Another one of my evangelical Christian intellectual heroes passed away recently.\u00a0 Arthur Holmes, long time professor of philosophy at Wheaton College and author of numerous books of Christian philosophy and apologetics, died on October 8 at age 87.\u00a0 I only met him once (that I can recall) which was when I was editor of Christian Scholar\u2019s Review.\u00a0 He was, in many ways, the \u201cguru\u201d behind CSR.\u00a0 Our approach to integrating faith and learning came largely from him.\u00a0 One year he met with our editorial board which was when I met him and had a chance to interact with him.<\/p>\n
Holmes was a catalyst for the whole \u201cintegration of faith and learning\u201d movement among Christian colleges and universities during the 1960s and 1970s.\u00a0 His motto, borrowed from Clement of Alexandria (and Kuyper and Dooyweerd) was \u201cAll truth is God\u2019s truth\u2013no matter where it is found.\u201d\u00a0 He expounded and applied that principle in books such as Contours of a Christian Worldview that I used as a basic text in my Christian Worldview course at a Christian liberal arts college for 15 years.<\/p>\n
Another principle Holmes promoted was that nothing is of value for its own sake; everything gains value from glorifying God.\u00a0 \u201cThe chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.\u201d\u00a0 (Yes, even as an Arminian I agree with that.\u00a0 I would just add with Irenaeus that the glory of God is man fully alive.)<\/p>\n
For Holmes this rightly meant that the often-quoted maxim \u201cArt for art\u2019s sake\u201d cannot be believed or followed by a Christian.\u00a0 Art is for God\u2019s sake and for humanity\u2019s sake.\u00a0 In other words, from a Christian viewpoint, art that does not in some way glorify God is not valuable.\u00a0 Nothing has value in and for itself.\u00a0 If God is the creator of all and if there is no square inch of creation not under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, then everything must be judged by how it glorifies God.\u00a0 I take it (and I think Holmes would have agreed) that insofar as something genuinely helps humanity become fully alive it is valuable because God cares about human wholeness.\u00a0 Some art does that; some does not.\u00a0 The same can be said of theology and any other discipline.<\/p>\n
Arthur Holmes was not one of those \u201cevidence that demands a verdict,\u201d overly simplistic or pugilistic (toward non-believers) evidentialist apologists.\u00a0 His approach to apologetics was \u201cworldviewish\u201d\u2013comparing worldviews and evaluating them by their ability to illumine life and our experience of the world.\u00a0 In other words, his criterion was coherence.\u00a0 For him (and I agree) the truth status of the Christian worldview in a pluralistic society lies in its ability better than any other one to answer life\u2019s ultimate questions.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a knock-down-drag-out matter of \u201cproof\u201d as if someone who doesn\u2019t believe in it is simply stupid (as many Christian apologists imply).\u00a0 But Holmes was confident that the Christian philosophy of life, based on God\u2019s special revelation, does a better job of answering life\u2019s ultimate questions than competing worldviews and that that can be demonstrated if not proved.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m probably a little more Kierkegaardian that Holmes was, but insofar as I engage in Christian apologetics (not my area of speciality) I approach it his way.\u00a0 I think it is more helpful for Christians (e.g., to bring reason to faith) than non-Christians because I\u2019m more a perspectivalist than Holmes was (with Newbigin, for example).\u00a0 But I found much help in Holmes\u2019 writings when it came to convincing Christian students that the basic Christian worldview is reasonable.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another one of my evangelical Christian intellectual heroes passed away recently.\u00a0 Arthur Holmes, long time professor of philosophy at Wheaton College and author of numerous books of Christian philosophy and apologetics, died on October 8 at age 87.\u00a0 I only met him once (that I can recall) which was when I was editor of Christian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n