Just as buildings need a strong and secure foundation, the education programs of MBU are built upon a foundation that integrates our faith perspective and contemporary educational theories. The Christian perspective is the foundation and the lens through which the faculty and students view the teaching and learning process. Central to the founding principles of the institution, our University Mission Statement integrates faith and learning. We believe that learning is a developmental and interactive process through which we stimulate our students’ awareness and knowledge of God and the behavioral, social, biological, and physical environments filtered through the lens of faith.

The perspective that faith is the foundation of knowledge and learning is modeled on the work of Hungarian scientist, sociologist, and philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) whose major philosophical work stressed the Augustinian formula fides quaerens intellectum, faith-seeking understanding. Human understanding rests on a tacit belief in the reality of an objective world within an affirming community. Faith is not peripheral to knowing and learning, but is a vital component of knowledge and understanding. The rationality of the cosmos is not something that can be verified or falsified, but must be understood and accepted by faith.

Polanyi provides an intellectual framework for relating faith to learning. Faith offers a lens that gives meaning and hope to the process of discovery. The faith perspective does not close down but opens up the reality of things so that there is an expectation and wonder about the order and sense of things. He rejects the idea of a neutral, impersonal scientific detachment in the process of learning. His fundamental principle is that “into every act of knowing there enters a passionate contribution of the person knowing what is being known” (Polanyi, 1974, p. xiv). No theory or construct can be relieved of the individual’s personal judgment as long as that theory is held to be true. This does not ascribe a purely subjective value to the learning of scientist-scholars, since there is an assumption of the universal validity of the researcher’s appraisal of reality and the scientist tacitly assumes that she or he is making true statements about likely events. Personal knowledge is much more than an abstraction that engages reality as a neutral bystander. Absolute objectivity is a misunderstanding of truth because it assumes the knower can stand outside the story of his own history, culture and language. This indwelling, or concrete experiencing, of truth is not formed in isolation but occurs within a believing community. It is Polanyi’s contention that no opinions, no matter how scientific and objective they are claimed to be, are outside a believing community. Personal knowledge is not an isolated endeavor but is undertaken within a community where one is held to be personally responsible for his beliefs. Learning and knowing becomes a kind of cultural apprenticeship within the believing community that confirms the values and standards of that tradition.

The emphasis in Polanyi on the formation of personal knowledge within a community is the key to developing both a critical and innovative conceptual framework. It is within the academic community that the scholar or student determines the limits of conceptual models and how such proposed models are to be judged. Language and thought are not immutable, so there must be some context for evaluating any reflection on life or truth so that it at least be intelligible to others within a particular community. As Stanley Cavell says, “the wish and search for community are the wish and search for reason” (20). Free inquiry, whether scientific, moral, or rational, demands intersubjective criteria since these provide a basis for consensus (Brunner, 27). Intersubjectivity relates to the “person-relative” nature of any argument or rational position. Whether something is intelligible or not depends on whether a person is able to relate it to his or her horizon of understanding (experience, cultural context, or language.) So in order for a particular conceptual framework to be recognizably adequate depends a great deal on the extent to which there is a shared horizon of understanding (Brunner, 23). There simply can be no discourse where there is not at least some view of the commonality of concepts and some shared criteria for assessing the limits of those concepts.

Every faith community will have a particular lens for viewing reality and will present a case for the universality of its position. This does not mean that a particular faith community believes that everyone will accept their position or that everyone belongs to it (McIntyre). A faith community will inevitably invoke a particular “we” framework such as “What we mean by such and such. . . “ which refers to a specific community of usage. It does not mean that the community assumes that everyone belongs to it and it does not mean that when someone disagrees that it is falsified. It simply means, as D.Z. Phillips states, “(T)hat the responses show that those who make them are outside the community of usage which has been invoked” (17). While MBU advocates a particular belief system, it also recognizes that there are pluralities of claimants and that all groups have the right to argue for the validity of their claims. This does not mean that every position is the same or equally valid. This is why a strong emphasis is placed on critical and reflective thinking in a context of receptiveness that is always open to correction and improvement that depends on this openness for continuous discovery (Thiselton, 252). The belief system that underlies a Christian university has important theological, ethical, and practical interests in hearing the voice of the “other” in the same manner that proponents of that belief system would expect or at least hope that others would allow them to present their claims for truth in the public arena. The proponents of a particular belief system recognize that their own particular beliefs are made more adequate when challenged by the claims of others.

While the university does present particular claims in the area of religious content, its view on the how of the learning process is multiform and varied and is based on the most current research in the field of education. Based on Polanyi’s view that the world is a place where it is expected that things will make sense, the faculty at Missouri Baptist University believe that learning is an active and shared interaction. Everyone has a stake in a process that leads to a shared understanding of the world.