ESSAY:
Theology among the Arts and Sciences¹
by Douglas F. Ottati
Craig Family Distinguished Professor of Religion
Davidson College 

Editor's Note: The following essay by Douglas Ottati contains reflections on the discipline of theology in an academic context. The editors thought that it well served to stimulate thought on an important question for pastors, educators, and theologians: how should we in the Reformed tradition conceive of the place of theological reflection in wider cultural conversations?



Institutional Contexts for Theology

Any understanding of theology and the arts and sciences will depend partly on one’s understanding of what theology is and does and partly on what one takes the arts and sciences to be and to do—matters to which (however inadequately) I shall return presently. But the title, “Theology among the Arts and Sciences,” not only points toward relationships among disciplines; it also intimates a certain institutional placement for theologizing. And this is the matter I wish to address first.

Consider two institutions: the medieval university where theology reigned as so-called “queen of the sciences,” and the modern research university from which theology sometimes is banished altogether. There are good reasons to bring these contexts to mind. It was in the medieval university, rather than, say, the monastery or the cathedral school, that theology faculties first taught beside faculties of arts, medicine, and law. So there is a sense in which the question of theology and other disciplines began to be raised with a special urgency just here. It was with the advent of the modern research university that the relation of the theology faculty to the faculty of arts of sciences threatened to come to an end. Indeed, as the arts and sciences developed methods and reached conclusions independently of normative theological control, as modern states came to be interested in supporting the intellectual life of societies that contain more than one religious group, and as theology appeared increasingly arcane to empirically-minded inquirers, the way seemed clear to institutionalize the universe of scholarship and intellectual inquiry apart from theology.

The picture gets more complicated when we consider particulars. For example, during the thirteenth century, when Aristotle belatedly entered into European intellectual circles via Muslim thinkers and texts, controversy broke out at the University of Paris over the eternity of the world. St. Bonaventure led the conservative theological reaction, claiming that the Aristotelian arguments failed, and that reason proved the temporal origin of the universe. Siger of Brabant, a member of the arts faculty, said that, as a Christian, he professed belief in the creation of the universe by God, but that as a philosopher, he judged Aristotle had convincingly demonstrated the eternity of the world. Thomas Aquinas, a member of the theology faculty, believed that the orthodox thinkers who claimed to demonstrate with certainty the temporal origin of the universe offered “feeble” arguments whose “very frailty seems to lend probability to the opposite side.” He said arguments for the eternity of the universe put forward by Aristotle, later Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna, and the medieval Jewish thinker, Moses Maimonides, had persuasive force. However, he also noted that there were persuasive arguments against, and so he concluded that, so far as reason is concerned, the issue remains undecided.² The church hierarchy weighed in with condemnations of a few theses in 1270 and of more than 200 in 1277. For our purposes, however, it seems equally important to note that Parisian professors – including the theologians – disagreed, and that the bulk of their debates took place while the writings of Aristotle were under a papal ban!

The modern research university overthrew theology from its position as the highest and dominant discipline. Henceforth, the arguments and findings of other disciplines were not to be judged by their implications for theological orthodoxy. Indeed, academic freedom had to be won over against the theology faculty’s prerogative at traditional universities to be “the ultimate censor” of what could be learned and taught. Thus, “to include theology in a research university could easily seem a betrayal of the educational revolution that the research university represented.”³ Nevertheless, when the University of Berlin opened its doors in 1810, Friedrich Schleiermacher had argued successfully for the place of theological education. Schleiermacher claimed that the training of ministers should be included within the state research university as a “professional” education analogous to training in medicine and law, and that the education of leaders for the church, in turn, requires the discipline of theology.⁴

These developments form a part of the deep background for some prominent institutionalizations of theology in contemporary America. Divinity schools at Yale, Duke, and elsewhere represent variations on the Berlin model. Theology has a place at these modern research universities partly as an aspect of the professional education of clergy. In addition, it also has a place among the research disciplines of these universities, as is signaled by the offering of the Ph.D.⁵ Another primary institutional context for theology is the seminary that stands independently of a university. When it is of a mainstream Protestant variety, the freestanding seminary generally mixes the Berlin model of professional education with attention to cultivating the spirituality or piety of candidates for ministry in an environment that is almost immediately responsive to denominational constituents.⁶

Much more might be said about theology and American educational institutions. For example, Virginia and Iowa maintain state universities that do not train ministers but nevertheless support programs in religion that include Ph.D. studies in theology and theological ethics. In addition, I have said nothing about theological studies at contemporary Roman Catholic universities and their rather complicated relations with church authorities.⁷ But a more complete taxonomy will not change the first point I want to make this evening. Current institutionalizations of theology at research universities and at freestanding seminaries rarely place theology as forthrightly among the arts and sciences as it seems possible to do at a liberal arts college.

This is comparatively easy to understand with reference to the freestanding seminary, where there simply is no faculty of arts and sciences. There is nothing to prevent theologians at such institutions from maintaining a lively interest in the findings of other disciplines, and I myself have tried to be a seminary theologian of this sort. But there is almost nothing endemic to the institutional environment of a freestanding seminary that encourages the interest either. Actual interchanges between seminary faculty and scholars in non-theological fields generally take place when theologians move beyond the confines of the seminary or when the seminary (sometimes through various centers or institutes) issues special invitations to non-theological scholars to participate in particular conferences and events. And this accords with a single fact. The great strength of the freestanding seminary as an institutional context for the study of theology is its focus on theological education, a focus that ordinarily is apparent in its library collection as well as in the faculty it hires; but this is also its most significant limitation as a context for theological reflection.

The modern research university is another animal. All of the arts, sciences, and professions may be represented here, and so the opportunities for creative interchange can be immense. Nevertheless, here too, the study of theology often finds itself rather strongly differentiated from the arts and sciences just because it is understood as a discipline that accompanies a highly distinctive sort of (clerical) professional education. Like the law school, the medical school, and the business school, the divinity school comprises a distinct unit within the university. Occasionally, it is located at a physical distance from the college of arts and sciences.⁸ The study of theology may escape the isolating pressures of being attached to a distinct professional school when it is housed within a university department of religion. But even then interchanges between theologians and professors in the arts and sciences sometimes confront significant obstacles.  Particularly if several departments, including the department of religion, maintain Ph.D. programs, theology may become one more highly differentiated and methodologically distinct research discipline. That is, it may be pursued in a manner that reflects the disintegration of university life that some claim to be a lasting and lamentable result of the increasing scholarly specialization of university faculty during the 20^th century.⁹

So, I return to the distinctive promise of placing theology among the arts and sciences in the context of a liberal arts college. Many colleges in America today recognize the importance of specialized training in disciplines differentiated by their methods, canons of literature, and practices. This is why they hire professors with Ph.D.s from modern research universities and why they typically organize their faculties into academic departments. Even so, a strong liberal arts college is committed to being something other than a confederacy of highly distinct doctoral programs and professional schools (a description once plaintively applied to the University of Pennsylvania when I studied there in another era). Indeed, at its best a liberal arts college mitigates the centripetal forces of disciplinary and professional specialization by enlisting faculty in the common project of educating undergraduates—those often youthful, sometimes inspiring, and occasionally exasperating non-specialists who seem on their way to becoming adults, and whom we hope will develop into attentive, reflective, sensitive, and passionate participants in the wider social and natural world. A liberal arts college is able to place theology among the arts and sciences in a comparatively forthright manner precisely because it may invite theologians to participate with practitioners of the arts and sciences in this compelling common project.

Well that, as I say, is my first major point. I shall also contend that this placement among the arts and sciences promises theology some considerable benefits and that it gives theology opportunities to serve the college as a whole. To explore these matters, I will need to say a few things about theology and theological inquiry. But before I do, I want to make a brief additional comment about theology and liberal arts colleges. 

Theology and Liberal Arts Colleges

An historically aware theologian will recognize that his or her invitation to contribute to the common project of educating undergraduate non-specialists is due largely to the fact that so many liberal arts colleges in this country were established by faithful Protestants. Part of their interest in doing so was to furnish a basic education to young men who might in turn become competent ministers. Thus, many college-founding Protestants had an interest in what today we call the professional education of clergy. But this interest was joined with a cluster of convictions that promised something more. In particular, it was thought that there are deep theological reasons to offer both clerically and non-clerically inclined students alike a strong liberal arts education. Indeed, particularly when they were Presbyterian and Reformed, college-founding Protestants tended to believe with John Calvin that God is the sole fountain of truth, that we should therefore honor and respect truth wherever it may be found, and that the arts and sciences are among God’s most excellent gifts.¹⁰ Or, as the current iteration of the Statement of Purpose of Davidson College puts it, “the Christian tradition to which Davidson remains committed recognizes God as the source of all truth,” and so “Davidson dedicates itself to the quest for truth and encourages teachers and students to explore the whole or reality.”¹¹ In short, a number of college-founding Protestants tended to build colleges committed to the idea that good theology supports the spirit of unfettered, sustained, and life-enhancing inquiry that lies at the heart of a good liberal education.¹²

A theologian’s colleagues in the arts and sciences may perhaps excuse him or her for noting the distinctive promise and opportunity that this history and conviction has bestowed upon all of us. Indeed, a church-related college that recognizes God as the source of all truth may avoid certain dangers. For, where the college understands itself primarily to serve the nation, inquiry may come to be sculpted and limited by national interests. And, where it understands itself primarily to serve commerce and business, the college may come to be organized and directed by corporate interests. But good colleagues may also expect a Reformed theologian to remind us of the persistent danger that a church-related college may understand itself merely to serve the Christian community and/or the church, and so reinstate some one interpretation of doctrinal orthodoxy as the ultimate censor of what may be learned and taught. That this is not only a medieval possibility is demonstrated pretty clearly by the elaborate schemes of doctrine included today in more than a few college mission statements. These sometimes bind faculty and students to affirm that “the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writings,” that “Adam and Eve [were] the historical parents of the human race,” and so on.¹³ The deleterious consequences for free inquiry and reflection of adopting such statements are too numerous to list here. Theologically speaking, however, we should emphasize the peril that the community of education and inquiry will come to serve a particular doctrinal formula rather than the mysterious and transcendent source of all truth. In addition, we should note that it also seems unwise to nominate any other theory or discipline for the role of “queen” and orthodox censor of what may be learned and taught, whether the candidate be a politically correct ideology, one or another science, a logically positive account of knowledge, or what-have-you.

Comment concluded. Reformed theology has two primary things to say that bear upon the project of a liberal arts college rather directly. First, the unfettered pursuit of truth is a way of honoring God, the transcendent source of all being and truth whom we strive to understand but never entirely comprehend. Second, whether manufactured by doctrinaire theologians, moralists, secularists, nationalists, or anyone else, idols are almost never good and, what’s more, they have constricting (not to say stultifying) consequences for inquiry and education. Now, to a short discussion of what theology is and does that I hope will help us to understand why its placement among the arts and sciences promises theology some considerable benefits and also puts it in a position to serve the college as a whole. 

What Theology Is and Does

In a semantic sense, theology is logos of theos, or discourse and reflection about god or the gods. Theology is inquiry into god or the gods, the reflective attempt to understand god or the gods more truly. A statement, set of statements, or discourse is theological if it has something to do with god or the gods.

Thus, statements, sets of statements, and discourses may be about matters of genuine importance, such as personal fulfillment, politics, economics, or the moon and yet not be directly theological. On the other hand, statements, sets of statements, and discourses about very many matters, including personal life, politics, economics, and the cosmos may be theological if they refer to god or the gods, or if they are made in a context that refers to god or the gods. The theological ethicist, James M. Gustafson, says that he once attended a party where a colleague in chemistry challenged him to say something theological. Gustafson said, “God.” And he regards theology (rightly I think) as an attempt to understand all things in their appropriate relations to God.¹⁴ Again, the great medieval Catholic, Thomas Aquinas, said that theology or holy teaching expresses judgments about God and about creatures in relation to God.¹⁵ Relatedness to God is what makes statements theological.

As a matter of historical fact, however, most theology is not freewheeling, generic discourse and reflection about god or the gods. It is discourse and reflection in the service of the teachings and doctrines of particular religious communities. Thus, Christian churches through the centuries have stated their teachings and doctrines in creeds, catechisms, and confessions. Christian theologians, such as Origen of Alexandria, Augustine, and John Calvin, have reflected on church teachings and doctrines, and they have regarded themselves as teachers in the church.

Interestingly, the persistent connection between theology and church teaching sheds light on why theology sometimes needs to take account of findings and ideas generated by other disciplines. Broadly speaking, Christian teaching and instruction is training in a Christian faith-orientation or way of living. It is training intended to help people interact with other persons, objects, situations, and realities in a manner that is faithfully responsive to the God disclosed in Jesus Christ. That is, the church has an interest in helping its members interact with their families, their possessions, governments, forests, fishes, and more in a manner that is also faithfully responsive to God. We may say that the church’s pastoral aim is the faithful formation of the people of God. The church tries to help people live faithfully.

The critical point for our purposes here is that this enterprise of pastoral formation or of building up people in a faithful way of life itself requires a certain reflective activity. It requires that one articulate a vision or a picture because people need a vision or a picture of objects and others in relation to God if they are to know how to interact with them in a manner that is faithfully responsive to God. If persons are to interact with families, possessions, governments, forests, and fishes in a manner that is faithfully responsive to God, then they need to have some picture of how these things are related to God. And this is where Christian theology comes in. Christian theology is the reflective attempt to picture or envision our selves, as well as the many objects and other with which we interact, in relation to the God disclosed in Jesus Christ. It is the reflective attempt to articulate a Christian worldview in the service of the life of faith.

Take our adolescent children. While they are sleeping in until noon, talking interminably with friends, challenges authorities, and lurching toward questionable decisions about their futures, Christian believing calls those of us who are parents to interact with them in a manner that is also faithfully responsive to God. A Christian theological vision will portray our adolescent children as gifts of God who are entrusted to our care for a time. It will emphasize (just in case we are prone to forget) that we never really choose or control what we are given. It will insist, despite occasional appearances to the contrary, that our adolescent children remain good gifts. It will recognize that we have responsibilities to help and to guide our adolescent children, but it will also indicate that they are not simply our personal projects and possessions. As gifts, our children are never entirely defined by our own hopes and expectations. Indeed, first and foremost, they belong to God, and there is an important sense in which our children—no matter what their ages—are never simply our own.

By introducing the image “gift of God,” then, Christian theology tries to help us picture our selves and our children in relation to God. It introduces a somewhat distinctive content about our children in relation to us and to God that emerges from the Bible and Christian tradition. (Remember that in many legal contexts, if I give you something, then it really is yours to do with as you please.) This picture, in turn, informs our attempts to interact with our children in a manner that is also faithfully responsive to God. But now for an additional observation that concerns us especially this evening. It makes a difference whether or not we understand our children as gifts of God, but it is also true that other things we know and believe about our children can make a difference for how we understand them in a theological frame of reference.

For example, there is now a sizeable body of evidence to indicate not only that adolescents need a lot of sleep, but also that their “biological timers” generally are set to stay up relatively late and get up relatively late.¹⁶ Psychological perspectives also suggest that adolescence is a time when persons’ identities are being formed with reference to emerging sexuality and thus redefined personal relationships, as well as by some rather experimental efforts to discern where one fits into a wider social world. Left to my traditional theological images alone, I might judge the sleeping in, the constant attention to friends and peers, the challenges to authority, and the questionable decisions not only a tad exasperating, but also the results of a vaguely objectionable and morally corrupting self-absorption.¹⁷ But, once I factor in some recent findings and theories, perhaps I shall picture these adolescent traits, not simply as chronic irritations and failings, but also as classic characteristics of the adolescent human creature, and thus also of the gift I have been given. Indeed, I may come to the theological conclusion that, in the economy of God’s world, and under certain conditions, these simply are some of the things a parent must expect.

To summarize, the pastoral aim of the church is to help people interact with objects, others, situations, and realities in a manner that is faithfully responsive to God. Christian theology serves this aim by furnishing a vision or a picture of things in relation to the God disclosed in Jesus Christ. It articulates a Christian theological worldview that serves a Christian faith-orientation. This worldview is responsive to the symbolic resources of the Christian community, for example, the image of creation as gift, but it is also responsive to other things we know and believe about objects, others, situations, and realities, for example, studies of adolescent needs for sleep. 

A Benefit to Theology

We are now in a position to see how Christian theology may benefit when it is placed forthrightly among the arts and sciences. Christian theology is a reflective and practical wisdom whose purpose it is to help persons interact with other persons, objects, situations, and realities in a manner that is faithfully responsive to the God disclosed in Jesus Christ. It tries to help persons and communities engaged in the push and shove of nature and history—persons and communities who find themselves interacting with estuaries and armies and families and stars—to be oriented faithfully toward the only and living God. This is why Christian theologians try to picture or envision in relation to God our selves, estuaries, armies, families, stars, and more.

To do this, Christian theologians work with a particular historical tradition. They investigate images of God as Creator, Judge, and Redeemer, and of humans as good, limited, and capable creatures corrupted by sin and renewed by grace. They ponder symbols of life as gift and world as creation suffering the consequences of human corruption. They consider stories of Adam, Eve, Babel, Job, and the New Jerusalem. They reflect on prophetic oracles and the meaning of vocation, on practices of confession, singing praises, and passing the peace. But this work with a routinely grand, often dynamic, occasionally disappointing and disturbing tradition is not an end in itself. The point is to make use of it to interpret and to orient contemporary living.

In short, a Christian theologian tries to bring to bear on our selves, and on the many objects and others with which we interact, the imaginative resources (the myths, narratives, symbols, ideas, beliefs, and practices) of the Christian community. She does not read Paul on the second Adam, grace, law, and new creation merely to understand Paul. She reads Paul in order to understand and to orient life. But, of course, if she actually does this, then, with the aid of some of Paul’s images and ideas, she undertakes to interpret or envision very many objects and others, such as human agents, natural ecologies, families, civil governments, and the cosmos, about which we already know and believe a good deal partly because these same objects and others are also investigated and interpreted by philosophers, biologists, novelists, psychologists, astronomers, playwrights, cosmologists, and political scientists.

This is why it behooves a Christian theologian to take into account findings, arguments, images, and ideas put forward by colleagues in the arts and sciences that concern our selves and the many objects and others with which we interact. No doubt she must do so critically. Current knowledge and beliefs arrive in many forms: empirical studies, scientific theories, dramatic performances, philosophical assumptions, personal stories, communal histories, cultural images, and so on. These may be more or less well attested, contested, and idiosyncratic, and there is nothing to guarantee that one or another study, theory, assumption, story, or image will not be incomplete or even wholly mistaken. Moreover, even well attested theories and research outcomes often yield place to further research and reflection. Nevertheless, the cost to theology of not taking into account findings, arguments, images, and ideas put forward by contemporary work in the arts and sciences is anachronism, or a theology that fails (as I believe many do) to relate God to objects and others as we presently know and experience them and so fails to orient life as we presently live it.

This, in fact, is one of the primary ways to short-circuit the reflective and practical wisdom we call Christian theology. It is a way of failing to construe and to orient contemporary life and experience in relation to the living God, of failing to articulate a Christian worldview in the service of the actual life of faith, and so failing to contribute to the church’s practical and pastoral aim. Christian theology, or the reflective and practical wisdom of the Christian community, needs to be in conversations with other disciplines, their findings and ideas precisely in order to do its own job, and a liberal arts college is an especially promising place to try such conversations.

This last observation puts me in a position to make my second basic point in some detail. The considerable benefit promised theology when it is placed forthrightly among the arts and sciences is that theologians will have opportunities to pursue interactions and conversations with colleagues in the arts and sciences and so to counter the risks of anachronism that are heightened when theological studies are pursued in more isolated contexts and that threaten to defeat the entire theological enterprise. 

Theology May Serve the College

I turn now to my third basic point—when it is placed among the arts and sciences, the reflective wisdom called Christian theology may also serve the liberal arts college.¹⁸ Let me emphasize, once again, that theology can do this only if it exchanges the stultifying role of censor for the more vibrant and compelling one of participant in the broader enterprise of “learning, understanding, and wisdom.”¹⁹ Nevertheless, when it does embrace the role of participant, then Christian theology may serve the college in multiple ways, not by pretending to be something else, but simply by being itself. Let me explain.

As we have seen, Christian theology is the reflective attempt to deepen and extend the particular wisdom of the Christian community. It is faithful reflection in the service of Christian believing. It tries to deepen and extend the interpretation of life and the world in relation to God that Christian believing has to offer. Historically, this has involved very many activities in very many different institutional contexts—letter writing to mission churches and sometimes even from jail; catechetical training in congregations and at noted ancient academies; synods, councils, and assemblies formulating statements of doctrine; bishops, monks, ministers, and professors writing theological treatises; homilies, liturgies, and stations of the cross in gothic cathedrals; disputations at medieval and reformation colloquies; sermons and hymns in clapboard chapels; Bible studies in Sunday Schools and in base communities.

At seminaries today, the work of deepening and extending Christian theological wisdom is intertwined with professional training, and in Ph.D. programs it is disciplined by modern canons and methods of specialized scholarship. At a college of arts and sciences, this work includes teaching classes and promoting discussions about the great texts, thinkers, ideas, images, doctrines, and debates of the Christian tradition in theology and ethics as well as about compelling contemporary challenges and issues. It includes teaching classes and promoting discussions about the Book of Genesis, John Calvin, creation, redemption, the challenges of new scientific findings and theories, the perils of war, the ambiguities of new medical technologies, the promises of peace, and the imperatives of justice in the overall context of a broad and hopefully also somewhat common enterprise of undergraduate education.

In the course of doing these things, one way that studies in Christian theology surely will serve the college is by helping to furnish some students with backgrounds suitable for further study toward professional and academic degrees at seminaries, divinity schools, and university departments of religion. But this is not nearly all. Christian theological studies will also try to make sense out of and to orient life; they will also try to interpret and engage current realities in a Christian theological perspective. That is, when Christian theology is itself, it refuses to be reduced to professional, pre-professional, or pre-academic training, and it also refuses to pose as an ahistorical and non-particular “every-theology.” It tries to make sense of the contemporary world and to orient current life, and it tries to do so in an explicitly Christian faith-perspective rather than pass itself off as the reflective wisdom of every religious community.

Now, if in the judgment of at least some people Christian theology succeeds in doing this, if it manages to illumine at least some things part of the time, then it inevitably suggests that the equally particular and interpretative wisdoms borne by other historical religious communities may also do the same. It therefore serves the college by suggesting that these other equally particular and religious wisdoms may also contribute to the enterprise of liberal learning and understanding. The Maloney Lecture at Davidson College for 2007 on “Islam, Sharia, and Human Rights” by Dr. Abdullah Ahmed An-Na’im of Emory University is a good example.

This brings us to a related consideration. When Christian theology is itself, it not only refuses to pose as generic wisdom and reflection as it endeavors to interpret and engage contemporary life, it also refuses to hide or obscure its drive toward formulating a comprehensive vision of God, the world, and ourselves. It refuses to hide its disposition toward articulating what the theological ethicist, Max L. Stackhouse, calls a “metaphysical-moral vision.”²⁰ It exposes people to the dynamics of faithful reflection, or to the reflective dynamics of trying to interpret all things in relation to God in order to lend life a distinct orientation, depth of meaning and direction. Indeed, since in Christian theological terms, God is the source of all things who continues to stand in relation to all, it is part and parcel of Christian theology, or of the reflective enterprise of picturing things in relation to this God, that it raises the question of the whole and our place in it. What’s more, this impulse to picture the whole in relation to God is only intensified in Reformed theology where the divine governance or causality is understood to encompass all things.₂₁ For this particular Christian theological sub-tradition, relatedness to God renders the cacophony and multiplicity of things a universe.

Christian theological studies inevitably expose us to the reflective practice of “world-picturing” or “world-viewing” in the service of faith-orientations that furnish persons and communities with heartfelt directions and trajectories in living. They expose us to a particular iteration of the generally human practice of construing ourselves and the many objects and others with which we interact in relation to a valued object or objects of devotion. In doing so, studies in Christian theology encourage us to ask what counts for and against our own views of the world and our place in it. They also encourage us to identify and critically compare world-pictures supplied by the many other religious and cultural traditions that lend persons orientation in life. That is, they encourage us to develop critical and comparative theological analyses.

Does this inquiry belong in a college of arts and sciences that means to explore the whole of human life and reality? Would a college be missing something important without it? Answers to these questions are eminently debatable. But surely, if there is one thing that the crush of recent world events has taught even the most secular western intellectuals it is that affectively charged and value-laden religious and cultural traditions continue to motivate and guide. Theological studies may therefore also serve the college by exploring this basic and irreducible dimension of human being and well being, namely, the faith-orientations and meaning-complexes that furnish persons and communities with heartfelt distinctive ways of life in the world.²²

Let me turn now to a final contribution. Precisely because theological studies expose us to the reflective practice of “world-picturing” or “world-viewing,” they also inevitably raise a host of “great” or at least “really big” questions. What is the meaning or the point of human life? What are humans for? What is their true place and worth in relation to other species? What is world, or the comprehensive context in which we live and move? What difference does it make to our estimates of our selves and our place when we begin to think ecologically? What is history and how shall we understand the dynamics of power and justice in human history? Is there a chronic human fault? Are there institutions and practices that seem indispensable for human flourishing? What is true community? For what may we hope?

Questions such as these clearly are not the purview of theology alone. They may be generated by any imaginative and reflective enterprise that rises to the level of world viewing or suggesting an orienting and holistic vision. Thus, philosophers, playwrights, novelists, poets, and artists have often raised them. Even so, due to the inherent dynamic of its faithful reflections, Christian theology inevitably must also raise them.

And, it is just here, I think, that yet another possible contribution of theology to the college comes into view. Harry R. Lewis, the former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, notes that it has become increasingly difficult to specify what is common and important in undergraduate education. He wonders whether the uniting principle is “anything more than excellence at whatever the student chooses to study.”²³ No doubt, many of us want to say that there is more to it than that, but we also are understandably reluctant to specify what the common content or experience may be.

Mercifully, almost no one wants to say that one disciplinary specialization is more important than all the others and therefore furnishes the common element—that would amount to crowning a specific discipline “queen of the sciences” once again. But there are other strategies. During the past century, Columbia University and the University of Chicago, tried to address the problem by specifying a core or a canon of texts, for example the so-called “Great Books”—a practice that survives today in something like its original form only at St. John’s College in Maryland and New Mexico. This strategy clearly has the virtue of furnishing an intellectual community with a common literature for conversations and debates. Despite the occasionally dramatic disappointment of some conservative columnists, however, the strategy has not been more widely adopted largely because it is genuinely difficult if not downright impossible to identify a common canon of texts without marginalizing or excluding other items of elegance and importance. In other words, the strategy may become too limiting and too narrow. The idea of a so-called “general education” also lies behind distributional requirements at a number of institutions.  Even so, says Lewis, the distributional core often lacks a unifying framework. It feels like “one from column A and one from column B,” and so under these circumstances, the forces of disciplinary and pre-professional specialization overwhelm the ideal of a common experience.²⁴ We relinquish the idea of shared knowledge with the result that the college, like some research universities, threatens to devolve into a confederacy of distinct specializations.

Shared knowledge and conversation, unity and integrity in excellent undergraduate education vs. plurality and specialization—Lewis surely has identified a genuine and serious problem. In fact, the problem he identifies has all the earmarks of an issue that cannot be resolved once and for all but instead must be continually negotiated and renegotiated in order to approximate rough and serviceable balances under changing circumstances.  And in any case, I am not foolish enough to propose a sweeping solution. (I leave that to former Harvard deans.) But I am willing to make a more modest and piecemeal suggestion. The great or big questions generated by the enterprise of “world-viewing” can help to mitigate the centripetal forces of specialization, and so be of service to a liberal arts college that continues to recognize some virtue in the idea of a general education.

This is so because the great or big questions are ones that anyone may ponder, and because the findings, insights, and ideas generated by very many different disciplines, inquiries, professions, and activities can contribute to how we ask these questions and also how we answer them. What does it mean to be human? What is world? For what may we hope? Painters, historians, naturalist philosophers, novelists, ministers, photographers, mathematicians, biologists, executives, sociologists, architects, actors, physicians, politicians, baseball players, climatologists, landscapers, poets, and cabbies all may have something illuminating to say about how we frame these questions and answer them.

Let me hasten to add that I know of no definite canon of the really big or great questions, and I have little interest in trying to develop one as a strategy for identifying a common core for a liberal arts education. I only observe that pondering and discussing such questions is at least one way to generate some common conversations, and to help undergraduates develop into attentive, reflective and passionate participants in the wider natural and social world. But if this is correct, then studies in Christian theology and perhaps especially in Reformed theology can serve the college by inviting us not only to pursue our various specializations unfettered by censors and queens, but also by inviting us to raise and pursue some really big questions. 

Conclusion

We have covered a lot of ground and you have honored me with your patience. Let me close with a brief summary. 1) A liberal arts college is able to place theology among the arts and sciences in a comparatively forthright manner because it may invite theologians to participate with practitioners of the arts and sciences in the compelling common project of educating undergraduates. 2) When it is placed among the arts and sciences in a liberal arts college theology stands to benefit from interactions and conversations that counter the risks of isolation and anachronism. 3) As a participant in the broader enterprise of undergraduate education, Christian theology may serve the college in multiple ways simply by being itself. Specifically, it may help to furnish some students with backgrounds suitable for further professional and academic studies in ministry and theology. It may encourage the college to invite the participation in undergraduate education of the equally particular interpretative wisdoms borne by other historical religious communities. It may encourage students and colleagues to engage the reflective dynamics of the generally human enterprise of “world-viewing,” and to critically compare the faith-orientations and world pictures that guide various persons and communities. In addition, it may raise “big questions” that invite conversations among practitioners of all the arts and sciences and indeed among people of all stripes and experiences.

Might contemporary theologians who do such things at a church-related liberal arts college such as this one perhaps believe that they are vindicating the fledgling confidence of Protestant founders that theology can make significant contributions to the excellent and general education of persons? Making allowances for the developments and revisions that inevitably must accompany any significant institution and undertaking over time, I am inclined to think so.