Chapter 4: The Theologians and the Two-Realm Theory of Truth

Previously, Sloan has made the argument that, for the mainline churches’ engagement of higher education to be successful, Christians – and especially Christian theologians – needed to show that faith was integral to the question of “faith and knowledge,” and not merely an optional component depended on personal taste.  In higher education, a concept of knowledge based solely on scientific, quantitative measures had become dominant, and it was up to Christians to show why the academy in general had any reason to care about qualititative truth, value, faith, etc. To give away the ending of this chapter, Sloan does not believe any of the mainline Protestant theologians succeeded in this task.

He first reviews the three major neo-orthodox theologians – Paul Tillich, Reinhold Neibuhr, and H. Richard Neibuhr.  All three, Sloan argues, subscribed to a “two-realm” theory of knowledge which placed “objective” or “scientific” knowledge into one ream, and “subjective” or “religious” knowledge into a completely separate realm, isolating each from the other. Each theologian formulated this distinction slightly differently, and some of their concepts – such as Tillich’s “knowledge of persons” and the Neibuhrs’ emphasis on community, narrative, and symbol - seemed to point toward an integration of the two realms.  Ultimately, however, all three fell into a “nearly complete acceptance of the scientific description of nature,” and this acceptance “posed problems that the theological reformers were often unable even to recognize, much less to deal with” (125).  Knowledge of God tended toward the “ineffable,” making it impossible to truly effect higher education’s view of knowledge.

Next, Sloan analyses the “secular theologians,” who were heavily influenced by Bonhoeffer’s concept of a “religionless Christianity” (129).  These theologians, such as Harvey Cox, William Hamilton, and Paul van Buren,

all agreed in taking the modern mind-set as normative and definitive for all statements about reality, theological statements especially. (129)

They agreed that “Christianity” was a suitable source for moral conviction and saw Jesus as the role model for personal life, but their definition of Christianity and of Jesus himself were so watered-down and so limited by the overal dominance of scientific knowledge, that it soon became questionable why anyone should really care.  For example, while the secular theologians stressed the importance of Jesus, “their ‘Jesus’ was a conscious projection of their own making” (134), not the cosmic redeemer and second person of the Trinity as in historical Christianity. Along with a third group discussed by Sloan (the “radical empricists,” theologians influenced by Whitehead’s process theology, including Charles Hartshrone, Bernard Meland, and John Cobb), this group of theologians went far beyond the “two realm” theory of knowledge and ultimately accepted

only one realm, that of modern scientific and theological truth, effectively eliminat[ing] the theological basis for the church’s engagement with higher education. (144)

Thus, the future does not look promising.  Next up, Chapter 5, “The Campaign Collapses: The Student Movement.”

Chapter 3: The Church Engages Higher Education

This chapter describes the “on the ground” efforts that church bodies made with students and faculties. Sloan begins by noting the incredible changes in higher education post-World War II: the massive increases in enrollment, which opened up universities to a broader demographic of Americans, and the almost complete dominance of research universities in setting the agenda, tone, and purpose of higher education.

Student Ministries

Among students, the churches reformulated their view of evangelism to “take in the needs of the larger community and of the individual situated within the context of that community” (76). The university was seen as crucial to this “new evangelism” as “the cognitive center of the modern world” (as Sloan quotes Julian Hartt). Sloan continues,

Furthermore, the principal work of the new evangelism would have to be carried by people within the university, not by churchly intruders from without who had no real, integral connection with the university. (76)

As a result, many new student organizations were founded in the late forties through fifties, and many new forms of campus ministry were attempted by mainline Protestant churches. For example, the National Student Christian Federation took a strong stance in “political-social activism” (78) and eventually contributed to the work of the civil rights movement.

On other campuses, students and faculty joined to together in intentional, covenantal communities, such as the Christian Faith and Life Community at the UT-Austin. Similar communities formed at many other campuses across the country – Sloan mentions Brown, MIT, Yale, U. Wisconsin, and U. Iowa. Campus ministries also formed Christian research centers (e.g. at Michigan State) and trendy, largely short-lived “coffee house ministries” that attempted cultural relevance. Sloan also mentions the strong influence of the Methodist student magazine motive, which served to give many Christian students and faculty an artistic, literary perspective on Christian life.

Faculty Ministries

Among faculty, similar innovation was taking place. The Faculty Christian Fellowship, founded in 1952, took as its mission to

uncover the basic presuppositions of the various academic disciplines and to explore the tensions existing between them and those of the Christian faith. (84)

Throughout the fifties, FCF grew rapidly across the country.

Sloan surprised me by connecting the establishment of religion departments to the church’s new engagement of higher education. I had simply assumed (wrongly) that the teaching of religion had long been a part of American higher education – it had, but in a vastly different form. Sloan records that, by the mid-1960’s,

The older views of the student of religion as primarily evangelistic or as pastoral and professional training for religious educators had given way to the conception of religion as a scholarly, academic discipline. (86)

Very quickly, Christians had moved from fighting for theology to be recognized as an academic discipline to seeing “religious studies” become as professionalized as any other social science.

Finally, Sloan spends a good chunk of space covering the newfound interest of theologians (led by Tillich) in the arts, and the impact of these changes on church-related colleges.

Sloan concludes the chapter by noting that all of these changes in the church’s engagement with higher education were ultimately based in the “faith-knowledge” question. The universities had radically redefined “knowledge,” to the detriment of “faith.” It’s worth quoting Sloan at length on this matter:

The conception of knowledge as power and control [in higher education] was thoroughly utilitarian and intrumental. The research university, of course, was committed to the higher utilitarianism of providing theoretical knowledge for the management and advance of a complex, industrial-technological culture. The less prestigious institutions farther down the tail of the academic snake pursued the lower utilitarianism of immediate community service and vocational training. In the overall competition for resources the higher utilitarianism usually prevailed, for it could argue that in the long run all else depended on the high-level, theoretical advances it made possible.

In neither of these emphases, however, was there much concern for what had been called the “basic questions” of life, and very little concern, except in an instrumentalist way, for an education devoted to the deepening and enrichment of personal and cultural existance. That other conceptions of knowledge other than “knowledge is power” might be possible and might reveal dimensions of reality as real and important as the instrumental, quantitative, and technical, was as foreign to the one as to the other.

Thus, the churches’ efforts would depend heavily on whether theologians could put forth a convincing argument for “faith” as integral to “knowledge.” Next up, chapter 4, “The Theologians and the Two-Realm Theory of Truth.”

Chapter 2: The Church and the Crisis in the University

Much of this chapter deals with the origins, analysis, and impact of Sir Walter Moberly’s The Crisis in the University:

This crisis in the university, as Moberly – and the other SCM [student Christian movements] writers – saw it, lay primarily in the dominance within the university and modern culture of science as a worldview that could not deal with questions of human meaning and value, but at the same time had become the source of the notion that a spurious scientific objectivity and value-neutrality should govern the pursuit of all knowledge. (40)

Moberly and other Christian writers sought to show how religion – and Christianity in particular – could resolve this “crisis” and provide a unifying force within the university. Unlike other elements of the student movements, which saw social action and Christian fellowship as their topmost concerns, a group of mainline Protestant theologians and writers (including those influenced by neo-orthodoxy) believed that “the churches’ proper relationship and mission to higher education must be above all in the intellectual realm” (40-41). Moberly, and many following his lead, concluded that the purpose of the Christian in higher education was “to enable the university to be the university.”

Sloan outlines three concerns that led to this intellectual emphasis:

1. The belief that “the university was the most powerful institution in modern culture” (41)
2. The belief that “the university was evading its responsibilities to raise and explore ‘the basis questions of human existence’ and of cultural purpose” (41)
3. A desire “to show that the theological enterprise itself was not only intellectually respectable, but also indispensible to the complete university” (59)

Unfortunately, Sloan notes, two platforms of the churches’ engagement with the university, which began as carefully reasoned analyses, often became mere slogans that inhibited truly “radical” redirection of the universities. First, many writers accepted a faith-knowledge split that set “facts” in the world of objectivity and “values” in the world of subjectivity. To many writers, this split gave religion a “reason for being,” since they argued that only “values” could give objective facts any meaning whatsoever. However, this split often led a sense of arbitrariness to religious belief. It also led to the conclusion that, for example, there was no such thing as a “Christian physics” (55) – that is, that the practice of academic disciplines was identical among Christians and nonChristians alike, and only the interpretation of a discipline could have religious content. This hampered Christians’ abilities to bring about true change in any discipline and, in fact, raised the question of why they were so concerned with Christians in the disciplines in the first place.

The second “slogan” was the phrase “all truth is God’s truth.” Sloan notes that, for Moberly, this statement was true, but required critical discernment to identify truth within secular thought. In less reflective hands, the slogan led Christians to uncritical acceptance of “whatever conceptions of truth and claims to truth happened to hold sway in the university and culture at any particular time” (57).

Sloan concludes the chapter by identifying three tasks necessary if “the hopes for the theological renaissance and its engagement with American higher education were to be fulfilled” (63):

1. University faculty would need to “grapple with the knowledge side of the faith-knowledge relationship.”
2. “Leading American theologians” would need to take up this same task.
3. Finally, the “central epistemological and faith issues” would need to be communicated “clearly and persuasively” to both the “larger educational community” (i.e. nonChristian authorities in higher education) and the broader Christian movements among students and faculty.

Next up, Chapter 3: The Church Engages Higher Education.

This book tells the story of this last, major attempt by mainline Protestantism to have a significant influence on American higher education. (vii)

This attempt began in the 1930’s, alongside the Protestant “theological renaissance” brought about by the writings of Barth, Buber, Tillich, the Neibuhrs, et al., and ended in the 1960’s.

[Note: my journal of Mark Noll's America's God is briefly on hold. I was reading a library copy for the first few chapters, and I am now waiting for my personal copy that I ordered from abebooks.com to arrive.]

Chapter 1: The Church, the University, and the Faith-Knowledge Issue: Background

Sloan sees the “faith and knowledge” question as central to the relationship of Protestant churches to universities. From the preface:

In the prevailing modern view of how and what we can know, the quantitative, the mechanical, and the instrumental [i.e. the primary content of higher education] are accorded full standing. All those things, however, that involve – as Huston Smith has put it – values, meaning, purpose, and qualities [i.e. the content of religion] are regarded as essentially having little to do with knowledge… (viii)

According to Sloan, the majority of intellectuals during the Victorian era regarded the “conflict” between science and religion as having been fully resolved. Evolution and religion were seen as having the same goal – the improvement of man (the famous Victorian faith in “progress”). As a result, many liberal Protestants welcomed the secularization of private colleges and the establishment of secular public universities as a sign of the “progress of civilization and the coming of the kingdom of God on earth” (22). Meanwhile, conservative, pietistic Protestants welcomed secular education because their children could learn professions without “the hazards of classical [i.e. pagan] learning” (23). In the midst of this, other forces also contributed to the reduction of Protestant influence. One example that Sloan gives is the Carnegie Foundation’s retirement plan for college faculty.

A major stipulation of the plan was that participating institutions had to be free of all denominational control [since this control inhibited the development of "true science"]. A number of colleges, such as Brown, Centre, Coe, Drake, Rochester, Rutgers, Wesleyan, and others severed their denominational ties and became eligible to receive the proffered retirement funds. (20).

As universities and churches were systematically disengaging from one another, theology was preparing for a re-engagement. The Victorian “synthesis” of science and religion had proven to be imaginary as both scientists and clergy had come to realize that the “value-free” principles of Darwinism were hardly compatible with a Christian world view. Any morality of this “progressive” movement had been imported wholesale from the Judeo-Christian tradition, without justification from within the mechanistic world view of Darwinishm and scientism. The horrors of the First World War shattered intellectual belief in the inevitable moral progress of man. Meanwhile, the “neo-orthodox” movement was gaining steam in North America through new translations of Barth, Brunner, Kierkegaard, and Buber, and the new American-based work of Reinhold Niebuhr, his brother H. Richard Niebuhr, and the German immigrant Paul Tillich. Sloan notes,

In many respects the emphases of the theological renaissance were tailor-made for engagement with higher education. Most importantly, the theological renaissance was preeminantly an intellectual movement…[The theologians] were capable as few before them of mobilizing an awareness of the religious origins of Western, and especially of American, higher education. Moreover, most of the leading theologians of the new movement were faculty at so-called university divinity schools [Union, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Vanderbilt] and well situated to speak to the university…

Thus, Sloan sets the stage for “Chapter 2: The Church and the Crisis in the University.”

I am currently reading Gordon Wood’s The American Revolution, a short (190 pp.) summary of the causes, major events, and results of the Revolution. His description of Washington particularly struck me. Wood writes that, while Washington managed the war well:

Washington’s ultimate success as the American commander in chief, however, never stemmed from his military abilities. He was never a traditional military hero. He had no smashing, stunning victories, and his tactical and strategic maneuvers were never the sort that awed men. Instead, it was his character and political talent and judgment that mattered most. His stoicism, dignity, and perseverance in the face of seemingly impossible odds came to symbolize the entire Revolutionary cause. As the war went on year after year, his statute only grew, and by 1779 Americans were celebrating his birthday as well as the Fourth of July.

When I think of Washington’s achievements, two of them – admitting that he chopped down a cherry tree and throwing a dollar across the Potomac – are entirely fictional and the third – refusing to become “President for Life” – is about an absence of action. Yet, in every history I’ve read, Washington seems to be universally admired, even revered, by his other Revolutionary figures. Among giants like Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Harrison, Madison, et al., Washington walks the scene like a giant among giants.

There is no doubt that Washington was a supremely gifted individual, both in his personal traits and in his familial/social connections. Washington’s greatness, though, did not come from genius-level military achievements or ground-breaking political vision. That was provided by other characters in the Revolutionary drama. Instead, Washington’s greatness was rooted in his virtue, which incarnated the American Revolution’s ideals of civic duty, productive living, temperance, personal integrity, etc. He was a true citizen, a modern Cincinnatus, the farmer-general-dictator who, his term of service over, willingly gave up his dictatorship and returned to his farm. (This comparison was not lost on his contemporaries, who elected Washington as the first leader of the fraternal Society of Cincinnati, named a city in honor of the concept, and, of course, named our national capital in his honor.)

Washington’s personal virtues incarnated the Revolutionary ideals of the determined, independent citizen, willing to take responsibility for his country yet refusing the role of king or aristocrat.  Washington was a man for his time.

In contrast, can we imagine a contemporary political leader known primarily for his or her virtue and personal character?  The only one who comes to mind is Colin Powell, post-Persian Gulf War, who made a Washington-like decision to decline to run for president.  Barack Obama almost fits, but, to me anyway, Obama is a blank canvas, whose charisma and all-American back story allows people from nearly every demographic to identify with him in some way.

Christian believers in colonial America, though overwhelmingly Protestant, still assumed that God had structured society like a pyramid and that contentment with one’s created place was a godly virtue. The respect owed to pastors was an instance of the deference due to all whom God had placed in their superior stations. (19)

Noll reviews the major theologians and theological traditions in colonial American, beginning with the Puritans and their well-developed Calvinism. New England Puritans “took for granted that the central religious task was to orient the self to the prerogatives of God” as revealed in Scripture (21). Noll notes the “landmarks” of Samual Willard’s Compleat Body of Divinity (1726) and the considerable works of Cotton Mather (1663-1728). Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is the final and preeminent example of Puritan Calvinism. Noll then examines briefly Presbyterianism outside of New England, Anglicanism in Virginia, and other groups (like Quakers) throughout the colonies. All of these, even the sectarian groups, tended toward a traditional understanding of God’s covenant with the people of God.

1. Biblicism – a “reliance on the Bible as ultimate religious authority”
2. Conversionism – “an emphasis on new birth”
3. Activism – “energetic, individualistic engagement in personal and social duties”
4. Crucicentrism – “focus on Christ’s redeeming work as the heart of true religion” (5)

Noll notes that, in the United States during the nineteenth century, a “surprising intellectual synthesis” (9) grows up between orthodox Christianity and republican government, a synthesis wholly different than in any other nation on earth. The purpose of this book is to examine the creation of this synthesis, its climax, and its ultimate collapse in the Civil War. Noll concludes this introduction with an outline of his plan for the book, which traces the beginnings of this American synthesis, explores in detail the various features of the synthesis in post-Revolutionary American, and then closes with a “theological history of the Civil War” (16). Ironically, the American emphasis on “simple” readings of Scripture (in Noll’s terminology), especially regarding slavery, leads to an “impasse [that] is far from simple” (17). Noll observes that, in no other country, did evangelical Christians attempt to defend slavery from Biblical arguments, as they did in pre-Civil War America.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. – Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Almost 231 years later, these truths seem hardly to be “self-evident.” Vocal atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have recently pointed out the futility in assuming that we have a Creator. (They are both British, so perhaps their opinions should not matter much in this conversation.) Many of the authors and signatories of the Declaration owned human beings as property, calling into question how “equal” they believed “all men” actually were and how much right to “Liberty” they believed “all men” actually had. Debates over war, the death penalty, abortion, and euthanasia demonstrate that “Life” is a more complicated right than it might initially seem, and postmodernism, deconstructionism, and basic psychology argue that “truth” is in the eye of the beholder. Even high school sophomores breezily announce, “What’s true for you isn’t true for me,” as if this was an obvious and self-evident fact. Of everything stated here, only the “pursuit of Happiness” continues to be universally accepted as an unalienable right by the people of these United States.

Is it any wonder that Americans are known globally for our rampant consumerism, the pursuit of Happiness-with-a-capital-H raised to an ungodly pitch? It’s stated right there in our founding document. It’s given as one of the fundamental purposes for creating our nation and announcing our independence: the right to be “Happy.” We’ve traveled from throwing off King George to coveting the new iPhone in less than two-and-a-half centuries.

It strikes me that the Bible speaks very little of “rights.” Even the section entitled “The Rights of an Apostle” in the NIV (1 Cor 9), though Paul does assert what he is owed by the Corinthian church, is more about the rights that Paul has willfully given up for the sake of the gospel. To be like Christ, Paul urges the Corinthians, is to abandon claims to freedom.

What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make use of my rights in preaching it. Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. (1 Cor 9:18-19)

In The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity, Iain Benson writes,

The Scriptures speak so little about rights that it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that “rights” are not a scriptural concept. What the Scriptures speak of are duties and justice” “He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic 6:8).

Can we imagine an alternate history in which Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams had composed a Declaration of Dependence, announcing our new nation’s dependence upon God?

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to bind themselves with one another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the dependent and humble station to which God and the Laws of God call them, a proper reverence for the revelation of their Lord requires that they should declare what He has shown them to be good.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created in the image of God, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Responsibilities, that among these are to act Justly, to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with their God…”

Sleeth argues that it’s okay to use contraceptives for family planning purposes. I agree, mostly, that some contraception is an option for Christians, but I’ll get to my perspective in bit. Sleeth summarizes the argument against contraception as thus:

Is the use of contraception against Christian teaching? I have heard many versions of this argument, but they all boil down to the same thing: Contraception is against God’s law, since it interferes with the created purpose of sexual intercourse. In short, contraception is unnatural.

This is a straw man if I ever saw one, one that hits especially close to home. I believe that Sleeth has mischaracterized the argument against contraception and that he, ultimately, misses the point about sexual reproduction.

The Theology of Reproduction
Sleeth gets it backwards. Reproduction is not the “created purpose of sexual intercourse.” Reproduction is the natural fruit of intercourse. Here, I’m summarizing an argument I first heard from James Houston, who was discussing the Trinity and drawing on writings of the Cappadocians and C.S. Lewis. In the beginning, God made human beings in his image. But why did God need to make anything? The Trinity is a self-sufficient community. God is the great “I AM.” He exists because of himself, for himself, without need for prior cause, without need of anything at all, including human company. The pagan gods of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world needed human beings to make sacrifices, worship them, and honor their sacred places. YHWH transcends humanity.

So why bother with human beings, or a created universe for that matter? Because God is love, and love is expansive. It’s like yeast, or a mustard seed, or good news that spreads and spreads, filling everything and everyone. The Trinity created the universe, and created us, out of an expansive love that sought more persons to love. God did not need to create us, or anything at all. He wanted to. We are wanted by God.

And we are made in his image. “Be fruitful and multiple in number” are God’s very first words to human beings. We are to be productive like God – generating new persons to love. In the perfect marriage, children are created out of the love between ‘adam and ‘adamah. It is a joyful expansion of the love between the lovers. In a sense, children “proceeds” from the marriage. It is not a coincidence that emotional bedrocks of a marriage – the wedding, sexual union, and the birth of children – are part of a continuous whole.

To reduce the connection between sex and childbirth to a matter of mere purpose is like saying the created purpose of Jesus was to die on the cross. There’s nothing incorrect, per se, with that statement, but it misses the mark entirely.

Next, the theology of children.

DAYTONA BEACH – No hymnals. No pews. No steeple. No stained glass windows. And no women.

This ain’t your grandma’s church.

Organizers of the Church For Men say that guys are “bored stiff” in many churches today. “We try to make it interesting for them. We meet in a gym and we talk about issues that mess men up,” said Mike Ellis, 46, the church’s founder. The Church For Men meets one Saturday evening a month, drawing about 70 guys dressed in everything but straight-laced shirts and neckties. The service features a rock band, a shot clock to time the preacher’s message and a one-hour in-and-out guarantee.

The article goes on to talk about hot rod events, fishing outreach, and one preacher’s idea that men have “the attention span of a flea.”

It is important, even Biblical, for Christian men to build relationships with other Christian men, to the glory of Christ. Our Lord himself modeled this for us by gathering the Twelve, and Paul’s cohort of Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, Silas, etc., shows the mighty deeds that men working together can do for the Kingdom.

But is the church’s problem that it asks too much from men and needs to cater their services so that men don’t know whether they’re at church or at home watching ESPN? I don’t think so. First, the popularity of movements like Promise Keepers and writers like John Eldredge suggests to me that too many churches ask too little of their men. There’s a great deal of work to be done in the Kingdom, and professional ministers can only do so much. God’s call is for all of his people to do works of service, and the skills that men have in business, with their hands, in planning and entrepreneurship, in risk taking and boldness, are integral for much of that work. I have seen that with my own eyes.

Secondly, however, I worry that something is lost when we don’t listen to God’s call to humble ourselves like little children when we come to him. Men are prideful, and we don’t like to leave our comfort zones. The problem, of course, is that the gospel is often uncomfortable. It’s easy to dismiss something we don’t want to do by saying it’s “not for us.” Our consumerist culture has taught us that our desires and our needs should be the most important thing to us. Many of these types of ministry try to put the gospel into a friendly, nonthreatening context, like fly fishing or sports cars. I know that these ministries have worked in many lives, and far be it from me to stand between God and another human being. At what point, though, does the context swallow up the gospel?

There have been many popular Christian men held up as examples for Christians. Many of them lived exemplary lives, while others “talked the talk” without “walking the walk.” Only one person ever showed us how a true man lives, a true man made in God’s image and obedient in every respect to God’s will: Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Son of God. May all Christian men look to him for their example and endeavor to conform to his image.