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Biblical and Theological Studies in the Christian University
Gregory Alan Thornbury
Introduction: The Bible’s Radical Claim about Knowledge
Toward the close of the first millennium, the people of England faced the constant threat of Viking invaders. Things looked grim until the vulnerable island of Britain united behind a great warrior from the House of Wessex, a king who is known to history as Alfred the Great. As Alfred’s story tells, great leaders are not usually mere warriors, and they never achieve greatness alone. By Alfred’s side during this great period of conflict with the Vikings stood his trusted advisor, Asser, a Welsh priest who served as the king’s spiritual guide. Alfred knew, however, that it was not enough merely to have access to someone who knew the Scriptures. He wanted Asser to teach him biblical and theological studies in the midst of fending off foreign invaders. To this end, the priest taught the monarch Latin, and Alfred soon became able to read the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible. He did not stop there. Alfred proceeded to compile his own commentary on Scripture, which he took with him into battle. Further, he understood that a nation would not be prepared for a time of crisis without a strong church, so the king proceeded to translate for his bishops theological works from Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Boethius into his native Anglo-Saxon language. Alfred the Great held a belief that no society could rise above its collective knowledge of Scripture and theology. It is an axiom that is abandoned at a culture’s peril.1
What follows in these next few pages is a sort of invitation to a new generation of Alfreds and Assers, who realize the threats and opportunities of the days in which we live, and turn to the faith once for all delivered to the saints for its rescue. The context in which most young men and women will have the best opportunity to steep themselves in biblical and theological studies will be in colleges and universities, specifically those who dedicate themselves to the proposition and promise of Christian higher education. For it is in these contexts where students will encounter the kind of scholars who not only have the highest degree of academic preparation available, but also have a heart for godliness and the discipleship of young Christ-followers.
If you are reading this and you are a student thinking about a call to serve the kingdom of God in building up His church, you need to know this: a call to follow Christ is a summons to prepare. That preparation must be done in the Scriptures and the soul-enlivening truths that flow from the heart of God. If you are a parent considering whether or not it is worth it to send your child to a Christian university, you know that the decision is not a trivial matter, for it involves with whom your child will be spend four of the most formative years of a crucial phase of his life. In this connection, the words of John Adams to his beloved Abigail during his service in the Continental Congress come to mind. Addressing the subject of their children’s education, he wrote: “Fix their ambition upon great and solid objects, and their contempt upon little, frivolous, and useless ones. . . . Every decency, grace, and honesty should be inculcated upon them.”2 Every student and parent owes to himself or herself a period of self-examination to answer the challenge posed by President Adams. What are the truly “great and solid objects” upon which to fix our attention and affix our affections? Elsewhere in this volume, we have read appeals to the importance of a panoply of disciplines that reside at the heart of the core of a great Christian liberal arts education. With deference to all these, we are reminded of the words of the prophet Isaiah: “The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God remains forever” (Isa 40:8 HCSB). If we consecrate ourselves to honor and study the body of divinity that flows from God’s revelation to us, we will never be disappointed with the result.
How does this commitment to the Word of God play itself out in a university education? Much discussion has been afforded in this volume and many others like it around the catchphrase “the integration of faith and learning.” But this concept will become little more than a shibboleth if it does not mean “the integration of the Faith with learning.” In other words, you cannot apply something into your education that you cannot readily identify and talk about rigorously, rationally, and comprehensively. The Bible is not some loose-knit pastiche of take-it-or-leave-it spiritual principles, but rather bedrock for all sorts of learning. It is our job to see whether or not we actually believe that proposition or not.
Though the German philosopher Immanuel Kant was no Christian, he was right on the mark when he said that as “supreme being” God “is an ideal without a flaw, a concept which completes and crowns the whole of human knowledge.”3 Even a skeptic like Kant had to admit the truth: only an eternal and transcendent Creator God can explain the richness and diversity of human knowledge. Without God, the world ultimately cannot make sense.
The Bible makes a radical claim about the nature of ultimate reality. It asserts that apart from the acknowledgment of its divine origin, the universe remains an unsolvable puzzle. As theologian Carl Henry has put it, “All merely human affirmations about God curl into a question mark.”4 Solomon—an impressive philosopher in his own right—boiled the issue down to the following proposition: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov 1:7a). This reverent recognition of the Creator (note: “fear” in this passage does not equal fright) provides the necessary foundation for education (Ps 2:11; Eccl 12:13; Isa 11:2–3).
Attentive readers will note that the “fear of the Lord” is not just the starting point for spiritual axioms. The proverb states that it is the beginning of all knowledge. The Hebrew word used for knowledge here covers the entire scope of human inquiry. Presupposing the God of the biblical type offers the only sensible way to begin uncovering the true and unified meaning of things. (Certainly, such scientific patriarchs as Kepler, Newton, Pasteur, and Mendel understood this.) Paul explained why: “For everything was created by Him [i.e., Christ], in heaven and on earth, the visible [e.g., planets, plants, animals, material things] and the invisible [e.g., numbers, laws, aesthetic and economic principles]. . . .” Reinforcing the point, he concluded, “All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Him” (Col 1:16; 2:3).
“All,” of course, means all. All is an audacious word for the apostle to use and Solomon to imply. The claim, however, does not mean that pagans never get anything right. After all, Solomon admired the king of Tyre’s expertise with architecture and construction (2 Chr 2:3). Paul appreciated the writings of the Greek philosopher-poets (Acts 17:28). Nonbelievers will continue to make singular advances in their individual modes of expertise, whether that is in mathematics, medicine, or other disciplines. But until they come to terms with the transcendent Ruler, they will never understand the “uni” in the word “universe.”
Only the biblical account of the creation of every aspect of existence, the fall into sin and disorder, and redemption through the gospel of Jesus Christ provides a satisfactory “big picture.” Critics of Christianity say that God’s people are anti-intellectual. Quite to the contrary, the church is the only earthly institution poised to pose the toughest question of all: how does one explain the beautiful but baffling complexity of the world without reference to God—the “ideal without a flaw”? The answer to that question must be as bold as the Bible’s claim about knowledge itself.
Theological Preparation in a Technological Age
If we can agree that biblical and theological studies form an essential foundation for a student’s university years, we must then consider what sort of education might best equip them for service in the diffuse and rapidly changing cultural environment in which we currently live. Much research has been done on the characteristics of this generation of students, but of special interest to those who would teach theology is the influence of technology on those who would commit themselves to studying holy or transcendent things.5 Education theorist Marc Prensky coined the term “digital native” in 2001 for learners who have grown up accustomed to technology being their primary interface for education.6 Ever since Nicholas Carr penned his famous Atlantic Monthly essay entitled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” the debate has raged over the relative merits that technology brings with it to the learning process.7 In the essay, he argues that people who use the Internet regularly—today’s students and teachers included—tend to have a drastically reduced ability to pay attention to and comprehend a longer work (like books). Further, instead of reading thoroughly, we skim or “power-browse” through the text, looking for “the right answer,” placing immediacy and efficiency in a more cherished place than deep reading and comprehension. As o...
