Faith and the Academy: Volume 4, Issue 1

A PUBLICATION OF THE CENTER FOR APOLOGETICS & CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT AT LIBERTY UNIVERSITY

FAITH ACADEMY AND THE

Engaging the Culture with Grace and Truth

Reimagining the Disciplines IN A SECUL AR AGE

LITERATURE AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE: A PRIMER ON THE INTEGRATION OF FAITH AND LEARNING

INTERVIEW WITH DUANE LITFIN

Leland Ryken

NAMING AND KNOWING THE GOOD FOR BUSINESS Dave Brat

CREATIONEERING: A PRACTICALTHEOLOGICAL PROPOSAL FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND RESEARCH Mark F. Horstemeyer

INSIDE OUT APOLOGETICS IN SOCIAL WORK Allison Kasch

Volu me 4 • Iss ue 1 Fall 2019

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FALL 2019 Mark Allen, Executive Editor Benjamin K. Forrest, Managing Editor Jack Carson, Associate Editor Maria Kometer, Assistant to the Managing Editor

Joshua Rice, Creative Director Ashley Holloway, Marketing Director Michael Strobel, Marketing Manager Seth Bingham, Project Coordinator Annie Shelmerdine, Graphic Designer Allison Shannon, Promotional Writer

 /LibertyUACE | @ LibertyUACE | envelope ACE@liberty.edu | location-arrow Liberty.edu/ACE

“Reimagining the Disciplines in a Secular Age," Faith and the Academy: Engaging Culture with Grace and Truth 4, no. 1 (Fall 2019): A publication of Liberty University Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement

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THEOLOGY OF THE ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES: A PROPOSAL FOR INSIDE-OUT INTEGRATION

CONSTRUCTIVE TEACHING: CULTIVATING AN EDUCATION THAT IS CHRISTIAN

REDEEMING ART THROUGH THE INCARNATING WORK OF THE REDEEMER

Mark D. Allen

Benjamin K. Forrest Sean Turchin

A. Todd Smith

MUSIC AS A MEANS FOR MAKING DISCIPLES: INTERDISCIPLINARY ENGAGEMENT FROM MUSIC AND MISSIONS Eunice Abogunrin Sean Beavers

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Contents

8 Theology of the Academic Disciplines: A Proposal for Inside-Out Integration

22 Naming and Knowing The Good for Business

Mark D. Allen, Executive Editor "Faith and the Academy" and Executive Director of the Center for Apologetics and Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

David Brat, Dean, School of Business, Liberty University

12 Seeking Truth in an Information Age: Finding the Balance of Skepticism and Acceptance Using Information Literacy Jeremy McGinniss, Coordinator, Research and Instruction, Jerry Falwell Library, Liberty University Joshua Waltman, Coordinator, Learning Commons, Jerry Falwell Library, Liberty University

15 Literature and the Christian Life: A Primer on the Integration of Faith and Learning Leland Ryken, Professor of English Emeritus, Wheaton College

26 Constructive Teaching: Cultivating an Education that is Christian Benjamin K. Forrest, Professor of Christian Education and Associate Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University Sean Turchin, Associate Professor of Philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences, Liberty University

29 Redeeming Art through the Incarnating Work of the Redeemer A. Todd Smith, Department Chair, Studio & Digital Arts, School of Visual & Performing Arts, Liberty University

32 Christ-Exalting Christian Education: An Interview with Duane Litfin Duane Litfin, Seventh President ,Wheaton College

18 Creationeering: A PracticalTheological Proposal for Engineering Education and Research Mark F. Horstemeyer, Dean, School of Engineering, Liberty University

Benjamin K. Forrest, Professor of Christian Education and Associate Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University

36 Theology for the Humanities Roger Schultz, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University

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39 Life after Liberty: Practicing Faithfulness in a Business World

BOOK REVIEWS

Will Shinn, Liberty Alumni ‘14

52 Created and Creating

42 Inside Out Apologetics in Social Work Allison Kasch, Liberty Alumni ‘19

INTERDISCIPLINARY ESSAYS 45 Incarnational Ministry for the Healing of Body and Soul: Interdisciplinary Engagement from Nursing and Chaplaincy Jerry Harvey, Associate Professor of Nursing, School of Nursing, Liberty University Steve Keith, Professor of Chaplaincy and Director of the Center for Chaplaincy, Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University

48 Music as a Means for Making Disciples: Interdisciplinary Engagement from Music and Missions Eunice Abogunrin, Instructor of Theology, Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University Sean Beavers, Professor of Guitar and Associate Dean, School of Music, Liberty University

Joseph Carson, Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

53 How to Read Theology Seth Pryor, Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

54 A Redemptive Theology of Art Cameron Hayner, Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

55 Just Business: Christian Ethics for the Marketplace Devonte Narde, Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

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Training Champions for Christ since 1971

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Editorial

Mark D. Allen Executive Editor, “Faith and the Academy” Executive Director, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

THEOLOGY OF THE ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES: A PROPOSAL FOR INSIDE-OUT INTEGRATION “Christian educators recognize that the Christian faith is more than a moral faith of warmhearted devotional practices, for the Christian faith influences not only how we act but also what we believe, how we think, how we teach, how we learn, how we write, how we lead, how we govern, and how we treat one another.”1 David S. Dockery, Christian Higher Education

academic fields and the theology of the professions. So, you will detect some of the next issue in this one and aspects of this issue in the one to come. Further, we will not build a complete theology of a field or a profession in a single article; instead, each author will begin a conversation that we hope will propel their department to consider, once again, what theology has to do with their studies and their teaching.

Frameworks for Integration In the next two issues of Faith and the Academy, we will think about faith and integration. First, in this Fall 2019 journal, we look at a theology of the academic fields. As you look through the table of contents, you will see that we discuss the integration of our Christian faith in specific disciplines such as literature, engineering, education, curriculum, art, osteopathic medicine, humanities, business, social work, library science, nursing, and music. Second, in the Spring 2020 issue, we will focus on developing a theology for professions and the professionals, such as a theology of the lawyer, the doctor, the teacher, the journalist, the counselor, etc. In sum, in this issue we hope to catalyze productive conversations about faith integration within our discipline-specific teaching and research in the academy. In the next issue, we will reflect upon the theology of work in particular fields. The first is done for our students while they are here learning in the academy; the second serves our students when they leave to enter the work force.

Let me set a few realistic expectations for the next two issues. The purpose for these issues is not to present definitive theologies for particular disciplines and professions; instead, we want to generate helpful models of integration for educators to reflect upon as they contextualize theology in their field. For obvious practical reasons, we will address a limited number of disciplines and professions due to space limitations.

Naturally, overlap exists between the theology of the

We could suggest many legitimately helpful frameworks for developing theologies of the various academic disciplines and career paths. For example, we could frame our approach to integration by employing a Trinitarian structure like that of the Apostle’s Creed. Another way to conceptualize a theology for a discipline or profession might be to think of it in terms of the grand narrative of the Bible: creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. Answering worldview questions with a specific discipline or profession in view could also shape a fitting theology for our sphere of interest. Examples of significant worldview questions are: Where are we from? Who are we? What went wrong? What is the solution? How does our discipline or profession advance God’s purposes in this world?

These three approaches to faith integration are classics, but many more could be added to this list.

Inside-Out Integration While these former approaches have contributed much to the conversation of integration, I want to propose a new method for our context. For the keen observer, however, it may be recognized as an older method rooted in the theology of Augustine. In Apologetics at the Cross: An Introduction for Christian Witness, the inside-out method for doing apologetics is offered. The application of this method, however, extends beyond apologetics proper. Here we offer a modification of this

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model to be used as “scaffolding” in order to integrate faith and the academic fields.

Keeping your academic field or profession in mind, how would you answer the following questions?

When you think of a Christian approach to your field as compared to a secular approach, how would you answer the following questions?

Inside2 • What can I affirm and what do I need to challenge in the secular conception of my academic disciple or correlative profession? What is already good, true, and beautiful, even among non-Christian approaches? What underlying assumptions, that non-Christians often take for granted, do I need to challenge?

• Where does a secular view lead? Does it lead to human flourishing? Is it sustainable? Does it contribute to the common good?

Out • Where does it borrow from Christianity without acknowledging it? Where do I find Christian influences already present?

• How might a Christian narrative or framework approach it? Does the gospel provide resources to transform it in positive ways? How might the biblical narrative be hospitable to other narratives within it?

Using this diagnostic tool may feel awkward at first, but after applying it regularly, this method will shape our mental map, influencing how we view our academic disciplines and professions. In other words, like all disciplines, it will become natural after repeated use. Allison Kasch, a recent graduate utilized this method in her university honors thesis titled, “Strengthening Social Work through the Lens of the Cross.” We invited Allison to write for this issue, as an alumna, offering insights as to how she utilized this model for integrating her faith into her field.

It becomes quickly evident then that this work of integration is more than just a project faculty pursue.

It is a product they prepare in the lives of students.

Allison’s example then is why we have structured this theme as a two-part issue. First, she was introduced in the classrooms at Liberty to theological integration, but this integration wasn’t for the classroom, but was for her life, future, vocation, and calling.

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Orienting Questions for Inside-Out Integration

9. Am I thinking holistically about my subject matter in conversation with the other disciplines in the university?

My hope is that this issue (and the next) energize faculty to think through faith-integration in their particular classrooms. Integration is more than beginning class or ending class with a topically related scripture passage, and we all intuitively know that it is something more. However, figuring it out within your discipline often requires listening to the approaches and experiences of fellow faculty members across the university in order to glean insights from their own academic reflection. Relevant to this topic, are some guiding questions we believe might aid in a faculty member's ability to think through an inside-out integration within their discipline.

10. How does the telos of the Christian story shape my engagement with my field of study in the present?

That is, how does the Christian vision of the future bodily resurrection and new heaven and new earth impact how I operate within my field today?

Each article in this issue approaches integration from their own unique expertise. These questions below, however, have been helpful in my own attempt to think through this university-wide call to integrate. I believe that careful reflection on these questions in the context of a particular discipline will either help you begin the integration process or mature in your goals of faith integration.

1. What does loving God and loving others look like in my discipline?

2. Where do I see beauty, goodness, and truth within my academic discipline? How can I support, nurture, and grow these values?

3. Can I detect “traces of the Trinity” within my academic field?3 4. How does the manner in which I inhabit my discipline lead to the glory of God and human flourishing in my classroom and in the world?

5. Does a Christian framework help me to interpret data more objectively, accurately, and productively?

Does a Christian worldview help me to explain, better than competing ideologies, the universe of data within my field? Does the Christian story make better use of the data within my field?

6. What Christian virtues are particularly relevant to my discipline?

7. How has the sin and the curse affected my field?

In what way does accepting the limits created by the fall help me to engage my discipline with realistic expectations?

8. Are there any apologetic issues created by my discipline? How should I approach those challenges?

11. How does my discipline lend itself to sharing the message of the gospel?

12. Are there any ethical issues that are particularly relevant to my discipline?

University president and esteemed Christian educator, David Dockery challenges us to move toward mature theological reflection on our disciplines for the good of our students: ... Christian higher-education institutions in the evangelical tradition cannot be content to display Christian commitments merely with chapel services and required Bible classes. We desire to see students move toward a mature reflection of what the Christian faith means for every field of study.4 This issue of Faith in the Academy is dedicated to facilitating a conversation by which we can help each other advance toward a more robust theology of the academic disciplines. “In so doing, we can help develop a grace-filled, convictional community of learning.”5 And this, we think, accomplishes our institutional goal of Training Champions for Christ.

David S. Dockery “Christian Higher Education: An Introduction,” in Christian Higher Education: Faith, Teaching, and Learning in the Evangelical Tradition, ed. David S. Dockery and Christopher W. Morgan (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 31.

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Note: in order to eliminate the redundancy of having to say “academic field or profession” in almost every question below, assume we are speaking of our academic fields or the professions our fields support.

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See Peter J. Leithart, Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience 3

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Dockery, 31.

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Ibid.

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Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement equip your students to address today’s most challenging social and cultural issues with humility and wisdom through its

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Students from all academic disciplines can participate. Applications for Fall 2019 are available at LUApologetics.com.

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Faculty Contribution

Jeremy McGinniss Coordinator, Research and Instruction, Jerry Falwell Library, Liberty University Joshua Waltman Coordinator, Learning Commons, Jerry Falwell Library, Liberty University

Seeking Truth in an Information Age: Finding the Balance of Skepticism and Acceptance Using Information Literacy

In the Information Age, assertions can be challenged and disputed by anyone wielding a smartphone with a modicum of technological proficiency. The network of ever-increasing information bolstered by new technologies has created a new cultural phenomenon – relatively instant access to numerous voices making varying claims to authority. Accordingly, justification for contradictory propositional truth claims are often marshalled on the basis of these competing authorities, and their corresponding data purported as fact. In this landscape, the barrier to discovering truth is not only the lack of access to authoritative information, but also the need for grounded discernment in the contextualization and interpretation of the information.

As Christian librarians, we find distinction in the profession by way of our unwavering commitment to the “knowability” of truth, the affirmation of truth’s origin in God, and the librarian’s mission to assist learners in discovering it. We seek to navigate through the information quagmire with professional skill while also engaging the meta-knowledge present in research presuppositions shaped by worldview. Thus, the multidisciplinary nature of librarian research expertise ideally imparts a means by which a Christian learner engages the authorities underlying both disciplinespecific and broad cultural assertions.

Determining Authority One tenant of library information literacy instruction is the recognition of source authority as being constructed and contextual.1 That which is deemed an authoritative source varies between disciplines and types of research in those disciplines. In order to determine the validity of a source, there must be an understanding of the nature of the research question and what types of evidence genuinely substantiate a conclusion within the epistemological boundaries of that discipline. Therefore,

the researcher must acknowledge biases and worldview differences, while evaluating other considerations such as authorship, research methodology, relevancy to the topic, and authorial intent.

The assumptions we make about how to synthesize and accept the information we receive are fundamental to how we think about truth claims and their correspondence to reality. Determining what kind of authority is recognized in order to answer a research question requires inward reflection, not just evaluation of the sources themselves. Our presuppositions and our affectual response to research questions, or any question, actively structures what we will accept as plausible or not. The susceptibly of many in sharing misinformation and disinformation commonly disseminated in so-called “fake news” is a testament to this.2 Often, students come to us with preconceptions which not only color their conclusions, but also their research methodology. For this reason, research librarians often begin with a “research interview” in order to help specify the nature of the information needed. Employing aspects of the Socratic Method and pedagogical best practices, librarians walk the student through these considerations with the goal of connecting students with appropriate resources.

Furthermore, a fundamental element in all disciplines is the acceptance or rejection of underlying authorities which always impacts truth-seeking behavior. This is why higher education must recognize and cultivate the role of information literacy instruction. To this end, we actively collaborate with other faculty in order to partner in facilitating meaningful instructional experiences which integrate information literacy practices into the classroom and across the curriculum.

By intentionally modeling these practices, the faculty member has an established vehicle to reinforce an awareness of the presuppositions of the discipline.

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That is, we invite students to ask critical questions about everything they learn. This prepares them for the barrage of conflicting cultural messages by fostering an inquisitive spirit that seeks to dig into the prevailing authorities found at the root of our lectures, research, teaching philosophy, pedagogy, and worldviews.

Balancing Skepticism and Acceptance There is a healthy and necessary place for skepticism in the evaluation process. However, library scholars, such as Barbara Fister, have pointed out that skepticism to information has been emphasized with such effectiveness that students are coming to texts with an extreme distrust, practicing what can be understood as the “hermeneutics of suspicion.”3 That is, readers approach a text with the expectation that it prove its own authority beyond the shadow of any doubt. This in effect assumes a source must conform to a particularly rigid set of preconceptions held by the reader. The outcome of employing this strict evaluatory filter causes the reader to rely heavily on their own authority, severely inhibiting the ability to effectively evaluate information beyond one’s immediate experience and viewpoint. In this way, extreme skepticism stunts the maturation of perspective, resulting in oversimplified views. On the other hand, many of us teaching in higher education have recognized the incongruency of students’ general informational skepticism and their conditioned habits when engaging with the academic research process. Student research can tend to rely on the first page of Google hits or library database results. This is essentially tantamount to trusting the algorithmic authority of the database and its metadata structure over and against the application of higher order critical thinking skills. We maintain that understanding the role and context of authority is a balance between extreme skepticism and wide-open acceptance. Therefore, using information well relies on a framework and skillset that holds our particular truths as concrete while allowing for thoughtful consideration of other ideologies without automatically dismissing them in their totality. Moreover, the research project is a means by which these philosophically robust ideas are put into practice. As George Steiner observes, interpretation is “... understanding in action.”4 Librarians recognize that this holistic view transforms the research process into a rich pedagogical encounter that supports students’ interpretive work. Accordingly, to adequately approach a research question, the student must practically cultivate a contextual awareness of authority. The successful researcher synthesizes ideas by determining appropriate sources while also navigating the academic practice of the discipline (e.g. citation styles). The complexity of this process is further exacerbated by the need for students to recognize all

of these elements in their own research and also in the texts they are examining. On the whole, students’ approach to the research project is shaped as much by the project parameters as the students’ own knowledge, experience, and presuppositions.

Engaging Cultural Assertions The research process is not an isolated academic undertaking but carries import into apologetic engagement via the evaluation of source authority. The presuppositional character of truth claims presents an immediate barrier to cultural engagement and overcoming that barrier in discourse of any sort requires the same critical thinking modeled by the research librarian. Finding the balance between skepticism and acceptance entails a recognition of the complexity of the authority structures at play in preparing a persuasive response to cultural questions. A persuasive response entails the use of reflection to understand the nature of the presented information and, subsequently, the burden of proof required to substantiate a claim. It is a matter of examining and exposing all factors that color one’s interpretation of information, on either end of a conversation, in order to lay bare the conclusion warranted by the evidence.

When presented with a claim, the reflective Christian responds with questions about that claim’s authority.

For instance, when presented with criticism of Scripture’s reliability, the reflective Christian begins with questions regarding substantiation of evidence. When presented with challenges about the sanctity of life, the reflective Christian recognizes the interdisciplinary nature of this bioethical issue by consulting sources in philosophy, theology, and medicine. When presented with viral social media narratives, the reflective Christian asks how our emotions shape our response to those narratives. A reflective response allows navigation between blanket skepticism and blind acceptance in the world, as in the library.

“ACRL Framework for Information Literacy,” http://www.ala.org/acrl/ standards/ilframework.

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2 Nicole Cooke, “Posttruth, Truthiness, and Alternative Facts: Information Behavior and Critical Information Consumption for a New Age,” The Library Quarterly 87, no. 3 (2017): 211-221.

3 For discussion of skepticism vs. informed trust see Barbara Fister, “From Schooled Skepticism to Informed Trust”| Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/schooledskepticism-informed-trust. The idea of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” is adapted from Eve Sedgewick’s work, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. (Duke University Press, 2006). This phrase has its genesis in the work of Paul Ricoeur.

4 George Steiner, Real Presences. (London, Faber & Faber, 2010), 8.

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Guest Contribution

LITERATURE AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE: A PRIMER ON THE INTEGRATION OF FAITH AND LEARNING For the past half century, the quest of professors and students in the Christian academy to pursue the intellectual life in a distinctly Christian manner has gone by the name of the integration of faith and learning. Despite attempts to debunk the word integration, it is exactly the right word. To integrate means to bring two things together. To integrate any academic discipline with the Christian faith involves two tasks. The first is to produce a Christian philosophy of the discipline — an explanation of its nature and a defense of its importance in a Christian’s life. With that as a foundation, we need a methodology for relating our activities within the discipline to our Christian faith. The integration of faith and literature follows the same two-fold procedure as the other disciplines do. If we will expend the time and intellectual energy to be thoughtful about the enterprise, we will find that in our travels in the realms of gold (John Keats's magical metaphor for reading literature) we can achieve the goal of bringing every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Integration Task #1: The Nature, Defense, and Importance of the Discipline In making the case for the importance of literature in the Christian life, I have always felt that my task as a literary scholar is easier than it is for my colleagues in other disciplines. We know that literature is important because of the example of the Bible. Using ordinary criteria for what makes a piece of writing literary, it is no stretch to regard eighty percent of the Bible as being literary in nature. Is literature essential to life? Yes — the example of the Bible, including the discourses and sayings of Jesus, assures us that literature is indispensable to the Christian life.

Leland Ryken Professor of English Emeritus, Wheaton College

In this brief guidebook, popular professor, author, and literary expert Leland Ryken explains what the classics are, how to read them, and why they’re still valuable.

Written to help you become a seasoned reader and featuring a list of books to get you started, this guide will give you the tools you need to read and enjoy some of history’s greatest literature.

Ryken, Leland. A Christian Guide to the Classics. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015. $9.99.

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As we forge a Christian poetic (philosophy of literature), the Bible is our authoritative sourcebook.

In some circles, an appeal to Christian creeds such as the Anglican Prayer Book, or to specific theologians like Augustine or Karl Barth, has been regarded as more sophisticated or valid than an appeal to the Bible. We need to reject that mindset. The Bible is the authoritative repository of Christian truth. It can be trusted to impart the essential principles of our thinking about literature as well as other subjects.

Nonetheless, we need to avoid naïve expectations that the Bible will speak directly to questions of literary theory. A leading pillar for all of the academic disciplines is the doctrine of common grace, also called natural revelation. According to this doctrine, much of the truth by which the human race conducts its affairs is revealed through human reason and the empirical study of the social and physical worlds in which we live. What this means is that much of what we believe about literature and its study will come from the discipline of literary scholarship. To know what literature is, we need to scrutinize works of literature, just as if we wish to understand plants, we put them under a microscope or observe them in their natural environment. Every literature professor’s approach to literature is rooted in some secular theory of literature and its study (also called literary criticism). We should not expect a Christian professor of literature to approach literary texts in a manner totally different from what is found in the broader world of literary scholarship. We do have a right to

expect a Christianized version of the literary theory or critical method that has been adopted. We also have a right to expect, surely, that a course that claims to be a literature course will actually study literature (and not, as in the secular academy today, ignore literary texts in order to promote politically correct propaganda).

Furthermore, we need to respect the integrity of literary works as works of literature.

What is this integrity of a work of literature? Despite changing views through the ages, a core of principles about literature has been acknowledged, even when variously valued. (1) There is a form of discourse that possesses properties that set it apart from other discourses in such a way we can speak of a type of writing as being literature. (2) One aspect of literature consists of form, beauty, technique, and creativity, and this aspect is self-rewarding as a form of enjoyment, entertainment, artistic enrichment, and enlightened leisure. (3) At the level of content, literature embodies or incarnates human experience, as distinct from stating ideas and abstract thought; literature shows rather than tells, and this truthfulness to human experience is a form of knowledge worth having. (4) That literature incarnates human experience should not lead us to ignore the importance of perspective in literature and its interpretation, nor to deny that ideas are part of the literary enterprise, so that the truth claims of literature need to be evaluated by Christian truth. (5) Literature also embodies and commends an author's moral viewpoint, which needs to be assessed

by Christian moral standards.

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When we streamline these principles, we can say that the true, the good, and the beautiful constitute the domain of literature in its ideal form, even though we realize that much literature falls short of the ideal. A Christian’s goal in life is to value what God values, and Scripture shows that he values the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Integration Task #2: Methodizing the Discipline into the Christian Life As I turn from the foregoing theoretic considerations to the subject of a reliable methodology for integrating our literary sojourns with our Christian experience, I will begin at the intuitive level. We do, indeed, need to be systematic in our integration, but there is also a place for what I have commended to my students through the years, namely, that they should “be themselves as Christian readers.” What goes through our minds as we read and assimilate a work of literature? With what do we resonate, and what do we resist? What connections with the Bible and theology and Christian experience do we find ourselves making? These questions are not a complete program for scholarly integration, but they are a good starting point.

At a more systematic level, I believe that the process of literary criticism starts at exactly the same point for Christian readers and their secular counterparts. We need to be competent readers first of all. This means exploring the literary form and beauty of a work, assimilating its embodiment of universal human experience in a way that leads us to see it clearly, and identifying the philosophic and moral ideas espoused by the work. The great Victorian, Matthew Arnold, championed the view that the goal of all the disciplines is to see the object of study as in itself it truly is. To this I will add the motto of former Wheaton College philosopher Arthur Holmes that before we can integrate, we need something to integrate with.

But if reading literature Christianly begins where all good literary criticism begins, it needs to be completed by the conscious and rigorous application of Christian principles to the data that has been placed on the table for consideration. I think of this further process as a “value added” component in the sense that Christian values and norms add a layer of understanding to our literary encounters. The precise nature of the added component depends on the individual aspects that make up literary experience.

In regard to literature as a form of beauty and the product of human creativity, for example, the Bible and Christian thinking give us an enormous quantity of information within which to understand this aesthetic component. Knowing about God as the source of beauty, human creativity as stemming from the image of God in people, and enlightened leisure as one of God’s gifts to the human race, provides depth of field to what otherwise is simply a selfcontained phenomenon.

When we turn to the embodiment of human experience in literature, other Christian considerations become relevant. Numerous Christian doctrines affirm the worth of people and their experiences. The Bible itself shows the degree to which God wants us to understand human experience accurately. Doing so leads to selfunderstanding, and it also clarifies the human condition to which the Christian faith speaks. Literature is the human race’s testimony to its own experience, and at this point integration becomes an embracing of our link to common humanity.

With the assessment of the truth claims of literature and its moral vision, integration becomes much more systematic and intellectually precise. It begins by accurately defining what a work of literature asserts ideationally and morally. This requires careful analysis.

Having determined the truth claims of the work, we need to ascertain what the Bible and Christian doctrine assert on the same topics. This is what T. S. Eliot meant when he said that Christian readers must complete their literary analysis by making judgments about literature in light of explicit theological and moral standards. We learn what those standards are by spending a lot of time in the Bible and books on theology. This allows for both application and expansion of our fund of Christian knowledge. Much of my theological and moral knowledge is the result of literary analysis of the type I have described.

Integrating literature with our Christian faith is demanding. Without doubt, it adds to our work load.

The rewards far outweigh the effort required. Once we have tasted the benefits of integration as part of the Christian life, to read literature without it seems a betrayal of an ideal and a missed opportunity. We want to bring every thought captive to Christ, and integration is a way of doing it.

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Faculty Contribution

Mark Horstemeyer Dean, School of Engineering Liberty University

CREATIONEERING:

A Practical-Theological Proposal for Engineering Education and Research Theodore von Karman, an aerospace engineer and the first Medal of Science recipient given by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, stated the following: “Scientists discover the world that exists; engineers create the world that never was.”1 Hence, science focuses on discovering phenomena in nature, but engineering produces innovational and technological “things” and processes. Engineering includes the following eight necessary steps in the creational process (see Figure 1): design, analysis/ synthesis, procurement or materials processing, logistics, assembly, performance, sustainability, and death/recycling. This eight-step process relates to the five fundamental features of a business enterprise/ entrepreneurial endeavor required to start a business: human resources, finances, legal, marketing/sales, and management (see also, Figure 1). Creationeering is the nexus where these two domains merge, where the eight engineering steps integrate with the five fundamental features of business.

Creationeering for Engineering In my new role as Dean of the School of Engineering at Liberty University, I have the privilege of working with the faculty and stakeholders to create a vision for engineering education and research within a distinctively Christian environment and university.

Faculty and students alike are here because of the commitment to ideals and the revelation found in scripture. Engineering, as a discipline, garners its foundation in Genesis 1 under the dominion mandate directly from God our Creator. “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28, KJV).

In the engineering process of the Creation Week of Genesis 1, God clearly set up a hierarchical system of different length scale engineered systems that interacted with each other in which He designed, analyzed, procured, accomplished logistics, and assembled things for their life performance, sustainability, and death/renewal. Along with the creationeering process, He focused on the human who needed a moral law, a way to communicate with others, an organized system of living and nonliving entities for life, and a method of exchange for commodities resembling the entrepreneurship element of this model. Thus, we see God in this context as the Creationeer who laid out the process for mankind to join in creationeering. We see these stages of creating throughout scripture.

Creationeering in the Doctrine of Creation God is the Ultimate Creationeer! In Genesis 1 and 2, we see a Creator-God who laid the foundation for man to join in the creational processes. The mandate given to mankind was to subdue has creation as a necessary component. From the beginning of Genesis 1, we see God’s design. Throughout creation, the design reflects intelligent and coherent systems made from nothing. The created world was crafted in such a way to reflect virtues to be celebrated throughout culture.

The second step in Creationeering is the need for Analysis/Synthesis. After God brought to man every living creature to name, “there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into woman” (Genesis 2:20-22). Creating requires analysis of the design and responses from this analysis.

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CREATIONEERING Engineering 1. Design 2. Analysis/Synthesis 3. Procurement 4. Logistics 5. Assembly 6. In-Service Performance 7. Sustainability 8. Death/Recycling

Business Human Resources (People/Ethics)

Management (Organizational Structure)

Marketing/Sales (Communications)

Finances/Accounting (Stewardship)

Legal (Moral Law)

Figure 1. Creationeering is defined by integrating two typically separated academic disciplines: engineering and business with a focus on entrepreneurial thinking.

What I propose here does not imply God’s lack of foreknowledge for the eventual need of a helpmate, but instead models for us the analysis/synthesis stage of creation.

We hold tightly to a doctrine of Creatio Ex Nihilo, creation out of nothing. And so as we consider how creation speaks to the third level of the creationeering process, procurement. We must be careful not to imply that God modeled procuring materials that were pre-existent. God did not procure materials in his creating, but engineers must. After the design, and after analysis/synthesis, engineers are tasked with procuring the best and the right materials for the project life. Procurement, however, brings its own challenges and represents the fourth stage of this proposal – Logistics. Bring materials from location to project requires logistical wisdom. God in His sovereignty does not need to “worry” about such things because he creates by His powerful word, yet we do not, and thus we must concern ourselves with the times, seasons, and availability of resources.

Following these four steps is the assembly process. The design of creation models how God assembled this world. Ecosystems, biological systems, and planetary systems are all finely tuned according to His design and assembled in balance and harmony to work

according to His set purposes. So too must an engineer assemble their projects with conscientious attunement to the requirements of the design. Once a product or project is assembled, it must be routinely evaluated for effectiveness. This is the In-Service Life Performance phase of creationeering. Engineers who create are not only interested in getting a product to market, but how effectively that product accomplishes that goal and survives through its routine use. As with all things created, eventually entropy catches up. Just as creation groans, so too do the things that have been created by man. As time catches up, products eventually enter into the Death/Recycling phase.2 Just as death came through the fall (Romans 5) to humanity, it also comes to products that make up creation. Finally, through this entire cycle, the astute engineer sees the need to consider sustainability. Creationeers create and construct through this entire process in hopes that the cycle can be reenergized for a second and third round.

This sustains the creational goals of the product by thinking how it might live on as needs change and new potentials arise.

Creationeering for Entrepreneurship The biblical basis for mankind to pursue this vocation as creationeer, is illuminated by the reflections of Johannes Kepler, on Deuteronomy 29:29, which

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says, “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” Kepler was a German Astronomer and Christian, and he reflected on the “secret things that belong to the Lord.” His insights challenge engineers to recognize that all information is owned by God, but God in His grace chooses to “reveal” some of this knowledge to us – in two broad categories. The first category is all knowledge that He will allow us to have and the second category is a subset of the first which is the knowledge that we have now. The question is, “How does a person move from current knowledge to future allowable knowledge?” This movement is by faith and by asking and by seeking. For, “I wisdom dwell with prudence and find out knowledge of witty inventions” (Proverbs 8:12). Whether the information requested is related to discovering what exists (science) or knowledge for new innovations (engineering) does not matter. In either case, asking for information for discovering something (science) or for creating something new (engineering) requires faith and faithfulness (c.f., 1 Corinthians 10:31; Hebrews 11:6).

From a outcomes perspective, when the engineering process and business/entrepreneurship process combine, Creationeering results, and it thus produces three types of students that will address issues in the 21st Century: 1. Students who start new technology companies 2. Students who progress up the management chain in a technology industry 3. Students who lead engineering projects for industry and government labs Hence, Creationeering is a paradigm and as a practicaltheological and discipline-oriented concept, it will equip students to lead in like manner after The Creator who leads us into our creation.

Finally, modern creationeers will be fully equipped to understand and bridge the expanse between the “technology push” and the “industry pull” found in the so-called “Valley of Death.”

The “Valley of Death” is a metaphor exemplified when scientific breakthroughs cannot progress into business practice. Essentially, a high probability exists in which a startup company will die before a steady stream of revenues can be established. During this time period, the startup company has difficulties raising additional

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CREATIONEERING

EARLY ADOPTER CORPORATIONS

LARGE INDUSTRIES

TEC HN ICA L REA D IN ESS LEVEL (TRL)

Engineering

Small

OEM

Technology

Medium

Tier 1

New Companies

Large

Tier 2

Students

Business Human Resources (People/Ethics)

Management (Organizational Structure)

Marketing/Sales (Communications)

Finances/Accounting (Stewardship)

Legal (Moral Law)

Academic Research, Development, Technology, and Business

TEC HNOLOGY

T EC H N OLOGY P U S H

TRL 1-3

TRL 4-6

IN D USTRY PULL

TRL 7-9

Figure 2. The products of Creationeering include students, technologies, and new startup companies related to TRLs 1-3.

TRLs 4-6 represent the “Valley of Death” (VOD). TRLs 7-9 represent the larger, more successful corporations that require products and services from corporations moving the technologies through TRLs 4-6.

capital and dies for one of many reasons. The Valley of Death is characterized as the gap between the dynamics of “technology-push” and “market-pull” in which research leading to new technologies often fails to reach the market place. Figure 2 shows the different Technical Readiness Levels from TRL 1 (basic research) to TRL 9 (upscaled products being made for the market). In Figure 2 the Valley of Death is shown in essentially TRLs 4-6.3

Death here does not mean that death preceded the fall, neither is it referring to the end of life (human or animal), but rather it is referring to the end of the use of a product/material for a particular purpose.

1

Theodore von Karman is the Father of Supersonic Flight. He made fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of aerodynamics.

See the International Space Hall of Fame. http://www.nmspacemuseum. org/halloffame.

2

3 National Academy of Engineering, The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004).

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Faculty Contribution

David Brat Dean, School of Business Liberty University

NAMING AND KNOWING THE GOOD FOR BUSINESS What is the theological foundation for the discipline of business? Within my first few weeks as the new Dean of the School of Business at Liberty University, I was honored to receive an invitation to address my brandnew colleagues and answer this seemingly simple and straightforward question. My task was simply to summarize the one true Christian foundation for the most broadly ranging discipline on campus using 1500 words or less. What could go wrong?

In an attempt to do this question justice, I will start off by providing some basic language regarding business and the academic disciplines. Next, I will explore theological language that links Liberty’s Mission statement to the business disciplines (i.e, economics, marketing, administration, IT, finance etc.). Finally, I will use the work of some of my new colleagues as a point of reference for proposing a vision of business as both a building block in the Kingdom of God and a constructive force for the common good.

There are many misconceptions regarding business that keep academics from making progress in building coherent frameworks to approach the study of business. To start, business itself is really not truly an academic discipline. Instead, most practitioners consider “business” to be a broad category for many subfields and sub-disciplines that businesses find useful in running their day-to-day operations. Some consider business a profession and not a discipline.1 The basic reason for this arrangement is that businesses are so diverse that it becomes nearly impossible to design a discipline that can model or interpret the seemingly infinite array of products and services produced by what we call “business.” Think, for example, that you are a small business manager running a privatelyowned business producing t-shirts in a small town.

Imagine, now, how staggering the stock market plunge of January 2019 on Wall Street must have felt. The stock market took a huge dip, uncertainty loomed over global economic growth due to China’s slowdown, the Federal Reserve began to unwind its four trillion dollar balance sheet, interest rates started to move up, the

yield curve started to invert, and profit announcements fell lower than expected.

In this hypothetical small business, which is located in the context of such economic upheaval, you have t-shirts to produce and a business to run; yet all of these geopolitical factors and macroeconomic issues may necessitate an entire restructuring of your business approach and prospectus—all within a single month. You would have to think through this while, of course, continuing to manage the everyday tasks of running production, pushing sales, hiring workers, and meeting payroll. There is no discipline that can capture this complexity and model it fully. Thus, the best we can do is to arrange sub-disciplines that help us to understand the basic components and best practices of many businesses.

At Liberty, faculty members have joined into the vision of Training Champions for Christ. We know what this means, but it is no simple task to align our basic ideas to courses and to curriculum in order to prepare students to connect their theology to their worldview, calling, and career. And yet this connection is crucial. Our students will spend most of their waking days working in their careers. We all spend more time working than doing anything else, and so we must ask, “Is our theology weighted to take this contextual and future reality into account?”

Business for the Good Kevin Rawls and Rusty Small, in addressing the concept of “Business for the Kingdom Good?” note the work of Luther and the Protestant Reformation in reimagining basic conceptions of work. As they explain, “Humanity’s ability to work creatively seems intrinsic to being in the image of God (Gen 1:26-28).”

At first blush, “the goals of business and the Kingdom of God can appear mutually exclusive”, yet we must confront this with the reality of what Abraham Kuyper reminded his readers of, “There is not a square inch of

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our human experience that is beyond the sovereignty of Christ.”2 Our colleagues proceed to explore several salient points about the Christian conception of “the good” which transcends profit as a singular motive.3 This launching point of pursuing “the good” forms the foundation for what I hope to be our pursuit here at Liberty. Perhaps a clarification from my own background as an economist might be helpful as we explore how academia can properly use the tools of business and economics for Kingdom Good.

“rationality” itself — cannot be grounded in modern academic life because, again, there are so few shared commitments and principles.5 Modern philosophy in many cases seeks to “deconstruct” concepts of God, natural law, and reason itself without any commitment to replace these foundations whatsoever. Derrida and company on the left have systematically moved to deconstruct the Judeo-Christian religion, the family, the rule of law, free market logic and business, and the nightly news chronicles this state of decay.

In the discipline of economics, we maximize an objective function. Firms maximize profits and individuals maximize utility (happiness). But these are not ethical statements. Economics claims to be a social science and by definition, it cannot and should not make claims about what is “good.” Quite simply, there are no ethics in economics as a discipline. Instead, the discipline insists that our models should be judged by prediction alone. The statements above are to be tested, not accepted. And the clever student will note that the claim to maximize “utility” is a tautology: “happiness” for a Christian should be characterized by maximizing God’s will, “happiness” for the hedonist by maximizing consumption and self-aggrandizement.

Then, hopefully, even though we are all fallen, there will appear to be some difference between Christians and hedonists when we model the real world pursuit of our telos, or objective function of our calling. Hopefully.

A “School of Business” for the Good

With tongue-in-cheek, I say that these two definitions of happiness hopefully result in a different telos or picture of the good. This is because most people, like most businesses and even most universities, do not appear to have a clarion call for their mission. Harvard’s motto at its Protestant founding in 1620 was “Truth for Christ and Church.” No longer does this call reflect the intent, pursuit, or results of the institution. Most universities today fail to even try to make claims about ethical conceptions of the “good” precisely because they are unable to define the “good.” This inability is frankly embarrassing — yet very telling.

George Marsden, in his work, The Soul of the American University, illustrates historically how most universities made a hopeful deal with secular society by offering up the principles they were founded upon in exchange for a gentleman’s promise from society to at least teach ethics—for example, Aristotle at a minimum.4 This promise has been crushed. Seminaries were moved across the tracks and the universities now lack systematic moral principles of any sort that they can state publicly. Alasdair MacIntyre, in his book A Short History of Ethics, shows how ethics — and even

At Liberty, we have a chance for something different.

The typical university seeks to find meaning in that which is ultimately meaningless. But here at Liberty, we have a distinct calling, vision, and mission that clearly articulates a sense of what the “good” [business] should look like.

At Liberty, this is our distinction. We know the good.

We teach the good. We apply the good. God and God’s Kingdom is our goal and it defines utility, or “the good,” for us. We must all work together to address what this looks like in a very complex and fallen world because the world needs this vision and this hope. My heart and intent is that we work together to define the good as a community of people joined for a common task, and that we joyously join together in the Apostle Paul’s refrain, that in whatever we do, we do it for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). This is a coordinated effort that starts with the general education curriculum and flows through the various departments of the university, into the courses housed in the Rawlings School of Divinity, and then, for “my” students, on to a rigorous pursuit of taking this good and joining it to their studies, their vocation, and throughout their lives. That is our calling, and I am honored to be a part of a community with this distinction.

Warren Bennis and James O’Toole, “How Business Schools Lost Their Way” (Harvard Business Review, 2005).

1

Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 488.

2

Kevin L. Rawls and N. Rusty Small, “Business for Kingdom Good?: Interdisciplinary Engagement from Business and Biblical Studies” in Faith and the Academy 3, no. 2 (Spring 2019): 44-45.

3

George Marsden, The Soul of the American University (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

4

Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (London: Psychology Press, 1998).

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CENTER for APOLOGETICS & CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT

Check Out Our Recent Faculty Publications LUAPOLOGETICS.COM

Divine Impassibility: Four Views of God’s Emotions and Suffering

Worldviews and the Problem of Evil: A Comparative Approach Ronnie P. Campbell Jr.

Robert J. Matz A. Chadwick Thornhill

Hymns and Hymnody : Historical and Theological Introductions, Vol. 2 Mark A. Lamport Benjamin K. Forrest Vernon M. Whaley

Celebrating the Legacy of the Reformation Kevin L. King Edward E. Hindson Benjamin K. Forrest

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Faculty Contribution

Benjamin K. Forrest Professor of Christian Education and Associate Dean College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University Sean Turchin Associate Professor of Philosophy, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University

CONSTRUCTIVE TEACHING: CULTIVATING AN EDUCATION THAT IS CHRISTIAN Education that is distinctively Christian should be constructive in nature.1 At the center of the Christian narrative is a God who created an ordered world where there was previously chaos. It is of a God who redeemed humanity from sin, and a God who will ultimately recreate in the eschaton for His glory and for the enjoyment of His children. God constructs as the crescendo. Still, deconstructing is also valuable so that a better construction can fill the void. For God responds to sin with consequence (2 Samuel 12:1-14; Romans 13:4; Galatians 6:7), disobedience is met with discipline (Hebrews 12:5-11), and misunderstanding with rebuke (Job 38). Deconstruction comes in these forms so that God might offer His people a better alternative, a state of living that is holy and honorable, to their benefit and His glory. Sometimes the whole purpose of such deconstruction is for our growth, not from a consequence of sin or loving discipline, but because God desires us to be transformed into a greater likeness of His Son.

Deconstruction: The First Step, but not the Final Step Theologians have believed that “deconstruction” was part and parcel of the Christian life; true Christianity accordingly is a life of continual deconstructing in order to be reconstructed in the mind of Christ (Philippians 2). For example, Martin Luther offered that true Christianity is a calling for individual hardship, rejection of the world, and taking up one’s own cross.

For Luther, true Christianity is one where the cross stands at the center. It is a theology of the cross that defines what it is to be a Christian; unlike the Catholic Church of the time and its “theology of Glory” which is akin to a prosperity or self-help gospel common today.

If one seeks to be a Christian, then one seeks suffering, in a sense, a deconstructing of the self in order to be fashioned in the likeness of Christ.

The Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard thought something similar. For Kierkegaard, a true self is one

which exists in relation to God, or as Kierkegaard maintains, one can only truly come to know oneself before “the mirror of the Word…To stand before the mirror means to stand before God.”2 However, in our current state, we find despair because we cannot find truthfulness in our own searching. Thus, due to sin, we are not what we were created to be, and our capability for a relationship with God and self fails to become what it was intended to be. It is only then, by God’s revelation, that we ourselves can become aware of our need and its remedy.3 Kierkegaard was compelled first to expose the inability of human reason in reconciling itself to itself and ultimately to God. Therefore, he points to God’s grace in revelation as God mercifully made known the human need for redemption.

A Kierkegaardian deconstruction of the self, then, is one that implores humanity to understand ourselves within the context of our original formation, which is in relation to our Creator. But modern conceptions of this deconstruction/reconstruction are unable to complete the project because they lack knowledge of what is, in fact, a “true self ’, which is only found before the foundation of our selfhood, this being God in Christ. Modern conceptions are constantly deconstructing an individual without identity and then reconstructing false identities that have nothing to do with justification and sanctification of the individual. Only Christianity does what nothing else can; it deconstructs the false self in sin to reconstruct the image of God that has been lost or, depending on one’s theological view, highly obscured.

Moving to a New Educational Location As people living in a fallen world, we come to life tarnished by the stain of sin. Yet, early in the life of God’s people, God gives Moses instructions for parents to teach their children (Deuteronomy 6:1f.; 11:18f.) as a means for teaching them covenant faithfulness, which reconciles. Education is one of the ways to

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redeem people from the state upon which they enter the world, it brings about knowledge and understanding (Colossians 1:28). Little children do not know how to walk, or talk, or obey, and so they are taught. Students in primary schools do not know how to read or write, and so they are taught. University students know most of these skills, but they do not yet know the potential for how their unique personality, background, and makeup can be utilized in ways for effective engagement in the world, and so they are taught. Thus, education is one of the vehicles for this teaching, which starts at birth and extends throughout life. Education, however, to accomplish these goals must, at times, deconstruct formerly held ideas to create space for ones that are better and more mature. Yet, too many educators end here, at the deconstruction phase of education.

Educators in the Bloom’s tradition have idealized academic critique to the point that it became the height of our educational goals. Students were encouraged to find fault without finding hope. This form of deconstruction aborts the educative process before bringing it to maturity or completion; the student is never offered a better vision after deconstruction removed the old one.

Here, we return to our thesis: Education that is distinctively Christian should be constructive in nature. Christian education must go beyond the temptation to deconstruct and stop; doing this is like leading one to salvation and never mentioning the need for growth and discipleship, it would be absurd.

It must instead propose a new way forward which requires the construction of something better: a better

vision for the discipline, a better way forward for culture, or a better story for posterity. A deconstructive approach to education finds fault with traditions because traditions do not have the benefit of hindsight and thus, characters of the past are proclaimed guilty for such ignorance.4 Instead, Christian education must look at the past and the traditions therein, recognizing the sinfulness of mankind and culture, but able to celebrate that which was worth celebrating and improving upon that which can be redeemed.

This proposal for education does not naively accept our cultural history as inerrant, but neither does it arrogantly assume the superiority of our insights based upon our chronological age over our forefathers.

Failing to establish our education in this constructive context creates a generation of students able to point out the faults in others, but unable to improve upon these faults. Deconstruction as the primary educative modality cultivates the ability to recognize inconsistency, but never equips the student to create something more consistent. Sadly, this might be where we find much of our educational system today. It is replete with individuals able to decry the injustices of yesteryear without recognizing the injustices of the day and age in which they are apart.

Constructional Teaching: A Christian Way Forward All great teachers set before themselves the goal of maturing their students, but measuring maturity is not easy. Our proposal toward this goal of teaching

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toward maturity begins with an evaluation of the Christian-ness of our education based on our ability to train students as creators and construction-ers.

In our educational processes, we should continue to evaluate and critique, but we must do so with the ultimate charge of telling a renewed story, the story of the redeemed. Joseph Hellerman says, “As American social life becomes increasingly post-Christian, it is imperative that we intentionally situate God’s Story at the center of the educational ministry of the church and of our individual lives.”5 Because we have a creational God, we have a story that constructs beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3) and this is the way to cultivate “higher education” that is distinctively Christian. We too must engage in redeeming the narratives of history and our world by looking toward the cohesion and beauty of the good news found in the gospel. This gospel is more than just a saving story, but it is a redeeming story.

A story that when told will redeem people as well as culture – and this retelling of the old, old story is more than something just for courses in theology. The gospel is more than just for the School of Divinity; it is a for Christian sociologists, mathematicians, and musicians. But how to integrate this story into the vocations and disciplines requires intentionality in practice and thought. By transitioning our educational framework from deconstructing reality, to constructing a compelling and saving story, we join in the creation mandate to subdue and rule. Thus, a constructional goal must become a litmus test and compelling vision for the Christian professor concerned with how to bring the gospel into their discipline. By doing so, they make their classroom a picture of God’s narrative of redemption in our world today as students are trained and equipped to start living this good news today and throughout their lives.

An early version of this article was published under the same title with Didaktikos 3, no. 2.

1

Søren Kierkegaard, JP, Volume 4, S-Z, Edited and Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 287.

Kierkegaard, SUD, 96. In both PF and SUD, Kierkegaard maintains that humanity’s existence as one which is IQD from God is due to human sinfulness. Even more, an awareness of our situation can only be achieved by God’s revelation and not anything we ourselves can do.

Kierkegaard states, “That is why Christianity begins in another way: man has to learn what sin is by revelation from God” (SUD, 95).

For a historian’s critique of this temptation see Thomas Kidd, “Virtue Signaling and Historical Presentism,” The Gospel Coalition (blog), June 4, 2019, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/ virtue-signaling-historical-presentism/.

Joseph Hellerman, Why we need the Church to become more like Jesus (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017), 143.

Faculty Contribution

29 A. Todd Smith Department Chair, Studio & Digital Arts School of Visual & Performing Arts, Liberty University

REDEEMING ART THROUGH THE INCARNATING WORK OF THE REDEEMER The Providence of Art

A Redeeming of Art History

Providence is the foreseeing care of God through His sovereign hand, and God’s providence has called and equipped artists throughout history to tell His story. Many artists, with or without words, have crafted representations of the song of the redeemed. Through God’s providence, and these artistic renderings, God is glorified. Just as God’s providence is displayed through the creational work of scientists, doctors, and theologians, artists display the character of the creator. My intent here is to focus upon the synergy that exists between the arts and their originator as we see how Christ’s incarnation propels the work of the Christian artist.

The church began in a culture dominated by Roman rule and religious syncretism. The Roman state was supreme in all things. The gods of the Greeks and Romans were little more than humans with supernatural strength; they suffered from the same frailties — hate, theft, lust, arrogance and pride, just to name a few. But then, God physically broke into history through the incarnation. In ancient pantheistic religious systems, history was viewed as cyclical, without clear purpose and reason. The incarnation and resurrection centers history in Christ. Christian eschatology proclaims a history with a beginning and ultimate end, which is accurately recorded by God, with an approaching day of judgment when humanity will stand before their Creator. Truth and justice will prevail and the eternal kingdom of God will be ushered in (1 Corinthians 4:5).

God is the creator. By His powerful word all things have come into being (Genesis 1), but according to Paul, it is through Christ that all things are held together (Colossians 1:16). To Moses, God said, “See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft” (Exodus 31:2-5, emphasis added). All things in the universe, seen and unseen are an outcome of God’s creative order. His love manifested a good world filled with beauty. Throughout the creation account each day brings greater and greater beauty, with woman as the pinnacle of creation. Humanity as the creation par excellence models God’s creativity as every race and people are made in the very imago dei. Paul tells the church at Ephesus that we are “God’s workmanship” (Ephesians 2:10) which literally means a thing that is made, a design produced by an artisan. Thus, we are His art, His masterpiece, created in Christ for good works. What was lost by the first Adam, God recovered through the new man, Christ and the Church. God weaves His providential will, in part, through the creative choices of humanity.

Cardinal doctrines were the immediate outgrowth of this understanding. Doctrines related to the Trinity, the virgin birth of Christ, atonement for sin, the canon of Scripture, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. While the early church fathers were busy formulating these doctrines, artists depicted them in multiple media and in various spaces. For example, during the early persecutions of the church (near the end of the second century) artists created paintings and reliefs on sarcophagi by torchlight in the dark tunnels of the catacombs. Many of the works of art were in symbolic form, such as the fish for Christ, the anchor for hope, and the dove for peace.

Other art was more narratival, depicting Old Testament stories of Noah, the three Hebrew children, and Daniel in the Lion’s den. In some of the earliest images known of New Testament events, miracles of the blind man being healed, the raising of Lazarus, and the feeding of the thousands are depicted. These images were meant to focus the persecuted believer on the hereafter and the hope of the eternal life.

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From Constantine on, Christianity was free to develop laterally in all areas of culture. Hitherto unavailable worship spaces were either erected or refurbished to accommodate the thousands who flocked for worship services. It is striking to compare the simple house church of Dura-Europas with post-Constantine basilicas. In this tiny church, which is made up of a house and a hall-like structure containing a frescoembellished baptistery, we find some of the earliest Christian paintings. In the immense basilicas, it seems as if every square inch of interior space is encrusted with mosaics of gold, glass and precious stones informing the viewer of God’s providential role in history. Within these churches, artists depicted Christ watching over the world. Just as culture at large is redeemed through Christ’s incarnating work, artistic endeavors are redeemed through that same offer. Art, through God’s providence, can become a source of beauty and truth in a broken world.

A Redeemed Imagination It is a sad truth that the church hasn’t always been the best at encouraging the use of imagination. Somehow, we have been pushed towards certain forms of hard rationality in our thinking. But if Abraham Kuyper is correct that there is no square inch upon which God does not resoundingly declare, “Mine!”1 then, certainly redemption entails the entire human experience from birth to death and all of the various capacities for which humanity was created to partake in. Here I agree with Kuyper and believe that redemption includes a reforming of the imagination by which artists envision their work. The imagination is the imagemaking faculty of the mind that allows us to reflect on former thoughts and experiences to recombine or reproduce them for new applications related to reality or imagination. Paul said that whatever you do in word or in deed do it all in the name of the Lord (Colossians 3:17; 1 Corinthians 10:31). So the work of the artist — that which comes from their imagination and their creative capacity — is a part of Christ’s redemption and is to be employed for the glory of God. The artist’s creativity is a means of expression; and in a remarkable way, it becomes a venue to experience the incredible presence of God and bring Him glory. The imagination of the artist is set free, redeemed, and reformed for further redemptive work through a relationship with Christ. But what does this redeemed imagination tell us about our Christian calling and vocation as artists to live and to create?

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A Redeemed Vocation Through the incarnation, Christ submitted himself to the conventions of His culture. This most certainly included the technological, governmental, societal, and in some degree, the artistic conventions of his world.

The incarnation situated Christ into a context as a fully embodied human being as well as the fully divine Son. Because of this embodied living, Christ took part in His culture and His vocation as a carpenter. It is, in similar form, to live within our culture. And, as Christians, we live singing the song of the redeemed — a song to that we sing in the various locations and vocations of life to which we are called.

From its inception, the church used art and artists to tell the story of the Gospel. Across a wide range of cultures this message has been encrusted in stone, wood, metal, glass, and a myriad of other media.

New concepts were developed which transformed ways of interpreting space, time, nature, scale, color, composition, tools, and media. Visual languages were developed over time to communicate truths inarticulateably. In many ways, Christian artists can speak the language of culture which is often foreign to the formal theologians of the church. Thus, the artist is a cultural theologian speaking in the native tongue and the heart language of the culture to those that live in our world. This is the redeeming of a vocation, when Christians incarnate into a vocation and create an aesthetic that appeals to the world and reflects the Gospel. The hope of heaven and its attendant joys propel these artists on toward excellence. Collectively, their art is a tool to shape the stories of society.

Abraham Kuyper, A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 488.

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Guest Interview

Duane Litfin Seventh President, Wheaton College Benjamin K. Forrest Professor of Christian Education and Associate Dean College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University

CHRIST-EXALTING CHRISTIAN EDUCATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH DUANE LITFIN Recently, Duane Litfin took some time to have a conversation with the managing editor of “Faith and the Academy.” Litfin holds doctorates from Purdue University (Rhetorical Studies) and Oxford University (New Testament). After two decades as a professor and pastor, Dr. Litfin served for seventeen years as the president of one of America’s leading institutions of Christian higher education, Wheaton College. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Conceiving the Christian College (Eerdmans) and Paul’s Theology of Preaching (IVP Academic).

Forrest: Are there any pictures that you think help us to rightfully imagine or understand faith integration?

Liftin: First, think of the academic silos that typically

characterize modern higher education. These silos represent the opposite of any type of integration, much less a Christian version. Our modern universities are not integrated, because there is nothing — and certainly not anything theological (aka Newman) — to provide them any unity. These institutions are multiversities with no unifying vision; they are not, and cannot be, uni-versities. For Christians, a better (if also imprecise) image may be that of a pie, cut into multiple slices. The pie represents the entire curriculum and the slices represent the various disciplines. In an integrated Christian model, where in this pie does Christian truth fit? If secularists assume it doesn’t belong there at all, what is a Christian response?

One response might be that in a Christian school theological truth plays a legitimate role as one of the slices of the curricular pie. Along with all the standard secular disciplines, Christian institutions also make available some sacred (Bible, theology) education. This is what makes the education Christian.

This book is designed to help those who are interested in Christian higher education explore anew the unique features, opportunities, and contemporary challenges of one distinct type of educational institution -- the Christian college.

What distinguishes Conceiving the Christian College from the many other books on this subject is its incisive discussion of a set of crucial ideas widely misunderstood or underappreciated in the world of Christian higher education.

Having served as president of one of the nation's foremost Christian colleges, Duane Litfin is well positioned to address pressing questions regarding faith-based education. What is unique about Christian colleges? What is required to sustain them? How do they maintain their bearing in the tumultuous intellectual seas of the twenty-first century? Litfin's themes are large, but they are meant to refocus the conceptual challenges to Christian education in ways that will strengthen both the academic environment of today's Christian colleges and their impact on culture at large.

Litfin, Duane. Conceiving the Christin College. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004. $32.00.

FA I T H A N D T H E A C A D E M Y: E N G A G I N G T H E C U LT U R E W I T H G R A C E A N D T R U T H

From the standpoint of genuine integration, however, this is a highly deficient image. Here the image of the pie fails us. Integrative institutions will certainly provide strong biblical and theological instruction as part of the curriculum, but that same Christian truth must also permeate all the other slices of the pie. The goal is not just to think Christianly in Bible and theology courses, but based on this biblical and theological truth, to think in distinctively Christian, Christ-centered ways about all the disciplines.

According to this way of thinking, the hoary old sacred/secular disappears. There is no such thing as a “secular” subject. Nothing we can study in the curriculum is irrelevant to Christ, and there is nothing to which he is irrelevant. In one way or another the Lordship of Christ reaches out to everything humans can know or experience. The goal of the integrative model is to help us think deeply about how this is true throughout the curricular and co-curricular activities of the institution.

Forrest: Yes! I see the temptation to view integration

like this pie, but recognize the deficiencies. Similar to this approach it seems that some schools, like a Baylor or Notre Dame would approach integration like an umbrella, whereas the philosophy for integration at schools like Liberty, Wheaton, and Bob Jones tends to be a more systematic or synergistic approach to integration. How does integration happen between the two models? And how is it unique in a synergistic/ systemic model?

Liftin: Integration, as described above, by definition

cannot take place at a truly umbrella institution. The task of integration in these settings is largely left up to the student. In umbrella institutions there exists a critical mass of faculty who are teaching from the standpoint of the sponsoring religious tradition. But there are also many others, probably the majority of faculty, who are not. Integration at an institutional level is thus precluded.

This umbrella model usually goes hand in hand with the above mentioned sacred/secular distinction.

Christian faculty committed to the sponsoring tradition will certainly teach the “sacred” subjects, but in the “secular” subjects why should it matter? What difference does it matter whether you have a Christian teaching, say, chemistry, or a secularist? Given this sacred/secular division, integration is unnecessary, much less a stated institutional goal.

A curricular-wide vision of integration can only be implemented in systemic institutions. That is what

renders them “systemic.” A Christ-centered view of all things (including chemistry; cf. Conceiving the Christian College, pp. 75-77, 160) permeates every aspect of the institution — root, branch and leaf. It’s certainly given substance and depth in Bible and theology courses, but it also infuses the thinking of every faculty member and the teaching of every subject matter, whether in the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences or the arts. This infusion is what marks this type of education and this type of institution as truly “systemic.” What is system-wide through it all is a profound understanding of and commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all we can know, experience, or be.

Forrest:

The system-wide commitment is what first drew me to attend Liberty and one of the things I enjoy most about the university. However, as I administrate programs and work toward assessment and accreditation reports, some disciplines find it more challenging to imagine how faith is best integrated into their field. How can we help faculty see the potential for integration even when the process for doing so may not be as clear as other disciplines?

Liftin:

The integrative model is a challenging one all across the curriculum. But what we need to grasp is that this sort of thinking is a challenge for every Christian, whatever his or her calling. The essence of the Christian life is learning how to live out our days in full obedience to Jesus. Along with everything else this calling requires, it means taking “captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

This is the task of all believers, whatever their walk in life. But it is especially the responsibility of those called to the intellectual task as a profession. Long before they arrive in the classroom to teach students, Christian academics should be developing a deeply Christcentered understanding of their discipline. Rather than passively accepting their (typically secular) professional guild’s take on the discipline, they should be seeking to think Christianly about its every dimension — bottom to top, from its philosophical and epistemological underpinnings, its theoretical framework, its history, all the way through to issues of application and practice.

What difference does it make in my understanding and practice of my discipline, the Christian professor continually asks, that I, unlike the guild in which I was trained, make the astonishing claim that Jesus Christ— the divine Son of God, Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer and Goal of “all things” (Colossians 1:15-20) — is the Cosmic Lord of all? Sophisticated answers to this question — answers that plumb far beyond mere proof texts — will be many and varied and will often take a

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lifetime to work out. And to be sure, these answers are more challenging to explore in some disciplines than others. But for the Christian who truly understands who Jesus is, the one answer that will never do is: It doesn’t make any difference at all. Our commitment to Christ touches everything we do, think, and are. A failure to appreciate this represents a failure to grasp the full reach of the most profound claim (Phil. 2:9-11) a Christian can utter: Jesus Christ is Lord!

school understanding of Christian truth. They may want to grow in this area but either don’t know how or haven’t had the opportunity to do so. In the case of younger faculty in particular, they’re often newly on the tenure clock, starting a young family on low pay, all while trying to develop a repertoire of new courses. They often need understanding, patience and practical help from the institution in developing their integrative thinking.

Forrest: With this all-pervasive perspective flowing

Third, the institution should look for ways of valorizing excellent integrative work across the disciplines. Find leaders on your own faculty who are doing it well and give them a platform to model their work. Bring in effective models from outside to encourage and creatively inspire those within. Make integrative work an important, even critical, aspect of the institution’s standards for hiring and promotion. Create seminars or share resources that provide instruction and provide best practice models of integrative work. Over time the institution will become known for valuing Christcentered thinking across the curriculum. This will serve both the students and the institution well. More importantly, it will serve Christ’s Kingdom well.

through our approach to integration, what advice might you have for moving forward and strengthening integration in a Christian university?

Liftin:

First, build a clear vision of what genuine integrative thinking is. It’s not something esoteric or unique to Christian teachers or academic institutions.

It’s what every follower of Christ is called to do. Those who aspire to be Christian academics differ only in that they have taken on the professional responsibility of being well out ahead in modeling and teaching this sort of Christ-centeredness to others. As Jesus said, “Everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). Helping students think in distinctively Christ-centered ways about their discipline lies at the core of the Christian teacher’s task. It is crucial that faculty at systemically Christian institutions understand and embrace this calling.

Second, the institution needs to find practical ways of helping faculty develop in their integrative work.

However lofty the integrative ideal, the truth is that many teachers in Christian institutions arrive with an advanced understanding of their “secular” discipline — often received at the hands of professional guilds openly hostile to Christian thinking — and a Sunday

Forrest: What are some successful examples you’ve seen regarding faith integration?

Liftin:

When I arrived at Wheaton I inherited an institution where integrative thinking had long been a part of the corporate culture of the institution. Longstanding faculty members such as Arthur Holmes and Mark Noll had both set and modeled the standard for other faculty. Still, when we approached our first major capital campaign one of our top priorities was the enhancement of our faculty. When I created a faculty-led taskforce to help flesh out what that might

FA I T H A N D T H E A C A D E M Y: E N G A G I N G T H E C U LT U R E W I T H G R A C E A N D T R U T H

mean, the team came back with five recommendations.

Second on the list was strengthening faculty salaries; the first item on the list was to find ways to help faculty in the integration of their faith and learning.

In an institution like Wheaton College, our faculty understood this crucial task and only wanted to become better at it.

Forrest: Have you also seen pot-holes or practices that should be avoided?

Liftin: Yes, several.

• First is the danger of institutions not practicing what they preach. Christ-centered thinking, decisions, and practices must be modeled by the institutional leadership if they expect this same sort of thinking to permeate in the classroom. The Lordship of Christ covers everything we do, not just our intellectual work.

• Second is settling into the old sacred/secular mode by recruiting otherwise impressively-credentialed Christian faculty who nonetheless show neither interest in nor a track record of integrative thinking. Keep the integrative mission clear, then hire to mission. Failure to do so undermines the entire enterprise.

• Third is recruiting warm-hearted, well-intentioned Christians as faculty, and then assuming this will guarantee integrative instruction in the classroom.

This is a naïve assumption. As noted above, there are too many ways this assumption can fail. The first rule for leadership in this area is to “inspect what we expect,” not so as to criticize but so as to come alongside with help and encouragement.

Forrest:

What additional questions should we be asking about faith integration?

Liftin:

As one might guess from what I’ve already said, the question that stands out to me after all these years is this one: How well do we understand who Jesus Christ really is?

I spent an entire chapter directly addressing this question in my book and I have often been told by readers in the years since that this chapter alone was worth the price of the book. This observation has always surprised me because the chapter doesn’t do much beyond simply summarizing some of what the Bible says about Jesus. Apparently even many mature Christians have never thought through the full range of what the Bible means when it declares: “Jesus Christ is Lord” (e.g., Acts 2:36, 1 Corinthians 12:3).

Many believers, it seems, even among Christian college administrators, have never thought much beyond a Jesus-as-sin-bearer understanding of who he is. They eagerly confess that he died for them on the cross, but they lack a full biblical picture of who it was who was hanging on that cross. A generation ago J. B. Phillips published a little book entitled, Your God Is Too Small.

There he explored how impoverished our view of who God is may be. In the same way, our vision of Jesus may also be too small. We surely see how Jesus is relevant to the business of evangelism, Christian living, or church ministry, but without the Bible’s fuller vision of his universal Lordship we can’t seem to imagine how or why he should be relevant to every nook and cranny of the curriculum. I’ve come to think that a truncated view of Christ constitutes probably the single greatest impediment to genuine integrative thinking.

Forrest: In your estimation, what do you think are

important tethers for Christian Higher Education Institutions who want to deeply and purposefully integrate faith in their training and education in our secular age?

Liftin:

The primary tethers are inevitably the Scriptures and the church’s understanding of the fully Trinitarian view of God taught there. Without these the integrative model is impossible.

Moreover, essential to this Trinitarian teaching is the high Christology that marks all distinctively Christian thinking. There are many things Christians hold that are not distinctively Christian. For example, Christians believe all are created equal and endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights. But this conviction is not distinctively Christian; many non-Christians hold it as well. It’s not until we are thinking in trinitarian terms—and in particular, in terms of the Christcenteredness of all things — that our thinking becomes distinctively Christian.

According to the Bible, we live in a profoundly Soncentered universe. This is a weighty truth clearly taught in the Bible (see CCC, pp. 34-84), but I have found it is also often an underappreciated truth in Christian higher education circles. A deep conviction about the Christ-centeredness of all things is crucial to the integrative task. This issue is inevitably complex and we lack the space to explore it here, but wrestling with what this means and how it works was one of my primary purposes in writing Conceiving the Christian College.

Those with questions or who may wish to look deeper can consult those pages for more on this crucial subject.

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Facutly Contribution

Roger Schultz Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University

THEOLOGY FOR THE HUMANITIES Francis Schaeffer’s How Then Shall We Live? debuted in Bemidji, Minnesota forty years ago. Evangelical Christians crowded the largest church in town, Sunday night after Sunday night, to watch Schaeffer’s captivating film series dealing with history, philosophy, art, music, and politics. Resplendent in goatee and knickers, Schaeffer provided us a rich, Christian introduction to the Humanities.1 The Humanities are different than “humanism.”

Humanism emphasized human autonomy, rationalism and relativism – making man “the measure of things.”

Best represented by the Humanist Manifesto II (1973), secular humanism rested upon an explicitly anti-Christian and anti-theistic worldview. Leading Evangelicals warned about the corrosive impact of secular humanism and the Enlightenment on religion and culture.

The Humanities, on the other hand, emphasized human culture and civilization. Depending on context, presuppositions, and persons, this creativity could be either God-honoring or God-defying. Academic disciplines in the Humanities include art, music, philosophy, literature, history, and cultural studies.

Schaeffer hoped to recover a positive, God-honoring role for the Humanities and show the richness of Western Culture informed by the Christian faith.

The Humanities rest upon the God-given creativity of human beings. Created in the image of God, man has tremendous creative potential. Genesis 1 repeatedly states that “God made” ... and “saw that it was good.”

Then God made man in His image (Genesis 1:27).

From a creationist and Christian perspective, we expect human beings to be gifted and creative.

Human creativity, however, was devastated by the Fall.

Sin has stained all human endeavors, and Rom. 1:1831 clearly describes the impact of human depravity on religion, art, philosophy and society. Elsewhere, Paul warns about the corrupting influence of “science falsely so called” (I Tim. 6:20). In short, human rebellion has manifested itself in all cultural institutions.

The Humanities, furthermore, must be reclaimed for Christ. In II Corinthians 10:5, the Apostle Paul gives a dramatic challenge: “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” Christians have an obligation to evaluate every area of life from a biblical and Christian worldview perspective. The Lordship of Christ must extend to human culture and the Humanities. As Dutch Christian academic and political leader Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) put it, “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”2 The Bible gives multiple examples of human creativity. Old Testament tabernacle construction, for instance, was marked by visually arresting design and craftsmanship. The chief designer, Bezalel, was uniquely gifted – filled by the Spirit of God with wisdom, understanding, knowledge and “all manner of workmanship” (Exodus 31:3). In fact, God gifted all project artisans with special wisdom and skill (Exodus 31:6). The foundations of Herod’s reconstructed Temple, visible again after archeological recovery, reveal massive stonework and architectural genius. God required that creative gifts be used to glorify Him. Music is another example. God inspired David, the sweet Psalmist of Israel, to compose songs and prayers that have survived for millennia. The Psalms were designed for the people of God to sing the Lord’s praises. The Jewish Temple was a place of music, featuring gifted singers and musicians (II Chronicles 29:25-28). When members of the Schultz family are laid to rest, the graveyard service includes the acapella singing of Davidic music (Psalm 23) – as comforting today as it was 3,000 years ago. Scripture, furthermore, describes the New Song (Revelation 5:9), Song of Moses (Revelation 15:3) and Song of the Lamb (Revelation 15:3). The Bible reminds us that music will fill heaven.

History is a Humanities discipline, and the Bible includes much history. Genesis, for example, is a book

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of “generations” — teaching the Children of Israel about their history and roots. Many of the Psalms, such as Psalm 105, recount the wondrous works of God in history. Isaiah 51:1 tells Israel to look to the rock or quarry from which they were hewn – and specifically to the legacy of Abraham and Sarah. Luke includes a careful vision of reflective historical methodology (Luke 1:1-4). Compared to the “court histories” and hagiographical sketches of antiquity, the Bible contains accurate, compelling and nuanced historical records.

The Bible even provides examples of humanities education. In Acts 7:22, Stephen says that Moses “was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” suggesting that breadth of education was a positive thing. Though the education Moses received at Mount Sinai was far superior, his classical training at Pharaoh State University was also noteworthy.

The Bible gives detailed information about Daniel’s education in Daniel 1. Training at the University of Babylon was highly selective, with only the brightest Hebrews being recruited (v3). The training focused on the language and literature of the Chaldeans (v4), with an intense three-year curriculum (v5), and stellar students being fully supported (v5). The program provided an automatic career track for imperial service (v5). The University of Babylon even had an Office of Institutional Effectiveness – and cumulative assessment proved that Daniel and his friends were far superior to their peers (verses 15-20). Daniel was faithful, did not submit to pagan cultural pressures (v8) and was greatly blessed of God (v9).

Over time, Christian leaders have advocated humanitiesrich Christian education. In the American context, a good example is Jonathan Edwards, who developed the curriculum for the Indian mission school at Stockbridge, on the Massachusetts frontier, in 1751.3 Edwards stressed assessment (“public trial of proficiency”), regular chapel services, vocational elements of training, co-educational experiences, metacognitive educational principles and a commitment to life-long learning.

Edwards had a clear pedagogical vision – featuring “understanding,” rather than rote recitation. Edwards stressed the traditional liberal arts: English, Bible, Religion, Music, Math, Geography and Logic. Above all, he stressed history: Old Testament history, New Testament history, Jewish history, Church History, world history, and European history.

Theologians have attempted to create a theology of Humanities and cultural engagement. Many are familiar with H. Richard Niebuhr’s categories in Christ and Culture (1951). For the neo-orthodox

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Francis Schaeffer preaching at Thomas Road Baptist Church, 1982

Niebuhr (1894–1962), there were five basic Christian approaches. Christ above Culture, Christ of Culture, Christ against Culture, Christ and Culture in Paradox, and Christ Transforming Culture.4 A generation earlier, conservative theologian J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) developed a similar evangelical cultural paradigm. In an address to his Princeton students, Machen described the culture wars of his day. There were Modernists, wayward Christians who subordinated Christianity to culture. There were Pietists, who repudiated culture in an attempt to save Christianity. A third group, Machen argued, were Consecrationists, engaged Evangelicals who wanted to transform culture for Christian ends. Machen issued a vigorous worldview challenge: “Instead of destroying the arts and sciences or being indifferent to them, let us cultivate them with all the enthusiasm of the veriest humanist, but at the same time consecrate them to the service of our God.”5

he stressed the Lordship of Jesus Christ. A standing ovation followed Schaeffer’s stirring conclusion: “Christ must be the final Lord – and not society, and not Caesar!”8 That message has resonated at Liberty University, where we are committed to Christ, look to positively engage our culture, and passionately teach the Humanities from a biblical worldview perspective.

Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture? (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming Revell, 1976) was the foundation for the film series.

1

Quoted in Vern Poythress, The Lordship of Christ: Serving Our Savior All of the Time, in All of Life, with All of Our Heart (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2016), 73.

2

Jonathan Edwards, “To Sir William Pepperrell” (28 November 1751).

Letters and Personal Writings (Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Vol. 16). http://edwards.yale.edu/archive?path=aHR0cDovL2Vkd 2FyZHMueWFsZS5lZHUvY2dpLWJpbi9uZXdwaGlsby9nZXRvYm plY3QucGw/Yy4xNTo1OjEzNC53amVv. Accessed 25 May 2019.

3

H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951). See D. A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) for an evangelical assessment of Niebuhr’s classic work.

4

Dr. Jerry Falwell Sr. was greatly influenced by Francis Schaeffer.6 Throughout his career, Falwell had emphasized a “Light” ministry (sharing the Gospel and winning people to Christ). From Schaeffer, he learned a “Salt” ministry (preserving American society and strengthening its Christian culture). Consistent with this was Falwell’s vision for a university: “academic excellence in a Christ-centered environment.”7 Toward the end of life, while stricken with cancer, Francis Schaeffer preached a powerful sermon on society and culture at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. In true Kuyperian fashion,

J. Gresham Machen, "Christianity and Culture," Princeton Theological Review, 11 (Jan. 1913), 1-14; available at http://journals.ptsem.edu/ id/BR1913111/dmd002 (accessed December 26, 2012). By 1915, Machen argued for a two-fold division within Christianity – a struggle between biblical Christianity and modernistic Liberalism. J. Gresham Machen, “History and Faith,” Princeton Theological Review (July, 1915).

5

Jerry Falwell, Strength for the Journey (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1987), 335, 361f.

6

Jerry Falwell, Falwell: An Autobiography (Lynchburg, Virginia: Liberty House, 1997), 484.

7

Francis Schaeffer, “A Christian Manifesto,” Sermon at Thomas Road Baptist Church (1982). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INN JtW1GpKA. Accessed 27 May 2019.

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Alumni Contribution

39 Will Shinn Liberty Alumni ‘14

LIFE AFTER LIBERTY: PRACTICING FAITHFULNESS IN A BUSINESS WORLD How does a Christian positively affect culture through business? It’s likely I am inadequate to address this question, but it is the question I face every day. I have seen success and I have seen failure both in my own experience and in the lives of others. There is a perceived struggle to try and balance the desire for the Kingdom of God, and the love of business. Although scripture is clear that there is no separation between the secular and the sacred, recognizing and practicing this reality is very different. There is a constant pull as the spheres of life find balance in my daily action.

The pull of the world screams that success is my end, while spiritually I know this is not true. Yet, I am also tempted to weigh my efforts by a spiritual version of that same rubric – the nebulousness of defining success.

We as Christians often find ourselves walking along a knifes edge, putting a focus or priority on one side vs. the other can be an error in itself. Our spiritual effectiveness is not found in processes, but in abiding in Jesus instead of the false gold of the world.

Affecting Culture is not something that happens in a moment but something that happens in every moment.

The business world is no exception. The Christian is commanded to abide in Christ above all things (John 15). Every moment of every day we are faced with the option of abiding in Christ or in something else. The solution to affecting culture for the Glory of God is to abide. We have no internal device that pushes us to choose what is good, the only way we can choose what is right and do what is good is through the Holy Spirit. With this foundational concept in mind, there are internal struggles that I see in the business world.

Addressing these internal perceptions and battles has helped me in my journey to maintaining and growing in my faith while in business.

Secular Vs. Sacred The secular vs. sacred divide is an internal battle all Christians face at some point. It results in questions

like, does my work matter? Am I contributing to the Kingdom of God? Am I wasting my life? The Secular vs. Sacred dichotomy is a false idea that splinters the mind and forces the affection into rationalizing the lesser priority of Jesus in the everyday life. Our religious affections are a treasure to be protected, cultivated, and cherished.

No matter what the Christian is doing, they must see Jesus as most valuable. Diminishing work to a mundane task diminishes the internal perception of work, resulting in a false motivation. This diminishing turns the religious motivation into apathy, blunting the Christian’s religious affections. This apathy poisons the ability for the Christian to abide in Christ. God wants our hearts, our motivations, and our thoughts.

No matter if you work on the mission field, the pulpit, or the business world abiding in Christ destroys the secular vs. sacred divide.

Work is Good Work was created before the fall; work is part of the original creation. Man was not meant to be idle but to create. Every human’s individual contribution is both a fulfillment of design and a necessity for human satisfaction. Man is made in the image of God; and since God is the Creator of all, it makes sense that mankind is designed to create as well. Humans must create to sustain themselves. This need to create has a compounding effect on culture and economies. This is a common grace that all men receive benefit from.

Order, discipline, efficiency are all types of beauty the market strives for. A Christian working toward these ends is perpetuating God’s Common Grace.

Common Grace and the Great Commission Yet working towards these Common Graces is not the main focus. As Christians, we are called to do more.

We are instructed to communicate Jesus to the world, to disciple the believer into greater relationship with

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Jesus, and to die to self for Jesus’ Glory. The Christian business person has a twofold responsibility. We must be willing to reach those around us with the news about who Jesus is, and we must also be willing to support those organizations and people who reach beyond our cultural boarders. We cannot allow ourselves to fall off the opposite side of the secular vs. sacred divide. Because everything we do is sacred, it does not mean we get to shrug off explicit pursuit of the Great Commission. We must live in the world, being salt and light, and also help support those who are being salt and light in ways we cannot.

We are stuck between the everyday and the grand scheme of creation. We must find purpose, joy, and contentment in Christ. Yet, we must not be lulled into complacency by our everyday life. Our world around us teaches that greatness happens all of a sudden, that happiness is found in the grand moments in life.

Yet, when the grand stories of literature or cinema end, when the mundane sets in, do those great actors find

contentment and happiness? Most of us will live our lives in obscurity and relative mediocrity in the world’s eyes. Yet, when your head hits the pillow at night, do you dream of greatness in the world’s eyes, or do you dream of your heavenly father saying well done? Every person must find his own way to affect the culture around him. I pray that as I am on this journey my heart expresses this every day: “Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise. Thou mine inheritance, now and always: Thou and Thou only, first in my heart, High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.”

Will Shinn graduated from Liberty University in 2014 with a business degree in Finance, Economics, and International Business. He spent the past 4 years in oil operations and sales at a company based out of Atlanta Georgia, and recently moved to a new role in Chattanooga, Tennessee working in industrial sales.

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EQUIPPING STUDENTS T O F A I T H F U L LY E N G A G E C U LT U R E

Q U N I O N N AT I O N A L E V E N T THURSDAY, OCT. 24 Join with 25,000 Christians on college campuses and in cities throughout the U.S. for a live event.

This shared learning experience combines three nationally broadcast presentations and three student-led talks, inspiring and challenging attendees to engage culture well.

SPONSORED BY:

Student Activities and Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement

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CRS Review

Allison Kasch Liberty Alumni ‘19

INSIDE OUT APOLOGETICS IN SOCIAL WORK In our modern world, when contradicting perspectives interact, people tend to grow hard in their opinions and refuse to engage in constructive conversation.

Neither side seeks to find points of agreement, and explanations for why the “other side” is wrong are formed without thoughtful reasoning. Although these sorts of debates are commonly observed in the political sphere, the lack of productive conversations regarding differences is also present in the professional sector. Individuals with different beliefs may work side by side, but when points of disagreement arise out of these competing beliefs, both individuals can become hard towards the other person. Instead of allowing for growth to occur, people stand in their corners, refusing to hear different ideas or helpful critiques.

in this way allows for humility and honesty to be at the center of conversations, instead of hostility and misunderstanding (Chatraw & Allen, 2018).

This problem can exist between any two people who disagree, but it is a more serious problem for Christians. Conversations regarding specific professions and Christian foundations within that profession are an opportunity to point others to the gospel. Taking the time to appropriately discuss the differences between secular and Christian ideologies allows for growth in both people and can ultimately be an evangelistic tool. Practically speaking, then, how does a Christian engage well and point others to Christ through conversations regarding a profession?

So how does this Inside-Out method play out in a conversation? Let’s use the profession of social work as an example for how one can incorporate Inside-Out to engage in conversations regarding their professions.

This is where the Inside-Out apologetic method is needed (Chatraw & Allen, 2018). Inside-Out is a framework that is useful in conversations regarding Christianity and a differing viewpoint, and a person using this model seeks to first understand the opposing view before offering a case for Christianity (Chatraw & Allen, 2018). This is done by identifying areas where Christianity and the conflicting perspective overlap and recognizing values that can be affirmed by a Christian worldview (Chatraw & Allen, 2018). Areas of disagreement, however, signify points which the gospel must challenge (Chatraw & Allen, 2018). Showing inconsistencies within the opposing frameworks allows for other worldviews, specifically Christianity, to seem plausible. These first steps are a part of working “Inside” one’s framework, and approaching discourse

The Inside-Out method, however, continues by working outside one’s framework. The “Outside” stages point to the gospel, as it reveals places where the opposing viewpoint has borrowed from the Christian narrative (Chatraw & Allen, 2018). Moreover, working outside demonstrates how Christianity offers a better foundation and how the gospel ultimately strengthens the specific profession being discussed. The Inside-Out framework aims to understand a differing worldview, find points to affirm and others to challenge, and direct others to the gospel (Chatraw & Allen, 2018).

First, what does the profession of social work believe?

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) grounds social work upon the six core values of service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, the importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence (NASW, 2017). Although these values further the mission of social work, social workers must assess the foundation for these values, and one should take special note of the value of social justice because in some ways it is the basis on which the profession stands (NASW, 2017). The NASW (2017) Code of Ethics defines the key aspects of social justice as including the promotion of well-being for individuals and communities, the increase opportunities for individuals, and advocacy for equal access and opportunity of employment, resources, and other services. Clearly, the profession of social work values people and their communities, but the reason behind why social work should advocate for these things is not discussed.

After understanding the basic structure of social work and its value of social justice, where do Christianity

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and social work overlap? What can be affirmed?

The root of social justice is an understanding that is undesired for people to suffer, and social workers should prevent suffering whenever attainable (KeithLucas, 1985). Christianity functions similarly, as it fights back against suffering and is intentional about serving the poor and oppressed (See Deuteronomy 14:28-29; Job 29:12-17). Christian and secular social workers alike agree they desire to see an end to suffering in the world (Keller, 2016). Moreover, Christianity affirms that it is necessary to further opportunities specifically for the poor, oppressed, marginalized, etc. (NASW, 2017; see Isaiah 10:1-3; Deuteronomy 10:18). Regarding those in need, social justice asks much of individuals and society but so does Christ, as he modeled what it looks like to love those in need (See Luke 4:16-19, 14:10-15, 18:22; John 14:10-12).

Although social work and Christianity agree on some concepts regarding justice, one must consider where social work’s foundation leads. The NASW’s (2017) Code of Ethics references the intrinsic value of every individual and the responsibility of social workers to combat injustices but neglects to provide reasons as to what gives social work the authority to speak on these values (Sherwood, 2012). The Western world is

dedicated to justice, but Charles Taylor (1989) rightly asks, “What sources can support our far-reaching moral commitments?” (p. 515). The issue for secular social work is distinguishing what standard can be used to determine social justice, for it is not enough to say these values exist without identifying why (Poe, 2012). Secular social work often tries to establish the necessity of social justice in the sanctity of human beings (Ignatieff, 2001). However, by denying the existence of a creator, humanity merely exists by chance (Sherwood, 2012). If no one created humans, how, then, does humanity have intrinsic value, and why should social workers advocate for justice? There are undoubtedly issues with the grounding for the profession of social work, even though its values align well with a Christian worldview.

After working “inside” social work’s framework, it is time to move “outside” to show how Christianity offers solid grounding. With a biblical foundation, the dignity and worth of a person is rooted in God creating people in the image of himself (Gen. 1:26).

Social workers now have a solid foundation for why they should advocate for the needs of individuals. The gospel provides a lasting context that will stand the test of time, as it does not waver through cultural phases (Sherwood, 2012). The best and simplest framework

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for asserting moral truths is grounded in looking to the personal God who designed all things and gave the world meaning and purpose (Chatraw & Allen, 2018).

Belief in God provides a solid foundation for asserting the necessity and eternal significance of justice; a strong understanding of justice is rooted in confidence in God. Christian theologians hold three general claims regarding God and justice: (1) “God is all-knowing,” (2) “God is perfectly just,” and (3) “God is not a tribal deity” — he transcends culture (Volf, 1996, p. 197).

Therefore, what God asserts regarding justice will be just for all the world, regardless of what specific individuals may perceive as justice (Volf, 1996). This divine justice is necessary before peace can ensue (Volf, 1996). Divine justice requires divine judgment (Keller, 2016). By believing in God’s final judgment, Christians have hope that one day there will be peace.

This confidence gives Christians the assurance God will make all things right (Keller, 2016). This image is one of restoration, and social workers can rest in knowing their work is not in vain. Understanding God’s love for humanity spurs on social workers to love and serve those in need.

Christian social work offers hope. This hope is not merely a desire for injustice to end, but it is looking towards the future and seeing a picture of a world completely vindicated of evil (Wolterstorff, 2013). This hope shapes how Christian social workers fight for the poor, and understanding that each person is created in the image of God gives social workers a stronger motivation for serving with love and compassion.

Through this simple example, one can see how the Inside-Out framework spurs on fruitful conversations

and uses areas of commonality to point others to Christ. Although this method works well in addressing the profession of social work, it is not limited to discussing social work but can be used in conversations regarding any profession or worldview.

Likewise, Inside-Out is not a strict set of rules to follow, but it provides a general structure for fruitful apologetic conversations.

Chatraw, J. D., & Allen, M. D. (2018). Apologetics at the cross: An introduction for Christian witness. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Ignatieff, M. (2001). Human rights as politics and idolatry, ed. Amy Gutmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Keith-Lucas, A. (1985). So you want to be a social worker: A primer for the Christian student. St. Davids, PA: North American Association of Christians in Social Work.

Keller, T. (2016). Making sense of God: An invitation to the skeptical. New York: Viking.

National Association of Social Workers. (2017). Code of ethics of the National Association of Social Workers. Washington, DC: NASW Press.

Poe, M. A. (2012). Good news for the poor: Christian influences on social welfare. In L. T. Scales & M. S. Kelly (Eds.), Christianity and social work: Readings on the integration of Christian faith and social work practice (4th ed.) (pp. 9-22). Botsford, CT: North American Association of Christians in Social Work.

Sherwood, D. A. (2012). The relationship between beliefs and values in social work practice: Worldviews make a difference. In L. T. Scales & M. S. Kelly (Eds.), Christianity and social work: Readings on the integration of Christian faith and social work practice (4th ed.) (pp. 85-103). Botsford, CT: North American Association of Christians in Social Work.

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Volf, M. (1996). Exclusion and embrace: A theological exploration of identity, otherness, and reconciliation. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Wolterstorff, N. (2013). Journey toward justice: Personal encounters in the global south. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

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INTERDISCIPLINARY ESSAYS

Incarnational Ministry for the Healing of Body and Soul: Interdisciplinary Engagement from Nursing and Chaplaincy Jerry Harvey, Associate Professor of Nursing, School of Nursing, Liberty University Steven E. Keith, Professor of Chaplaincy and Director of the Center for Chaplaincy, Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University

Christian nurses and chaplains have the opportunity to partner together as Christians to provide ministry to the body and the soul. While the respective missions of chaplains and nurses are quite different, both groups seek the healing of those in their care. The mission of the chaplain is to provide spiritual care and the nurse’s mission is to provide physical care. Still, chaplains and nurses have a unique opportunity to collaborate and synergize their efforts to provide comprehensive patient care and wellness. Chaplains are called to take the lead spiritually and nurses physically. Yet the physical is impacted by the spiritual, and thus nurses can provide excellent resource and insights for this dimension of healing. A wise partnership toward this goal of synergistic ministry will entail that chaplains consult with nurses before visiting with a patient. Similarly, the astute nurse will refer to the chaplain when spiritual needs are evident. It is the goal of chaplains and nurses to synergize their efforts to best provide comprehensive patient care and wellness.

Synergistic Ministry for the Hurting From a chaplain’s perspective, a Christian nurse can be one of the most significant assets in helping the chaplain meet the spiritual needs of patients. While serving in Iraq, I (Steve) came to appreciate significant collaboration and synergy between nurses and chaplains. Every evening for several months I made my way to the medical tents to provide spiritual care to wounded warriors. I was normally greeted at the door by a nurse who had made a spiritual assessment of patients and was anxious to connect me with various patients who had spiritual needs.

I remember a specific time when a nurse greeted me at the door telling me of a young soldier who was hit by a roadside bomb. He survived, but his comrades did not. He was going to need a chaplain. As we walked over to him the nurse introduced us and told him that I was there to talk and pray if he wished. This

significant connection that the nurse provided led to a conversation about the soldier’s patrol partners. When my assistant handed me a card with three names of recently killed in action soldiers, I knew where his friends were.

A Ramp Memorial Ceremony takes place in back of a C-130 transport plane so that fallen soldiers are taken home to be buried by their families. It happens as quickly as possible so that remains can be returned home. I sat there and had to explain to this Sergeant what had happened to his friends, and then had to leave to perform this ceremony. While he wanted to attend to honor his friends, he was just recently stabilized and could not be moved. I told him I would return afterwards.

While I left, the nurse stayed with the sergeant and continued to care for his wounds and assure him that I would return. Following the short memorial service, I made my way back to the medical tents and was once again greeted by the nurse, who wanted to make sure I made it back to her patient in order to provide needed pastoral care. As I shared a visual picture of the ramp ceremony the sergeant was deeply moved. “Chaplain, why am I here? I should have died with my buddies.

Why am I here?” The answer to him is the same answer to anyone asking this question. “Sergeant, God has a plan for your life, and He wants you to live.” I invited this young man to tell me about his friends, and he did.

One of the things he recalled was their commitment to their faith. He said, “They were the real thing. They were all in!” With the Christian nurse standing by my side, I took opportunity to share the Gospel with the sergeant. No surprise, he had already heard the Good News from his friends. “Sergeant, would you like to follow the Lord like your friends?” He responded, “Yes sir. Will you help me?” That evening in Iraq, I had the joy of seeing the sergeant come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I will never forget the new-found joy when he said, “Chaplain I am going to

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see my friends again, aren’t I?” The synergy of chaplains and nurses cannot be overestimated when there is a common understanding of the need for physical and spiritual care.

Incarnational Ministry for the Soul Indeed, the chaplain’s mission is to bear the presence and message of Christ. The incarnational nature of Jesus’ earthly ministry lays the foundation for chaplain ministry in all its forms. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Jesus’ earthly mission was fulfilled through his physical presence and his words. Through His sacrificial ministry of presence, His bodily death and resurrection, Jesus brought salvation

and eternal life (I Corinthians 15:3-4). Through His words Jesus brought the message of salvation and the opportunity for eternal life (John 3:3, 15-17).

Chaplains seek to model the incarnational ministry of Jesus by bearing the presence and message of Christ. Still further, the Christian chaplain’s personal relationship with Jesus Christ is foundational to every part of his demeanor and conversation. Specifically, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the resulting fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) exhibited in the chaplain’s life is paramount to representing Christ.

The chaplain who represents Christ well will be able to minister on a deeper relational level and be invited into highly personal conversations of the soul. Often these conversations include the patient’s desire to make sure

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they are in a right relationship with God. Some might argue that the Christian chaplain should steer away from such conversations, but the discerning chaplain will faithfully bear not only the presence of Christ but also the message of Christ (John 3:16).

spiritual wellness. In other words, the nurse needs to be “present” with his or her patients, regardless of the patient’s stance or views. Being present means truly listening and conversing with their patient while simultaneously providing outstanding nursing care.

Incarnational Ministry for the Body

This is where the ministry of the nurse and the chaplain truly merge. They both develop under the auspice of a “ministry of relational caregiving.” At the center of both ministries is the belief that developing a trusting relationship with the patient will assist in understanding and provide for the patient’s spiritual needs. If the caregiver is not present emotionally, physically, and spiritually with the patient, very little ministry is likely to occur. For the chaplain, this is called the “ministry of presence,” and it is why the common ground of the chaplain and nurse is “relational caregiving.” No doubt, the synergy of evangelical chaplains and Christian nurses is paramount to comprehensive physical and spiritual care.

From a Christian nurse’s perspective, even though spiritual care is the mission of the chaplain, it is often a nurse who has the first opportunity to evaluate the spiritual needs of the patient. It is normally the nurse who spends the most time with the patient and often gets to know the patient best. This calls for active listening, sensitivity, and a discerning spirit to determine the patient’s spiritual needs and desires.

Herein, is how the nurse and chaplain can operate synergistically as they both seek the healing of a patient.

Nurses in certain vocational locations (i.e., long term care, mother-baby, intensive care with regards to family members who are around) often may be the only incarnational picture of Christ available to the patient or their families. This role, therefore, is one with eternal potential as nurses model Christ and avail themselves for conversations with patients and families.

However, for this dialogue to occur, the nurse must first provide excellent care, which in turn builds trust within their patients. Once trust has been established, the relationship becomes a conduit for conversations that are more meaningful, and in many situations, include discussions about God. It is at this juncture that the nurse may choose to share about their own relationship with God. This self-disclosure may provide even greater trust and understanding of the patient’s spiritual needs.

A deeper dive into the process of the nurse’s spiritual assessment reveals the advantage of building a relationship between the nurse and patient when time allows. As the patient grows in trusting their nurse and deeper and more meaningful conversations begin, the nurse can begin to more deeply assess their patient’s spiritual needs. This assessment can provide great insight into the specific needs of each patient. Some patients will have a deep and developed relationship with God and all they need during their hospital stay is fellowship with another Christian and a visit from their pastor. However, other patients may have much more complex spiritual needs, ranging from almost no knowledge of God to perverse views of God based on a myriad of cultural and social influences. For these patients, the nurse’s transparency is just as crucial as with the patient that has been assessed as having

Incarnational and Synergistic Ministry By nature, and definition, those coming to a nurse or a chaplain are a vulnerable population, and thus need a wise hand and a compassionate heart to offer support. Patients in medical and acute settings find their life cycles and schedules disrupted. As a result, many patients perceive themselves as dependent upon those caring for their needs, especially while dealing with stress caused by disease, grief, and trauma. This provides a unique power dynamic for the nurse to navigate. Likewise, those seeking spiritual care from a chaplain are often in a disorienting phase of life.

Chaplains and nurses must be aware of and step into the vulnerability of their patient population with wisdom and sensitivity recognizing the secular context impacts the way in which they exercise Christlike compassion (in word and deed). Toward these challenges, quality care is heightened by the nurse’s and chaplain’s ability to team together.

No doubt, an alliance between the nurse and chaplain serves to provide the best treatment for the patient, as both occupations recognize the importance of their patient’s spiritual wellness. When Christian nurses and chaplains work together for the physical and spiritual care of those entrusted to them, their efforts truly become synergistic. The “bond of the Spirit” provides the Christian nurse and the Christian chaplain with an understanding of a higher calling; their work is the work of God, a work of healing both the body and soul.

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Music as a Means for Making Disciples: Interdisciplinary Engagement from Music and Missions Eunice Abogunrin, Instructor of Theology, Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University Sean Beavers, Professor of Guitar and Associate Dean, School of Music, Liberty University

How does a missionary engage with another culture through music and worship? As we reflect on this topic, it is important to start by emphasizing the inclusive nature of God’s redemptive plan. It is this inclusive nature that makes missions cross-cultural. Many Bible passages shed light on this truth. God says to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” indicating the global reach of the Messiah who would come through Abraham’s offspring.

In the New Testament, John records Jesus’ statement to Nicodemus, “Whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (3:16), indicating the widespread opportunity to believe the gospel.

At the disciples’ commissioning, Christ charged them to “go…and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). He gave followers a mission to bring the gospel to all people groups. This mission is accomplished through the work of the Spirit (Acts 1), and it is a marker of the world to come. This global vision of evangelism is directly connected to a global vision of the eschaton.

Just as the beginning of God’s story tells of worldwide blessing through God’s promise, the end too reveals the extent of this blessing as we see people from all of creation, time, and culture will be present at the marriage super of the Lamb. John records this vision saying, “Behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb,” (Revelation 7:9). These passages speak of the inclusion of all cultures in global missions, as God is reaching out for their redemption. Therefore, because God is inclusive and each culture is a part of His mission outreach, cultural engagement is part of the mandate for missions.

Cultural Engagement in Missions Cultural engagement necessitates understanding a given culture well enough to perceive important

cultural patterns and standards, and then with that understanding in place, healthy engagement requires a willingness to see things through another’s cultural lens. Without considerable attention to cultural background, whatever comes from outside the society may be seen as a disrespectful imposition or be rejected outright. If the cultural background of a host community is ignored, missions will inevitably be viewed as foreign and irrelevant. This thought was expressed by a man who once attended a Christian church but later converted to Islam. He felt that he had been westernized when he adopted a new name (Gabriel) and began wearing western clothes. Since he preferred his native name and clothes, he became a Muslim and retained his ethnic identity.

Similar concerns were expressed by Africans who saw Christianity as synonymous with Western culture. One of them expressed what they thought it meant to be a Christian this way: “You were not a Christian if you did not wear coat and tie and trousers; you were not considered a son of God if your name was not Jack or Robinson, Jones, Stone or Drinkwater.”1 Another African said, “... the black people were made to believe not that salvation is in Christ alone, but that salvation is accepting the new white ways of living.”2 In order to avoid alienating people, missionaries should avoid imposing their own culture on their audience.

Beyond just the practical and strategic value that this provides missionaries, the practice of honoring someone else’s culture has deep significance to the outworking of the Gospel. Honoring the creative work of another people is certainly a form of love, and it would be paradoxically absurd to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a way that did not show love to those it was being shared with.

Missionaries must constantly be seeking to overcome biases and pre-conceived assumptions about others.

They should immerse themselves in the culture of their audience. Converts can retain their native names, wear their native attire, speak their own language,

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and practice any aspect of their culture that is not inimical to the Gospel message. A missionary should bond with local culture in acceptable cultural practices as well. As Charles Kraft rightly put it, “The gospel is to be planted as a seed that will sprout within and be nourished by the rain and nutrients in the cultural soil of the receiving peoples.”3 This means Christianity will actually look different in cultures that are different; this is good. God created us to create, and the diverse expressions of a shared belief in Jesus Christ are a beautiful outworking of that reality.

However, it must be emphasized that a missionary should not compromise the truth of the gospel in their efforts to accommodate culture. “There are great risks involved in attempting to promote a Christianity that is relevant culturally and appropriate biblically.

The risk of syncretism is always present.”4 In order to avoid the danger of syncretism and, at the same time, honor the cultural context of an audience, Paul Hiebert suggested a need for holistic theology. This may involve addressing middle-level questions that Westerners may not understand. He penned, “... I do not want to deny the need to deal with the spirit world and related subjects. Yet we need to center our theology on God and his acts and not, as modern secularism and animism do, on human beings.”5 This challenge of immersing in the host culture without compromising biblical truth can affect nearly every aspect of engagement, including musical engagement.

Cultural Engagement through Music in Missions Music is an integral part of cultures around the world. In many cultures, music is used during baby naming ceremonies, birthday parties, graduations, engagements, weddings, house dedications, memorial services, and other gatherings. In addition, music is used on a day-to-day basis.

As we seek to engage with another culture in missions work, how do we help promote music and worship within that culture? First, we turn to God’s Word for guidance. The Bible refers to music many times and in many contexts, yet the Bible never condemns one musical style or promotes another musical style. There is freedom in the use of musical styles from any culture.

We can encourage new believers in other cultures to make music in their own native tongues, with their own instruments, and in their own musical styles.

While we enjoy this freedom of musical style, we must realize that certain music may, in a particular culture, be associated with sinful activity. The style itself is not wrong but the association can bring sinful thoughts to

an individual’s mind. Perhaps a certain musical style is associated with a pagan ceremony. How should this be handled? This is analogous to the situation Paul addressed in 1 Corinthians 8 regarding meat sacrificed to idols. On the one hand, Paul advocated freedom: “Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do” (1 Corinthians 8:8). On the other hand, Paul advocated caution: “Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble” (1 Corinthians 8:13). Paul advocated that the believer’s conscience should be the guide in these cases. A mature missionary can encourage new believers to use discretion in these matters without discarding all of the music of one’s culture.

While musical style is not directly addressed in the Bible, the content of lyrics should always be evaluated from a biblical perspective. When the lyrics of songs in a particular culture are not aligned with a biblical worldview, a missionary can encourage people to create new songs in their musical style but with lyrics that are aligned with biblical truth, reflecting the gospel and true worship of God. It is important to help each people group find a way to use music to worship God and to experience the beauty and truth of the gospel. Music can powerfully move the emotions and awaken the spirit. When music connects with the worshipers and expresses the lyrics that are being sung to God, people can enter God’s presence and open their hearts to Him. Engaging other cultures through music is a powerful way to reach people with the gospel and lead them to worship in their own musical language. Missionaries are encouraged to pray for God’s guidance regarding how to be in a culture but not of it, how to engage another culture and its musical style without compromising the truth of the Word of God. For in this pursuit, missionaries can use music as a means for making disciples.

1 Akin Omoyajowo, “The Church’s Prophetic Witness in the Politico-Cultural Contexts of Nigeria,” African Theological Journal 11 (1982):14.

2 Ibid., 10.

3 Charles H. Kraft, “Culture, Worldview and Contextualization,” Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne, eds, 4th ed, (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2010), 404.

4 Ibid., 405.

5 Paul G. Hiebert, “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle,” Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, 414.

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Book Reviews Joseph Carson Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

In recent years, “culture” has become a buzzword in Christianity. Christians frequently assume different meanings when they talk about culture-making or cultural engagement, and they often appeal to theology with hazy concepts or hyper-enthusiasm. Fortunately, Dr. William Edgar, professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, recently published Created and Creating: A Biblical Theology of Culture, which directly deals with the Old and New Testaments’ teaching on the topic. Edgar offers a thorough treatment of the relevant passages and argues that “cultural engagement before the living God is, along with worship, the fundamental calling for the human race” (87).

Not only does he make a persuasive case for a positive stance toward culture, Edgar also analyzes the “Contra Mundum Texts,” concluding that they are not defeaters for his thesis (87-98).

In the first two chapters, Edgar presents an excellent literary and historical review of both secular and Christian cultural theories, analyzing contributions ranging from Matthew Arnold, Percy Shelly, Karl Marx, and Max Weber to Richard Niebuhr, T.S. Eliot, Abraham Kuyper, and Francis Schaffer (23-83). He concludes that “Christians can benefit enormously from the many insights set forth by the leading scholars,” both secular and Christian (50). Then, in part two, Edgar reviews the central passages on culture and makes two important claims: (1) the texts that criticize the created world are critical of the corrupt aspects of creation and (2) “the reconciliation of all things is not a narrowly ‘spiritual’ work, but a comprehensive work involving the healing of individuals, groups, countries, in short, all things” (103, 151). After handling passages on culture, he moves to part three where he analyzes the iterations of the cultural mandate throughout Scripture, which often coincide with the creation of a covenant. According to Edgar, the cultural mandate contains three different aspects: God’s blessings, human flourishing, and human vice-regency over creation (176). Furthermore, he convincingly argues in this section that “there is essential continuity and even progress in the recurrence of the cultural mandate in its successive versions” (183). Also interweaving eschatology into his argument, Edgar ends by affirming the continuation and fulfillment of humanity’s cultural purpose in the eschaton (226-231).

Created and Creating presents a thoroughly Biblical theology, as its argument emerges directly from Scriptural analysis. Thus, Edgar gives an invaluable resource for understanding Scripture’s support of positive cultural engagement. His exegesis is academic, nuanced, and comprehensive—the Church can benefit immensely from such analysis. Anyone interested in theology, culture, or Biblical studies should read Created and Creating, as it brings clarity to an easily confusing topic.

Edgar, William. Created and Creating: A Biblical Theology of Culture. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016. $17.62.

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Seth Pryor Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

To theologize is to enter into a conversation that has been happening for thousands of years. Pitfalls abound, and terms are used, abused, and confused (just try reading Hegel). Thankfully Uche Anizor in How to Read Theology has written an incredibly helpful book for anyone looking to better asses and interact with various theologies.

The book is divided into two sections: virtues for reading well and tools for critical engagement. Chapter 1 is dedicated to the “enemies of love.” The four “anti-postures” that prevent charitable engagement are: pride, suspicion, favoritism, and impatience. Yet, protecting against the enemies of love, isn’t radical enough. Virtuous reading, which is humble, discerning, equal-handed, and patient, needs to be connected to Jesus’s command to love our enemies, even theological ones. Only then will this ensure that we are faithful to God and others. Chapter 2 demonstrates how context is inseparable from understanding a certain theology or theologian. Each one has a historical-cultural, ecclesial, and polemical context (42). If theologians are not understood in this context they will be misunderstood.

In the second section, Anizor answers four major questions. How do we (and others) reconcile the authority of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience with theology? Chapter 3 examines the nature of Sola Scriptura and is largely concerned with interpretation. Holding the Bible as the highest authority does not guarantee right interpretation. As such, it is not in opposition to tradition or reason. Chapter 4 explores theology's relationship to the past. In particular, the bounds and contours of the Christian tradition including the creeds, confessions, and doctors. Anizor argues persuasively that theology is only being responsible when engaging this interpretive community of the past, whose shoulders we stand on (95). To reject tradition is shallow, and to welcome it uncritically is naive.

Chapter 5, shows that no theology escapes reason. Here, Anizor lays out the standards of logic (coherence, consistency, and cogency), which are far too often overlooked in the setting of theology (132). Particularly of note is his lucid treatment on the role of experience in the de/formation of theology in Chapter 6. This topic is either too scant in reaction to earlier liberal theology or overemphasized in the other extreme as a pillar of personal theology. Anizor concludes, “experience does not have the authority of Scripture or tradition and can be the cause of many theological missteps. Nevertheless, it is a criterion with which we must reckon, for it provides another way of confirming and refuting held beliefs” (172).

Overall this is an excellent resource. Anizor’s writing is smooth and accessible. Examples abound from across the theological spectrum, which help ground the discussion. His points are beautifully illustrated from the writings of Marilynn Robison to Flannery O’Connor. Students will find a “Marauders Map” to navigating the centuries’ long conversations they are dipping their toes in. Teachers will find new ways for helping their protégés better understand what they believe as well as the beliefs of those whom they disagree. In so doing, this book is not just applicable to theology but across various disciplines in the humanities. Hopefully, this book will foster a better spirit of dialogue in this new era with grace and truth.

Anizor, Uche. How to Read Theology: Engaging Doctrine Critically and Charitably. Grand Rapid, MI: Baker Academic, 2018. $13.78.

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Book Reviews Cameron Hayner Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

A Redemptive Theology of Art seeks to show Christians how beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder—Namely, God. Redefining aesthetics is the purpose of the book, and this purpose is accomplished by searching deep within scripture for what God finds beautiful. Genesis 1 and 2, the creation narrative, is where God sets the standard for beauty, and this beauty can be seen reflected in the rest of the Scripture.

Beauty can never be separated from the God who created it. David A. Covington shows us in this book that something important we can do for our own spiritual growth and for our cultural apologetic is to see beauty through the eyes of God. Adam and Eve shared God’s eyes in the garden, but when they disobeyed, they chose to look through their own eyes. At this moment, the same moment sin entered the world, the eyes of mankind were marred. Humans stopped asking, “what does God find beautiful?” Instead, humans began to ask, “what do I find beautiful?” A prime example constantly revisited in the text is pornography — a celebrated voyeurism that takes God’s design for sex and distorts it.

Pornography and all other abuses of God’s design are despicable in the eyes of God. But with the death and resurrection of Christ, not only was man redeemed and reconciled to God, but our eyes were redeemed as well.

Covington ventures into the realm of culture. Specifically, he explores the concept of art. Artists have tried to distinguish their work from theology, but this is an impossible task. When trying to convey beauty through art, the task at hand is to display what is truly beautiful—which is, in its ultimate sense, whatever God says is beautiful. By allowing our art to be influenced by our theology, the sinful things we once believed were beautiful will be shown as the horrific distortion of beauty that it actually is. Because God defines beauty, we do not need to run from disciplines that commonly exploit God’s Edenic design, but rather enter them with redeemed eyes, cultivating a culture that reflects God’s initial design for beauty.

At its core, A Redemptive Theology of Art is a path to repentance. Repenting of how we have viewed art and culture through our sinful eyes and putting on Christ, to look through the eyes of God. Covington equips the reader to stop delighting in self-pleasure and to start delighting in God’s pleasures. This book will change the way you read scripture, view art, and engage culture, pointing you back to the glory of God as the culmination of beauty. This is a much-needed book on the shelf of all Christians who view art in any of its forms. Reading this book may not change the art around you, but it will certainly give you useful categories by which you can measure and evaluate the beauty of that art.

Covington, David A. A Redemptive Theology of Art: Restoring Godly Aesthetics to Doctrine and Culture. Grand Rapid, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2018. $24.99.

FA I T H A N D T H E A C A D E M Y: E N G A G I N G T H E C U LT U R E W I T H G R A C E A N D T R U T H

Devonte Narde Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

Alec Hill, in his book Just Business: Christian Ethics for the Marketplace, believes that the foremost priority of Christians in the global marketplace is to act in a loving manner and to respect the rights of all people. Human law is not the final word on ethics; rather, our ethic should be evaluated against a higher and more universal set of values—namely, holiness, justice, and love. A business act is ethical if it reflects God’s character. Businesses should ideally view themselves as managers of God’s resources, caring for nature and for the benefit of all. As Christians we should embrace the responsibility of being stewards, be zealous for God in the marketplace, resist property related temptations, value people over property, be resourceful with property, and be slow to criticize other’s use of property. Contrary to total submission, Christians should refuse to compromise their ethics to accommodate their employers.

Instead of having a dual morality in and outside work, Christians should see their vocation as a piece of submitting his whole life to God’s will so that work is used for this end. Though legalism, judgmentalism, and withdraw from society are potential abuses of holiness, in its proper form, holiness holds us accountable and keeps us humble.

Hill also demonstrates how the Christian ethic is transferable to management. “Covenantal management” is to be preferred over “theory X” and “theory Y.” The theory of compensatory justice squares most directly with biblical principles as a justification for strong affirmative action. Contractual justice should not be isolated from procedural rights, substantive rights, and merit, and without the concept of compensatory justice, the very notion of these rights would be meaningless. With respect to termination, privacy, and testing we should strike the right balance between respecting workers’ dignity (employee), property rights (employers), and the legitimate right of others, with love, holiness, and justice as the core principle.

Hill approaches business ethics in a topical textbook-like fashion. He supports his arguments with real-world examples from the marketplace and each chapter discussion opens with a hypothetical scenario. He demonstrates how the Christian ethical approach offers solutions to common problems and tensions in the marketplace. All Christians, and others, who desire ethical living in and outside the marketplace should read this book.

Hill, Alexander. Just Business: Christian Ethics for the Marketplace. Third edition. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2018. $25.93.

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In partnership with the Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement and the Center for Youth Ministries.

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Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement Editorial BOard Shawn Akers Mark Allen Joseph Brewer Gabriel B. Etzel Keith Faulkner Mark Foreman Benjamin K. Forrest Chris Gnanakan Edward Hindson Gary Isaacs Linda Mintle Karen Swallow Prior Gary Sibcy Samuel C. Smith

“Get wisdom; get insight; do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.

Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you.

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.

Prize her highly, and she will exalt you; she will honor you if you embrace her.”

Proverbs 4:5-8

Coming SPRING 2020 Vol. 4, no. 2 Faith and the Academy: Engaging Culture with Grace and Truth “Reimagining Vocation in a Secular Age”