Pro Rege
Volume XL, Number 4
June 2012
Features
Academia Coram Deo
Gaylen J. Byker
Faculty Assembly Devotions
Karen De Mol
Connotations of Worldview
Roger D. Henderson
Pedagogy of Promise: The Eschatological Task of
Christian Education
Jason Lief
Musalaha: Opportunities and Challenges in Listening
for Reconciliation
Charles Veenstra
To The Hilt
Carl Zylstra
Book Review
Bartholomew, Craig G.: Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of
Place for Today. Reviewed by Mark Tazelaar.
A quarterly faculty publication of
Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa
Pro Rege
Pro Rege is a quarterly publication of the faculty of Dordt College. As its name
indicates (a Latin phrase meaning “for the King”), the purpose of this journal is to
proclaim Christ’s kingship over the sphere of education and scholarship. By exploring
topics relevant to Reformed Christian education, it seeks to inform the Christian
community regarding Dordt’s continuing response to its educational task.
Editorial Board
Mary Dengler, Editor
Jeri Schelhaas, Review Editor
Sally Jongsma, Proofs Editor
Carla Goslinga, Layout
Erratum:
Pro Rege misspelled the title of Eduardo J. Echeverria’s article in the March 2012 issue.
It should have been titled “Lumen Gentium 16: Anonymous Christians, Pelagianism,
and Islam.”
Pro Rege is made available free of charge as a service to the Christian community. If
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The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent an
official position of Dordt College.
ISSN 0276-4830
Copyright, June 2012
Pro Rege, Dordt College
Editor’s Note: Dr. Byker delivered this paper as the spring Convocation Address at Dordt College, January 13, 2012.
Academia Coram Deo
I
by Gaylen J. Byker
Dr. Gaylen J. Byker has been president of Calvin College
since 1995. He announced plans to retire following the 201112 academic year, in May of 2011. Raised in Hudsonville,
Michigan, Byker earned a bachelor’s degree from Calvin in
interdisciplinary communications, both a master’s degree
in world politics and a law degree from the University of
Michigan, and a doctoral degree in international relations
from the University of Pennsylvania. At the age of 19, Byker
interrupted his career at Calvin to earn a commission in
the United States Army and serve as an artillery officer in
Washington State and Vietnam, where he supervised 90
enlisted men in combat situations and was repeatedly decorated. Discharged with the rank of captain, he resumed his
studies at Calvin, graduating in 1973. During that time, he
and Susan (Lemmen) Byker, a 1971 Calvin graduate, served
as resident directors. It was while at Calvin, Byker says, that
he became interested in the Middle East, and he explored
that interest more deeply at the University of Pennsylvania.
While working on his Ph.D., Byker lived and taught in
Beirut, Lebanon. Prior to returning to his alma mater as
president, Byker worked as a lawyer in Philadelphia, an investment banker in New York, and a partner in a natural
gas firm in Houston. Gaylen and Susan Byker have two
daughters, Tanya and Gayle, and three grandchildren,
Bastian, Eva and Johannes.
n my first Convocation Speech at Calvin College
in 1995, I described eight “Habits of the Mind”
that should characterize a Christian college. In the
following eight years, Dean of the Chapel Dr. Neal
Plantinga and I alternated Convocation speeches
on these eight habits.
Our primary text was Romans 12:1-3, in which
the Apostle Paul challenges us to be transformed by
the renewing of our minds—the cultivation, with
God’s help, of Christian habits of the mind. The
series included the following topics:
“Intellectual Love”–Loving God with all our
minds
“Sober Self Esteem”–Developing the proper
attitude towards oneself
“Ordinary Love”–Loving and respecting our
neighbors
“Duty: A Light to Guide and a Rod to Check”
–Doing our duty by connecting our practice
with our principles
“On Truthfulness”–Being honest
“What is a Christian Worldview For?”–
Developing and practicing a Christian
Worldview
“The Habit of Reflection”–Being thoughtful,
reflective People
“Intellectual Courage”–Courageously following
our convictions
These habits of the mind are vital features of a
Christian college community. They are habits that
are at the core of our efforts to build an institution of Christ-centered higher education—habits
that we need to remind ourselves of frequently and
work on consistently. The habit of loving God with
all our minds, the habit of humility, the habit of
Pro Rege—June 2012
1
loving our neighbors as we do ourselves, the habits
of being truthful, and the habit of demonstrating
intellectual courage: all are vital characteristics of a
Christian college community. And the habitual development and practice of a Christian worldview is
one of the primary missions of a Christian college.
However, I have become more and more convinced that Dr. Plantinga and I did not really finish our task. There remains an important group of
interrelated habits of the mind and the heart that
need to be added to the list if we are to adequately
deal with the habits required to build and sustain a
thoroughly Christ-centered college.
Dr. Plantinga and I drew upon the writings of
John Henry Newman, a Christian educator who lectured in the 1850s at the founding of a distinctively
Christian university in Ireland. Newman believed
that a thoroughly Christian university was necessary
to counter what he called the “godless colleges”
of his era and the “ironically dilapidated ethos” of
Oxford and Cambridge universities.1 Newman’s
lectures, collected in a volume entitled The Idea of
a University, have been described by a prominent
philosopher as, “the most important treatise on the
idea of a university ever written in any language.”2
But, despite Newman’s powerful description of the
ideal Christian liberal arts education and the habits of the mind that should characterize a Christian
university, his new university lasted only 28 years.
In the 1880s, about the same time that Newman’s
ill-fated Christian university was being merged with
the Royal University of Ireland, Abraham Kuyper
led the founding of a distinctively Christian university in the Netherlands. As you know, it was named
the Free University of Amsterdam because it was
free of control or financial support from either a
church or the government. Kuyper’s inaugural address at the founding of the Free University contains some of his most profound thought and oratory. The address speaks eloquently of the purposes and character of a Reformed Christian university in much the same terms that we use at Calvin
College and Dordt.3 And, yet, by the 1970s the Free
University had ceased to be a Christian institution
in any meaningful sense, though some Christian
scholars carry on aspects of the original vision.
I want to draw upon the histories of Newman’s
and Kuyper’s failed efforts to create and sustain
2
Pro Rege—June 2012
Christian institutions. And, I want to propose that
conducting “Academia Coram Deo”—that doing our
teaching and learning, our research and scholarship
and our communal living before the face of God—
involves three interrelated habits of the mind and
the heart: three essential ways of believing, thinking, acting and relating that can sustain a distinctively Christian and academically excellent college.
Conducting all aspects of academic life coram
deo, before the face of God, has been a Calvinist
rallying cry in higher education in this country since
the founding of what were at their beginnings explicitly and staunchly Reformed colleges: Harvard,
Yale, and Princeton. The founders of these institutions, like Newman and Kuyper, claimed every domain on earth for Christ and believed that every moment
should be lived coram deo, before the face of God.
Kuyper stated this conviction most eloquently in
his Free University inaugural lecture:
No single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and 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!”4
And, yet, as James Bratt, history professor at
Calvin, has observed, these Calvinists “also set
loose one of the most efficient engines of secularization the modern world has seen.”5
So, what went wrong? Why were the noble
founding principles, purposes and character of
these—and many other Christian colleges—not
sustained? My proposal today is based on the belief
that the people who constituted these institutions
failed, both individually and collectively, to embrace
and balance three, sometimes contending, habits of
the mind and the heart, three habits that are all necessary to sustain the conduct of academic life coram
deo, higher education before the face of God.
These habits of the mind and heart are, first, the
consistent practice of piety, that is, a personal and
a collective engagement with God and his Word;
second, engagement with God’s world in recognition of the common grace that God grants to all
of his creation; and third, a constant awareness of
and response to the antithesis—the ever-present
conflict between sin and evil, on one hand, and
God’s will and kingdom, on the other. Conducting
and sustaining academic life coram deo, then, requires
constantly embracing and balancing piety, common
grace, and the antithesis.
The wonderful but daunting task of living coram
deo, of doing all of our thinking, acting and relating in the conscious awareness that we are in God’s
presence, is the other side of the coin of our belief in the sovereignty of God. The Apostle Paul
makes this clear in the powerful passage read from
Colossians 1. All three of the habits of mind and
heart that I am suggesting as necessary for sustain-
Conducting and sustaining
academic life coram deo,
then, requires constantly
embracing and balancing
piety, common grace, and
the antithesis.
ing a truly Christian college are beautifully tied together in this passage. Paul says that we are rescued
from the power of darkness and made members of
God’s kingdom through Christ’s sacrifice, and that
our reconciliation with God, and the world that he
created and sustains though Christ, is the basis of
our faith.
Our faith is established and held firm through
the hope we have in the gospel. To continue in this
faith and make it fully operative in our lives, we need
to nurture our relationship with God. Individual
faculty, staff, students, and the college itself need to
be regularly engaged with God and his Word. This
is the essence of true piety. It involves personal and
institutional commitment and allegiance to the triune God, not mere assent to abstract concepts like
creation and transformation. In his book on the essential characteristics of Christian colleges, Duane
Litfin describes the need to know, worship, and
have allegiance to Christ as the creator, redeemer,
sustainer, and judge of the universe.6 This piety is
very different from Newman’s abstract assent to the
existence of a “Supreme Being” as the basis for a
natural theology. Intellectual assent to theism is a
far cry from piety.
Unless we, individually and collectively, grapple
with the Scriptures, pray, and worship with passion
and commitment, we will not have the faith, the
spiritual resources, to actually engage in the “integration of faith and learning.” To love God with
our minds, to have intellectual allegiance to him,
we obviously need to know and love him. This love
does not have to become an otherworldly pietism
that distorts faith and leads to withdrawal. As historian Mark Noll has observed, piety is the realization
that “Christianity is a way of life as well as a set of
beliefs,”7 and there is no inherent conflict between
“warm piety and hard thinking.”8 In fact they need
each other.
Abraham Kuyper himself had a passion for the
life of the spirit that he constantly sought to balance with intellectual integrity, social and political
activism, and a strong concern for justice. He loved
the idea of living coram deo, and, in addition to his
voluminous writings on theology, philosophy, social policy, and politics, he wrote devotional meditations, the best-known collection of which is entitled
Near Unto God. In his devotionals as in his others
writings, Kuyper “sensibly worked the line between
spiritual and earthly concerns.”9 He sought to be
deeply engaged with God and deeply engaged with
God’s world. But!, in part because of the religious
and political context in which the Free University
was founded, Kuyper built in an unfortunately rigid
separation between the university and the church.
In practice, he also kept the spiritual and the intellectual spheres far too distinct. As a result, the Free
University had no chapel and no connection to a
church. This lack was not of as much consequence
when all of the faculty and administrators were
Reformed Christians, committed to Kuyper’s cause.
But, when Kuyper’s successors felt the pressure
for academic respectability and diversity, the drive
for specialization, and the desire for government
funding, the lack of an intentional, institutionalized
emphasis on and commitment to piety proved disastrous.
The key lesson here is that a robust piety, a fullyorbed engagement with God and his Word, is the
basis for conducting and sustaining academic life coram deo. The great 18th-century Calvinist theologian
and educator Jonathan Edwards put it this way:
Pro Rege—June 2012
3
Only the heart changed by God’s grace will understand itself, God, the world of nature, and the
proper potential of human existence.”10
This perspective is world-affirming and worldengaging, and it privileges the biblical account of
God’s creation, redemption, and restoration though
Christ. It makes this account the touchstone of our
teaching and learning, our research and scholarship,
and our life as a community. And this is the starting
point of the connection between the habit of piety
and the second, interrelated habit, the habit of living as agents of God’s common grace.
What is God’s common grace, and what does it
mean to live as agents of that common grace? God
created the world good. He delights in all aspects
of it—its beauty, its marvelous processes— and he
desires the shalom, the flourishing, of all his creatures, even those who are not recipients of special
or saving grace. And even though sin entered the
world through the Fall and affected every aspect of
creation, the world is still God’s handiwork. As part
of God’s common grace, Christ came to “reconcile
all things,” as Colossians 1 puts it. As part of God’s
common grace, all things hold together in Christ,
and Christians have the privilege and obligation to
be engaged with all intellectual and practical aspects
of God’s world, to work for the redemption of
God’s creation. That is why at Calvin and Dordt we
teach, learn, and write about politics and science,
education and social work, philosophy and foreign
languages as part of the “cultural mandate.” And
it is why we take delight in seeing our graduates go
out as agents of transformation in law and medicine, teaching and engineering, government and
business, science and recreation.11
Recognizing and living as agents of God’s common grace is one of the great strengths of the
Calvinist tradition and one that we take seriously.
Reformed Christians have frequently heeded the
command passed on by Jeremiah to “seek the welfare (or shalom) of the city [where you have been
sent], and pray to the Lord on its behalf.”12 Our
concerns for justice and the restoration of people
and structures distorted by sin and evil—for the
building of shalom—are central to what we are as
Reformed colleges and how we perceive our mission. The key for Christians who would conduct
4
Pro Rege—June 2012
academic life coram deo, however, is that we recognize and act as agents of God’s common grace, that
we engage with God’s world, in response to and in
keeping with our engagement with God himself.
We need to see ourselves as agents of God’s unfolding purposes—not our own purposes—in this
current age.
The concept and work of common grace have
been great strengths of the Reformed tradition in
higher education. However, they have also been
among the tradition’s greatest weaknesses. This is
what James Bratt was referring to when he noted
that the Reformed tradition in higher education has
“set loose one of the greatest engines of secularization [and I would add secularism] the modern world
has seen.”13 It is a common trend for many individuals and institutions to move from the concept
and practice that “everything is sacred” to the concept and practice that “nothing is sacred” or has any
spiritual significance. In one manifestation of this
trend, “The progressivism of liberal Christianity
succeeded so thoroughly that it obliterated the
Christianity.”14 Such people believe that they can
carry out God’s purposes in this world without being committed Christians. This process often involves, as Richard Mouw describes it, the granting
of an “across-the-board upgrade” to all aspects of
culture, with a nod to God’s common grace. The
result is that institutions often focus on the positive
aspects of culture and work for the common good
but cease to be Christian.
This misunderstanding and misuse of common
grace frequently results from two interrelated tendencies. The first I have already cautioned about:
loss of the connection between common grace and
piety, the loss of the connection between engagement with God’s world and engagement with God
and his Word. The second tendency is to ignore or
deny the existence of the ever-present conflict in
this world between sin and evil, on one hand, and
God’s will and kingdom, on the other. This tendency to ignore or deny the Antithesis is at the root of
what Lesslie Newbigin calls our failure to engage
in a “missionary confrontation” with our culture.15
As Henry Stob states, “The good creation is
God’s thesis…[;]the fall of our first parents [initiated] humanity’s antithesis to God’s thesis.”16 The
results, as Augustine saw them, are two spiritual
kingdoms arrayed against each other in the world,
and their mutual opposition is central to the historical process. This conflict exists within each of
us because of sin. And this conflict exists between
the worldview and life system based on Christ and
the worldviews and life systems of fallen cultures.
In referring to the field of education, Kuyper described this antithesis as a fundamental confrontation between the worldviews and life systems of
“normalists” and “abnormalists,” between those
who believe and act as if the world is normal and
those who believe and act as if all of life is distorted
by sin and evil.
Nicholas Wolterstorff offers two reasons that
we often miss this conflict. He says that we “scarcely
see the world as Christians” because our “patterns
of thought are not those of Christianity” but those
of our time and place in history. And second, many
Christians, including many Christian scholars, lack
a deep understanding of the Christian faith: “We
see only pieces and snatches and miss the full relevance of our Christian commitment.”17 This limited view contrasts sharply with the Apostle Paul’s
call in our text, Romans 12, not to be conformed to
this world but to be transformed by the renewing
of our minds.
We are called to combat the materialism and hedonism of our culture—to be in opposition to its
worship of individual autonomy, its glorification of
violence, and its sexual mores: to challenge unjust
domestic and international policies. Christians need
to stand over-against the scientific naturalism, rampant relativism, and post-modern cynicism of our
day. Miroslav Volf reminds us that such non-conformity takes considerable courage but is needed
to “preserve the identity of the Christian faith and
insure its lasting social relevance.” He says,
In contemporary de-Christianized, pluralistic and
rapidly changing Western cultures, only those religious groups that make no apology about their
“difference” will be able to survive and thrive. The
strategy of conformation is socially ineffective in
the short run (because you cannot shape by parroting) and self-destructive in the long run (because you conform to what you have not helped
to shape).”18
In the Irish university case, Newman failed at
the outset to present such a Christian challenge to
the rationalism and scientific naturalism of his day.
At the Free University, the recognition and opposition to the Antithesis fell away with the decline
in the faith commitments and piety of its faculty.
Neither institution sustained a “missionary confrontation” with its surrounding culture.
We have, then, these three interrelated habits
of mind and heart that combined, make possible
the sustained conduct of academia coram deo. Three
ways of believing, acting, and relating that can sustain a distinctively Christian and academically excellent college: the consistent practice of piety—that
We need to see ourselves as
agents of God’s unfolding
purposes—not our own
purposes—in this current age.
is, personal and collective engagement with God
and his Word; engagement with God’s world as
agents of the common grace God grants to all of
his creation; and the constant awareness of and response to the antithesis—the ever-present conflict
between sin and evil on one hand, and God’s will
and kingdom on the other. Embracing and balancing piety, common grace, and the antithesis in our
teaching and learning, our research and scholarship,
and our communal living is no easy task; few colleges or universities have been able to sustain higher
education before the face of God in the long run.
I have learned over the years, especially from my
Kuyperian mentor, Richard Mouw, that piety provides the spiritual resources needed to embrace and
balance common grace and the antithesis. And, I
believe that consistently conducting academia coram deo is the worthy and wonderful calling of a
Reformed Christian college.
Endnotes
1 David N. Livingstone, “The Idea of a University:
Interventions from Ireland,” Christian Scholar’s Review,
30, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 186.
2 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Idea of the University: A
Pro Rege—June 2012
5
Reexamination (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1992), 9.
3 “Sphere Sovereignty”, in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial
Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids, MI: William
B. Eerdmans, 1998), 461-90.
4 Ibid., 488.
5 James D. Bratt, “What Can the Reformed Tradition
Contribute to Christian Higher Education?” in Models
for Christian Higher Education: Strategies for Success in
the Twenty-First Century, eds. Richard T. Hughes and
William B. Adrian (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 1997), 125.
6 Duane Litfin, Conceiving the Christian College (Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 38-44. I
am indebted to Litfin for his citation of several of the
sources used in this speech.
7 Mark A. Noll, “Christian World Views and Some
Lessons of History,” in The Making of a Christian Mind
– A Christian World View & the Academic Enterprise,
ed. Arthur Holmes (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 1985), 42.
8 Ibid., 43.
9 James C. Schaap, introduction to Near Unto God, by
Abraham Kuyper, translated and adapted by James C.
Schaap (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans,
1997), 12.
10 Noll, “Christian World Views and Some Lessons of
History,” 44.
11 Richard J. Mouw, He Shines In All That’s Fair: Culture
6
Pro Rege—June 2012
and Common Grace, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 2001), and “Common Grace” in Abraham
Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 165-201.
12 Jeremiah 29:7 (NRSV).
13 Bratt, “What Can the Reformed Tradition Contribute
to Christian Higher Education?” 125.
14 Mark A. Noll, “The Future of the Religious College:
Looking Ahead by Looking Back,” in The Future of
Religious Colleges, ed. Paul J. Dovre (Grand Rapids,
MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), 75, citing George
M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From
Protestant Establishment to Established Unbelief (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
15 Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel
and Western Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 1986).
16 Henry Stob, “Observations on the Concept of the
Antithesis, “ in Perspectives on the Christian Reformed
Church: Studies in Its History, Theology and Ecumenicity,
ed. Peter DeKlerk and Richard R. DeRidder (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983), 241-58.
17 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason Within the Bounds of
Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans,
1976), 103-4.
18 Miroslav Volf, “Theology, Meaning and Power,” in The
Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of Jűrgen Moltmann
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996),
100.
Faculty Assembly
Devotions: January 5, 2012
by Karen De Mol
H
ere we are at the mid-point of the year—new
beginnings in our continuing work! I hope your
break was refreshing, and especially that your experience of Christmas—the celebration of Christ
becoming human—was newly rich and joyful. For
me the yearly celebration of Christ’s birth is a highpoint—and then it is over, and I take a deep breath
and take up my tasks again. Perhaps it is that way
for you, too. I am reminded of thoughts from W.
H. Auden’ s For the Time Being—A Christmas Oratorio:
now the relatives have gone home; the decorations
taken down; the song of the angels has receded,
and we are back to scrubbing the kitchen table—the
“betweenwhiles” between past and future glories.1
Dr. Karen De Mol has served Dordt College as Professor
of Music and Chair of the Music Department for 28 years.
This moment is also the “betweenwhiles” in
our academic year—half way through the academic
year. We are in the betweenwhiles in another way
too; we are in the betweenwhiles between the creation and the renewal of all things. We are between
Genesis and Revelation, two pillars on which our
work here at Dordt is founded. In our curriculum
we explore and develop in God’s great creation, and
we rejoice in it as well. Our work starts in Genesis 1:
“And God said, ‘Let there be light…dry ground…
plants…living creatures…humankind. And God
saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”2
And we look forward to the renewal of all
things; while seeking restoration and healing now,
we look forward to that great day foretold in Revelation 21: “‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now
among the people, and he will dwell with them….
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will
be no more death or mourning or crying or pain,
for the old order of things has passed away.’... He
who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making
every thing new.’”3
Our daily work at Dordt focuses on those two
pillars—creation and renewal. In the words of the
Contemporary Testimony, “our daily lives of service
aim for the moment when the Son will present his
people to the Father. With the whole creation we
wait for the purifying fire of judgment. For then we
will see the Lord face to face. He will heal our hurts,
end our wars, and make the crooked straight.”4
We are in the “already and not yet” of God’s
great plan for us and for his entire creation, and all
our disciplines and fields of study are there too. All
our disciplines are rooted in creation, blessed for
Pro Rege—June 2012
7
present kingdom labor, and all our disciplines are
destined for renewal and future kingdom glory. You
know the implications of that for your field better
than I do. But allow me some examples and some
imaginings.
In the beginning God said, “ ‘Let there be light.’
And there was light.”5 Light! And with it, color, light
prismed into vibrant purple, gentle yellow, brilliant
red, colors enough for every shade of lake and
flower, colors enough for a thousand paintings, set
out there right at the beginning of things. Charged
with the care and development of these gifts, we
are busy in art and engage our students in art. And
I wonder: what will art be like when all things are
made new and perfect? What rough places will be
made plain?
In the beginning God created sound. Though
Genesis does not name sound, God surely made
that too, somewhere in those days of primeval silence, conceiving the idea of sound, spinning out
into his world the sine wave, choosing the pitches
of the overtone series from which could spring
tunes and harmonies in a thousand shapes and
sizes, building into the woods and fibers the resonance and power for a mega-orchestra of tone
colors. Charged with the care and development of
these gifts, we are busy in music and engage our
students in music. And I wonder: what will music
be like when all things are made new and perfect?
What crookedness will be made straight?
In the beginning God made all the substances
and laws of this world—the far-flung galaxies, the
tiniest cell, the force of gravity, the speed of light.
Such wonders! No matter how deeply we plumb
the skies and the cells, there seem always to be yet
further and deeper mysteries of science. Charged
with the care and development of these gifts, we
are busy in the sciences, and engage our students
in the sciences as well. And I wonder: what will the
sciences be like when all things are made new and
perfect? What glories of the Lord will be revealed?
Genesis tells us in simple words that God made
man—made the human body and human psyche,
both of them complex wonders. Each of us, and
each of our students, is fearfully and wonderfully
made—intricate psychologically and physically. He
also made us capable of relationships; in perfect
relationship within Himself, among the persons of
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Pro Rege—June 2012
the Trinity, he made us capable of relationships as
well. Charged with the care and development of
ourselves and each other, we are busy in psychology, biology, nursing, sociology, and education—
and engage our students in these disciplines. As
we work in these fields, we long for the day when
all things—all bodies, all persons, and all relationships—are made new, perfect, and healthy. What
will that perfection look like in health, in relationships, in learning?
God gave us eyes and ears to perceive the wonder of color, of sound, of cells; minds to understand and imagine; hands to fashion and to heal;
hearts to respond and to love. This semester he
calls us again to care for his creation and for his
people, to show his wonders to new generations, to
invite them into relationship with him and into his
service. He calls us again to develop his world. He
calls us again to name what is crooked and to work
now to make it straight and even. And he holds us
accountable to do so.
But he who calls us and charges us will also
equip us and sustain us and bless our efforts, not
for our personal use and pride but for his glory.
And so we begin again! Let us do so with joy and
confidence. For in this betweenwhiles, this time between semesters, in this January of 2012 between
creation and the final renewal, he will guide and sustain us, and he will give the increase.
Please join me in prayer for his blessing on our
work this semester:
Lord God, our maker, redeemer, sustainer,
We stand in wonder at your good world, your
amazing works in creation.
We thank you for the eyes and ears and minds to
see your works.
We humbly thank you for the privilege of being given a task in your world, and we stand
amazed that you would designate us as your
stewards.
Help us not to shrink from the task.
In this new semester, bless us with energy, insight,
enthusiasm, dedication, perseverance, and
wisdom for for the task ahead.
And make our work effective, for without your
blessing, all we do comes to naught.
In the generations of those who serve you, prepare our students for their future roles in your
kingdom, and raise up new generations to
serve at Dordt.
For all we should raise to you in prayer and do
not, we ask the Holy Spirit who pleads for us
to present our unspoken needs, and we thank
you for hearing our prayers, which we lift in
Jesus’ name.
These prayers and praises we lift in Jesus’ name,
Amen.
Endnotes
1. W. H. Auden (Wystan Hugh). The collected poetry of W.
H. Auden (Vintage International, division of Random
House, 1991).
2. Genesis 1 (Today’s New International Version).
3. Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony
(Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Reformed Church
Publications, 1987, 1904).
4. Revelation 21 (Today’s New International Version).
Pro Rege—June 2012
9
Connotations of
Worldview
by Roger Henderson
T
wo general tendencies can be distinguished in
the use of the term worldview (weltanschauung), tendencies that reveal profound differences, which I
propose to examine in this essay. The two connotations give rise to two very different assessments
of talking and thinking about worldview. Those who
discourage its use often identify it with an unprincipled pluralism or relativism; those who favor
its use identify it with a web or system of beliefs
with a common denominator, a system that clarifies implications for life and vocation. 1 Although
there is no mention of anything like worldview in
Dr. Roger Henderson, formerly Professor of Philosophy
at Dordt College, now lives in the Netherlands, where
he writes and teaches in the Spice Program (Studies
Program in Contemporary Europe, at the Gereformeerd
Hogeschool, Zwolle).
10
Pro Rege—June 2012
the Bible, the importance of what a person thinks
and believes is stressed throughout. 2 If attention
to worldview serves this emphasis without compromise, it is beyond reproach. Before we can
clearly distinguish the two connotations, we must
consider what quite generally is at stake in the idea
of worldview. My overall goal is to show that discussions of worldview can be very valuable, while
pointing out certain ways the notion of worldview
can be misunderstood and misused. I start with a
brief definition and then turn to the history of art,
reflecting on the fact that each people and culture
inevitably portrays things in their own characteristic way. This, I suggest, indicates the presence of a
worldview.
A good way of approaching the idea of worldview, I contend, is that there is “beneath and beyond
all the details in our ideas of things…a certain esprit
d’ ensemble.” 3 This French expression, used by Orr,
is insightful: It says there is something that colors
and gives flavor to the content of what a person or
group believes. It implies that such an esprit unites
all the particulars into a consistent whole. It also
means that something comes about out of a certain
arrangement of details that displays this esprit. Such
a “spirit” is that which enables all the details to fit
together in the first place, like a hidden “logic.”
Something is shared that goes beyond individual
details while imparting unity and character to
them as a whole. The esprit is an overall meaning
and impression arising in and through everything.
Like the “spirit” of the law often spoken of, it is
something better, more life-giving than anything
simply evident in the details or parts of our ideas of
things. It is something under, over, and above all
the parts as such, a shared quality or feel. As such,
it denotes the web-like structure of human belief(s),
the coherence of life as reflected in thought, the interconnectedness of thought and reality. Worldview
depends upon the unity of human existence and
the coherence of it (and thought) as fitting together
within one creation. Like the “spirit” of the law,
the meaning of worldview is sometimes better,
more beneficial than what people at times make of
it. Yes, talk of worldviews can, like everything else,
be misused and misplaced. But this misuse does
not detract from its intrinsic value or the insight it
offers us into reality.4
and recognition always occur within some frame
of reference, it seems natural to us to assume that
what the two artists see is the same. This amounts
to saying, however, that the lake’s true appearance
is what is captured in a photograph. Yet, when we
look at a photo, we automatically compensate for
its flatness, point of focus, shadows, size, and texture discrepancies, repeatedly reminding ourselves
of what the various things in the picture “stand
for.” Skillful representative works of art do this
and much more for the viewer, although the viewer
will still compensate for certain “discrepancies.”
We read a lot into a photograph and somewhat
In his book Art and Illusion, a study in the psycholog y of pictorial representation, E.H. Gombrich considers the following question: “Why is it that different ages and different nations have represented the
visible world in such different ways?” 5 Think, for
example, of how differently landscapes are represented in Medieval as compared with seventeenthcentury Netherlandish painting. Or imagine two
artists, one from China and one from England, sitting in front of the same lake, making a drawing or
painting of it. Even though we know that seeing
less into a painting. Paintings involve more selecting and poignant presenting of what the artist considers important for us to see. Still, we wonder why
the artist who paints the lake in the Chinese fashion does not see what we (seem to) see and gladly
accepts what we consider the discrepancy (between
what we see when we compare her painting with
a photo). Why doesn’t she see the same thing we
do and notice the obvious difference between her
lake and what we see (there, or) in the photo? She
doesn’t see the same thing we see probably because
Pro Rege—June 2012
11
she considers its Chinese look or style to be true
and correct—a look which to her the lake obviously
does have and to us it obviously does not have. We
tend to think in a similar way about accents: people
who don’t talk like us have accents—but we don’t,
or at least we think we don’t. 6
A worldview is like a certain
encryption code allowing us
to open, organize, and “place”
the things we see within
familiar categories.
Compensation factors are always at work. We
make allowances for discrepancies of appearance,
caused by bad lighting, distorting weather conditions, and uncharacteristic momentary looks, in
order to portray and bring out what something is
“really” like. Familiar objects can suddenly look
strange in certain environments, just as strangers
can sometimes be mistaken for familiar persons. A
lot of what we perceive is what we have been taught
and (come to) consider important. Similarly, when
someone says something in a foreign language, it is
hard to even make out the sounds, let alone what
(s)he is saying. Goethe once said that people hear
only that which they understand. The uninitiated
eye or ear is not very open to what is just there.
A good (picture) frame tells us how and where to
look; it should intimate the kind of painting we
are meant to see; the frame also tells us where the
little world (and story) of the painting starts and
ends—even though a frame (work) is not made to
be consciously noticed. 7
Like any other picture, the Chinese lake painting (above) presumes to reveal what is important
and real about the lake but perhaps not obvious
to us at first. After seeing the painting, we may
be able to see the lake in the Chinese fashion and
appreciate important facets of the lake previously
hidden to our view; the profound and skillful artist
highlights what is most savored, worthwhile, good,
or true, rendering this service to the viewer. And
here we have a parallel with worldviews—they
12
Pro Rege—June 2012
give us eyes to see and understand what otherwise
might have gone unnoticed. Although artistic limitations can never be excluded from explaining variety in representation, the very existence of artistic
schools, styles, and traditions tells us that like (verbal) languages, artistic conventions of representation are not merely individual but communal—as
are languages, accents, and worldviews. We tend to
see, think, and talk about things as do our friends
and like-minded community. For these and other
reasons to be mentioned later, I argue in this essay that worldviews are communally held, shared
perspectives, or ways of thinking, passed down
from old to young. This means that they are not
the same as philosophy or religion—philosophy
being more analytical and abstract, religion being
an all-embracing way of life and not limited to a
way of thinking.
A worldview is like a certain encryption code
allowing us to open, organize, and “place” the
things we see within familiar categories. One of
Gombrich’s main points throughout his book is
that “to see a few members of a series is to see
them all”; 8 and this is one of the keys to how perception is assisted by acquaintance with a worldview, a category, type, or kind. The operative
word in the quotation is “members.” What makes
a member a member is that it shares in the same
esprit or spirit. In this way things fall into certain
categories as members of groups or kinds—and acquaintance with these assists discovery. Similarly,
once a person has become aware of a certain esprit,
style, or brand, for example, of architecture, music, or clothing, it becomes easily recognized anywhere. A brand is like a man-made generic type
or kind. You need only hear a few bars or catch a
quick glimpse of something to know that it is one
of that kind. Acquaintance with a type or kind is an
identifier that tells a whole story. This is similar to
the way worldview-awareness works and assists us.
Familiarity with one tells us a great deal about what
to expect from members of the community possessed
of it. The reason for this correlation is that reality
is highly integrated; things are tied together with a
thousand bonds constituting kinds and types in a
coherence, not an aggregate of things just standing
side by side. Attaining a “view” of a whole affords
an implicit, intuitive, or tacit grasp of many things,
and this grasp is something a worldview offers.
Equivocal Perceptions
Related to worldview, a relevant question today is
no longer just whether different people living in
different cultures and ages perceive things in different ways but the significance of one and the
same person perceiving one thing in different, incompatible ways. It has become popular to present
one thing that can be seen in two different ways,
such as the rabbit-duck or the young-woman/oldwoman drawings.9 While there is a certain fascination in perceiving “one thing” in two ways, such
experiences can also be unsettling. If the world and
any one thing can be perceived in different ways by
one and the same person, does this mean there is
no such thing as truth? Is truth, then, paradoxical?
In spite of its problems, this is a conclusion many
people feel driven to draw, once they have experienced a plurality of contradictory perspectives.
And if correct, wouldn’t this plurality of contradictory perspectives undermine any legitimate idea of
worldview?
In the eighteenth century, philosophers aware
of the problems raised in accounting for perception and knowledge argued that knowledge arising
from sense experience is subordinated to necessities of
the structure of the human mind (“Vernunft”).10 The unintended eventual consequence of this argument
was the permanent separation of reality into subjective and objective realms, with consciousness
now being primary and independent. We will return to this momentarily. Many people now believe
that there is no single right way of looking at reality,
no single right worldview, only incompatible perspectives and “incommensurable paradigms.” 11
Negative Connotation
As some writers understand the term, worldview
has the connotation of unmitigated “perspectivism,” implying that humans are fogbound within
their own perspective, or system. (Those who actually believe that they themselves are fogbound
like this might be asked how it was possible that
they made this discovery, given that they were supposedly captives within their own system.) If talk
of worldview assumes or necessarily leads to such
“perspectivism,” it is understandable that it has
The rabbit/duck, a wood engraving, from Germany,
is Kaninchen und Ente, published in Fliegende Blätter,
1939. The young woman/old woman drawing is
from an unidentified German postcard of 1888,
called “Junge Frau oder Hexe?”drawn by the English
artist W.E. Hill, Punk magazine, USA, 1915.
been greeted with distrust and skepticism.
This connotation exemplifies a key feature of
modernism, namely a preconceived notion of a gap
between that which is seen and anything that might
exist outside of perception—an assumed chasm
separating consciousness and a so-called external
world. It suggests the primacy or ultimacy of views.
Pro Rege—June 2012
13
Everything that is seen is then a matter of (consciousness and) someone’s view. Accordingly, what
we see is a result of our angle or vantage point but
even more of our prejudice, will, linguistic conditioning, and cultural bias. Here we detect the modernist and post-modernist attitude of suspicion and
a complete rejection of the long venerated, classical
and medieval assumption of an adaequatio re et intellectus, a coordination of viewer and viewed.
The contemporary relativist attitude considers
perception to be “underdetermined” by any collection of ingredients, either internal or external. This
attitude, then, has moved away from that of the
eighteenth-century modernist philosophers, who
contended that the observer is furnished with certain “standard equipment,” which when used to
process the input from the senses produces reliable knowledge. While that “modernist” approach
was clever, it was soon interpreted as meaning that
beauty and everything else was indeed only in the
eye of the beholder. This view is part of the background of the negative, subjectivistic connotation
of worldview. According to contemporary relativists, neither the structure of human subjectivity,
nor the structure of what is, uniformly produces
what is perceived. Knowing is controlled, not by
a set of regular human faculties or by what is, but
by random, ever-changing factors in the viewer—
unconscious interests and desires. Knowledge is
ultimately a matter of perspective, a way of seeing
and perceiving. In this view, total human autonomy
is assumed, the idea that human beings have an
unlimited control and are completely self-determining. But ironically, this very view can switch
at any moment to its own opposite, into the view
that nature is determined and is an all-determining
mechanism—over which humans have little or no
control.
The nativity of this relativist perspectivism, which
we have been discussing, is sometimes ascribed to
the German Idealist philosophy of Kant, Fichte,
or Schopenhauer. This ascription is ironic, however, since Kant, at least, believed he was pointing out the standard equipment and various rational necessities controlling human perception and
knowledge-acquisition, including the assumption,
or postulate, of a world. While he believed he was
giving a firm basis to scientific knowledge, his
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Pro Rege—June 2012
philosophy eventually achieved the opposite in
the popular mind. Perception came to be seen as
more subjective than ever and less connected to a
known (or even knowable) world. Reality outside
of the human mind became ever more hypothetical. By ascribing to “inner sense” or “intuition”
(Anschauung) a universal role in knowing, “intuition” took on an exaggerated importance. It
(Anschauung) was also connected by Kant to the
notion of world (Welt in German), giving us the
German term Weltanschauung—which might have
been more correctly translated world-intuition instead of world-view. In any case, it was only a new
name for something not new—a perspective of
the whole. 12 Although worldview is sometimes given
a bad name because of such associations—and
hence has led some (Christian) writers to conclude
that it is a contaminated and dangerous notion—
there is little good reason to surrender the term to
this negative usage or confuse it with a proper definition or connotation.
Positive Connotation and Use
Ideally speaking, a worldview represents a unified “life-conception,”13 affirming and indicating
how the many facets of life fit together. Things
are meant to line up, fall into place, and constitute
“their own kinds.” While there are legitimate differences in perspective, these are not caused by
any supposed indefiniteness or unknowability of
the world; instead, they arise out of both the richness of creation and the limitations or fallibility of
human knowing. For example, some beliefs are
distorted, based on a limited or mistaken acquaintance with things. Yet the world is far from being
an unknowable thing in itself or a mere aggregate
of parts. Just the opposite is the case; it is so rich
in meaning that there is practically an inexhaustible diversity of pictures that can be drawn of it
(including any one of its lakes) without exhausting
its meaning. This is so, partly because of its temporal character—things go through phases, grow and
develop in time, repeatedly revealing a new gestalt.
The break, gap, or fragmentation that can sometimes alienate knower and known is not original
but adventitious, signifying dysfunction and break
down, not a shortage of meaning, reality, or truth.
A worldview may color but cannot create what
is there, or all of what is perceived. While every
worldview has its limitations, both internal inconsistencies and faults in its account of reality, there
is usually some visible hint of these limitations, especially when they are very mistaken in some way.
Whether a person takes seriously the hint or light
coming through the cracks in the wall depends
upon the person’s courage, integrity, and good
faith.
Failure to follow up indications of problems
can be disastrous. This truth became painfully
clear to me in talking to the parents of friends I
made while studying in Germany in the 1980s. As
Christian teenagers, they had all joined the Hitler
Youth League—Hitlerjugend—and saw nothing
wrong with it at the time. After many questions
and much discussion, at least one thing (hint) came
out in each case that, if followed up, could possibly
have opened their eyes to the surrounding evil—as
it did to the youth of Die Weiße Rose group in 1941.14
One such missed hint was briefly witnessing the
horrible condition and mistreatment of a group
of prisoners—quickly “explained” by a parent as
treatment reserved for “traitors to our country”—
which allowed the terrible sight to be categorized,
sanitized, and forgotten until much later. Another
case was the family’s (of one of the people I talked to) being told by long-time friends, who were
Jewish, “You must never visit us again, because it
could put you in danger.” The family could not—
did not work hard enough to—understand what
this warning signified.
In a significant way, sinful human beings are
still at home in this world and often have opportunities to rectify or compensate for its present
brokenness. We are made for learning and created for discovery—we are supposed to become
acquainted with God, his handiwork, its kinds, its
regularities, and its patterns, i.e., its unity and interconnections. An eye for worldviews can assist
in this process. Although there are ways in which
we seem to know God directly, what we grasp
(of Him through Scripture) is understood largely
through our perspective and experience in creation. Scripture often instructs us by comparing
God to the behavior of things around us, like birds
caring for their young or shepherds keeping their
sheep or the sun rising anew each morning.
Worldview properly refers to a coherence of beliefs within a world for which humans were well
suited—and this is its proper connotation. It grants
only a secondary importance to “view,” since “a
view” is not quite the same as “the truth.” Some
of the differences between the two connotations
are a matter of emphasis, one focusing on human
volition and consciousness, and the other seeing
human life as coordinated with what is there, the
order and laws by which God governs and sustains
the universe. A proper awareness of worldview is
meant to alert people to the way (primary) beliefs
attract similar (secondary) ones, repel contrary
ones, and form unified belief-systems. Knowledge
of a worldview can alert a person to far-reaching
implications and consequences of first principles.
No one can avoid having some perspective, with
its own direction, guiding thought along certain
lines, showing it where to go, and indicating concordant action.
There is a limited number of first principles or
primary beliefs, and this means that worldviews
are seldom if ever individually but rather communally held. Belief is understood here as a commitment with a specific character and a potential cost
if upheld in practice.
Worldviews also map things out, give guidance and direction to human thought and action,
but motivate only in a secondary sense, not with
the driving force of religion. Factors such as fear,
In a significant way, sinful
human beings are still at
home in this world and often
have opportunities to rectify
or compensate for its present
brokenness.
greed, and pride also play a big role in motivation
and sometimes work against or in the opposite
direction of a person’s own worldview. By inclining persons to act contrary to what they (say they)
believe, such cravings commonly give rise to dissonance and confusion within their worldview.
Pro Rege—June 2012
15
Because fear, greed, and pride are not in accord
with the deepest confession of the heart, they act
as foreign or inauthentic motivations—not rendering the satisfaction to people of having acted with
the courage of their convictions or of having done
what they knew was good and right.
A number of key points can now be summarized. People are unavoidably possessed of beliefs
and assumptions about reality. These beliefs and
assumptions constitute not mere collections but
“comprehensive frameworks.” 15 As we have seen,
people are not possessed of unrelated individual
beliefs simply standing side by side, like marbles
bouncing around in a bag, but rather are possessed
by congruent systems, webs, or frameworks of belief, each with a distinctive esprit of its own. If human beliefs and “belief-forming processes” were
essentially singular or atomic, we would have a
hard time making sense of the mutual attraction
of similar and repulsion of contrary beliefs. This is
one of the most remarkable characteristics of the
way human beliefs work, that is, the appearance of
systems or families of beliefs bearing a common
spirit.
Since some beliefs have greater weight and authority, more and farther reaching implications, than others, these may be thought of as primary beliefs. For
this reason, beliefs form hierarchical structures in
which the primary ones take the lead in coloring
the whole framework or worldview. Because beliefs
are drawn together to form webs, or systems, it is
rather uncommon to find a person whose thoughts
combine diametrically opposed primary beliefs.16
When a primary belief is altered, the change usually has far reaching ramifications, whereas the
changing of a secondary belief or opinion occasions little notice.
The attraction and repulsion of human beliefs
that give rise to systems of belief and worldviews
make blatant inconsistencies and contradictions
within a worldview all the more interesting and
puzzling. If things function and work as they are
supposed to most of the time, why don’t they always work in this way? This question requires
more attention. For the moment we can only be
reminded that the presence of dysfunction does
not contradict the existence of normal or proper
function but rather reinforces it.
16
Pro Rege—June 2012
Assuming for the sake of argument that every
normal adult human has a worldview, we should
ask whether it is final or subordinate to something
else more profound and all-controlling. A worldview represents a person’s primary beliefs, yet it depends upon something deeper, namely, a person’s
religion, religious commitment, or religious state.
In general, worldview is subordinate to religion.
Worldview depends upon but is not the same as religion; it reflects religion’s intellectual structure or
bent. Religion is more than a set of ideas or way of
thinking to which a person acquiesces. It has a vital or lived-out quality that transcends both theory
and ideology. Religion involves being connected to
something that transcends visible reality and embraces the divine in some way. To be divine is to be
self-existent, dependent on nothing else.17
A key biblical term in connection with religious is heart. Although an adequate account cannot be given here, something must be said about
this word because of its frequent use in Scripture
in connection with a person’s basic religious orientation. This is not the modern usage of heart as
organ of infatuation. The heart is the center from
which all kinds of activity begin. The heart is said
to devise plans, to think, to speak. Sometimes
it is said to be foolish, darkened, divided in allegiance. The tongue speaks, but the heart is far off;
or the heart speaks, but something in us is unable
or won’t listen. We are in the bivalent position of
being both its keeper and its dependent—we rely
upon it for guidance, initiation of action, but we
must also guard it carefully. Scripture speaks of the
heart as having its desires, which are often (but not
always) given by God. In a sense, it can’t be defrauded or dissuaded from doing what it is set on,
either for good or for evil. We can pretend we want
to do one thing, but if there are other plans (priorities or treasures) in our heart, they will prevail.
(This is not the level at which worldviews operate,
although it is the place out of which they grow and
receive direction.)
I have tried to show that worldview is more
than a mere convention or human construction yet
less than a simple given of nature. It appears to be a
way human beliefs cluster themselves together and
divvy themselves up to form patterns or systems
of belief. This process initially happens without
great conscious effort. It is learned, but it first happens at an intuitive level; and like a person’s native language (for example, English), it normally
needs education in order for its facility in use to
be gained; refinement and cultivation are necessary
and beneficial.
The willingness to test our
ideas against experience
repeatedly and adjust our
view of kinds and types
accordingly is a perennial
goal of a Christian
worldview, true science,
and philosophy.
Assumptions about “Kinds”
As described above, knowing that a certain person
has a certain worldview is a little like acquaintance
with a (natural) kind: once you have recognized it,
you have a way of anticipating behavior in that kind
and that person. Without going into detail about
the status of natural kinds, I should say something
about assumptions, since it is often said that acting
on the basis of one or another is inevitable. When
we say “fruit,” “worldview” or “human being,”
“chair,” “act of courage” or “dog,” do we refer to
a universal—or only names coined in experience
for convenience sake? The standard views are that
their existence is either (1) ontological (Plato), (2)
conceptual (Aristotle), (3) verbal (Ockham), or
what one Christian author takes to be a matter
of (4) creation disclosure (H. Dooyeweerd). This
distinction is significant because it affects the importance attributed to experience in contrast to the
use of reason, models, paradigms, or perspectives,
particularly in the sciences—the role attributed to
empirical input. In attempting to explain patterns
or regularities, one can easily overlook any (new)
factors that don’t easily fit within the familiar, established perspective. This means that there comes
a moment when the usefulness of an established
theory, paradigm, or (world) view has shrunk, and
the expansion or renovation of the familiar perspective is needed. You will be able to make sense
of the new experience or observation, only when
struggle (imagining and borrowing) has yielded a
new or renewed perspective. This idea of struggle
implies the limited practical validity of the Platonic
and Aristotelian notions of inborn or fixed “forms”
because in both cases, these notions have (in principle) a very limited openness to correction by experience.
Degrees of Openness
While the process of seeing and recognizing things
always occurs within some frame of reference, each
community is more or less open and has a greater
or lesser willingness to face certain things that are
unknown and to learn from them. To recognize
“new” things requires openness and imagination—stretching oneself and one’s perspective—
to go from the known to the unknown. There are
various types and degrees of openness, for example, to instruction, to correction, and to what
is there, outside of us, waiting to be experienced
and discovered. Indeed, the rise of modern science has been credited, in part, to the third view of
“kinds” outlined above—late medieval nominalism. By accepting the idea that kinds and categories
are human models, constructed by using language
and numbers to formulate the regularities of experience (as laws), various thinkers began forsaking
Platonic or Aristotelian deductive methods (based
on universal “essences”) in favor of more tinkering-based, inductive methods of studying nature
and a more malleable approach to kinds.
However, the idea of being completely open to
experience and using only induction is an illusion,
since complete openness would only mean indiscrimination and pretending that theories arise automatically (as Francis Bacon imagined). The willingness to test our ideas against experience repeatedly and adjust our view of kinds and types accordingly is a perennial goal of a Christian worldview,
true science, and philosophy. 18 Human knowledge
is not a copy or mirror of nature; it is a human account of what is behind the observable regularities,
historically qualified articulation of formulas, laws,
and decrees holding for the behavior and function
of creation.
Pro Rege—June 2012
17
Worldview Benefits
Thinking in terms of worldview can help us recognize the logically consistent inferences of our beliefs. Knowing that a certain person has a certain
worldview (biblical or otherwise) sometimes makes
it possible to anticipate accurately what his or her
opinion will be on various issues. Each particular
community with its own intellectual-spiritual orientation has its own worldview and key insight.
Behind each such community (and worldview) is
locked a criterion for selecting, interpreting, and
arranging life and pursuing certain goals. Even
an implicitly held worldview offers an interpretive
framework for identifying and understanding (or
sometimes misunderstanding) other communities (of
belief), cultures, and historical periods.
As a result, a worldview allows identification in
two ways—one for the identifier and one for the
identified. Because each community (or collective,
partly) embodies a worldview, each is distinctive
and identifiable, making it possible for a person
familiar with it to pick out its members. To know
or have knowledge of something also involves acquaintance with its effects. We don’t know what a
lake is like just by looking at it. Acquaintance with
its kind and all other types and kinds can tell us a
great deal and assist us in recognizing the things
we meet. Without such knowledge, we would have
to experience each unique individual, its operation,
it actions, its doings, and its effect upon us, in order
to know what it is.
Pictures and Truth
I now return to questions raised earlier about seeing two images in one picture. By concentrating
on one or another of the leading features of a picture and taking one’s cue from that feature, one
determines the image one will perceive. 19 I dare
say, nobody can see both images at the same time,
but one can move quickly back and forth between
the images. We are inclined to ask, “Which of the
images is the real thing?” We know from the visual compensating we do that we can be fooled
and tricked, and it may be the artist’s intention to
do just that. We also know that the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, that dead-looking wood branches produce gorgeous colored blossoms, that every
coin has two sides, that the tiny baby becomes the
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Pro Rege—June 2012
large adult; but we assume that a thing is one thing,
with a single identity, when pressed to determine it.
When Jesus says that the same tree cannot produce good and bad fruit and that the same well
cannot bring forth sweet and bitter water, he is not
unaware of changing cycles over time. Indeed, it is
time that is the key to the changing images we are
discussing. That one thing can function in many
ways over time poses no problem; a hammer can
be both a paper weight and a nail driver, a car can
offer both shelter and transport, and a light can offer both heat and illumination.
If one can pick out an image in a cloud as children often do, and then another and another, is
there any problem with that? And if a third thing
can be seen in the rabbit-duck drawing, should that
be troubling? As a rule, things start out as one thing
with a specific function; they can then change or
be changed. Changing and transforming things is
essential to artistic activity. The mutability of materials, their susceptibility to change and molding, is
the condition of artistic work. Even if one thing has
many (possible, potential) functions and images,
one function or image almost always starts out as
the chief, even if another soon takes over.
All of this illustrates the richness and fecundity
of creation—mentioned earlier. There is wonder
stored up in a thing made by a very imaginative
Creator. “There are more things in heaven and
earth my dear Horatio, than is dreamt of in your
philosophy,” says Shakespeare’s Hamlet.20 And if
one asks what is really there when one is looking
at the different images in the clouds, the answer
may have to be that it is just a cloud, and a drawing
is just paper and ink—although as the handiwork
of God, there is so much more that we cannot describe it all.
Presence in the World, Absence On-Line: A
Cyber-Sized World-View
What about images on the computer? What effect are the long hours of sitting in front of our
computers and Internet screens having on our life
and world-view? Prior to the late 1980s, people in
a few occupations spent long hours sitting in front
of their typewriters. Now millions spend most
of their days looking into screens, staring at texts
and pictures on their computers. While our world
(view) is hugely enlarged in the narrow electronic
channels of the streaming audio-visual information presented to us on the Web, it lacks presence
and depth of perspective, it lacks the grounding
of boundaries, of location in space, and the lastchance limitations of time. Although the Internet
can show us places and things from all over the
world, everything we experience takes place right
in a room while we are sitting at a table, staring
into a screen.
It is hard to say what influence the On-Line
illusion of presence and the reality of absence is
having, in particular, upon relationships. While it
is often said that the Internet brings people closer
together, in some ways the opposite is true. It certainly can increase the frequency and number of
people we reach—with the touch of a button—but
it is contact with no price. The ease with which we
can fire off an email to a person or include someone in a group message facilitates cheapness of intent and shallowness of content. It breeds disregard
in both sender and receiver. One is reminded of the
emptiness of computer-generated birthday cards
sent by agencies. The lowering of the threshold to
writing someone is having a questionable effect on
relationships. Can it make for better, more authentic communication? Even the act of speaking to
someone on the telephone asks for a higher degree
of engagement and sincerity. The lowered contact
threshold affects the depth and intensity of the
communication and relationship. Writing no longer requires special effort, nor results in a tangible
artifact. It can be done with any motive or scarcely
any motive at all.
Why do people sometimes travel all the way
across the country just to be with another person—even for only a few days or hours? What’s
the difference between just talking to people on a
telephone or through a computer screen and being
in the same place together, present with them? In
both cases, we can see and hear each other. What
bearing or effect does being present together have
upon us compared to communication at a distance
by electronic means? Being present gives to and requires of us something more. Being absent eliminates touch, smell, and a sense of nearness. All
parties are less vulnerable; the possibility of being
uncomfortable or frightened by the other person,
or of imposing or being imposed upon is diminished. We can be quite indifferent towards one another and hardly notice it when apart. Acting and
pretending are much easier and the temptation of
insincerity greater.
Virtual presence and actual absence can also
affect what we consider natural, intuitive, or selfevident and as such may alter the basis upon which
we draw conclusions and make decisions. It can
bring about a kind of insensitivity or numbness,
because it is more partial (virtual) than we realize.
It can both open up and stunt the growth of young
people. For some, it becomes a replacement for a
real (social) life. It allows people to withdraw into
exclusive networks of friends and family, no longer
The more people live
a web-based existence,
the more their frames of
reference and world (view)
shrink....
needing anyone else, allowing them to close themselves off from all other contact. It makes it easy
to stay within all their limitations and fears. It has
also become a major source of addiction to many
people, particularly addiction to game playing.
The more people live a web-based existence,
the more their frames of reference and world
(view) shrink, though they can be jolted back to
fuller presence and awareness. By shrinking these
limits, we land in utopia, precisely nowhere. In
one sense, being On-Line is to be no place except
in our heads, at least until we move away from
the computer screen. Our worldview becomes a
Google-sized, filtered Internet portal (under constant surveillance). It is a controlled environment.
There is no out-of-doors available On-Line. We
control much, and are controlled: if we don’t wish
to meet someone, we can click off—delete is always only a button away; and yet no one is ever really with us. We are more in contact than ever and
less in contact than ever—firewalls (and worlds)
away from reality and other people. What this will
Pro Rege—June 2012
19
do to us in the long run remains to be seen, but at
present it allows us to create a sense of a man-made
world(view) without presence: a universe in which
much good talk about God can still end up sounding awfully hollow.
This nowhere Utopia fits well with a public
philosophy that tells educated Western people they
are in control of themselves, that what they do and
think is within their own power, that they are autonomous—a law unto themselves. Many believe
humanity is in charge of itself, can recreate itself,
can wholly recreate the world. Yet when I walk
down the street and smell something appetizing,
something in me can crave it even if I do not wish to
have any such craving. Before consciously deciding
to get up in the morning, I sometimes notice I have
stood up and am heading for the wash room. Many
things bypass my will, such as appetites, instinctive
cravings, longings. These may indicate something
I need but don’t at the moment want. Sometimes
there is cultural interference between my ideas and
my needs—because of certain notions or fears I
have acquired. Indications of need are sometimes
overlooked, ignored, or suppressed—like a craving to eat something with the vitamins in it I need.
We can learn by observing such operations in ourselves. Their message is that there is more to me
than I think, will, or consciously understand. Our
thirst does not arise from our worldview—even
though our thirsts, too, are trained, for example, to
want water, wine, milk, or coke.
Conclusion
Rather than thinking of ourselves as autonomous
“individuals,” unattached to the rest of reality, we
should recognize our relation to it, including all the
ways our thought patterns are meant to reflect it;
the many interconnections largely constitute our
peculiar existence. These interconnections do not
mean, however, that our thought lacks all originality or independence. Thanks to the way God
has made and sustains us, we are not robots! Yet
thankfully we constantly meet with hints of organizing structure(s) in and outside of ourselves.
We perceive in freedom, in orderly ways, by virtue
of divine ordinances and law—to which we are,
thankfully, always subject—yet not in bondage.
Under the best circumstances, there will be a good
20
Pro Rege—June 2012
match between our views of the world and the way
the world is. The fit, however, will never be perfect
or exhaustive because for that, the creation is far
too rich and dynamic.
Our perspective on life reflects and corresponds in varying degrees to an order that is larger
than ourselves. It is intimated to us even in a fallen
world and even through a less than perfect worldview. Beginning in earliest childhood we are instructed by intuition, instincts however minimal,
and a tacit awareness of the arrangement of the
world prior to our thought becoming self-conscious and focused. Such intuitive and tacit functioning is wonderfully evident in language, the way
speech is learned by infants even before they realize what they are doing; they begin to talk and express themselves using signs or words long before
analysis or independent understanding develops.
We want and try to talk even before possessing a
vocabulary because we are human beings—made
to talk. Being so made is what allows us to learn,
develop, and acquire language in the first place.
Reality is made to be spoken of, and we are made
to speak of it. Things are created to be known, and
we are created to know them, to gain a view of the
world and to gain acquaintance with God.
While there is nothing foolproof about the way
all this human learning and “viewing” takes place,
we constantly receive hints and indications telling
us when we are right and when we are wrong, by
the test of time and experience. Self-awareness and
observation are there to teach us basic knowledge,
and they far exceed what we consciously control.
In a tacit way, we discover that many things are
happening, are being suggested to us; we are being
asked to respond to these things—some of which
we eventually realize in a deliberate way. Many
signals, however, go unnoticed because our worldview is off the mark, more a constricting ideology
than an expanding vantage point. Sometimes we
learn more about the world by careful observation of our own intuition and tacit awareness of
things than by looking at things directly or by what
we are taught. The ideas of our culture, or what
experts and celebrated thinkers tell us, can easily
be false. Cultivating an awareness of the esprit d’
ensemble of all the things people think and believe
offers the attentive observer an extra filter and a
valuable guide in sorting out what is (most likely)
true. Recognizing that there is always one or another interpretive framework in play can be greatly
instructive to us and lead us to deeper insight into
ourselves, others and other communities.
it. The phonology of each language (or accent) naturally
includes and excludes certain sounds. A certain
spectrum or range of familiar sounds characterizes the
whole, such that foreign words are recognized as not
really belonging to it.
7. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action, Toward a Christian
Aesthetic (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1980,
1996), 122 ff.
8. Gombrich, 220.
9. The old-woman/young-woman drawing is from an
unidentified German postcard of 1888, called “Junge
Frau oder Hexe?”drawn by the English artist W.E. Hill,
Punk magazine, USA, 1915. The rabbit/duck, a wood
engraving, also from Germany, is Kaninchen und Ente,
published in Fliegende Blätter, 1939.
10. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernnft (Academie
Verlag, 1781, 1998).
11. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
University of Chicago Press, 1962, Preface & Ch. 10.
This is the original rabbit/duck wood
engraving, Kaninchen und Ente, published
in Fliegende Blätter, 1939.
Endnotes
1. Another type of criticism identifies worldview with
“rationalism.” This criticism incorrectly sees worldview
as necessarily turning (Christian) faith into nothing but
logical propositions and dogma.
2. A person’s opinion on which connotation is most
correct may depend on his or her eschatology, that is,
what he or she thinks living in the “end times” means.
It may also be influenced by the importance he or she
places on the use of the intellect. These last two factors
are indicators of whether a person’s attitude towards
the use of worldview will be more positive or negative.
Another concerns evangelism and the value a person
attributes to the use of apologetics.
3. James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World as
Centering in the Incarnation (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 1893, 1954), 6.
4. Virginia Lloyd-Davis, Willow by the Lake, joyfulbrush.
com.
5. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, A Study in the
Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1977, 2000), 3.
6. It is likewise the case with a language; it too has its own
color or esprit “beneath and beyond all the details” of
the grammar, the speech, and the sound that animates
12. A remarkable use of an equivalent to worldview(s),
(wereld beschouwingen) is found in the title of a Dutch
book by Bernard Nieuwentijt (1654-1718), Het regt
gebruik der werelt beschouwingen, ter overtuiginge
van ongodisten en ongelovigen, Amsterdam, 1715,
literally, The Right Use of World Views, to Convince the
Unreligious and the Unbeliever.
13. Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism: Six Stone Lectures (Grand
Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 15.
14. Their story has been written about and filmed: The
White Rose, Munich 1942-1943, Inge Scholl (Wesleyan
University Press, 1970, 1983).
15. Al Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a
Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 2005), 3.
16. I have met just one; he endorsed the revolutionary
Communist teachings of Chairman Mao along with
Dispensationalist Christian theology. Politics, he
insisted, has nothing to do with religion.
17. Roy Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 21.
18. Luther’s appeal to the written word (book) of God
in Scripture, outside of himself, (to correct his own
view of salvation), was imitated by scientists who
appealed, outside of themselves, to the work (book)
of God in nature.
19. In the case of the duck-rabbit, it seems to be the nose
of the rabbit; in the case of the lady, it seems to be the
ribbon on the neck or the ear.
20. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1. 5. 165-167.
Pro Rege—June 2012
21
Pedagogy of Promise:
The Eschatological Task of
Christian Education
I
by Jason Lief
n his book Getting it Wrong From the Beginning: Our
Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey,
and Jean Piaget, Kieran Egan provides a critique of
the manner in which developmental theory has
been appropriated by contemporary educational
structures.1 He focuses on the ideas of Piaget and
Dewey that emphasize the biological development
of human cognition through a dialectical engagement of “practical” issues. Because this development is believed to be primarily natural or biological, the focus of formal schooling in this context
Jason Lief is Assistant Professor of Theology at Dordt
College. He is also working on his Ph.D. through Luther
College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
22
Pro Rege—June 2012
has become the engagement of “age appropriate”
or “developmentally appropriate” material. Dewey,
specifically, believed the task of educators was to
facilitate natural development by exposing students to practical problems that cultivate the disequilibrium necessary for students to cooperatively
seek solutions that leads to cognitive ability and
communal identity.
On the surface, this emphasis on biological development seems to be rather obvious, as the importance of making the connection between stages
of development and educational praxis is, for the
most part, taken for granted. How can Egan possibly disagree? While Egan acknowledges that biology plays an important role in cognitive development, at issue is the fundamental relationship between biology and culture. For Piaget and Dewey,
the cultural world plays an important—but secondary—role in the educational process, as it provides the tools needed for an individual to engage
the world. They believe that while culture provides
the raw materials necessary for the educational
process, these raw materials remain secondary to
the natural process of equilibrium/disequilibrium
that occurs within individual students.
Against this perspective Egan, in conversation
with early 20th-century Soviet psychologist Lev
Vygotsky, argues that culture is the primary means
by which human cognition and identity develop
through the appropriation of what he refers to as
“cognitive tools.”2 Egan writes,
If, instead, we take a “cognitive tools” approach
to development, we cease to look for some underlying spontaneous process within physical and
cultural environments whose role it is to support
some unfolding ontogenesis. Rather, we will see
development in the micro scale as “it reveals itself
in the restructuring of the child’s thinking and behavior under the influence of a new psychological
tool” ; in the macro scale, development “manifests
itself as the lifelong process of the formation of
a system of psychological functions corresponding to the entire system of symbolic means available in a given culture” (Kozulin 1998, 16). From
a Vygotskian perspective, our intellectual abilities
are not “natural” but are socio-cultural constructs.
They are not forms of intellectual life that we are
programmed in some sense to bring to realization; there is no naturally preferred form of human intellectual maturity. We are not designed,
for example, to move in the direction of “formal
operations” or abstract thinking or whatever.
These forms of intellectual life are products of
our learning, “inminding,” particular cultural tools
invented in our cultural history.”3
This paper will argue
that Egan’s pedagogical
understanding of
education...provides
an important dialogue
partner for the Christian
community as we work
to cultivate a Christian
pedagogy.
This paper will argue that Egan’s pedagogical
understanding of education—as the appropriation of cognitive tools that correspond to various
cultural ways of understanding—provides an important dialogue partner for the Christian community as we work to cultivate a Christian pedagogy. Egan’s perspective opens the issue of human
cognition and human identity to sources outside
the biological or natural realms, emphasizing the
significance of social relationships in the cultivation of knowledge and identity. In this way, Egan’s
work provides an important conversation partner
for Christian educators as we seek to form the
identity of young people in the context of the resurrection of Jesus Christ—through communal ways
of understanding. To make this argument, I will
bring Egan’s perspective into conversation with
Wolfhart Pannenberg’s theological articulation of
“human becoming,” as well as Jurgen Moltmann’s
“hermeneutic of promise,” for the purpose of describing how Egan’s pedagogical paradigm provides insight into the ways Christian education
might provide the “communal tools” necessary for
young people to be opened to their human destiny
revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Descartes, Dewey, and Instrumental Reason
For Egan, cognitive development is not primarily an inside out process, or a biological unfolding;
instead, it is primarily an “outside in” movement
in which human cognition and identity are mediated through the “intellectual tools” and ways of
understanding provided by the social world.4 This
perspective comes from his appropriation of the
psychological theories of Vygostky—who, as Egan
writes in The Educated Mind, “understood intellectual development in terms of intellectual tools, like
language, that we accumulate as we grow up in a
society and that mediate the kind of understanding we can form or construct.”5 It is through the
internalization of these socially constructed intellectual tools that cognitive development occurs—a
process that, for Egan, is essentially linguistic and
aesthetic. Because language is a primary means
by which we construct meaning, it is through the
internalization of the different forms of language
—what he refers to as different “ways of understanding”—that cognitive development occurs.
Egan writes, “The process of intellectual development, then, is to be recognized in the individual’s
degree of mastery of tools and of sign systems such
as language. The development of intellectual tools
leads to qualitatively different ways of making
sense: ‘The system of signs restructures the whole
psychological process’. So the set of sign systems
one internalizes from interactions with particular
cultural groups, particular communities, will sigPro Rege—June 2012
23
nificantly inform the kind of understanding of the
world that one can construct.”6
Egan takes direct aim at the influence of
Dewey’s educational theory upon contemporary
compulsory education—particularly with regard
to the rise and domination of the economic paradigm. A central tenant of Dewey’s theory is the
belief that the formation of cognition and selfconsciousness occurs through the recapitulation of
the scientific and technological evolution of civilization, specifically emphasizing problem solving
and the meeting of basic needs.7 This instrumental
understanding of reason has increasingly pushed
education into an economic paradigm, which can
be seen in Dewey’s Democracy and Education. Dewey
writes,
Economic history is more human, more democratic and hence more liberalizing than political
history. It deals not with the rise and fall of principalities and powers, but with the growth of the
effective liberties, through command of nature,
of the common man for whom powers and principalities exist…. Surely no better way could be
devised of instilling a genuine sense of the past
which mind has to play in life than a study of history which makes plain how the entire advance of
humanity from savagery to civilization has been
dependent upon intellectual discoveries and inventions, and the extent to which the things which
ordinarily figure most largely in historical writings
have been side issues, or even obstructions for intelligence to overcome.8
While the pedagogical practices advocated by
Dewey have, for the most part, failed to take root
within contemporary education, his pedagogical
philosophy—specifically his view of instrumental reason—remains influential. Clearly, formal
schooling has become the primary means by which
contemporary North American society addresses
social, political, and economic problems.9 While
this situation is not new, what has changed is the
extent to which schooling has become politically,
economically, and socially institutionalized, as human freedom is increasingly understood to be the
potential for self-determination via a utilitarian
construction of the world through instrumental
reason, which is reinforced by a cultural pedagogy
24
Pro Rege—June 2012
grounded in an economic interpretation of human
identity. 10
However, for Egan, it is through “myth and
metaphor,” not “utilitarian problem solving,” that
human cognition and identity develops.11 In utilizing Vygotsky’s notion of the “zone of proximal development,” Egan argues that it is the social community—or our cultural particularity—that plays a
primary role in the development of human identity
and consciousness through the cultivation of language and myth.12 For Egan, the educational process consists of the recapitulation of the “the five
distinct languaged engagements with the world
that have created collective human culture”—what
he calls the somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophical, and ironic.13 Egan argues that it is through the
internalization of the “cognitive tools” that correspond to these “ways of understanding” that
human cognition, and therefore human identity,
develops—a process that is possible only within
the context of a social and cultural community.
The pedagogical praxis that develops from this
perspective answers the question of identity formation with a relational understanding of the human person. In so doing, this praxix provides an
important dialogue partner for the Christian community. More specifically, Egan’s emphasis upon
the communal construction of identity through
the imparting of linguistic cognitive tools provides the context for an important conversation.
This conversation concerning the formation of a
Christian pedagogy will allow Christian education to challenge the prevailing economic narrative while it cultivates an interpretation of human
identity grounded in the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ.
The Resurrection of Christ: The Promise of
Human Identity
Egan’s emphasis upon the social and cultural
development of human consciousness correlates
with the eschatological interpretation of “human becoming” found in the work of Wolfhart
Pannenberg and Jurgen Moltmann. Pannenberg
argues that human identity is formed as the egocentric self becomes open to the world through
a relational encounter with the universal Other.14
Theologically speaking, this process is fully real-
ized in an encounter with Jesus Christ, whose death
and resurrection reveals the destiny of humanity.
This Christological paradigm provides an interpretation of identity formation in which the source of
identity is found outside the human self—in this
case the event of Christ’s death and resurrection,
which points to the future destiny of humanity and
creation. Thus, the process of human becoming
cannot be reduced to the self-actualization of free
individuals through instrumental reason, nor can
human freedom be reduced to a form of rational
self-construction. Instead, the formation of human
identity is understood as the relational opening of
the self to God and to the world as revealed in the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here we
find the eschatological impulse of Pannenberg’s
theological anthropology, as it is only in the anticipation of this future made known in the resurrection of Jesus Christ that “human beings presently
exist as themselves.”15
In Moltmann’s theology, the resurrection of
Jesus Christ not only reveals the future destiny of
humanity but also represents the Spirit-induced
in-breaking of agency and freedom that opens human history to new, transformative possibilities.
Moltmann refers to faith in the resurrection as “a
living force which raises people up and frees them
from the deadly illusions of power and possession,
because their eyes are now turned towards the future life.”16 In Christ’s resurrection the future, eschatological life of the new creation breaks in upon
the present in a “process of resurrection” that represents the “transition from death to life” and the
promise of human becoming that is infused with
“expectant creativity.”17 This concept means that
human identity is not grounded in a static past,
nor is it determined by biology or the “practical”
economic realities of the present. Instead, human identity “becomes a life which is committed
to working for the kingdom of God through its
commitment to justice and peace in this world…
[,]trusting in God’s renewing power, … joining in
the anticipation of God’s Kingdom, [and] showing
now something of the newness which Christ will
complete on his day.”18
Ultimately, what connects Pannenberg and
Moltmann’s theology with Egan’s pedagogical insight is an aesthetic (trust, love, language, myth,
etc) understanding of human identity. Egan argues
that it is the human capacity for myth that provides
the foundation for the construction of meaning
and identity. In other words, the various forms
of narrative and metaphor comprise this mythic
framework to form the building blocks for the development of other ways of understanding—the
Only an eschatological
doctrine of creation...can
become the basis for a truly
Christian educational praxis.
romantic, philosophical, ironic, and somatic. Egan
writes, “This poetic world—emotional, imaginative, metaphoric—is the foundation of our cultural
life, as a species and individually. [More abstract
modes of thinking] do not properly displace the
poetic world, but rather grow out of and develop it;
they are among its implications.”19
Using Egan’s terminology, we can say that
the eschatological theology of Pannenberg and
Moltmann constitutes a mythic (poetic) interpretation of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as
the foundational narrative in which human identity is given meaning.20 This eschatological interpretation of human identity forces us to consider the
aesthetic nature of human becoming and the importance of cultivating a theological imagination
that poetically grounds human identity within the
promise of new creation given to us in Christ’s resurrection. In this context, the purpose of Christian
education becomes the formation of a “Christian”
imagination through the development of a pedagogy grounded in the promise of Christ’s resurrection.
Conclusion: Pedagogy of Promise and the
Christian Community
Kieran Egan’s work provides an important
paradigm for naming and challenging the economic pedagogy that undergirds both Christian
and secular educational structures. While such
structures speak of freedom and possibility, they
are hemmed in by the status quo—the world as it
Pro Rege—June 2012
25
has been given to us by capitalist ideology. Thus,
the institutionalized lives of young people remain
subject to the social pedagogy of gainful employment and economic self-fulfillment, in which
freedom becomes the power to overcome social
circumstances by controlling and manipulating
the world. A critical engagement of contemporary
youth culture reveals the effects of this paradigm,
as young people desperately construct and reconstruct identity in an attempt to deal with anxiety
and attain security.
Even religious belief is appropriated by this
paradigm—especially within Christian schools. It
offers the divine sanction and blessing of the status
quo, which offers stability and security, as seen in
Christian Smith’s well-known articulation of the
general religious worldview of Christian young
people in North America as a pragmatic form of
“moralistic, therapeutic deism.”21 For the Christian
community to address this situation, it must develop a counter pedagogy rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ—a “pedagogy of promise,”
comprised of a language and praxis grounded in
faithfulness, hope, trust, and love.
In his book Experiences in Theolog y: Ways and
Forms of Christian Theolog y, Jurgen Moltmann talks
about a “hermeneutic of hope” grounded in the
language of promise, in which the past and present
are caught up in the anticipation of the future. 22
Central to this hermeneutic is the promissory nature of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as God’s
“speech act”—the promise of God concerning the
future destiny of humanity and all of creation. The
task of the Christian community is to testify to a
way of being human in the world that is grounded
in the promise—the speech act—of Christ’s resurrection. This testimony involves the formation
of an eschatological pedagogy that recognizes the
telos of humanity as the new creation of which
Christ’s resurrection is a pledge and promise. In
the event of Christ’s resurrection, the process of
human becoming is opened to a source of life and
meaning outside of the self—being grounded in
the trust and love of a relational existence with
God, others, and the created world.
Ultimately, this process means that Christian
education in all its forms must cultivate a pedagogical praxis that opens young people to the possibil26
Pro Rege—June 2012
ity of resurrection and new creation. A “pedagogy
of promise” does not teach in order to explain how
things “are”—hoping to plug young people into
the world as it is given to us. Rather, the focus of
such pedagogy is the promise and anticipation of
how things will be. This pedagogy opposes the
totalizing economic paradigm that undergirds current educational praxis structures by inviting young
people to look for the signs of new creation and the
kingdom of God in the world ”—asking not “what
is” but “what should and will be.” In this context,
Christian education cannot be satisfied with helping students take their place in the so-called “real
world”—thus, job training must never be the implicit or explicit basis for a Christian educational
praxis.
Furthermore, Christian education should not
appeal to “creation” as the basis of educational
theory and praxis, disconnected from the eschatological telos of creation—the coming Kingdom of
God that is promised in the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Education done in the context of “creation”
runs the risk of becoming a new form of “natural
law” that provides a divine sanction for the symbolic and institutional order of the status quo.
Only an eschatological doctrine of creation—one
that recognizes that all of creation remains open to
“new-ness” and possibility through the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ—can become the basis
for a truly Christian educational praxis.
A pedagogy grounded in this understanding
of human identity is prophetically both formative
and subversive—seeking to cultivate a sense of liberation and agency by which young people become
open to the possibility of new creation. This means
cultivating a pedagogical praxis that testifies to the
unjust and inhuman social structures and patterns
through what Moltmann refers to as “subversive
talk about God.” Moltmann writes, “Subversive
talk about God gives voice to counter-images to
the self portrayals of the powers of the present,
counter histories to the stories of the victories and
successes of tyrants, whole counter-worlds to the
powers and conditions of ‘this world.’”23 Such subversive talk about God must permeate the educational method and content of Christian education
at all levels.
Kieran Egan’s work offers a significant meth-
odological paradigm for the articulation of this
promissory pedagogical task within Christian education. Egan takes seriously the social and cultural
mediation of meaning and identity—a challenge
to Christian education to think seriously about the
institutional structures and practices we develop
and about the ways they implicitly “inmind” young
people with a particular understanding of the
world. His appropriation of the cultural tools and
ways of understanding offers to Christian schools
a practical way to reflect upon how the identity of
young people might be formed somatically, mythically, romantically, philosophically, and ironically.
Ultimately, Egan’s work challenges Christian education to reflect upon how the learning and formation of young people is poetically grounded within
the foundational narrative of Christ’s death and
resurrection so that they might open themselves to
the freedom and promise of the coming Kingdom
of God. Finally, Egan’s work challenges Christian
education to establish a creative educational space
in which the subversive talk about God and the
hope of resurrection resists the domination and injustice of the status quo, opening young people to
the imaginatively creative anticipation of the life of
new creation.
Endnotes
1. Kieran Egan, Getting It Wrong from the Beginning:
Our Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John
Dewey, and Jean Piaget (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2002).
2 Kieran Egan, The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools
Shape Our Understanding (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1997).
3 Egan, Getting It Wrong from the Beginning : Our
Progressivist Inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John
Dewey, and Jean Piaget, 113-14.
4 See L. S. Vygotsky and Alex Kozulin, Thought
and Language, Translation newly rev. and edited
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986).
5 Egan, The Educated Mind : How Cognitive Tools Shape
Our Understanding, 5.
6 Ibid., 29-30.
7 Theodora Polito, “Educational Theory as Theory of
Culture: A Vichian Perspective on the Educational
Theories of John Dewey and Kieran Egan,”
Educational Philosophy & Theory 37, no. 4 (2005).
Polito writes, “Dewey formulates an educational plan
which he believes will recapitulate the development of
the mental processes experienced by the culture from
its primitive origins to the present. By recreating this
process in school, children will move in the direction
of the scientific method and the scientific expert, just as
culture has moved”(480-481).
8 John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction
to the Philosophy of Education, Text-Book Series in
Education (New York,: The Macmillan company,
1916).
9 See A.H. Halsey Phillip Brown, Hugh Lauder, and
Amy Stuart Wells, “The Transformation of Education
and Society: An Introduction,” In Education, Culture,
Economy, and Society, ed. A.H. Halsey Phillip Brown,
Hugh Lauder, and Amy Stuart Wells. (New York:
Oxford Press, 1997).
10 See Christian Smith, What Is a Person? : Rethinking
Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the
Person Up (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2010). Specifically his treatment of social structures
and the institutionalization of cultural forces found in
chapter 6 “The Personal Sources of Social Structures.”
11 Polito, “Educational Theory as Theory of Culture: A
Vichian Perspective on the Educational Theories of
John Dewey and Kieran Egan.”
12 Egan, The Educated Mind : How Cognitive Tools Shape
Our Understanding, 29. Egan writes, “[I]n Vygotsky’s
view, higher psychological processes—such as dialogic
question and answer structure—begin in interactions
with others, as “external” social functions that were
themselves invented perhaps long ago in cultural
history, and then become internalized and transformed
into psychological functions” (29).
13 Polito, “Educational Theory as Theory of Culture: A
Vichian Perspective on the Educational Theories of
John Dewey and Kieran Egan,” 486. Also see Egan,
The Educated Mind : How Cognitive Tools Shape Our
Understanding.
14 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological
Perspective, 1st ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1985), 68. Pannenberg writes, “Such knowledge
is reached only when reflective attention turns
thematically to the universal which is given
simultaneously with perception of the object.”
15 Ibid., 527.
16 Jèurgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ : Christology
in Messianic Dimensions, lst HarperCollins ed. (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 241.
17 Ibid., 340.
18 Ibid., 341.
Pro Rege—June 2012
27
19 Egan, The Educated Mind : How Cognitive Tools Shape
Our Understanding, 69.
20 Cornelius A. Buller, The Unity of Nature and History in
Pannenberg’s Theology (Lanham, Md.: Littlefield Adams
Books, 1996), 101. Buller writes, “On the other hand,
in ‘Christentum und Mythos’ Pannenberg attempts to
counter dialectical theology’s negative interpretation of
myth. He accepts Malinowski’s definition of myth as
fundamentally related to a primeval event (Ureignis).
Myth functions as ‘grounding and foundational
history.’ Myth is conceived as a generative primeval
event that is fundamentally connected with ritual
performance in the present. What Pannenberg gains
28
Pro Rege—June 2012
by accepting this definition of myth is a ground upon
which to criticize what he regards as the less carefully
defined use of myth in Bultmann’s demythologization
program.”
21 Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul
Searching : The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American
Teenagers (Oxford; New York: Oxford University
Press, 2005), 162.
22 Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology : Ways and
Forms of Christian Theology, 1st Fortress Press ed.
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000).
23 Ibid., 175.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Veenstra presented this paper at the International Listening Association Convention in Bremerton,
Washington, March 22, 2012.
Musalaha: Opportunities
and Challenges in Listening
for Reconciliation
by Charles Veenstra
O
ne of the most intractable political disputes
in recent history is the Israeli-Palestinian struggle
over the land. The Israelis claim that God gave
them the land at the time of Abraham and therefore they are entitled to it forever. The Palestinians
argue that they have lived on the land for hundreds (even thousands) of years and therefore feel
the Israeli conquest to be entirely unjust. Israelis
claim that they must control the Palestinians because of security, while Palestinians insist that
justice requires that they control their own land.
Dr. Charles Veenstra is Professor of Communication at
Dordt College.
One searches nearly in vain to find many instances
where the sides listen to each other. Furthermore,
the theologies of the two sides differ significantly,
and those differences make reconciliation of differences harder.
Within the larger Israeli-Palestinian dispute,
we find two minorities—one on each side—that
appear to have a common religion but differ on political realities. These minorities are the Messianic
Jews and the Christian Palestinians. A brief description of each is necessary before moving to
a description of how an important movement is
working to get each side to listen to the other and
move toward reconciliation.
Messianic Jews are Jews who have accepted
Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah. They maintain many
Jewish customs and practices and celebrate Jewish
feasts rather than Christian feasts. Although they
are a small minority among the Jewish population
as a whole, they are quite vocal in their beliefs. In
Israel, they maintain, along with many Israelis, that
God gave them the land of Palestine.
Palestinian Christians comprise a tiny minority of Palestinians. They are of Arab descent and
speak Arabic. Some live in Israel, some in the
West Bank, and some in Gaza, but the majority of them today live outside of the Middle East.
Approximately 2.3 percent of the total population
in the Holy Land are Christian.1 They are members
of various Christian denominations. Their claims
to the land are based in legal ownership going back
hundreds of years. The oppression of the Israelis
Pro Rege—June 2012
29
led to emigration of large numbers of Palestinian
Christians and continues today.
Although Messianic Jews and Palestinian
Christians share essentially the same religion, they
do not share political views. The result is significant tension. Differing perspectives toward the
ownership of the land have divided these two
groups. Both sides know that they should cooperate because they believe they must love their neighbors as themselves. Both follow Jesus as the only
way of salvation.
One organization that works to get these
groups to listen to each other is Musalaha (which
means reconciliation in Arabic). Founded approximately twenty years ago by Salim J. Munayer, who
is also the present director and a professor at the
Bethlehem Bible College, it maintains a Board of
Oversight with an equal number of leaders from
both Palestinian Christian and Messianic Jewish
communities.2 Its mission statement is clear from
its website:
Musalaha is a non-profit organization that seeks to
promote reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians as demonstrated in the life and teaching of
Jesus. We endeavor to be an encouragement and
advocate of reconciliation, first among Palestinian
and Israeli believers and then beyond to our respective communities. Musalaha also aims at facilitating bridge building among different segments
of Israeli and Palestinian societies according to
biblical reconciliation principles.3
These reconciliation principles focus significantly on communication, particularly listening
to each other. Lisa Loden writes, “Listening was
often the first step of the journey. Listening and
truly hearing the painful stories of the other required openness and a hearing of the heart.”4
Listening has been defined by the International
Listening Association as “the process of receiving, constructing meaning from and responding to
spoken and/or nonverbal messages.” 5 This paper
will describe the principles for listening that operate in Musalaha. Throughout this description, a
fuller picture of the activities of this organization
will become clearer.
One principle could be called elimination of
background noise. Because participants cannot eas30
Pro Rege—June 2012
ily visit each other’s homes, and because travel
restrictions make it difficult for them to meet,
Musalaha provided neutral ground by developing “Desert Encounter.” Participants travel to
the desert—in Sinai, Jordan, or elsewhere—to
meet for several days together. There, they live in
Bedouin tents. The desert provides a neutral atmosphere where participants must work together to
deal with the challenges of the environment. As
stated on the Musalaha website, “The challenges
of survival and cooperation provide an excellent
occasion for relationships and open communication.”6 Distractions from home environments are
minimized. Participants cannot simply go home at
the end of the day; in fact, they must deal with their
counterparts for several days—usually a week.
Another principle is the requirement that there
be a balanced situation, that is, neither side will have
the advantage in the desert retreats. As they drove
to the desert sites, according to Sarah Atwood,
“five or six people were placed in each car and, of
course, at least one person next to you didn’t share
your ethnicity. You’re very close to each other and
you really have to listen to the other side in such a
tight place. You can’t really get away if you wanted
to. The only thing you have to do is listen.”7 Not
only is there an equal number of Messianic Jews and
Palestinian Christians on the board of Musalaha,
but each trip to the desert contains an equal number of Israelis and Palestinians. While some may
be suspicious at first—as noted by Munther Isaac,
“It is understandable that Musalaha is . . . viewed
by some as pro-Palestinian”8 —they learn to listen to each other. Each side has experienced significant pain—one side from the Holocaust and the
other from Nakba (the term Palestinians use for
the catastrophe when they were dispossessed and
removed from their homes in 1948). The purpose
of Musalaha is “not to compare, but to understand
the other side’s pain.”9
In order to get people to talk in a situation
filled with tension, there must be no hidden agenda.
Clearly, reconciliation between these two groups
is the goal. People must be free to express their
pain, frustrations, and even anger. If there were
not the protections of a board made up equally
of Messianic Jews and Palestinian Christians, it is
likely that some potential participants would be
suspicious.
The opportunity to learn about the other first is essential in this process. Politics, although very significant in the minds of participants, does not come
up in the conversations until people have learned
about each other. Rachel Feinberg reports, “Evan
and Salim [leaders of Musalaha] will tell you: you
have to have many meetings before you can bring
up politics.” 10 Brittney Browning describes her
experience:
Musalaha’s primary focus
began with Messianic Jews
and Palestinian Christians,
who both believe that Jesus
is the only way of salvation.
The first day was spent in the khan, or large tent,
at the main camp. Since we arrived early, there was
a lot of time to get to know each other. We began with a game in which people were paired and
interviewed one another. Amid chuckles and silly
comments, we introduced each other to the entire group, and amazingly everyone became quiet
as they were given a few facts about each person.
There was genuine interest in each one’s background and identity.11
Munayer provides several challenges Musalaha
faces in developing relationships:
1. Division between “us” and “them.”
2. Dehumanization: He claims that this is the
root of all evil and that they can tell that
children already show hate by the age of 4.
3. Failure to see plurality with the other side:
People tend to lump all together in the same
way.
4. Suspicion of the other side: Must of this is
due to ignorance; for example, only 12 percent of Israelis know about the 2003 Arab
initiative for peace.
5. Self-fulfilling prophecies.
6. Moral superiority: Both sides claim this.
7. Perceived victimization: Each seems to take
a monopoly on this while ignoring other disasters. Each seems to want victimization.
8. Demonization: For example, the Christian
Zionists from the United States come to see
the sights of the military, Israel, etc., but do
not come to visit Palestinian Christians or
even the “holy” sites.12
Until Musalaha eliminates these challenges, the
two sides will find it difficult to develop respectful
interpersonal relationships that encourage listening to one another.
A corollary principle is that change must begin at
the grassroots level. This means that individuals must
listen to other individuals—as early as possible.
Consequently, Musalaha regularly conducts sports
camps for children and teenagers. Playing together
on sports teams, swimming together, and enjoying food together allow people to see each other
with genuine human interests and enjoyment.
These activities take place before participants get
into serious discussions of issues that may divide
them. Building relationships comes first. Women’s
groups are also a regular part of the program of
Musalaha.
Clearly, given the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations in the last 60 years, those who live in
the land cannot depend first of all on their governments to bring peace and justice. Reconciliation
from the top down when there has been deep hurt
is extremely difficult. But putting people together
on an interpersonal level where they listen to each
other provides a significant opportunity for influencing their own governments to secure peace and
justice.
Closely related is bridge building. Musalaha provides participants with the opportunity to learn
about the other side. They learn that both sides
have suffered. Yet they learn not to compare one
suffering with another since it would then be easy
to claim the higher ground. Through Masalaha’s
bridge building, people eliminate barriers of ignorance. Rachel Feinburg clarifies,
Maybe I lived in ignorance, but the situation seems
to have worsened. Maybe I’m more aware now. I
read the newspaper and watch the news, but I certainly wasn’t aware of what was going on before I
Pro Rege—June 2012
31
came. You live in a bubble . . . . I didn’t know all
the little ways in which other people suffered. The
press tells you want they want you to hear, and
you live here and just don’t know the other side. 13
Musalaha builds those bridges.
Munayer describes what happens when the two
sides meet:
Whenever Palestinians and Israelis meet with each
other, on a personal basis, they see that they are
actually quite similar, and can relate to each other
on a human level. They see that the people on
the “other” side are not all monsters, contrary to
what they may have heard. The problem is, in their
normal, everyday lives, they have no opportunity
to meet each other, other than at checkpoints. So
they begin to believe the lies they are told about
each other. The sooner you counteract the negativity that they are subjected to through ignorance,
the easier it is for them to recognize the truth and
be set free. The only way forward is to break the
cycle of dehumanization and stereotypes. Once
we learn to see each other as humans, this is possible. Meeting with each other face to face is the
best way to do this, and this is what Musalaha provides: a setting for that type of meeting to take
place.14
Organizers of Musalaha recognize that true
listening means providing a safe place for people to explain their views. As a result, Musalaha
creates a forum which does not champion any
particular theology or political agenda, but which
allows believers, regardless of background, ethnicity and theology pertaining to the Holy Land and
concepts of justice, to come together to express
and voice their concerns and opinions in a safe
and secure environment. As such, these divisive
issues are not neutralized or considered unimportant, but rather they are articulated in a loving and
understanding environment which allows participants to enter into a process of reconciliation with
each other.15
It is clear that when people do not feel safe,
that is, when they believe their opinions will not be
considered honestly, they will not talk. Agreement
is not the first item on the agenda, but talking and
listening is. Sometimes people get frustrated, and
32
Pro Rege—June 2012
frustration happens frequently when one person
does not know the other.
For illustration, here is the early experience of
Raed Hanania, a Palestinian in Musalaha who was
placed in a group with an Israeli soldier:
His name was Mati Shoshani from Ma’ale Adummim. This is a very bad settlement. They have
stolen so much water and land from Palestinians.
When he started talking the first thing he said to
me was that he was a solider in Bethlehem for five
years. He kept talking and I remember all the bad
things that soldiers have done to me. I got up and
walked away. 16
Not long after this, however, he wondered if this
might be an opportunity to purge his hate, so he
found the soldier and began talking with him,
pouring out all his stories of oppression from
Israeli soldiers. The other man listened and acknowledged that he had seen even worse things
from soldiers. Because of that encounter, he recognized that he could no longer be a soldier and a
Christian believer at the same time, so he quit the
army. These two men ended up praying together.
No one criticized Raed for leaving the group for a
time, but they knew the experience of being forced
to remain in the desert for several days would allow
for reconciliation, and that happened.
Of course, a common foundation of values is necessary for face-to-face communication. Musalaha’s
primary focus began with Messianic Jews and
Palestinian Christians, who both believe that Jesus
is the only way of salvation. Given this common
foundation, they know they must respect each
other as believers. Reconciliation is a common
goal. Both believe that reconciliation can happen
through following Christ’s example of forgiveness
and healing.
Musalaha hopes to broaden its work to include
people of other religions. Common moral values of
respect for human beings, peace, justice, and security provide a foundation for the beginning of talk.
When people refuse to meet each other face to
face, reconciliation is impossible. One can see this
problem in other international disputes as well.
Demonization of the other side not only results in
no progress but also further exacerbates the separation between peoples.
On the other side, neither can people ignore their
differences. To stay only at the level of agreements
would not solve problems of differences in theology, politics, and justice. After a foundation of
respect for each other as human beings has been
established, participants can and should deal with
differences. And they must do so without preconditions (beyond the basic, common values of respect for each other, etc.). The problem of preconditions by participants in Musalaha is described by
Charlotte Williams:
On both sides of the conflict, believers have attached various pre-conditions on coming together
to reconcile. Some believe that the process of
reconciliation can only begin once Jewish restoration the Land of Israel is declared as objective
truth by all involved. In this context, reconciliation
has come to mean that my true interpretation of
Scripture must over-ride your false interpretation
of Scripture, before we can enter into a process
of reconciliation. This is an inherently violent
view employing holy war-type theological hegemony, and alien to the life of service and humility which should be adopted by the believer, and
which recognizes with grace and charity that my
enemy is also a child of God. Others argue that a
pre-condition for reconciliation is that the dictates
of justice are met, including the end of the Israeli
occupation of the territories. They believe that to
meet before this is to co-operate with the “normalization” process which accepts the status quo
and legitimizes the confiscation of land, the settlements and the multi-layered legal system which
keeps the Palestinians as second class citizens.17
A challenge for some participants is that of discussing controversial issues after they have formed
their friendships. They fear that disagreements will
hurt their friendships. Yet,
While we should have respect for each other,
and should avoid deliberate antagonism, we cannot allow our friendship to stand in the way of
an open, honest, and painful (if need be) discussion of the conflict and the issues that come with
it. In fact, we should discuss these issues because
of our friendship. In the context of friendship, a
meaningful discussion is possible, whereas if the
foundation of friendship does not exist, people
will rarely even listen to each other.18
Another example of how difficult, yet possible,
it is to discuss significant disagreements when
friendship has been developed is the true story of
Bashir and Dalia in Sandy Tolan’s The Lemon Tree:
An Arab, A Jew, and The Heart of the Middle East.19
Tolan examines the Mideast conflict through
the story of two individuals, a Palestinian and an
Israeli, Bashir Khairi and Dalia Eshkenazi, who
both claim the same house in the town of Ramla.
This story is about two families, the Kahairis
and the Eshkenazis. The Palestinian family, the
Khairis, had built the house in 1936 and planted a
lemon tree in the yard. They lived there until the
war of 1948, when they were forced into exile by
the new Israeli army. Bashir Kahairi was six years
old at the time of the exile. A few months later,
the Eshkenazis, a family of Bulgarian Jews, arrived
in Israel after fleeing from the Nazis. After being told that the house had been abandoned, they
After a foundation of respect
for each other as human
beings has been established,
participants can and should
deal with differences.
moved into this stone house. The Eshkenazis’ only
child was Dalia, who was 11 months old when her
parents came to Israel. The Khairis remained in
refugee camps after being forced from their home.
After the 1967 war, Palestinians could move more
freely through Israel, so Bashir set out to find the
house with the lemon tree. Interestingly, Dalia let
him in and thus began a conversation that would
last for the next forty years. While they did not
visit together often, they did keep up correspondence through letters and visits and more. Respect
for each other prevailed even though they did not
agree on all political issues.
Theology, like political issues, is a significant
area of difference between the two groups most
active in Musalaha. In this case, the theological
differences have to do with who owns the land.
While separating theological differences from
Pro Rege—June 2012
33
political differences is hard, there are issues deeper
than politics.
And considering those deeper issues, leaders
in Musalaha recognize that once people have learned to
listen to each other, they must find a way toward reconciliation. Therefore, they continue to develop a curriculum for reconciliation. Briefly, Munayer describes
the following obstacles to reconciliation between
Israelis and Palestinians generally:20
1. Finding a forum to develop relationships
and trust: He claims that trust does not exist now.
2. Dealing with issues too quickly: In Israel
today, there is a huge imbalance of power,
income inequity, and military inequity.
Israel does not need peace because it has
power.
3. Reconciliation as ignoring reality or maintaining the status quo.
He offers these stages of reconciliation:
1. Beginning relationships: Much of this has
been described above.
2. Opening Up: Participants must be allowed
to unload grievances and engage in trustbuilding exercises.
3. Withdrawal: Here grievance is met with
grievance, and sometimes they feel their
suspicions confirmed
4. Reclaiming Identity: Through trips to the
desert, participants learn to cooperate without sacrificing their own identity. 21
Musalaha’s curriculum, then, “deals extensively
with justice and is attempting to develop a theology of reconciliation, which will incorporate justice,
as well as mercy, peace, and love, and see the cry
for justice in the context of the cross.”22
Essentially, Munayer argues that we need to
know the narratives of both sides in order to reconcile them, or at least to bridge them. That knowledge requires extensive listening. Furthermore, he
asks that we help each side to accept and respect
the validity of the competing narratives. 23 These
two bitterly contested narratives make listening
hard to practice. But there is no other way for reconciliation.
34
Pro Rege—June 2012
The challenge of listening goes far beyond
the reconciliation of these two little groups of
Messianic Jews and Palestinian Christians. It extends to the entire population of both Israel and
Palestine. But much more than this, it extends
internationally. In this case, it involves the moral
obligation of Americans, particularly Christian
Zionists,24 to listen to both sides in this seemingly
intractable dispute. Also, the people of all Arab nations need to listen to both sides in this dispute, as
well as to Americans.
The work of Musalaha provides a wonderful illustration of what can be done. Of course, it is not
alone in getting Israelis and Palestinians to listen
to each other, but it shows the challenges and hope
of two groups that share the same religion while
differing significantly on the political realities of
their lives.
The Musalaha website puts the challenge very
clearly: “It is our vision and hope that in listening to one another, in understanding each other’s
backgrounds and identity, in seeking forgiveness
and to forgive, Palestinians and Israelis will build
relationships that reflect their faith and bring glory
to God and peace to this Land.”25 Munayer adds
that walking down this path of reconciliation is “a
narrow path, and hard to follow, but that in the
end, it leads to healing. All other paths lead to destruction.”26
Endnotes
1. Bernard Sabella, http://www.al-bushra.org/holyland/
sabella.htm.
2. Salim J. Munayer, Lecture, Bethlehem Bible College,
May 23, 2011.
3. www.musalaha.org.
4. Jonathan McRay, You Have Heard It Said: Events of
Reconciliation (Gugene, OR: Resource Publications,
2011), 84.
5. www.listen.org.
6. www.musalaha.org
7. McRay, 12.
8. Ibid., 89.
9. Salim J.Munayer, ed., Journey Through the Storm:
Musalaha and the Reconciliation Process (Jerusalem:
Musalaha Ministry of Reconciliation, 2011), 188.
10. McRay, 57.
11. Munayer, 173.
12. Munayer, Lecture.
13. McRay, 56.
14. Qtd. in Munayer, 48.
15. Ibid., 104
16. McRay, 21.
17. Qtd. in Munayer, 102.
18. McRay, 102.
19. Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and The
Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2006).
20. Munayer, Lecture.
21. Ibid.
22.McRay, 104.
23. Munayer, Lecture.
24. Charles Veenstra, “Christian Zionism: Listening Left
Behind,” Pro Rege 36, no. 4 (June 2008): 29-39.
25. www.musalaha.org.
Pro Rege—June 2012
35
Editor’s Note: Dr. Zylstra delivered this address at the Dordt College Commencement, May 4, 1012.
To The Hilt
by Carl Zylstra
I
t probably was on a day something like this.
Parents and graduates were gathered together to
celebrate the blessing of a Dordt College education
in the lives of their children. One father pulled me
aside. “You want to know why my kids came here
from California to Iowa for college?” he asked.
“It’s not that they couldn’t get a quality academic
experience someplace else,” he went on. “It’s not
that they couldn’t find a college that respected
Jesus Christ and still stayed closer to home,” he
continued. “It goes back,” he related, “to when I
was boy of about 10 years old living on a farm near
Orange City, Iowa.”
He went on to tell me that in the early 1950s his
dad had gotten fascinated with the idea of starting a Christian college here in the area. Periodically
Dr. Carl Zylstra has served as President of Dordt College
for sixteen years.
36
Pro Rege—June 2012
he would head off for meetings in the area, mass
meetings where hundreds of people would gather
to talk about the need to start such a college, a college described in those days as “a Christian college,
not just in the sense that devotional activities are
appended to the ordinary work of a college but a
Christian college in which all of the course work
and all of the student’s social, intellectual, and
imaginative activities will be permeated with the
spirit and teaching of Christianity.”
This father went on to describe how one day as
a ten-year-old boy he was out fixing fences with his
dad after apparently a rather memorable meeting in
Rock Valley. This ten-year-old kid wasn’t quite sure
exactly what a college even was or why they would
need a Christian college, but, he related to me, “My
dad was so excited. He pounded away on the fence
and told me how Reverend B. J. Haan, who later
became the first president of the college and for
whom this auditorium is named, had given an inspirational address in which he held out the vision
of starting a college here on the prairies, and once
they began they wouldn’t quit but rather would go
all the way, as he recalled it, ‘To the Hilt’.”
Now this father didn’t quite remember exactly
what Bible text Reverend Haan had used—probably the verse from the Old Testament where a
Jewish hero name Ehud had slipped a dagger into
the presence of a particularly loathsome king name
Eglon. And, in typically graphic Old-Testament
fashion, the Bible recounts that Eglon was also an
especially corpulent fellow and that when Ehud
came close to Eglon as if to tell him a secret, he
grabbed hold of Eglon’s beard with his right hand,
and being left-handed, he unexpectedly drew the
dagger with his left and thrust it into chubby king
Eglon and didn’t stop until he had it all the way in
“to the hilt.” In fact, as the Bible says, Eglon’s fat
closed up over the dagger so that he couldn’t even
pull it out.
I hope you haven’t been grossed out and are
still following the story, because the point that
this granddad was relating to me was that those
Christian folks who began this college in the 1950s
were inspired to begin a project against seemingly
insurmountable odds. As they did so, they were not
going to be timid or tentative but would press forward with all their energy, money, and prayers until
they slew every obstacle in their path and with all
their heart had pressed ahead “to the hilt.” This
now grown man recalled that even as a preteen lad
he never forgot his father swinging the hammer on
those fence posts and shouting “to the hilt,” “to
the hilt.” “That’s why,” he went on, “now that I
have my own family, even though California is a
long ways away, I need to do my part of this project—the project of maintaining and celebrating
in the lives of my children this continuing educational challenge of delivering an educational experience that is thoroughly permeated with the spirit
and teaching of Christianity—and doing it ‘to the
hilt’.”
Graduates, you and I are the beneficiaries of
those who went before us and who, with minimal
resources and bumbling strategies, nonetheless
built this community of faculty and staff together
with facilities to support their efforts so that you
could have the blessing of a Dordt College education. All it takes is a look in front of you at the faculty who are assembled here to wish you well—and a
glance around you as you entered the auditorium by
processing across the green and through the clock
tower as the carillon chimed the Alma Mater—to
know they really did it “to the hilt.” They spared no
effort and no ounce of energy—and contributed a
prodigious amount of financial resources—so that
you could leave here today, having experienced an
environment where all of your course work and all
of your social, intellectual, and imaginative activities could have been permeated with the Word and
Spirit of the Lord of all, Jesus Christ.
Which leaves you the obligation now. When
you leave here, having been nurtured for the past
years in 24/7 comprehensive discipleship of Jesus
Christ, your responsibility is to continue living a
life of comprehensive discipleship 24/7 in whatever square inch of his world God places you and
in every cubic centimeter of human life and culture
in which you participate now and for the rest of
your days.
You’ve heard that before. You’ve heard it from
me, and you’ve heard it from your professors.
You’ve heard it from the staff with whom you
work. The only thing left is to encourage and commission you now: “Go for it. Whatever God calls
you to do, do it with all your might, and whatever
you do, do it to the hilt.” Those who went before
you went to the hilt to establish this college. Your
task now is to go to the hilt in carrying out the
life callings you were inspired to see and prepared
to fulfill as indeed you found your place in God’s
world.
Your task now is to go to the
hilt in carrying out the life
callings you were inspired to
see and prepared to fulfill as
indeed you found your place
in God’s world.
Earlier today at the senior breakfast, I referred
to the economic disaster that befell our world during your years here at college. You now face a world
devastated by economic travail and struggling toward sustainable recovery in the years ahead. That
task is just beginning. But this much I know: just
an hour from now, more than 300 new recruits will
march out of this auditorium ready and prepared to
meet the challenge—and to do so to the hilt.
Some of you will go out and enter the healing
professions where damaged lives can be tended
and restored. Some of you will go out and start
businesses and provide employment that will feed
dozens of employees and their families. Some of
you will go out and teach the next generation to
see God’s world more clearly and prepare for life in
his world more fully. Others will design and engineer the products and services that will make posPro Rege—June 2012
37
sible life together for seven billion people in God’s
world. You know your own individual calling. But
the common Word I want to leave you today is simply, be sure you go with energy, enthusiasm, and
with no holds barred. For God’s kingdom is too
important and the mandate he has laid on us too
significant to do anything less.
Oh sure, there are challenges. From the mundane like, “Uh, that’s all fine but do you have good
job leads for me?” to the more expansive, “Have
you been paying attention to the news lately? It
doesn’t seem like the world is all that eager for
Christians to step forward and reclaim this world
in the name of Jesus Christ.”
And that’s true. Been there. Done that. During
the first twelve years of our marriage, I was unemployed for just about six of them. And especially
during the past sixteen years, I’ve been able to get
involved in national public policy issues, discussing
them face to face with senators and congressmen,
and pounding on the doors of those faceless policy
writers who often seem not even to know we exist or that the message of justice in the name of
God would make any difference. But that’s not any
reason to back down. In fact, the greater the challenge, the greater our calling to move forward with
resolve and dedication, forbearing any thought of
retreat and not resting until we’ve struck the blow
against the gates of hell in the name of the Lord of
heaven and done it to the hilt.
Many people are familiar with the quotation
from Abraham Kuyper, who is memorialized in
the Kuyper Apartments on our campus, the one
where he says, “There is not one square inch in all
of human activity over which Christ who is Lord
of all does not say, “This is mine.””
What we sometimes forget is that this early 20th
-century European preacher, newspaper publisher,
and statesman also saw clearly that if Christ is Lord
of every square inch of life, then we can never be
content when any square inch of human culture
is controlled by those who will not recognize his
rule. That’s why one of our United States senators
has on his office wall another quote from Abraham
Kuyper, where he says, “When the principles
that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then the battle is your calling, and peace has become sin. You must at
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Pro Rege—June 2012
the price of dearest peace lay your convictions
bare before friend and enemy with all the fire
of your faith.” Or as Reverend Haan would have
said, “To the Hilt.”
Well, friends, it’s time to begin. We’ll take a
few minutes first to recognize that you have been
prepared for that battle that will not be complete
until every square inch exalts Jesus Christ as Lord.
We’ll call your names one by one, and you will be
acknowledged and certified as battle-ready troops
to serve in the name of the Lord of all. But then
you’ll be ready to process out of here and get to it.
One request. This year Gloria and I are leaving
with you. Like you, we don’t know exactly where
we’re going and what the next steps of the challenge of service will be. But if you will allow us to
lead you out of here today, it will be a great honor
for us because then we’ll know that you are going
with us, your energy and enthusiasm will sustain us
as it has for the past sixteen years, and we are particularly thrilled because we also will know that,
by God’s grace, you’ll be carrying on this task long
after our strength will fail.
When each of us picks up the challenge and
pursues it to the hilt, there will always be those who
will follow after and be even more dedicated than
were we. That father who pounded on the fence
post and related Reverend Haan’s challenge to his
young son has gone on to the glory that awaits the
saints of God. The boy who grew to be a father
and send his kids off to the college of which his
father only dreamed is now beaming with pride as
one of those kids has been appointed a professor of
education who will begin his tenure in this college
this coming summer and continue to metaphorically swing his grandfather’s hammer and, in whatever challenge he faces, do it to the hilt.
So let’s go folks. Faculty, I’m going to ask you
to reverse protocol this year and let Gloria and me
follow the mace, accompanied by the platform
party; then the graduates; and, finally, the faculty, bringing up the rear. That way we can burst
from this auditorium as the newest battalion in
the Lord’s army of service, ready to live that life
of service and, whatever challenges come our way,
live it to the hilt. And we will be doing so, not because these grads are so great but because God is
so great, and not because finally they deserve the
honor for having completed their course of study.
Rather, in the applause with which we send them
on their way, we once again will acknowledge that
we know what really is the truth, not just because
it’s on our college seal but because it’s the deepest
reality—that, when we serve, when we do live lives
of service and live them to the hilt, in the end it will
be evident to all the world now and always, Soli Deo
Gloria. To God alone belongs all the glory.
Pro Rege—June 2012
39
Book Review
Bartholomew, Craig G. Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place for Today. Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2011. 372 pages. ISBN: 9780801036378. Reviewed by Mark Tazelaar, Professor of Philosophy,
Dordt College.
Adding to an already-impressive body of work,
Craig Bartholomew’s new book, Where Mortals
Dwell, is an important and timely contribution by
a representative of the Reformational tradition
to the growing conversation on the issue of place.
Certainly those already interested in environmental
and ecological questions, as well as those with
knowledge of twentieth-century continental
philosophy, will find much food for thought in its
pages. Speaking personally, that’s what first caught
my attention. After reading the book, however,
I can happily say that this is too restrictive a
characterization of its proper audience. The range
of topics, questions, and issues treated throughout
the book—of which I will say more below—
should make it of interest to a wide readership. But
more importantly, the kind of non-reductionistic
theological voice (familiar to Reformational ears)
that Bartholomew injects into the conversation is
one to which all Christians should attend. Why
is that? Because, in the final analysis, place is a
spiritual phenomenon, integral to our relationship
with God in Christ. Though shocking or strange
to some ears, perhaps, this claim is absolutely
central to the thesis of the book. We—Christians
included—have had a tendency to separate the
spiritual from the physical, earthly, and spatial.
Even those of us who deny this separation have
not consistently worked toward an affirmation of
place and place-making. This, I would suggest, is
what Bartholomew challenges us to do.
“Place is a rich, thick concept which is
notoriously difficult to define,” states Bartholomew
in his Introduction. It is, as he says, “a complex
creational structure” (2). It may prove frustrating
to some readers that Bartholomew never offers a
concise definition of place. Given this lack, while
acknowledging the difficulty, I would suggest that
place evokes who we are in ways richer and deeper
than does, for example, the concept of space,
which, as Bartholomew says, is comparatively
“thinner.” Space, particularly to the modern mind,
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Pro Rege—June 2012
is pure extension; that is, it is homogeneous, able
to be parceled out into measurable distances.
Space, Bartholomew observes, is fundamentally
an abstraction. He does not mean to denigrate the
idea of space but simply to point out that space
presupposes place. In fact, when space displaces
place, as it has in our modern/postmodern world,
we become existentially uprooted. Moving from
place to place is not the same as moving from
spot to spot. The former should be genuinely
more difficult and challenging for a human
being than the latter. In an age of global travel
and telecommunications (where I am always in
contact no matter where I am), many of us might
be hard pressed to communicate a difference. A
world comprised of “spots” but no “places,” or
places rooted in nothing deeper than a spatial grid,
is a broken world. Clearly, of course, we’re not
always aware how much place is a concern to us.
We may even fail to be aware of our rootlessness.
Perhaps we need first to become aware of it in a
way similar to the way we need first to become
aware of our sinful brokenness. In any case, place
easily retreats into the background for us, and we
quickly and easily become more focused on action
and movement than on stage, setting, context,
and horizon. It’s not as though action and setting
need to be opposed to one another, of course,
but too often we fail to notice that places are
not simply spaces, but can be structurally rooted,
deepened, opened, enriched, textured, and so on,
in ways that space can’t be. One of the virtues
of Bartholomew’s book is that he celebrates the
dynamics and dwelling that belong (or can belong)
to places. One of the challenges of his book is for
us to see how deeply issues of place penetrate into
creation, fall, and redemption.
Bartholomew does not engage in close,
technical analyses of these questions. Though he
does direct the reader to more technical work (the
bibliography is well over 30 pages), he himself
does something which I think should properly
come first: provide a biblical understanding of
place. In taking this route, Bartholomew promises
to show us how contemporary conversations
about place (regardless of the level of technical
analysis involved) can easily suppress the spiritual
character of place and, therefore, are inadequate.
Though he does not do so here, on the basis of
the biblical understanding he develops he could
return (in another book) to these more technical
analyses. In the interim, we can parse the place/
space distinction by saying that the concept of
place will prove more able to bear the spiritual
depth and resonance Scripture discloses to us than
the concept of space can.
In fact, Bartholomew tells us as much by
the end of his first chapter, “The Theology of
Place in Genesis 1-3.” He says, “Insofar as place
evokes—as it clearly does—the nexus God,
place, and humankind, it would be quite right to
see place as a major contender for the central
theme of biblical faith.... Redemption, examined
through the prism of place, has the structure of
implacement—displacement—(re)implacement”
(31). This is good news, for today we live amidst a
crisis of place, suffering not only from anomie but
from atopia—placelessness. Bartholomew quotes
Walter Brueggemann: “It is rootlessness and not
meaninglessness that characterizes the current
crisis. There are no meanings apart from roots”
(4). The challenge we face is to recover a sense of
place and place-making—and to see this recovery
as central to our spiritual act of worship (Romans
12). In fact, this recovery is integral to the “renewal
of our minds” (metanoia). A central thesis of this
book, then, is that place is “particularly well-suited
to excavate key elements of the biblical message”
that in turn will help us to recover a robust sense
of place and practice of place-making today (5).
So what can we learn about place—crisis of place,
recovery of place, and the task of place-making—
from the Bible?
Bartholomew addresses this question in Part
One of the book: “Place in the Bible.” I will highlight
a few central points in the 150 pages he devotes
to this discussion. A theology of place, someone
might suggest, seems more appropriate to the Old
Testament than to the New. The Promised Land is
obviously central to the Old Testament narrative,
and so anyone searching for a theology of place
would find plenty of material there for reflection.
And indeed that is the case. For Israel, “the land
is holy precisely because of Israel’s relationship
to Yahweh and because it is owned by him and
given to Israel as the place where they are to live
in communion with him as his people” (101). But
someone objecting to Bartholomew might ask if
this concern for land (and place) is not “entirely
lost in the New Testament?” The objection, in
Bartholomew’s view, assumes an understanding
of the universal scope of the gospel message that,
in effect, uproots it from the creation—as though
the shift from Old Testament to New could be a
shift from Palestine to nowhere. For Bartholomew,
the assumption behind this objection is due to a
mistaken understanding of the apocalyptic and
eschatological expectations of the first Christians.
And so Bartholomew rightly takes time to
consider, with respect to the entire New Testament,
what these expectations were. What he finds is that
the early Christians did not expect an imminent
destruction of the physical world. Instead, they
expected a God who would intervene in history
to abolish—not space, time, or the creation
itself—all that threatens it. The implications of
this are dramatic for our understanding of place.
Bartholomew quotes D.J. Bosch: “Paul perceives
the church in a way that fundamentally modifies
standard apocalyptic thinking. The church already
belongs to the redeemed world; it is that segment
of the world that is obedient to God.... As such, it
strains itself in all its activities to prepare the world
for its coming destiny” (126). The obedience of
which Bosch speaks here has eschatological import:
“The one who is obedient is the eschatological
counterpart of the one who out of disobedience
surrendered his creatureliness. He is hence the
beginning of the new world, the manifestation of
that freedom of the children of God for which
earth cries out from its self-imprisonment....
Obedience is the sign of regained creatureliness”
(123).
The first part of the book, then, lays the
groundwork for the idea that our contemporary
crisis of place is not simply a modern or
postmodern condition, and it is not susceptible
and treatable within the confines of a purely
philosophical or sociological analysis. It reaches all
the way down into our being creatures.
In “Part Two” Bartholomew turns to “Place
in the Western Philosophical and Theological
Pro Rege—June 2012
41
Traditions.” I greatly appreciate the generosity
and sensitivity Bartholomew extends to those he
examines and evaluates from these traditions. (In
fact, this generosity extends throughout the book.)
Though these traditions have contributed to the
kinds of misunderstandings that Bartholomew
tries to rectify in Part One, he does not use that
as reason to dismiss or denigrate the figures he
treats here. Though the biblical witness has
been blunted, he says, and despite the fact that
throughout our history we Christians have failed
to build on the foundation the Old and New
Testaments provide for a Christian view of place,
we should not fail to recognize the “positive
nodes in the tradition that we can transfuse into
the present to forge a contemporary theology of
place” (191). He does not find such positive nodes
only within the Reformed tradition, it should be
noted. I hope that all Reformational approaches
will follow Bartholomew’s example.
I do wish both that this portion of the book
were substantially larger (in a way adequate to the
traditions he treats) and that the treatment had
not been restricted to simply the philosophical
and theological traditions. With respect to the
first, even granting that much research remains
to be done, and granting the limitations that
publishers and readers are likely to impose on a
book of this nature, this part of the book feels
too much like a survey to be genuinely helpful.
And all the more so since the first part of the
book is so constructive an exercise in biblical
theology. I suspect this may be due in part to
the origins of the book in a college course the
author has taught several times. But given the
fact that the author acknowledges that a great
deal of further research into the tradition ought
to be done, allow me to suggest a brief, perhaps
too cryptic, but I hope nonetheless constructive
avenue for such research. I think that research
into both the medieval idea of acedia (“sloth”),
which developed in both the monastic and
scholastic traditions, and Kierkegaard’s concepts
of despair and anxiety could be groundbreaking
for contemporary understandings of implacement
and displacement. I say this for both historical and
textual reasons: the twentieth-century German
philosopher Martin Heidegger clearly serves as
one of the philosophical inspirations behind this
book, so I think it should be pointed out that his
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Pro Rege—June 2012
work on place (and being-in-the-world) was in no
small measure influenced by these medieval and
Kierkegaardian notions (some might even say
“cribbed”). For example, Heidegger’s analyses in
Being and Time of what Bartholomew would call
“displacement” are secularized versions of what
Kierkegaard called the “despair of not willing to be
oneself ” before God, of being unable to live with
oneself, a condition of which, as in medieval acedia,
instability of place, constant uprootedness, and
never dwelling anywhere—all the while throwing
oneself distractedly into the world—are central
features. In other words, some of the very same
analyses that bring home to us our contemporary
crisis of place are rooted in analyses that have long
been a part of Christian philosophical traditions.
Now with respect to the second misgiving,
even were the survey character to be overlooked,
this portion of the book suffers from focusing
only on philosophy and theology. Insofar as we
concede that the “crisis of place” today is deeper
than contemporary conversations might allow so
that it needs to be reframed as a spiritual crisis,
that fact obliges us to broaden the conversation
beyond the parameters of philosophical and
theological analysis to embrace every sphere
of culture. The biblical theology Bartholomew
develops from Scripture seems to me to have this
as one of its necessary implications. Of course, he
does broaden it somewhat in the third part of the
book, but the breadth that appears there should
appear already here. I can state this objection in a
more positive form: aren’t there other traditions
and cultural activities, such as the arts, to which
one might turn to discover rich resources to help
us not only better understand our crisis of place
today but also help us to develop a better sense
of place? It’s hard to tell the history of painting,
for example, without reference to the ways that
painting confronts us (or fails to confront us) with
issues of place.
The third part of the book delivers on
my recommendation of this book for a broad
audience who would represent and be concerned
with a wide range of issues of place. I would
caution that you cannot simply skip to the third
part if you hope to develop the truly robust sense
of place the author wishes for you. At the same
time, the issue of place cannot be resolved simply
by having the right view or theory about place, so
this part follows necessarily as the conclusion of
the book.
Drawing on the work of many people working
in many different fields, the chapters comprising
the third part are filled with examples and practical
suggestions that I’m sure will encourage reflection
and conversation. Whether the topic be cities,
neighborhoods, homes, farms, gardens, colleges,
or churches, the focus is on that central component
of “culture-making” that Bartholomew calls placemaking. Place-making is a task for people in all
these locations. What follows is a small sample of
the questions and suggestions in these pages.
A city is not an artwork, but why are we so
good at paving parking lots but seem incapable
of building cities of delight? Could a Christian
community with ten acres of land at its disposal
consider building the core elements of a potential
neighborhood rather than simply a church
building with a large parking lot? Might it instead
focus on a church building of reasonable size, a
public square, and a school? Could it take seriously
the ecology of the land in the development of this
plot? And commit to planting indigenous species
of plants that would encourage vibrant bird and
insect life?
Might neighborhoods commit to developing
what are called “third places”: contexts in which
informal association and conversation are the main
activities, in which all are welcome (but which has
its group of “regulars”), a home away from home,
within easy walking distance, characterized by a
mood of playfulness, but the aesthetics of which
are low-profile?
Might we work to develop homes that are
not simply places inhabited by consumers but by
true home-makers? Homes filled not exclusively
with store-bought, standardized furniture and
accessories, but with items like ceramics, paintings,
quilts, tables and clothing crafted by people you
know? Can we imagine homes with porches on
the front instead of garages? Homes in which
bread is sometimes baked? Homes with gardens;
neighborhoods with gardens?
Could we imagine a class of educators
willing to live where they work and work where
they live? Willing to take root and to cultivate
a sense of place? Colleges aware of the history
of the place where they are located? Committed
to providing ample places for reflection and
contemplation, and having spaces designed for
conversation and the development of intellectual
community? Campuses having a “third place”
or two, and perhaps classrooms that aren’t just
“smart,” but designed to evoke dialogue and
exploration? Classrooms and buildings that carry
a sense of their own history (unlike the kind of
empty-space, nondescript, Cartesian classrooms
that characterize too many colleges, in which one
would have little sense of what might have taken
place in the previous hour, or ever)?
Who, then, should read this book? I hope that
by now the answer is somewhat clear, despite the
brevity of this review and its necessary selectivity
in choosing from among so rich a field of topics:
Faculty and students, administrators and board
members, city planners and city councils, church
councils and congregants, husbands and wives and
families, businesspersons and artists, historians
and poets—everyone, that is, who seeks, with
eschatological vision, to live a life in a place before
God.
Pro Rege—June 2012
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Pro Rege—June 2012
Submissions
We invite letters to the editor and articles, of between 2,500 and 8,000 words,
double-spaced, using MLA or Chicago Style Manual documentation. Subjects should be
approached from a Reformed Christian perspective and should treat issues, related to
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sciences, technology, and media. Please include a cover letter with your e-mail address
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Pro Rege
c/o Dr. Mary Dengler, Editor
Dordt College
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Sioux Center, Iowa 51250
Dordt College is a Christian liberal arts college in Sioux Center, Iowa, which believes
that the Bible is the infallible and inspired Word of God and which bases the education
it provides upon the Bible as it is explained in the Reformed creeds. Hence, the college
confesses that our world from creation to consummation belongs to God, that Jesus
Christ is the only way of salvation, and that true comfort and reliable strength can be
had only from his Holy Spirit.
Dordt College was established in 1955 and owes its continuing existence to a
community of believers that is committed to supporting Christian schools from
kindergarten through college. Believing in the Creator demands obedience to his principles
in all of life: certainly in education but also in everything from art to zoology.
The Dordt College community believes in the Word of God. God’s revelation in
word and deed finds its root in Jesus Christ, who is both Savior from our sin and Lord
over the heavens and the earth. The Bible reveals the way of salvation in Christ Jesus
and requires faithful thanksgiving to him as the Lord of life, especially when exploring,
coming to understand, and unfolding the diversity of creation.
Dordt College, in its many departments and programs, celebrates that diversity and
challenges students not merely to confess Christ with their mouth but to serve him with
their lives. Empowered by the strength of his Spirit, Dordt College stands ready to meet
the challenge of providing and developing serviceable insight for the people of God.
Pro Rege
A quarterly faculty publication of
Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa