Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 21:2 (May 1959)
Article: The Christian Scholar
Author: Cornelius Van Til

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WTJ 21:2 (May 59) p. 147

The Christian Scholar

Cornelius Van Til

THE “American Scholar” of Ralph Waldo Emerson has apparently become the “Christian Scholar” in our day. The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U. S. A. is, in large measure, responsible for this. Through its Commission on Higher Education this council publishes a quarterly journal entitled The Christian Scholar.

In a Supplement Issue (Autumn 1954) we have a “Report of the First Quadrennial Convocation of Christian Colleges” and in a Special Issue (Autumn 1958) we have “Addresses and Reports of the Second Quadrennial Convocation of Christian Colleges”.

Other recent issues of The Christian Scholar are devoted to such subjects as “Christian Apologetics and the University”, “The Christian in Philosophy”, and “The Church College and Philosophies of Education”.

The discussion throughout is not limited to “church-related colleges”. All American Protestant institutions are in view. The question therefore pertains to the Christian Scholar teaching in any such institution. How is his Christian commitment related to his work as a scholar?

It is assumed that the religious commitment of the Christian Scholar does and should have a bearing upon his teaching in the field of science or philosophy.

Eugene Carson Blake, as president of the National Council of Churches and Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. writes an article that may give us a first glimpse of the Christian Scholar as he seeks to influence the secular subjects of a college.1 Blake deplores the fact that “the leading schools in our basic intellectual disciplines are still non-Christian, anti-Christian, or materialistic”.2 And this is true because our whole culture is

WTJ 21:2 (May 59) p. 148

largely materialistic. But the chief blame for this sad state of affairs, says Blake, is to be placed upon the church and her theologians.

Naturally it is the church and the theologians that must provide the leadership in a general reformation.

“But preachers can’t do the job without the scholars, and theological scholars can’t do it without the universities and colleges.

“Where is the trained economist who, expert in the Old Testament and New, as well as in his own field, will really give us the lead in the Christian reformation of a free economy?

“Where is the biological scientist who has digested both Genesis and Darwin sufficiently to change the...

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