Paper Topics
These paper topics relate to the course using Robert A. Harris, The Integration of Faith and Learning (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2004). Unless otherwise specified in class, the minimum length is 750 words.
1. What personal challenges do you see in developing your own method of faith-learning integration? Include a discussion not only of the challenges themselves, but some ideas about how you plan to meet those challenges.
2. Imagine that some members of a Church youth group (either junior high or high school) want to know what the integration of faith and learning is all about. Write a paper explaining the concept and the process to them.
3. Discuss an example of faith-learning integration that you have processed. (That is, find some specific knowledge claim that you integrated with your faith in some way, using one or more of the techniques discussed in the book.)
4. One of the objections to the idea of integrating faith and learning is these two areas are “separate realms” each treating “different aspects of reality.” Respond to this objection.
5. How does a proper understanding of faith-learning integration, together with a set of effective integrative techniques, encourage a life of the mind, a love of learning, and the desire to learn?
6. What do you see as the operating relationship between your faith (Christian worldview, Biblical framework of reality) and your major or discipline? Identify the elements and their interaction.
7. In what ways does the Biblical framework impact the standards, tools, processes, techniques, assumptions, methodologies, and models of your major or discipline? (Choose at most two or three, perhaps even one, of these items for elaboration.)
8. Which Biblical truths are particularly relevant or key to your discipline? (For example, the view of human nature, a creator God, the sovereignty of God, the moral structure of life, and so on.)