Why Integrate Faith and Learning?

In contemporary Christianity there is a tremendous gap between the faith we confess on Sundays and the life we live from Monday through Saturday. We live in the world during the week, but do we know how to think biblically and Christianly about life? The purpose of integrating faith and learning is to reduce the gap between faith and life in order to show how Christ's claim of Lordship extends over all areas of life. Abraham Kuyper said, over 100 years ago, "There is not one single inch of the created world over which Jesus Christ does not say, 'This too is mine.'" Integration asks, "What are the implications of the Christian faith for all of living?" At an evangelical university, we especially nurture the relationships between the doctrinal content of Christianity and human knowledge.

C. S. Lewis once wrote, "There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan." We cannot be neutral about the implications of our faith for what we teach. Yet, where do we start? First, we need to understand why there is such a gap between faith and life.

B. What are the reasons for the gap between faith and life?

1. Christian anti-intellectualism and theological illiteracy rising out of middle nineteenth century revivalism.

From the arrival of the pilgrims to the middle of the nineteenth century American Christians prized the life of the mind for its contribution to Christian living. The Puritans believed in education. They had a literacy rate between 85-95% in early Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Puritans started America's first colleges like Harvard. Jonathan Edwards is considered one of the finest theological minds America ever produced, but he also read widely and could hold his own in a variety of disciplines. Puritan pastor Cotton Mather said, "Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but of heresy."

However, things started changing in the mid-nineteenth century during the revivals led by Charles Finney (1824-1837) and the prayer revival of 1856-1858. Much good came from these movements, but their overall effect was to emphasize immediate conversion to Christ over against deep reflection, where conviction can take root. Emotional appeals along with simple popular preaching were elevated over intellectually careful sermons that emphasized doctrinal clarity along with heart religion and a felt Christ. Personal feelings in one's relationship with Christ were set over against pursuing a deep grasp of Christian teaching. Tragically, for all the good that came from revivalism, anti-intellectualism was one of its features too, and we are all heirs to this movement in American religious life. Isn't it ironic that three of America's cults, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian Science came out of this period? Even more sobering, Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses came from regions of New York, where the Finney revivals were the strongest.

2. A lack of readiness for the intellectual assault on Christianity in the early twentieth century and subsequent withdrawal from the culture.

Because the Church's life of the mind was in decline in the nineteenth century, it was unprepared for the intellectual assault on the foundations of the faith, which reached its fullest fury in the early twentieth century. First, a radical empiricism asserted that knowledge must be confined to what can be perceived by the five senses. Thus, empiricism dismissed religion as a realm of knowing. We call this mindset modernity or modernism, and it's advocates we call modernists. We will address the profound impact of modernity on Christian scholarship later in this paper. Second, Darwinian evolution challenged the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis for some and the existence of God for others. Third, German higher criticism of Scripture was already systematically undermining confidence in the inerrancy of the Bible in the major mainline seminaries and denominations, especially in the northern states. Fundamentalists, when that label was not pejorative, simply were not ready for this assault. We had already withdrawn from the broader intellectual culture of America and from the wars with liberalism within the denominations themselves.

Instead, conservatives started their own Bible schools and focused on Bible prophecy conferences. They emphasized end times and condemned the culture to the hell it deserved. I've been reading the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins along with everyone else. I sometimes wonder if one reason for the popularity of the series among Christians is that apocalyptic scenarios of the self-destruction of civilization tend to excuse us from involvement in the culture. We marginalized ourselves from the public square. Our withdrawal has led to a shallow church and, tragically, a saltless culture.

3. The separation of the sacred from the secular in church life.

Another reason for the gap between faith and life is that we have allowed the culture's idea about knowledge into the church unchallenged. Modernists claimed that science and science alone gives us true knowledge. To please them liberal Protestants bargained away the whole message when they quit stressing Christianity's supernatural nature, especially the historical reality of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:14; Romans 10:9-10). They were wrong. Christ either rose from the dead, or you might as well call Christianity something else. The reality of the resurrection is so central to the New Testament documents that it would lack integrity to call anything that did not start there Christianity (1 Corinthians 15:15).

However, evangelicals have their problems here too. We believe in the supernatural nature of Christianity. However, when we get into the classroom, we often take our cues from modernists just like liberals have done. Just because modernists have their ideas about knowledge does not mean that we have to behave and teach the way they tell us to do. If we accept the Christian world-view by faith, then we do know things in our various disciplines apart from science. We should not call our classes Christian, if we open them in prayer, and then act methodologically like secularists.

Of course it's true that we know we will never, in our finite condition, be able to verify the truth claims of Christianity empirically. We can avoid arrogant triumphalist attitudes by remembering and admitting openly that we too are limited, like secularists, by our creaturely and fallen condition. God opened our eyes to know things that are true, so we should make truth claims humbly.

Yet, with that said, the fact that we confess some things by faith and not by sight should never keep us from teaching them as truth. We are not silent about these things at church, so we should not leave them at the door of the church when we head for school and the culture. Let's just make sure we go humbly.

Let me add a warning here too. The world will not understand this or you, until it sees its need for Christ. We need to get over it. We are called to reach out to the world, but we will not on the Day of Judgement answer to the world. Do not let the world drive a wedge between the faith you confess and the discipline you teach.

4. The separation of divinity schools from universities in education.

In the past, divinity schools were located on university campuses and were seen as integral to the university's intellectual life. Today, most seminaries are unrelated to any university and have little contact with disciplines other than theology. Conversely, departments of religion that remain on university campuses are perhaps some of the most secular departments there.

A few of the professors I had at the University of Missouri Rolla were devoted Christians, but no attempt was made to answer questions about the relationship between science and religion. State laws forbade it, and their own secular university education simply did not prepare them for it.

Christian organizations like the Baptist Student Union met right next to campus and were very active teaching the Bible, but little attention was given to how science illuminated the Bible or how the Bible might address science. Yet, I longed to understand the significance of the orderliness and intelligibility of the world. It amazes me that laws, which govern the world, can be discovered by human investigation and expressed in abstract mathematical equations. These and a host of other issues simply went beyond the philosophical framework within which U.M.R. operated and beyond the skill level of the B.S.U. leadership.

C. What makes Missouri Baptist University so special?

This is why our platform is so precious at Missouri Baptist University. Integration is not simply giving our personal testimony in class or cultivating Christian living on the part of faculty members, though both of these are important. Its purpose is not merely to use academic disciplines as a source of illustration for religious truths. We cannot call ourselves a Christian university if we start class with prayer and then proceed to teach uncritically the same secular methodologies that our counterparts in the university teach. We must take every thought captive and subject it to Christ, which means passing every idea through the content of biblical Christianity. Then we ask where does my theology intersect with my world and where does my theology critique my world?

Missouri Baptist University can do for the church and the culture what the church is not doing and what secular universities cannot do. Evangelical is not in our mission statement as a public relations strategy designed to placate suspicious constituents or to say that our teachers are in church on Sundays. It's who we are. Our mission statement commits us to enriching our student's whole lives spiritually, intellectually, and professionally, and to providing educational services to the community. By definition we are called to integrate faith and learning. Integration is not merely acceptable here. It is mandated. But how do we do it? First, we must assess the intellectual climate in which we serve and teach.

D. What are the possibilities for integration in the current intellectual climate?

1. The promise and the failure of modernity.

First, we must assess the impact of modernity on our approach to integration, because its mindset has had such a pervasive impact on our culture. Modernity is the mindset brought on by the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment. The scientific revolution led our culture to say that true knowledge is only that which can be verified empirically. The Enlightenment said that man is able to discover truth through the use of autonomous reason alone. Under modernity, then, reason operates apart from any divinely revealed and therefore authoritative revelation, like Scripture, that can judge reason and science.

Some say modernity promised and delivered many things and even argue that it has Christian roots. Christianity, they argue, made modern science possible, because it affirmed the existence and autonomy of the created world as well as the worthiness of its investigation as the study of God's creation. Christians have benefited from modern medicine and technology as well. Christianity made modern liberal democracies possible, because it relativizes all human authorities by insisting that all people have equal worth as creatures in God's image.

Others argue that modernity has failed us and led to the decline of Christianity. Modernity's reliance on the autonomy of reason and its insistence that real knowledge is only that which can be verified empirically, has led to two realms of knowing, the realm of science and, by implication, the unreal realm of religion. Such a dichotomy made belief in miracles, the existence of a supernatural world and the idea of special revelation seem unreasonable. The basic assumptions of modernity by law control every academic discipline of every publicly funded university in America today.

2. The promise and the peril of post-modernism.

We have been in the transition to post-modernism for at least twenty-five years in America. Post-modernism recognizes that reason is not autonomous, that purely rational thinking is not possible. Everyone is situated within a particular socio-cultural context. All of us come at questions of truth from our own contextualized perspective. Post-modernism has given up on the quest for absolute truth and has settled for a world of competing ideologies and world-views. "Every tub sits on its own bottom," as J. I. Packer has said. All truth is relative.

Some see great promise here. Now that the folly of the supposed God-like objectivity of the human mind has been exposed, enlightenment rationalism no longer rules the day. In theory, other voices should be welcome at the table, including Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus. Everyone should be a part of the new pluralistic conversation, because spirituality and the importance of religion are getting harder to marginalize today.

Yet, there is great peril in the new post-modern era. The ground is not level for exclusive world-views like Christianity. Post-modernism rejects the idea that there is a single or overarching truth or meta-story that gives meaning to all of human existence and is hostile to any truth claim that asserts one. Christianity says there is. The story began in the garden with a perfect creation, followed by the rebellion of the creatures against their maker. The story climaxes at Calvary, when God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. The moral of our story is that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). That story excludes every other world-view but its own.

We should not be surprised, then, when the world says yes to God and spirituality but no to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We are unwelcome at the table, not simply because abortion clinic bombers claim to act in Christ's name, but because we say, "You must be born again" (John 3:3). Please understand this. No matter how humbly we come to the table, if the sinful mind is hostile to God and unable to submit to its law (Romans 8:7), our table manners are going to be suspect. What appeared naïve and unsophisticated in modern times-believing in a supernatural religion-appears oppressive and imperialistic in post-modern times.

3. Modern or postmodern? What to do?

Both modernity and post-modernity have something to say. Neither is right, but both are not completely wrong. Modernity believed truth could be discovered, but it was wrong to reject supernatural religion. Post-modernism rightly critiques the myth of objectivity and the dominance of scientism, but giving up on truth altogether leads to despair. Man cannot live without God!

Christians have a tremendous opportunity within this new intellectual climate. We confess by faith that there is truth which we can know. So, we can affirm modernism's confidence that truth can be found and show how the Christian world and life view makes the most sense out of what can be studied empirically. Our approach can also affirm the post-modern critique of modernity's exclusive reliance on reason and empirical science. Plus, we can offer hope to a world that has despaired of finding truth at all. Where do we start? We start with what we believe and how our beliefs can be shown to intersect with the disciplines we study.

E. What should our theological starting points be?

1. God as creator

The doctrine of God as creator is where I believe integration should start in every discipline for two reasons. First, the world we seek to understand has its origin in God (John 1:3). Second, the history of modernity can be described as the systematic exclusion of the doctrine of creation, with the consequent assumption that humans are simply the products of natural forces. Christians must question this arbitrary dogma. It is as much an a priori commitment as is the doctrine of God as creator. Such a challenge would have implications for all the disciplines. In particular, we will consider it's implications questions about morality, epistemology (how we know things), the pursuit of truth, the common ground we have with non-Christians on these issues, and stewardship of the environment.

If considerations about God are excluded from questions of morality, then the only sensible explanation of human morality would be to see it as a survival mechanism that serves various cultural interests (i.e. moral relativism). An indifferent universe means no moral absolutes exist. Moral standards are only valid for whatever group or individual happens to affirm them. However, the result is that all morals end up amounting to personal preferences.

Under moral relativism how can anyone ultimately challenge deeply offensive practices in other cultures like female genital mutilation, the physical abuse of women in general, and racial genocide. Who can say that the Holocaust was wrong? Even atheists instinctively know that such things are wrong, but why? The Bible gives the answer. Scripture says that God has written the moral principles of his law on every human heart, even apart from the written law God gave Moses. Our consciences tell us this is so (Romans 2:14-15).

Moral relativism is extremely vulnerable here. The doctrine of creation asserts what our consciences already know. There are true principles of morality, which originate with God. They are not socially constructed but rather revealed. God made, sustains, and rules his creation. He is personally involved in it, and he has the right to judge us by the standards he has set.

The doctrine of creation also has implications for epistemology, questions about how we know things. Postmodernism's correction of modernity's over-optimism in its study of reality swung to the relativist extreme of saying that all so-called knowledge of that reality is really just a social construction. However, if God did create a true reality (contra postmodernism) and if human reason and objectivity are truly limited (contra modernity), then other possibilities exist. The Christian world-view provides the most realistic framework within which to interpret our encounter with the real world. We accept what the Bible says about how our sin and finiteness limits our objectivity. We see through a glass dimly. We come to knowledge with students as fellow pilgrims, admitting our sinfulness and limitations as historically situated creatures up front. Yet, we should never lose our nerve to say, "This is what God's word says," when it addresses what we teach.

For the Christian, the doctrine of God as creator also has implications for whether or how we can know truth. An understanding that we are finite and fallible does not lead us to reject the idea that there is absolute truth. It simply humbles us, especially if we define truth in terms of God's point of view. We are not God and should not claim to see the world as well as he can. We can construct logical systems that approximate and reflect the truth fairly objectively, but a system that explicates the final and complete truth is impossible for anyone but God. How does this help since we are not God? We, more than the rest, should not despair about truth. Our understanding of truth starts with the Bible and culminates in Jesus Christ (John 5:39; 14:6). There is a final and objective truth we should humbly and courageously seek to know and make known.

Do we have any common ground with non-Christians on the doctrine of creation? We have much. The Bible says that God's eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen through what has been made. Even though we suppress the truth in unrighteousness, that knowledge is there (Romans 1:18-20). The true light who came into the world does give some light to everyone (John 1:9). I do not hesitate to dialogue with non-Christians on what the doctrine of creation implies about learning, because I know it rings with their hearts whether they confess it or not.

One final word on the doctrine of creation. The Bible says that what God made and sustains, he owns (Psalm 24:1). God has put us here as stewards, but he did not give us the deed, and we will answer to him for our management of the environment. Evangelical refusal to address stewardship of the environment, largely for political reasons, has left a world-view vacuum on environmental concerns. We have allowed all kinds of New Age philosophies to take control of this issue. The New Age world-view tends to see the world as possessing divinity and does not maintain the radical Creator-creature distinction in the Bible. They end up placing people, animals, and even trees on the same level.

The doctrine of creation has massive importance for our work of integration, as is plain to see.

2. God's incarnation in Christ

All monotheistic faiths have much in common, when it comes to the implications of the doctrine of creation for scholarship. However, the incarnation makes the Christian faith utterly unique. Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is God and that the second person of the Trinity truly became a man and joined himself to his creation. He became flesh (John 1:14). What does this mean for our academic work? It means that the supernatural and the natural realms are not closed off to each other. Christians, who affirm that Jesus was fully God and fully man, believe that the maker of heaven and earth can make himself known in our ordinary history. Most modern thinking has assumed something like "Lessing's Ditch", where one cannot get from the contingent truths of history to the timeless truths of religion. The incarnation says we can know about the transcendent through ordinary contingent means and that we must.

Another implication of the incarnation for learning is that Christianity calls for an actual encounter with the historical person of Jesus Christ through repentance and faith. Biblical truth is not grasped like the truths of mathematics, though the mind is engaged. The truth, according to Christianity, is revealed in encounters with God within history, his and ours. Christians work within a framework, then, that is open to spiritual realities. We can be just as skeptical as anyone about various so-called claims of revelation or miracles that people make. However, we do not operate on the modernist assumption that such things do not happen.

In the natural sciences, an awareness of the incarnation invites a consciousness of the wider and more permanent dimensions of reality, that the material world is only a part of, and within which empirical inquiry takes place.

The incarnation implies much for the arts, humanities, and social sciences too. It says that God works in the apparent ordinariness of life. Poets, artists, and musicians are naturally open to seeing the wonder and mystery of everyday life. Christians look further to see God working in all these things and have much for which to praise Him.

Like the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of the incarnation affirms the created order, especially people. God has already crowned man with glory and honor by creating him a little lower than the angels and has put him in charge of his creation (Psalm 8:5-8). The incarnation says even more. In the incarnation God expressed his desire to make himself known to humanity (John 1:18). He said that when we serve the poor we minister to him (Matthew 25:40). Ultimately, God demonstrated his greatest love for us in the incarnation, when Christ died a sinner's death for us that we might have life (Romans 5:8; John 3:15-16).

3. The Holy Spirit

Both the doctrines of creation and the incarnation call us to be open to the spiritual dimensions of life and learning. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit leads us even further down this road. We affirm not only that the Holy Spirit is actively working in history but also in our own lives as well, and he illuminates this work to our hearts and minds (Ephesians 1:17-18). Jonathan Edwards spoke of Christian sensitivities as a kind of a sixth sense. In the natural state we are closed off by self-love. Yet, when the Holy Spirit gives us the new birth, we glimpse an overwhelming picture of God's love expressed in Christ's death for unworthy sinners like us. This changes the center of gravity of our entire existence. Whereas the world once revolved around us, now Christ is at the center and we delight in the glory it brings Him. With spiritual eyes we hear God speak of creation and feel his pleasure at what he has made. This drives us to try even harder to see and understand God's work in all areas of reality.

Recognizing that it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to see the spiritual dimension of life also makes us aware of the limits of human knowledge. We have hardly begun to understand the vast outer reaches of the universe. Jeremiah tells us we will never understand all we would want to know about the inner landscape of the human heart (Jeremiah 17:9). George Marsden suggests the role of Christian scholars is something like that of a map reader on a mission whose full dimensions we cannot fully comprehend. Modern scholarship tends to exalt its own perspective or the view each particular field lends to an issue. Christian scholars ought to be marked by humility that admits we do not know all we ought to know, and for what we do know we give glory to God.

4. Man's fallen condition and need for Christ

Because we recognize ourselves as descendants of Adam and, therefore, participators in his fallen nature, Christian scholars remain sober about human potential. The Bible says that the sinful mind is alienated from God and darkened in its understanding (Colossians 1:21; Ephesians 4:18). Man does not naturally seek God, and is not able to, unless the Father draws and enables him to come (Romans 3:10-13; John 6:65; 6:44). This is why the Internet can be home to so many useful resources on the Bible and integration and to the worst forms of depravity (e.g. pornography, hate speech, …etc.). Technology is not the problem. We are. Christian scholars, because we are told this in Scripture, remain sober about human potential.

On the other hand, we know too that things are not as bad as they could be. God's common grace is given to all men and preserves us through institutions like the family, the state, the church, and through the conscience, though even these realms are constantly under assault today.

Such a view reminds us that ultimately we need God's special grace given only in Christ. We must keep that fact before ourselves, before each other and in front of our students. Our culture does not need smarter professors forever writing more books. We need Jesus. We need students radically converted to Christ as Lord. We need teachers who are unashamed of their faith and can lead a student to Christ as naturally as they can lead them in their disciplines. One reason why we struggle to integrate faith and life may be that we are too busy trying to imitate a godless secular culture's academic elite. They are blind guides. Maybe it's time to declare humbly but boldly that what makes our case compelling at Missouri Baptist University is precisely Christ at the center. We should enthrone him there, do our homework so that we back our position with compelling critical scholarship, and just get over the reaction it gets from the world. Apparently some people in the world want to come here and hear about it.

5. Redemption and consummation

Our message about man's fallen nature and need for Christ goes beyond the salvation experience too. The theme of redemption and hope in the victory of God should run all through our scholarship. I have stressed our need for humility several times already as we speak about what we know. Yet, no matter how much society's problems humble us, we ought to be the most hopeful people of all too. God is extending his kingdom throughout the earth (Matthew 13:31-33). We pray for God's kingdom to come (Matthew 6:10), and it is coming. Sin is not the last word in the drama of human history, because sin is not the last word in the Bible. Christ wins. If we believe in redemption and that God's redemptive power extends to all of life, including the mind, then we should see the renewal of the mind (Romans 12:2) as part of the coming victory of God. We confidently pursue learning in our fields, because we know that in him are "hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). Glory to God!

F. How do we get started integrating biblical truth into our disciplines?

1. What questions should we ask that will help us analyze the intersections between the content of our faith and our disciplines?

a. What does my field say about what is and is not real, about what is true and what is false, and how do I understand that as a Christian?

b. What does my field say about the nature and limits of knowledge?

c. What methodology for gathering data does my field require before someone is able to assert their view about something?

d. How can what I know and teach in my field point to God's existence and presence in everyday life and nurture a hunger to understand and know him?

e. What are the ethical issues involved in my field of learning, and how do they relate to my ethical beliefs as a Christian? How does my faith promote principles of justice, charity, and concern for others within my field?

f. Is Christian scholarship in my particular field vocational, implicit, explicit, or a combination of the three? Vocational means the scholarship may not appear uniquely Christian, but it is done with excellence and contributes to the development of new knowledge. Implicit means your work touches on concerns common both to Christians and everyone else. Explicit means your work is directly and obviously Christian and has value for apologetics as well as daily living.

g. How does the content of the Scripture verses printed below intersect with basic knowledge in my discipline? What does it affirm? What does it challenge? What are the points of contact with the world?

2. What are some Bible verses that point us toward the goal of integration?

a. Psalm 19:1 - "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands."

We seek to celebrate God's glory and greatness seen in creation. Integration satisfies the human quest for joy and to praise.

b. Matthew 22:37 - "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."

With all our mind means we submit our reason to the Lordship of Christ. In addition, Christian education must intellectually challenging, or it is not Christian.

c. Ecclesiastes 12:12-13 - "Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body. Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

Knowledge and devotion to books for its own sake is tiring, because that is not the ultimate duty of man. To fear God and obey him is.

d. Romans 12:2 - "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will."

We refuse to have our minds pressed into the world's mold. We seek to be changed by renewing our minds with according to the Christian world-view in order to think Christianly about life. There is true truth.

e. Colossians 1:16-18 - "For by him [Christ] all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead so that in everything he might have the supremacy."

We acknowledge Christ's involvement in every field of learning as the One through whom all things were created and are sustained so that his supremacy and centrality is seen in all of life. Christ is the integrating center of integration.

f. Acts 14:17 - "[H}e has not left himself without testimony: He has shown his kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their season; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy."

We acknowledge God's kindness toward humanity evidenced in the good things he provides for all of us through creation. God is a good God.

g. Ecclesiastes 3:10 - "He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."

God made everyone with an awareness that this life is not all there is, and yet we also know that we are not sufficient of ourselves to understand what is beyond this life.

h. Romans 2:14-15 - "[W]hen the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law. They are a law for themselves, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them."

Non-Christians and even people who have never heard of Moses are able to recognize and even approve of the basic principle of right and wrong revealed in Scripture. By design there is much common ground between Christians and nonChristians on moral principles.

i. Jeremiah 17:9 - "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?"

Christian scholars are sober about human potential to succeed at doing what is right, because the heart is corrupted by sin.

j. Psalm 8:3-4 - When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor."

We are humbled before the value God places on each person.

k. Genesis 2:15 - "The Lord took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it."

We accept our stewardship of God's creation. We are accountable.

l. Deuteronomy 29:29 - "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law."

We recognize that there are "secret things" that belong to the Lord, which we will never know, and revealed things for which we are accountable. We need to submit our minds to biblical truth.

m. Romans 1:19-20 - "[W]hat may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what was made, so that men are without excuse."

We acknowledge God's judgement on the human race for suppressing the truth we know about him from creation. We need a savior.

n. Proverbs 1:7 - "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge."

A truly integrated life is one that is rightly related to its Maker.

o. Matthew 5:13-14 - "You are the salt of the earth. … You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden."

We serve our culture as salt and light.

p. Matthew 5:16 - "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven."

We humbly allow people to see the evidence for God in both our work and our character that compels them to glorify God too. Excellence is a must for the Christian scholar.

q. Matthew 6:10 - "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

We participate with God in extending His kingdom throughout the earth.

r. James 1:27 - "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

Ministry to the helpless is vital to integrating faith and learning, because it authenticates our profession of faith before God.

SOURCES USED:

Stephan Evans. "The Calling of the Christian-Scholar Teacher." The Educator (Summer 1999): 3-7.

__________. "Christian Scholarship and the Biblical Drama." The Educator (Fall 1999): 3-6.

__________. "The Voice of the Christian Scholar in the Postmodern Academic Conversation." The Educator (Winter 2000): 3-6.

Arthur Holmes. The Idea of a Christian College. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1975

George Marsden. The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

J. P. Moreland. With All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1997.

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