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WHERE WOULD WE BE TODAY IF WE TOOK MALIK'S CHRISTIAN CRITIQUE OF THE UNIVERSITY TO HEART?
PETER KREEFT
I recently discovered Charles Malik’s work, A Christian Critique of the University,1and was blown away by it. I’m not a fan of talking about how to talk or educating people on how to educate, so I did not expect anything that remarkable in a book on education. But I would say this is the single masterpiece in the twentieth century on Christian education, unless you count C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man.
Since I am a beginner with regard to Professor Malik, I will use a beginner’s method: I will let myself be taught rather than teach. That is, about half of my words are going to be his words, and I will be very content to be a dwarf climbing up on the shoulders of this giant.
Where would we be if we had taken his advice? Nobody knows. Nobody has a crystal ball. But the necessity of taking his advice is the burden of this chapter. We have done very little in the way of taking the advice of this great book, so let me try to repeat his message. I have four main points.
First, I will reflect on the importance of the university for Western civilization: its past, present, and future. Second, I will address the meaning and absolute need for asking the question, the main point of the book, “What does Jesus Christ think of the university?”2Third, I will consider how that question is going to fall on our universities, which are certainly in crisis. I will discuss the historical fall of universities from their original tasks to their present state and the idolatry and arrogance that Professor Malik sees in the sciences and the humanities. And finally, a solution. I will discuss three specific solutions and one general solution.
Professor Malik insisted on not abandoning secular universities but regenerating them. He also suggested the formation of an ongoing institute to study this problem. He was also strong on the ecumenical dimensions of that problem and the need for an ecumenical solution, not only among Christians but also between Christians and Muslims, which is an area I’d like to explore. Finally, the most important question of all is, what kind of person must you be in order to implement the solution? That is indeed the first question. I love the Chinese saying: “When the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.”
The Importance of the University for Western Civilization
I never realized how important the university was for our civilization until I read this passage from chapter 1 of A Christian Critique of the University:
The university is one of the greatest creations of Western civilization. There is the family, the church, the state, the economic enterprise, the professions, the media, and the university. These seven institutions with all their living traditions and with all that they mean, constitute the substance of Western civilization. And while in other civilizations there are families, religious institutions, states, institutions for the creation of goods and wealth, a profusion of crafts and professions and even certain public modes of disseminating information, the university, as universally recognized today, is more distinctive of Western civilization than of any other.3
This great Western institution . . . dominates the world today more than any other institution: more than the church, more than the government, more than all other institutions. All the leaders of government are graduates of universities. . . . The same applies to all church leaders. . . . The professionals—doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc.—have all passed through the mill of . . . the university. And the men of the media are university-trained.4
It’s a simple cause-and-effect principle. Touch the cause and you touch the effect. Influence the university and you influence the world.
Our universities are in crisis. They are in crisis partly because they have not been faithful to their origins. They have a double origin: secular and religious, Greek and Christian.
The ultimate origin of the university is among the Greeks. Here is how the Greeks were distinctive, unique:
More than by anything else, Western civilization is defined by total fearlessness of and openness to the truth. To the extent this civilization begins to harbor reservations about this fearlessness and this openness it ceases to be itself, i.e., Western; and to the extent a society, any society, has developed fearlessness of and openness to the truth, it has become Westernized. . . . An inhibition of [this] original curiosity has blunted Soviet universities. . . . This blunting, inhibiting virus has infected Western universities themselves [especially] with respect to the knowledge of Christianity. . . . The original universal Greek curiosity is gradually becoming overwhelmed!5
Notice the togetherness of the secular and the religious here. The principal of openness to truth is not a distinctively Christian principle, but on the basis of that principle openness to Christianity would be a part of the university’s program. How much does Harvard University talk about Christianity in the classroom? So this is not just a lack of fidelity to Christianity, it’s a lack of fidelity to itself as a university.
What are at stake in this crisis, he says, are not only the mind and spirit and character of our children. What could be more important than that? When our own mind and spirit and character are at stake, then the entire fate of Western civilization and therewith the fate of the world is at stake as well.
This is not, however, a doomsday scenario. It is an opportunity. A crisis is a means of growth. The glass of water is always half full. Every great achievement in history is a result of a crisis. It’s the “challenge and response” that Arnold Toynbee defined as the moving force of human history. The university, alik writes, is “a clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world.”6Remember Archimedes’s famous statement: “Give me a lever and a fulcrum to rest it on and I can move the world.” What is the Archimedean point of the world today? The university.
The challenge is for the church to realize this: that no greater service can it render both to itself and to the cause of the gospel with which it is entrusted than to try to recapture the universities for Christ, on whom they were all originally founded. That is simply a historical fact. Not only does the university need to pay attention to the church, but the church needs to pay attention to the university. More potently than by any other means, change the university and you change the world. The ministry of the Christian scholars, the ministry of educators, is not somewhere out in left field. It’s on the pitcher’s mound. It is not an extra; it is perhaps the single most important public social ministry of the church in our age.
Christ and the University
What is the fundamental question about the relation between Christ and the university? Characteristically, Malik did not accept the ordinary answer to that question. When I think of his mind I always think of the mind of G. K. Chesterton. There was one thing that could not find a home in either mind, although it finds many homes in ours, and that one thing is baloney. Fashionable clichés were ruthlessly demolished and stood on their heads. Malik’s question is not, “What does the university think of Jesus Christ?” His question is, “What does Jesus Christ think of the university?”7C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory tells of the realization that what people used to say is wrong. They used to say, “What we think of God is the most important question.” He said, “By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important.”8
What’s the standard of truth? How I think of God or how God thinks of me? What the university thinks of Christ or what Christ thinks of the university? If I am the standard then Christ is an object, and if I am the university I am the judge and Christ is in the dock. It’s the other way around. We’re in the dock. God says the words, “I AM” (Ex. 3:14) before we do. That’s what it means to be in his image. It has been said that “God created man in His own image and we’ve been returning the compliment to God ever since.”
The foreword to The Christian Critique of the University describes the book as the third of the annual Pascal lectures on Christianity and the university. In comparing Charles Malik to Pascal, the author of the foreword, John North, quotes Pascal:
Not only do we only know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only know life and death through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot know the meaning of our life or of our death, of God or of ourselves.9
And those are the only four important things we must know.
Malik writes, “What does Jesus Christ think of the university?”10That is the question. “[The question] is valid and it has an answer. We may not know the answer but the answer exists.”11It’s a nice way of saying there is objective truth. Truth is not “whatever my department lets me get away with saying.” We may not know the answer, but the answer exists, and we may expectantly seek it, for even if it eludes us it is still there. You might think this is too difficult a question. A much easier question to answer is, what does the university think of Christ? Empirical research can tell you what the university thinks of Christ. Just send around people with tape recorders. But despite the fact that the question, what does Christ think of the university? is more difficult to answer, it’s infinitely more important to answer, and we can hope to answer it because the answer is there.
Malik says:
We are not thinking of the university first and then as a sort of afterthought of Jesus Christ; we are thinking of Jesus Christ first, and all along and in his light we see the university.12
I have put [the question] in this form rather than in the fashionably more acceptable form: How do we see the university from the Christian point of view?, because this way of putting the question soon lands us in some form of subjectivism which, as the bane of modern thought, is precisely, as we shall see, what is at stake with the university today. “From the Christian point of view” has no solid foundation unless the word Christian here means Jesus Christ himself. So from the very start I have put aside all such questionable phraseology as “from the Christian point of view,” “in terms of Christian principles,” “applying Christian principles or values,” “from the standpoint of Christian culture,” etc.13
Notice how comfortable academics are with abstract phrases and how uncomfortable they are with concrete words like “Christ.” “In fact,” Malik continues, “it is already a concession to entitle this study A Christian Critique of the University rather than simply and directly What Does Jesus Christ Think of the University?”14
Now I love InterVarsity Press, but I must criticize them for not allowing Professor Malik to publish the book under his original title, which is the real question: what does Jesus Christ think of the university?
The need for that question is absolute and obvious. That’s the next step:
If the university today dominates the world, if Jesus Christ is who the church and the Bible proclaim him to be, and if we happen to believe that . . . then how can we fail, not only to raise the question of what Jesus Christ thinks of the university, but to face the equally urgent demand: What can be done?15
We know and love Jesus Christ and that is why we ask the question and seek his will for the university. Those who do not ask it either do not know him, or know him but are afraid of him, or hate him, or do not want to ask it. . . . But it is impossible for one who knows and loves Jesus Christ not to ask the question and seek, in fear and trembling, an answer to it.16
Notice how Malik focuses you. He doesn’t let you take side roads. This is the highway. This is the main way. This is the central question. So everything in the book is only about that one central question.
Jesus is always doing that, too. He seems in the gospels to sometimes be clever and avoid things. No. It’s others who are clever and avoid things. For instance, the disciples ask him, “Lord, will many be saved?” And his answer is, “Strive to enter in” (Luke 13:24, KJV). Well, why doesn’t he answer the question directly? Fifty percent will be saved. Or 10 percent or 90 percent. Surely he knows. He doesn’t answer the question directly because that’s not the question. Those are the words. The real question was the questioner. Jesus has this incredible way of not being distracted by words. He answered the questioner. And if we can do that too, we do his work. That’s the only way we can do his work, by talking to the real person inside, not the mask and the tongue and the words that the person manipulates. Powerful and effective Christians always do that. I mentioned Pascal, I mentioned Chesterton, and I should mention St. Augustine. Professor Malik is in that category. Like a hunter he goes for the jugular:
Our immovable position is that Jesus Christ exists, that he has a will for everything, especially for that most important thing, the university, that the question as to his will for the university can and should be asked, that if we seek it with all our heart and mind and strength, he will, at his pleasure, reveal it to us.17 Jesus said, “Seek and you will find” (Matt. 7:7). “And that even if we do not know or find the answer, the answer nevertheless is still there.”18
The university exists and Jesus Christ exists and the future exists, and the university and the church and our children and grandchildren and the whole fate of man and civilization are crying for us to do something. No man can comprehend what is involved here without burning to do something. This is why I must confess I am a little skeptical of conferences. Conferences are full of words. Words are often substitutes for action.
Mother Theresa was at a conference once. She didn’t like to go to conferences. This was an ecumenical conference. She was interested in ecumenism, so she sat patiently through four or five long theological talks. They asked her what she thought about them, and she said, “They talk too much.” They said, “But, Mother, these are academics, these are theologians. They’re eloquent. That’s what they do. They talk. What else could they do?” She was in an outdoor tent and the floor was a bit dirty and there was a broom in the corner, so she answered the question by pointing to the broom. She said, “Well, the floor is kind of dirty. One of them could have picked up that broom and swept the floor. That would have said more.” I think it would have. I don’t think anyone remembered any sentence in any of those talks, but if one of those theologians would have picked up a broom they would have been talking about that until Christ came again.
The Crisis of the University
That the university is in crisis should be fairly obvious, but let us make sure we understand the obvious, and in the correct way. We see the appearance. We see the empirical facts that we cannot ignore, but we may not remember the ultimate cause. It’s certainly not fashionable to speak of the ultimate cause. What is the ultimate cause? Here it is; here is the ultimate meaning of history: we always have, in the womb of history and in the heart of man, Christ and Antichrist contending. Spiritual warfare is a pervasive theme in Scripture, present on almost every page. It is an utterly unfashionable theme to hear today. We hear instead much about “progress.”
“The forces of this kind of progress have as their ultimate aim to obliterate from history the very mention of the Name of Jesus and his cross.”19 I am told that in the nation my four grandparents were born in, the Netherlands, it will soon be illegal to mention the name Jesus in public schools.
Inquire diligently what the word progressive means (progressive person, progressive doctrine, progressive law, progressive attitude, progressive system, progressive tendency, progressive movement, progressive society, progressive culture, progressive country), and you will find it for the most part directed, consciously or unconsciously, against Jesus Christ. There is always something else put forward to make us forget him: justice, science, culture, prosperity, pleasure, serenity, peace. The important thing is to replace him . . . to crowd him out of existence altogether. Jesus radically disturbs. . . . 20
There should be no controversy at all about whether you have to be countercultural. By definition Jesus is always countercultural, and when that is forgotten corruption always sets in. “Jesus radically disturbs, and the disturbance must once and for all be put to rest.”21
We know that the first universities, which set a pattern for all other universities, were founded on Jesus Christ. Every single Ivy League university was, for instance, once a “Christian” university. Harvard still has as its motto, “Truth for Christ and the Church.” And we know that that foundation has now in practice become a relic of the past. A Christian Critique of the University raises the question of why this has happened. Is it a natural phenomenon? No. Was it an inevitable development? No. What were the ultimate spiritual causes behind it? The devil. Does it really signify progress? Well, if advanced tooth decay is progress, then yes. Progress from what to what? From childhood to adulthood? Remember how the term “adult” is used in modern America. What is an adult bookstore or adult movie?
“Can the university be recaptured for Christ? . . . Who is going to win, Christ or Antichrist?”22Those are two different questions.
The answer to the first question is yes. The answer to the second question ultimately is Christ, but Antichrist can win a lot of territory and a lot of souls temporarily. Yes, the gates of hell do not prevail against the church (cf. Matt. 16:18), but unfortunately they can prevail against many of her members.
Professor Malik analyzes the crisis in the two basic parts of the university, the sciences and the humanities. He gets specific and embarrassing, and therefore very useful. First, the sciences:
More serious is what happens to the scientist himself. . . . First is what I call the pride of knowledge and power. . . . Because he controls his subject matter, the scientist slips into the feeling that he is a kind of god. People speak of the humility of the scientist; in truth I find very little humility among scientists. They know, it is true; but what they do not know is not only greater but far more important than what they know. They control, it is true; but they are controlled far more than they control.23
It’s the old master/slave relationship. Does it matter if your slaves are made of flesh or if they’re made of metal or silicon or fiber optics? In each case, the slave is free and the master is enslaved to his need for the slave, but the slave has no need for the master. So though externally the master controls the slave, internally that is not so. Internally the master’s own need for the slave controls the master. It’s all in the Lord of the Rings. What do they teach them in school nowadays, anyway?
We return to Malik:
Second is what I call the illicit transfer of authority. Many scientists think . . . that their recognized competence in their own field qualifies them to pass judgment on matters pertaining to other spheres . . . questions of man, morals, philosophy, theology, history, truth, freedom, destiny, trial, suffering, God, Christ, the Spirit, the church. . . . Scientists should humbly acknowledge that there are authorities in other fields too, and should seek them and sit at their feet. . . . 24
Third is the error of naturalism. Because scientists give themselves to nature all their lives they often end up by worshiping it.25 Fourth, the scientist, wrapped up in and dedicated to nature, forgets himself. The fact that he is “human,” in that he suffers, loses his temper, is tempted, often falls, is selfish, is terribly limited, envies, resents, schemes, hates, is caught up in frenzied rivalries with his colleagues, rejoices in the misfortunes of others, is in desperate need for fellowship and love, faces death any minute, often does not stand up for truth and justice, often lends a hand to slander, often is not fair in his judgment of others, often wishes others did not exist and therefore murders them in his thought—all these common human frailties he is as much heir to as any other person. Science cannot save the scientist from them. In fact, like other people, scientists are prone to flee from them.26
Wonderfully ruthless honesty, isn’t it?
A “Christian” critique of the university is concerned with this fourfold temptation of the scientist—pride, pretending to know what he does not know, naturalism and self-forgetting—because Jesus Christ judges the scientist on the basis of these temptations even more than on the excellence of his scientific achievements.27
You think that’s bad? Wait until you get to the humanities!
When I started teaching back in the early 1960s, most of the atheists were science majors. Now most of the science majors are theists and most of the atheists are English majors. English and history are probably the two most corrupt departments. If the humanities were themselves in a healthy state from the point of view of Jesus Christ, they would provide the necessary corrective to the problem of the sciences, but they are not.
What’s missing? And what’s present? Well, what is present is usually presupposed:
What is presupposed is often far more subtle and potent than what is explicitly taught; what you are silent about will pass as something so much taken for granted that you do not need to say a word about it; while what you explicitly put forward may be arguable. Therefore seek first what the university is silent about, and then you know the secret of the university.28
[T]here is something almost universally absent in all the humanities, and that is any reference to something genuinely transcendent. . . . 29
Malik lists a few dozen problems in the humanities, but I’m going to focus on just four. One is skepticism:
Nothing certain. No absolute. All ultimately misty. Living in a world of doubt and suspicion. Every sentence hedged by some reservation, some warning, some caveat.30
Otherwise you’re dogmatic, simpleminded. Two and two may be four if you really believe it. Even deeper is cynicism:
There is also a great deal of cleverness, calculation and cynicism in the humanities. . . . One seeks in vain for the great and confident mind that takes a firm and sustained stand on the great issues of life and death and purpose and meaning and being. . . . In business and in the technological world one finds such minds, and in their own spheres they are respected, but very rarely in the realm of the humanities. What meets us here is for the most part the chilling smile of the cynic . . . who dismisses everything, even the most momentous . . . who enjoys the game of elaborating endless arguments which invariably end up in the total obfuscation of what is discussed. Darkness, uncertainty, insecurity, the dissolution of being into non-being, the “vanity of vanities, all is vanity” of Ecclesiastes—this is the mood and fundamental attitude. . . . The lips are not firm, there is not even laughter: there is only that soul-scorching awful smile.31
Those of you who teach in humanities departments in secular universities unfortunately know what Malik means. Still deeper, nihilism:
It is incredible how much the spirit of nihilism pervades the humanities today. . . . Pull down and annihilate everything that is: customs, traditions, institutions, establishments, revered values, the sensibilities of parents, the names of the great, the classical norms. The rule, the intent, is to debunk everything. And while you are not in power yourself, pull down those who are. The spirit of destroying everything stalks the earth. The malicious pleasure in destruction is one of the most deep-seated impulses in human nature: it is Satanic.32
Even Freud came close to recognizing that. It’s a death wish.
One more characteristic of the humanities is an index of their decadence. It is something very specific, very concrete, very apparently small but much more telling than we think. Everyone is in a hurry. Our relationship to time is about the same as our relationship to nature; we have to conquer it. “The humanities, both students and professors, are in a hurry. They must get somewhere! God knows where!”33 This is your pilot speaking. We have good news and bad news. The good news is we are proceeding at 750 miles per hour. The bad news is we have no idea where we’re going.
“They cannot rest where they are! ‘Be still and know that I am God,’ that they hardly know. Stillness, which belongs to the essence of the humanities, has been distilled out of them altogether.”34One insight that keeps haunting me from Kierkegaard, repeated constantly in the Journals goes something like this: “If I could prescribe one remedy for all the ills of the modern world I would prescribe silence. For even if the truth were proclaimed, even if the word of God were proclaimed from the housetops it would not be heard. There is too much noise. So first create silence.”
But, Malik writes:
The deadline must be met, the manuscript must be completed, the dissertation must be revised, the meeting must be attended, the appointment must be kept, the news must be followed, the developments must be watched, the latest literature must be mastered, their anxieties about their position and their future must be allayed—and therefore they can give you only five minutes! And even in these five minutes their mind is not on you. There is no stillness, no quiet, no rest, no living in the presence of eternity, no overcoming of time and its pressures, no unfretting patience, no resting in being just yourself. . . . They must be on the go all the time. Again, on the go where—God knows.35
[T]he humanities mean peace, grace, patience, communion with others, the joys of fellowship and sharing, the art of relaxed, creative conversation, abiding friendship, love—love of the subject matter and love of your friends—the suspension of time, forgetting even yourself, that incredible inner-freedom which creates on the spot, God knows how and God knows from where.36
It’s the secret of creativity. It seems that that’s the thing the humanities are terrified of.
One of the things I am most impressed by in this analysis is that Malik does not simply talk like a sociologist and give you statistics, facts, problems, the obvious surface data. He goes to causes. And they are not just the causes that we all know. He goes deeper into very concrete things, very specific things. And therefore his solutions are also very concrete and very specific.
The Solution for the University
Malik gives us a four-aspect solution. Aspect number one is strategy. Should we start new universities, or should we try to save the old ones? There are some very good new universities arising. Is that an adequate answer? He doesn’t think it is:
[S]hall we concentrate on recapturing the great established universities for Jesus Christ or, despairing of this task, shall we choose the line of least resistance and concentrate on establishing new Christian universities to compete with them? . . . If we concentrate only on competing, two problems arise. First, the established institutions started centuries ago with as sincere an intention as ours to serve Jesus Christ; and so how do we know that we will succeed in holding out against the onslaught of secularism, rationalism, relativism, humanism, immanentism, etc., more than they did? . . . Second, can we really compete if we start, comparatively, virtually from scratch?37
If the boat is sinking, do you take the life boat and abandon the Titanic? No, you rescue all the passengers you can. I don’t think it’s an either/or. You do both.
The second specific recommendation, the point and conclusion of the whole book, is reminiscent of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech:
Let us now think of a different procedure I spoke of as a dream. But let us give this dream a name; let us call it “The Institute.” I do not like the term institute because there are numerous and sundry institutes around, and we have in mind a task much more important, more far-reaching and more historically decisive than the task of any existing institute.38
The mandate of this Institute is fourfold: (a) To find out, in the most authoritatively objective manner possible, the exact state of mind, morals and spirit in the universities. . . . (b) To let, in fear and trembling, Jesus Christ judge this existing state of mind, morals and spirit. . . . (c) To consider the possibility of bringing Christ back to the university and to suggest practical ways and means to that end. (d) To consider that its mandate shall last as long as there are universities, namely, indefinitely.39
Astonishingly, Malik then points out that no government, no foundation, no university, and even no church has ever set up such a corporate body. Why? The book’s been out. We have read it and talked about it. We have agreed. Why haven’t we done it? Because it’s much easier to talk about something than to do it, and it’s wonderful being an academic: you can actually persuade yourself that you’ve done something simply because you’ve thought about it and talked about it. That’s how important thought is to you.
That sounds insane, but academics, as a class, are closer to insanity than anyone else. We have a saying in academia: “That idea is so crazy you have to have a PhD to believe it.” In 1900 there were one hundred times more farmers than PhDs. In the year 2000 there were one hundred times more PhDs than farmers. That says a lot about why you can fool people today.
Here is the third aspect of Malik’s solution. He doesn’t give it a name. I’ll give it a name. I’ll call it “chutzpah” or “moxie.” He contrasts the Christian response with the Muslim response, or at least a typical Christian response with a more typical Muslim response. And here I think we have something very much to learn from the Muslims. He writes:
A couple of years ago a Muslim Pakistani won a Nobel award in physics. Many other people were also honored with Nobel prizes for their diverse accomplishments. The press interviewed most of them about their reactions to the awards when they first heard of them. With the exception of the Pakistani, they all said that they were overjoyed, that they celebrated with their families and friends, and they expressed the normal feelings of satisfaction that people experience on such occasions. Only the Pakistani said that his first act was to pray to Allah (God) and thank him for having illuminated his mind and enabled it to penetrate some of the mysteries of his creation. . . . The Muslim scientist first thought of Allah (God) and not of himself or of science or of truth or of nature or of his own achievement. The Christian scientists . . . can emulate the Muslims in their total fidelity to their faith and in the courage with which they confess it from the housetops.40
I had a Muslim student in a comparative religion class once at Boston College, about twenty years ago. It was a class of about twenty-four students. Most of them were Catholic, and there was a Muslim and a Jew sitting in the front row. They were the two best students. They were fighting all the time about Palestine and they were fighting me all the time, and I loved it. They asked the hard questions. During the break (it was a three and a half hour class so we had a long break), we often had better discussions than in the class. One day we were sitting munching on potato chips and drinking Coke when the Jewish student pointed behind my head at the cinder block wall and said, “Is that supposed to be a cross?” I turned and noticed that it looked like a faint cross was painted there, and I realized that that’s where the crucifix used to be. Boston College had taken it down.
So I turned around and with an embarrassed smile opened my mouth to make some lame excuse, and the Holy Spirit shut my mouth and opened the mouth of a Catholic student next to him who said, “Oh no, we used to have crucifixes but we took them down.” And the Jewish student said, “When?” (Why is he asking when instead of why?) The student said, “Last semester, I think.” And the Jewish student said, “Aha! The Bundy money!” He explained that when President Carter assumed office there was a case that was about to go to the Supreme Court, and it was going to be very divisive. Can federal money to go parochial schools without violating the separation of church and state? McGeorge Bundy had brokered a deal under a previous administration so that the answer was yes, if and only if the school was not sectarian or negative or “narrow.” It was vague enough to satisfy everybody.
The Jewish student pointed out that in the semester following that decision, in order to apply the Bundy decision, all twenty-one Jesuit colleges in America took down their crucifixes. The Catholic student was rather abashed and said, “We wouldn’t do that for money.” And the Jewish student said, “Of course not. But I hope you got more than thirty pieces of silver this time.” Unfortunately, some of the students were so biblically illiterate that he had to explain that Judas Iscariot was the first Catholic bishop to accept a government grant. Then the Catholic student said, “No, we took down the crucifixes to be ecumenical.”
Then the Muslim student chimed in, “Excuse me, what is the meaning of that word? I do not know ‘ecumenical.’ ” Once again I opened my mouth to answer and once again the Holy Spirit, in the nick of time, shut it and opened the mouth of another student next to him who gave about the stupidest answer to the question imaginable: “Ecumenical means we didn’t want to offend anyone else, since we’re all equal.”
The Muslim student said, “Oh, you did it in order to avoid offending others? You mean like me, the Muslim, and my friend the Jew?” Everyone was very quiet. Those two words were too concrete: “Muslim,” “Jew”; we don’t talk that language. “People of faith,” something vague. “Well, yes,” said the Catholic, “we did it so as not to offend you.”
“Well you have offended me.”
“Why have we offended you?”
“You have called me a bigot.”
“No, no, we hate bigotry. That’s why we’re doing this. Why are you offended by our gesture to you for your sake?”
“Let me try to explain. If you came to my country and enrolled in a Muslim university, you would know you are in a Muslim university. We do not have images, we think it’s idolatrous, but you know you are in a Muslim university. Would you be offended at a Muslim symbol in a Muslim university? Of course not. Only a bigot would. Now you expect me to be offended at a Catholic university by a Catholic symbol. So you’re calling me a bigot by taking down your crucifixes. I am highly insulted.”
I was the only one smiling. I’m a philosopher. I like to smell the wood burning. I like to smell people thinking. Too often the wheel continues turning even after the hamster is dead.
Then, God bless him, the Muslim student turned around like an evangelist, faced the class, and said, “How many of you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?” I said to myself, Why wasn’t I courageous enough to ask that question? They almost all raised their hand. And he said, “Well we Muslims don’t believe that. We think it’s an absurd idea. That’s pagan. That’s idolatry. But we respect Jesus, blessed be his name, as one of the greatest prophets of all time, and we believe that Allah created him without a mother, miraculously, and that he performed miracles and raised the dead and that he is a true prophet and even that he will come again at the end of the world to execute Allah’s judgment. So we have a great devotion to Jesus and his mother Mary. Blessed be their names. So if we had pictures of them we would never take them down. Not for any money at all. In fact, if some troops from the government came into our classroom with rifles and fixed bayonets and said, ‘There has been a regime change. The law says you must take down the pictures of the prophet Jesus,’ then every good Muslim would get out of his chair, go to the front of that picture and say, ‘You take down the pictures of our beloved prophet over our dead bodies.’ We would be privileged to be a martyr for our beloved prophet. And now you have taken down your pictures of your prophet just to avoid offending us. I think we are better Christians than you.” Something deeper than thought was touched that day in my students’ souls.
You know, at Georgetown they got the crucifixes back only because the students pressured the faculty and the administration. And the two faculty members that were on the side of the students and organized the thing were a Jew and a Muslim. Why do we have to let others fight our battles for us? That was a typical Muslim response. Here is, unfortunately, a typical Christian response. I speak as a Catholic because I know that place the best. Here is an unfortunate Catholic example: I was on the campus of Notre Dame and was impressed by the students. They are very pious, serious, and holy; they go to church all the time. But the administration is another matter.
This is by Father Richard John Neuhaus from First Things magazine:
Many were cheered when Father John Jenkins was appointed president of the University of Notre Dame. I have written in these pages on the recent and encouraging signs that Notre Dame was being renewed in a vibrant sense of its identity and mission as a Catholic University. In January, Fr. Jenkins took up the question of the performance of The Vagina Monologues and the sponsorship of a Queer Film Festival as an occasion to address what it means to be a Catholic university. In that statement, he asked many of the right questions and lifted the hopes of those who believe that clear Catholic commitment is the key to Notre Dame’s greatness as a university. Then [a few months later] after extensive consultation with faculty, students, and other interested parties, Fr. Jenkins issued his decision. The Vagina Monologues and the film festival would continue. This was met with cries of disappointment and outrage from those whose hopes had been lifted. My initial response was to urge calm. While he had made the wrong decision about a potty-mouthed play and a specific promotion of the homosexual cause, I wrote, this does not necessarily define his leadership of Notre Dame. . . . I am afraid I was wrong. Fr. Jenkins himself made the controversy over these two issues a litmus test in defining his understanding of what it means to be a Catholic university. . . . [He] offered the assurance that Notre Dame will try to “achieve balance, to achieve the kind of conversation that is fair, that is intellectually serious, that includes, when appropriate, the Catholic perspective.” A university that includes, when deemed appropriate, the Catholic perspective is something less than a Catholic university.41
More impressive than Father Jenkins words was the open letter issued by the chairman of the Department of Theology at Notre Dame who noted that
there is “a missing conversation partner. The statement of our president barely mentions the Church . . . [but] whether we recognize it or not this relationship to the Church, to the real, incarnate Body of Christ, the Church as it is with all its blemishes and not the abstract, idealized Church in our minds—is the lifeblood and only guarantee of our identity as a Catholic university. There is no Catholic identity apart from affiliation with the Church. . . . The ancient Gnostic heresy developed an elitist intellectual tradition which eschewed connection to the “fleshly” church of the bishop. . . . Are we in danger of developing a gnosticized version of the “Catholic intellectual tradition,” one which floats free of any norming connection and so free of any concrete claim to Catholic identity?42
At the very least the Bible provides a kind of “church on paper” for all Protestants, even para-church Protestants. But something concrete, some bunch of people, some authority structure must be there as a reference point. Otherwise you have ideas, clouds. Then your thought is like a plane and not a car. Cars can crack up. There are curbs and there are trees. My son as a teenager cracked up the car three times. He is now a pilot. There are no curbs in the air. Academics often forget that thoughts are like cars, they are not like planes, and other thoughts are like curbs. They bump up against them. They contradict them. Above all, things are like curbs. Real things limit and measure thoughts, not the other way around. Thoughts are like cars or curbs. They are not like clouds. Ideas have consequences.
Professor Malik has written some wonderful things. The best thing I have ever read from him is a book called The Wonder of Being. It answers the fundamental question, “What kind of a person must you be in order to bring Christ into the university and in order to do His will for the university?” Listen to a few paragraphs from this remarkable work:
There goes on in the soul of each one of us a fateful struggle between two persons—the person of being and the person of non-being. Which has the upper hand is the deepest question that can be asked about us at any given moment. The person of being stands in awe before the wonderful plenitude of being. . . . The person of non-being dissolves this plenitude. . . . The person of being affirms—and rejoices—in every positive being. The person of not-being . . . only affirms in order to contradict—that is, to destroy some positive being. The person of being sometimes stops talking altogether, because he is lost in contemplation and wonder. The person of not being never stops talking, because that is his way of destroying or suspending or covering up or drowning his sense of amazement at being. . . .
The person of being is always taken by the norm, the rule, that which for the most part is the case; he never averts his gaze from it to the abnormal and exceptional. On the contrary, he understands these only in terms of it. The person of not being appears not to be interested in what is true as a rule, but always hunts the abnormal, the aberrant, the exotic, and in terms of these he feigns to understand the rule and the norm. He does not see the wonder of being true as a norm to be aspired to or as a rule to be upheld. . . . And since there is no rule to the abnormal, he is always essentially without a rule himself. . . .
Put a being before a person of being and [he will submit to its being in love and adoration]. . . . Put a being before the person of not being, and his first impulse is to manipulate it, to use it, to bring it under his control; he wants it to submit to him.43
The single most illuminating sentence I have ever read about the difference between modern civilization and pre-modern civilization is found C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. He says, “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For [modern man] the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is technique.”44
The person of being rejoices in being and is deeply thankful for it. The person of non-being is incapable of thanking or being thankful for anything. Father Norris Clark, the great Thomist philosopher, came to Boston College recently and told us of his trip to Tibet. He went to Tibet on his own to talk with some Buddhist monks on a very high level. He was at first very impressed by their peace, their seriousness, their silence, their control of thought and desire. He asked them, “What ordinary state of mind is the most important one for what you call the religious life?” and they said, “Gratitude.” And he said, “Wonderful. That is what I would say too. Gratitude for what?” And they said, “Gratitude for everything.” And he said, “That is extremely wise. Now, to whom are you grateful for everything if you do not believe in God?” And he said they were incredibly confused. They said, “We never ask that question.” At least they have the first step; they have gratitude, although they don’t know to whom to be grateful. I think it’s far easier to make a Buddhist into a Christian than to make a deconstructionist into a Buddhist.
Malik continues:
The typical act of a person of being is stillness and adoration, as with Jesus’ friend Mary. The typical act of a person of not being is business and activity and analytical obfuscation, as with her sister Martha. . . . What is it that calls forth the person of not being in us, and what is it that calls forth the person of being? . . . My answer is that only Jesus Christ of Nazareth calls forth the person of being in us, whether or not we know it. I know why he does it—he does it because he loves us—but I do not know how. . . .
In his tremendous speculations about the teleology of the universe, Aristotle was really seeking Jesus of Nazareth. . . . In his insistence on a supreme and beneficent “good” behind all phenomena . . . Plato was really seeking Jesus of Nazareth. . . . In his wonder about the [mind] behind the order of the universe, Anaxagoras was really seeking Jesus of Nazareth. . . . Do you think it is only in these latter days that people are demythologizing the data of our faith, or romanticizing or secularizing them or denying or explaining them away? There is nothing new in these attempts. The church has faced similar movements in its first seven centuries and dealt decisively with them; we need to restore in our thinking the historical dimension of our heritage. . . . [The only thing that] is really new, radically new, is the new creature in Jesus Christ. . . . How you and I confront and react to Jesus Christ-—that is the only really new thing that occurs in history. . . .
Only the new creature, born from above, “born of the Spirit,” can see everything in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ in everything. And only this new birth and this mode of seeing in and through Jesus Christ is new in history. [So] if you take him at his word, then nothing can be the same again for you in the world and in your life.45
You would expect that a book that raises questions as serious as these would give a method, a set of answers or guidelines, a way to bring about the will of Christ in the university. The first time I read The Wonder of Being, I confess I was disappointed that he didn’t do that. Then I realized that this is one of the things that make it a great book. It’s like the book of Job. The first few times I read the book of Job I was disappointed. God didn’t give Job a philosophical answer. He didn’t even read him chapter 1: “See, this is why I’m doing it, I’m testing you.” All he said was, “Here I am” (cf. Job 38–40). And Job fell down at his feet and said, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6, KJV).
If Professor Malik had given us a five-year plan or a twelve-step program or a twenty-point manifesto we would have said, “Oh that’s the answer.” And then we could have prayed, “Jesus, please be the key to open the door to this manifesto or this five-year plan.” We would have seen Jesus as the key, and we would have seen the problem as the door. That’s the way we usually see our lives. Here we are, and here is our life with all its problems, and here is Christ at the top who has the golden key that will open all the doors. That, I suggest, is not the right way to see our lives. Our lives are not an encounter of three things: you, your life, and Christ. Your life is a bi-polar relationship. It’s like a ladder. It has a top and a bottom. Think of Jacob’s ladder moving between heaven and earth. Here you are at the bottom. Here is Christ at the top. He sends his angels down and up. The ladder is a highway. Everything that happens in your life—your problems, solutions, joys, pain, suffering, your prayers, works, problems of the university, your career, the solutions—these are all tasks sent to you by Christ. Everything is a means to him. Everything is relative to him.
There are only two absolutes because there are only two persons that you will never, ever be able to avoid and escape in all eternity: yourself and Christ. And therefore an answer to the question, how do we do it, valid as that might be, is a temptation to make that the end and Christ a means to it. If, on the other hand, we recognize that Christ is the absolute and that the very problems that we’re here worrying about are problems that he has sent to us to be our task, then we think, Isn’t it good that he has put me in these corrupt universities that are so shameless and so empty and so confused, rather than in a fulfilling, wonderful, enthusiastic time and place like the University of Paris in the thirteenth century. Isn’t it wonderful? Yes it is. That’s your task. That’s your identity. He forges your identity through these things, and he forges the identity of our civilization through these things.
The first answer to what we can do to save the university and to save Western civilization, wonderful and precious as these things are, is to stop idolizing them. We are not guaranteed success and salvation for anything other than our souls. The mind is the captain of the soul. If we capture our thoughts we capture everything else. So thought is absolutely crucial. But neither America nor Greek philosophy nor Western civilization has ever been promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against them. We ourselves are the recipients of that promise. Christ, in his respect for our freedom, has given us the task, “Go and do this but I’m not telling you how. Create the ways.” That is what we must do. That is what Charles Malik did.
Where would we be if we had done it, if we had taken Malik’s Christian Critique of the University to heart? We would not be asking that question in the subjunctive mood; we would be where Christ wants us to be.
Where is that? The only way to find out is to go there, by doing it.
Discussion Questions
1. What difference does it make in trying to “recapture the universities for Christ” that the university has a distinctly Christian origin?
2. Why is the question, what does Christ think of the university, the truly important question to ask?
3. Empirically it is relatively less difficult to discern what the university thinks of Christ. How might we go about discerning what Christ thinks of the university? What implications does this question have for our own actions with regard to higher education?
4. Have you ever witnessed a specific way in which a scientist has given in to one aspect of the “fourfold temptation”? Which of these four temptations do you believe is most prevalent? How is Jesus Christ a response to these temptations?
5. Have you ever witnessed a specific way in which a scholar of the humanities has exhibited skepticism, cynicism, or nihilism? Which of these three beliefs is most prevalent? What does the truth of Christ have to say to each?
6. In what ways do you see “hurry” affecting your own work within the university? How do you see it affecting the university as a whole? In what ways can you begin to find peace and stillness before God in your daily life? How can you encourage others to do the same?
7. Among the various solutions that Malik mentions, which do you believe would be most effective? Which do you believe would be most practical? Do Malik’s solutions generate any ideas of your own?
8. How is the “person of being” the necessary antidote for what ails the university today? How can one become such a person?
1. Charles Malik, A Christian Critique of the University, 2nd ed. (Ontario: North Waterloo Academic Press, 1987). First edition published Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1982. All references hereafter will be from the second edition.
2. Ibid., 24.
3. Ibid., 15.
4. Ibid., 19–20.
5. Ibid., 19.
6. Ibid., 100.
7. Ibid., 24.
8. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2001), 38.
9. Malik, Christian Critique of the University, 10.
10. Ibid., 24.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 25.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 21.
16. Ibid., 105.
17. Ibid., 104.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., 31.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 32.
23. Ibid., 42.
24. Ibid., 42–43.
25. Ibid., 44.
26. Ibid., 44–45.
27. Ibid., 45.
28. Ibid., 70.
29. Ibid., 71.
30. Ibid., 73.
31. Ibid., 77–78.
32. Ibid., 78.
33. Ibid., 80.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., 81.
37. Ibid., 106.
38. Ibid., 110.
39. Ibid., 112.
40. Ibid., 55.
41. Richard John Neuhaus, “While We’re at It,” First Things 164 (June/July 2006): 63–64.
42. Ibid., 64.
43. Charles Malik, The Wonder of Being (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1974). The text cited here is from Charles Malik, “The Wonder of Being,” in Kelly Monroe ed., Finding God at Harvard (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2007), 338–39.
44. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 2001 ed. (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 2001), 77.
45. Malik, “The Wonder of Being,” 340–46.