Welcome to the third plenary session of this symposium on the Christian University in the next millennium that is a culmination of Biola University’s celebration of its 90th anniversary but it really is intended to include the wider community as well and so we are pleased that many of you from the wider community have joined us.
Yesterday afternoon, Dr. Packer started us off with thanksgiving for God’s blessing in the way in which the Christian college coalition has been able to bring about Christian education in ways not found elsewhere and he focused us upon the Christian educator for the next millennium who would be one who has ruthless realism, piercing communication, and concentrated devotion.
Yesterday evening, Professor Marsden challenged us to be a different kind of GAP person. I’m not going to forget that one and in so doing, challenged us with the integration of faith and learning and focused our attention upon the opportunity, the possibility, and the necessity of us doing so. [1:37]
Yesterday morning, before some of you arrived, our plenary speaker for this morning, Dr. Dallas Willard addressed our undergraduate Chapel where he challenged all of us—not just the students—but all of us with the question, “Do we honor Jesus Christ in our fields of expertise?”
Just prior to his coming to give us our third plenary address, we are going to once again have the opportunity to nourish our souls. We have two of our undergrad students who will be performing flute duets. Their names are Mishaya Loosely and Kevin Koda. Mishaya is a sophomore, Music Education Major involved in symphonic winds. After graduation, she plans to be an elementary school music teacher and then Kevin is a freshman, a Performance Major and performs in symphonic winds. But just prior to their coming to nourish our souls, I’d like to focus our attention upon a passage of scripture from the Apostle Paul; although I’m a Gospels person, a Jesus scholar, I do read Paul once in a while. [Laughter] And Paul challenges Timothy, as he is getting ready to move off the scene of his earthly ministry, and he says,
“ . . remain at Ephesus that you may charge certain persons . . .”—this is in 1 Timothy, Chapter 1, verses 3 and following— “. . . remain at Ephesus that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the divine training that is in faith; whereas the goal of our instruction is love—love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscious and sincere faith. (1 Timothy 1: 3-5 RSV-Paraphrased) Certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions.” (1 Timothy 1: 3-7 RSV) [4:16]
That fifth verse has been for me, for now some 20 plus years of teaching, been a challenge to me. The goal of our instruction is love—love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscious and sincere faith.
Join me in prayer please. “Father, this is indeed a tremendous venture that we are engaged. The venture of providing Christian higher education for our culture—a culture that is in many ways in opposition to what we are doing but therefore because of that, we do have good news and I pray that as we continue this conference today that we would indeed focus upon the goal of our instruction being love for this culture, love that does indeed issue from a pure heart and a good conscious and sincere faith. In the name of the Savior—Amen. [5:34]
Mishaya and Kevin—please come and join us. [Flute Duet One] [9:55]
Mishaya and Kevin [Flute Duet Two] [12:12]
Mishaya and Kevin [Flute Duet Three] [14:40]
Mishaya and Kevin [Flute Duet Four] [16:30] [Applause]
Thank you very much, Mashaya and Kevin.
Dr. Dallas Willard is a Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. He has taught at USC since 1965 where he was Director of the School of Philosophy from 1982 to 1985. He received his undergraduate education at William Jewel College, Tennessee Temple College and Baylor University and his graduate education at Baylor University and the University of Wisconsin where he received his PhD.
He taught at the University of Wisconsin from 1960 to 1965 and as I said he has been teaching at USC since 1965. He’s been a visiting Professor at UCLA and the University of Colorado and we are happy to say many times here. His many philosophical publications are mainly in the area of epistemology and the philosophy of mind and of logic and among them is his logic and the objectivity of knowledge.
Not only is Professor Willard a leading evangelical scholar who has had in my opinion probably the most profound influence among evangelical scholars in many different ways on many different levels. Among them, the training of a host of evangelical philosophers. He truly is a mentor to a host, a host of evangelical philosophers but he has also had a profound effect upon the evangelical world in calling its pursuit to spirituality to be grounded in a thoroughly biblical anthropology and soteriology—quite rare today. [18:28]
Two books in particular have had a profound effect upon the church’s search for authentic sanctification. In his book In Search of Guidance, Dr. Willard attempted to make real and clear the intimate quality of life in Christ as a conversational relationship with God, but that relationship is not something that automatically happens, and we do not receive it by “passive infusion”—his words.
So, in his second book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Professor Willard explains how disciples of Jesus can effectively interact with the grace and Spirit of God to access fully the provisions and character intended for us in the gift of eternal life.
The third book of this trilogy will be released this year and it is entitled The Divine Conspiracy reflecting on Jesus’ Gospel for life and Christian discipleship. And in that sense, he truly is one of the leaders in helping us to understand what it is to be a truly Christian University in the next millennium. His message title for this morning is “The Redemption of Reason and the University in the next Millennium.” Please welcome Dr. Dallas Willard. [Applause] [19:51]
Dallas: Thank you for those gracious words and thanks to those of you who are responsible for inviting me here to take part in this wonderful and I hope it will be epic-making symposium.
Now, I am to speak this morning on the topic “The Redemption of Reason” and I am doing that because I think that is the most salient thing I could talk about from the point of view of my work as a philosopher. The task assigned to me by Dean Wilkins was to address the philosophical pitfalls and prospects of the attempt to interface reason and revelation in a Christian university.
I think one of the greatest needs today is to help people to understand the changed situation between reason or understanding and revelation in our time. And in particular, to understand that what is in trouble on our campuses today is reason itself. Reason is in trouble and the topic that I have chosen, “The Redemption of Reason” is to say that in the task of the university in the next century and millennium—I can hardly get to the millennium, I guess we are in it once we cross the line—but the next century certainly is to redeem reason and bring it fully into the camp of God and if we don’t do that . . . when I first heard the topic about reason of the university in the next century, my first thought was, “I hope it does better in the next century than it did in this one;” and I believe it can by the power of God. [22:10]
My claim will be that only the body of Christian knowledge—I will say this slowly—Only the body of Christian knowledge and intellectual method can redeem reason. Now, I am not going to try to keep you awake this morning. I am going to plod along. Please forgive me. So, I’ll just have to ask you to—in Biblical language—gird up the loins of your mind and stay with me. [Laughter] And I want to just say that to you again. Only the body of Christian knowledge and intellectual method can redeem reason. [22:58]
Now if you would have said that in most places of intellect and knowledge for any time up probably to the first World War in the western world, they would have looked at you and said, “Yes, what else is new?” But in the last fifty or so years, the cultural transition has followed the wave of intellectual ideas that has been developing for some centuries so that in the words of Max Picard’s wonderful little book (The Flight From God), there has been a “flight from God”—a cultural flight from God so that all of the automatic assumptions about life, intellect, truth, knowledge and so no, that prevailed in culture generally and please understand, I know that within tiny circles Bishop Butler, in the preface to his analogy of religion commented in a rather rye manner that certain advanced intellectuals seem recently to have found out that Christianity is a hoax. Well, that group of intellectuals was extremely small and through the years, it has grown and only in recent decades has it come to have the weight of cultural assumption on its side.
Once that came about, then reason itself, which was thought to be the bulwark of humanity for good and against evil began to crumble and for reasons which I shall try to explain could not sustain itself. Now, I’m going to repeat for the third time—Only the body of Christian knowledge and intellectual method can redeem reason in our time and for the future. [25:22]
Now, let me give you a preliminary survey of the ground. The contest now in our culture and in our universities is not between revelation and reason. Reason is as much or more in trouble in the academic world today as revelation. Now, I admit that in some cases, this is because the people who are attacking reason don’t think revelation is worth troubling with but generally speaking, the human enterprise that is taking a beating is reason.
The opponent of the Christian understanding of reality today is a set of socially powerful ideas or prejudices. At one time they were called empiricism and you have the fruit of that in the philosophy of David Huhn. A little later they were called positivism and you had the fruit of that in the work of thinkers like Ernst Mach and Neechie. Then later on the logical positivist, and the existentialist in the middle of this century. The name for it currently is naturalism; and naturalism is a form of what can also be called scientism—the idea that truth and reality is marked out by the boundaries of the concretely existing scientists and their future. [27:08]
The central opposing idea to both reason and to revelation is that the sense perceptible world is reality—the sense perceptible world is reality. The so-called public world which is really not very public on most accounts when you get right down to it, but the sense perceptible world is reality. Now, we can go various ways from there but that’s the basic idea.
On this view, reason and knowledge itself becomes incomprehensible. Reason and knowledge itself become incomprehensible. This is the fundamental fact of our time from which reason must be redeemed. The incomprehensibility of reason and knowledge in naturalistic terms. Reason and knowledge are not to be found in the sense perceptible world. It’s just that simple. [28:22]
And if then you have to understand everything in terms of the sense perceptible world—reason and knowledge are gone and that is why you have the many strained and forced interpretations of knowledge and consciousness and reason including all of the creative arts and all of the areas of expression of the human spirit that we study in the academy. The forced interpretations of these as sociological, as behavioral or even chemical.
And so, we heard a wonderful discussion, presentation—just comments and texts that Mike just read about love and the interpretation of love has to be put in the naturalistic mold. Now, when you do that, I am reminded of the man who said, “Sawdust is wonderfully nourishing if you will substitute bread for it.” [Laughter] And when you try to put truth into the naturalistic mold, it’s gone. When you try to put evidence, you try to put logic—logical relationships—probability—all of these fundamental things and if you—you know there are many dimensions of evidence and many of them fall in a very variegated way within what we would call sense perception but not sense perception in the narrow sense that the naturalist wants to take it. [30:55]
And so, we have to simply understand that the sociological behavioral and chemical attempts to treat knowledge, reason, creativity are due to the fact that the only categories available are the ones posed by the naturalistic world view. So, of course, that’s why I say only the Christian knowledge tradition can save knowledge in our time. If we don’t have that, then we have a constant struggle within our Christian schools with what one writer has recently called the problem of “stemming the drift” in our Christian schools.
The question comes up—what is it about higher academic life that seems to make it so hard, such a hard and fast rule given enough time, any institution no matter how rooted in orthodoxy will sooner or later slip away from its anchors. [31:47]
In an article that appeared in World Magazine in May of 1997, Joel Belz tries to address this, and he quotes Galen Vicar, President of Calvin College on the problem. The problem is—how do you secure faculty for first class programs in Christian colleges without losing them to the secular mindset? And when you are hiring faculty, you begin to think thoughts like “Is it really important that a math professor hold to his school’s theological position?”
And the experts in the various subject matters, Vicar comments and its very true in this simple statement he makes. “It’s hard to justify hiring a third-rate Christian when you can get a first-rate non-Christian.” Those are his words and I think every one of us understand the problem. It is a serious problem. It is not something to be dismissed. [33:09]
Now, Joel Belz in that article comes up with a formulaic response and that is simply in terms of being faithful to a high doctrine of scriptural inspiration and he’s commenting actually a bit about Calvin here; and Calvin is kind of a lightning rod that draws a lot of blows on its head—Calvin College—Calvin of course is beyond all of them. [Laughter]
And Belz’s comments that the debate really got underway when professors at Calvin and other folks in their sponsoring denomination got wobbly on the doctrine of scripture. That’s when the underpinnings get knocked loose and I agree with that. The question is “What are you going to do about it?”
I have a friend who says when he goes to France, he just speaks French louder. When we are dealing with this problem, do we just affirm the doctrine louder? You see, the real problem is “How do you integrate a high doctrine of scriptural inspiration into the body of knowledge that makes up our academic life?” That is the real problem back of “drift.” We speak of the integration of life and faith and of learning and faith but that means in practice, let’s have a theory of knowledge that incorporates an authoritative scripture. How does that fit in? With no special pleading, no dodging, no poo-pooing, no evading—how does that fit in? [35:34]
Now, you may feel like I’m taking unfair advantage of this morning because I’m going to drag you through some of the hardest patches in philosophy and the reason for that is simply, you cannot deal with these questions unless you are willing to face up to the question of what constitutes knowledge?
See, one of the reasons why people drift on the authority of the Scripture is because they have been taught that somehow it is in a separate category and that’s what they do. They put it in a separate category and then they do their Mathematics, and they do their Slovak languages and Philosophy and whatever it is as if it were knowledge and then when they come to the authority of the Scripture and the contents of the Scripture, suddenly that’s not treated as knowledge. [36:36]
It isn’t so much it isn’t treated as knowledge—it doesn’t even appear in the same category. And that is a kind of compromise that has been worked out over a long period of time. And it was worked out first—I’m going to talk about that a little more in a moment—worked out first among philosophers such as Spinoza and later on, thinkers such as Kant and Fishta who developed the view that the historical content of the religious traditions was only a fasom de palate—it was a manner of speaking—it was a way of saying something that could be said better if you laid it aside and did it on the basis of reason.
So, you have a compartmentalization—an idea that somehow, you know, sure we tell the biblical stories and all of that but well, you know, they are teaching something which we can all know on a different basis, and we can get past all of the sectarian divisions, and we can have peace by making this little division here so that religious faith as traditionally understood and real knowledge never meet. They never meet. [38:05]
That is the circumstance in which drift occurs and drift occurs because that is a falsehood. They do meet and you cannot keep them from meeting, just the fact that you have one person who’s trying to play both sides of that street means that it can never succeed as a device. And what we have to do is we have to recognize that, and we have to begin to understand that the content of the Christian tradition stands on all fours with any other knowledge tradition and where they deal with the same thing stands as a knowledge claim on the basis of evidence.
Authority is not opposed to evidence. Authority is a form of evidence. But we have to have a theory of evidence that brings them together. Well, you may be discouraged to learn now that I am ready to start. [Laughter] And now, I want to just, in a pedestrian manner just go over some things. I want to tell you what reason is. I want to tell you what knowledge is. I don’t do this in any high-handed way I trust but we need to have definitions before us to work from and so let’s just begin with reason itself. And I will give you a very simple description. I will not split and start all of the available hairs. [39:59]
What is reason? Reason is the power to determine by thinking, “what is the case?” Reason is the power to determine by thinking, “what is the case?” Really, it is the capacity to discern necessary connections—hypothetical connections—and this is true when you are balancing your checkbook, you are using reason. You are saying if this happened, and that happened, and the other happened and the other happened. I wrote this check. I made that deposit. There was this service charge. There’s this much going in—this much coming out and then there is this much in the bank. That’s a use of reason. Some of us may not be familiar with that particular case. [Laughter] [41:05]
Any time you are trying to puzzle out what is happening in the middle of an event on the freeway sometimes—you are using reason. You are trying to understand your child or you’re grading a paper. Now there is a fine use of reason. Very often it’s a great challenge to reason—[Laughter] to determine what, if anything is being said. [Laughter]
And of course, that’s a loving activity because we want to be able—we read the paper and I’m sure you feel the same way as a teacher—you want to find contact with the mind of this person that is working and it’s a great thing. It sounds a little Polly-Annie-ish but I grade most of my own papers, no matter how large the course and I do that so I can stay in touch with my students and I have a problem with doing it because I’m apt to get too absorbed in their papers so I have to sort of “take the lash and drive myself onward” to the end, but that’s a use of reason.
Reason is the power to determine or discover what is the case by thinking; and we see it in its formal properties and one of the indicators of the sad state of reason in our culture today is there is almost no training in logic now in our universities. I have to take my under graduates aside and say, “now, I know you don’t have to take a course in logic but I encourage you to take a course in logic” and to those who are Christians, I use the old saying of L. T. Hobhouse, the old English philosopher who used to say—“all that religion requires of philosophy is a fair field and no quarter given” because that’s exactly right. And when you learn it on that basis, you’ve got something. [43:29]
But now, you can go to a PhD and never know the difference, Clyde between non-sequitur and post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc . . . [Laughter] You know, you think, you are never required. Now, you more or less fit into a particular field and you learn how the ball bounces in that field, and you try to keep the ball bouncing and that’s often thought to be good method. And that’s one reason why in the Academy very much today, people are judged in terms of where they come out rather than how they got there and that is a fundamental failure of intellectual virtue, which should indeed judge where you come out by how you got there instead of judging how you got there by where you come out.
But, increasingly in our culture, you see, reason is put in a position of defending a corner of the academic map for oneself and reason as Freud might say, “has degenerated into rationalization.” [44:39]
Now, what is knowledge? Another simple but I think correct statement –knowledge is the capacity to represent things as they are. Knowledge is the capacity to represent things as they are on an appropriate basis of thought and experience. That is purposely designed to incorporate the authority of tradition and the authority of scripture properly chastened, and we learn a lot about evidence by looking at how the tradition of knowledge in the Bible and from thereon has developed. [45:37]
When Abraham—when God comes to Moses, he identifies himself in terms of a previous experience with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then Moses is a point of reference as the structure of verification, if you wish for religious authority and revelation moves down through time until it comes to a head in Jesus Christ himself. And when Jesus Christ comes, he fits himself perfectly into a relationship that had already been given and he completes it. That is an appropriate basis of thought and experience. If you want to know what God is like, you have to take it in those terms. You are not going to be able to derive the knowledge of what God is like simply from a blast of your own experience or from some clever thinking that you did one day after breakfast. [47:00]
And we have to understand the nature of evidence and that’s a large part of the task that stands before the Christian universities today—is to re-interpret and come to an understanding about the nature of evidence and all of the professions today in my judgment are in epistemological crisis because any solid sense of evidence has departed, and it has been taken over by good professional practice.
And so, evidence has become a sociological reality and then what do you do with the verse that says, “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil?” But if you are following the multitude for your evidence, you don’t have much choice left, do you?
Now, we need to say, because of the history of our circumstances at this point that reason is not inherently bad. Knowledge is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is like all-natural abilities. Reason is simply a natural ability. The ability to know is a natural thing. It is like the ability to grow corn and cook chicken and do all the other things that we need to do to stay alive. There is nothing wrong with it. It is good. God made it. It is good—like all of the aspects of the human being that God has created, they are good; but, it may be taken as a place to stand independently of God and even against God—that it also has in common with all other human abilities; and that is what has happened in the last 100 years in our academic culture. [49:09]
If you have not read George Marsden’s book on The Soul of the American University, go out and read it immediately. And one of the most telling passages in there is where he explains the encounter between William Graham Sumner and Noah Porter who was president of Yale in the 1890’s and the heart of that discussion is very simple. Sumner wanted to use a book by Herbert Spencer on sociology as I recall, and Porter objected that Spencer’s book did not include discussions of God and Sumner’s reply is like the point where you go over the waterfall. His reply was simply that “the subject matter had nothing to do with God.” It had nothing to do with God.
Now, Noah Porter realized the significance of this and there is a wonderful statement that Dr. Marsden includes in his book where Porter is saying, “Everything teaches theology. It’s just a question of which theology” and he sites Spencer and others. The only question is whether it’s going to be their theology. We can do that same thing today. It’s only a question of whether we are going to teach the theology of B. F. Skinner or Carl Sagan or somebody else. Teach a theology because when you teach a subject matter in a way that God is irrelevant, you are teaching a theology and the Christian theology is precisely God is not irrelevant to anything—more on this later. [51:13]
You see, the problem is that reason can be socially corrupted and what you see in Sumner is the result of two or three centuries of the social corruption of reason and the deeper issue here as it is always, is what is to count as knowledge? You see, Spencer and Sumner and now, nearly everyone in the academic world simply defines knowledge in such a way that what can be known is something that God has nothing to do with.
You see, what I have to say to you is—that is not a discovery. That is a decision. They did not discover that. They decided that. Now, the weight of history had pushed them along; it’s true to the point to where they thought for their own professional respectability, they had to make that decision and now, I think it is so important to understand that the skids began to really move at this point because the old model of responsibility for knowledge before God, which was basically that the President or perhaps the community minister or perhaps some of the more distinguished members of the faculty would interpret the whole college career to the student in the light of Christian revelation. That could no longer sustain itself in the face of specialized knowledge. Noah Porter could not convincingly come back to William Graham Sumner and say, “you don’t know what you are talking about.” Do you understand what I am saying? [53:18]
The growth of specialist knowledge posed a problem for Christian intellectual leadership in the Academy which it was never able to get over or has not thus far. After this conference, of course, it will. [Laughter]
So, the deeper issue here, you see is what is to count as knowledge and the decision that you see in Spencer and in William Graham Sumner has its roots back in people like—I mention Spinoza. Spinoza wrote a book called Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, I think or Politials-Theologicus. [It is actually Tractatus Theologico-Politicus: A Critical Inquiry into the History, Purpose, and Authenticity of the Hebrew Scriptures with the Right to Free Thought and Free Discussion]. I never can quite remember that but it was a tract on the relationship between theology and politics and it is worth your time to read it because Spinoza, more than anyone else, set afoot, well, there are many, many dimensions of this; including he really gave great impetus to what is called higher criticism and the function of higher criticism is very apparent in what Spinoza has to say in his book.
The function of higher criticism is basically to disarm historical traditions and authoritative texts and to put them in a position where they can be reinterpreted as having a local cultural significance but not significance as conveying truth about reality. That now is going to be left to the sciences and to philosophy of course. And the state will stand back and not enforce theological truths, which of course is a major issue and in Holland at that time where Spinoza lived, Mennonites were hunted down and burned at the stake. This is not a small thing, is it? But with the good comes a time bomb and it ticks away—the irrelevance of the content of historical revelation to reality. [55:33]
And then we have the positive side and that’s seen no more clearly than in a piece of writing by a Frenchman named Condorcet and it’s a piece that he entitles , “Sketch for Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind”—a very ironic piece. Condorcet wrote this while he was in hiding form the French Revolution which he had earlier sponsored, and which killed him before he got the book written. And it’s full of confidence about the progress of the human mind on the basis of scientific knowledge—knowledge of scientific laws. Scientific laws are of course to be interpreted precisely in the naturalistic way that I have described already.
And any of you see we are going to solve every conceivable problem including the problem that we still talk about today. It’s so amusing to see how these things keep going that we are going to overcome aging and death on the basis of natural law. We will also learn how to make people virtuous and happy and see, that’s the positive side. What do you need religion and priests for if you have science? Well, this is not exactly worked out, but liberal thought—I don’t mean to use that in a derogatory term but descriptively—liberal thought as its historically understood, including liberal theology adopted this course that you see both in Spinoza and then later in Condorcet. [57:12]
It buys into the idea of the scientific and of knowledge as defined by the scientific and puts it in opposition in another category to faith and I think many of you will know that story so I will not spend much time on that.
Now, the reaction on the part of fundamentalism and likewise, I don’t use that as a term of derogation at all but rather as a descriptive term. The reaction of fundamentalism was mistakenly to attack reason. And I came up through Christian colleges and I know how bad this can be at times. The very idea that thought is wicked—and you can quote verses on that.—that the imagination is wicked and the idea that there is nothing good in human beings and that therefore one should sort of try to blotto every element of creativity and thought and action. And of course, I was in a very confused tradition anyway. I am southern Baptist, and, in that tradition, we will preach to you for an hour that you can do nothing to be saved and then sing to you for a half an hour trying to get you to do something to be saved and that is confusing. [Laughter] [58:54]
So, there are real problems here and I just say very simply mistakenly the fundamentalist reaction was, general speaking, and of course, there are exceptions and if we had time, we could name them. There are exceptions.—was to see the problem to be reason and not to be wrong reason. It’s like the people who quote Paul from Colossians 2 about vain philosophy and suppose that the idea to respond with is no philosophy at all. I hope if I advised you against vain clothing, you would not suppose . . . [Laughter], etc.
So, there was a progression that really went on, by and large, the disowning of particular fields from the authority of the Christian tradition. The disowning of knowledge of such regarding it as outside the pail and so many times in Christian institutions the idea was that we really do spiritual life here and we protect our students from those bad people in the other universities and we do what is necessary to qualify them for jobs, but we don’t honor; we don’t think of honoring the intellectual or artistic life in its own rite because somehow that would be ungodly. [1:00:22]
So now, the next stage is how reason itself left on its own—left without the life-giving sustenance of the content of scriptural revelation. Reason on its own falls’ victim to empiricism and positivism. It’s a long story. I don’t have time to tell it. The patron saint who is Niche. Niche himself philosophically was the dupe of all kinds of shallow and unconvincing philosophical positions—most notably phenomenalism or positivism. He simply buys the whole bag. The weight of authority falls on him and actually he gives a theory which justifies it anyway, which is always nice to do if you are going to be irrational—give a good reason for it. [Laughter}
But Niche is of course the patron Saint of irrationalism now on the campuses generally. The idea is that everything is an expression of power and so then all of the very real problems in our culture about diversity, oppression and so on are brought to bear on this and the idea is and comes to be now that even truth is oppressive. Logic is a male conspiracy. You hear these things actually said that reason itself is a part of the problem because reason gets formed in a cultural way so that those in power can oppress the weak and guess what? There’s a lot of truth to it—a lot of truth to it, but its fundamentally, it is used to undermine the role of reason as an authority and reason cannot sustain itself and the reason it can’t sustain itself is because it does not fall within the naturalistic world view and so, it is pushed over into that world view and standards of reason and rationality are then treated sociologically or behaviorally. It’s only when you get in philosophy that you find any attempt to even say that they are chemical, but you know, that’s quite a stretch so they are usually treated sociologically or behaviorally and frankly, they are lost. Reason cannot sustain itself on its own as no natural created power can. [1:03:05]
Reason was never meant to function on its own any more than any of our other natural powers—sexuality—the ability to cultivate the landscape, to work with chemicals and physical powers and so on. None of that was ever meant to be alone. Reason wasn’t either. It won’t stand. It won’t stand on its own.
And so, we come to the point now that reason must be redeemed. Okay? I hope you are still with me. Again, I apologize, There is just—I know no way to do this other than this way. Maybe I just should stamp my foot more often, [Laughter] but I just know of no other way to do it.[1:03:57]
So now, in my overall outline, I have talked about what reason is and I’ve talked about the history of reason and I’m now down to the point to where reason must be redeemed, and I want to say somethings about that.
Reason must be redeemed because it becomes—it falls under the influence of fallen patterns in our social context. I want to read you a few words from C. S. Lewis—wonderful Screwtape Letters. This is a prophetic book. I’m stunned when I read Lewis, especially these and he is—I see Lewis as standing mid-stream where everything that I am talking about to you this morning is sweeping past him, and he’s standing there and sees it and he knows it. What he says is prophetic because it has become increasingly true, but in the first letter, you have Screwtape saying,
“My dear, wormwood, I note what you say about guiding your patient’s reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naïve? It sounds as if you suppose that argument was the way to keep him out of the enemy’s clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time humans still knew pretty well when the thing was proved and when it was not. And if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning but what with the weekly press and other such weapons we’ve largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed ever since he was a boy to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines of primarily true or false but as academic or practical as outworn or contemporary. As ruthless or conventional jargon, not argument is your best ally in keeping him from the church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true. Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous; that it’s the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about. The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the enemy’s own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of this kind, I am suggesting, he has been shown for centuries to be greatly inferior to our father below. [1:07:01] By the very act of arguing you awake the patient’s reasoning and once it is awake, who can foresee the result, even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favor, you will find that you have strengthened in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his consciousness, his attention from the stream of immediate experience. Your business is to fix his attention on that stream, teach him to call it real life and don’t let him ask what he means by real.” [1:07:40]
You see, the flow of human events around academics proves that they too are sinners, and they too are ready to give in to the pulls and pushes of the social context—another little piece by Lewis called The Inner Circle is one of the most important things for any Christian academic to read—The Inner Circle. And it is a story about how we hunger all of our life to be included and that is one of the main reasons why reason has to be redeemed. [1:08:19]
I often jokingly say but not so jokingly that the lie most commonly told in my context is “Oh yes, I’ve read that book.” [Laughter] Now, why do we say that? Because we want to be included. We don’t want to be left out. We want to be “in.” The whole word “party” is an interesting word. It means to be a part of. Right? And we like to be included. We like to be brought in.
Only the strength of a greater community that is provided by Jesus Christ can stand against that and that’s why Paul refers to the church as the pillar and ground of truth. It really is only the person in a redeemed relationship to God that can stand for truth. Truth is too hard. You often hear the verse quoted to the effect that the truth will make you free. The truth will not make you free. That verse doesn’t say that. Read the whole thing. It doesn’t say that. It’s about discipleship—if you continue in my word, then you are my disciples indeed and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. [1:09:47]
Now, we’ve—don’t even have to know it anymore.—at USC, on the elevator in the humanities building, it just says, “ . . . the truth will make you free.” Truth will not make you free. It’s probably better said, “the truth will make you flee.” Truth is hard to live with and that is one reason why there has to be a community of redemption that comes down to earth and provides a context in which people can truly walk free in the truth because they are supported by their spiritual redemption before God in relationship to him. They are living in what I call a conversational relationship with God. [1:10:32]
Now, I want to spell out in rather full detail just exactly why reason has to be redeemed. I’ll give you just three premises and a conclusion.
First of all, standards generally cannot be maintained unless you can maintain ethical standards. Standards generally cannot be maintained and reason in a social context is a matter of sustaining standards. They cannot be maintained unless you can maintain ethical standards. Why? Because courage is required as well as justice and compassion.
If you are going to hold standards, go back to Dr. Packard’s talk last time—wonderful words about the incarnational presence of the teacher—what I have learned is you can be completely rigorous and people will still respect you and love you and not drop your course, which aren’t necessarily all the same thing, but they are important. If that student understands that you are being courageous and fair and loving about something of vital importance. We’ve lost that in our culture. [1:12:00]
I don’t know if you saw in the paper the other day but at Princeton apparently “F’s” have totally disappeared from the grades. Now, you and I know there is something wrong when that happens. It reminds you, you know, of that line from the radio guy who does Lake Woebegone where “all the children are above average.” [Laughter] It won’t work mathematically. Good social policy, I presume.
So, standards cannot be maintained unless you can maintain ethical standards. [1:12:37]
Secondly, you cannot maintain ethical standards unless you can effectively present them as grounded in reality. You cannot maintain socially ethical standards unless you can present them as founded in reality; that is, as an expression of what is the case of how things are. The Ten Commandments are an expression of truth about human life. The truth about the human context. That’s why God gave them to us and it’s important to keep this in mind when we think about all the oddities of our educational system. I often point out that we can be thankful that God didn’t give them multiplication tables to Moses because then we wouldn’t be able to teach them in our public schools. [Laughter] Unfortunately, the Ten Commandments couldn’t wait. Right? [1:13:37]
Third, you cannot present ethical standards as knowledge of reality if knowledge and reality must be interpreted within the empiricist, positivist, naturalist framework of ideas. I’ll say that again. You cannot present ethical standards as knowledge of reality if knowledge and reality must be interpreted within the empiricist, positivist, naturalist framework of ideas. You cannot do it. Again, it’s back to the case of sawdust being nourishing if you substitute bread for it.
Now, what you get substituted for ethics in the naturalistic framework is not ethics. You look at so called professional ethics today, there is nothing classically that you would call ethical about it. It’s all about how to stay out of trouble with your clients, with the law, and with your fellow professionals. There is nothing in professional ethics about how to use your profession to be a good person—nothing. And if you know, please, I beg you if you know of something contrary to that, would you please tell me because I go around the world saying these kinds of things and I’d like for it to be as tested against experience as true.
You show me an ethical code of any of the professions that says anything about being a good person, I’ll buy you lunch. [Laughter} You cannot present—I am restating the third—you cannot present ethical standards as knowledge of reality if knowledge and reality must be interpreted within the empiricist, positivist, naturalist framework of ideas. Now, If feel very cheap to just dump that on you. I teach ethical theory constantly and I am prepared to try to reason with you about that if you have any doubts about it. [1:15:34]
Now, because those three premises are true, it follows reason cannot prevail within the naturalist paradigm and reason will not prevail and of course generally now if you are familiar with post-modernist talk, you know it’s ordinarily assumed that reason goes along with technology, and you have two magical words which you chant when the topic of reason comes up. One is Hiroshima and the other is Auschwitz, and these are taken to prove that reason has failed from the other side.
Now, yesterday there was mention of the name Derek Bok and Derek Bok is a man I greatly admire. In his President’s report to Harvard or the corporation for 86 and 87, Derek Bok comments on the problem of teaching and fostering moral development in the university. He has reason to do this because several outstanding graduates of Harvard had recently been escorted to jail from Wall Street and, so he’s reflecting on this. And actually, Derek is very deeply committed I think, and I do admire him greatly and I am not in the least trying to belittle him but rather to use his concern as to make this point—drive this point home. Derek Bok says, “The churches no longer succeed in forming character.” Interesting observation. But he says, “perhaps the universities should look into this matter.” [1:17:16]
Well, you know, you almost want to say, “wrong turn.” Okay. But on the other hand, Bok realizes that the universities have had responsibility for this. He knows the tradition well though. He is a very well-informed man. And he knows that in the past, universities did assume a lot of responsibility for this. And again, read George Marsden’s book to see the depth to which this is true.
So, he wonders about this, and he sort of chides Harvard and other universities for not doing it and. . . now, unfortunately, if he had walked across to Emerson Hall and inquired of the people who perhaps are thought to be most knowledgeable about this, he would have discovered that there is no such thing as moral knowledge. And it’s very hard to have development of anything of which you have no knowledge. [1:18:18]
Now why is there no moral knowledge? And again, I just have to lay that on you, and I would be happy to try to say more about it later, but that’s the situation we are in today. There is no moral knowledge. And people often wonder why has there been such a fuss about political correctness? Answer: There isn’t any other kind of correctness. That’s disappeared as a topic of discourse.
Now, in my final moments, stay with me please—I am going to try to say very specifically what we as Christians might begin to do about this. How are we to be redemptive? How are we to redeem reason and understanding? How are we to bring back a social framework within which reason can fulfill her God appointed function?
Please understand my claim. Reason cannot stand on its own. It cannot stand on its own. It will be swamped by the sinfulness—I can say that here, which is present as an actual reality in the most exalted corridors of learning. What one finds is there are no original sins. It would be nice if we could find one sometime. It would be refreshing but when you are standing around with the highest levels of learning, you find that it’s drearily present and this desire to fit in—the desire to advance oneself—the desire to be secure and so on which are of course valid needs. They simply corrupt the power of reason and makes it serve at the mills of the philistines like blinded Samson. [1:20:12]
Here’s what we must do. Institutionally and individually, treat the content of, and again I use Lewis’ word, “mere Christianity”—treat the content of mere Christianity as a certified body of knowledge. This is going to be a tremendous effort and nothing I am going to say now in these closing moments is going to be easy. But I say it again, “treat the content of mere Christianity as a certified body of knowledge” and Lewis used that phrase basically to “shear off” all the odd excretions than come to us from our more or less recent history usually—you know, which way you get baptized, 3 times forward or whatever and so on and that’s not included. The doctrine of The Trinity –the incarnation, the presence of Christ and his people, the authority of the Word and so on—that’s Mere Christianity. Now, I’m saying, treat it as a certified body of knowledge and stop acting as if it were something else. [1:21:25]
Strip that gears in your transmission which allows you to shift over intellectually when you come to the doctrine of the Trinity, the resurrection of Christ, the origin of matter from mind and so on.
The Biblical tradition is a tradition of knowledge. I’ve already said what it is, and I don’t have time to go back and repeat it—what knowledge is. The Biblical tradition is a tradition of knowledge and many of you may be getting uneasy at this point, and you say, “What’s happening to grace?” This is not a, you know—work, knowledge, effort—grace is not opposed to effort. It’s opposed to earning—not opposed to effort—it’s opposed to earning. Jesus said, “Without me, you can do nothing. . . “ And you can be sure if you do nothing, it will be without him. [Laughter] [1:22:34]
So, in all firmness, in love, in openness, in humility, we say this is knowledge. It is certified. It is certifiability. It is certifiable to anyone who will look into it.
You hear of people who decided to look into the resurrection and how many of them are converted. Now, I don’t know, there may have been some that weren’t converted. They didn’t write a book, but Morrison and Wallace and all these other famous people looked into it and see—it just needs to be looked into. We don’t need to poo-poo; we don’t need to be high handed; we don’t need to be arrogant. We must not be arrogant; we must live in the spirit of Christ. We must love our neighbor as ourselves. If my neighbor is Jaques Dededa or Neechi, he is still my neighbor; I love him as myself. And I’m going to be faithful to him and I’m going to be faithful to him in truth. [1:23:37]
Secondly, confront the main issue at every turn. Again, and I say institutionally and individually because we can’t go this alone. Individual faculty people can do a lot and thank God for the heroes but basically, we need to stand together, and we need our institutions to encourage us but on the other hand, our institutions—we can’t send Clyde Cook out front and let him get his pants shot off if we are not prepared to stand back of him in our fields. That’s often what happens to college Presidents. They stand up for stuff that the faculty wouldn’t be caught dead defending in their professions. [1:24:20]
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be unpleasant, but my heart goes out to these men and women who stand up like this and we have to stand with them. We are the ones who have to deliver the goods. I said, we never got over that hump of specialist knowledge that effectively shut the mouths of the people who stood as spokesmen—people like Noah Porter—and he was not a bad philosopher in his own field but when you stand up as President, you’ve got to have people back of you saying, “Yes, I’ll deliver the goods. You write the order, and I will deliver the goods. I’ll deliver it in Sociology. I’ll deliver it in Slovak literature. I’ll deliver the goods. I’ll deliver it in Algebra. I’ll deliver the goods.”
We confront the main issue at every turn and the main issue is the reality of the spirit. That is the main issue—the reality of the Spirit and of the spiritual. We have many people teaching in some of our evangelical seminaries even who will dodge this like it was a silver bullet—the reality of the sprit and here we come back to the very heart of theology—God is Spirit. [1:25:34]
It’s often shocking to people—I tell them, “God doesn’t have a brain.” They go into a stake of shock. [Laughter] He doesn’t miss it. [Laughter] He doesn’t need it. Everything is a “no brainer” to God.[Laughter]
Thirdly, make a point of specifically treating our subject matter in relation to God—and now here I am just going to get down to the real nitty gritty—I suggest that at least one whole lecture each course in a Christian university should be devoted to the relationship of the subject matter to God—one whole hour—specifically devoted. Now, you can’t force people to do this, and I am not talking about that. I am talking about leadership—about opening the way.
Suppose the members of Christian Coalition of Colleges and Universities took this as an ideal and opened up a home page and started a discussion. I’ll tell you; it won’t be hard once you get into it. It’s like jumping into a cold swimming pool. It’s hard when you are entering, but this can be done and I am suggesting that every Christian faculty member should, as appropriate develop one lecture for each course which explicitly relates their subject matter to fundamental Christian doctrine. What does Pascal’s theorem have to do with the Trinity? It might be more interesting than you think it is—no jive, no poo-pooing, no forcing, just hard honest thinking accompanied by the grace of God. [1:27:39]
Fourth, devote one week of research each year to exploring the connection of my subject matter to fundamental Christian doctrine—mere Christianity. Devote one week of research time each year to that.
Now, you know after a few years you might not need it and that’s good—you can go fishing or whatever you like to do but until it’s done, until it’s done.
And fifth, that institutionally and individually, we refuse to allow the secular mind to continue to define what counts as knowledge. This is the bedrock issue—what counts as knowledge? That’s why William Graham Sumner said what he did about using Spencer’s book. What counts as knowledge? Don’t farm this out to your philosophy department or your theology department. Each of us work it through. Ministers desperately need to work this through and if they worked it through carefully, and it isn’t an endless task, and you don’t have to have a PhD in it. On the other hand, Christian faculty need to lead the way. That’s what we are Christian faculty for, isn’t it? [1:29:05]
We need to lead the way but if ministers began to teach and talk about this as some do, then we’d have a lot less Christians coming to our universities and hanging on by the skin of their teeth if at all until they had finished their requirements and got out where they could begin to practice their religion privately and conduct their profession in secular terms.
Now if we approach it in this way, sixthly, we will solve the problem of freedom in the Christian academy. The problem of freedom of thought is an absolutely crucial one. One of the things we know is it cannot be settled by force. You cannot stuff things down people’s throats and thank God you can’t. The problem of freedom in the Christian Academy is solved by intellectual leadership. That is what can stop the drift, set the students free because of the strength of the leadership of intellect on the campus. [1:30:13]
Well, I must quit. There is a little folder out in the foyer. It has my old colleague, Stan Matson’s picture on it—the old badger. He looks a little like a badger here. It looks like this. It has a wonderful title—Loosen the Fire—they are out in the foyer. That’d be a good thing to put on your bathroom mirror. You can cut Stan’s picture off. [Laughter] Stan’s had enough hard times in his life; he can take this. Loosen the fire! Isn’t that a wonderful phrase? Do you know where that story came from? [SILENCE FOR A FEW SECONDS] . . . all the academic music. You hear this music, you’re going to bow down or you are going in the fiery furnace and these guys said, “We don’t even need to have a committee meeting. We are going in.” And you remember the old king after he threw them in, and some men got burnt throwing them in, said, “What? We put three in there; there is four! Loose walking in the fire.”
The power of God will be with us as we walk loose in the fire. Thank you! {Clapping] [1:31:34]
I probably don’t need to say it but that was an absolutely powerful essential and non-negotiable in the development of the Christian university. Only the body of Christian knowledge and intellectual method can redeem reason in our culture in the university.
Thank you very much, Dallas. I knew you’d do it!! [Laughter]
In just a few moments, we now have two final parallel faculty papers and these promise to be also essential –Robert Sosee, on Being a Christian University: Reflections from a Theologian, and Sherwood Lingenfelter, our Provost, University Church, and Culture: Prisoners or Partners for the Great Commission. Dr. Lingenfelter will be in Mayor’s Auditorium.