Irving Hexam, of the Department of Religious Studies, University of Calgary wrote:
Christianity is the greatest intellectual adventure of all.
No doubt this statement will surprise some people and shock others. Agnostics will be surprised because Christians are supposed to be intellectual ostriches. Many Christian students will be shocked because they enjoy being ostriches.
The truth of the matter is that for me to be a Christian is to belong to a great cultural
tradition with a rich intellectual heritage. And the Christian tradition is in constant dialogue with other traditions and cultures. Christianity is not, and never was, an easy escape from intellectual life or practical concerns.
. . . To be a Christian academic means asking hard questions about oneself and one's abilities. It means mastering a discipline, becoming a good teacher, and producing the first class scholarship in obedience with God's commandments.
According to Jesus the first commandment is:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.(Mark 12:30)
Similarly, the first duty of the Christian student is to be an excellent student. To fail in this, because one is too busy "witnessing" to devote sufficient time to study, is to break the first commandment. Unfortunately, too few students have read enough of the New Testament to know that rather than encouraging their anti-intellectualism it condemns it. Far too many students see Christianity as a means of escape rather than an adventure to be lived.
Of course to take scholarship seriously means that one's reading cannot be limited to safe "Christian books." Rather texts like Walter Kaufmann's Critique of Religion and Philosophy and Tom Paine's The Age of Reason must be embraced alongside historic and contemporary classics. Knowing one's chosen field or even mastering the material in a single course does not mean agreeing with everything one reads. But, it does mean interacting with required readings and developing one's own critique.
What does it mean to be a Christian academic? It means recognizing that education is a gift of God and that we have a responsibility to serve God in our calling as students. Why am I an academic? I am an academic because it is an unavoidable Christian calling. Why am I a Christian? I am a Christian because for me Jesus is:
and as Thomas a Kempis said:the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14:6)
Without the way,
there is no going,
Without the truth,
there is no knowing,
And without the life,
there is no living.