Anabaptistica
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 56, No. 2 – Spring 2014
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By David Dockery. Forward by Robert P. George. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2008. xxii + 152 pages. Paperback, $19.99.
As the President of Union University, perhaps the most significant university closely aligned with the sizable and influential Southern Baptist Convention, David Dockery stands in a unique position to offer a way forward for Christian higher education, which he also might call a way backward. Dockery observed, “The integration of faith and knowledge is the most distinctive task of Christian higher education—always was, is now, and always will be” (84) and noted the debilitating effects of “the separation of faith from learning and teaching . . . even in church-related institutions” (4).
At the heart of the book is a call to Christian colleges and universities to refocus their energies upon the integration of faith and knowledge, learning, and teaching and upon the resulting unity of knowledge across fields of study. According to Dockery, this means that Christ-centered higher education cannot be content to display its Christian foundations merely with chapel services and required Bible classes. We must bring students to a mature reflection of what the Christian faith means for every field of study. (21)
The edition under review is the second revised and expanded edition, published in 2008, only one year after the original version. Dockery noted in his preface that he attempted to reformat the book for presentation to an academic audience (xviii). The inclusion of endnotes must have been part of that effort.
While Dockery called the work “an introduction to the field of Christian higher education,” the book gives the impression of a manifesto for what he calls the integration of faith and knowledge toward the unity of knowledge and learning. He described this unity, or universe of knowledge, which is an old idea at the very root of the concept of the university. “Thus specific bodies of knowledge relate to one another not just because scholars work together in community, not just because interdisciplinary work broadens our knowledge, but because all truth has its source in God, composing a single universe of knowledge” (12).
In Renewing Minds, Dockery describes the sorts of emphases and organization necessary to implement and to maintain such an integration. The book follows along those lines, beginning with the foundational issues of integration, working through the organizational structures of a shared community a college or university might require in the development of a consistent model of integration, developing a framework for a theology for Christian higher education, and concluding with the global mission of Christian higher education.
The book rightly has garnered great praise from leadership in the Evangelical and Christian higher education communities. It is a monumental work that required years to develop and to produce, and it is worth the time of every Christian to read. Critics of the effort, most of whom seem to believe that the book offers nothing truly new, might not grasp fully the Bible’s declaration, “So there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9c). Leaders understand that often the most important work is the reorganization and presentation of old ideas in new ways that challenge the status quo. Dockery has achieved that, offering the challenge of a virtual remake of the Christian university as we know it today.
The most impressive aspect of the book is its brevity, given the landscape it covers. Its concision reflects its nature as an “introduction” and leaves several matters largely undone and others wanting. While beginning and concluding with biblical and theological groundings, the book makes no real effort to present, or even to develop, more than an appeal for a theology for Christian higher education. Dockery started in right directions, such as when he declared, “The essence of the Christian faith is that God is Savior, but we fail to understand the comprehensiveness of the Christian faith unless we also see God as Creator, Sustainer, Ruler, Father, and Judge” (82). What a great beginning that was followed by less than two pages to the end of that chapter.
Included in that theology would be an epistemology, a biblical, Christian understanding of knowledge and truth. Perhaps the most urgent need left underdeveloped, the epistemological foundations for the integration of faith and knowledge, requires a clear understanding of just what knowledge and truth are. Dockery did not ignore the matter. In what might be called his thesis statement, he tied truth and knowledge together directly: “I would suggest that the starting point of loving God with our minds, thinking Christianly, points us to a unity of knowledge, a seamless whole, because all true knowledge flows from the one Creator to His one creation” (12). At the same time, one might ask just what “true knowledge” is.
Again, given that the book is an introduction, the omission of a fully orbed epistemology of Christian higher education was necessary. However, much is left open to the imagination by this particular deficit. For only one example, Dockery built much upon the familiar statement, “All truth is God’s truth,” credited in idea to Augustine and granted book title status by Arthur Holmes. Dockery plainly implied that it means that every field of study is open to Christian investigation. However, in a scientific age, would the statement mean that anything that “science” claims to be truth actually is God’s truth?
In the scope of this opus, these are small matters that call for further work by all of us engaged in this field. An important work, Renewing Minds demands both a reading and a response.
