recognize the need for a kind of countercultural stance. Hendrik Kraemer
has rightfully suggested that our faithfulness–also in scholarship and the
academy–is dependant upon it: ‘The deeper the consciousness of the tension
and the urge to take this yoke upon itself are felt, the healthier the church
is. The more oblivious of this tension the Church is, the more well established
and at home in the world it feels, the more it is in deadly danger of being the
salt that lost its savour’ (1956:36). A deep sense of the wariness of what
Dooyeweerd describes as the demonic and idolatrous power of secular science
must inform our scholarly activities. I often wonder how much this ‘unbearable
tension’ functions fruitfully within the Christian academic community in
Western culture.
If we are to be faithful in
making known the gospel in the academy we will necessarily find that these two
stances toward the western academy are necessary: affirmation and rejection,
solidarity and separation, participation and opposition. In fact these will be
two sides of the one coin. To preserve the great gains and insights of science
demands opposition to the idols that would destroy those achievements.
How does the Christian
academy live out both participation and opposition? I offer here a general
approach[8]
to the task of the Christian community in its cultural efforts that I describe
as ‘subversion.’ I take as my model the way John dealt with Greek philosophy
and culture. John freely uses the
language and thought forms of classical religion and culture that form the
world of his hearers–light and darkness, body and soul, heaven and earth, flesh
and spirit, and more. Since these words are not neutral but shaped by the
religious idolatry of classical culture, John uses this language and
thought-forms in such a way as to confront them with a fundamental question and
indeed a contradiction. John begins with the announcement “In the beginning was
the logos.” As he continues it becomes apparent that logos is not
the impersonal law of rationality that permeates the universe giving it order
but rather the man Jesus Christ. The logos became sarx. John
begins by identifying with the classical longing for the source of order
expressed in the term logos, but subverts, challenges, and contradicts
the idolatrous understanding that had developed in the classical world. He
recognizes the insight but challenges the way that insight is expressed. In
this way John is both intimately involved in the cultural tradition yet
standing in opposition to the idolatrous twisting. Wim Visser ’t Hooft has stated
this approach succinctly: ‘The uncritical
introduction of such words into Christian terminology can only lead to that
syncretism that denies the uniqueness and specific character of the different
religions and creates a grey relativism. What is needed is to re-interpret the
traditional concepts, to set them in a new context, to fill them with biblical
content. . . . Words from the traditional culture and religion must be used,
but they must be converted in the way in which Paul and John converted Greek
philosophical and religious concepts’ (1967:13).
This approach to all cultural
forms offers a way to deal with the academy and scholarship. The neo-Calvinist
or reformational tradition issuing from the Netherlands has used the term ‘the
inner reformation of the sciences.’ Al Wolters describes this in the following
way: ‘. . . we must begin with what is historically given. No one can start in
history with a clean slate. . . . Reformation is working along the grain of
history, respecting what is good in the tradition and bending it around to move
in another direction’ (1975: 15). Henk Hart describes it in the following way:
‘Christian scholars should work in science for continuing reformation, changing
science radically from within, pulling its roots out of its traditionally
idolatrous soil and transplanting them in the soil of the gospel’ (1988:14).
Wolters suggests that the way theories and concepts can be reformed or
subverted from within is by asking, what is the insight into the structure of
creation and how has this insight become misdirected by religious idolatry
(1978:12-13). As a matter of fact, it can be precisely at the point of idolatry
that the insight into the creation comes. He demonstrates how this might take
place in philosophy.
Plato’s
distinction between perception and analysis (not made by his predecessors) . .
. is a real and valuable one . . . The neo-Platonic hierarchy of being, though
identified with the good-evil distinction, nevertheless points out many real
creational distinctions between e.g. space, physicality, vitality, perception,
and analysis. Kant can teach us much about the distinction between morality and
legality, and between the language of faith and the language of science and
ordinary experience. There is a great deal we can learn from Hegel about the
nature of history and the cohesiveness of cultures, and from Jaspers about the
committed nature of philosophy. In a paradoxical way, a great philosopher’s
contribution tends to lie precisely in the area of his idolatry. . . . Marx’s
discovery of the correlation between class and culture, although he inflated it
to become the basis of a new gospel for mankind, nevertheless unearths a
distinction and a relationship which cannot be ignored (ibid).
Theories (and institutions and educational
practices) uprooted from idolatrous soil and replanted in the soil of the
gospel, respecting the good in theories and bending it around from an
idolatrous direction to move toward Christ, filling the insight or longing with
new content from the gospel–all of these images offer a way toward a Christian
scholarship that both participates in the ongoing tradition of Western
scholarship and yet opposes the idolatrous directing power that is operative
there.
Dooyeweerd offers us another
important insight in ‘our vocation to war against the spirit of apostasy. . .’
That is we cannot ‘battle this spirit in our own power. The warfare to which I
refer is one of faith, a struggle even with ourselves, in the power of the Holy
Spirit, a struggle which finds its dynamic in a life of prayer’ (1954:4). If I
am correct in suggesting that our mission in the academy is, at the deepest
level, a struggle of the spirits then prayer, indeed all the spiritual weapons
offered the believer for spiritual warfare, will be essential equipment for the
work of the academy. After all the God’s kingdom is first of all the work of
His Spirit.
WORKS
CITED
Berkouwer, Gerrit C. 1972 (English Translation). The Return of Christ.
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Chaplin, Jonathan et. al. 1986. An Introduction to a Christian
Worldview. UK: Open Christian College.
Dooyeweerd, Herman. 1954 (English Translation). The Secularization of
Science. Memphis, TN: Christian Studies Center.
--------------------. 1979 (English Translation). Roots of Western
Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options. Toronto: Wedge Publishing
Foundation.
Fowler, Stuart. 1993. Communities, Organizations, and People, Pro
Rege, June.
Greidanus, Sidney. 1982. The Use of the Bible in Christian Scholarship. Christian
Scholar’s Review X, 2: 138-147.
Hart, Henk. 1988. Introduction: The Idea of an Inner Reformation of the
Sciences.” In Paul Marshall and Robert Vandervennen, eds. Social Science in
Christian Perspective, Lanham, MD: University Press of America: 13-31.
Kraemer, Hendrik. 1956. The
Communication of the Christian Faith. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
Lawrence, David. 1995. Heaven . . . It’s Not the End of the World.
London: Scripture Union Press.
Malik, Charles. 1982. A Christian Critique of the University.
Newbigin, Lesslie. 1983. The Other Side of 1984: Questions for the
Churches.
Pannenberg, Wolfhart. 1989. Christianity in a Secularized World.
Schaeffer, Francis. 1968. Escape from Reason.
Tarnas, Richard. 1991. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding
the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View.
Visser ’t Hooft, Wim. 1967 Accommodation: True or False.” South East
Asia Journal of Theology. 8, 3, January: 5-18.
Walsh, Brian and J. Richard Middleton. 1984. The Transforming Vision:
Shaping a Christian World View. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.
Wolters, Albert M. 1975. Our Place in the Philosophical Tradition.
Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies.
--------------------. 1978. Facing the Perplexing History of
Philosophy. Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies.
--------------------. 1987. Ideas Have Legs. Toronto: Institute
for Christian Studies.
Michael Goheen, Redeemer University College
Ancaster, July 2002
[1] G.C. Berkouwer
speaks of an understanding of salvation that has been reduced to the salvation of
humanity apart from the cosmic context as ‘soteriological self-centredness’,
1972:211.
[2] Richard Tarnas, an
unbeliever, has noted this reduction in his book on worldview: ‘The early
Christian belief [i.e., Scriptural belief] that the Fall and Redemption
pertained not just to man, but to the entire cosmos, a doctrine already fading
after the Reformation, now [under secularism of 19th c.] disappeared
altogether: the process of salvation, if it had any meaning at all, pertained
solely to the personal relation between God and man’, 1991:.306f.
[3] I want to avoid
three misunderstandings in my use of the word secular. By secular I do not
mean, first, that science has been removed from the authority of the church.
This was the original meaning of the word as many spheres of life were removed
from the authority of the institutional church. Neither do I mean the
emancipation of reason and science from theology. Moreover I do not mean
growing interest in this world that arose in the high middle ages. In all these
cases I can affirm the development that took place. What I do mean is the
development and practice of scholarship apart from the authority of God’s word
in Scripture and creation. I use this almost as a synonym of the autonomy
of human reason, that is reason ‘liberated’ from all revelational authority.
[4] Jonathan Chaplin
notes that there are two strands within Augustine’s writings–an antidualist
Christian strand and dualist strand that compromises the gospel with
neoplatonism. It is not my intention to undermine the tremendous contribution
of Augustine to the Christian faith in his more consistently Christian
emphasis. However, I agree with Chaplin when he goes on to say that the
Christian strand ‘remained undeveloped’ and that the dualistic strand was ‘more
prominent’ (Chaplin 1986:104-105). Herman Dooyeweerd says that the ‘orthodox
direction of Christian thought reached a high point in Augustine’ and that the
religious root of his thoguht was ‘undoubtedly scriptural.’ This does not
prevent him from offering a penetrating critique of the pagan Greek thought in
Augustine, after which he says: ‘The example of Augustine clearly demonstrates
how even in a great father of the church the spiritual power of the Greek
ground motive worked as a dangerous counterforce to the ground motive of
revelation. It is not right to conceal this out of love and respect for
Augustine. Insight into matters where Augustine should not be followed need not
detract from our love and respect for him’ (Dooyeweerd 1979:113-115).
[5] Aristotle’s works
on logic were already well-known having been passed along by Boethius. However
his Metaphysics, Physics, and De Anima along with other
works of Greek Science (e.g., Ptolemy) were reintroduced to Europe.
[6] Of course, the
Bible does not tell us ‘how the heavens go.’ And while Copernicus’ statement
about going to heaven reflects an otherworldly Platonism, he is essentially
correct that the Bible is concerned about redemption. However, the remaining
dualism did not allow him to see how the Bible impacts scholarship. Sidney
Greidenus has offered a helpful perspective beyond dualism and biblicism. He
suggests that the Bible properly interpreted in a redemptive-historical manner
provides a biblical framework, and scriptural norms and themes that can give
direction to scholarship (1982).
[7] The profound
religious significance indicated by labels such as ‘Renaissance’ and
‘Enlightenment’ is a clue to the religious status of reason and science in
Western culture. Renaissance describes a change so significant that it can only
be described in terms of new birth. Enlightenment designates a moment when one
believes that they have found the one thing in the light of which everything
else can be understood. Lesslie Newbigin comments: ‘“Enlightenment” is a word
with profound religious overtones. It is the word to describe the decisive
experience of Buddha. It is the word used in the Johannine writings to describe
the coming of Jesus . . . The leading thinkers of the mid-eighteenth century
felt themselves to be at such a moment of enlightenment . . .’ This feeling of
exhilaration at finding the light that marked this period ‘came from the
conviction that things which had been previously obscure were now being
“explained.” In place of “dogmatic” or “unscientific” explanations which no
longer satisfied the mind, the true explanation of things was now coming to
light’ (1983:7-8).
[8] I only describe
here a general approach. The task of subversion applies to all areas of the
Christian academy. More specifically in the area of scholarship, this general
approach will require further reflection on foundational issues such as the use
of Scripture, the role of worldview and philosophy, the differences among the
various kinds of disciplines, different modes of integration, etc. I cannot
enter these questions here.