Flexing academic muscle
June 9, 2005
Editorial Board
MATTHEW THIESSEN GRADUATED FROM AN OXFORD MASTER’S PROGRAM LAST YEAR, having attended on a full ride scholarship. His thesis won the “Best Dissertation” prize for 2004. He’s going on to pursue his Ph.D. at Duke University on another full-ride scholarship, this time with a living allowance added on top. Thiessen is clearly a top-shelf academic, and he earned his first M.A., in Biblical Studies, right here at Trinity Western University. Lest you think him an anomaly, the winner of the previous year’s Oxford thesis prize was another Trinity grad, Dorothy Peters.
In fact, despite our small size, Trinity boasts one the best Biblical Studies programs on the continent, and our Dr. Peter Flint recently received a grant for (dollar sign)1.4 million over seven years to study the Dead Sea Scrolls. If this was only one example of our University’s successful pursuit of academic excellence, we might be able to write it off to the particularly dedicated faculty and students of a particularly intensive field of study. This is not the case. TWU has world-class scholars in several fields, such as Lynn Szabo, who was approached by the publishers of Thomas Merton’s work to release an edition of his unpublished poems. Unfortunately, some of our hardest hitters are leaving, though for stellar opportunities; Paul Janz recently left to teach at King’s College in London, and Hans Boersma is taking up North America’s most prestigious theology chair at Regent College
next year. Clearly, Trinity is no academic featherweight. The question is fast becoming how to retain such professors, and how to build on our existing strengths.
Of course, there are still a large number of hurdles to be jumped before T can be counted with the top academic institutions in the world. To reach that level should be the highest goal of the University. We ought to always strive to be the best at whatever we do, and in this particular case, there are at least three major reasons for doing so.
First, we are called to love our God with all of our hearts, souls and minds, and it is the University that has been established specifically to serve the latter part. Proverbs 25:2 tells us “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings” (NIV). Clearly, God wants us to examine Creation, to learn about it, and to learn from it. Academic excellence honours God.
Second, by being excellent scholars we can be a witness to the culture around us. Trinity has proved in the past, and will continue to prove that a faith-based approach to learning need not diminish the quality of the results. Some might argue that we have restricted ourselves to ignorant and unreflective positions based on superstition and antiquated traditionalism, but as our school produces more and more students who go on to make groundbreaking contributions to their fields, our work will provide ample defense against this line of attack.
Third, by pursuing and achieving academic excellence we will put ourselves in a position to influence the course of history. Men like Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertrand Russell received wide audience because they were intellectual giants. Derrida and Sartre especially were seminal thinkers in the post-modern movement. By contributing thinkers to the highest ranks of discourse, Christians will be in the position to literally alter the course of history by helping to provide the intellectual framework for whatever it is that will come after post-modernism. If we neglect this task, we may doom ourselves to an epoch of thought that is at best ambivalent, and at worst outright hostile to Christian faith.
The challenges that face our school are significant, but the rewards for this endeavour are more than worth the effort. To reach these heights requires the commitment of all parties here, faculty, staff, students, administration. However, as we pursue these noble and faithful goals, God will be faithful to us. We’ve made a good start, but the goal is a long way off.
Now you go...
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