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Pursuing Coherence and Conviction in Christian University Education
Drawing things together into a coherent framework of faith is the unique gift that a Christian university like CMU can offer students.
by Gordon Matties

A few years ago a student lamented to me that his post-secondary educational experience at a major Canadian university had not helped him find a cohesive view of life and the world. Rather than functioning as a university—providing a coherent centre around which he could find his bearings—it had acted as a "multiversity," offering many views and perspectives without a framework within which to comprehend them. Instead of bringing things together, the educational smorgasbord had fragmented his view of life.

His experience is not unique. University education today offers students the ability to develop critical thinking skills, but seldom provides them with a way of relating one thing to another. The contemporary pluralistic environment that is the hallmark of contemporary university education does not allow for discernment of the web of meaning that draws all things together.

Drawing things together into a coherent framework of faith is the unique gift that a Christian university can offer students. We give them a toolbox for learning to think as Christians in a way that shapes and forms character, a way that brings the various disciplines into conversation, and a way that calls them into a community that seeks a vision of health, wholeness, justice and peace for all creation.

At the same time, a Christian university education also stands firmly on the conviction that personal knowledge is part of the web of creation in which we live. If it is true that Christ is the still point amidst the multiplicity of ideas and ideologies that flow all around us, then it is possible to create a university in which students are invited to view all their learning as the work of discipleship. Theology, literature, psychology, business, biology—all have their centre in Christ. As separate disciplines, they are arenas in which to discover and experience the reconciling and transforming wonder of God's presence. At the same time, each discipline also contributes to the whole.

As a professor, I am committed to giving my students a holistic spirituality of education that includes, at its centre, the discipleship of the mind. I also want to nourish a spirituality of the heart, so that students learn not only to love God, but also to love what they learn and learn what they love.

I assume that learning happens best when one embodies what one learns. As author and theologian Parker Palmer puts it in his book, To Know as We are Known, "To teach is to create a space in which obedience to the truth can be practised." Such an understanding of embodied learning led me to develop this teaching motto: "Nurturing the Mind, Minding the Heart, Mending the World." Christian university education, therefore, creates space for learning that is profoundly intellectual, relational, and morally transforming.

What about the Bible? A holistic approach to education recognizes the priority of Scripture for Christian formation, for shaping the identity and mission of the community of Jesus, and for reflecting theologically on life in the world. But it also recognizes the interaction between what we do when we study the Bible, do theological reflection and study other academic disciplines. Biblical studies by itself cannot shape a worldview; we have to participate in the conversations with the other disciplines, such as English, math, psychology, music and others.

Fortunately, we are not on this journey of discovery alone; we have each other, and God is with us. Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel said it well; we are not only in search of truth, but it is also in search of us.

A few years ago at a chapel service, I invited students to accept for themselves the following model of Christian university education: "Education in a Christian university setting will invite you to explore God's world—to know its beauty, to wonder at its complexity, to feel its pain, and to long for and work toward its wholeness. A spirituality for education will include inviting God to shape your thinking, so that your character is formed in keeping with the character of Jesus, with your passion directed toward the healing and reconciling work of God in the world. This is a work you share as you are empowered by the Spirit in community, joyfully transformed for faithful obedience and reconciling service in the world."

I believe this model works. I am convinced that Christian university education offers students an alternative both to the cynicism that pervades much of academic and other life today, and to the idolatries and ideologies of our time. I believe it can build integrity of character and provide skills, habits and vision for a lifetime of reflection and action that is intellectually coherent and works in every area of life. It is a way of life that is rooted in a community of hope, and that is rich with conviction and passion.

My view is summed up well by author Steven Garber in his book, The Fabric of Faithfulness. Like me, he is convinced that "the challenge for the contemporary college student … whose creedal commitments are rooted in the possibility and reality of truth—is to form a worldview that will be coherent across the whole of life because it addresses the whole of life."

My particular contribution to that enterprise is to nurture in my students a profound understanding of how Scripture functions in the life of the believing community and in the life of the individual. I want to help them find themselves in their church tradition, discover the strengths of that tradition, and also learn from other church traditions. I want them to inhabit the story of God's redemptive work in Israel and through Jesus in such a way that their character is shaped and changed by the contours of the story.

I also want to help students develop a desire to embody an alternative vision of justice and peace, a vision that involves restoring and reconciling all relationships—with God, others and creation. And I want to help them engage critically and constructively with all of their studies, so they can—to use images from the Apostle Paul—allow their minds to be transformed as together we examine everything carefully, thereby discerning how all things cohere in Christ.

I am also committed to teaching them about the unity of all truth, which is rooted in God. I am committed to a process of personal and social transformation and creation-mending that is based on a vision of peace and justice, and that finds its centre in Jesus Christ, who serves as model, initiator and enabler of the new reality that God is bringing into being.

I am committed to the academic task of searching for the truth and doing the truth within an ongoing community of faith that is rooted in tradition and empowered by the Spirit. With my students, I want to discover more of what it means to be human, and to be God's people in the world. And I am also committed to the task of mentoring and discipling. I see myself as a coach. I do not teach simply to transfer information, but to be an agent of transformation and reconciliation that occurs as an act of God's grace.

Integrating all aspects of life into one meaningful whole. That was the goal I set for myself during my own undergraduate studies. I now want to offer a hospitable environment to students who are working at that same task—discovering ways in which the great diversity of life finds its centre in Jesus Christ, "in whom all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17).

The unique gift that Christian university education offers students is a toolbox for learning to think Christianly in a way that has integrity, that shapes and forms character, and that calls them into a community that lives toward a vision of health, wholeness, justice and peace for all creation.

Gordon Matties is associate professor of biblical studies and theology at Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg.

Originally published in Canadian Mennonite, January 23, 2006.