Faith, hope, and loveA profile of the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton

On the weekend of November 9th, a group of Brown University students ventured down to Princeton, New Jersey, to attend a conference on the ever-intriguing issue of “The Christian Worldview and the Academy.” Sponsored and organized by The Witherspoon Institute, the conference was chiefly held in a Princeton University lecture hall, and the attendees were generously afforded a two-night stay in the local Nassau Inn.

This article will focus on several matters; foremost will be the mission of The Witherspoon Institute, and its chosen means to achieving that mission – collectively, if you will, I will address the ethos of this rather atypical community.  Faith, hope, and love - the three theological virtues, to be found in 1 Corinthians 13 - are what I regard as that ethos.

The conference was a splendid weekend getaway, particularly for a conservative, Christian gentleman such as myself, and for my fellow attendees from Brown, who each would identify as Christian, if not conservative as well. Suffice it to say, this conference was a refreshing reminder of the truth that faith, properly defined and used, is no enemy of reason. Indeed, as the many academics, scientists, and clergymen at the conference frequently said, faith makes reason metaphysically possible. For where would science be if a monotheistic worldview had not, long ago, posited that the entire universe, the creation of an omnipotent and omniscient God, was rationally ordered and therefore capable of being rationally understood?

Speakers at the conference were among the best and brightest that the world of academia has to offer – and the interesting kicker is that, for all intents and purposes, each one of them was a Bible-believing (although not quite Bible-thumping) Christian. There was the priest whose discourse on religious epistemology was both profound and engaging. The historian whose debunking of the alleged battle between science and religion was both enlightening and fiercely presented. The scientist who argued that, theologically speaking, the Fall of Man (and consequently the existence of Original Sin in all of humanity), took place when evolution had reached the point at which man became self-conscious of his divine powers – when he became aware of the fact that his very bodily and spiritual being is in imago dei (“in the image of God”). And the biblical scholar who forcefully critiqued the recent emergence of a secular faith in the Gnostic gospels, most famously via The Da Vinci Code, and in the cult of claiming there exists a Christian conspiracy to brand women as nothing more than whores and the source of all social ills.

The Witherspoon Institute is not what many contemporaries might expect of a Christian organization dedicated to the enhancement of “public understanding of the political, moral, and philosophical principles of free and democratic societies.” Certainly the “illustrious” Christian lights such as Bob Jones University, Regents University, Liberty University, the Moral Majority, and The 700 Club, to name only a few, are not esteemed by many outside of the doctrinaire confines of the American incarnation of the Christian Right.

But I would contend that The Witherspoon Institute, and the serious intellectuals who organize its activities, have that capacity to impress those individuals who may feel uncomfortable with the Armageddon-esque, dinosaurs-lived-on-the-earth-with-the-first-humans, form of Christian “conservatism.” The Witherspoon Institute, that is, will likely have many successes in demonstrating to the country, and world, that one need not dispense with faith to have reason, with church to have a State, and with morality to have critical thought.

Returning to the recent conference – it instilled hope in all who attended it. This conference compellingly set forth the proposition that the eternal and the empirical are complementary – dependent even. Science, as one manifestation of reason, is hopeless without religion; and religion, as the earthly manifestation and institutionalization of ultimate faith, is blind and ignorant without science.

As was mentioned earlier, science would have no first principle from which to operate had not religion laid down the fundamental metaphysical truth of a rationally ordered, “law”-abiding universe. And likewise, religion would have no earthly understanding, no awe-inspiring physical realities, without science. The two are inseparable, and hardly in opposition to each other. In a simple, straightforward manner, yet also in an intellectually rigorous manner, the conference cemented that truth into most who attended.

But most of all – and this is precisely why I believe that The Witherspoon Institute will continue to develop into a serious force in the academic and political life of the United States – the conference grounded each participant in the Christian duty of charity, or love, toward his fellow man. The culmination of this reflection on the duty to love, and to give of oneself, occurred during the bioethics discussion panel of Saturday night.

Dr. Robert P. George, a Princeton University Professor and a Senior Fellow with The Witherspoon Institute, was abundantly clear on the duty to love when he answered a question from a student in the audience. The student, admittedly pro-life, had asked about how pro-life students could best counter pro-choice arguments on campus, and Professor George, seemingly always in his element, responded with an impassioned statement praising the Christian conception of equality and ultimate motivation.

He focused his answer on the radical equality, derived from the very words and actions of the Christ, that Christians are compelled to seek, and the radical love with which Christians are to seek it. He cited a hypothetical scenario in which a severely retarded individual were the only person who could provide a vital organ to a “greater” human being – greater in the sense that the latter could actualize his human potential in an ostensibly “better” manner than could the former, via greater athletic achievements, or intellectual ones, or battlefield ones, etc. But despite the fact that one’s death (read murder) for the sake of another may have greater naked utility, to make that individual forfeit, or even to request that he forfeit, his life is unspeakably evil and immoral, and therefore must never be allowed. The same holds true if one is put in the situation where raping and murdering a woman may save an entire city – regardless of the potential “gains,” the respect for the life and human dignity of that woman precludes her being used as a means to some other end.

More controversially, perhaps, the same holds true in the domain of embryonic stem-cell research. No matter what the potential “gains” may be, it is evil and immoral - and therefore must never be allowed – for one to use a human being at the embryonic stage of development for the ends of another. It speaks ill of American society today that people would regard the forced use, and murder, of certain human beings for the so-called benefit of others as permissible, but alas that is the state of the current debate.

It is indeed quite unfortunate that today, as with all of history (the debate over slavery provides a compelling parallel example), there are people who feel that some human beings do not possess full equality with all other human beings, and therefore can be used or terminated without regard to their natural rights and liberties. What the pro-life person does in response to this culture of death, however, is potentially the most essential aspect in one’s pursuit of social justice.

With a belief in radical equality, and motivated by the radical love of the Gospels that were revealed to humanity, Professor George and all of The Witherspoon Institute have a truly humane, and truly Christian, strategy. They will not waiver, will not falter, will not cease, until all human beings are possessed of their God-given rights. With faith, they understand both man’s great possibilities and his certain limitations, and therefore humbly accept that only with God can true justice manifest; with hope, they understand that, despite the imperfections of this world, it can still be better; and with love, well with love they understand all.