Interpreters or Integrators? Or, Whatever Happened to Christian Education? Dr. David P. Smith

​It has become somewhat of a settled conviction in America Christian education circles that the task of the Christian teacher and student is to work at integrating faith and reason, or Christian belief with the subject matter of one’s study. While the integration project seems to have a death grip on Christian education, there is good reason to question it. When we look at what the Christian is called to do in the integration project, and examine it in the light of Scripture, we discover that it denies in significant ways both the biblical doctrines of creation and redemption. What Scripture actually requires for education to be “Christian,” necessitates that the Christian engage in interpretation not integration, as the latter is conceived in this integration project. Those who recognize the value of Christian education for the advancement of God’s kingdom will do well to examine or re-examine the validity of the integration approach.

The project was stated well by Francis Beckwith and J. P. Moreland in the preface they wrote to a series on Christian education published by InterVarsity Press. Their preface was titled “A Call to Integration and the Christian Worldview Integration Series.” Beckwith is currently professor of Philosophy and Church-State studies at Baylor University. In 2007 he announced that he was leaving Evangelical Protestantism and converting to Roman Catholicism. J. P. Moreland is currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in California. Moreland is a Dallas Seminary and University of Southern California graduate and has authored numerous books in apologetics. In their preface they identified two kinds of integration: conceptual and personal.

For Beckwith and Moreland, to integrate is “to form or blend into a whole” or “to unite,” and conceptual integration is done as “our theological beliefs, especially those derived from careful study of the bible, are blended and unified with important, reasonable ideas from our profession or college major into a coherent, intellectually satisfying Christian worldview.” Personal integration is “deeply intertwined” with conceptual integration since it is “to live a unified life, a life in which we are the same in public as we are in private, a life in which the various aspects of our personality are consistent with each other and conducive to a life of human flourishing as a disciple of Jesus.” Setting the number of questions one might raise regarding, among other things, a definition of reasonableand intellectually satisfying, or what the various aspects of our personality constitute, there is good reason on biblical grounds to question this work of integration. In brief, integration project as defined by Beckwith and Moreland fails to recognize that God integrated all things by creating, and it is God who in redemption reintegrates the sinner to his already integrated cosmos, and, in turn, not doing what they ought to do for their educational pursuits to be Christian. Those who endorse this integration project are, very likely without realizing it, attempting to do what God has already done and what God alone can and does do for the sinner.

​This critique of the integration project for Christian education is no mere semantic game or quibbling over terms. Far from it. In point of fact, it is to accuse much of what passes for Christian education in America of adopting the same fundamental presuppositions of our broader anti-Christian Western culture. As difficult as it might be to believe, this integration project affirms that it is Christian to treat reality and life as if God did not already create; as if God did not already determine what things are, and how they stand in relation to each other. As a result, it shifts the emphasis for the Christian student and teacher away from God’s reintegration or redeeming of them, and places it on the Christian’s attempts to do what God has already done by creating and alone can do in redemption. 

Scripture teaches that God created all things without sin, or as integrated in a harmonious order (Gen.1:1-2:25). With sin, Adam and Eve brought a disorder or a kind of dis-integration that marred both themselves and all creation (Genesis 3; Romans 8:19-24). The Triune God alone has accomplished, has been, is and will continue applying his redemption or re-integration to his cosmos and his covenant people. Some might immediately raise an objection: But don’t Christians have a role to fulfill in God’s redemption or re-integration? Indeed, they do. The seminal questions needing answering are: What constitutes this role the Christian fulfills? And, how does the Christian’s role relate to God? 

While the Christian is required to obey God (Exod. 20:1-17; Mt. 7:21; Rom. 2:1-11; John 14:15), the Christian is only able to do so, albeit imperfectly, because of God’s acts of regenerating and renewing (or “reintegrating”) the Christian(Titus 3:1-7; Eph. 2:1-10). Such renewal or reintegration is God’s ongoing work he applies to the Christian, not a one-time act that he turns over to the Christian. Whereas Romans 12:1-2 teaches us that the Christians are to continuously present their bodies a living sacrifice to God so that they are transformed by the renewal of their mind by God, so that they are thereby equipped to discern and do the will of God, the integration project places emphasis on the actions of the Christian in doing what God alone has already done, is doing and will do. In other words, while the Bible teaches us to recognize or discern what already is because of who God is and what he does, theallegedly Christian integration project, rather unknowingly, presumes that we arrogate to ourselves the position and powers of God, all in the name of Christianity. It may seem a bit stark to present the integration project in this way but Beckwith and Moreland’s preface justifies it.

​Consider the following. According to them, “Christians hold that, when properly interpreted, the teachings of Holy Scripture are true.” The implication, based on how this is worded, is that the teachings of Holy Scripture are only true when properly interpreted. Perhaps Beckwith and Moreland meant to affirm that when Christians properly interpret Holy Scripture, Christians understand the truths of Holy Scripture. If so, they are at the very least guilty of poor writing. The fact is,however, the affirmation they made based on what they wrote is not about the Christian’s understanding of Scripture, when properly interpreted, instead it is about the teachings of Scripture being true when those Scriptures are properly interpreted. It ends up affirming that the interpreter gives the Scripture their truthfulness. As a result, the statement reflects a reversal of the order of knowing (epistemology), or something we do, with the order of being (metaphysics or ontology). Of course, more than a few people have identified this as a particular problem with Roman Catholicism, not to mention the theology of Karl Barth. It confuses the biblical doctrine of illumination—our receiving knowledge of the Scripture’s including their truthfulness—with the biblical doctrine of inspiration—or God’s delivery of his truth bearing Scriptures. It identifies humans as doing what God does. Such confusion is nothing less than the expression of the pagan Western cultural mindset that regards humans as the measure of all things, as the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras affirmed over two thousand years ago. 

​ A little later in their preface Beckwith and Moreland affirm the following: “To live Christianly, is to allow Jesus Christ to be Lord of every aspect of our life.” Really?! We allow Jesus to have his Lordship?! Some of us have heard this sort of thing so often it may not set off any alarms. Of course, it is a statement that is fully consistent with their previous statement about the Scriptures being true when properly interpreted. In both these affirmations, the Christian is thought to establish a reality that in point of fact already exists, because of who God is and what God does. The truth is no one gives Jesus his Lordship; Jesus is Lord and always has been, because he, along with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit is the eternal Triune God, Creator of heaven and earth. In point of fact, no one allows the Triune God to do anything. God is not dependent on us for anything at any time. He does not need to ask anyone permission to do anything, nor does he. Of course, this way of thinking is perfectly compatible with Arminianism and Roman Catholicism, both of which are unbiblical in their views of God’s relationship to humans in general, and the church in particular.

​With this basic confusion about the doctrine of God, it is not surprising that Beckwith and Moreland went further in expressing more confusion about the task of Christian education. They went on to write: “[A]s Christians seek to discover and become excellent in their special vocation, they must ask: How would Jesus approach the task of being a history teacher, a chemist, and athletic director, a mathematician?” In other words, Beckwith and Moreland restate the tired and trite question: “What Would Jesus Do?” as inherent to the integration project. All of this, is so that we can “restore to our culture an image of Jesus Christ as an intelligent, competent person who spoke authoritatively on whatever subject he addressed.” It ought to go without saying, but needs to be stated, that we have here a sad and serious amount of irony. Beckwith and Moreland confuse the two basic categories of being and doing by failing to distinguish between what God has already brought into being and what we should and can do as his image bearers, and then fail to relate the distinction between being and doing to our relationship to God. Then they present this confusion as the means by which we are going to “restore to our culture an image of Jesus Christ as an intelligent competent person.” 

​Beckwith and Moreland’s statements are in fact fully consistent with the Protestant Liberal theology that functioned as a cancer in every denomination that has embraced it. It was Protestant Liberal theology rooted in the late 18th and early 19thcentury work of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher that eventually resulted in the Social Gospel movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, and that gave us the question “What Would Jesus Do?” as directing Christian living. Protestant Liberal theology denied the deity of Jesus. This is exactly why its advocates thought the question “What Would Jesus Do?” was necessary. Jesus was treated as merely a good example; he was not the Second Person of the Trinity, who actually accomplished the salvation of his covenant people, rose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven and sat down at the Right Hand of God the Father, Almighty. According to Protestant Liberal theology, Jesus and God the Father didn’t actually send the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. The Church, according to Protestant Liberal theology is not the actual dwelling place of the living Son and Spirit. Protestant Liberal theology has no place for the Holy Spirit rescuing sinners from sin so that they can discern and do God’s will. In Protestant Liberal theology, as well as in Roman Catholic theology, the church replaces God. 

In other words, what we have in the integration project as Beckwith and Moreland described it is the embracing of Roman Catholicism’s and Protestant Liberalism’s view of the relationship between God and the creation in general, and God and humans, and the church in particular, and all in the name of “evangelical” thought. If you are wondering why there seems to be so little in the way of distinctly Christian thought pushing back against what is popular in American culture, here is part of your answer: What so often passes for Christian education in America affirms the basic presuppositions of the very Godless thought that is popular in American culture. It is, in fact, naturalism: the idea that the physical material realm is all that there is. It is what has given birth to the LGBTQ+ movement, and its cadre of sexual deviancies, as well as woke Critical Race Theory.

In his 1992 Bampton Lectures titled: The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity, British theologian Colin Gunton argued, among other things, that the essence of “modern” thought—and here he uses “modern” not in the sense of “contemporary” but as a distinct philosophy—is that it treats humans as if they are disengaged from creation and able to create their own truth and values. Consider the following in his endorsement of some of the work of philosopher Charles Taylor.

Disengagement means standing apart from each other and the world and treating the other as external, as mere object. The key is in the word instrumental: we use the other as an instrument, as the mere means for realizing our will, and not as in some way integral to our being. It has its heart in the technocratic attitude: the view that the world is there to do with exactly as we choose. Its other side—and I give an extreme view—is that we do not seek in the world for what is true and good and beautiful, but create our truth and values for ourselves.

This is the attitude and approach, whether they recognize it or not, of those who harp about the need for Christians to integrate faith and learning, or their Christian faith with the object or subject of their studies. As it turns out, the enemy has been in the “gates” of the Church for some time.

​According to Scripture, God created all things by his Word and Spirit. He determined what all things are. He gave them being. Their doing is dependent on what God created them to be, and what God allows them to do. Our doing is dependent on who God is and what God does, or, what God has done, is doingand will do. The truly Christian way of thinking and living endorses and lives according to the truth that in order live obediently to God one must submit one’s self to an order that God created, sustains and redeems. God has created us to be discoverers and interpreters of what he created and to live in harmony with that creation as it is. It is simply wrong-headed, if not wretchedly rebellious, to think that we need to integrate faith and reason, or any reality of life with any other reality. All things are integrated, because God integrated them. Sin spoiled or corrupted this integration, but did not destroy it. We need to discern what constitutes the integration that God brought and how Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension have brought, are bringing and will bring purification to his already integrated cosmos. We are not disengaged from creation but engaged to itby God; we are an integral part of creation, and always have been ever since God gave us being. It is in God that we live and move and have our being. Therefore, the Christian faith and life requires us to recognize that we are fundamentally receivers, not takers, discoverers not determiners, interpreters not integrators, and given the glorious privilege and duty to discern and practice the truth as it already is in Jesus. If education is going to be Christian, it must begin with this foundational belief and act according to it.