tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004197800618234561.post8619867989734295041..comments2023-04-02T03:07:27.930-07:00Comments on Reformed Academic: Academics and Church MembershipReformed Academichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14744307133232033891noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004197800618234561.post-65282200791518034262011-08-03T12:07:25.554-07:002011-08-03T12:07:25.554-07:00Your description of your student years no doubt re...Your description of your student years no doubt resonates with many Canadian Reformed people who have attended university. I myself was an undergraduate in the 1950s (when the CanRC was just being established), and isolation for me was simply a given; I had no idea that any Christian resources were available to help me with the challenges of secular scholarship. And neither, apparently, did our theologians. The situation certainly has improved since then. Reformed and other Christian study societies and conferences have been helpful, and so has our ever-growing acquaintance with wide-ranging Christian scholarship and literature. I agree with you, however, that much more could and should be done. Particularly, as you write, “We ought to encourage our students to be appropriately open to new and challenging ideas, and not just to gain the knowledge and skills they need to get a good job.” (Thanks, incidentally, for your reference to Ben Faber’s relevant essay “As a Stranger Give it Welcome.”)<br /><br />I wonder if in recent years we as Reformed people have not regressed. I am thinking of 19th and 20th century Reformed scholarship in the Netherlands, but also of a man like John Calvin, who was able to laud the work even of unbelieving scholarship. Remember the oft-quoted statement, “If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God” (<i>Institutes</i>, II , ii, 15 – I suggest reading the entire paragraph and chapter). Let me also quote once again (I have done so more than once before) the warning which the Lebanese diplomat, scholar, and Eastern Orthodox Christian Charles Malik issued to American evangelicals:<br /><br />“At the heart of all the problems facing Western civilization…lies the state of the mind and the spirit of the universities….” And therefore, “The greatest danger besetting American Evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism…. Who among the evangelicals can stand up to the great secular or naturalistic or atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship and research? Who among the evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics? Does your mode of thinking have the slightest chance of becoming the dominant mode of thinking in the great universities of Europe and America which stamp your entire civilization with their own spirit and ideas?” (quoted in Mark A. Noll, <i>The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind</i>, pp. 25, 26).<br /><br />Malik spoke in 1980. Since then intellectual life in the American evangelical world has blossomed. Perhaps his warning contributed to the change. May we also be inspired by it. Thanks for once again drawing our attention to the need and the challenge.Frederika Oosterhoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06340388418031783192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004197800618234561.post-58802777619573426532011-07-25T08:50:52.157-07:002011-07-25T08:50:52.157-07:00In the above post, when I wrote, “We ought to enco...In the above post, when I wrote, “We ought to encourage our students who go to university to be appropriately open to new and challenging ideas”, I was thinking in particular along the lines of Ben Faber, who wrote <a href="http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/2710/" rel="nofollow">a very interesting piece</a> called “As a Stranger Give it Welcome” for <i>Cardus</i> in March.Arnold Sikkemahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02914734765194448215noreply@blogger.com