Notes and Questions for Arthur F. Holmes
The Idea of a Christian College
Revised Edition, 1987

Robert Harris
Version Date: July 26, 2000

These notes were developed as a faculty resource for use when reading and discussing the Holmes book.

Chapter 1: Why a Christian College

Pages 3-4. The "predicament of the modern mind" is that it is "at a loss to know what life is all about" because it (1) rejects the revelation of God and (2) insists that all meaning is created, none discovered. A first benefit of a Christian college or university, then, is that we are free to engage a richer view of life. We recognize that people are not only creators of some meanings, but seekers and discoverers of the "rich meaning and purpose" God has put into life. The idea of pre-existent, external meaning implies an objective, rational world.

• How would you explain the difference between indoctrination and education to your students?

• What methods do you use to "wean" students from dependence on you for learning (and even thinking)?
• What do or might you do to enable students "to evaluate information, particularly in the light of the Christian revelation"?

• What techniques or educational experiences do you use that encourage students to be shapers of culture rather than passive participants in it?
• Holmes says that what is needed is not "Christians who are also scholars but Christian scholars, not Christianity alongside education but Christian education." How would you distinguish between a Christian who is also a scholar and a "Christian scholar"? What are the implications for such a fusion in regard to teaching, research, writing, and approaching your discipline?
• Can you provide some examples from your own work of the "interpenetration" of Christianity and learning?
• How would you describe the difference between "the development of a Christian perspective" and "tacked-on moralizing"?

• What is the status of your discipline in relation to reason, truth, meaning, and unity? How can Christian principles help to provide meaning, order, and sense to your field?
• Have you attempted to articulate a Christian educational philosophy in relation to your field? What is it?

Pages 16-17. All people use what may be described as a "religious worldview" to give their lives direction, motivation, coherence, and perhaps purpose, even if that "religion" is materialism, a political ideology, or even "the self on the throne." Thus, learning involves the examination of competing religious worldviews, not the decision between a Christian worldview and no religious worldview. Holmes notes that "not everything writers and scientists and others declare can be true" because writing is a combination of factual presentation, interpretation, belief, inductive leaps, conclusions based on sometimes overt and sometimes hidden assumptions, and even sometimes baseless claims.

• How do you encourage students to dig beneath the surface of their studies to identify "religious" assumptions or aspects of an author's worldview, in order to help them understand the influence worldview can have on interpretation?
• How do you help students discern the difference between a fact, a claim, and an interpretation in their reading?
• What techniques do you use to convince students of the value of writings that contain much objectionable or unbiblical philosophy, yet which also contain useful information, truth, or at least provocative issues worthy of addressing?
• Do you encourage students to value truth wherever it is found? How?

• Some students come to the Christian university feeling shy about using their minds. What strategies do you use to encourage them to reason about the world in relation to their faith, or to "make friends" with their minds as great tools for the service of God?

Pages 24-25. Holmes views education not as the transfer of a compendium of useful knowledge but as the shaping of persons: "For the question a teacher must ask about his teaching is not 'What can they do with it?' but rather 'What will it do to them?'"

• When you design your courses, do you develop learning objectives that foster "the making of Christian persons"?
• What do you answer when a student asks, "How will I use this?"
• Do you encourage students to let their reading, thinking, and writing change them?

• Do you make an attempt to connect your discipline to the whole realm of knowledge, to show its part, relationship, limitations, and connections?
• How can a general education requirement show "the unity of truth"?
• Do you encourage students to value their general education requirements and not act as if those should simply be gotten "out of the way"?

• How do you help your students to reflect? Many students, being economizers, are always in a hurry and seem unwilling to take awhile to think. How do you overcome this?
• Are you careful to pause after an in-class question to allow for sufficient thinking time?
• How would you develop an interdisciplinary approach to an issue from your field?
• What disciplines could you bring together for a successful interdisciplinary course? Why would the interconnection of those disciplines be effective?
• What books outside your area of specialization do you read in order to enrich or contextualize your course material?

• How do you encourage students to examine their current values? Do you encourage them to ask, "Where did I get this value?"
• What steps or sources do you provide to help students form new or better values?
• Can you connect values development to your course materials? Do you provide readings (such as philosophical classics or Biblical stories relevant to your subject) that help students examine and develop values?
• What kinds of discussion can help lead students to see that values go beyond feelings?
• How do you teach or model values related to your discipline?

• What contributions can your discipline make to helping non majors "become more fully human"?
• What methods might you use to persuade non majors to value and pursue key insights from your discipline?
• How can you generalize from the specifics of your field to larger awareness, appreciation, understanding, or values?

Pages 37-38. The liberal arts education prepares students for the greater vocation of life, as well as providing the employer-demanded qualities of work ethic, ability to think, and ability to communicate. In a world where graduates will be changing careers several times, these qualities are the most important. Christian education provides a sense of wholeness, a centered and focused life in the midst of career and social change.

• Do you help students understand what exactly is "marketable" about them?
• Do you encourage your students to develop their universally valuable skills (thinking, writing, speaking) as well as their subject learning?
• Besides jobs based on the subject matter of your field, what different careers might study in your area prepare students for? That is, how does knowledge of your area help those in various other jobs?

• How can students be motivated to view their callings this way?

Pages 45-49. Integration differs from interaction, where faith and learning "sit side by side" and talk. Integration includes (1) what human learning can contribute to the faith and Christian worldview, (2) what Christian faith can contribute to the arts and sciences, (3) an attitude of the love of truth and honesty and a motivation to do well.

• Do you use faith commitment to encourage students to do well? Have you discussed Col. 3:23-24 with your classes? ("Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.")
• Do you tell your majors that (paraphrasing Holmes), what is needed is not Christians who are also [your major here] but Christian [your major here]?
• How do you respond to those students who seem to harbor anti-intellectual feelings?

• Do you discuss with your students the problems with a "just the facts" attitude?
• When you define terms or concepts, do you discuss the various alternative definitions sometimes given to the same terms?
• Do you encourage students to trace the multiple level ethical implications of seemingly simple decisions or events?

• What techniques do you use to articulate the commonality and the differences in worldview among fellow Christians?
• What do you think is at the core of a Christian worldview, that all or nearly all evangelical Christians would adhere to?
• What is the source of difference among believers in their Christian worldview? How important are these differences?
• Is a persons' Christian worldview fixed and unchanging or does it develop over time? How? Why?

• How would you define, explain, and apply a Christian philosophy of history to your discipline? How does it differ from other philosophies? Does it have commonalities with some others?

• How can the faculty create a cross-disciplinary dialog to enrich understanding?
• How many and what kinds of philosophy courses should be required in the Core curriculum? Is Holmes' recommendation of two (one general and one bridging disciplines) appropriate?

• Considering Holmes' meanings of "multiversity" and "university," how best can we reemphasize our intention to be a university? How best might "intellectual polytheism" be addressed?
• What can faculty do to encourage students to develop "a systematic understanding and appraisal of life" as they move through more than forty courses?
• Some studies claim that many students come to college "foreclosed" in their worldviews. What can be done to encourage in students a thoughtful exploration and construction of a vibrant, lasting, and faithful worldview?

Pages 61-63. Students must be free to learn for themselves and not be "pontificated" to.

• What strategies do you use to help students find their own way to truth, thinking things out for themselves, rather than giving in to the temptation simply to tell them the path to take?
• How do you respond to a student who seems headed off in the wrong direction?

• How do you handle the presentation of sensitive or potentially offensive material in your classroom?
• It is now being said that many American universities are less free to discuss some issues than are other areas of society, because such discussion is now being labeled "intolerance," "hate speech," and the like. What formerly was considered philosophical disagreement is now often considered a moral crime. What can the university do to keep from falling into this sort of political correctness?
• What approach do you take when a theological controversy or disagreement breaks out in your classroom or in the course material?
• Holmes says that students should have the freedom to disagree "on reasonable grounds" with their teachers. Do you encourage such a freedom? Have you found improved insights through such disagreements?

In Student Learning Outside the Classroom: Transcending Artificial Boundaries, the authors note that "out-of-classroom experiences have a more lasting and defining impact on students than do the classroom experiences" (Kuh, et al. xi). For this reason (and many others) building community is important at the Christian university. As Holmes says, the university must work at a "climate of faith and learning."

• What ideas do you have for encouraging students to continue to interact over course material outside the classroom?
• How can faculty help foster a community that "helps create [positive] attitudes and impart values"?
• What can faculty do outside the classroom to help build a thoughtful, faith-centered community?
• What kinds of educational community service requirements do you have for your courses? What kinds of "real world" applications do you require students to perform as part of a course?

Experience must be connected to theory and interpretation. "Experience is not self-interpreting."

• What assignments do you give that cause students to evaluate and interpret their experiences?
• What do you think is the value of experience-based learning components in your courses?

There is a difference between being educated and being merely trained.

• How would you define an educated Christian? What characteristics should a graduate of this university have?
• How do Holmes' "marks of an educated Christian" on pages 102-103 compare with your ideal list? With the university's targets and goals?

Holmes, Arthur F. The Idea of a Christian College. Rev. Ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987. ISBN 0-8028-0258-3.

Work Cited

Kuh, George D., et al. Student Learning Outside the Classroom: Transcending Artificial Boundaries. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 8. Washington, D.C.: The George Washington University, 1994.