*This is developed from a recent talk I give.
His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants in the divine nature. – 2 Peter 1.3
Peter talks about escaping the corruption that is in the world because of desire, and as Christians we’ve been trained to read that as meaning the creation is evil. That is this world, this creation, the thing God said several times over at the beginning of time was good, good, very good, but which Paul's says in Romans has now been subjected to decay. The world is corrupted; therefore the whole of material existence is evil. But that’s not quite where Peter takes it does he? That has more to do with Gnosticism or Buddhism than with the gospel of the resurrected, embodied, Jesus Christ. The world is corrupted not because of something inherently wrong with materiality, but with human desire and our malfunctioning hearts:
“In sin we divide the good
world God has made into two “worlds”, one good and the other evil, and we make
our own contingent perspectives the criterion for the division. And this gives
a new, negative sense to the term “world”, which we have hitherto spoken of
positively as God’s creation. This negative sense is characteristic of the New
Testament, and points to the reality a constructed world, a world of our own
imagination, pitched over against the created world and in opposition to it.”[1]
The Biblical account holds that God made all things not
under compulsion or out necessity, but as a gushing forth of love. God's gracious action
in creation belongs from the first to that delight, pleasure and regard that
the Trinity enjoys from eternity, as an outward and unnecessary expression of
that love; and thus creation must be received before all else as gift and as
beauty. God is not grey; and he
does not create a grey world. ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’
as English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote. Creation wasn't just what needed
to be done and no more; it was an excessive and even decadent act. It was more
than a bit unnecessary.[2]
Moreover, we must maintain that God entered into the world,
and experienced pain and death to rescue the splendour of what he had made –
including you and me. He did not sit idly by as creation was plunged into death
and decay, as we fooled about fooling about with drink and sex and ambition,
half-hearted creatures like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud
pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a
holiday at the sea.[3] He
condescended himself into our decay so that we might share his life.
This theological conviction concerning creation and redemption is, I believe, profoundly
connected to the vocation of Arts students. Understanding the world
rightly – that it was created by God, who loves his world, who sustains his
world, who will one day rescue his world from sin and decay rather than allow
it to slide in nothingness – that is what sustains the task of universities
generally, and the B.A. more specifically.
I spend a lot of time in my work
with postgrads thinking about the university: what is the university? Why does
it exist? Arts students are, in many ways, a relic, a fossil, from a
by-gone era. The Arts degree is the remnant of the original degrees awarded by
universities (developments of the Trivium and the Quadrivium), deposits of a time when universities where established across
Europe by Christians in order to facilitate a depth of knowledge and insight
into God and his world. That was the original vision of the university,
interested in the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge because all
truth is God’s truth, and thereby holding together the ordered reality of the universe. It was a thoroughly Christian vision – one which has long
since been replaced by universities driven by economic rationalism, where
universities now exist on the one hand to develop the next generation of
leaders of the welfare states which sustain the universities;[4] and on the other
to facilitate the kind of research which will make money and fulfill that vague
category of ‘being good for the nation’, which mostly equates to science and engineering.
For art students, their mere presence within the university
is a constant reminder of the original purpose of universities: towering spires
pursuing the knowledge and love of God. You can find slight echos of this even
in Sydney University, which has always been secular. The next time you’re in
the great hall, look up at the two angels that hover of the dais at the front,
and try and make out the Latin on their scrolls. To the left: Knowledge puffeth
up, but charity edifieth; to the right: The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom. Arts students are fossils to this vision. But much like the Wollemi Pine or
crocodiles, they are living fossils, a very present reminder of a different age.
I want to place the emphasis on the word LIVING
fossils. The university has plenty of inanimate sandstone around the place to
pretend that it's Oxbridge and Hogwarts. Their vocation as Arts students is not
exhausted by just turning up to campus 1-2 days a week. Instead their calling is
testify to the goodness this rich and diverse creation by studying it at depth.
Whether you study modern philosophy or Aztec philology, whether you research
the events of history or the currents of political science, whether you're
researching drama or music or gender or sociology, classics or anthropology,
there is a dignity and worth in studying each of these things–not because our
culture deems them to be economically viable or productive, but because they
are each part of God's world. God’s world, which God is not indifferent to; his
world, which he has created with complexity and meaning, and has endowed us with
the intellect and brains to deliberate, to examine, to study all these things.
It’s easy to pay Arts students out, by predicting their future as McDonald’s
employees. (I somehow was offered the position of manager at a different fast food store on the strength of being an Arts graduate alone; I declined).
But they are not studying just an Arts degree: their study is
one of the most human things one could do [recalling especially Adam's task in Genesis 2.19–20, which was not merely scientific, but required linguistics, hermeneutics, and so on). It’s part of our calling as God’s
representative ruling presence in the world. Therefore be people who engage with your mind: read books which no one else in the university will read; read deeply and widely; talk to people across diverse disciplines. Immerse yourselves in your study of God's world. Engage well; Augustine was right I suspect when he said that to know something is to love that thing.
Their challenge is to not rest
content with just learning things, but doing the hard, integrative work of
connecting what your study with the gospel? How does modern history connect
with the gospel? How does sociology, anthropology, or linguistics connect with
the gospel? What does the death and resurrection of Jesus have to say about
geography, or English? How does the gospel both affirm and challenge the
stories my major tells about itself? How are all these things completed in
Jesus? How can I use the logic of the gospel re-narrate what my discipline is
to my friends in a way that is compelling?
The world is made up of languages and ideas, creatures and events.Study those things. Engage with words and ideas, taking every thought captive for the obedience of Christ. That is not where the problem of sinful desire lies. The problem is not with
materiality. Don’t fall into the sub-Christian trap of thinking that God’s
going to abandon his creation. As God’s representative ruling presence, and as
Arts students, your calling is go about studying and knowing God’s world at
depth. As I said a few moments ago, this is a sidebar, a discursive. But
engaging with God means engaging him with our minds as well as our hearts, and
necessitates engaging the world he has made.
That God made the beautiful when it was unnecessary to do this is love. To study the logic and rhythm of that world in all its complexity and beauty is the task of the student, and the Arts student especially.
[1]
Oliver O’Donovan, ‘Admiring’. http://www.newcollege.unsw.edu.au/newcollegelectures.html.
[2] My thanks to Michael Jensen's second year doctrine lectures for some of these ideas.
[3] Cf. C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: “…it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
[3] Cf. C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: “…it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
[3] I owe this idea to Dr. Mark Hutchinson.
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