Education as Catechesis: The Formative Impact of Christian Education
The opportunity to instruct and shape a coming generation is immense. Teachers and administrators take time each year to prepare curriculum, organize materials, structure class sessions, set up classrooms, and engage with students for proper learning to take place. Educating has a long and robust history, a heritage we look to for inspiration and instruction as we do our work as unto the Lord and for the betterment of our students.
One aspect that has received increased interest in recent days is the idea of education as a form of catechesis.[1] Simply put, education is not simply about information transfer. Certainly, specific content must be conveyed, but our end is not simply regurgitation of the facts. Our aim is to see the transformation of students in their thinking, affections, and will. We want to instruct for the sake of formation, character development, and desires that are attuned to God and his purposes. This is especially needful in our day as we inherit students who seem to have less familiarity with Scripture and a Christian worldview. Our students are always being catechized, and thus our educational endeavors truly do serve as a counter-catechesis, a way to counteract the worldly message that can bombard us. It is essential that we consider both curricular and co-curricular means by which we can instill proper values, loves, and thoughts.
My aim in this article is to encourage us as educators to aspire beyond information dispensing to teach and minister in ways that genuinely form the overall character of our students. I will begin with some definitions, specifically of education, formation, and catechesis. The issue of counter-catechesis will then be addressed as a significant part of how we approach our education. Attention will then be given to an academic culture that cultivates formation. Finally, we will consider some academic implications, namely, some ways we can apply this content to our classrooms and beyond.
Definitions
Education can be defined as a holistic, formative process aimed at cultivating wisdom, virtue, and intellectual maturity within learners. As Christians, such a process is done within the framework of a biblical worldview, and it is done in preparation of individuals for faithful service to God, the church, and society. David S. Dockery elaborates, “Christian higher education is about the development of the whole person for the glory of God. It seeks to prepare students not only for a profession but for life, enabling them to think Christianly and act redemptively in the world.”[2] This, as Christian educators, is what we aspire to, and thus we see that education involves the whole person and calls for formation.
Formation is the continual, gradual, and intentional development of individuals such that they are shaped and molded intellectually, spiritually, morally, and relationally in light of the gospel. Such formative efforts in the lives of students allows them to faithfully follow Christ and serve the church and society in numerous aspirational pursuits. This is a similar idea to education, but it must be emphasized that we are teaching and modeling truth to our students for their transformation. If education is what we do vocationally, formation is the goal of our instructive activities. And this requires a certain approach to our teaching, focused on the whole student.
Catechesis, Alex Fogleman notes, is basic, but comprehensive instruction on Christian beliefs, spirituality, and ethics.[3] As such, catechesis is about grounding believers in the fundamentals of the faith, giving us a countercultural grammar for Christian living and lifelong discipleship.[4] It also aims at comprehensiveness, incorporating a believer’s doctrine, spiritual disciplines, and morality.[5] Historically, catechesis has supplemented what is accomplished through the church’s preaching ministry and provided a systematic framework for disciples of Jesus to be instructed and guided into Christian living. And if present statistics are correct, we as Christians have great need of engaging in catechesis as a key means of discipleship.[6] We who work in Christian education have a unique and incredible opportunity to engage our students with an education formed by catechesis.
The Need for Counter-Catechesis
Education sounds straightforward enough, but we all know the complexities of working through the details of our respective disciplines, as well as the needs of our students. Specifically, we recognize that as Christian educators that not only are we instructing from a biblical worldview, but we also need to engage in the false beliefs and ideologies that our students bring with them to our classrooms and offices. Idolatry and false ideas are rampant in every educational subject, and so we need to not just teach truth but also dismantle every thought and belief that is not in line with God’s Word. We are building a biblical worldview within our students, and part of that work is demolishing any thought, desire, or belief that is contrary to Christ. In other words, we need to be about the business of counter-catechesis.
If catechesis is to be defined as basic, but comprehensive instruction on Christian beliefs, spirituality, and ethics, then counter-catechesis engages with beliefs, spirituality, and moral beliefs that are in fact contrary to God’s character and purposes. Some may question this approach, understanding catechesis to be a method that utilizes question and answer through rote memorization. Such an approach still has merit in our educational enterprises, but catechesis extends beyond a mere pedagogical approach. As Trevin Wax says, “More important than the [form of] instruction is the instinct—developing and honing the instinct for how Christianity makes us different, how the gospel counters the world’s lies while fulfilling the deeper longing. Ultimately, it’s not about memorizing a bunch of questions and answers. It’s about learning to see all of life through the lens of Scripture, so we’re faithful to the Lord in our time.”[7] The call to such instincts should resonate with us as we aim to educate for the transformation of our students, living as salt and light in a secular context.
Wax and Thomas West have recently written a helpful work on this very concept.[8] They approach their work by exposing the longings people have that drive their activity (not merely their beliefs) and exposing the lies that stand behind such disordered longings. Positively, they show how the gospel is the true and only answer to their longings, proclaim Jesus’ person and work as the only truth that will set them free, and thereby expose people to the light of what is genuinely good, true, and beautiful. Jesus is the fulfillment of the deepest longings we have ever experienced, and it is only in him that we and our students can know life as it was meant to be known.
Their work has certainly been impacted by the teachings of Tim Keller. He notes, “In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, ‘You heard it said… I say unto you.’. . . Our instruction needs to follow the same pattern. We need catechesis as well as counter‑catechesis, using biblical doctrine to both deconstruct the beliefs of culture and answer questions of the human heart that culture’s narratives cannot.”[9] Keller emphasizes that Christian teaching today must actively confront—and correct—the implicit “catechisms” of secular culture. These false secular catechisms that lead to an alleged good life include identity, freedom, happiness, science, and self-manufactured morality and justice.[10] Keller helps Christians dismantle such false ideologies through a fourfold process:
Identify the cultural narrative.
Affirm it partly, acknowledging its roots in truth.
Subvert by exposing its distortions and shortcomings.
Redirect toward Christ as the true fulfillment and Scripture as God’s revelation.[11]
This is a simple, yet profound paradigm to present to our students as we train them to think as Christians in their engagement with the world.
Wax builds on Keller’s points and states that if we are to truly succeed in counter-catechesis “it won’t be only through tools and mindful memorization. It’ll be through training ourselves and our fellow church members and the next generation to know, intuitively, where the world doesn’t line up with Scripture, and how Scripture gives us a better story, the true story that unmasks and envelops all the cultural narratives of our world today. Counter-catechesis isn’t just about proving Christianity is true. It’s about showing a world trapped in false stories that the gospel is better.”[12] The call is to renew our minds in the truth and not be conformed to the ways of this world (Rom. 12:2). We as Christian educational institutions certainly have a role to play in achieving such an end.
An Educational Culture that Cultivates Formation
To see an educational approach that is formative and counter-catechetical, a particular culture must be cultivated.[13] John Webster maintains, “Christian culture is the assembly of forms and practices which seek to somehow inhabit the world which is brought into being by the staggering good news of Jesus Christ, the world of the new creation.”[14] More specifically, a culture of theology is a public or social space fixed on the practice of “awed reading of classical Christian texts, Scriptural and other,” to cultivate certain habits of mind and soul for one’s formation in Christian virtue.[15] We should add here for a broad-ranging approach to Christian education that this culture of “awed reading” forms Christian virtue and also shapes our minds and hearts to see all of life, every educational discipline, under the Lordship of Christ. Such a culture is a call to faith integration within our educational contexts.
Understanding culture as a set of “intentional patterns of human action with sufficient coherence, scope, and duration to constitute a way of life,” one must consider what way of life and established goals one is to pursue in a Christian academic context.[16] The specificity of this pursuit is shaped by the fact that the culture of Christian faith is eschatological, that is, “Brought into being by [Christ’s] disruptive presence and thereby pointed toward its proper end. The world of Christian faith is the strange cultural space in which the re-creative work of God is confessed.”[17] And that “re-creative” work is to be understood as “mortification and vivification in Christ.”[18] In other words, Christian culture, focused on God’s sanctifying work in us, is characterized by a pattern of dying to the old self and being conformed to Christ. Being in this culture means simultaneously being put to death and made alive. Such a culture in Christian education reminds us of our identity (dead to sin and alive to God in Christ; Rom. 6:1-11) and activity (put off sin, put on righteousness; Rom. 6:12-14) as bound up in a group of people in a particular context pursuing the same ends through Word, prayer, and Spirit.
It is this kind of culture—one dedicated to reading and applying the Word in community, prayerfully, intentionally, within an eschatological framework—that can then shape the lives of students to see all of life as under Christ’s Lordship. Such a community will prize delightful meditation on Scripture. This is so they can know God, know all things in relation to God (e.g., literature, history, mathematics, physics, economics, biology, etc.), make him known, and return to Scripture with a nuanced interpretive horizon so as to be further shaped. They will not merely skim texts and move on; they will pause and ponder and be shaped by the God they attend to.
Consider, for example, if a community of Christians within an academic environment were to read and contemplate together (in context) Isaiah 26:3-4: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.” This kind of passage provides opportunity to behold God’s glory, to gaze at his beauty in this life as we anticipate the life to come (Ps. 27:4; 2 Cor. 3:18). We are told that peace awaits those who fix their minds on God. This fixation of mind is related to trusting in God, with a call then to do so continually because he is our everlasting rock. Such a group could ponder what it means that God is an everlasting rock and why that makes him trustworthy and worthy of constant attention. Briefly, this metaphor infers that “Yahweh is the very essence of what an everlasting rock should be, durable, changeless, and of saving efficacy (as in Exod. 17).”[19] Thus, our way of looking at life must be undeviating, centered on God, thinking of him as he truly is revealed in Scripture. As this text is considered and language is applied to the truths we find here, in correlation with the remainder of the witness of Scripture, God can be identified as the one who is immutable, impassible, and Savior.
Some may affirm the truthfulness of such observations but wonder what it really has to do with their work as teachers conveying content and forming students. Many answers could be given, but for our purposes here we can say briefly that such meditation grounds us, offering stability and steadfastness in the face of the cacophony of life. Instead of looking to news, social media, political pundits, influencers, and the like, we gaze at God and how things exist in relation to him. Such biblical reasoning gives us sure footing, drawing us back to what truly is, killing our idolatry, allowing us a glimpse of glory, preparing us for the life to come. This contemplation of Scripture and its revelation of God and how all things relate to him leads to no mere passivity in the Christian life. As we engage in learning and send our students out to work in any number of professions, raise families, engage in church membership, and participate as citizens, they are better equipped to gaze at God in prayerful, biblical-theological meditation now, anticipating the day we will see his face. We pursue purity in hope (1 John 3:2-3). And they will also connect how God is involved in all matters of life.
This does not require that all teachers are biblical scholars or must engage in-depth Bible lessons in each of their class sessions. However, it does call us to consider how all academic disciplines relate to God and to one another within a holistic worldview framework. Such meditation embedded in an educational culture forms us as teachers and then spreads as it is made known to others. This is where the concept of catechesis connects to our academic endeavors, engaging in biblically reasoned instruction that is rooted in biblical-theological truth.[20] As our minds are shaped by biblical-theological truth, it shapes our teaching and conversations in formative directions.
Catechesis, Fogleman notes, gives us a countercultural grammar for living the Christian life, a sturdy framework for lifelong discipleship.[21] It is intentionally summative and sequentially didactic. The term derives from the Greek word katēcheō, meaning to teach or instruct in the Christian faith (Luke 1:4; Acts 18:24-25; 21:21, 24; 1 Cor. 14:19; Gal. 6:6).[22] It deals with fundamental beliefs that shape the entirety of our view of life, engaging the mind, affections, and will, putting God at the center of all things (Rom. 11:33-36). This is the essence of education.
Fogleman elaborates,
It gives an all-encompassing view of Christ through the refracted vision of faith, hope, and love. Faith, hope, and love here are shorthand for three essential and interconnected aspects of the Christian life. Faith refers to doctrine or belief—the intellectual aspect of Christianity, the life of the mind. Hope is shorthand for the affective, desiring aspect; it’s about prayer and spirituality, or how we relate to God. Finally, love invokes the ethical or moral life; it’s about what we do and how we live in the world. Typically, these aspects are expressed through three texts that form the main building blocks of many catechisms: the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. The creed summarizes what Christians believe to be true about reality; the Lord’s Prayer encapsulates Christian spirituality and our hope for eternal fellowship with God; and the Ten Commandments offers a template for learning to live the Christian moral life.[23]
Belief, spiritual maturity, and obedience, then, serve as the key aspects of catechesis, discipling someone to follow Jesus. And these values can be inculcated in a Christian educational context. Indeed, they must be.
And while many think of catechesis as merely serving children or new believers, which it certainly does, it holds value for all believers in being built up in their faith.[24] This is because counter-catechesis is pervasive and desperately needed for high school, college, and graduate students who are inundated with worldview assumptions and teachings that simply run counter to all that is to be upheld within a Christian worldview. Worldliness tends to make godliness look strange and sin look normal. It is continually instructing in a wide variety of ways, drawing people toward the lifestyle of Babylon (Rev. 17:1-18:24), making the ways of God look oppressive, pathetic, small, and evil. Bombardment of this nature is constant. As such, we must be vigilant to instruct, to catechize, to disciple, grounding and growing our people in gospel truth for doctrine, devotion, duty, and delight.[25]
Catechesis, rooted in biblical-theological formation, serves Christian education by “helping to shape its collective imagination so that its image of its body life, and everything else, is governed by the gospel message at the heart of the master story that unifies Scripture.”[26] As the people of God we are to think God’s thoughts after him, to set our minds on things above (Col. 3:2), to renew our minds in truth (Rom. 12:1-2; Eph. 4:22-24). While expositional preaching, fellowship, and a host of other practices that take place within the local church can contribute to such ends, a neglected practice that would enhance and enrich the other ministries of the church is catechesis, systematic instruction in the God of the gospel and the gospel of God. We can take advantage of class settings and conversational moments to help our students learn how to “inhabit Scripture.” In so doing, we can learn and relearn “what it means to think and speak as people of the gospel, and thus as people whose perceptions and habits of discourse are governed by the scriptural testimony of the gospel.”[27]
An educational culture that takes the Bible and theology seriously will result in the contemplation of God and how all things relate to God within an educational context. As Christians, we gaze at the glory of God in Scripture as a way of seeing God by faith in the present by means of his Word, an “inaugurated but not yet consummated” vision of God (2 Cor. 3:18).[28] John Owen once said, “No man shall ever behold the glory of Christ by sight hereafter who doth not in some measure behold it by faith here in this world. Grace is a necessary preparation for glory, and faith for sight. Where the … soul is not previously seasoned with grace and faith, it is not capable of glory or vision.”[29] In other words, we cannot expect to enjoy the consummation of heaven, God himself, if we have shown no interest in him here by the means he has presently provided, particularly, Word and prayer in community.[30] As such, study and teaching should not merely be for information. Rather, we must engage in God-centered meditation so that our instruction plainly shows God as from whom, to whom, and through whom are all things (Rom. 11:36). Such an approach to education will lead to transformation, by God’s grace.
Academic Implications
Christian education conceived of as formative ministry should take into account these words from J.I. Packer as it relates to cultivating a culture of theological precision, God-centered contemplation, and orderly instruction for the upbuilding of our students:
Nowadays, the word theologian suggests academic professionalism, guild membership, a passion to push out the walls of knowledge, cutting-edge and growing-edge debate with other theologians and champions of other disciplines, and distance from the routines of regular pastoral care. This conception, however familiar to us moderns, is in fact little more than two centuries old; it sprang from the late-eighteenth-century division of theological studies into the biblical, the creedal, the historical, and the pastoral, a division that has led to narrow specializing in each department with relative unconcern about the others, and so made the organic unity of theology hard to imagine and harder still to achieve. But before this a theologian had been a scholarly generalist with wisdom and skill to guide Christians on questions of belief, morality, devotion (what we now call spirituality), and forming holy habits to please God (what we once called sanctification and now refer to as spiritual formation). When Gregory of Nazianzus and then John Calvin of Geneva were honorifically described as, quite simply, ‘the theologian,’ this is what was meant. It is this model of ministry—didactic and down-to-earth, biblical, spiritual, and transformational— that I have set before myself over the years, and it is with reference to this that, with a glance back at the adult catechumenate of the early Christian centuries, I call myself a catechist today.[31]
While many of us do not directly teach theology in our educational institutions, we recognize that formative instruction occurs as we teach any discipline within the realm of a full-orbed biblical worldview, seeing all things in relation to God.[32] We all think theologically to the end that we would educate formatively. Thus, with a call to instruct and catechize today, the following serve as ways within Christian education that we can encourage such a culture.
1. Plan for the integration of faith and learning at curricular and co-curricular levels. In seminaries there is a great deal of focus on Scripture and theology, but there is work to be done in helping students in Christian high schools and universities understand and articulate how all things relate to God. This could involve minimally some engagement with a theology of work.[33] In terms of Christian universities, much has been written.[34] We need more institutions of higher education that present and embody a full-orbed Christian worldview, impacting students in every facet of life. This will include the classroom—including required Bible and theology courses for all students and all classes taught with a biblical-theological awareness and integration—as well as chapel, mentoring, and various events that orient students toward faith integration for their high school, college years, and beyond, recognizing that we are worshipping beings, seeing all things in relation to God.[35]
2. In keeping with the integration of faith and learning, acknowledge theology as “queen of the sciences.” Forster notes,
The medieval university . . . was built on the view that theology was ‘queen of the sciences,’ the discipline of all knowledge that would provide an architectonic coherence for all disciplines of knowledge. . . . Theology, the study of the highest of all things—and the thing that made all the other things, ‘in whom all things fit together—would, in addition to producing its own knowledge, ensure that all knowledge was coherent. The university was structured in accordance with this expectation.[36]
It is incumbent upon Christian universities to see that theologians and theology play a central role in keeping coherence within that setting.
3. Teach in the classroom in such a way that students can overtly trace the ways you are linking your subject (e.g., math, literature, economics, history, etc.) to the character and work of the triune God.[37] We do not want to be trite in our approach or irresponsibly prooftext in making our points. Rather, we want to think well about how we can responsibly connect the Bible to a holistic theology which builds out our worldview and then assists in understanding what we are to reject, receive, and redeem in the various areas of our disciplines (see figure below).
4. Engage with students in a “pastoral” manner. Stated broadly, Christian educational ministry should consist of pedagogy and mentoring that shepherds students toward appointed ends of knowing God and all things in relation to God.
5. Offer opportunities that cultivate a culture of theology, especially through reading and discussion, in and out of class. Christian universities and seminaries should foster a habitus of engaging with formative texts, preeminently Scripture and texts that help us understand what Scripture teaches. This can be done through required textbooks, suggested reading for classes, and organized reading groups that foster an engagement with great books.
6. Focus some level of scholarship toward the church, especially in producing works that would be of use to churched adults. Theology aims to equip our people to know God and live for him. And whether one writes theology directly or incorporates theological insights for a particular discipline, both can be of help to the church as it gathers for worship and scatters on mission. We must ensure that we write in such ways that the people of God at large are trained and built up.[38] This can be done in both direct and indirect ways, but there should be intentionality to not merely be building up a CV to satisfy the guild but building up a people so they can be satisfied in God. Whether writing for fellow scholars or for the common person in the church, it is good that we define our terms clearly and make our arguments biblically and cogently.
These are a mere sampling of ideas for institutions of Christian education to consider how they can instruct in formative ways. Catechetical instruction in the academy is aimed at the “sight” of the living God, both now in an inaugurated sense and in eternity as we behold his glory. We think and speak of God and how of our academic disciplines relate to God in light of Scripture, pondering these truths and teaching them to students, that we can truly begin corporately to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5) and thus behold God’s glory and be transformed into his likeness (2 Cor. 3:18).
[1] See for example Kyle R. Hughes, Teaching for Spiritual Formation: A Patristic Approach to Christian Education in a Convulsed Age (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022).
[2] David S. Dockery, Renewing Minds: Serving Church and Society through Christian Higher Education Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2007), 40.
[3] Alex Fogleman, Making Disciples: Catechesis in History, Theology, and Practice (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2025), 9.
[4] Ibid., 2.
[5] This has often been done through a focus on the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. See an articulation of such an approach in J. I. Packer, Growing in Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022).
[6] For a recent engagement with the need for the church to take up more readily the work of catechesis, see J.I. Packer and Gary A. Parrett, Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010). For a historic sketch of how catechesis was done in the Patristic era contrasted with the practice, or lack thereof, today, see Clinton E. Arnold, “Early Church Catechesis and New Christians’ Classes in Contemporary Evangelicalism,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47.1 (2004): 39-54.
[7] See https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/introducing-gospel-way-catechism/.
[8] Trevin Wax and Thomas West, The Gospel Way Catechism: 50 Truths that Take on the World (Eugene: Harvest House, 2025).
[9] Tim Keller, How to Reach the West Again: Six Essential Elements of a Missionary Encounter (New York: Redeemer City to City, 2020).
[10] See ibid.
[11] See ibid.
[12] Trevin Wax, “Introducing ‘The Gospel Way Catechism’: A Tool for Spiritual Formation in a Secular Age,” The Gospel Coalition, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/introducing-gospel-way-catechism/.
[13] Portions of the last two sections are drawn, with permission, from Jeremy Kimble, ““In Your Light, We See Light: The Role of Systematic Theology in Contemplation and Catechesis,” Midwestern Journal of Theology 24.1 (Spring 2025). Forthcoming.
[14] John Webster, The Culture of Theology, Ivor J. Davidson and Alden C. McCray, eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 43.
[15] Ibid., 44-45.
[16] Ibid., 48-49.
[17] Ibid., 53.
[18] Ibid., 55.
[19] J. Alec Motyer, Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 20, TOTC (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity 1999), 196.
[20] While not the focus of this work, one could also speak of the historic practice of conference (i.e., God-centered conversation) as a key means of forming students. For more on this practice se Joanne J. Jung, Godly Conversation: Rediscovering the Puritan Practice of Conference (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2011).
[21] See Fogleman, Making Disciples, 2.
[22] Jonathan D. Watson, In the Name of Our Lord: Four Models of the Relationship Between Baptism, Catechesis, and Communion, Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2021), 9-10.
[23] Fogleman, Making Disciples, 2-3.
[24] Packer and Parrett refer to protocatechesis as the instruction given to unbelieving inquirers, catechesis proper as the formal instruction given to children or adult converts, and ongoing catechesis as ministry of teaching and formation that continues in the life of the believer for continually nurture and growth. See Packer and Parrett, Grounded in the Gospel, 29.
[25] See ibid.
[26] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Hearers and Doers: A Pastor’s Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2019), 10. What Vanhoozer refers to as “collective imagination” is rooted in the concept of the “social imaginary,” which can be understood as “ingrained habits of perception” or the “picture that frames our everyday beliefs and practices, in particular the ways people imagine their social existence.” See James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 28, fn. 12; Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 171.
[27] Webster, Culture of Theology, 66.
[28] For further thoughts on how Scripture is given by God for us to behold his glory in an inaugurated way in this life and thereby be continually transformed as we await glorification to come, see Kimble, Beholding and Becoming.
[29] John Owen, “Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ in his Person, Office and Grace,” in The Works of John Owen, vol. 1, ed. William H. Gould (London: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850), 288-89.
[30] See Suzanne MacDonald, “Beholding the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ: John Owen and the ‘Reforming’ of the Beatific Vision,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen’s Theology, eds. Kelly M. Kapic and Mark Jones (New York: Routledge, 2012), 122.
[31] J.I. Packer, “Reflection and Response,” in J.I. Packer and the Evangelical Future: The Impact of His Life and Thought, ed. Timothy George (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 174.
[32] For more on this point see Gregg R. Allison, “Christian Worldview and Christian Education,” Integration 3 (Summer 2024), https://iace.education/journal-blog/christian-worldview-and-christian-education.
[33] See, for example, Daniel M. Doriani, Work: Its Purpose, Dignity, and Transformation (Phillipsburg, PA: P&R, 2019).
[34] See David S. Dockery, Renewing Minds: Serving Church and Society Through Christian Higher Education (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2007); David S. Dockery, ed., Christian Higher Education: Faith, Teaching, and Learning in the Evangelical Tradition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018); Arthur F. Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987); George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University Revisited: From Protestant to Postsecular, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).
[35] For further thoughts on this see Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 215-30.
[36] Greg Forster, “Faith, Learning, and the World,” in Christian Higher Education, 457-58, emphasis original.
[37] For an excellent example of this see Jacob Shatzer, Faithful Learning: A Vision for Theologically Integrated Education (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic 2023).
[38] Packer was exemplary in this. For one direct example on how contemplation and catechesis can be spoken of in a way for the church, see J.I. Packer, Growing in Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994).
JEREMY KIMBLE
Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology | Director of The Synergy Initiative
Cedarville University