The university, at its beginning, was an arm of the church, instructing those that were suitable for further education. There is a fundamental difference between what this education brought to the students and what post-secondary education means to us today. The medieval education centred on the discovery of one truth: the language of “the good.” This truth focused around the single goal that only the nine muses of the liberal arts could reveal: the beauty and wonder of virtue.

However, with the onslaught of modern rationalism came the modern paradigm of knowledge that changed our world in ways that its founding fathers could not have possibly dreamed. The university proved to be one of the most drastically affected branches of society, even though it is only in the last 60 years that the change has come to expansive fruition. The holistic and idealistic aspirations of the medieval university were traded in for the compartmentalized rigors of modern science, which is itself defined by the modern paradigm of knowledge.

The modern paradigm of knowledge, or, quite literally, the modern definition of knowledge, defines our age and dictates the actions of our state and society. In its simplest form, the modern paradigm of knowledge states that knowledge, or truth, can only be found once one has taken the object of interest and questioned it from every angle. As one of the first modern scientists, Francis Bacon said, we, “put Nature on a rack so that she will reveal her secrets.” The ultimate goal is to know everything so that we will have mastery over all of nature.

The typical university has left the side of the church and now serves on the side of modern science, playing an important role in the pursuit of the “truth.” The continued fragmentation of the university is the inevitable sign that the university no longer seeks a single truth, but instead seeks to question everything. Through this questioning, the university seeks to learn the truth that the moderns are convinced lies behind every object. The manifestation of this comes in the multiversities that have divided their structure into different schools, such as the School of Business, the School of Human Kinetics, the School of Social Sciences, etc. These schools come to have little to do with the other, because each is consumed by its own quest for understanding the truth that its object reveals. A holistic education for its students is no longer the central goal of the typical university; the goal now is to produce focused intellectuals that have a specific field that they will study until the day they finish their doctoral dissertation on that subject, after which they will be experts on that one extremely concentrated subject.

Though it is an undeniable fact that we live in this system, the important question for all of us should be: how can we exist in this system while living out our faith without becoming hopeless dualists? There is no obvious answer to this question, except to stress the importance of reflection on one’s faith, with a focus on understanding where exactly that faith has come from and its importance in one’s life. This, essentially, is the study of theology, which unites the multiversity together under one common confession. This allows one to engage the academic world and all of its bounties, without forgetting that everything is subordinate and reliant upon the core beliefs of faith.

This article is in response to George Grant’s chapter “Faith and the Multiversity” in Technology and Justice, published by House of Anansi Press Ltd.