By Cornelius Plantinga Jr.
Harvard had it and lost it! The same need not be said about your institution or your education.
The book in a sentence (or two):
Neal Plantinga wrote Engaging God’s World to drive home the point that “education is for service in the kingdom of God — or for shalom in God’s Kingdom” (137). “He frames education through the big themes of creation, fall, redemption, vocation, and the kingdom of God with the view of helping students and schools recognize and articulate a Christian “world and life view” (xvi).
About the author:
Cornelius “Neal” Plantinga, Jr. is Senior Research Fellow at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and president emeritus of Calvin Theological Seminary. Neal was Dean of the Chapel from 1996 to 2001 at Calvin University and served as professor (1979-1996) and president (2001-2011) at Calvin Theological Seminary.
My quick take on Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of faith, learning, and living:
This book is excellent . . . outstanding! It is necessary reading for any Christian college that wants to remain on the foundation of Christ and for any collegiate who wants to prepare for a life of service to Christ and his kingdom.
Overview and Analysis:
About two-thirds of colleges in the US by the time of the Civil War, including Harvard, “were either founded or controlled by the theological heirs of John Calvin” (ix). Harvard’s mission statement was distinctly Christian:
Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed, to consider well [that] the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, Jn. 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning.
Harvard, like so many schools of higher learning, slipped off of that foundation. Plantinga notes, “Keeping a strong Christian purpose on any campus requires an enormous effort” (xiv). The same could be said for any student who desires to form and live a Christian vision of life in service to Christ and his kingdom.
But no matter how a Christian college plans to integrate faith, learning, and service, it will never just conduct education-as-usual — not if it is serious about Christian higher education. It won’t even do education-as-usual with Bible classes tacked on, or education-as-usual with prayers before class, or education-as-usual with a service-learning component and a ten o’clock chapel break. No, a solidly-built Christian college will rise from its faith in Jesus Christ and then explore the height and depth, the length and breadth of what it means to build on this faith — not just for four years at college, but also for a lifetime of learning and work within the kingdom of God. In short, like the Puritans at Harvard, the sponsors of top-notch Christian higher education in the twenty-first century will “lay Christ in the bottome” (xiv).
The author, who anchors his perspective in the written word of God and views learning as a “spiritual calling” that attaches us to God, devotes five chapters to helping readers frame a Christian worldview of education:
Longing and Hope: As Augustine said in his Confessions, “O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Plantinga helps us see that all longing is rooted in a deeper longing for God, “even when what we really want is a green valley, or a good time from our past, or a loved one” (7). “Without the lens of Scripture to correct and enlarge our vision, we see the world with self-referential bias” (10). Our vision is (should be) shalom, the world as the way it should be — which only comes about through life in Christ.
Creation: “Scripture tells us who created the wonders of the world, and why. Studies of these wonders tells us, at least in part, how God did his wonders, and when. Both Scripture and science reveal God’s nature and interests” (24). Created in God’s image, Christians image God by exercising “responsible dominion” over creation, living in communion with one another, and conforming to Jesus in suffering and death (self-giving love). Plantinga explains the meaning of the doctrine of creation for education: creation is redeemable, mysterious, separate from God (and therefore admired but not worshiped), good, and deserving of our stewardship (34-41). The doctrine of creation places us as image bearers, not mere evolved products. “We image God in our personhood, communion, responsibility, dignity, virtue, suffering, and freedom” (41). As those created by a sovereign God, humility should mark our lives.
The Fall: Creation sings and it groans (Romans 8:21-22), and it groans because of sin and evil, defined “as any spoiling of shalom, and deviation from the way God wants things to be” (51). As Augustine says, “sin becomes the punishment of sin” (58). A fallen world is a corrupt world, joining together what God has put asunder, dumping toxins into what God calls good and making idols (“whatever your heart clings to”) of fame, money, power . . . or anything that competes with God for our affection. Sin corrupts our character and our relationships, and yet, God in his goodness extends common grace: “the goodness of God shown to all, regardless of faith, consisting in natural blessings, restraint of corruption, seeds of religion and political order, and a host of civilizing and humanizing impulses, patterns, and traditions” (59). We are to blame, not God (1 John 1:5). Sin is both action and “spirit of darkness” (63). Education can’t fix what is wrong, but God has graciously addressed human corruption from outside the system (68).
Redemption: “Human misery is nearly as old as the human race, but equally old is the story of God’s grace, that is God’s mercy to the undeserving” (71). Despite our sin, God provides the promise of redemption through a redeemer (Genesis 3:15). This Savior is both the sacrificial lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep and rises from the dead (78). “The Lord is risen” is the confession of redemption. God’s declarative righteousness (justification) is the explosion that starts the dead sinner’s motor; sanctification (the continual reformation God works in our hearts). Why? Because a person needs much more than a New Year’s resolution to break the corrupting power of sin, more than good feelings, a good song, or a good sermon. “The reforming of our lives is both God’s grace and our calling” (91). Life with the church is central in God’s sanctifying process.
Vocation in the Kingdom of God: The “coming of the kingdom of God” is just the New Testament way of spelling shalom. The kingdom of God is the sphere of God’s sovereignty—namely the whole universe. . . What follows is that we all have a little kingdom. That is, we all have a certain range in which our will is effective. . . Successful living depends especially on fitting our small kingdom inside God’s big kingdom, always recalling where we got our dominion in the first place. . . In short, Jesus invited (actually elected) all his followers, including any of us today who believe in him, to participate in the kingdom as its agents, witnesses, and models (103, 105-107). To be a Christian person is to be a kingdom person. We are people with a calling, first to be a part of a local church, then to live out all of life — no matter the arena — as a follower of Christ in words and actions, intent on pointing people to the way things ought to be through Christ.
So where does education come in? As Plantinga notes, “God is at war with what is anti-God. . . But the clash still shows up everywhere, and not the least in education, where opposing philosophies really do grapple with each other for the minds of students” (111). Therefore, thinking of college as no more than job training is a narrow-minded impoverishment of the kingdom of God… Your college education is meant to help you find and prepare you for your vocation and your prime citizenship in the kingdom of God (115).
My Takeaways:
Why go to a Bible College or Christian school: “If you have chosen a Christian college so you won’t have to wrestle with Nietzsche or worry about evolution, you’ve come to the wrong school. You can’t “rise with Christ” unless you died with him first, and that means enduring some dark nights of the soul” (125).
If you are a doubter: “If you are a doubter, the Bible is your book. It’s full of the doubts and laments of believers whose faith emerges only from a crucible of some kind. Jesus’ own lament from the cross, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) has become one of the most famous things he said, a small death during his big death” (125).
On arguing vs quarreling: G.K. Chesterton speaking of the arguments he had with his brother, “I am glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing; and we never once quarreled. Perhaps the principle objection to a quarrel is that it interrupts an argument” (128).
The importance of humility: “We need to recall that wisdom’s first child is humility, and that humility means a kind of realism about our place in the scheme of things so that we don’t end up thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think (Romans 12:3)” (41).
The importance of the law: “God rescues people and then lays down the law. . .The Ten Commandments are guides for a free and flourishing life. They say, “Do this and you will thrive.” Or else they say, “Don’t do this: it’ll kill you.” God’s commandments are all pro-life” (75).
Sanctification: “Once reformed, a Christian life needs continual reformation. Even our reforms need reforming, and especially when we grow proud of them or despairing of them. And the central rhythms of reform is dying and rising with Christ, practices over and over till it becomes a way of being” (86).
A Christian’s main vocation: “Is to become a prime citizen of the kingdom of God — and this is true of every Christian, of artists and engineers as well as ministers and evangelists. All are called to mesh their kingdoms with those of other citizens in order to work together inside the kingdom of God” (108).
The author piqued my curiosity about these books:
A Separate Peace by John Knowles. PBS's The Great American Read named it one of America's best-loved novels.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
No Future without Forgiveness by Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC Frederick Buechner
Words to ponder:
On redemption: “Reformed Christians take a very big view of redemption because they take a very big view of fallenness. If all has been created good and all has been corrupted, then all must be redeemed. God isn’t content to save souls; God wants to save bodies too. God isn’t content to save human beings in their individual activities; God wants to save social systems and economic structures too. . . . Everything corrupt needs to be redeemed, and that includes the whole natural world, which both sings and groans”(95-96).
The purpose of Christian higher education: “Christian higher education is ‘For Christ and His Kingdom,’ Wheaton College motto” (xiii).
The supremacy of Christ: “There is not one square inch on the whole plain of human existence over which Christ, who is Lord over all, does not proclaim: ‘This is Mine!’” Abraham Kuyper, Souvereiniteit in Eigen Kring (Amsterdam: Kruyt, 1880) (32).
Nostalgia: “Nostalgia is a yearning for what is over now” (Plantinga, 5).
Hope: “Keep hope alive and hope will keep you alive,” Louis Smedes, Commencement address, Calvin College, May 23, 1998.
Construction vs. Creation: “The whole difference between construction and creation is . . . that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists,” G.K. Chesterton, Appreciation and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens (14).
Creation: “The universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God,” The Belgic Confession, Article 2.
Prayer: “When we have met our Lord in the silent intimacy of our prayer, then we will also meet him . . . in the market, and in the town square. But when we have not met him in the center of our own hearts, we cannot expect to meet him in the busyness of our daily lives,” Henri Nouwen, Gracias!: A Latin American Journal (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), (21).
Implication of God’s creation: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror or a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal,” C.S. Lewis, Weight of Glory, (18-19).
On sin and science: “Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated, just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism…. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door,” Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review of Books, January 7, 1997, (31).
Calling: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, (119).
Racial injustice: “One of the most blasphemous consequences of injustice, especially racist injustice, is that it can make a child of God doubt that he or she is a child of God,” Desmond Mpilo Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness, (197).
On prayer for “childish things”: “Those who have not learned to ask God for childish things will have less readiness to ask Him for great ones. We must not be too high-minded. I fancy we may sometimes be deterred from small prayers by a sense of our own dignity rather than of God’s,” C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, (23).
On discipleship: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, (89).
Recommendation:
In Essays, the English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon (1561-1626) shared these memorable thoughts about reading:
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living is meant to be chewed and digested. I highly recommend Plantinga’s fine volume.
