Read the previous installation in this series!
When our University gave each its faculty a copy of Duane Litfin’s book, “Conceiving the Christian College”, we were asked to focus on Chapters 4 and 10 because those would be the primary chapters discussed at our faculty retreat. I have already summarized the first six chapters in my blog. Now, I am going to skip ahead to Chapter 10 since it is of utmost importance to our University. I may come back to Chapters 7 through 9 later.
Chapter 10 is called “The Voluntary Principle: CHALLENGE: To Reconcile Institutional Commitments with Individual Freedoms”.
Response to Alan Wolfe
In this chapter, Litfin starts by responding to an article by Alan Wolfe published in Atlantic Monthly called “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind”. One of Wolfe’s criticisms of Christian colleges is the “loyalty oath”. For example, here at our University all faculty must sign a statement of faith as well as a list of behavioral guidelines.
Wolfe admits that even at secular universities, some departments have some philosophical bent and are reluctant to hire faculty who do not agree with their bias. Litfin writes, “Wolfe is no doubt right in this assessment; in fact, his point could be argued with considerably more force and detail.” Here and elsewhere, Litfin strongly condemns this kind of prejudice. He continues, “And in this light one might argue that a Christian college’s transparent commitments are demonstrably more honest and fair than the covert types Wolfe cites.” When Christian colleges firmly forbid membership, they are up front about it. Everybody knows we do it and our criteria are out in the open. This makes us much more fair than those secular departments that have secret preferences.
It also makes life easier on a college president. At secular schools, since their prejudice is not in writing, they have to go to more trouble to get rid of people. They usually have to come up with some excuse such as “gross misconduct” to get rid of someone. At Christian colleges, we only have to say that we don’t agree with what this person said and they are gone.
One of Wolfe’s criticisms of Wheaton College (where Litfin is president) in particular is that they do not hire Roman Catholics. Litfin concludes that Wolfe believes that Wheaton is “anti-Catholic” and spends a couple of pages completely refuting the claim that Wheaton is “anti-Catholic”. Even though Wolfe didn’t make that claim, Litfin’s refutation of a claim Wolfe didn’t make has the effect of completely destroying Wolfe’s entire argument. Once Wolfe’s article has been easily dealt with in a mere three pages, Litfin doesn’t need to treat it seriously for the rest of the chapter and, indeed, it is rarely mentioned.
Secular conspiracy of education
Litfin spends the next few pages remarking on the symptoms of the liberal conspiracy called “education”. Since I have already exposed this conspiracy in an earlier blog post, I don’t need to go into much detail. Litfin explains that the liberally educated secularists are anti-religious not “because secular academics are evil people, but because they have been inculturated into a secularized way of thinking that pervades the contemporary academic world.”
Refusing to dogmatically defend the precepts of evangelical Christianity can only be the result of an education in which one is “inculturated” with ideals and presuppositions such as “ask questions” and “challenge assumptions”. Those of us without that inculturation are free to hold on to evangelical doctrine.
Litfin’s keen eye for irony allows him to notice these disparities: “Hence the irony of secularists taking Christian colleges to task for some purported hostility to academic freedom.”
The Voluntary Principle for Piglet
Litfin now moves to the heart of the chapter: the voluntary principle. This is the principle that requires all faculty to sign a statement saying that they will not question the Truths laid out in some statement of faith. “Were this principle to be lost,” Litfin writes, “Christian colleges could not exist.” It is easy to see the reasons for the truth of this statement.
In an early stroke, Litfin quotes conservative (with close KKK connections) US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Hugo Black was writing his opinion in a case in which a government employee lost his job due to the “loyalty-oath” trials in the early 1950s. Of all of the Justices, Black wrote most strongly against the legitimacy, morality, and legality of these oaths and trials. Litfin quotes him as follows: “I am certain that loyalty to the United States can never be secured by the endless proliferation of ‘loyalty’ oaths. Loyalty must arise spontaneously from the hearts of people who love their country and respect their government.”
Black is rebuking the government’s practice of requiring such oaths. But Litfin, in his brilliant way, shows that Black’s logic actually unwittingly supports the use of such oaths as long as they come “from the hearts”. Litfin writes, “No one would claim that a political loyalty oath—or an affirmation of an institution’s statement of faith—could not be a heartfelt and genuine expression of an individual’s personal convictions…. It is beyond question that the mere mouthing of the words will not ’secure’ that conviction.” His point is that if people really believe what they are signing, then the signing is merely a heartfelt expression of the person’s convictions.
This reminds me of the way Winnie-the-Pooh would answer Piglet’s concern.
POOH: Supposing the Heffalump really believes the statement we require him to sign. Then he can join our faculty and there is no coercion involved.
At first Piglet is satisfied but then he has an anxious thought.
PIGLET: Supposing Heffalumps don’t really believe this?
Pooh thinks for a long time and finally figures it out.
POOH: Supposing he does.
Piglet is greatly relieved and goes along with Pooh’s plan.
But Litfin is not satisfied with this seemingly complete answer. A little more than two pages later, he comes back to this. Alan Wolfe writes, “When careers are at stake, it is hard to take seriously Litfin’s insistence that signing Wheaton’s declaration is a purely voluntary act.” Litfin’s response: “But, it is fair to ask in return, why should that be so?” Piglet is even more relieved to have Pooh’s answer repeated. You see? Maybe it’s not coercive because maybe everybody really believes it.
But Litfin doesn’t stop there this time.
The problem with this analysis is that it misconstrues the key issue. It mistakenly sets the gaining or keeping of a job as the paramount concern, the center around which all other considerations must revolve. But for the Christian such a shift constitutes a serious error. The paramount issue of the Christian, the issue that must come before all others, is obedience to Christ. Thus, in facing such a dilemma, the central issue of a Christian professor would not be her job, but the issue of her integrity, not merely before others but before her Lord.
Piglet worries that the Heffalump might lie because his livelihood is at stake. Pooh comforts him by supposing that he might not.
Back to Litfin’s point, which was, “signing an institutional statement of faith fraudulently or under duress would not be one of our options for resolving [the dilemma].” It is simply not an option. Piglet feels much, much better and you should too.
The true lessons of history
Litfin then gives several historical examples of true Christians who were faced with this dilemma and lost their livelihoods as a result. He spends two pages telling and analyzing the well-known story of Sir Thomas More who was killed by King Henry VIII for not signing a statement agreeing with the King’s denouncement of the Pope’s authority over England. Sir More was beheaded.
Litfin draws from this tragedy the only moral it offers: requiring people to sign a document or face the loss of their livelihood is a necessity for Christian colleges.
Many similar stories could be told: Joan of Arc and the many martyrs of the Spanish Inquisition all tell the same story. These people voluntarily refused to sign the document as good Christians.
Consider also the many true Christians whose lives were spared by the torturing inquisitors when they voluntarily signed the statement. Litfin understands that this process is fair, moral, and, most importantly, necessary for the preservation of Christian colleges.
I would like to relate a story that happened here at our University not many decades ago. A professor made a private statement to a student to the effect that God might be more pleased with a homosexual living in a monogomous loving relationship than with a promiscuous heterosexual. When news of this was spread around, the professor was brought in to the administrators who fired him. This might sound harsh, but, as my theological hero here at the University told me while relating this story, “to be fair, these administrators,” like the Spanish Inquisitors, “gave him an opportunity to recant his heretical views.” This fired professor, though clearly not a Christian, had the integrity to give up his livelihood rather than lie about his views.
The existence of Christian colleges is in danger
Litfin then addresses why the signing of a statement of faith is a necessity. The answer is that Christian colleges would change if this requirement were removed. Litfin calls this change inevitable and refers us to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton as sad examples of what happens to a school that rejects its Christian roots. Why would changing be so bad for a school like Wheaton? Because, Litfin argues, if they changed, then they would be different from the way they are now.
He lists other advantages to the existence of Christian colleges. One is that they are different from colleges that are not like them. This brings diversity to the biosphere of universities. Diversity, we are told, is a good thing.
A second advantage is that Christian colleges “enable [faculty] to enjoy the synergy of working together with others of like mind to strengthen their contributions to the intellectual arena…” The synergistic effects of working with people who think exactly the way you do are explosive. “We do not wish,” writes Litfin, “to see this come to an end.”
What about liars?
But the persistent Piglet in me wakes up again. It seems that Litfin’s voluntary principle allows the possibility that lying non-Christians (is there another kind?) could be employed at Wheaton. I feel a sudden despair at this thought.
Litfin’s answer, and thank God he has one, is summarized in the title of one of the subsections of this chapter: Deliberate Naivete. In this section, Litfin explains that the college simply takes faculty at their word. However, he also exposes clearly how sinful and unchristian those people are who sign it wrongfully.
He also explains several fraudulent, wrongful, unchristian ways of signing it.
- For some, “their affirmations are a lie.”
- Some “keep themselves in a state of denial.”
- Some “hold mental reservations about some of its provisions.”
- Some “intentionally keep themselves ignorant about the issues for fear of where they might come out if they studied it through.”
- Some “consider the act to be nothing more than an affirmation of what the institution holds, not what they believe.”
- Some consider “the signing of the statement to be an act of interpretation wherein the individual first decides how he or she will construe the statement, and then signs it accordingly.”
Litfin roundly and rightly condemns all of these fraudsters as unchristian. But on this last category of faculty falls his fullest judgment. He tells the story of a professor who said to him, “Here’s what I mean when I sign the statement.” He interrupted her and said,
When you sign the college’s statement you are not being asked what it means. If you need clarification of its meaning, please ask and I’ll get you whatever you require. But it’s not up to you to decide what the institution’s doctrinal statement means; establishing its meaning and keeping that meaning clear is the institution’s responsibility. What you’re being asked when you sign the statement is not, What does it mean?, but, Do you agree with it?
For example, in our statement of faith is the statement that Jesus ascended into heaven after his resurrection. Now the meaning of this phrase to those who wrote it is well-known. “Ascended” means “went up” and “heaven” is the area above the firmament or the “dome of the heavens”. The Bible even specifies that he rode a cloud up as all gods, demons, and angels in the Bible do. Just as when Jesus was baptized and the firmament opened and a dove flew down from heaven through the hole, after his resurrection, the firmament opened again and he ascended through that hole. There were many witnesses to this.
Some so-called Christians “reinterpret” the ascension of Jesus to mean something totally different. “Ascend” does not mean “go up” to them and “heaven” is not up above the sky.
“Never mind,” writes Litfin, “that the Creed begins ‘I believe,’ or that signing a statement of faith is essentially a statement about one’s own convictions.” When a true Christian says he believes that Jesus ascended to heaven, he means exactly what the crafters of the creed meant, and nothing else.
Litfin continues, “…no individual is free to decide for himself or herself what the statement means. To have everyone affirming the statement only after construing it to mean what they prefer it to mean is to negate the unifying function of the statement altogether.”
3 Replies
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[...] Will this convince secularists? No. Because they have presuppositions. Presuppositions are bad for them because they are not Truth. Only our presuppositions are Truth. It’s so obvious to anyone who has been to Dallas Theological Seminary. Too bad the secularist academy is “blinded” by their presuppositions. “The academy appears to be perking along on a set of unwritten but ironclad presuppositions that leave little room for religious claims to truth.” (p. 123) In the Christian academy, our presuppositions are equally ironclad, but ours have two advantages over theirs: ours are written and ours are true. More on that in Chapter 10. [...]