Stranger in a Strange Land

• INTELLECTUM VERO VALDE AMA •Greatly love the intellect

—Augustine

A year ago in this space [May/June 1998] we congratulated the first winners of an annual competition sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies (IFACS) for books exemplifying scholarly excellence and integrative Christian thinking. And we were pleased to announce that the competition would henceforth be jointly sponsored by BOOKS & CULTURE and IFACS. In this issue, we are privileged to announce the cowinners of this year’s $10,000 prize: William J. Abraham, Albert Outler Cook Professor of Wesley Studies at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology, for Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology (Oxford Univ. Press, 1998); and Roger Lundin, Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College, for Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief (Eerdmans, 1998). Reviews of both books—assigned before the award was announced!—are forthcoming in B&C.

Cosponsoring this book prize is one way in which B&C is responding to the challenge posed by George Marsden in his provocative book The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship: to show how Christian thinking makes a difference. The particulars will vary from discipline to discipline, as Marsden noted, and we will be publishing an open-ended series on these themes. Several of the essays in this issue’s special section, “The History Wars,” for example, take up the question of providentialism and the Christian historian; Douglas Sweeney’s essay-review focuses specifically on the “school” of historiography centered around Calvin College. In our July/August issue, Emily Griesinger of Azusa Pacific University will take up the question “Christian Scholarship in Literature: What Difference Could It Possibly Make?”

Christian scholars, of course, like all Christians, must operate in a culture that is at many points deeply hostile to Christian belief; this is especially so in the academic world and in the “cultural sphere” generally. See, for example, Time magazine’s issue of March 29, 1999, featuring the 20 most influential “scientists and thinkers” of the twentieth century: “The Century’s Greatest Minds,” or so a banner on the cover proclaims. This issue is the fourth in a series of five, begun a year ago, in which the magazine will present its choices for the 100 most influential people of the century. Earlier lists covered leaders and revolutionaries, artists and entertainers, and business titans; the last of the five will feature “heroes and icons.” (Visit www.time.com for more information on the series.)

Time‘s list is a curious mix. In an introductory essay, managing editor Walter Isaacson refers to spirited debates “concerning the relative merits of thinkers vs. tinkerers.” Both categories are well represented. More interesting, although not addressed by Isaacson, is Time‘s definition of “thinker.” If we set aside from the list scientists (such as Albert Einstein) and inventors (such as Philo Farnsworth, credited here as the inventor of television), we are left with eight names, two of whom—Kurt Godel and Alan Turing—were mathematical logicians, though Turing also was involved to some extent in applying his insights. The other six include Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein (one of whose philosophical obsessions was the foundations of mathematics), Jean Piaget (one of the most dubious of several highly debatable choices), John Maynard Keynes, the Leakey Family (???), and Rachel Carson.

From this we can infer, to some extent at least, what kind of thinking matters at Time. Great Minds are pre-eminently scientific/mathematical/technological. Then there are the “human sciences”—hence Freud (an inescapable choice in any case) and Piaget, representing psychology; Keynes, representing economics; and the Leakeys, anthropology. Linguistics, for instance, didn’t quite make the grade, though Noam Chomsky is one of a number of lesser Great Minds to be featured in a sidebar. Rachel Carson doesn’t fit this schema, but she was truly influential in fostering an awareness of environmental concerns.

And what about—what is it called?—theology? That isn’t really thinking, is it? When was the last time you saw an equation in a systematic theology text? And who reads the stuff? And of course, it is rather offensively Christian—though one imagines the Time crew at least considering Hans Kung for enshrinement on the List. Did Karl Barth ever appear on their radar screen?

If you have your own suggestions for changes in Time‘s list of the century’s Great Minds, let us know. I’ve already started on my revision by crossing out Piaget and writing in Marshall McLuhan.