The Idea of a Free Christian University[1]
I should like to begin by thanking the organisers of this conference, The Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, for inviting me to speak to you today. My topic is the idea of a (1) Free (2) Christian (3) University, and I intend to discuss the specific content of these terms as they are each indispensable to the idea itself. And my subject is the idea of such a university. I shall not dwell on the many questions relating to the practical realisation of such an idea, although I will make some brief comments on the questions of size and resource allocation. Moreover, I am not purporting to discuss this idea as an educational specialist. My own discipline is early modern and modern history, and while I will assume no familiarity with the details on the part of my audience, I will make some reference to the historical context in which this idea was articulated by what I will term the neo-Calvinists of the Netherlands during the nineteenth-century.
Context and Background
The idea of a Free Christian University cannot be adequately understood apart from this movement of renewal, which in turn must be viewed in its continental European context. I believe that it will become clear that this is a Christian view of the university clearly distinct from that usually held by both Catholics and Anglicans, as well as by Protestants of the liberal as well as the evangelical/charismatic varieties.
At some risk of oversimplification, it might be argued that in the western intellectual tradition, religious belief has been related to the academic and scientific task in three basic ways:[2] firstly as religious rationalism, in which religion must stand or fall on the basis of human rational inquiry supposedly not in need of any divine revelation - here reason stands in some kind of judgement upon religious belief; or, secondly as religious irrationalism, in which religion is both an optional and a self-contained “extra” wholly divorced from reason. Much reflection on the relationship of religious belief to science and scholarship has been structured by, or has been in response to, these two standpoints.
By contrast, the “neo-Calvinism” which emerged in the Netherlands and has since become widely influential in North America and elsewhere, articulated a third and alternative standpoint in which divine revelation is seen as the key to all knowledge. In this view theory is not neutral and all sufficient, and is constantly directed by religious belief. All of life is religion: and therefore every intellectual, scholarly and scientific endeavour is religiously governed. Accordingly, theoretical thought is not an ultimate arbiter, not all decisive, and not neutral because it is ultimately controlled by a religious standpoint. Here the scholastic and enlightenment notion that theoretical thought is autonomous is explicitly rejected.[3]The implications of this third position have, however, been repeatedly obscured by the rise and prevalence of a (both catholic and Protestant) Christian scholasticism which, in regarding science and philosophy as neutral in relation to religious belief, has seriously clouded the full biblical standpoint. Over many centuries scholasticism has, in effect, sought to strike a compromise between the biblical view that all true understanding is dependent on our knowledge of God, and the religious rationalism of classical Greece, which proclaimed the primacy of reason in and over all knowledge. Scholasticism appeared to have performed this impossible task by imposing a dichotomy in which faith receives a “super-natural” revelation of “God” and “the way of salvation” while “reason” was left to explain the realm of “nature” according to supposedly independent/autonomous procedures common to all everyone. Super-nature is added to nature: true faith is a donum superadditum.[4]
As a consequence, time and again theology has been seen as the discipline that addresses that which has been supernaturally revealed, as distinct from that which is said to be accessible in nature and culture by way of autonomous natural reason. Under the impact of scholasticism, what has been termed theology has been seen as a sacred science, and as such regarded as possessing certain prerogatives in respect of the biblical texts. At the same time, and in contrast, the natural and human sciences use reason and rational technique to investigate nature and culture. The former may be specifically Christian, while the latter are said to be open to all on a common, rational/empirical basis.
Yet on the model offered by traditional scholastic theology, the Christian religion does not transform. Faith is nothing more than a salvation-giving supplement to “ordinary life”. Such a scholasticism has not only curtailed and restricted the possibility of scientifically understanding “all things” from a scripturally ordered standpoint - the task of the Christian University - it has also functioned to introduce into the area zoned “sacred” ways of thinking actually derived from various pagan or neo-pagan standpoints. Neo-Calvinism challenged this traditional formulation. As it developed, it no more saw theology as sacred than it regarded science as secular. It did not speak that language. Rather, it sees each discipline as addressing aspects or features of the creation order, each in terms of its irreducible and specific focus, but always from the standpoint of a scripturally directed world and life view. On this basis it has repeatedly challenged the claim of scholastic theology to be the queen of the sciences.[5]
Rather, the scriptures are seen as the divinely granted norm of what we are to believe. While all of the sciences are called to bow before Jesus Christ in humble and adoring service, no science can investigate God Himself.[6] The scriptures are not God-given theory, but they are the basis from which we should engage in the task of understanding the order of creation theoretically. The scriptures are given to all humankind: to the theoretician and non-theoretician alike; and we are all called to heed the life-giving Word, and to do so in every aspect of our lives.[7]
However, although the Calvinistic Reformation was prey to late sixteenth-century scholastic tendencies,[8] scholasticism does not represent the best insight of Calvin himself.[9] And it was from the latter that what I have termed “neo-Calvinism” sought to draw - hence my use of this term. It sought to re-articulate, in the greatly changed circumstances of the nineteenth-century, the bedrock Augustinian-Calvinian view of the Sovereignty of God over all creatures; and therefore over all human life and endeavour, including science and scholarship. It saw all human thought and conduct as response: either as expressive of an obedient response to the Almighty’s revelation of himself and his will for us in Jesus Christ; or as a disbelieving and rebellious response indicative of submission to, and service of, a false god. If this sounds strange and “over the top” to us today, we need perhaps to remind ourselves that the bible never discusses a people without reference to their gods.
With these considerations in view we can see that the French revolution, with its repudiation of belief in God as the sovereign ruler of governments and nations, and the religious assertion of the supposed sovereignty and rights of man, cannot be dismissed as a mere secular event, but was profoundly religious in character. And, of course, under the impact of its own apostate ideology the revolution soon achieved the reversal of its own heady rhetoric. Instead of liberty came the totalitarian state. Belief in the sovereignty of the people proved to be no defence against the tyrannies of governments who claimed to do all in the name of the people - whatever the cost to the people themselves.
Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer
Under the impact of all of this many European Christians became increasingly Conservative in their political outlook.[10]Yet it soon became clear that the revolution had marked a fundamental change in the fabric of European life and thought. There was no going back. Even conservatives found themselves shaped by the new public philosophy. In the Netherlands, under William I (1772-1843), it became apparent that at least some conservatives were willing to resort to revolutionary methods if it suited their policies and aided the imposition of their agenda upon the whole of society. All this deeply exercised the first of the two “neo-Calvinistic” thinkers whom I will discuss: the Dutch aristocrat Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876).[11] He was among those influenced by the reveil, a trans-national movement of renewal that combined aspects of the older Calvinism and eighteenth-century evangelicalism. Groen received no great support in his lifetime. Yet he did not stagnate, and his insight deepened considerably during the course of his public and literary life. In the long run he transcended the limits of his initial conservatism. He came to see that traditionalism, as well as revolution, involved deep forms of spiritual disobedience. His remarkably perceptive masterpiece, Ongeloof en Revolutie, [Unbelief and Revolution] was published in 1847.[12] By this time the principles of the revolution were most consistently presenting themselves in Dutch and European life in the form of liberalism.
According to liberalism, individual human beings know best what to do with their lives and how to live. They have sufficient reason to make rational choices in the course of life. Although the bible warns us that there is a way that may seem good to men, but the end of which is death, the assumption is that human beings know best what is good for them. They and their reasoning are the final court of appeal. They are autonomous, a law unto themselves. This is the religious basis of the (so-called) “enlightened philosophy” that drives liberal theology and liberal socio-economic-political principles and theory. With such a creed to live by men delight in their insights, but repudiate all need of a divine revelation. They see themselves as needing adjustment and re-organisation, not faith, repentance, and deliverance. Liberalism declared the privatisation of religion: it was inner, private and personal, and had no place in public affairs. This was the spirit with which Groen struggled, and it is - with many a variation - the spirit that confronts us in our own day.
Abraham Kuyper
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) understood this.[13] He placed the thought and principles of Groen at the centre-stage of Dutch life. He brought a prodigious drive and energy to the articulation and implementation of his vision of a renewed Calvinism. His enemies called him “Abraham the Terrible”. It is hard not to conclude that if he had flourished in a German or English speaking nation he would have enjoyed a reputation among us comparable to that of a Luther or a Wesley. His published writings, which have never been fully collected, appear to have been greater in volume than those of Luther. It was Kuyper who was to refine and bring to public prominence Groen’s critique of the revolution and liberalism. Following his conversion by the mid-1860s, Kuyper is to be found opposing liberalism and arguing that the revolutionary idea of popular sovereignty had no place in the church. And consistency moved Kuyper to apply this principle also to the areas of school and university education, and public life generally. Groen finally broke with conservatism in 1871, and there followed a comprehensive reconstruction of the Anti-Revolutionary Party for which he had done so much in its establishment. This Christian political party now emerged as taking a stand in political life that was not driven by ideologies derived from the Revolution or the resulting Reaction. It was reformative rather than revolutionary. And it showed Christians how to engage in a principled way in the political life of a pluralistic society.[14]
Kuyper deepened and refined the insights of Groen. Kuyper grasped that while the state had to do with all things, from the standpoint of its public-legal responsibilities, nevertheless, the state was not all things, and that the totality of human society (comprising marriages, families, schools, companies, and so forth) did not amount to so many segments of the state. Very early on Groen had become involved in the Christian Day-School struggle - the struggle to break free from the claim of the liberal state to monopolise schooling and education at all levels.[15] Kuyper continued that struggle.[16] And, most significantly for our discussion today, he extended that struggle to the sphere of higher education. Although he eventually became the Prime Minister of his country, perhaps his greatest achievement was the founding and establishment of the Free University of Amsterdam in 1880. Of course, he was not the only person involved, but I think it right to say that he was foremost in the development of that vision. At the formal opening he declared, with words that deserve a place in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations: "There is not an inch in the whole territory of human life which Christ, the Sovereign over all, does not call Mine!"[17] Kuyper saw that the religion of the bible entailed a Christian worldview that was bound to stand over and against all scientific and scholarly endeavour that investigated the same creation order, but that did not share its starting point.[18] In implementing this view, Kuyper broke the then secular monopoly in higher education in the Netherlands, continuing the process that had started with the Day Schools.
What is a Free University?
For Kuyper the university should be public and free. Moreover, by talking about a Free University he positively declared that a university that was subservient to the church, or the state, or to industry and agri-business, or to commerce, would not be free to fulfil its divine calling. And this was the freedom he sought. As a corporate entity of a distinct type, a free Christian University is directly subject to Jesus Christ. Its task and authority is not that of church or state or business. It is not independent from them as if separate from the body of Christ, but it is not subordinate or subsidiary to them; and church, state and business should have no jurisdiction over the Christian University. It is to enjoy a God-given freedom in the service of Jesus Christ. We need to keep this in view when some in the churches insist that the Christian University, and associations formed to establish Christian Universities, must subscribe to ecclesiastically approved and perhaps even ecclesiastically imposed statements in order to establish their Christian bona fides.[19]
We also need to keep this in view as we consider the way in which the Federal Government in Australia, from the era of John Dawkins onwards, has been imposing its anti-scholarship, anti-philosophy, anti-literature, anti-classics, anti-humanities, anti-history, anti-pure research agendas upon the universities of this country in the name of its notion of what constitutes the so-called national interest.[20] The external facade of our universities might be the same (if a little decayed) but within we are no longer teaching students to think critically, and no longer providing them with a training in science itself, we are now training them to maximise their efficiency as absorbers of information.[21]
These evils are upon us not least for want of genuinely free universities. Moreover, by being highly restrictive in their authorisations of the use of the term “university”, state and federal governments may be seen as laying themselves open to the charge of tending to restrict as a monopoly the public-legal use of the term “university” to institutions that they control and upon which they are able to impose their own secular-materialist higher educational agenda - even though and as that agenda is, arguably, undermining the true character and purpose of the university. So-called “economic rationalism” is now the order of the day. It is the ruling ideology.[22] It is being applied to the entire university in all of its faculties and departments. All are liable to be undermined by a view that might serve to exclude entire disciplines from the university unless they increase the value/volume of exports, and/or somehow reduce the cost per unit of production, and/or improve the terms of trade.[23]
Governments, churches and business should all support the Free Christian University, but they should do so as governments, as churches and as businesses, and not make the price of their support an undermining of the specific calling of the university. The latter must be free to follow its calling before the face of God without the control or constraint of state, church, or commerce. And we should not forget the extent to which truth and clarity and accuracy have been fostered in science by the influence of Christianity. Indeed, the Christian religion, when rightly understood and practised, has never been on the side of ignorance and obscurantism.
Moreover, and in this context, we should not ignore the ways in which business can undermine the scientific integrity of the university and its research work. As the government seeks more control over the university, it seeks to minimise costs by encouraging the university to be more “open” to “collaborations” and “joint-ventures” with the “corporate sector”. However, close links of the wrong type with industry and commerce can compromise the integrity of scientific findings where scientific scrupulousness and stringency offends the corporate priorities of profitability and acceptable public image.[24] By contrast, the scientific and scholarly enterprise is to be undertaken in the Godgiven freedom of a full and free submission to the Word of God. The responsible freedom of the scientist and scholar must be upheld and protected against any constraint and dominion of church, state, commerce, or any other societal structure.