The Vocation of a Lutheran Liberal Arts College Revisited
by Paul J. Dovre

Part of the Web companion guide to Our Calling in Education: A Lutheran Study

As David Ratke and I exchanged notes about the lecture series on Lutheran Higher Education, it was agreed that I would focus on developments in the past half-century or so with focus on the renaissance of interest in these matters that we observe among Lutheran colleges.  The title I suggested was "Faith and Learning: A Lutheran Renaissance" and while that would have worked, as the lecture came to life the title evolved into "The Vocation of a Lutheran Liberal Arts College Revisited"  for reasons that may become obvious as we proceed.

What I share today should be seen more as a series of hypotheses rather than a set of declarations in the sense that Lutheran colleges are very diverse in what and how they appropriate the elements of the tradition.  There is not, in any sense, an official Lutheran theological perspective anymore than there is a normative Lutheran liberal arts tradition.

The Lutheran commitment to learning dates from the Reformation itself.  Luther exemplified St. Anselm’s dictum that “faith seeks understanding.”  It was intellectual inquiry fed by religious anxiety that led Luther to his breakthrough reading of Romans on the nature of salvation.  It was Luther’s commitment to the laity, the priesthood of all believers, that led him to champion a universal education that would give people of both sexes and all ages direct access to knowledge.  It was Luther’s commitment to worldly truth that led him to exclaim “how can you not know what can be known?”  It was his respect for human curiosity that led him to write the catechism with its recurrent question, “what does this mean?” following each creedal affirmation.  And it was commitment to the place of learning in church and world that led Luther and Melanchthon to spearhead a reformation of the curriculum at Wittenberg University.

This is a significant history but what leads us to revisit the vocation of a Lutheran liberal arts college in the first decade of a new century?  Let me venture some answers to that question.

The first reason is because, beginning a decade ago, we realized that the vocation of Lutheran liberal arts colleges (and other religious colleges) might be slipping away.  As George Marsden related in his epic, The Soul of the American University, the hegemony of modernism marginalized humanistic and religious ways of knowing all across the academic landscape.  It left religious colleges, at best, with what Douglas Sloan calls a two-realm theory of truth in which faith(values) and learning(facts) rarely intersected.  In Mark Schwehns’s analysis, the post Weberian preoccupation with the creation of knowledge edged out the discovery of truth and moral formation as desirable ends of learning.  Academic excellence came to be defined by modernist, scientific criteria.  Most of us were socialized in the modernist academy and its methods and values shaped our intelligence. Survey work led by Michael Beaty at Baylor University documents the impact of the two-realm theory of truth upon faculties at three highly recognized religious colleges and universities.

The recent history of religious colleges has been chronicled by several writers, mostly notably by James Burtchaell in his landmark work, The Dying of the Light.  As Burtchaell and others note, the straying of colleges from their religious moorings was in some cases a deliberate action of the colleges.  For example, in order to meet institutional funding needs many colleges sought to broaden their constituent base by generalizing their mission statements. In the face of change and incredible growth, many colleges sought to position themselves in a more ecumenical, secular, and less particularist mode.  Now the influence of modernism and secularism was ameliorated on the campuses of many religious colleges for a considerable period of time through the ethos of the faculty who were part of the tradition, through relationships with sponsoring church bodies, and through religious rituals and traditions.  But over time the rituals and traditions became less evident and important.  Along with that the ethos of the faculty was reshaped by professionalization with the consequence that disciplinary interests increasingly trumped college interests and college interests often came to trump any religious purpose interests.  In addition, as colleges grew there were shortages of candidates for faculty positions from the related church bodies--in our case Lutheran.  Other factors included the desire for diversity and the leadership practices of the colleges.

The policies and positions of religious bodies were an additional factor.  For example, in the 70's the Lutheran Church in America, then the sponsoring body for Lenoir-Rhyne, developed and approved a statement of mission and philosophy for its colleges ("The Basis for Partnership between the Church and its Colleges").  The focus was on the first article, on the orders of creation where human reason prevails.  Robert Benne, among others, noted that while this rationale "affords a high view of reason, affirms academic freedom, and gives ontological grounding to secular fields of learning---it also has serious defects that have contributed to the secularization of Lutheran colleges.  Primary among them is that it gives no epistemological status to the claims of the Christian intellectual tradition.  It leaves little if any room for the Christian account of reality."  One should acknowledge that what LCA Lutheran institutions were doing was consistent with what was occuring in many other protestant religious colleges and universities.  Merrimon Cuninggim of the Danforth Foundation played a key role in popularizing this first article approach among religious colleges in the 70's and 80's.

A second reason we revisit the vocation of a Lutheran liberal arts college is because of the powerful influence of material, individualistic, instrumental, and pluralistic values in our culture.  Again, the historical accounts note the influence of a culture hungry for economic development, students motivated by narrow vocational goals, and a society preoccupied with glitz, consumption, and personal happiness.  Many see a connection between these goals and the intellectual values that privilege the pragmatic, the material, and the individual.  The cause of concern is not that material and personal issues are to be ignored, but rather that they are not contextualized within broader, transcendent values.  Consequently, the two realms, faith and action, are unequal and largely disconnected.

A word about pluralism, the constructive value of pluralism is not the issue, but the relationship between pluralism and particularity is.  The idea that we are a richer society because of the plurality of voices and visions is borne out by our history.  Bias and discriminatory practices have often jeopardized the richness and have led many to eschew any particularity, be it religious, ethic, gender, etc.  The challenge for a democratic society is to honor the particularities, the pluribus, that bring richness to our unum and the challenge for religious colleges is to sustain and enrich their particularity as they engage the pluralism.  This requires courage, integrity, humility, and respect for others.

A third reason we revisit these issues relates to the critique of post-modernism.  In the closing decades of the 20th century, the foundations of modernism were shaken from both inside and outside academy.  As citizens sought a deeper sense of meaning and understanding (the spiritual dimension as some call it), the modern, objectivist, oriented academy was found wanting.  As social/human crises continued unabated in a time of technological mastery, modernism’s vulnerability became apparent.  And as the marginalized voices of women, the poor, and persons of color were raised, the objectivist project began to shake. 

While these external realities were being made manifest, the academy engaged in its own self-critique.  The relationship between perspective and perception, between experience and knowing, between motivation and judgment, and between narrative and truth raised serious questions about the modernist project in general and other narratives, including Christian, in particular.  A combination of new voices, fault lines in the social order, and the self-searching of the academy created a kind of an epistemic/ hermeneutical chaos.  Critics complained of an insipient relativism that would lead to still more chaos.  Some predicted the undermining of rationality itself and the descent into nihilism.  But others saw the postmodern critique as an invitation to new voices in the academic process and new definitions of the academic project.  We have an increasing body of literature from both young and seasoned scholars who are attempting to unpack the epistemological confusion and engage the desperate voices in common dialogue.  This is a hopeful sign.  (Particularly valuable are Professing in the Postmodern Academy: Faculty and the Future of Church Related Colleges, a collection of essays by younger scholars edited by Stephen Haynes, and Religious Scholarship and Higher Education: Perspectives and Direction for the Future, the work of established scholars edited by Andrea Sterk.)

The third reason we reconsider the vocation of a Lutheran liberal arts college is because of the renaissance of religious intentionality in the culture and in the academy.  Speaking of what he calls our smorgasbord culture, Miloslav Volf of the Yale Divinity School observes that "communities of faith have not found effective ways to offer a compelling vision of an integral way of life that is worth living.   Many people are seeking precisely that.  They are unsatisfied with a lifestyle shaped only by the watchwords of contemporary culture: 'freedom' and 'prosperity.'  This is signaled by the resurgent interest in spirituality as related to almost every dimension of life--from medicine to business, from arts to politics."

The last decade of the 20th century has been a watershed for students and practitioners of religious higher education in America.  Certain crises in the culture, the changing expectations and priorities of religious bodies that sponsor colleges, and the critical reexamination of intellectual paradigms already noted are among the key markers in this watershed.  In addition, the Lilly Endowment has provided the essential resources and marshaled the competent talent that are prerequisite to a sustained and unfolding treatment of these developments.

But behind these developments lie the memory of a rich heritage, the restlessness of academics trying to come to terms with the discontinuities between experience and conviction, the growing spiritual self-consciousness of students and younger faculty, and the work of the divine spirit. The results are many and diverse:  we see faculty renewal projects, the re-emergence of a robust scholarship in faith and learning, the reformulation of institutional missions, the reconsideration of religious identity, curriculum reform, the reshaping of campus life, the reemerge of religious symbols and practices, and new forms of relationship with the church. 

Signs of renaissance among Lutheran Colleges and Universities include numerous ventures such as your own focus on the Lutheran tradition through study groups and lecture series.  Many institutions have completed major self-studies oriented around religious identity, several of which have been published.  The now annual ELCA conference on "The Vocation of a Lutheran College" was originally envisioned as an occasional or possibly biannual event but the response has made it into an annual event.  The Lutheran Academy of Scholars, in which two of your colleagues have participated, attempts to take seriously the scholarly task of relating faith and learning.  Initial funding for this program has expired but efforts are being made to secure sponsorships that will provide a future for this valuable enterprise.  A recent leadership development initiative, The Thrivent Program, is build around core understandings of the Lutheran idea of vocation and the Lutheran tradition of faith and learning.  And this list does not exhaust the examples of the Lutheran expression of the renaissance that is underway in and among religious colleges.

Given all of these and other recent developments what can we say about the vocation of a Lutheran liberal arts college?  I believe that it finds its expression in three areas:  purpose, substance, and pedagogy.  Let me explore each in turn.

The vocation of a Lutheran college is expressed first of all in its purpose, and here the Lutheran idea of vocation is formative.  In Luther’s view, God takes the initiative in the relationship between God and humans.  We receive the righteousness of God through faith.  We don’t earn it or build our life toward that end.  So salvation is our starting point, not the goal of our lives.  We receive this gift through faith and we respond to God’s call through our vocation in service to the neighbor.  The Lutheran concept of vocation was and is unique and it begins with gift.  In addition, it is distinctive in that it is inclusive of all occupations.  Another feature of Luther’s formulation is its comprehensiveness.  For Luther, vocation was occupation, but it was so much more than that – it was home and family and community and leisure and church – wherever one meets the neighbor.  As Mark Edwards put it “Luther spiritualized secular life, by taking the notion of spiritual calling and applying it to all honest walks of life.”

Luther was concerned about the renewal of the church, but his larger concern was the renewal of society.  Thus, he was concerned about the education and conduct of those called to be priests and monks, but he was just as concerned for those called to be shoemaker, farmer, judge, parent, and teacher and so he called all of them priests! The calling to serve the neighbor leads us to issues of love and justice, it leads us to the community, and it leads us to concern for the common good.  Again and again, Luther’s centering ethic was expressed in the question “Does it serve the neighbor?”

In view of this, what then is the purpose of a Lutheran liberal arts college?  To call and prepare graduates to serve the neighbor.  Luther made the case in his letter to the councilmen in 1524 as he wrote:

“In order to maintain its temporal estate outwardly, the world must have good and capable men and women, men able to rule well over land and people, women able to manage the household and train children and servants alike.  Now such men must come from our boys, and such women from our girls.  Therefore, it is a matter of properly educating and training our boys and girls to that end.”  

Luther particularly underscored the necessity of good education for those who would be leaders, rulers, and authorities.  So again, the vocation of a Lutheran liberal arts college is to call and prepare students to serve their neighbor.

Which leads to the second expression of our vocation as a Lutheran Liberal Arts College and that is in the substance of the enterprise. Let me say a few things initially about the Reformers commitment to what we refer to as the liberal arts.  Martin Luther and Phillip Melanchthon were dismayed by the scholastic curriculum of their day, a curriculum that featured philosophy, a rote dialectic practice, and dogmatic formulations of belief and practice.  In the 1524 letter previously referred to, Luther lamented about his own education in these words,

“How I regret now that I did not read more poets and historians and that no one taught me them!  Instead I was obliged to read at great cost, toil, and detriment to myself the devil’s dung, the philosophers and sophists, from which I have all I can do to purge myself.”

In response to this, Luther and Melanchthon said, metaphorically, “Let in the light.”  “It should be noted that the Reformers recognized the power and value of non-Christian contributions to culture. The great pagan poets and writers were to be taught in schools partly for their inherent value,  partly as instrumental to the mastery of language and grammar for the study of scripture.”(Richard Baepler, The Lutheran Reader).  While Luther disliked Aristotle in general, he recognized the superior value of his moral ethics.  For Luther and the other reformers at Wittenberg the mantra was “consider history, the languages and classics, develop critical perspective, study moral philosophy, and learn and practice a rhetoric that engages life.”  In the words of James Kittelson, for Luther and other humanists “…true knowledge was not universal and propositional in character, but concrete and specific to time and place.  Its truths were not  scientia or knowledge but sapientia or wisdom, which was to be found in the marketplace and in the conduct of daily life rather in the lecture hall or the monastery.  Education thus had an end both temporally and finally.  This end was the finished person that came out of the classroom and into society … the one who could apply general principles in a variety of specific situations.”  (James M. Kittleson, Luther and Learning).  All of this is by way of saying that we have a legacy – a liberal arts legacy, a legacy of curriculum reform, a legacy that includes both the sacred and the secular.

But in addition to this liberal arts legacy, the substance of our collegiate enterprise is shaped by several theological themes and elements.  In his book, Quality with Soul, Robert Benne writes that one of the distinctive resources of a healthy religious college is the Christian account of  reality.  This account is comprehensive, “it provides an umbrella of meaning under which all facets of life and learning are gathered and interpreted.”  It does not claim to have all of the data, but it offers a paradigm in which data and knowledge about the world can be “organized, interpreted, and critiqued.”  This Christian account arises from the Christian narrative and from the intellectual tradition that has emerged from it, and this intellectual tradition, says Benne, “conveys a Christian view of the origin and destiny of the world, of nature and history, of human nature and its predicament, and of the human situation and of the Christian way of life”. In other words, the Christian account provides a variety of substantive propositions that may shape the academic experience of a Lutheran college.  While it would be presumptuous to even attempt to unpack all of this for our time and place, some illustrations may be helpful…six in all.

We begin with the Christian notion of freedom and its profound implications.  Saved by grace from the burden of sin and the necessity of constructing our own salvation, we are free to serve God, free to explore all that God has done.  This is a more profound notion of freedom than we find any place else in our culture.  This leads most naturally to academic freedom, described in the recent draft of Concordia's statement of purpose as “the exercise of critical inquiry and the use of reason to discover the beauty, complexity and order in creation and contribute to the emergence of a just world.”  The practice of free inquiry, a right secured by the secular authorities in Saxony, enabled Luther to unlock the scriptures and emboldened him to set out his arguments for critical examination in the forum of public opinion.  It is a legacy with both substantive and pedagogical significance.  Indeed, our call to serve the neighbor requires that the truth be discovered and that the truth be told in a society that is always in need of reformation.

A second theme with implications for the substance of our work is Luther’s affirmation of the world.  Luther spoke of a God active in two kingdoms or two realms as Ernie Simmons identifies them, the heavenly realm where grace rules and the earthly realm where reason and the law are indispensable.  These two kingdoms are both arenas of God’s activity and Christians are called to be active in both.  What was distinctive about Luther’s view was his affirmation of the world, the secular – his view that this is God’s creation and the site of God’s continuing activity, and so (as I noted earlier) Luther affirmed the study of so-called pagan authors and understood that they possessed knowledge that was essential in serving the neighbor.

A third substantive theme has to do with the importance of the arts.  Music, in particular, played a key role in the Lutheran Reformation, more so than in the Calvinist Reformation with its rejection of graven images.  So there was a creative explosion in the hymnody as well as a general cultivation of music.  “Music not only banished earthly cares and became a vehicle for glorifying God, it seemed to mediate the presence of God in special ways.” (Baepler, The Lutheran Reader)

A fourth theme is the centrality of community in Luther’s writing and speaking.  The vocation of serving the neighbor brings us into community.  Recognizing God’s work in the earthly kingdom brings us to community.  Confessing the third article of the historic confession of the church leads us to community.  Therefore it is not surprising that Lutherans have been distinctive among denominations in their engagement in the public sector.  For example, in the United States, Lutherans account for only 3% of the population, but sponsor 25% of the nursing homes and the largest social and human service enterprise in the nation.  In addition, Lutherans have pioneered the development of global assistance through Lutheran World Relief and the Lutheran Immigration Service has resettled more refugees that any agency except the U.S. government.

Moral deliberation of the sort Luther encouraged and exemplified begins with attending to the biblical narrative and the insights of the tradition and often ends by engaging the reflection and common sense of the community.  In Luther’s view no particular form of government or public policy was mandated by the Bible or tradition, so we need to use our reason to apply ourselves with wisdom.  Luther modeled this paradigm, sometimes well and sometimes badly.  Although he didn’t deny his fallibility, neither did he use it as an excuse for inaction.

A fifth theme is what I describe as a sense of contingency.  It is expressed in a number of ways, including the famous simul eustis et pecator formulation, the confession that we are simultaneously both sinner and righteous.  We also see it in Luther’s view on the limits of reason.  Luther viewed reason as “the most important and the highest in rank among all things, and, in comparison with other things of this life, the best and something divine.”  But he was leery of Erasmus and others who thought they could rationalize divine grace and revelation and he was sensitive to the ways in which persons who were simultaneously saint and sinner could corrupt reason.

The sense of contingency is also evident in Luther’s preference for the paradoxical, the reality of the sometimes irresolvable tension among alternative ways of understanding and negotiating reality.  This sense of contingency leads to a sense of intellectual humility.  It may also enable Lutheran intellectuals to be less bothered by the epistemic and hermeneutical chaos of postmodernism – but that is the subject for another day.  And finally, it perhaps accounts for the “ethical realism” characteristic of Lutherans, the idea that we are called to work for change without the expectation of heaven on earth.  And this apparently sensible insight has led others to suggest that our “realism” may lead to quietism.

The theology of the cross perhaps best exemplifies the Lutheran sense of contingency.  In view of the human suffering we have experienced in the past century and already in this new one, this theme is worthy of our attention.  We are called to think coram deo that is, in relationship to God.  And we find God in suffering places, places where we encounter most dramatically the limits of human wisdom and action. In weakness we find God's strength, in human folly we find God's wisdom, in the cross we find God's victory.  To seek God in such crosses is a profound quest, one that opens us to both spiritual depths and heights, to our own human limitations and our human possibilities as messengers of God. 

A decade ago Nicholas Woltersdorf, a guest on this campus on more than one occasion, lost his son in a mountaineering accident.  He experienced a long night of grief.  As he emerged from this experience of the cross he wrote: "To believe in Christ's rising and death's dying is also to live with the power and the challenge to rise up now from all our dark graves of suffering love.  If sympathy for the world's wounds is not enlarged by our anguish, if love for those around us is not expanded, if gratitude for what is good does not flame up, if insight is not deepened, if aching for a new day is not intensified, if hope is weakened and faith dimished, if from the eperience of death comes nothing good, then death has won.  Then death, be proud."

A sixth substantive resource emerging from the Lutheran tradition is the incarnation.  Luther’s idea was that the finite, that is human beings and other created things, are capable of witnessing to the infinite, that is the divine.  As the bread and the wine convey God’s gift and presence, as prayer and word give us access to God’s spirit, so also does human work in the community make a difference.  That work may be making good shoes or good beer, or it may be aiding the poor and disenfranchised, or it may be engaging in the hard and often ambiguous work of moral deliberation but we are God’s creatures who in spite of the dirt on our shoes and in our souls are called and enabled to convey God’s truth and mercy in whatever station we may find ourselves.

Needless to say, we have not exhausted the Lutheran themes that may bring substance to a Lutheran liberal arts college, but hopefully, we have exemplified the possibilities.  Let me now turn to the third of the ways in which the vocation of a Lutheran liberal arts college may manifest itself and that is in our pedagogy. 

First, from a pedagogical point of view, we are reminded of Luther’s high praise for, and confidence in human reason as a means of understanding God’s revelation and gaining wisdom and skill to live out our vocation in the world.  His reservations about the limits of human reason notwithstanding, Luther and his colleagues had high expectations for the intellectual rigor of their work and the work of their students.

The Lutheran preference for dialectic constitutes a second contribution to pedagogy.  It is framed by the themes of contingency, the limits of reason, and by our human nature. But it is also shaped by our callings in the world, the need to bring the insights of our faith to bear on the burden of our callings.  Returning again to Robert Benne, he argues for a dialectic that will reveal the alternative worldviews that shape our academic disciplines.  For example, let the worldview assumptions of classical economics be in conversation with those of Christian ethics, let the disciplinary assumptions of literary criticism be in conversation with those of natural science.  And if we are to transcend the two-realm theory that dominates the academy, then conversation between the disciplines and the Christian intellectual account, or between faith and learning if you will, is both a promising and necessary activity.  From a Lutheran point of view, the objective is not to Christianize or somehow “convert” the disciplines because we regard them as having integrity in their own right.  Rather, the goal is to engage the disciplines in the service of holistic understanding, a holism that recognizes the sacred and secular as two realms of a single reality, that is God’s creation. 

A third pedagogical resource is our notion of paradox.  As noted before, this has strong roots in the substance of the Lutheran theological tradition.  But it has pedagogical implications as well.  It may provide a modality for understanding complexity and ambiguity.  Richard Hughes raises a warning flag worthy of consideration. He points out that while paradox is a unique gift, it is also a weakness.  In nurturing both sides of a paradox, it is easy to sacrifice one side for the other.  In Hughes words, “when paradox dissolves in this way, the risks can be absolutism on the one hand and relativism on the other.”  This tendency is especially apparent in considering the Lutheran formulation of two realms.  If we accentuate the realm of God, we may absolutize our religious vision as the Scholastics did.  On the other hand, if we accentuate the realm of the world, we run the risk of relativism.  So our challenge is to maintain the tension.  I believe he advises us wisely in this matter.

CONCLUSION

For many good reasons Lutheran liberal arts colleges are revisiting their sense and understanding of vocation.  The implications go well beyond those noted today, but perhaps this will suffice as a beginning.  As academics in a Lutheran setting we have a goodly treasure. 

Let me close with the testimony of one who speaks about our tradition from outside of it, Richard T. Hughes.  Here is what he says about us,

“The Lutheran tradition possesses some of the most potent theological sources for sustaining the life of the mind that one could imagine.  It encourages a dialogue between the Christian faith and the world of ideas, fosters intellectual humility, engenders a healthy suspicion of absolutes, and helps create a conversation in which all of the conversation partners are taken seriously.”

It seems to me Hughes says it right and he sets a standard worthy of our highest aspirations.

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