Category
Tag: Christian mind
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Developing a Christian Approach to Your Academic Discipline: The Map and the Mirror
In this post I want to explore one way that Christian academics can get to grips with the secular disciplines in which we work. I will begin by discussing two different ways in which we can understand the Christian faith and the way it shapes our work, before moving on to discuss a tool to help
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Shalom (2 of 2). Building human culture: our task for today, our joy for eternity
In a previous post I explored how shalom shapes what we think the task of academy should be, and how we understand our place in it. I now want to widen the focus a little and think about shalom as a paradigm of culture-building that bridges this world and the next. This second way in
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The Christian student and academic’s full body workout
I started (another) physical workout regime recently, and in order to drum up some enthusiasm for the task I did some lightweight web-based research on how to train and what it takes to keep going for the long term. One recalcitrant fact I kept butting up against is that it is little use to work
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A Pauline model for engaging with our academic disciplines
Somewhere in the Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World series of talks (available on iTunesU), Tim Keller offers a brilliant fourfold schema that can help Christian academics to engage with our disciplines in a God-honouring and constructive way. Keller unfolds the schema as a way of understanding and engaging with culture in general, but I have found it
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Augustine on Christians reading pagan books
The notion that “faith” and “learning” need to be “integrated” is a slippery proposition. Sometimes it is embraced unthinkingly; sometimes it is dismissed precipitously. One assumption sometimes latent in the claim that we need to integrate Christ and academia is that there is an unbridgeable gulf between “Christian” and “non-Christian” thought. However, there is a
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What does a “Christian approach” to my academic discipline even mean?
What does a “Christian approach” to my discipline even mean? Do I need to mention Jesus in the papers I write? Is it OK just to allude to something Christian in the acknowledgements? Should I quote the bible? What will happen if I do? I found myself asking questions like these pretty early on in
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Nicholas Wolterstorff video on transforming your discipline: Be patient and don’t jump on bandwagons
Speaking at the Centre for Christian Thought (CCT) conference at Biola University in 2012, Nicholas Wolterstorff touched on a point that many young Christian academics worry about, and that caused me a lot of anxiety in the early days. His talk was entitled ‘Fides quaerens intellectum’, faith seeking understanding, and among other topics he answered
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Forming a Christian Mind: What to Read and How to Read It
Regular, broad, meditative and transformative reading of the bible is an indispensable foundation for anyone seeking to develop a Christian mind to the glory of God, but we understand God’s word and its implications better when we do so in dialogue with others who have likewise meditated deeply on it. Like dancing or learning to
