Duane Litfin: having the right presuppositions

November 10, 2006 in Conceiving the Christian College
Tags: Duane Litfin, gospel, presuppositions

[Disclaimer]

Read the previous entry in this series!

In honor of Duane Litfin’s book being a finalist for the 2007 Lilly Fellows Program Book Award, I continue my review of the book by examining Chapter 4: “A Centered Education: CHALLENGE: to keep the center at the center”.

Recall that the center of a “Christ-centered education” is the post-resurrection Christ not the pre-resurrection Christ. Litfin continues to bring home the point that “we cannot grasp anything aright apart from him” (p. 66). But is important to understand who Litfin means by Christ, otherwise, the rest of the book doesn’t make much sense.

Foreshadowing “A Balanced Epistemology“

In Chapter 4, two of the major themes of the book, already alluded to in Chapter 3, begin to get the emphasis they deserve.

1. “Christian higher education—Christ-centered education—does not merely arrive at truth claims; it begins with them, and the most staggering truth claims at that” (p. 66). In other words, we must start with the right presuppositions.
2. “There can be no room for forcing one’s scholarship into some preset mold so as to make it come out a particular way.”

Both of these important themes are developed and reiterated throughout the book, mainly in Chapter 6.

Post-Resurrection Christ centered

The main theme of the chapter is introduced on p. 67:

I desire only to call attention to what we mean when we talk about Christ-centered education. It is an education that rigorously and without apology insists upon looking through and beyond the created order to see the Christ-centeredness of all things

For Litfin, “Christian thinkers—if the thinking they’re doing is distinctively Christian—can never settle for merely ‘looking at.’” With that, he begins to expand C.S. Lewis’ parable of a man looking at a beam of sunlight shining into a dark shed compared to a man standing in the beam and looking at the sun.

Presuppositions are the problem

The wonderful thing about Litfin’s “looking along” (in contrast with what Lewis does with the metaphor) is that only Christians can do it because only Christians have the right presuppositions. This is so partly because only Christians “know that it is all in the end related to the person of Christ, and they seek to press beyond the thing itself to understand how this can be.” This is why Christian scholarship is more challenging than secular: the secularists can’t understand how it is all related to the person with the sword coming out of his mouth. Because of their presuppositions, secularists can’t have this knowledge. Presuppositions are bad for them: they give them “mental blinders” (p. 68). Litfin really hammers in the sorry effect the secularists presuppositions have on them in later chapters.

Presuppositions are the solution

In Chapter 4, he goes on to discuss the lack of respect that the ideals of a “Christ-centered education” get in secular academic establishments.

It is not uncommon to hear members of the academic establishment call Christians into question from its secular presuppositions. But the Christian scholar’s task will sometimes be to turn the tables by calling the secular establishment into question from Christian presuppositions.

Among the presuppositions of the secularists are the following absolute assertions and values:

1. Promote rational discussion
2. Consider other points of view
3. Change your mind when the evidence or logic is against you
4. Question presuppositions

It is impossible for someone with such absolute, relativistic, rigid, and intellectually capricious values and presuppositions to come to the Truth of evangelical Christianity. It is only the Christian, with her presuppositions of the Lordship of the post-resurrection sword-mouthed Christ, who can come to the conclusion that nothing makes sense without the post-resurrection sword-mouthed Christ. It’s sad, really, but this is the nature of the veil that the devil has pulled over their eyes.

Litfin admonishes us to call the secularists into question from our presuppositions. “If, as the Christian believes, nothing in the end can be understood aright apart from the person of Christ, then Christian higher education may sometimes have to insist that the academic enterprise give him due consideration.”

It’s true that some ultra-liberal secularists give some consideration to the pre-resurrection Christ. Anarchists, communists, socialists, anti-religious, and others love to quote the teachings and life-example of the pre-resurrection Christ. Litfin explains in Chapter 3 that the fact that the pre-resurrection Christ was a homeless teacher living in a traveling commune teaching about the dissolution of hierarchies and the uselessness of judging others has nothing to do with a “Christ-centered education”. Litfin is talking about the post-resurrection Christ. The Christ of the good news. Christ as Lord.

Stay tuned, it gets even better!

Read About Chapter 5!