Faith of their Fathers

On Monday I finished reading Thomas Maier’s The Kennedys: America’s Emerald Kings, a fascinating and sympathetic journey through five generations of that family’s life in America. Maier’s thesis is that biographers and historians have tended to underestimate the influence of the Kennedys’ Roman Catholicism and Irish ethnicity on their politics, mainly because none of the Kennedys set up the theocracy feared by (among others) the Houston ministers during the 1960 presidential campaign. But Maier argues that Jack and Robert Kennedy staunchly opposed communism primarily because they had been shaped by a conservative Catholicism that saw communism as its primary enemy. Moreover, Robert Kennedy fought hard for civil rights both because Catholic theologians had been teaching that integration was the morally correct choice and because he saw the treatment of African-Americans through the lens of his own Irish experience.


Maier’s thesis is essentially correct. One cannot totally divorce someone’s political ideas from the experiences (whether sacred or secular) that shaped him or her. Maier has an easier time drawing a line from the Kennedys’ Irish immigrant experience to their politics since for a Kennedy being an Irish-American meant knowing oppression first by the English and then by the Boston Brahmins. The Irish in the Kennedys compelled them to beat the Brahmins whether in finance (as Joe Kennedy did) or in building a new political base (as Joe’s father PJ and father-in-law John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald did). But what did it mean to a Kennedy to be a Roman Catholic?

It helps to understand that Roman Catholicism is not a monolithic religion—something that Protestants too often fail to grasp. There are people like the late Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman, fighting Vatican II tooth and nail and supporting an almost reactionary political mindset, as well as those like the late Richard Cardinal Cushing and the Jesuit Fr. Richard McSorley, who welcomed the church’s aggiornamento and thought that the church’s creeds pushed for a progressive answer to the social and political questions of the day. (All three clerics were well known to the Kennedy family.) Thus, it is not surprising to see a wide variety of responses, even from equally pious members of the family. Indeed, as Maier points out, there were shifts in the way that Robert Kennedy (one of the most devout of Joe and Rose Kennedy’s children) dealt with clergy and with his attitudes towards certain political questions.

At the same time, though, Maier points out that there were certain constants amid the changes. For example, Robert Kennedy firmly believed in original sin, unlike most of his more secular liberal allies. Though Maier does not say so, I would argue that it added gravitas to Robert’s agenda and kept him from the utopianism so prevalent among the political left. And thus, though I am not a Roman Catholic, I appreciate the way that his faith added depth to what could have been a very flat way of looking at politics.

Most commentators on faith and politics assume that a politician of faith must either be a diehard secularist in political life or an outright theocrat. Maier shows us another possibility: people’s faith shapes their values, which will determine to some degree the political questions they find most interesting and the approaches they will use to answer those questions, even if their faith does not explicitly determine their politics and they use secular arguments in the political realm and find themselves often allied on political matters with those of a completely different faith.

Source Criticism

Before a historian explains the implications of a particular historical event, he or she must first determine what happened. But to do that, a historian must know how to handle the sources; indeed, that is the sine qua non of the historian’s craft. Unfortunately, Tom Mockaitis, a history professor at DePaul University, failed to do this before writing his editorial in yesterday’s edition of the Chicago Tribune.

I do not fault Professor Mockaitis for failing to examine the primary sources that would describe Anders Behring Breivik’s motivation for his murderous rampage. Neither the professor nor I have any time to look carefully at the madman’s manifesto, and I am sure that Professor Mockaitis is no more tempted to slog his way through that sewage than I am. But, of course, there are people who have done so, and it is to them that we should turn. The question arises: what secondary source should we consult?


Professor Mockaitis chose to latch onto a statement made shortly after Breivik’s arrest, in which the deputy Oslo police chief Roger Andresen characterized his prisoner as “a right-wing Christian fundamentalist.” At the same time, the professor chose to ignore an article written by Arne Fjeldstad, a theologian and religion column writer for Aftenposten—Norway’s New York Times—in which he demonstrates how little theology of any kind holds sway in Breivik’s thought and how Breivik disavows that he is personally Christian. Now the term “fundamentalist” has been stretched to mean many things over the years, but if words have any meaning at all, a fundamentalist should take religion more seriously than his average compatriot and his religion ought to shape his thoughts and actions in a major way. By this definition, Breivik cannot be a fundamentalist; indeed, those who think that a religion has no intrinsic merit, care little for the particulars of its creed, and view religion as a placeholder for society’s cultural values are generally called religious “liberals,” not "fundamentalists."

But should we believe Andresen or Fjeldstad? Andresen was acting as a spokesman for the Oslo police department and had not necessarily interviewed Breivik himself. Moreover, the announcement was made shortly after Breivik’s arrest, mainly to squelch the many rumors that the terrorist was a Muslim. (I noticed how quickly the announcement appeared after the arrest, as I was carefully following the news all day on the online versions of Dagbladet and Aftenposten, Oslo’s two main newspapers.) Thus, a police spokesman, with perhaps little firsthand knowledge of the suspect and without the academic training to tell the Trinity from a truncheon, gave a press statement mainly to calm down Norwegian anti-Muslim sentiment. Meanwhile, Fjeldstad, an expert on religion, actually waded into the sewage of Breivik’s 1500 page manifesto in order to see what religious or political thoughts lay behind the attack. Whose evaluation should we believe?

Professor Mockaitis is correct to say that Christians have not been immune to using violence in the name of their faith. But that is not what happened a week ago in Oslo. Relying on poor evidence, the professor has drawn the wrong conclusion and overlooked the real lesson to be learned. He thinks that Breivik’s attack should teach us to be wary of people who are overly religious. In truth, it should teach us to be wary of people who aren’t particularly religious, but may invoke religion now and then to support the secular ideology they really believe in.

Just Because It's Hot in DC, You Don't Have to Get into a Heated Argument Here

Just the other day I got a copy of the latest Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly. I can see your eyes glazing over already, as you think that it is a collection of dusty memoirs of prairie pastors from a century and a half ago. It can be that at times, to be sure, but often it has nuggets of wisdom with direct application to today.

Such was the case of an article entitled “The Christian and Politics,” pages 119-121 of volume/issue 84:2. I thought that the advice of Theodore Brohm (1808-1881), translated by Sieghart Rein, to be particularly useful to us today. Here are some highlights drawn from Brohm’s ten theses:


• “All political questions, as far as they are purely of a political kind, are to be strictly excluded from pulpit and congregational meetings [voters’ assemblies].”
• “To command agreement in matters concerning eternal life is no overstretched demand…because God has given us the source and norm of the truth [i.e., the Word]…but to demand complete unity in the things which God has subjected to the judgment of human reason without revealing His will in Holy Scripture, would be presumptuousness and would lead to intolerable tyranny.”
• “Diversity of political opinions…can exist, irrespective of unity of the spirit and faith, just as well, as diversity in the opinions about matters of art, civil association, the best manner of farming, etc.”
• “Love does not judge others because of a different opinion, does not despise them, does not undertake to push its personal conviction upon others with impropriety, much less does it want to exert control over him, or have everything arranged according to its mind. Love…readily believes the best of [an opponent], even when it deems to have him trapped in a great and harmful political fallacy.”
• “If renowned grayed men, of whom one can deny neither ability nor integrity, are of different opinions concerning significant political questions, thus it is indeed an intolerable assumption to conduct oneself, talk and act as if one were an expert, while one, however has neither gifts, nor knowledge, nor calling, nor resources, in order to procure a well-founded, mature conviction, and has scooped his political opinions only from the corrupt source of a political-party newspaper.”
• “Not seriously enough can everyone be warned of so-called political hot air (Kannengießereien) political gibberish as amusement and such loose talk with which the precious time is corrupted and the soul is alienated from God’s bliss.”

In other words, allow fellow Christians the freedom to express a variety of opinions on political topics (as long as they do not disagree with a theological article of faith), keep the church focused on the one thing needful (which is not politics), tone down the rhetoric and bluster, and don’t think of yourself as an expert simply because you saw something on Fox News or MSNBC. To which I might add that it is useful to get beyond the generalities and slogans of your party and address issues as concretely as possible and be prepared to explain the arguments of your opponents in a way which they would deem fair. Also, be humble enough to realize that there will always be unintended consequences for choices you make and your opponent may be quicker to realize that.

Nordic Nightmare

A madman, incensed by the direction of politics in a charming Scandinavian country, killed 80 or 90 of its best and brightest citizens.

Norway in 2011? Actually, I was thinking of Sweden in 1520.


A little background is in order. In 1397 the three Scandinavian kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark formed a united kingdom. (The three crowns, a prominent Swedish national symbol, is a reminder of the once united North.) However, a century later Sweden had grown dissatisfied with the arrangement, in large measure because the Swedish aristocracy was used to playing a much more independent role in politics. While a significant portion of the Swedish aristocracy favored continuing the Union of Kalmar (as the united monarchy was called), many noblemen did not. In early November of 1520, Christian II of Denmark assembled many of the leading Swedish dissidents in Stockholm and ordered their execution. At least 82 people were executed and perhaps more.

What was the result? Christian II earned the title “Christian the Tyrant,” as he is still known in Sweden. (Contrary to popular Swedish opinion, Christian II is not called “Christian the Good” in Denmark.) Sweden was soon in revolt and even the Danes did not want him. He was driven from his throne and replaced by his uncle Frederick I. Christian II tried to regain his throne, now by claiming to favor the Lutheran cause, now the Roman Catholic, but neither side trusted him. (Christian II seems to have been as opportunistic in religious matters as his modern Norwegian counterpart, who is not personally religious but likes to think of religion as a placeholder for secular cultural values.) Eventually, things would turn out quite the opposite from what Christian II had wanted. The Swedes not only would gain their independence from Denmark, but they would begin a series of wars through which they would gobble up much formerly Danish territory. For example, Scania, formerly the heart of Danish culture and learning (as embodied by such cities as Malmö and Lund), would be lost in ensuing centuries to Sweden. Norway would remain part of the united monarchy, but eventually the Danes would lose that country, too. Christian’s bloodbath not only hurt Denmark, but eventually assured the rise of the unstoppable Vasa dynasty that built a Swedish empire that covered all the shores of the Baltic Sea.

Ever since Cain killed Abel and built the town of Enoch, people have thought that murder and intrigue could establish an eternal kingdom. How wrong they are.

It's All the Same

“Brussels sprouts and mint ice cream are the same. They’re both food items and they’re green. One is as good as the other. It doesn’t matter which of the two you choose since they taste the same.”

“Dogs and cats are the same. They’re both furry, four-legged pets. One is as good as the other. It doesn’t matter which you choose to have since they are indistinguishable from each other.”

“Christianity and Buddhism are the same. They’re both religions. One is as good as the other. It doesn’t matter which you choose since they teach the same thing.”

Why is it that saying either of the first two statements would get you locked up in an insane asylum, while saying the last one would get you all sorts of accolades? Sane human beings make distinctions.


I am not arguing today whether Christianity is better than Buddhism—or dogs than cats. That merits a separate discussion. But cannot we have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that there is a difference between the two? Cannot we be forthright enough with the facts to agree that a Buddhist’s nirvana would be a Christian’s hell, inasmuch as the abolition of distinct personhood is a Buddhist’s hope and a Christian’s nightmare? Cannot we acknowledge that Christianity and Buddhism have different attitudes toward the existence of God (Christianity affirming His existence while Buddhism leaving the question open)? Cannot we admit that Christianity and Buddhism address fundamentally different concerns (Christianity seeks the redemption of the created world, while Buddhism seeks the avoidance of pain)? Cannot we agree that the two religions consequently propose different means to achieve their different ends?

Why do people try to equate the various religions? Sometimes they do so because they are too ignorant about religion to know the distinctions. I can’t tell Pepsi from Coca Cola because I drink soda so rarely that I don’t have enough of a basis to make a judgment on the matter. But that doesn’t mean they’re the same. Similarly, people who know very little about world religions are apt to make generalizations that aren’t true. But more often people talk this way because they figure that this is the only way that peace can exist among the various religions. Ignorant of history, these people assume that most wars have been fought over religion and so they assume that getting all religious people to agree that their religions are all the same will stop all wars. But while wars have sometimes been fought over religion, religion is a surprisingly rare cause of war; moreover, even wars that start out as overtly religious (such as the Thirty Years’ War) are quickly overtaken by political concerns and find the participants crossing confessional lines (as Catholic France and Protestant Prussia allied themselves against Catholic Austria and Protestant Denmark in that same war). You can have people of different religions living in the same or neighboring countries without going to war, just as you can put dog lovers and cat lovers in the same room and still keep the peace. To say otherwise is not only insulting to the various religions, but is also to dismiss the experience of most of history.

Ostensibly, ignoring the differences between religions will open dialogue. In reality, there is no quicker way to shut it down. As the French say, vive la différence!

Special Ops

I grew up in a wonderful church. It was a vibrant congregation that in somewhere around 30 years or so had grown to have 1500 members, 900 of whom you would see in church on a typical Sunday and 500 of whom would stick around for Sunday school or Bible class. It operated a full parochial school, K-8, with about 200 students and a separate class for every grade. I cannot praise highly enough the spiritual and academic foundation I received in that school. There are hymns I know today by heart because I learned them in school. And I discovered that my grade school education at their school prepared me to excel even in the academically most rigorous public high school in that city (and indeed one of the top in a state known for its fine public school system at the time).

But there was one fault it had, a rather common fault among large churches, as I have since discovered: the members constantly made snide comments about smaller churches, especially if they happened to be struggling. When a mission—their own daughter church!—faltered as it tried to get off the ground, there was a great amount of glee, for the failure of others underscored their own success. Consequently, my home congregation really didn’t understand smaller churches and looked at them with an attitude of contempt mixed with pity.

I have been able to get a different perspective because God has called me to serve smaller churches. Small churches and huge churches have been around since the beginning of Christianity. Jerusalem, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome were the megachurches of the first century, while most of the other first century churches were small churches. (When Ignatius of Antioch wrote his letters a century after Christ’s birth, he assumed that all Christians in a city could fit in a large room of a house where all could see the bishop presiding over the service.) More importantly, big churches and small churches operate differently from each other, occupy different niches, and must be encouraged to flourish if the Christian church is to continue to advance.


Big churches excel at offering a wide variety of programs, each of which is likely to serve at least one significant segment of their membership. They tend to be homogenous, where people share a common ethnicity, language, and economic class. Often large churches have grown up in newly settled areas, where members experience the phenomenon of being pioneers both on their block and in their church. If the large church remains in a stable community, it can flourish for many decades or even centuries. Its large size makes it fairly economical to run, its programs will be of a high caliber, and it can help the church-at-large address needs that a smaller church or even a consortium of smaller churches cannot address.

Big churches, however, have to do things in a big way. That means that the pastor and church leaders are constantly having to make big and sweeping changes, from building new sanctuaries to revamping youth ministry from the ground up. However, big changes also can quickly alienate members and lead to a steep decline. In smaller churches a big change could be ameliorated by a close relationship between the pastor and church leaders on the one hand and the ordinary lay members on the other, but the size of a large congregation will dictate that the pastor will know few people well except for key lay leaders. As long as a large congregation’s members are fairly homogenous, whatever decisions the leadership makes will probably reflect the values of the membership. However, when major demographic changes occur or controversial decisions have to be made, the longstanding members often feel that the one connection they had to the church has been lost and they move elsewhere.

The problems of small churches are rather obvious. They can be just one major building repair from closure. Moreover, it seems woefully inefficient to train a pastor and send him to preach to a few dozen people. But small churches have a degree of agility unknown to larger congregations. Because small churches value relationships among their members and because the pastor knows his members well, it is easier to introduce new programs or to be more flexible in making changes. It is here that the church is most like to cross boundaries of ethnicity, culture, and class. Moreover, small churches have historically had a much better record than large churches of bringing in people from outside the Christian church. (To the degree that evangelism work is faltering now in the U.S., it is in large part because small churches have forgotten their missionary task and left it up to large churches, which are less capable in this area. In part this is because many formerly large churches in urban and rural areas have become small churches, but are still acting as if they were large churches.)

Rather than throw stones at each other, large and small churches should see themselves as valuable partners in God’s kingdom. Large churches are very much like the regular forces of an army, while small churches are more like special ops. When trying to hold ground or establish a beachhead, as on D-Day, an army needs hundreds of infantry troops backed by artillery, air support, and all the other specialties of an armed force. But when trying to make a lightning raid or sabotage some facility of the enemy, a large army is useless and special ops are needed. In a similar way, large churches take the beachhead and hold it against the satanic foe by bringing all of their specialties to bear, while smaller churches need to use their agility to make advance strikes against the devil’s kingdom.

A few years ago the U.S. Army rethought its entire strategy as they realized they needed more than just combat troops on the ground. It is time for people in the church to realize that we need something better than the one-size-fits-all policy we have now.

Chaos Theory

A month or so ago I read that a new style of bike lanes are coming to Chicago. They are modeled on those recently installed in New York and many cities in Europe. (See the picture below of a protected bike lane in Paris.) Rather than having bicycles serve as a safety buffer for parked vehicles, parked vehicles will serve as a safety buffer for the cyclists. The bicycle lanes are also much wider so that cyclists won’t have to worry about getting “doored” by a parked car. While I recognized that this is inherently safer for bicyclists, I hadn’t thought about another point until I read it in Barbara Brotman’s column in the Chicago Tribune: these new bike lanes tend to attract saner bicyclists; you see grandparents and grandchildren cycling at a leisurely pace rather than just bike messenger wannabes. I commented to some friends that it made sense. You put people in a crazy situation and you foster crazy behavior. You put them in a saner situation and you foster saner behavior.


Later I realized that I could be understood to be implying that people are simply the product of their environment, which is not what I meant. And that prompted me to think about the discussions of nature versus nurture, which usually go awry. Those who argue that nature determines all point to people raised in Dickensian conditions who still turned out all right. Those who argue that the environment is determinative point to how improved living conditions have reduced crime.

What gets lost in the whole nature/nurture debate is that both nature and nurture serve as limits. The nature of something will determine what that object is capable of; the environment will help determine which of those possibilities comes to fruition. But an object cannot go beyond its nature. A rose bush will always be a rose bush; perhaps it will be a scraggly one or a beautiful one, but it will never yield peonies or give birth to calves. The environment in which that rose bush resides may hinder it or foster growth, but the environment cannot make the rose bush achieve things that it is incapable of. Thus, a rose bush with a hardy nature may do well in a poor environment, while a rose bush with a defective nature will not flourish under even the best conditions.

Thus, no human being can outperform his or her true potential. If sometimes we are surprised by what we deem extraordinary behavior (such as horrific crimes or heroic feats of valor), it indicates that we had not previously considered the full range of human nature. As creatures of God designed originally to reflect His image, we have almost angelic qualities of a rational mind and appreciation for the good. As fallen beings, curved inward on ourselves, we also taint everything with our sin and are capable of great evil. Moreover, as creatures made by God to be social beings, it is our nature as humans to be nurtured by other humans and to take seriously the environment in which we find ourselves. But as creatures created to be individuals rather than thoughtless cogs in a wheel, we will not always listen to other people or conform to their ideas.

And so we come back to the question of bicyclists on the road. What is the range of possible human behavior while on two wheels? Will anyone be a perfect bicyclist, always observant of the rules of the road, courteous and gracious and forgiving of motorists without exception? No. Our fallen nature will not permit that. But aside from that, there are plenty of other options. One is for bicyclists to cultivate their sense of fairness and behave decently while on the road. Another is for bicyclists to use their sense of fairness to chastise bad motorists, but to ignore that morality in their own case so that they can ride selfishly (since it is somewhat to their advantage). That route, the way of hypocrisy, is rather common, both on and off the road, since it allows people to enjoy the fruits of selfish behavior while savoring the feeling of moral indignation at others. One more option is simply to engage in boorish behavior, perhaps now and then trying to excuse it as what is necessary to survive on the road.

Given that range available in human nature, it is easy to see how chaotic situations can breed chaotic behavior. We don’t need much more than our sinful nature to get us to sin, and so it doesn’t help when other people (whether obnoxious drivers or fellow cyclists behaving badly) give us a good excuse to manifest that sinfulness. Of course, we may recognize that our behavior is counterproductive and resist the temptation. Not every bicyclist is trying to drive in as wicked a manner as possible. But chaos does make the temptation all the more alluring. By the same token, a saner environment can encourage saner behavior, if for no other reason than it allows people the chance to flaunt their self-righteousness. Self-righteousness doesn’t pass muster with God, but at least it allows for a more pleasant bike ride.

Modernity, Meet Moses

In my last blog I urged you to consider the bigger worldviews that give a framework for understanding your studies. In part, this was to enable you to address another question: why would any Post-Enlightenment individual study our Scriptures? In fact, why would institutions dedicated to fostering a Post-Enlightenment view of the world (such as public universities and deconfessionalized private colleges) offer courses on the Bible?

The fact is that the Post-Enlightenment world is very curious about our Scriptures. Just as well read Christians are eager to know as much about the intellectual thought of the past three centuries, so serious Post-Enlightenment thinkers also take the Bible seriously. Both groups believe that a judicious use of their rival’s primary source material may well serve their own cause. Thus, secular universities have no problem offering courses on the Bible, because they believe that they can show how the Scriptures can be made to honor their Post-Enlightenment agenda.


In part, they study the Bible because they believe it is useful for people to know how human thought has unfolded. No one can appreciate fully what Immanuel Kant did at the end of the eighteenth century, if unable to speak of his predecessors, including Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes. In the same way, to understand fully the modern world, one has to study the Bible to see how modern thought builds upon certain of its ideas while rejecting or altering others.

Thus, while Christians see all the books of the Scriptures as having a common theology and proclaiming a common message, Post-Enlightenment biblical scholars argue that the various books of the Bible have nothing in common and that there is a development of theology over the course of the centuries during which the Bible was written. Most commonly, they teach that the oldest patriarchs of Israel were polytheists (believers in many gods) and that their descendants underwent a development from polytheism to henotheism (the belief that there are many gods, but one god is superior to all others) to monotheism (the belief that there is only one god). Of course, if one thinks that the trend of human thought has been to reduce the number of gods over the centuries, it is clear why some would argue that the next step is to subtract one more god and turn monotheism into atheism.

But Post-Enlightenment educators are concerned about more than mere intellectual history. As I mentioned in my previous post, Post-Enlightenment educators are trying to get their students to be autonomous individuals, freed from the shackles of tradition, community, and transcendent authority. And thus a major reason that they teach the Bible in secular universities is to stop students from being deferential to the authority of the Scriptures and their church. The Scripture is praised for its poesy and vivid metaphors and fine sentiments, but in the process the Scripture is no longer able to be the voice of the living God. Those students who had previously been Christian and had heard the voice of God in the Scriptures confronting them in judgment and mercy now are taught instead to confront and judge the Scriptures. The voice of autonomous man speaks; the voice of the living God must keep quiet.

And that explains what seems to be a great irony to those who do not understand the Post-Enlightenment agenda: the highest percentage of non-religious faculty members is to be found in the Religious Studies departments of state universities and deconfessionalized private colleges. They love the Bible no less than Christians do; they just love it in the same way the wolf loves sheep.

The King of Sciences

In a previous blog, I noted that there are two major systems of thought in the Western world, Christianity and post-Enlightenment philosophy. Let me go a step further and note that advocates of each system are concerned with passing on their worldview to the next generation. In fact, they see it as the most central goal of their lives.

Of course, they both realize that their students will have to learn all sorts of other things. Christians and post-Enlightenment thinkers alike want all students to know how to read books, to compose essays, to do arithmetic and more complicated forms of mathematics, to know the elements found in nature, and to know the major events in history. But from the dawn of time until now, all serious educators have understood that they are doing more than teaching isolated facts. They are giving their students a framework with which to understand life in all its complexity. They are teaching what truths are essential and immutable, what means we can use to learn new truths and to distinguish false opinions from the truth, what code of ethics ought to guide our decisions, and what criteria we should use to discern the beautiful and the good.

Christians, therefore, have often referred to theology as the king of the sciences—science here being understood to mean “field of study.” We are not just saying that theology is the most important subject, as if it counts twice as much as history or physics or geography. Instead we mean that one has to have a correct theology if one is not to land in fundamental error in one of the other sciences. For example, if one knows about original sin, much of history becomes self-explanatory. We will understand why there have always been conflicts and always will be. We will be displeased with simplistic histories that assume that one side was all good and the other all evil. We will also dismiss hagiographies masquerading as biographies, for we know that people are more complicated than that. As a consequence we will understand history more profoundly than if we had a more optimistic view of human nature. Similarly, if we understand the created world around us not to be divine but still God’s handiwork, we will know how to approach the sciences, including biology and conservationism. Because Christianity knew that the world was not divine, they were a major force behind the growth of the natural sciences, while paganism thought it sacrilege to look too carefully at nature. But as we appreciate the freedom to explore God’s beautiful world, we treat it with respect as His creation, not adoration. In other words, we have a proper sense of what conservation of this world must entail.

But it is not just Christian theology that offers a comprehensive way of looking at the world. Post-Enlightenment thought also offers a lens through which it views all the phenomena of the world: the autonomous self. Whether that self be the neutral observer or scientist (as Modernism would emphasize) or the authenticator of the truth that appeals to himself or herself (as Post-Modernism would say) or simply a businessperson who manipulates the world for his or her own ends (as American Pragmatism in its crassest form would say), the autonomous self—unshackled from tradition, authority, and anything transcendent—is to hold sway over one’s life. Thus, the whole goal of education in the Post-Enlightenment worldview is to unchain students from anything or anyone that they may have relied upon earlier in their lives and to make them completely self-reliant. One of the chains, as you can well imagine, is Christianity, for it appeals to a transcendent Being (God) and acknowledges a transcendent truth (Christian doctrine) revealed in an authoritative book (the Bible).

Those who have gone through higher education (or are going through it now) would do well to consider to what is their “king of the sciences.” There is much that I have learned from those who look at the world from a thoroughly Post-Enlightenment view and I would not give up that education in the least. At the same time, though, as a serious Christian, I recognize the need to re-evaluate all that I have learned from the vantage point of Christian theology, the king of the sciences. Lord willing, you will see this topic touched upon in many blogs in the future.