learning.

My friend Molly has a recent article in the New York Times! Of course we're all bursting our buttons in pride and joy, though this isn't Molly's first journalistic success and won't be her last (look for an article in Christianity Today about her time at L'Abri sometime in the future). I appreciate that there's room to be productive at L'Abri, and Molly's really hard work inspires me to think about taking more care in my studying and writing.

We had a lecture yesterday about the intellectual virtues. First, that they exist at all, and second, that they involve a kind of responsibility in learning and teaching (or communicating). There's an ethic behind our epistemology and the way we develop and commit to what we know we know.

For instance, while Molly was here I remember talking to her about Christian presuppositions, and how often when Evangelicals engage in intellectual tasks they begin with a set of presuppositions regarding their own "world view" and that which is presented by those who aren't Christians. Molly noticed that Evangelicals will frequently approach a philosopher, author, or idea with Christian presuppositions that block them from genuinely engaging with the ideas at hand. So what happens in Christians classrooms goes something like this: "Today we're going to study Freud... and why he was wrong;" "Today we're going to learn about evolution, and why it's wrong;" "Today we'll read about Marx, and why he was a basket case."

In education, when this type of framing occurs, students are taught to block, fear, or refuse to think thoroughly about ideas. Maybe that seems basic, but when I told Molly about my experience in Culture Theory (where we studied Marx, Weber, and Durkheim) and how I distinctly remember how seriously we tried to take "the big three" of sociology/anthropology (that's another shout out to Dr. Howell, who designed our seminar in this manner), she seemed encouraged. That's not to say that blindly engaging or accepting every idea is intellectually virtuous, after all, caution is a virtue, but refusing to be open is a vice. (And yes, there is a sliding scale which makes the black & whiteness of this post seem overly simplistic).

In a way, heavy presuppositionalism is intellectually vicious, because it uses fear as a decision-making tool in curriculum design and is prideful. Two intellectual (and moral) virtues are courage and humility, which are possible because of grace in the first place.

The point is, since we are depraved, God in his mercy allows us to get anywhere at all intellectually. Learning and the development of intellectual virtues (which are habits and characteristics, not just random epiphanies) are possible because God is merciful.

Yet another opportunity to thank God, another place to recognize where we are sinful: slothful, resistant to truth, fearful, or proud, and another place to accept and administer grace to one another as we learn and teach. Grace abounds...