personal preference, the idea that we all have our own reality is almost axiomatic. The import of the Bible is definitely, most students would say, a matter of choice. If students assume that the relevance and intelligibility of a discipline do not fit neatly into a positivistic frame, then at best that discipline is voluntaristic. And if it’s non-academic and irrelevant for college admissions, why should students care?4 Understanding the assumptions of students is vital for creating buy in because it helps you identify what needs nudging and how to nudge it. With a reasonably accurate description of their epistemology in play, the next move is not to fundamentally alter their epistemology—desirable as that may be— but to show that they actually and already know things about life and reality that do not fit positivistic and voluntaristic claims. Knowing is much more than “knowing.’5 Knowing, in this sense, is something like what Martha Nussbaum has termed, in an essay of the same name, Love’s
that’s exactly the point: there is genuine knowledge that is already recognized as knowledge and is, for most 11th grade students, already relevant. Arguably, it is the variety of relationships that a person enjoys, or absence or failure thereof, which intones a full or diminished life. However confident the positivist may seem, more times than not, the unexpected joy that comes from such news as “she likes you” or the equally unexpected sadness of “she has gone” hardly seem to be entirely, if at all, a product of measurement. Equally so, this type of joy or sadness seem beyond volition. Who, among 11th graders, really think—when pushed at all—that they ‘choose’ to be happy or sad in such moments, as if mere willing can do justice to their knowledge in that moment? Marcel certainly wouldn’t, because love’s knowledge is knowledge! By showing students that there is more to knowing than what a positivist claims or what a volunteerist denies, you can move them beyond their assumptions—perhaps
Understanding the assumptions of students is vital for creating buy in because it helps you identify what needs nudging and how to nudge it. Knowledge. Her work suggests a viable pedagogical approach that often results in an epistemic nudge. Put another way, the immediate goal of a course like Biblical Theology is to introduce students to a mode of thinking that is already relevant in and for their lives. Appropriating the work of Marcel Proust, Nussbaum writes: “Francoise brings him the news: ‘Mademoiselle Albertine has gone.’ Only a moment before, he believed with confidence that he did not love her any longer. Now the news of her departure brings a reaction so powerful, an anguish so overwhelming, that this view of his condition simply vanishes. Marcel knows, and knows with certainty, without the least room for doubt, that he loves Albertine.”6 The moment before, Marcel was sure he understood, based on a supposedly rigorous and analytic scrutiny, where he stood in relation to Albertine. But of course, Nussbaum via Proust argues that analysis, scrutiny, and for that matter voluntary and positive reason are not able to know fully what a person knows. It is cliché that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Paraphrasing the editor of the this volume, “Of course, every high school boy knows that.” To a degree,
even beyond the extravagant claims of the college admissions process—and create the possibility of buy in.7 If love’s knowledge does this, then you can nudge them into an epistemology where even a course like Bible Theology is intelligible. This is because, from first to last— whether we agree with it, believe it, or even like it—the Bible is a love story, replete with the epistemic certainty of love’s knowledge, including joy and sadness. At the center of this love story, for the Christian tradition, is the heretofore uninteresting and unintelligible high theological notion of the “Incarnation,” that God so loved the world that he became a human in Jesus Christ In his own day, Soren Kierkegaard addressed the challenge and scandal of the Incarnation by employing a fairy-tale, of sorts. I use Keirkegaard’s poetic account to have students enact—literally, I have them put on a skit—the logic of the Incarnation as an instance of love’s knowledge. His fairy tale is nuanced, complicated, and polyvalent, so for our purposes, a quick paraphrase must suffice… Once upon a time, there was a King who fell in love with a lowly maiden. This King was rich and powerful beyond measure and could, by the utterance of a
single command, have the maiden. But the King, being both kingly and a connoisseur of human nature, sees a problem. Lest love become one of manipulation or misdirection, he must overcome the great distance between himself and the maiden. With a poet’s help (Who else would you call upon—your physics teacher?), he realizes that the Cinderella option isn’t viable. He cannot appear to the maiden as King Charming and dazzle her with the brilliance of his wealth, power, and good looks. Why? Because as a connoisseur of human nature, he knows that humans are so inclined towards beauty and power that they often confuse their love of them with love for the one who possesses them. She may think that she loves him, but in reality she may only love him because she gets to live in the castle and live happily ever after. The King knows that if they are to share a happy love she must have the “bold confidence” to know that she loves him, with or without the royal accouterments. Although the Cinderella option isn’t available, all is not lost. The King and poet recognize that a type of the Princess Bride option remains. He could become like the servant boy Wesley. He could renounce— and this would have to be absolute and final, a till-death-do-us-part renunciation— his kingship for servitude and try to win the maiden’s heart as a less-than-equal. It’s risky! He could renounce everything, live as a peasant, risk his affection for her and still get rejected. But if it’s for love, it’s worth it. And so…the King is born of a virgin and laid in a manger…and is later rejected and is crucified…8 When students come to grips with Kierkegaard’s poetic—yet highly theological—tale and realize that they know the logic of love therein, they’ve been nudged. They recognize that there’s something knowable beyond their positivistic and volunteerist assumptions. Still, it is unlikely that students will change the way they believe when they recognize that their experience of love’s knowledge is anticipated and displayed in the Bible. Provisionally, that’s beside the point. The point is that, perhaps, this nudge will be enough for them to buy in to a course that they otherwise would have thought as unintelligible and irrelevant. And when that happens, when students are surprised to find something like the Bible meaningful and interesting, well, that’s why teachers teach. Troy Dahlke (tdahlke@saes.org) teaches Religon and Philosophy at St. Andrew’s.
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