Jackson, March 19-- Union University held its first "Colloquium of Christian Scholars" March 7 and 8 with evangelical scholars Roger Lundin and Moises Silva.
Lundin, literary critic and English professor from Wheaton College, spoke at Davis Kidd Booksellers on the topic "The Discipline of the Christian Scholar, Christian Scholarship Across the Disciplines."
Silva, chair of the department of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, served as the guest lecturer at a Friday, March 8, chapel service for Union students, faculty and administration.
Both speakers came as part of a grant received from the Pew Charitable Trust. Union received $45,000 from the Pew Summer Research Program. The University will award four $3,500 summer research grants to four faculty members for research over the next three years.
Union is only one of six colleges across the United States to receive this grant. The purpose of the grant is to encourage Christian scholarship through academic disciplines.
In his lecture, Silva reiterated the theme of Christianity within academia. Silva, who received a Ph.D. from the University of Manchester, defined the term "scholar" by means of the activities one performs, not through his or her level of intelligence. As a profession, scholarship employs people who spend their lives studying and researching.
Silva's lecture was based on Proverbs 1:7: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline."
This scripture anchored his two points relating scholarship to Christianity: that part of man's existence lies in the discovery of truth and understanding the world as part of God's plan for his people, and that the intellectual cannot be separated from the spiritual as God is the provider of both.
Silva continued with Proverbs 9:10, which states, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding."
According to Silva, Christ becomes the wisdom and a "Christian college that seeks to present the knowledge of the world in the light of the word of God is involved in Christian scholarship."
A good scholar has to strike a very difficult balance between passion on the one hand... but on the other a certain disinterest," Silva elaborated.
Overall the importance of scholarship lies in the need to recognize true wisdom as the fear of God.
"If you will have this even if it means forgetting every grammatical rule of scientific principle you learned in school, stick with it, " Silva said. "But again don't make the mistake of drawing those kinds of divisions and to separate the kinds that you're learning even now from the responsibilities that you have as a believer."
"But always remembering that being a scholar begins where scripture says it begins with the fear of the Lord."
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Last updated on March 21, 1996.
