This spring semester, California’s Biola University, among the nation’s largest evangelical institutions, opens the doors of its ambitious new Center for Christian Thought. Resembling institutions such as Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, Biola’s center seeks to bring a mix of senior and postdoctoral fellows to campus to collaborate with internal fellows and faculty.
The center is unusual in operating from a distinctly Christian vantage point. The mission statement is forthright: “The Center offers scholars from a variety of Christian perspectives a unique opportunity to work collaboratively on a selected theme…. Ultimately, the collaborative work will result in scholarly and popular-level materials, providing the broader culture with thoughtful Christian perspectives on current events, ethical concerns, and social trends.”
If the idea of Christian perspectives raises your eyebrows, it might be time to brush up on Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Karl Barth, Martin Luther King, Edith Stein, Reinhold Niebuhr, and many others….
Dr. Giberson has long been a vocal advocate for science from a Christian perspective. His concern regarding a Fundamentalist view of science derailing the current path and leaving scientists of Christian heart hanging comes from his study of the history of science and religion in the past century. Another of Giberson’s cohorts in Boston, Dr. Don Yerxa, works in a similar movement towards a Christian perspective on history; a position lost to secularists. They’ve done quite a bit of work together.