Following is a resonable rendering of thoughts I delivered in Hodges Chapel at Samford University on March 19, 2019.
Is there something about Faith that drives the enterprise of education in our western society?
I think the answer is a resounding “Yes!” even though it may sound as a dimly remembered echo to our ears in this 21st century.
A man found himself in an airport on one of those unfortunate days when flights get cancelled and everyone begins the mad rush to find alternative flights. This self-important man pushed his way to front of line demanding that he be given a seat on the next available flight. The overwhelmed attendant behind the counter says, “Sir, you will need to take your place in line.”
“Do you know who I am?!,” came his immediate and irritated response.
The veteran attendant immediately picked up the public address microphone and said, “Attention please, there is a gentleman at Gate 3 who has forgotten who he is, any help you may provide will be greatly appreciated.”
The defeated man sullenly slunk back to his place in line.
Most in the west have forgotten who they are. Perhaps we can be among those who help them to remember.
When we think of Egypt we think of the pyramids. If we think of China we think of the great wall. If we think of Paris we think of the Eifell Tower. Most nations have great monuments to power, wealth, or ingenuity. Israel has a book.
The Shema –
“Shema Israel: Adonai eloheynu Adonai echad…” (and that is as far as I will trust my Hebrew…with apologies to Dr. Karen Joines)
Hear O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might…”
Deuteronomy 6:4
Shhh. Hear. Listen. Be quiet. Here is Torah. Teaching.
The connection with Jesus’ final command is rather startling.
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name fo the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:18-20
“All authority…” he says.
Nobody ever said that…not Plato, not Confucius, not Buddha, not Ghandi, not the Dali Lama. Nobody. ONLY Jesus. Nobody claims to have “all authority.” Those are the kinds of people we put in the asylum or in prison. Yet, even before His resurrection his listeners noted something about his teaching; it had authority.
And having that authority, what does he tell His followers to do? Rise up against the oppressor? Win political favor? Enjoy your best life now? No, he tells them to”make disciples” and “teach.”
And boy did they!
Jesus was asked, “Good teacher, what is the greatest commandment?”
In Matthew’s accounting of this encounter, Jesus replies with the words from the Shema – but Jesus adds one significant word. Look and take note.
You shall love the LORD your God with all you heart and with all you soul and with all your strength and with all your MIND.
Matthew 22:37 (emphasis added)
“Christ wants a child’s heart, but a grown-up’s head.” -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Jesus’ followers believed God created everything and God thought everything up, therefore the pursuit of knowledge was, and is, by it’s very nature, the pursuit of God Himself.
Augustine of Hippo would declare, “All truth is God’s truth,” stating, “A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to [God], wherever it is found, gathering and acknowledging it even in pagan literature.” (On Christian Teaching II.75) This revolutionary notion was taken up by followers of the itinerant teacher from Gallilee and they began gathering it up and preserving it for future generations. Most pointedly this occurred during a period of time colloquially known as “The Dark Ages.”
Thomas Cahill in his remarkable little volume, “How the Irish Saved Civilization” points out that for centuries the monasteries were the only institutions in Europe for the acquisition, preservation, and transmission of knowledge. Jaroslav Pelikan, noted Yale historian, echoes Cahill’s cogent observation saying, “One may perhaps begin to comprehend how completely Christ the Monk conquered the scholarly world of the Middle Ages {simply} by checking, in the standard modern editions, how many works of antiquity even exist for us today only because they were copied by monks in some medieval scriptorium…[works of] not only Christian saints but of classical and pagan authors.”
From monasteries came universities. The 1st university? Paris 12th century. Followed by Oxford and Cambridge in the 13th. Followed by Rome, Naples, Vienna, and Heidelburg and, in 1841, this venerable institution, the 87th oldest institution of higher learning in the US, Samford University, my alma mater. All begun by followers of Jesus so people could love God with all their mind.
“The purpose of a Christian education would not be merely to make men and women pious Christians: a system which aimed too rigidly at this end alone would become only obscurtantist. A Christian education must primarily teach people to be able to think in Christian categories.”
T.S. Elliot, Christianity and Culture
The picture begins to come into focus. This business of loving God with all of one’s mind is not some high-blown, over spiritualized endeavor with little or nothing to do with our work-a-day world. In fact, when we squarely face it, we begin to see that loving God with all of one’s mind has everything to do with how we live and move and work in this world we inhabit. Those who have gone before us, and who laid the strong and deep foundations on which we continue to build, apparently understood this.. Yet we find ourselves in grave danger of forgetting it.
In fact, when we squarely face it, we begin to see that loving God with all of one’s mind has everything to do with how we live and move and work in this world we inhabit.
Words have meanings that we cannot escape. Those early pilgrims on the way to knowledege named the places of gaining this knowledge “university,” not multiversity. They understood that behind and above all that can be known is the God who is the singular source of all that is and, in order to rightly understand the world, one must understand that “the LORD, our LORD is one.” These universities were populated with people called “professors.” These were individuals thought to have something to profess; something true and of value which needed to be known.
While not the progenitor of the notion, Martin Luther, and his understanding of the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer, came to the logical conclusion that every person should be able to read and write so they can study the Scriptures for themselves. Thus, from one who loved God with all his mind, arose the notion and goal of universal education.
Fast forward 100 years and the new world is beginning to open. Within 6 years of landing in the American wilderness, Puritans established what would become a reputable college. “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, (John 17:3), and therefore to lay Christ…as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.” (From the first student handbook of Harvard University.) Soon would follow Yale, William and Mary, Princeton, Brown, and the list goes on. “Before the nineteenth century every college started in this country, with the exception of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia, was a Christian based institution committed to revealed truth.” (David Dockery, Renewing Minds, p.4). In fact, 127 of the first 138 colleges and universities founded in America were begun by followers of Jesus.
To understand what has happened since those not-too-distant days, which sounds archaic and brittle to our modern ears, I offer you, what I lovingly refer to as “The tale of two schools.”
In 1838 members of Siloam Baptist Church prevailed upon Milo P. Jewett to come to Marion, AL to begin a school for women that would offer an education on par with that which could be obtained at Harvard. This was a truly progressive and radical notion as it was widely held that a woman’s constitution could not withstand the rigors of academic training. Nevertheless, the work was begun and young women were given the almost unheard of opportunity to study in earnest and love God with all their minds. To this very day, this venerable and storied institution of higher learning for women (Judson is the 5th oldest women’s college in the US) maintains a deep and abiding relationship with Siloam Baptist Church as it maintains its commitment to being “rigorously academic and resolutely Christian.”
In 1861 Jewett left Marion, AL and traveled to Poughkeepsie, NY to found, what is now known as Vassar College on much the same model as Judson College, with a prominent benefactor and a strong baptist church promoting this endeavor. But the paths quickly diverge. So much so that in a 2013 Huffington Post article, Vassar College is given the dubious honor of being “The Least Religious College” in the United States. Both Judson and Vassar were started for the same reason. One has stayed true, one is no longer a sacred place
A part of the Judson College legacy that could not have been forseen, or even dreamt of as a remote possibility, by its founders is the presence of several young women from Myanmar over the last decade. One of those young women I have gotten to know showed me her bible after our services on a Sunday morning. There, on the title page of her bible were these words, “As translated by Adoniram Judson.” A woman whose linguistic heritage was captured by one whose entire purpose was to give the people of Burma (now Myanmar) the opportunity to love God with all their mind is now the beneficiary of an education provided by believers who honor the memory and legacy of Ann and Adoniram Judson through the ongoing work of Judson College.
There will be other “Judsons” in our century. Much of the work of Wycliffe Bible translators is creating new alphabets to bring the beautiful truth of God’s word, and every other truth, into the heart language of unreached peoples and, in so doing, enabling these peoples the opportunity to love God with all their mind.
I leave you with this arresting thought from John Ortberg’s book, Who Is This Man?
“One day a carpenter left his shop and began to teach. What would the history of our world be if Jesus had not changed careers? Imagine that he stays in the shop: there is no teaching ministry, no crucifixtion, no rise of the church, no New Testament scriptures, no monastic communities. The reason for which Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard and Yale (and Judson and Samford) got founded does not exist. It is a mark of Jesus’ imprint that the scenario is simply, literally, unimaginable.”
Stay the course. Firm up the foundation. Invigorate a new generation to love God with all their minds. In so doing we fulfill Christ’s command.
Soli Deo Gloria.
“One day a carpenter left his shop and began to teach. What would the history of our world be if Jesus had not changed careers? Imagine that he stays in the shop: there is no teaching ministry, no crucifixtion, no rise of the church, no New Testament scriptures, no monastic communities. The reason for which Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard and Yale (and Judson and Samford) got founded does not exist. It is a mark of Jesus’ imprint that the scenario is simply, literally, unimaginable.”
John Ortberg, Who is this man?
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