College and Worldview – A Reason for Choosing a Christian Campus
- 1 view
[Bert Perry] “Does Christian education as currently constituted help young Christians get a more Biblical worldview” (to which my answer is “generally no”). We can also suggest a third question, related to the second, of “Does Christian education help with sanctification?”, and my answer to that one is also “generally no”.
that attitude is obvious from our discussion and is in fact the reason we are having a discussion. In my opinion, you couldn’t be more profoundly wrong. I don’t know how we can progress beyond this, because the heart of the discussion rests on fundamentally opposed propositions.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Things not taught in a secular college :
- Church history from a theistic worldview. Some are not taught church history in a Christian college either (I have a friend who graduated from Pillsbury without taking church history). Sadly few churches teach church history
- Creationism (underlying physics, chemistry, biology, et cetera). Obviously the church should and probably does teach creationism!)
- Absolutism in morals and ethics
- Not likely to teach anything about the Bible and if it does the Scriptures not regarded as supernaturally inspired. So no OT introduction / no survey of the NT. Church could and should but rarely does
[Jim]Things not taught in a secular college :
- Church history from a theistic worldview. Some are not taught church history in a Christian college either (I have a friend who graduated from Pillsbury without taking church history). Sadly few churches teach church history
- Creationism (underlying physics, chemistry, biology, et cetera). Obviously the church should and probably does teach creationism!)
- Absolutism in morals and ethics
- Not likely to teach anything about the Bible and if it does the Scriptures not regarded as supernaturally inspired. So no OT introduction / no survey of the NT. Church could and should but rarely does
It’s worth noting that if a Christian college were to insist on a good logic course as a prerequisite for graduation, you get most of this for free. The very structure of the Aristotelian categories requires the user to acknowledge that there are some conclusions which necessarily follow from premises (absolute right and wrong), and the relativists/modernists/post-modernists are nothing if ready to provide those premises ready-made. In the same way, the difference between evolutionary and creationist explanations of biology really lies in the logical presuppositions—you get that very quickly when you start teaching the craft. In many places, Origin of Species really uses the Far Side’s “and then a miracle occurs” method of forming its syllogisms and conclusions—Darwin didn’t do good with logic in school.
Finally, if you, again, teach the craft of how to think, you also introduce church history and a supernatural view of events very quickly–as any one who has read the author’s notes on The Killer Angels (classic epic about the Battle of Gettysburg by Michael Schara) can tell you, the author had to do a LOT of work to reduce/eliminate the rather overt religiousity of documents of the time for modern sensibilities. There are only so many letters by the “Reverend” this or that that a thinking person can read before he comes to the conclusion that a purely secular version of history is a fool’s errand.
(one does not need to go full David Barton to do this…. even if some wrote “for the audience” despite little natural religiousity, that still leaves the fact that the audience expected this religiousity and must be assumed to be at least somewhat religious in outlook)
Soapbox I climb on often, but the power of learning how to think is huge in this regard, and it would do a lot to make Christian colleges more appealing to young people—especially if they had a two year degree that included these things. It doesn’t ensure that a person will have a Biblical worldview, but it does give him the tools by which he can obtain it with very little effort on the educator’s part.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Doesn’t the question of “need college to develop worldview” depend on “is my worldview already developed?”?
(apologies for the weird punctuation on that)
What I mean to say is that 4 yrs at BJU was great for me, but not as worldview development. That was already firmly in place, though it matured over subsequent decades (and is still maturing).
But I will say that this period was a time when I was doing a whole lot more questioning of ideas than any other phase of my life. But not at the worldview level. More of the philosophy of ministry level. And at BJU in the 80’s you could find multiple philosophies not only in the dorms but in the classrooms and in the chapel pulpit.
For me, this was a good thing. Though I didn’t finish college having settled entirely on “the right philosophy of ministry,” it was pretty obvious early on what needed to be rejected. I finished the BJU years far more “liberal” than I started. Slowly discovered after that, in the lab of real life, that what is theoretically right and what is actually right can be very different things. Got more conservative… but this time from a more deeply rooted and sound set of principles.
It’s hard to say exactly where seminary fit in that process… but it certainly did.
Anyway, the journey is at least somewhat different for every ‘kid,’ so it’s best to avoid over generalizing.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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