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Many universities, founded on the principles of vigorous scholarship and steadfast Christian faith, have abandoned those roots, resulting in confusion, fragmentation, and ideological strife. This book explores the role reflective Christian faith can play in unifying the intellectual life of the university. Contributors including Jean Bethke Elshtain, Richard Hays, John Polkinghorne, Joel Carpenter, and David Lyle Jeffrey analyze the character and practices of an ideal Christian intellectual community.

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 avril 2006
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441206602
Langue	English

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C HRISTIANITY AND THE S OUL OF THE U NIVERSITY
C HRISTIANITY AND THE S OUL OF THE U NIVERSITY
F AITH AS A F OUNDATION FOR I NTELLECTUAL C OMMUNITY
Edited by
Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty
2006 by Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty
Published by Baker Academic a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakeracademic.com
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-for example, electronic, photocopy, recording-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Christianity and the soul of the university : faith as a foundation for intellectual community / edited by Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 10: 0-8010-2794-2 (pbk.) ISBN 978-0-8010-2794-9 (pbk.) 1. College students-Religious life. 2. Universities and colleges-Religion. I. Henry, Douglas V. II. Beaty, Michael D. BV639.C6C47 2006 261.5-dc22
2005036688
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
C ONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1 Basic Issues
1 The Palpable Word as Ground of koin nia Richard B. Hays
2 To Serve God Wittily, in the Tangle of One s Mind Jean Bethke Elshtain
3 Christian Interdisciplinarity John C. Polkinghorne
4 The Christian Scholar in an Age of World Christianity Joel A. Carpenter
5 Faith, Fortitude, and the Future of Christian Intellectual Community David Lyle Jeffrey
Part 2 Vital Practices
6 Doubt and the Hermeneutics of Delight Susan M. Felch
7 Christian Hospitality in the Intellectual Community Aurelie A. Hagstrom
8 Communal Conflict in the Postmodern Christian University Steven R. Harmon
9 Moral Imagination at a Christian Institution Daniel Russ and Mark L. Sargent
10 American Protestantism and Vocation in Higher Education Daniel H. Williams
Contributors
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
W E OWE A DEBT OF gratitude to a number of colleagues who shared in bringing this volume to fruition. In the first instance, since the book represents a sustained conversation initiated in connection with a March 2004 conference at Baylor University, words of thanks are due to several individuals involved in the planning and administration of that conference. They include senior colleagues at Baylor: David Jeffrey, Stephen Evans, and David Brooks; members of the board of directors of the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies (IFACS), which significantly underwrote conference costs: Elving Anderson, Judith Dean, Robert Frykenberg, Arthur Holmes, Lamin Sanneh, Rodney Stiling, and Keith Yandell; various colleagues on the executive committee of the Council of Christian Scholarly Societies, which cosponsored the conference: Amy Black, Russell Howell, and Don Munro; and staff members of Baylor University s Institute for Faith and Learning: Vickie Dunnam, Ronny Fritz, and Wynne Vinueza. In addition, we recall with appreciation the enthusiastic involvement in the conference of more than two dozen associations, centers, and scholarly societies with a common stake in the theme of Christianity and the Soul of the University: Faith as a Foundation for Intellectual Community. While too numerous to list by name here, en masse they provide encouragement to believe that renaissance and not retrenchment is the order of the day for the Christian academy.
In completion of the book itself, we express genuine indebtedness to the contributors who have collaborated with us: Joel Carpenter, Jean Elshtain, Susan Felch, Aurelie Hagstrom, Steven Harmon, Richard Hays, David Jeffrey, John Polkinghorne, Daniel Russ, Mark Sargent, and Daniel Williams. In the Christian diaspora twenty centuries after Jesus of Nazareth, they represent the flesh-and-blood virtues of Christian intellectual community, even when widely scattered over space, and to them we offer thankfulness for their conscientious reflection and patient work with us along the way. Our graduate assistant, Travis Pardo, devoted considerable energies to tracking down details, confirming citations, and offering advice about content. Not least of all, we express appreciation to Baker Academic, especially to Jim Kinney, for offering generous support on behalf of the Baylor conference, expressing enthusiasm for publishing a book on the subject, and working diligently with us to bring the project to completion.
We owe one final word of particular appreciation to Robert B. Sloan Jr. Under his presidency-and now chancellorship-of Baylor University, we have witnessed the flowering of a Christian intellectual community beyond all expectation. Among many others near and far, we have benefited extraordinarily from his relentless effort to join together accomplished scholars who embrace the scandal of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Inasmuch as his vision and leadership played a role in our efforts with this project, we offer sincere thanks, along with hopeful prayers that springtime for Baylor will tarry long. In nomine Jesu et soli Deo gloria.
I NTRODUCTION
T HIS BOOK EXPLORES THE ROLE that reflective Christian faith can play in unifying the intellectual life of the university. In the midst of a larger academic culture prone to confusion, fragmentation, and ideological strife, its multiple authors call Christian scholars to an ever ancient and always new faith that heralds clarity, unity, and accord, not least of all for the life of the mind that the university prizes. They thereby underscore the central place that Christian faith holds as scholars consider how they are called to intellectual labor and how they regard their disciplines. By so doing, they offer a compelling and provocative alternative to business as usual within higher education and the scholarly guilds.
Growing out of a conference held at Baylor University in March 2004, the book more particularly features theologically grounded reflection on the relation of Christian faith to the church-related university s aspiration for intellectual community. It offers a rallying call to all those who, committed to the unity of truth in the Triune Godhead, long for a community vitalized by faith formed by intelligent inquiry and characterized by the kindled flame of friendship which, as St. Augustine once professed of his own intellectual community, fused our very souls and of many made us one. 1
The prosaic, predictable routine of lamenting the loss of community and urging its renewal typifies postmodern American culture. Especially since Robert Putnam s much-publicized book of a few years ago, Bowling Alone , everyone seems to have a theory about the collapse and revival of American community. 2 Putnam, following the lead of such social theorists as Jane Jacobs, James Coleman, and Glenn Loury, appropriates the notion of social capital to make sense of the features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. 3 Whether one may fruitfully reduce the good of human community to an essentially economic concept is, in our judgment, questionable. Yet whatever else might be said about the merits or limitations of Putnam s account (and those like it), he surely is right about two things: we live in a period in which anything approximating genuine community is in short supply, and the breakdown of community represents a phenomenon long in the making and for which there can be no quick fix.
To make matters worse-at least for all who are abidingly convinced of the virtues of families, friendships, and communities-many evidently prefer lives of personal autonomy that are relatively unconstrained by the burden of relationship with others. Far from mourning the waning of the bonds of community, they embrace the independence and fulsome range of free choice opened up for them in an individualistic culture. Some see themselves not primarily as social and relational beings who need others in order to develop and flourish but as essentially private, solitary, and autonomous individuals for whom relationships are more likely an unwanted restriction than the key to our humanization. 4 Thus, for them, the present age s privileging of individuals over communities constitutes assured progress rather than mournful decline.
Disappointingly, at precisely the point where church-related colleges and universities ought to display a countercultural communitarian impulse, they generally mirror the radically individualistic tendencies of the rest of American culture. Thus, they do not realize in any exceptional way the kind of peaceable polity described by St. Augustine: a perfectly ordered and perfectly harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. 5 Irrespective of their rhetoric, Christian colleges and universities in practice seldom if ever resemble anything like the commonwealth of which St. Augustine speaks, wherein all are united in fellowship by common agreement as to what is right and by a community of interest. 6 To