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How Christian Faith Can Sustain the
Life of the Mind
Richard T. Hughes, Eerdmans, 2001, 172p
Review by Ray Hoekzema
The author, Professor of Religion and director of the Center for Faith &
Learning at Pepperdine University, California, says he wrote the book
especially for Christian scholars and Christian teachers who want to
connect Christian faith with scholarship and teaching in meaningful and
effective ways. Explaining what he means by ‘the life of the mind’,
Hughes proposes four dimensions. First, a rigorous and disciplined
research for truth; second, genuine conversation with a diversity of
perspectives and worldviews that are different from one’s own; third,
critical thinking as one seeks to analyse and assess the worldviews and
perspectives one has studied; finally, embrace intellectual creativity.
He says, all of them are linked because dynamic Christian faith requires
that we learn to make connections, and to think creatively about the
meaning of what we believe. This thinking is called “theology”.
Successful integration of faith and learning demands a certain level of
theological literacy and expertise. To be a Christian scholar is to
understand one’s work to be based on, framed by, and always in the
service of one’s identity as a Christian. And the most important
consideration in Christian scholarship is one of motivation. In making
his point, Hughes spends a fair bit of time on ‘the religion’ of the
Republic and the American Churches, saying that Christians have often
assailed the religious foundation on which the American experience was
built as little more than rank infidelity. The contest between religious
diversity and religious particularity has raged for 200 years and has
posed a formidable challenge to church-related higher education in the
United States.
Hughes looks at the emphases of the various teaching models, which he
says, compliment each other e.g. Roman Catholic, Reformed, Mennonite and
Lutheran. Luther’s first resource was his insistence on human finitude
and the sovereignty of God. It means that every scholar must always
confess that he or she could be wrong. That enables them to assess in
critical ways their own theories, judgments and understandings. His
second resource was his notion of paradox which he found to stand at the
core of the Christian gospel. In other words, the notion of paradox is
fundamental to good teaching. Whereas the opposite of a true statement
is a false statement, the opposite of a profound truth can be another
profound truth. Luther observed: “In the midst of life we die” and God
answers: “No, in the midst of death we live.”
Christian faith is built on a paradoxical framework at every crucial
turn. If we seek to reduce the Christian religion to a set of simple,
linear statements that have no paradoxical qualities about them
whatsoever, then we have robbed the Christian faith of its power to
sustain the life of the mind. Hughes goes on to say that we will serve
as ambassadors for a kingdom that turns traditional values on their
heads.
But now to rephrase the title of the book, “What might it mean to teach
from a Christian perspective?” or “How can the Christian faith sustain
the life of the mind in the context of the classrooms?” In touching upon
a number of practical ways, the author stresses the need for raising
wonder and to teach with passion. We serve a God whose majesty defies
description, whose sovereignty shatters human orthodoxies of every kind,
and who finally forces one to respond, not with answers, but with
wonder, creativity, and imagination. Christian scholars must allow the
wonders and the mysteries of the Christian faith to inspire doubt and,
at certain levels , even scepticism. For scepticism and doubt breed
questions, and without questions, there can be no life of the mind.
Though the book is written primarily for those of the profession, it is
also profitable for those associated with management in education. In
fact, I would highly recommend it.
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