Fides Quaerens Intellectum

More than a few authors of late have chronicled the history of American higher education with a view toward restoring the foundational role that the Christian religion once played in educating students.  College presidents of yesteryear, including John Witherspoon (Princeton),  Noah Porter (Yale), and Francis Wayland (Brown) recognized that their institutions were not educating students primarily for the sake of increasing their earning power upon graduation.  Although they did not discount the importance of earning a living, they knew that the primary purpose of a college education was preparation for life as a whole.  For these leaders, “education” and “preparation” were not to be equated with “training,” which is the purpose of trade-schools in Great Britain as well as the present-day American technical colleges whose focus is practical skills training such as computer technology, auto mechanics, and nursing.  To be sure, there is a place for such centers of learning, but let’s be clear:  an honest-to-goodness preparation for life must begin with asking ultimate questions…not prematurely jumping into the “how-to’s” of skills training without the benefit of exploring those ultimate questions.  Skills training divorced from ultimate questions and answers invites the question–”skills training for the sake of what?”–a question that skills training alone cannot answer.  If one grants this premise, then the natural follow-up question is “what is the basis for determining what the ultimate questions are?”  My simple answer?  Human nature itself–specifically the imago dei.  How else can we even account for why we ponder certain questions at all? 

Since the beginning of the history of ideas, we have been asking ourselves “why are we here?”  How did we come into existence?” and “What is life’s purpose?”  “Is there inherent meaning in our existence by virtue of being put here by design, or are we here as a result of some cosmic blind watchmaker called ‘chance?’”  “If we were placed here for a purpose, then how do we know what it is, and how are we to live while we are here?”  College leaders long gone understood that asking such questions, thinking critically about them, and seeking to bring definitive answers to such questions was fundamental to a flourishing democratic republic.  What’s my point?  Educational leaders–presidents and professors alike–knew that one of the main purposes of higher education was the formation of a virtuous citizenry.  They knew that a thriving and virtuous citizenry required plausible answers to life’s ultimate questions which came from good thinking drawing from both special and general revelation, and that the disciplines that flowed out of the latter (arts and sciences) assumed the truth of the former (holy, authoritative Scripture).  They sought to show students how the two were inseparable in the learning process. 

Many Ph.D.-types of today’s academy reply to this historical argument with this kind of response:  “There is a place for faith in the academy, and it has to do with the formation of student’s moral sensibilities.  That project is best tackled by the campus minister, various student ministries, and maybe at times the student life staff.  However, if real education is anything, it is progress.  Science is our best roadmap to progress and as such we need to recognize that the knowledge we glead from reason and knowledge from revelation are two largely unrelated projects.  We will always disagree on matters of faith–which is unprovable–but science is the universal language of truth which leads to progress that most benefits humanity.”  I have heard Christian academicians from various institutions give this kind of two-spheres view of how faith and reason interact (or don’t).  Scholar Julie Reuben explains it this way:  “Some approached this problem by distinguishing between knowledge about the natural world and knowledge about the supernatural realm.  They simply assigned each to different categories:  theology explored the supernatural, while science examined the natural.  Since the two did not coincide, they could not disagree.”*

My rejoinder?  Yes, science INDEED provides a roadmap for progress, and we ought to pursue it.  In fact the cultural mandate in Genesis demands it.  However, progress for the sake of what?  Humanity.  Great.  But why do we place such a high value on benefiting humanity through science?  I have yet to hear anyone articulate a cogent and convincing scientific argument that answers such a question.  And how could it?  Science is a way of knowing–an epistemological method for better understanding the universe.  So?  Well, here it is:  we get things confused in our investigations when we assume that this kind (or any kind) of epistemology is untethered from a cogent ontology (reality, or being itself).  Furthermore, what is the result when we assume that epistemology precedes ontology?  Well, Descartes has already answered that question for us–cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore, I am.”   In this formulation human reason is supposedly severed from any ontological preconceptions that would influence or bias what is known.  So what’s the problem here?  Simply this:  putting epistemology before ontology makes life’s ultimate questions trivial.  That is, if knowing comes before being, then why should I assume that there is any meaning to our existence?  Knowing before Being means that my autonomous human reason will establish its own standards for what is real to me, and to me only.  If I happen to agree with others, that is fine.  But knowing before being means that there can be no overarching (dare I say it, postmodern lit. fans?) metanarrative–no Grand Truth–by which all other truths are determined.  Sure, we can all agree with the truth that 2+2 = 4, regardless of where you are on the epistemology/ontology thing.  But that’s not the point.  The point is to try to account for why life’s ultimate questions are important and why they keep coming up, despite the new knowledge that science churns out every year. 

How can we even make sense of why life’s ultimate questions concern us if ontology (what is) doesn’t precede epistemology (how we know what is)?  I don’t wonder why there is meaning to universe because I’ve been taught to wonder about it.  The very question is bound up in my nature–the “whatness” of being human.  Those of us who have children know this to be the case from the questions they ask about ultimate reality.  This includes moral questions, which are still very much a part of university discourse, although most often in a way that ends up lapsing into a pernicious relativism and even subjectivism.  If knowing precedes being, then is there really any objective basis for differentiating between the wonderful (like the birth of a child) and the horrible (such as the gruesome murdering of a child)?  If my knowing is untethered from any prior assumptions about being and what is inherently good about it, then why should we celebrate when scientific/medical breakthroughs are made in the race to cure cancer and other maladies?  The Darwinian answer “survival” is woefully inadequate, because it does not explain the idea of human dignity and why even the most socially liberal scholars (with the exception, perhaps, of ethicist Peter Singer at Princeton) agree that someone with incurable cancer still has as much diginity and worth as a human being as someone who is cancer-free.  Or, if the cancer example isn’t convincing enough, then try mental retardation.  Does someone with Downs Syndrome have less dignity than someone who doesn’t have that extra chromosome? 

This is why I am such a flag-waver for an academically rigorous Christian liberal arts education.  Only a Christian liberal arts education has the resources to explore life’s ultimate questions with purpose and to equip students to answer those questions with sufficient clarity.  Only a Christian liberal arts education has the ability to repair the deep fractures between faith and learning that have occurred in the history of American higher education.  And it is why I am so thrilled with Erskine College’s (my alma mater) new mission statement:  “The mission of Erskine College is to equip students to flourish by providing an excellent liberal arts education in a Christ-centered environment where learning and biblical truth are integrated to develop the whole person.”  For an excellent clarification of each key phrase of the statement, click here: 

http://www.erskine.edu/about-erskine/missionstatement.shtml

*Julie A. Reuben, The Making of the Modern University:  Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1996):  51.