Life In "Concordia Land"

The University of Wittenberg in the 19th century

Martin Noland notes: "In Germany, Scandinavia, and the Baltics, the Lutherans had–and still have–great universities that produced some of the leading thinkers, scholars, authors, inventors, scientists, engineers, etc. in the 16th to 20th century." What about Lutheran higher education in the States?

If you're dying to find out, read Noland's little essay on life in "Concordia Land." It's on one of our favorite blogs, Steadfast Lutherans. To bookmark it, click the link on the right.

Luther and Hercules

Lutheranism & the ClassicsII (L&CII), "Reading the Church Fathers," is only a few weeks away. But there's still time to register. You can even do it online here.

There's a lot that L&CII means. But it also means we can officially start talking about L&CI. Now, supposing you planned on making it to L&C II but very much regretted having missed L&CI. What could you do?

Due to the good offices of our friends at Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology and its kind editor, Michael Albrecht, the proceedings of L&CI are available for all to read. Oh, to be sure, you'll miss Carl Springer's wry manner as he recounted the name and epithet of the great Viking Ragnar Shaggypants. You'll have to imagine, as you read, the booming voice of John Nordling explaining how to sing modern American Jesus-camp songs in ancient Greek (χαίρετε, κτλ). And you'll need nothing to restrain you when tempted by Diane Johnson's siren-voiced reading of Johannes Posselius' heroized, versified Gospel lectionary. Viva voce was great. But, as I say, if you missed it, you can read it in Logia. The editors inform us there are still copies. If your bent is modern, the ever-enterprising Logia continues to come out with ways to access that important journal electronically.

The one thing the Logia XXI.2 (Eastertide 2012) has in scads over the live event? Its cover depicts Lvthervs Germanicvs as Hercvles, clad in the pelt of the Nemean lion. He is Hercvles redivivus--Hercules resurrected--this time doing battle not against the Stymphalian birds, not against the Hydra (nine heads), but against the seven-headed beast (Rev. 13), known in the German cartoons of the day as das siebenhauptige Papsttier. Luther qua Hercules' battle entailed not only retrieving Scripture from Nicholas of Lyra, but the entire academic method lassoed to idiosyncratic readings of Aristotle, represented here by the papal beast. For his efforts Luther was credited with extirpating all that was good, including the good arts. Wrongly as, it turns out--rebuttal, Kopff, in the aforementioned volume. In the church of the Reformation Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Vergil--all had their place in court. The Wittenberg Reformation just put the Queen back on her throne. But this was no corporate downsizing. The Queen retained her courtiers in Wittenberg. Without the arts, Luther said, no theology. 

Oh, and did I mention that Logia XXI.2 contains nearly all the papers from L&C I? So if you missed it, it's not too late.

Lutheranism & the Classics II

"What do you have that you did not also receive?" So intones the apostle to the unruly Corinthian congregation. The deposit of the Faith comes with the implication of great humility. It must. That's the nature of the Gospel. We are beggars; God is the great Benefactor. And this Faith, and all the goods that come to men through it--the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation--Paul reminds us, are nothing if not gift. Those who possess it dare not brag.

That was the mindset, too, of the Wittenberg Reformers. No re-invention of the divine Deposit was their proclamation; they could lay claim to the Gospel as nothing other than what had been given them. And that's why the Reformation is best thought of as the Reformation, and not the Revolution. The very name suggests that its impetus was to "form" the church "back," to return the Church to the doctrine and practice of its faithful teachers who had gone before. That's why the languages mattered--because the faithful teachers taught in Hebrew and Greek and Latin, because God communicates by His Word, proclaimed and read and taught and confessed. And that's why, too, perhaps unlike any other reform movement of the 16th century, the Wittenberg Reformation above all was conscious of its debt to the Fathers of the Church. "Nun komm," a favorite among Luther hymns even today, is nothing but a German translation of Ambrose's "Veni, redemptor gentium." The Augsburg Confession aligns itself clearly and knowledgeably with the Ecumenical Councils, and rejects the arcane heresies that formed the crucible in which the confession of the Fathers was forged. The Catalog of Testimonies, treated today as something like an appendix, but in actuality the fundamental evidentiary basis for the Formula of Concord, foregrounds the work of the Fathers' faithful confession of scriptural doctrine.

In that spirit, Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, offers installment two of Lutheranism & the Classics, "Reading the Church Fathers." Why? Because "what do you have that you did not also receive?"

Here's what the organizers have to say about it:

"Although the fathers of the church occasionally erred, Lutherans have always had the highest regard for such ancient teachers as, e.g., Augustine, Jerome and Chrysostom, as well as the old Lutheran theologians Chemnitz, Hunnius, Selnecker, Calov and others. Concordia Theological Seminary is pleased, therefore, to offer the second Lutheranism and the Classics Conference under the theme, “Reading the Church Fathers.” The conference features three plenary papers, a banquet address and 20 sectional presenters on the Reformation-era reception of the Latin/Greek fathers, classical authors, ancient Christian hymnody, cultivation of neo-Latin and pedagogy. Latin will be used in three worship settings. The presentation by Joanna Hensley is intended especially for classical educators and homeschoolers. The conference celebrates Lutheranism’s engagement with the church’s greatest teachers of the past and to their value for the propagation of the faith to present and future generations."

With "Reading the Church Fathers," Lutheranism & the Classics continues its important work of reminding the contemporary Church of the Augsburg Confession that its future lies in its past. 

So reclaim what's yours, mark your calendars for 28-29 September, and plan to attend Lutheranism & the Classics II.

Malthus or the Cliff?

Thomas Malthus

Are we in a Malthusian moment or is that an edge over there? You be the judge. More info in Jeff Selingo's "The Financial Cliff for Higher Ed" from The Chronicle thereof. 

There are so many good arguments that emerge from the very belly of confessional Lutheranism for recalibrating Lutheran higher education along the lines of what Ren Mus has been arguing for--let's call it the Lutheran argument. But perhaps nothing will compel change like forced change. Let's call it the...?

Why Not Accept the Status Quo? An Open Letter to Ray, a Skeptical Lutheran Reader

Ray, a reader of RenMus, has left some provocative comments on the last post, “Well, Of Course.” The present post attempts to address them, and, as you can see, I’ve organized these thoughts around answering the question, “Why not accept the status quo in contemporary confessional Lutheran higher education and, by implication, work with and within it?”

Coat of Arms, Wittenberg

The answer to this question is, in some sense, the entirety of this blog. But let me try to condense things as much as possible. First, the status quo in confessional Lutheran higher education hardly resembles anything distinctly or even noticeably Lutheran. I don’t think there’s any big secret here. In the vast majority of its programming, what the average synodical conference college does differently from, say, Cardinal Stritch (just to take an example with which Ray will be familiar) is so minuscule that students, especially those in satellite campus and evening programs, have to make an effort to discover any unique residuum of Lutheranism. This, by the way, puts the lie to the notion that opening the doors of Lutheran institutions to all comers is really “missional.” This is a pious self-blandishment and -deception at so many levels. First, it’s an extremely expensive way for the church to fulfill the Great Commission. Second, because the residuum of Lutheranism is so scant, it’s frequently the case that most non-Lutherans can enter and exit a great many Lutheran colleges without so much as a brush with the bracing claims of Scriptural, Lutheran theology. Third, as it’s sold it’s a terrible bait-and-switch scheme, even though the “switch” never really occurs (see “Second,...” just above). One might add that while the church certainly is and must be engaged in works of love toward the world (charitable and human-care undertakings), it is not clear to me that higher education, especially with a steep price-tag attached to it, is such an offering. The church’s charity is charity (“Come, buy without money!”), not “charity” on the back of student debt.

That’s the Lutheran theology element of the critique. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there are not Lutheran theologians at the Lutheran colleges. I’m not saying that those theologians do not teach Lutheran theology. But that also does not mean that I am saying that all of the Lutherans are really Lutherans, either, nor that all the faculty are actually Lutherans, much less ones who can give what could be identified as a reasonably articulate account of Lutheranism. But therein lies the problem.

Ray wonders whether eschewing such professional-preparation courses as pharmacy or exercise science or what have you is a wise move on the part of those who advance a Wittenberg higher education. In other words, the question is “Why can’t RenMus and the professional and pre-professional courses of study just get along, i.e., exist side-by-side, in the same institution?” Answer: Because they can’t. Please note, that’s the “can’t” of impossibility, not the “can’t” of “uneasy, but liveable relationship.” There are many reasons for this. First, students are important to other students’ education. In fact, some educators identify “peer-group” as the single most important factor in a student’s college-years intellectual development. The peer group in a “multi-versity” is so broad and uneven that it has a corrosive effect on the entire student body. If one’s experience in higher education has been with high-quality liberal arts colleges, this factor will hardly have been apparent. However, it is a reality. A conversation can be only as good as its weakest link. If higher education is something like a sustained conversation between students and students and students and faculty, etc., the impact of the recalcitrant is utterly destructive. It would be like going to a Star Trek convention only to find that more than 50% of the people there wanted to talk about Desperate Housewives.

Second, when an institution of higher education, especially a Lutheran one, develops programming that is not characteristically Lutheran, that is, that lacks an account for why Lutheranism needs that program, the motive is always the profit motive (despite our pious self-blandishments; see above). This motive opens the floodgate to an Iliad of evils, not least of which is prizing and prioritizing the new programming over the “old standard.” Not only is it the case that the concerns of the Evangelical Lutheran Church are represented in an attenuated way or not at all in major curricular decisions (such as core requirements), but now the entire curriculum is shifted to meet the needs of what I like to call “grabby” professional and pre-professional programs. The argument might go something like this: “A legitimate business major doesn’t have room for a heavy distributive core. Now, since everyone at institution X earns the B.A., the B.A. requirements across the institution need to be curtailed to accommodate the professional programming.” Again, the church’s interest is derailed. Not only that, but as mentioned above, this places serious students of, say, theology or history or chemistry in a class with students who regard all of those courses as hoops to jump through (Desperate Housewives fans in a conversation with Trekkies about Star Trek). Again, the impact is corrosive on the student body. One might argue, even, that theology fares even worse in this scenario than the students (and therefore the students with it): as Robert Benne has well pointed out, the marginalization of theology on campuses has the effect of reducing it to what he calls a pietism, wherein religious feelings are expressed in the vaguest of terms (“God is great, God is good.”) and not brought into real converse with the intelllectual project or academic disciplines of the institution [see the post Worth Reading]. Thus to put a RenMus program in an existing institution is something like throwing the lambs to the wolves; there’s that bit about pearls, too.

Third, a Lutheran skeptic might wonder why a RenMus higher education could not or would not benefit, financially, from being attached to an institution with income-generating (?) programs [on this see Steve Gehrke’s monitory words in several comments on earlier posts]. In other words, why not use, say, a pharmacy program to underwrite a Wittenberg humanistic education? First, see the arguments above. Second, if generating income to support core programming is the goal, I can think of many ways to make money more effectively than by skimming the slim margin off tuition payments for a professional program that, in any case, provides a distraction from the institution’s purpose.

There are more universal concerns here, too, and unfortunately this post has grown way too long. But let me add a couple of points. First, the professional programming mentioned above is animated by an entirely different value system from that that underlies Wittenberg higher education. In Wittenberg higher education, that is, the higher education that the Evangelical Lutheran Church has at its heart, the goal is theologically learned and conversant laity and clergy. The education itself, while ordered to the goods of the church, state, and individual, takes what looks to us today like an indirect route to those goods: it mines the past for the present and the future. Carl Springer in his recent talk at CTSFW [click here, and then click on Listen/View Conferences and Events; then click on Lutheranism and the Classics; then click on Wise, Steadfast, and Magnanimous] points out that Lutherans, by habit and even by confession, “back” into their future. The future is unknown, except for the eschatological horizon when Jesus will return. The past is known. And we approach the present and future on the basis of what is known, using (again, a quaint notion) the best that has been thought and written in the past. In other words, the notion of utility that partially animates Wittenberg education should not be confused with utilitariansim, which is what animates professional programming. Second, it is always the case that the proliferation of programming takes the eye off the ball. Efforts at an administrative, curricular, financial, admissions, development, and PR level that can and should be aimed at advancing and fostering an ongoing encounter with Lutheran theology, developing awareness of the Wittenberg reformational approach to the life of the mind, foregrounding the Christian life of vocation (not vocationalism) become so scattered that what is said about the important core purpose of the institution becomes something like background noise—perhaps at most a kind of mood lighting or light God-“musack.”

Penultimately, given the reality on the street, even approaching an institution that presently exists in order to create something like a Wittenberg curriculum would require showing up money in hand. In other words, it is not the case that present institutions will simply divert funds from what they are already doing to develop a Wittenberg curriculum. Since that’s the case—that is, since it requires starting from scratch anyway—it’s best to keep it at a safe remove from what history has shown to be the inexorable progresss of a typical confessional Lutheran institution of higher education.

Will this mean teaching a handful of students in a trailer park in Northern Wisconsin? No, it must not; for it all to work properly, architecture, location, curriculum, faculty, governance, financing, admissions requirements, student body, etc., must all work together, that is, be expressive of the same animating idea or ideal. As I’ve tried to show above, just one element being out of whack can and most frequently does have a long-term and irreversible deleterious impact.

Finally, I express my thanks to Ray for putting his finger on and pressing the issue. Much of what has been said here has been alluded to or touched upon lightly in other posts; the fruit of Ray’s prompting, “Why Not Accept the Status Quo?” attempts to draw a line from RenMus’ critique of contemporary confessional Lutheran higher education to the envisioning of a better way. 

Well, Of Course

It is time to get rid of the humanities as unproductive, useless money drains. Gradgrind has been making the case for years. The numbers! The facts! And now we have this from the maven of humanism, Stanley Fish, in an Opinionator column of his in the New York Times several weeks ago [click here for the article]: “I have always had trouble believing in the high-minded case for a core curriculum—that it preserves and transmits the best that has been thought and said—but I believe fully in the core curriculum as a device of employment for me and my fellow humanists.”

Thomas Gradgrind

Well, there you have it. Milan Kundera has one of his characters, Paul, say that Europeans will never be able to fight another war because they don’t believe in anything anymore. That is, the French can’t and won’t fight for the French way of life because they don’t believe in it (at least against other nations; I’m not saying anything about torching their neighbors’ businesses and bashing the windshields out of tante Yvette’s car, an altogether understandable way to preserve one’s way of life). Nor can perhaps the most-listened-to (or heard) of the humanists in the U.S. today make a case for the humanities that is anything else than a French temper-tantrum at his friends losing their jobs.

But let me put it to you: why would you do anything else—if you didn’t believe in it?

This is what has been slowly choking the life out of the humanities. Once the Gradgrind argument became vogue—that is, once we bought the idea that facts, numbers, etc., should determine the good of the humanities—it was only a matter of time.

Ironically, the humanities have in some sense been a millennia-long protest against a view of the world that is “just the facts, ma’am.” Their very existence, their very own articulation of their raison d’être, is that they give access to some other non-quantifiable, qualitative dimension of human life: that of the soul, that mysterious thing we all know we have but whose existence we cannot prove by empirical measure.

Humanism, in fact, and Wittenberg humanism in particular, prizes this unproven thing, this thing whose existence has no demonstrable measure, as the center of human life, as the definitional element of humans. Luther defines the human being by his aristotelian potential in his Disputatio de homine: hominem posse justificari—man has the ability to be justified. Here he lays a theological finger on the distinctive element of human beings as overagainst all other creatures. Humans have the ability either (failingly) to justify their own existence before God, or to receive from God the justification for their existence. All other things have their account. It is humans alone who seek—and either make up or blessedly receive—an account. In other words, it is humans alone who are possessed of a soul, a soul caught in immeasurable existential Anfechtung or temptatio. And that’s why we need the humanities—to help us live in this strange place, between God and the animals, between good and evil, between infinite beauty and unspeakable horror amidst the truths and deceptions, the scant justices and barbarous injustices involved in human life.

That’s what we think. But if that account makes no sense to you, at least the humanities keep a few of Stanley Fish’s friends employed. 

World-Class Liberal Arts for Lutherans

The point RenMus has been attempting to make—with some success, we hope!—is that a new way in Lutheran higher education can and must be found. Worn out are those attempts to turn essentially parochial institutions into the multi-use, “everything-to-everyone,” institutions we see today. In fact, the success rate for Lutheran colleges that have become everything to everyone if only they might win a few for their coffers is dismally low. The Church’s interest in higher education really cannot be anything other than “a theologically conversant and literate laity and clergy.” All other “objectives” of higher education can be met by large state universities. So let’s leave those objectives to them and attend to our own interests.

Liz Reisberg makes a similar point in today’s Inside Higher Ed in an article titled, “If not a world class research university, then perhaps world class liberal arts?” The piece hinges on two arguments. First, world-class research university is coterminous with big bucks; liberal arts education is relatively much less costly. Second, given the tortuous route of a typcial worker’s “career” these days, liberal arts education is poised today as at no other time to be useful.

Mutatis mutandis, the same arguments Reisberg makes can be directly applied to Lutheran higher education. Chasing the latest professional program is always going to be much more costly than sticking with a solid liberal arts curriculum—and the payoff disappointing to the effort given. And since Lutheran higher education educates for one’s vocation, Lutheranly understood, and not one’s “vocation,” understood as “career,” it uses the human arts (artes humaniores) to that end on the premise that one learns to be a human better by reading Thucydides than by learning the precepts of marketing.

While the first point is one going to the proper management of limited resources, the latter is really a theological, not a merely aesthetic, issue. The Wittenberg Reformers were convinced that the higher education entailment of the Lutheran Reformation was a radical approach to the Western intellectual tradition through the sources themselves. To be sure, other approaches to higher education were wildly popular at their time; Melanchthon could complain with the best of us that students eschewed the liberal arts and chose instead what was “universally more saleable.” But for the Wittenberg Reformers, higher education was a matter of best preparing students to live under God’s call in a world and under orders created by God for men and their benefit. It was not, finally, business prowess or bureaucratic advancement that made for a life well-lived in the Wittenberg way; rather, a life well-lived in the Wittenberg way was one with a deeply cognizant sense of being located in a specific time and place, gifted with a certain wisdom handed down from antiquity and with an eschatological horizon that meant that this world was not all there was. That was the end to which the Wittenberg Reformers put the artes humaniores.

And that’s the end to which their modern heirs should continue to educate. Indeed, Thucydides is still the father of political philosophy, and the eschatological horizon hasn’t changed a bit. It’s only that we heirs of Wittenberg seem to have lost our way between our past and our future. But by approaching things like Wittenbergers, that is, by understanding what we ought to do now based upon where we have come from, based upon what we already know, we can find our way again. 

Lutheranism & Classics a Huge Success

The dust has finally settled, and I can offer a report on Lutheranism & the Classics. Attendance at the conference numbered over 150, and the response by those in attendance has been overwhelmingly positive. The conference drew together Lutherans and non-Lutherans alike (I ate breakfast one morning with a public school teacher from Colorado, a Methodist, who thought the conference sounded interesting and so decided to come!), clergy and non-clergy, and academics and non-academics. Speakers forcefully and persuasively made the case, both directly and indirectly, that the languages (classical Hebrew, Greek, and Latin) and the arts in which they find their home are the highest and most natural decoration of the Church and that the Church of the Augsburg Confession without them is like a stripped-out, whitewashed shell: a church building in Geneva, say, compared to the Stadtkirche Wittenberg. 

That's all fine and good, and you probably wouldn't have expected anything else to transpire. But those in attendance, both by their numbers and by their appreciative reception of the orations at the conference, confirmed that Lutherans want to be Lutherans. They want their children to be educated as Lutherans, they want Lutheran preachers in their Lutheran pulpits, Lutheran teachers in their Lutheran schools, and they want it authentically--not in an attenuated form. 

Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, which hosted the conference, has also generously published sound recordings of the plenary talks by Jon Bruss, Dale Meyer, Carl Springer, John Nordling, and Avery Springer and Jim Lowe. You can find these on the CTSFW Media page. Once you've navigated there, click on "Listen/View Conferences and Events," then hit "Lutheranism & the Classics 2010," which will bring up the five plenary talks. 

Papers from the sectional sessions will, along with the plenary papers, be available in a Logia 2012 special issue. I'm sure Logia would be delighted to have new subscribers in anticipation of that issue! 

To all who attended, to all who helped out, to all who spoke, many thanks. 

Foxes in the Chicken Coop

Critical observers of U.S. higher education—of which there are far too few—have certainly seen it coming for years, perhaps decades. I think it might have finally sunk in for me when, within the space of but a few years, the ubiquitous “caf” was renamed the “dining facility,” dorm rooms that looked like what you’d get for third-class passage on a ship were replaced by suites, and the cavernous rubber-and-sweat-smelling gym was turned into a “fitness center,” often as well appointed as the local for-profit fitness club. Ironically, none of this coincided with an equally obvious renewed emphasis on teaching and learning. Those on the busy side of the podium at the front of the room might even have been able to discern, over this roughly 10-year revolution that swept American higher ed, an inverse relationship between enhanced non-academic facilities and students’ engagement.

The problem was, those who should have been keeping tabs on it all were the ones who stood to gain the most from it: the fitness club for students is open, usually free, to faculty; the house-beautiful dorm rooms are as much a badge of pride for bricks-and-mortar administrators as they are for the students who take up residence there; and, well, everyone has to eat, and adults no less than students prefer padded chairs to benches, small tables to row seating, and a nice cut of beef in the stroganoff to yesterday’s shepherd’s pie. Meanwhile, students and their parents paid more and more; the federal government released more and more funds in support of “higher education” in the form of grants and loans; and the institutions kept doing what institutions do best: engage in a Veblen-esque conspicuous grasp for the biggest piece of the pie they could get.

Which makes it, frankly, refreshing that someone, finally, has someone’s ear: the president’s. In an interview with college and university newspaper staffs from around the country yesterday, Mr. Obama shows that he: (a) is onto the federal gravy train that has allowed higher education costs to soar out of proportion; (b) understands the higher-ed “arms race” (if I may be permitted: in 1985, 25 years ago, the comprehensive annual cost of one, very nicely appointed private institution [VNAPI] which I was fortunate enough to attend was just less than a brand-new VW Golf—$8,750; today, while the equivalent 2010 Golf runs roughly $16K, the comprehensive cost of the same VNAPI is $47K); (c) rightly views spa-like accommodations on campus as having little to no bearing on the quality of education; and (d) wonders out loud whether “research” may have gotten in the way of teaching and learning. You can read more about Mr. Obama’s interview in the Around Washington column in today’s Inside Higher Ed.

What does this all mean? First, this may be the first time I’ve seen these issues addressed publicly by anyone in Washington, although, as I've mentioned, critical observers have long noted these matters privately and in smaller venues. Mr. Obama’s comments may bring some long-overdue and well-deserved attention to some of the real problems in higher education. Second, this portends a new era of what we’ve been arguing for here on RenMus, a leaner, meaner curriculum, the creation of a shared culture not based upon whether students have private bathrooms with Kohler fixtures but on what they read. Third and finally, perhaps the reign of the foxes is over in the chicken coop.

That said, the foxes will be foxes as long as they can—even if it means destroying the chicken coop. The higher education juggernaut will continue. But there is room—and it is widening—for a new way, for a return to a tightly managed curriculum taught by teachers to students who want to be...educated. And Lutheran higher education, with its unique Wittenberg intellectual apparatus, is poised like few others to deliver.

Wittenberg and the Sciences

Perhaps no more vexatious question, no question passed over in more silence, no question more [unpersuasively] pontificated upon, is that of the relationship between science and theology. The two don’t make easy bed-fellows. In fact, so the caricature goes, they’re more likely found sleeping in separate rooms, unwed. When the two do meet (Daniel Dennett, say, and Oral Roberts), it’s usually for an unsatisfying one-nighter in the alley behind the bar that both would rather forget, and it requires an ice-cold shower back in the safety of their own disciplinary apartment to wash off the filth. (Excuse the colorful image.) So it goes in the 20th and 21st centuries.

It has not always been this way. In Wittenberg, in fact, the sciences lived comfortably in what was at the time known as the Philosophical Faculty or the Arts Faculty, taken up by the master’s (M.A.) candidates and their teachers as the Quadrivium after they had successfully demonstrated mastery at the bachelor’s level (B.A.) of the other three arts. Indeed, there was no road to the higher faculties—to Law, Medicine, and Theology—but that that led through both the Trivium (B.A.) and the Quadrivium (M.A.). And in Wittenberg it is the case that by the mid 16th century, the humanistically-reformed curriculum that emerged was pointedly weighted toward the two elements that arose as central in the B.A. and M.A. curriculum: philology in the Trivium; science in the Quadrivium.

This historical fact and element of our intellectual heritage as Lutherans beckons us, it seems to me, to take the sciences seriously in the curriculum. But that raises hackles and comes with a set of questions that needs to be addressed before the sciences can find their home—not a place, but their home—in the curriculum of a Lutheran college radically dedicated to the Wittenberg way both intellectually and theologically.

Following are some of the questions that, at first blush, seem to be basic and preliminary to any further consideration:

Has so much scientific water flowed under the bridge since the 16th century that it is impossible today to make the sciences at home in a Lutheran curriculum?

Is there such a thing as a Lutheran approach to science? And if so, how does it differ from, how does it complement other views? How might it be regarded as better or deficient?

What need does the Church have of the sciences, if any? Put the other way around, what would be missing for the Church without the sciences? And are all sciences equal? Which are necessary, which are not?

What sort of philosophical or theological Weltanschauung is necessary to work under in order to have a healthy scientific community on a Lutheran campus?

Will 16th-century guide-posts be helpful or harmful in this discussion? If helpful, how can they be enlisted?

Can a science-less curriculum offer a responsible Wittenberg education?

Do the big quarrels, such as that between evolution and intelligent design, materialism and non-materialist views, matter? Do they drown out the healthy discussions, or do they create a context in which a healthy discussion may occur? Are they the only “going paradigms” that may be adopted?

In the coming weeks, I hope we can address this. I’ve enlisted the help of my friend, Stevin Gehrke, Professor in the School of Engineering at KU, pious Lutheran committed to classical, orthodox, confessional Lutheranism, and thoughtful interlocutor. Actually, this discussion finds its impetus in his proddings. Some things will get posted here on the blog. We can also use the Renascentes Musae Facebook page for less formal exchanges. If you have not yet joined us there, look us up, and welcome aboard.

But what’s your reaction, now, to this matter? Do you have any helpful things to say in addressing the questions above? Do you have other matters that you think can help the discussion along? Do you think that something like an intellectually and theologically rigorous and responsible science can be articulated from the Wittenberg perspective? Please weigh in!

[Image: Aritmetica; mosaic]

Rhetoric, Preaching, and...Homer

Wait! Shouldn’t that say: “Rhetoric, Preaching, and ... Paul,” or “... St. Augustine,” or “... John Chrysostom,” all of whom are stand-outs in Christian preaching? This would be understandable. It was certainly the reflex of Tertullian, and the radical reformers, Müntzer, Karlstadt, and others: Christian things for Christians; leave their own learning to the pagans.

But Melanchthon’s 1523 Encomium eloquentiae or Praise of Eloquence operates with an openness to the rhetorical tradition even of the classical pagans, or perhaps especially of the classical pagans. There, Homer, on the recommendation of Horace, Quintilian, Cicero; on the example of Solon, the just law-giver at Athens (fl. 596 B.C.), and Peisistratus, the tyrant of Athens (561–525 B.C., with interruptions), who had the poems of Homer sung in their proper order and a text finalized—there, in Encomium eloquentiae, Melanchthon makes Homer the source and teacher par excellence of rhetoric, an art whose highest usefulness lies in understanding and proclaiming the Word of God. Homer remains the basic source for: the qualifications of a speaker, the arrangement of a speech, the capacity to argue and counter-argue, the ability to describe in persuasive detail; in short, all that is really needed for speaking, for rhetoric—indeed, for the proclamation of the Word.

But how does one “arrive”? How does one achieve the eloquence of Homer? First, one comes to grips with the humanist idea that the ancients are not museum pieces to be observed behind a glass case, but great works of art whose use in education is for them to be imitated. “No one doubts the perusal of good writers is very profitable. In truth, unless you add to this the habit of writing and speaking you will be able neither to understand with sufficient incisiveness their opinion, nor to conceive in your mind the fixed rule for judging and deliberating.” [Kusukawa & Salazar, 70]

Second, even in imitation one does not remain frigid and “scientific.” Indeed, deep and incisive reading is commended. The Encomium eloquentiae is exemplary in this regard (Melanchthon teases out of Homer what the untrained eye would miss; for example he notes that excellence of speech and excellence of mind are made tandem at Odyssey 9.367, σοὶ δ ἔνι μὴν μορφὴ ἔπεων, ἔνι δὲ φρένες ἔσθλαι, “You have both a form of words and an intelligence that are excellent.”) But even intensive and incisive reading does not lead to distance, but to proximity, so that “not only the mouth and the tongue, but also the heart, are shaped by the knowledge of good writers.” [Kusukawa & Salazar, 68]

As noted elsewhere in this blog, this is that business about the text interpreting the reader, not vice versa, the requisite attitude in the Wittenberg way for reading all great works, including and especially the Bible. Tuning the ear to the force of rhetoric in the Greats—Homer, Vergil, Herodotus, Thucydides—in turn allows the tuned ear to tune in to the rhetoric of Scripture, in short, to understand what Scripture, as rhetorical message, wants to say. Indeed, Melanchthon reasons, it was because of the West’s ignorance of classical antiquity from the end of the Carolingian Renaissance until what we now know as the Renaissance that the horrors and atrocities of scholastic theology came to be: “Unless these writings are studied, we shall have a posterity that is in no way more sane than past centuries, when the ignorance of writings had overthrown all human and divine matters. Indeed..., in time past, when God was sorely angered against the Church, writings were snatched away, and ignorance of holy things followed. For when God wanted to speak in our words, those who were inexperienced in the arts of speaking judged foolishly on the divine Word.... And since they had no writings from which to learn how to be wise, the charming men devised that foolish sophistry [note: scholasticism], and began to argue about fabricated compositions of words.... Does it not [now] seem that the [once] neglected writings have sufficiently avenged the affront?... Indeed, when the excellent Father [i.e., God the Father] had begun again to turn His attention to the wretched, and was going to give back to us the Gospel, because of His generosity He also restored [the classical] writings, by which the study of the Gospel would be assisted.” [Kusukawa & Salazar, 74–75]

So, yes! Let it be: Rhetoric, Preaching, and ... Homer! Otherwise you might end up with a theology worthy of the other Homer, and a preaching to match.

Studium Excitare: A Worthy Project

You'll definitely want to visit Studium Excitare, an online journal whose spiritual epicenter is Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minn. Stud. Exc. publishes translations from the Lutheran Fathers' German and Latin works, including such 17th-century greats as David Hollaz and late-19th/early-20th century giants of North American Lutheranism K. Georg Stöckhardt, G. Adolf T. F. Hönecke. The translations are on the whole quite well done, with very little Deunglish and overly Latinate English, which makes the production of these pieces eminently usable. The journal is certainly doing its part to raise the profile of often long-forgotten figures who have important things to say to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America today.

To the editors of and contributors to Studium Excitare: Well done!