What's the Wesleyan in IWU? 2

Skipping over some of my talk, I come to the question of a Wesleyan model of integration. By the way, I won't be saying all the following tonight. It is more raw "get it out" for later polishing.

A Wesleyan Model of Integration
Evangelical academia has witnessed a good deal of discussion on the integration of faith and learning over the last thirty years. The integration gurus have suggested a number of different models: 1) the "Lutheran" two kingdoms model that keeps faith and learning separate from each other, 2) the "Pietist" model that focuses more on behavior and attitude, 3) the "Reformed" model that emphasizes the proper cognitive presuppositions. Occasionally the possibility of a "Wesleyan" model has been mentioned (Wesleyan here in the broader sense of pan-Wesleyanism). The book in question usually will bring up Outler's idea of a Wesleyan Quadrilateral at this point (Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience) and deem a Wesleyan model of integration the incorporation of these elements.

I believe that this summary is on the right track. Let me develop it both as a pan-Wesleyan and as a member of The Wesleyan Church, give it a little more sophistication, and bring it into the post-modern era.

First of all, notice that a Wesleyan model of integration is by its very nature more inclined to be multi-faceted and eclectic. While the other models do this more by way of exception--"We emphasize heart but head is not unimportant" "We emphasize head but heart is not unimportant"--a Wesleyan model is by its very nature a matter of integration itself. Frankly I smile after Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton, has finished making allowances for these other traditions (Conceiving the Christian College). By the time he has made his allowances for the strong points of non-Reformed traditions, he has basically arrived at the integrative Wesleyan model! And while I believe the core of a Wesleyan model has more in common with the Pietist model than the Reformed, no one could ever legitimately accuse John Wesley of being anti-intellectual.

Again, quite amusingly, Arthur Holmes' different forms of integration (attitudinal, ethical, foundational, and worldview--changed slightly from the first edition of his book) are not far from the Wesleyan kingdom themselves! I believe that all we need is give them a proper prioritization and we have a fair model of Wesleyan integration. Let us draw a Wesleyan model of integration as a number of concentric circles surrounding a core.

1. Heart Integration
I believe that a truly Wesleyan model will agree with the Pietist model on the highest priority and core element in integration. No matter what your discipline, the heart of integration is the integration of the heart.

There may be little on a presuppositional level for a mathematician to integrate with his or her discipline. Christian mathematics will mostly if not completely be a matter of a Christian doing mathematics.

And here let me add that a "personal relationship" with God is an essential element in the equation. I place this phrase in quotations, however, under the realization that much of what passes for this phrase is distinctively Western, modern, and individualistic. I use the phrase with room for collectivist personalities without well defined individual identities. I do not imply any particular emotional content to the phrase. A person must affirm as an individual (however that individuality is culturally parsed) that "Jesus is Lord" with their being.

Let me include within heart integration the matter of personal behavior and personal ethics. You will sooner get fired from a Wesleyan college for moral failure than for strange beliefs. This is a part of Wesleyan pietism that I suspect distinguishes it from a Calvin or Wheaton College. A professor who has an affair with a student at a Wesleyan college or university will almost certainly lose his or her job immediately and without recourse.

Church attendance should be an essential component of the heart integration of a Wesleyan college. Professors who rarely attend church should not be hired or promoted in rank. Prolonged absence from the body of Christ should be grounds for dismissal. "There is no salvation outside the church."

2. Ethical Integration
Here I retain Holmes sense that for many disciplines, integration will involve an ethical component. I do not mean personal behavior here but situations where the facts of the discipline may point in directions that, as Christians, we simply cannot take. If all disciplines require their professors to integrate with the heart, many will also require an integration of discipline with the fundamental "love ethic" of Christianity. Whenever relevant, no Christian teaching can be properly considered Christian if it does not cohere with the dual commands to love God with all one's being and one's neighbor as self.

Here the subject of economics comes to mind. It may be true that market factors eventually work themselves out into a system that comes to be best for the majority. But Christians are obligated by Christ to consider individuals as ends in themselves rather than as means to other greater ends (when being such a means conflicts with their existence as ends in themselves). What these ethical concerns may mean is that Christian economics will be obliged to chose different economic paths than a secular economist or an economist following a Lutheran model of (non) integration might. The science of economics is the same, but the implementation is likely different for a Christian.

3. Cognitive Integration
Let me gather other forms of integration under the general heading of "cognitive integration." We might also call it presuppositional integration. However, in a post-modern age it seems important to draw very clear and tight lines around and within this domain of integration. It is at this point that we might make a claim in comparing a Reformed model with a Wesleyan one. In practice, I would claim that the Reformed model has typically "drawn" presuppositional integration at the core of integration, with matters like ethical and heart integration on the periphery in terms of emphasis. This is an inappropriate priority in emphasis. Further, in the twilight of modernism, it is a sign of the Reformed model's eclipse. In contrast, a Wesleyan model of integration such as I propose holds much more promise at becoming the dominant model of the decades that follow.

It is at this point that I would like to interject some thoughts on Wesleyan integration at this point in history. It is my contention that we are currently witnessing a collapse of the distinction between Scripture and tradition. The events at Wheaton, where a professor was fired for converting to Roman Catholicism, are part of the birth pains of that which is becoming. As even one Wheaton professor has acknowledged (First Things article--note that President Litfin apparently does not agree with him), we stand at a point where the Wheaton ethos statement seems inadequate as it stands to prevent a Roman Catholic from being a member of its faculty. This is a situation that would not have happened perhaps even ten years ago.

[I might add that this issue seems less significant at a Wesleyan college where a personal relationship with Christ is the crucial issue outside the religion division more than debates on how the meaning of the Bible is determined--the real debate that as yet evangelicals have largely not admitted to themselves]

The professor claimed to be able to affirm that the Bible is the "supreme and highest authority" for the Christian, since the Pope's authority is not understood to supercede the Bible but to function in terms of its authoritative interpretation--and even then only when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, a very rare thing indeed (I don't think Pope John Paul ever invoked this authority). This is one of the big issues facing evangelicalism in the near future, and I believe the Wesleyan tradition is capable of an answer with greater depth than Wheaton College has thus far mustered.

With over 20,000 different Protestant denominations that think they get their beliefs from the Bible alone, Erasmus seems without any question the winner of the sola scriptura debate between him and Luther. The post-modern question is not "Is the Bible inspired or authoritative?" This is a kindergartenish question. The question is "Which interpretation of the Bible is inspired or authoritative?" It is none too difficult to show that Christians--including evangelicals, Reformation Protestants, and indeed, the Catholics of the ages--have generally blurred the lines between Scripture and tradition. Most groups prior to the post-modern era have seen Scripture as the true authority behind what they say (including Catholics)-- yet usually without any real awareness of the glasses of tradition through which they have read the Bible.

Postmodernism draws our attention to the fact that orthodox interpretations of the Bible regularly invest meaning into the words that are anachronistic to their original contexts. E.g., that the "we" of Genesis 1:27 is the Trinity when it took hundreds of years after the NT to refine this belief (see Psalm 82 for a more likely hint at the original background). Orthodox interpretations--whether they come by way of a translation like the NIV or by intensively scholarly rationalization--use the traditional lenses of the creeds and consensus of the church to provide the "rules" governing what biblical texts can and cannot mean. It is just not really until now that we have been self-aware enough to admit it to ourselves.

So to distinguish itself from Roman Catholicism, Wheaton cannot coherently paint the issue in the old terms of "only the Bible" versus "more than the Bible." Wheaton's ethos already goes beyond the Bible. I believe the way the issue for Protestants must be framed is "consensus of the church catholic" versus "further developments particular to Roman Catholicism." But once Wheaton has admitted this as the more accurate distinction, it is doubtful it will want to prohibit Roman Catholics from its faculty simply by virtue of the fact that they are Roman Catholics.

So I suggest three levels of cognitive integration particular to a Wesleyan university with some further additions to the third level for a university owned by The Wesleyan Church. I will suggest these in the next post.