In Celebration of Curiosity: An "R"chaeology of Christian Higher Education

by Douglas R. Clark, 2001 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer

My most sincere, warm and hospitable welcome to all of you who have come to be part of this special occasion tonight. I am truly honored to be surrounded by members of the Board of Trustees, a number of individuals from my family, many friends and the administration, faculty, staff and students of Walla Walla College. It is a distinct privilege and high honor for me to speak to you this evening. It is also, I should tell you, a source of sheer terror! After all, according to the popular proverb, "Curiosity [what?] killed the cat!" Besides that ominous note, along with my hope to save the cat, the very nature of this lectureship is to provide a venue for all of us not simply to hear from one professor, but to hear from the college in a sense, to hear from ourselves, to hear about ourselves, to reflect on who we are and what we do here as a community of faith and learning. This is one reason I am looking forward to some time for discussion at the conclusion of the formal presentation. We need to hear each other on matters of this magnitude.

It occurs to me that there are a myriad of ways to approach a topic like the one before us: "In Celebration of Curiosity: An "R"chaeology of Christian Higher Education." Of those options, I have thought to begin at the end, where the outcomes live, and see what it might take to get there, see what we might learn about the journey on the way to our conclusions, about the excavation process by which we locate and display our treasures. Curiosity, which we celebrate here this evening, drives us to the process by which we discover. Good stories are like this, at least mysteries are. Readers all know fairly early on what has happened. We just need to find out who done it, where, with what, how and why.

So there is no mystery, I would suggest, about what a Christian institution of higher education aims to accomplish, about what this kind of community hopes collectively to realize at the end of the day. We lay these sorts of objectives out in statements of mission, and work and pray toward their fulfillment. We anticipate that for all of us to be educated Christians (or educated persons of any faith tradition), we form, maintain and model the following: 1) critical and reflective thinking; 2) honest and authentic believing; 3) cultured and aesthetic appreciating; and 4) generous and gracious contributing to those around us. You will notice that all four outcomes, as just formulated, are gerunds; they are verbal. Not "thought," "belief," "appreciation" or "contribution," but "thinking," "believing," "appreciating" and "contributing." That's because life is verbal and not static, moving and not stationary.

How then do we get there, get to Christian higher education's objectives of thinking, believing, appreciating, contributing citizens? There certainly exist options from which to choose in the modern world of higher education. They range across wide landscapes of religious persuasions and perspectives, of teaching styles and approaches, of instructional venues and technology.

Two major approaches occur to me in connection with achieving our goals for the educated Christian--one focused more on answers and assured results, the other more on questions and the quest; one on the security of knowing what we need to know and that we know it, the other on the excitement of the expedition to explore the wide and wonderful world of faith and ideas; one on the artifact, the other on finding and recovering it; one on the destination, the other on the journey (for some, travel exists only as the obligatory means to get to a destination; for others, destinations only mean that we get to travel).

The former approach, when carried too far, has been defined and described by a number of individuals as "indoctrination," a style of learning assuming known answers to virtually all questions, or in the worst-case scenario and as defined in legal disputes on such matters, coercive persuasion intended to force acceptance of prescribed information or a set of beliefs. Few if any of the people publishing articles and books on this subject today, from religious or secular academic institutions, have much good to say about this approach. Robert Sandin (50) is typical: "An indoctrinative approach to education is as counter productive in a church college as in any other institution."

According to Arthur Holmes, in his The Idea of a Christian College: The Christian college must provide the opportunity and the atmosphere for an open discussion of new ideas and significant issues. Hackneyed clichés and parroted answers smack more of indoctrination than education. There is no substitute for the hard work of thinking and no escape from the ever present possibility of misunderstanding (66).

He adds: Sometimes even interaction has been repressed in favor of indoctrination, as if prepackaged answers can satisfy inquiring minds. Students need rather to gain a realistic look at life and to discover for themselves the questions that confront us. They need to work their way painfully through the maze of alternative ideas and arguments while finding out how the Christian faith speaks to such matters. They need a teacher as a catalyst and guide, one who has struggled and is struggling with similar questions and knows some of the pertinent frontiers of learning where problems are still not fully formulated and knowledge is exploding, and where by the very nature of things indoctrination is impossible (46).

B.B. Beach, in an Adventist Review article on the Christian university several years ago, lists as the very first potential pitfall of such institutions: "The danger of simple indoctrination instead of education. It is not the task of a Christian university to blindfold students to what civilization and culture can offer, but rather to open their eyes to reality" (24). His second pitfall: "A defensive mentality: offering ready-made answers to prepackaged questions" (24). Quoting John Henry Newman, Jaroslav Pelikan suggests: "A University is, according to the usual designation, an Alma Mater, knowing her children one by one, not a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill (I.vi.8)" (180).

Do we then toss answers to the wind along with the certainties they convey? I don't think so. In fact, I am persuaded otherwise. To represent both sides of this issue fairly, as far as I can tell, we should probably be celebrating certainty as well as curiosity. Unfortunately, those more certain about certainty too often miss the basic academic necessity, the fundamental educational essential, of curiosity and the role of questions. At the risk of suffering the same fate as the cat, I lay out my purpose here: while not selling short the need for religious security and a sense of well being under God and understanding within my religious tradition, I wish to pursue curiosity as a primary ingredient in the educational process, even, I would argue, in the formation of faith. Questions, far from being the sworn enemy of Christian education, are our friends, our best friends, perhaps our very best friends.

a little curiosity
a tiny question asked
seem to me to be the key
to education's task

For support, I cite Gordon Van Harn (81): Colleges do change students; that is the purpose of education. While the church and college should seek to develop in students a faith commitment consistent with denominational teachings, both should expect the expression of faith to change as students learn, experience, and mature .... The difficulty of balancing these two tasks [orthodoxy and challenge] is illustrated by survey results that indicate that the more insulated church-related colleges are less effective in accomplishing the mission of protecting orthodoxy; their activities are actually counterproductive to this mission, producing >individual Christians who are less certain of their attachments to the traditions of their faith or altogether disaffected from them' (Hunter, 1987, p. 178).

If indoctrination is not the best way to get to education, and if curiosity and questions really are, how do we undertake this expedition in a fashion respectful of both faith and learning? How do we create a climate favorable to curiosity, a Christian community committed to the protection and encouragement of curiosity? Are there any clues about how to celebrate curiosity in the context of Christian higher education?

I think so. Since, by definition and the digging around required by the discipline, archaeology and its seemingly insatiable quest to explore and discover might provide some assistance to us in our search. Besides, as we know, by nature archaeologists are curious people--perhaps in more ways than one, but we won't go there!

I would like to recommend three "R"s of archaeology which might serve us well in discovering and illustrating what it takes to celebrate educational curiosity in a Christian context. We are not talking here about the three "R"s of education we all learned in grade school--'Reading, 'Riting and 'Rithmetic. Essential as these have been, we move beyond them to three other "R"s, three "R"s which have the potential further to enhance what we do here at this institution.

My first mentor in archaeology, Dr. Siegfried Horn, the dean of Adventist archaeologists, graduated from Walla Walla College the year I was born. He was an amazingly productive excavator, scholar, writer and churchman. I have long admired him for his gifts, his academic stature and his eternal search for new discoveries. While definitely Prussian, Germanic, in personality--to illustrate, he once marked tardy with attendant penalty two students who actually made it to his 7:30 am class at Andrews University in Michigan through a howling blizzard of biblical proportions because they were a few minutes late; the other twenty students did not make it at all!--he exemplifies my point about curiosity and questions. His approach has also been influential to me in formulating my three "R"s of Christian higher education.

The first R, a designation which seems obvious in our business and really should not surprise us as something mysterious or unexpected, has to do with how Responsible we are in undertaking the educational process. Approaches to the academic study of anything cannot afford to be slipshod or substandard. Mediocrity may have been possible in the past, but it is not an option today if we hope to be credible in our task. Our best efforts and only our very best will suffice. We owe it to ourselves and to others on curiosity's quest who are looking over our shoulders. Even if we wanted to cover something up (Heaven forbid!) or re-bury the truth of what we discover, it is impossible today--not only impossible, but undesirable--not only undesirable but totally unacceptable. The educational process is worth too much to sell it out along with its results to a mindless commitment to mediocrity. We must, as Holmes puts it, be "humble, teachable person[s], free from the dictatorship of all but the truth" (67). "Christian faith," according to Elton Trueblood (as cited by Holmes [48]), "is the sworn enemy of all intellectual dishonesty and shoddiness. The Christian believes that in all that she does intellectually, socially, or artistically, she is handling God's creation and that is sacred."

This is especially the case when it comes to discoveries which really do surprise us and threaten to undo our understanding of the world and how it works. Siegfried Horn found this out the hard way. Joining a whole tent full of archaeologists whose excavation results could not locate evidence at their sites of the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, he would not sacrifice responsible research for assured outcomes. Although excavations at Hazor in the north, Bethel in the center and Lachish in the southern part of Israel have demonstrated destructions during the 12th century B.C., the time frame during which most archaeologists date the settlement of ancient Israel, other sites are more problematic. These include the one Horn dug (with this Doug's help) during the late 1960s and the 1970s--Tall Hisban. Horn had hoped to find the biblical Heshbon from the story of the conquest, as had Kathleen Kenyon in Jericho, Joseph Calloway at Ai, and others elsewhere. The remarkably consistent evidence in these locations at least points either to no occupation or to insignificant squatters huts at the sites during this time. Horn's Heshbon had not even been established yet as an occupied town or city. There was nothing there at all.

So, what's an archaeologist to do, especially an archaeologist who went to Heshbon to find the very evidence which eluded him? One could bury the evidence he did find. Or, he might just adjust the facts a bit, tweak the stats, change the dates typically assigned to artifacts, move the chronology a tad, twist the data. At least this way he could guarantee assured results. Or, as Siegfried Horn did, an archaeologist could accept the evidence for what it was, maintain honesty about it, follow where it might lead, even begin to celebrate some new possibilities. We have to be "mature enough," he noted in his extensive diary in connection with a letter Larry Geraty, president of La Sierra University, wrote to church leaders years ago, mature enough "to face problems which exist and which do not disappear by being ignored" (Geraty 12).

This all reminds me of an adaptation of the opening verses of the book of Job, cited by Joseph Calloway (and revised here). Calloway was a Baptist who excavated at Ai and found that the site was not occupied at the time of the conquest: One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan: "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the Lord: "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." The Lord said to Satan: "Have you considered my servants, the biblical archaeologists? There are none like them on the earth, blameless and upright, fearing God and turning away from evil." Then Satan answered the Lord: "Do biblical archaeologists fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around them and their institutions and all they have, on every side? But now stretch out your hand and send them, with full funding, to excavate at the site of biblical Jericho or Ai or Heshbon and they will curse you to your face!"

Is this a problem? Of course. Should we with our trowels cover up and re-bury the evidence? I don't think so. Are their other ways of understanding the whole picture which might help us make sense of the apparent facts and faith? Very much so. The match between the archaeological evidence and the book of Judges is remarkably close, suggesting we have more work to do in the Bible and in the field. But, should any of this, whether apparently positive or negative, dissuade us from doing responsible explorations of what is there? I hope not. That would be unfaithful to Horn's principles, unacceptable to the discipline of archaeological discovery, untrue to responsible research. In fact, it is responsible study and research which provide one of the safeguards of curiosity. We are free to continue the quest and explore further if we are honest and maintain our integrity about us in our ongoing work.

In this context, what is the task of the Christian college or university? How might it contribute to responsible investigation which can bear the closest scrutiny? According to all the literature on the subject, the answer is clear. It must formulate, foster and forever protect responsible policies of academic freedom; there is no escape from this task. This is not freedom FROM a church and its beliefs and practices. Rather it is freedom TO serve both an academic enterprise and the best of Christian principles. Sandin recommends (52) that: The Christian college must be in the vanguard of those who defend the right of the academy to inquire, insisting on the duty of every scholar to pursue truth wherever it leads in the realm of ultimate meaning and value as well as in the domain of empirical verification. An academy of learning must never prejudge the outcome of scholarly investigations. Even in its service to the mission of the church, the Christian college must reserve the right to inquire declaring that God continues to reveal new truths.

He adds: The task of the Christian college is to pursue truth in all of its dimensions and all of its ramifications. The purpose is not only to possess truth but also to be possessed by it, not only to know the truth but also to do the truth, not only to fashion a system of true belief but also to be formed in the truth. Academic freedom is unlimited in the Christian college in the sense that the institution is committed to the pursuit of truth in every area of human experience and to the appropriation of truth whatever the costs. The present challenge to religiously affiliated colleges and universities is to combine their concern for religious values with commitment to the highest ideals of teaching and scholarship and to confirm the autonomy of the Christian scholar in the highest tradition of academic freedom ....

Are there risks inherent in academic freedom? Of course. On the other hand, are there dangers tied to squelching academic freedom? I think so--more so by far than the perils of freedom. Again, a comment from Holmes, fantasizing about an ideal world: Academic freedom would not create such criticism if we had ideal faculty, ideal students, ideal administrators, ideal trustees, and ideal constituencies [have we left anyone out?!]. But this is not yet the best of all possible worlds. The truth can surely speak for itself to honest and mature and well-informed minds, but not all minds are equally honest and mature and well informed, and we are at best poor communicators (74).

A second "R" in our "R"chaeological quest to understand and safeguard and thereby celebrate curiosity in the Christian college is tied to Redemptive perspectives and behavior. If we do not own the first "R" of responsible research, I don't feel we can call what we do education. I am also uncertain that we can call ourselves Christian (or any other faith tradition) without the redemptive dimension of our task. As a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, as part of the wider Christian community, as a citizen in the global village of religious expressions, I celebrate faith. I have always been personally and professionally committed to faith's journey, to the quest for deeper understanding and believing, to what my religious roots stand for. Siegfried Horn speaks well for me when he wrote in his diary: "What I have and am I owe to my church and I am grateful that my church has supported me and given me opportunities for growth and allowed me to pursue my various interests" (Geraty 18).

While affirming all kinds of things about life and about God, I have also found the search itself intriguing. To uncover something novel, to excavate a new ideaBthere is something exciting about this. New volunteers on an archaeological dig are ecstatic to find their first clay potsherd. This is new. The discovery of a potsherd normally occurs about five minutes into the dig, but it is nonetheless cause for celebration--sometimes shouting, work stoppage, slaughtering a watermelon. After uncovering about 4,000 of these broken pieces of old pots in the course of a season, carrying them to camp, soaking them in buckets, scrubbing them clean, transporting them back to the site's pottery dump and disposing of them, the enthusiasm wanes just a bit. But the initial rush is real.

What makes what we do redemptive? Does it have to do with a sense of God's goodness and our well-being? I believe so. What about the majesty and mystery of God? Should be so. Hope for the future? Indeed so. Would we include as redemptive, activities which confirm our faith and enhance our understanding of it? Of course. Could we add to these a commitment to making the lives of people around us more meaningful, to helping especially the marginalized in society, to enriching our understanding of and appreciation for people of other cultures (forgive me if the Middle East comes immediately to mind)? I hope so. Would we consider appreciation for the beautiful something redemptive? Seems so to me. What about curiosity? In the context of faith and our redemptive goals, would curiosity contribute to religious life or will it kill the cat?

Holmes addresses the question about the redemptive nature of a Christian college. He notes that the Christian college, as an extension of the church and not the same as the church in function, does not exist primarily or only to offer biblical or theological studies or cultivate "piety and religious commitment." These are not abandoned of course. "Rather," he asserts, "the Christian college is distinctive in that the Christian faith can touch the entire range of life and learning to which a liberal education exposes students" (45). He calls for a total integration of faith and learning: The college must therefore cultivate an atmosphere of Christian learning, a level of eager expectancy that is picked up by anyone who is on campus for even a short while.... The chapel program must exemplify this attitude rather than the unthinking disjunction that is all too frequent between faith and devotion on the one hand and what goes on in the classroom on the other.... And required general education courses must present not narrow specializations in isolation from each other, but ideas that stretch the mind, open up historical perspective, enlarge windows on the world, and reveal the creative impact of Christian faith and thought" (49-50).

Finally, the third "R" of our trilogy. If to be educational our work needs to be responsible; if to be Christian what we do should be redemptive; then to bring both of these "R"s into the service of today's world and its needs, we should aim for Relevance. We would hope that the educational enterprise in which we are engaged fosters and maintains a connection with our times, with current needs, with the world in which we now live. Responsible research and teaching are as helpful as they are up to date. Redemptive dimensions to our work are as meaningful as they are in touch with our real lives. Relevance forms the bridge between our best academic efforts and religious affirmations and who we are right now and hope to be in the future.

I am always intrigued by student responses on standardized course evaluations to the question about the relevance of my archaeology class. After all, this really is old stuff. The archaeology lab is dusty as can be; you can't handle a piece of ancient pottery there without carrying fine ceramic dust around on your hands for days. We talk about ages long past in this class and deal with dry bones long since dead and gone. What we study there will not show up on anyone's major exams like comprehensives, MCATs, LSATs, nursing boards. Students don't carry much from an archaeology class which turns up useful on a date, after all. So what should I expect in answer to the relevance question on course evaluations?

Traveling to Morocco one Christmas break with some friends (all of them in this room tonight), I was struck by one particular mosaic among many at the spectacular Roman site of Volubilis in the northwestern part of the country. It pictures a donkey headed off in one direction and the rider mounted backwards, looking into the past. I look into the past and so do we all; and we learn from it. We even pay historians to help us explore the past. The question is: Are we learning from the past? Have we taken the results of our responsible research and our understanding of the redemptive role of Christian higher education and made it relevant for this time, for this setting, for those of us in the twenty-first century? It seems to me that we do not prepare students well for the present or the future if we only give them answers adequate for the past.

Siegfried Horn, at the age of 60 (in the late 1960s, you should know), lamented his inexorable slide into old age and what must have appeared to him as irrelevancy. After giving thanks to God for a good life and blessing, he entered these words into his diary: "My only regret is that I get old. The last 10 years have taken us into the Jet-, Computer-, and Space Age and life is becoming so interesting that it is a shame that we are now running downhill and in the foreseeable future may come to a stop" (Geraty 9). But curiosity kept this cat alive for another quarter century, researching, publishing, traveling, consulting for archaeologists, leading the way up ancient tells, people much younger than he huffing and puffing to keep up.

So, the three "R"s of Christian higher education: Responsible, Redemptive, Relevant. Being responsible suggests a vocation of integrity and honesty; being redemptive a vocation of faith and goodness; being relevant a vocation of service and generosity now. To be responsible is to care for the mind; to be redemptive to care for the soul; to be relevant to care about and for the world in which we now live. Helping us become more responsible, colleagues and peers look over our shoulders; nudging us toward a more redemptive sensitivity, God stands by our shoulders; motivating us toward relevance, our students stand on our shoulders and from there are able to see farther than we do.

An approach to our work which is responsible, redemptive and relevant also saves the cat. It safeguards curiosity. It secures a Christian college as a place where continued exploration of available data, of God, of the meaning and purpose of our lives in today's world is assumed, asserted, affirmed. It is a place where curiosity is celebrated as the best way to achieve our stated goals.

We have, then, come full circle in our quest to celebrate curiosity. We have returned to the place at which we began. We have encountered again the intended outcomes of a Christian higher education, that is, to cultivate and nurture a community of thinking, believing, appreciating and contributing citizens, and to do so by being responsible, redemptive and relevant. Curiosity is thereby safeguarded and lives on. So, we might be tempted to call it a day. But one mystery remains, another discovery awaits our attention.

What is it? I mean by that: What is this word, this idea, this thing we have considered celebrating tonight? It can kill cats, according to some. It can protect cats, I have suggested. We have talked about celebrating it, but how should we define what we are toasting? What is curiosity?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "curiosity" has had many meanings historically. Most of these are now obsolete: carefulness, careful attention to detail, proficiency, care carried to extreme, careful workmanship. More current meanings include: desire to learn and know, inquisitiveness, a pursuit in which one takes an interest.

While these dictionary definitions are intriguing, I have come to appreciate a description coming from the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. The book of Ecclesiastes or Qohelet, as it is known, or The Preacher, not everyone's favorite devotional reading I know, constitutes a remarkable site for curiosity's cats to explore in search of something worthwhile. The third chapter of Ecclesiastes contains the memorable list of orderly events in the universe: "For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted," etc. At the end of the list, in verse 11, the sage makes a further observation about life under the sun: "[God] has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put [something] into the human heart." What did God place into the human mind and heart? Some translations have "eternity." Others, "a sense of the past and the future." The word in the original language is `olam and can be translated as: duration, from of old, always, the future, eternity, the universe or the cosmos. God placed `olam into the human heart and mind. A sense of the past and the future, the entire universe. Could this be curiosity? Could it be that the whole universe and the quest to explore and understand it are actually a divine gift, and that we should thank God for implanting it? Is it part and parcel of the human condition to be curious, to make like an archaeologist, to become a cat?

Albert Einstein's words are suggestive: "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity" (Bolander, et al, 71). Or in the words of Holmes: "Too often God-given imagination and curiosity are stifled in early education, or thinking is regarded as an impious spectator sport. The first task of liberal education is to fan the spark and ignite our native inquisitiveness" (30). Or, as the good friend of many on this campus, Jack Provonsha, put it: If heaven is a place where we will be asking questions and exploring the universe throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity, hell must be a place where all the answers are in.

I extend to you this evening an invitation. An invitation to join me in celebrating curiosity. Yes, there are certainties. Indeed, there are solid givens. Of course, there is security in places inhabited by faith and understanding. Paraphrasing the sage, There is a time for certainty ... and a time for curiosity. And tonight we applaud what drives human beings to explore. We commend the questions which enrich and enlarge our Christian educational enterprise. We honor the cat in all of us. We admit to the archaeologist residing within our search for treasures awaiting discovery. With enthusiasm, with unbridled enthusiasm, with embarrassingly unbridled enthusiasm, we celebrate curiosity.

a little curiosity
a tiny question asked
seem to me to be the key
to education's task