Essays In Faith And Learning

This book represents the collected thinking of a few people who have had strong personal connections to Dr. Song Nai Rhee. Because the integration of faith and learning is a core value held by Dr. Rhee, the various authors have written essays on this topic in honor of his life and work. Such a book is typically referred to as a Festschrift, a celebratory writing given for a special person. Dr. Rhee's robust career at Northwest Christian College/University is celebrated by the essays brought together in this book. All the authors have known Dr. Rhee as students or as academic colleagues or both. What they write about ranges from topics found in biblical literature to expressly theological ideas to matters that are eminently practical. Yet each essay is held in place by its relevancy to the ongoing conversations about how faith and learning are integrated in the context of the Christian liberal arts university. More important, each author has a deep and abiding respect for Dr. Song Nai Rhee. His teaching and mentoring at Northwest Christian College/University have left an indelible mark on each of their lives.

Christian teachers have long been thinking about what content to teach, but little scholarship has been devoted to how faith forms the actual process of teaching. Is there a way to go beyond Christian perspectives on the subject matter and think about the teaching itself as Christian? In this book David I. Smith shows how faith can and should play a critical role in shaping pedagogy and the learning experience.

This book represents the collected thinking of a few people who have had strong personal connections to Dr. Song Nai Rhee. Because the integration of faith and learning is a core value held by Dr. Rhee, the various authors have written essays on this topic in honor of his life and work. Such a book is typically referred to as a Festschrift, a celebratory writing given for a special person. Dr. Rhee's robust career at Northwest Christian College/University is celebrated by the essays brought together in this book. All the authors have known Dr. Rhee as students or as academic colleagues or both. What they write about ranges from topics found in biblical literature to expressly theological ideas to matters that are eminently practical. Yet each essay is held in place by its relevancy to the ongoing conversations about how faith and learning are integrated in the context of the Christian liberal arts university. More important, each author has a deep and abiding respect for Dr. Song Nai Rhee. His teaching and mentoring at Northwest Christian College/University have left an indelible mark on each of their lives.

In addition to his notable work as a premier Christian philosopher, Nicholas Wolterstorff has become a leading voice on faith-based higher education. This volume gathers the best of Wolterstorff's essays from the past twenty-five years dealing collectively with the purpose of Christian higher education and the nature of academic learning. Integrated throughout by the biblical idea of shalom, these nineteen essays present a robust framework for thinking about education that combines a Reformed confessional perspective with a radical social conscience and an increasingly progressivist pedagogy. Wolterstorff develops his ideas in relation to an astonishing variety of thinkers ranging from Calvin, Kuyper, and Jellema to Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant to Weber, Habermas, and MacIntyre. In the process, he critiques various models of education, classic foundationalism, modernization theory, liberal arts, and academic freedom.

Two dozen Christian higher education professionals thoroughly explore the question of the faith's place on the university campus, whether in administrative matters, the broader academic world, or in student life.

In Teaching and Christian Practices several university professors describe and reflect on their efforts to allow historic Christian practices to reshape and redirect their pedagogical strategies. Whether allowing spiritually formative reading to enhance a literature course, employing table fellowship and shared meals to reinforce concepts in a pre-nursing nutrition course, or using Christian hermeneutical practices to interpret data in an economics course, these teacher-authors envision ways of teaching and learning that are rooted in the rich tradition of Christian practices, as together they reconceive classrooms and laboratories as vital arenas for faith and spiritual growth.

R. M. Hare, one of the most widely discussed of today's moral philosophers, here presents his most important essays on religion and education, in which he brings together the theoretical and the practical.

Our world is growing increasingly complex and confused—a unique and urgent context that calls for a grounded and fresh approach to Christian higher education. Christian higher education involves a distinctive way of thinking about teaching, learning, scholarship, curriculum, student life, administration, and governance that is rooted in the historic Christian faith. In this volume, twenty-nine experts from a variety of fields, including theology, the humanities, science, mathematics, social science, philosophy, the arts, and professional programs, explore how the foundational beliefs of Christianity influence higher education and its disciplines. Aimed at equipping the next generation to better engage the shifting cultural context, this book calls students, professors, trustees, administrators, and church leaders to a renewed commitment to the distinctive work of Christian higher education—for the good of the society, the good of the church, and the glory of God.

The Operation of Grace collects a decade's worth of essays by Gregory Wolfe taken from the pages of Image, the literary journal he founded more than a quarter century ago. As he notes in the preface, his Image editorials, while they cover a wide range of topics, focus on the intersection of "art, faith, and mystery." Wolfe believes that art and religion, while hardly identical, offer illuminating analogies to one another--art deepening faith through the empathetic reach of the imagination and faith anchoring art in a vision beyond the artist's ego. Several essays dwell on how aesthetic values like ambiguity, tragedy, and beauty enlarge our understanding of the spiritual life. There are also a series of reflections that extend Wolfe's campaign to renew the neglected and often misunderstood tradition of Christian humanism. Finally, there are sections that contain more personal meditations arising from Wolfe's involvement in nurturing and promoting the work of emerging writers and artists. The Operation of Grace demonstrates once again why novelist Ron Hansen has spoken of Wolfe as "one of the most incisive and persuasive voices of our generation." .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }