Conceiving the Christian College: A College President Shares His Vision of Christian Higher Education
Book Summary • Duane Litfin, Conceiving the Christian College: A College President Shares His Vision of Christian Higher Education (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), Kindle Edition. 289 pp. $11.
Read time: 3 min
Summary
Christian scholarship must be both rooted in the centrality of Christ and rigorously academic, so argues Duane Litfin in Conceiving the Christian College. Litfin contrasts two institutional models: the “Umbrella” model, which houses diverse perspectives under a broad Christian identity, and the “Systemic” model, which integrates truly Christian thinking into every academic discipline. Litfin helpfully unpacks the concept that “all truth is God’s truth,” explaining ten crucial principles underpinning this belief and focusing on the coherence and unity of knowledge as rooted in the person of Christ. He challenges modernist and postmodernist assumptions while advocating for a pursuit of Truth—as God knows it—that resists relativism. Furthermore, Litfin addresses the integration of faith and learning by proposing that Christian scholars not only master their disciplines but also view their scholarship through a Christological lens, including scholarship in even the natural sciences. His final chapters focus on the uniqueness of Christian colleges within the broader academy, contending for “The Voluntary Principle” and a marketplace of ideas where Christian scholarship competes on its own merits in institutions free from the anti-religion bias characteristic of so much secular scholarship. In sum, Conceiving the Christian College provides a remarkably insightful and thorough consideration of what it means for Christian universities to be authentically Christian, blending rigorous intellectual pursuit with unwavering commitment to Christ’s Lordship in all things.
Quotations
“The Systemic Model Systemic . . . [seeks] to make Christian thinking systemic throughout the institution, root, branch, and leaf. Their curriculum is typically all-encompassing. Their goal is to engage any and all ideas from every perspective, but they attempt to do so from . . . the sponsoring Christian tradition” (loc. 218).
“There is nothing imaginable that is irrelevant to [Christ] or to which he is irrelevant. There is no quarter of human learning in which he is not the central figure. Without him humans will never make full sense of either their world or themselves” (loc. 536).
“All that is truthful, from whatever source, is unified and will cohere with whatever else is truthful. Because God’s reality is unified and coherent, centered as it is on the person of Christ, all truthful apprehensions of that reality, or truthful expressions of those apprehensions, will cohere and contribute to an integrated, unified, Christ-centered vision of all things” (loc. 1170).
The Voluntary Principle “allow[s] the college to draw its staff from those whose personal convictions, developed of their own volition, align them with the college’s publicly stated commitments. As long as both sides of this principle are faithfully observed, not only will individual academic freedoms not be violated, they will be guarded” (loc. 2604).
“The marketplace place of ideas was simply society thinking out loud. Just as in a court of law truth and justice have a stake in encouraging advocacy . . ., so Isocrates taught that truth holds a stake in encouraging discourse and prompting the claimants to their best efforts” (loc. 3061). ❖
Quote this Review
Footnote: Timothy J. Harris, “Conceiving the Christian College: A College President Shares His Vision of Christian Higher Education,” Practical Theologian, September 17, 2024, www.practicaltheologian.com/blog/bookreview-k8h3m.
Bibliography: Harris, Timothy J. “Conceiving the Christian College: A College President Shares His Vision of Christian Higher Education.” Practical Theologian. September 17, 2024. www.practicaltheologian.com/blog/bookreview-k8h3m.
