That physical courage is not at all on the minds of people who think of Francis indicates how little people actually know his life. He’d been a fierce warrior as a young man. He survived fighting in two wars (we would call them battles today), one that saw the slaughter of his town Assisi in a battle so brutal it turned the Tiber River red. There were a total of nine crusades waged by Christians in the west to try to take back land that had been seized by the Saracens, as Muslims were called at the time. Living in the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth centuries, Francis lived in the middle of this period. When Pope Innocent III dispatched the fifth crusade, Francis jumped at the chance.

So off he went with a few of his brothers, setting sail from the shores of Italy across the Mediterranean to Damietta, Egypt near the Nile delta. That’s where the fiercest battle was going on, in that critical port city. The Christians were fighting valorously and were being slaughtered. Francis went to the man leading the Christian forces and asked him permission to go into the Saracen camp to meet the Sultan. The commander summarily denied his request. Francis received that denial and went anyway, his brother Illuminato going with him. They walked straight into the Muslim camp.

As they drew near the Saracen perimeter, Francis repeatedly called out, Sultan! Sultan! Sultan! and because he was calling specifically for the Sultan the guards didn’t kill him on the spot. They thought the Christian wanted to convert and weren’t willing to deny the Sultan such a conquest.

The Sultan’s name was Melek-el-Kemel, and he received the Christian graciously. Have you come to convert? It was the first thing the Sultan said. No, Francis demurred. I’m not here to become a Muslim. I’ve come to implore you to convert to the Lord Jesus Christ.

This stunned the Sultan. Flabbergasted, he summoned his sages. This is what they told him, “The law forbids giving a hearing to infidel preachers. And if there be someone who wishes to speak or preach against our Law, the Law commands that his head be cut off.”

The Sultan knew the law, knew that it bound him to cut off the heads of these two men. But the Sultan said, “I am deciding to act against my own law, because it would be an even reward for me to bestow on one who conscientiously risked death in order to save my soul for God.”

Disarmed by the physical courage of Francis, Melek-el-Kemel asked Francis to stay for a while. I imagine Melek offering my church’s patron saint some tea. Francis declined. The Sultan said, “At least let me send you back with gold and silver and silks and other treasures.” No, Francis declined again, disappointed. There was only one treasure Francis came there looking for and that was the Sultan’s soul; if he couldn’t offer that to God he’d just as soon return home empty-handed. He was hungry, though. He said that he wouldn’t mind a little food. So the Sultan gave him all the food he could possibly need, and gave him a military escort back to the Christian camp. I’m not making any of this up.

On the tombstone of one of the Sultan’s sages who was present at this meeting of Francis and Melek-el-Kemel there’s this cryptic remark. “The things that befell Melek-el-Kamel owing to the monk are very well known.” Ten years after this meeting between Francis and the Sultan, in 1229 Melek-el-Kamel freely remitted Jerusalem to the Christians. Not a drop of blood was shed in this transfer. Francis didn’t live to see that. He had been dead three years.

From Mitch Albom’s column about Ernie Harwell in the 20 September issue of the Detroit Free-Press:

Now Ernie makes the best of it, with grace, warmth and faith. Above all, faith.

“A church wants you to do the Sunday sermon,” his friend and attorney Gary Spicer said, sitting with stacks of mail and requests. I mentioned that would be a sure way to increase church attendance.

“Oh, I dunno,” Ernie answered, laughing, “They might throw tomatoes.”

It came out “tamay-tahs,” the soft Georgia coda to his words, easy on the ears, like cool tea to the lips. Ernie’s voice has always been soothing — he sounds like baseball would sound if the game could talk — but we forget it’s soothing mostly because Ernie himself is soothing. He is as gentle, open, kind and decent as anyone I have ever met. He was planning for a farewell speech at Comerica Park. Spicer told him there would be a long video and a salute, and then he’d be given the microphone… .

But be careful not to eulogize Ernie, because he’s not only still with us, he is entering a phase where he may be more precious than ever. “Maybe I can help somebody else,” he said, after we’d finished the ice cream.

Harwell has been an example of grace over every game he’s called, genteel, respectful, never in the way, accepting that he is there to paint the picture, but he doesn’t own the brush. He has that same approach to life and now to death. He says he has long believed that his life is in G-d’s hands, and he’s lived it that way.

And he will continue to do so. To the end. I have written a new book about faith, part of which chronicles a broken down church in Detroit led by a poor pastor who fights to keep it going. Ernie read an advanced copy of book a few weeks ago. He told me he liked it.

That was special enough. But do you know that on his way down to his big night at Comerica Park, Ernie first drove by that crumbling church, unannounced, in a rundown section of Detroit, and when he saw the pastor, he rolled down his window and said “Hi, I’m Ernie Harwell, I just wanted to meet you.”

Nobody looking. Nobody taking notes. Just something he wanted to do.

Dei Sub Numine Viget (Princeton), In Deo Speramus (Brown), Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae (Harvard), Lux et Veritas (Yale). I don’t know when Harvard dumbed down their motto to Veritas, leaving Christ and the Church out of it, but the mottos of Ivy League schools are part of a long-ago history the colleges washed their hands of for reasons having to do with expedience. It wasn’t the first time. One thinks of a middle-management bureaucrat asking Jesus, “Quid est veritas?” If you’ve the eyes to see Pilate in the best possible light your heart almost breaks for the guy. Almost.

In contrast, Wheaton’s motto is in plain English; For Christ and His Kingdom. One of my great teachers during my graduate studies at Wheaton, Frederick Buechner, in his memoir Telling Secrets wrote of his experiences teaching at Harvard and Wheaton. The latter he compares favorably to the former. “What made it different from any [college] I have known can perhaps best be suggested by the college motto, which is more in evidence there than such mottos usually are… . [I]t seemed to me that insofar as their resounding motto can be true of any institution, it was true of Wheaton.”

Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels, 
and let your trumpets shout Salvation 
for the victory of our mighty King.

Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth, 
bright with a glorious splendor, 
for darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.

Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church, 
and let your holy courts, in radiant light, 
resound with the praises of your people.

It is truly right and good, always and everywhere, with our whole heart and mind and voice, to praise you, the invisible, almighty, and eternal God, and your only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who at the feast of the Passover paid for us the debt of Adam’s sin, and by his blood delivered your faithful people.

This is the night, when you brought our fathers, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land.

This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life.

This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.

   How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your
   mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you
   gave a Son.

   How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and
   sin is washed away. It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy
   to those who mourn. It casts out pride and hatred, and brings
   peace and concord.

   How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined
   and man is reconciled to God.

Holy Father accept our evening sacrifice, the offering of this candle in your honor. May it shine continually to drive away all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting, find it ever burning—he who gives his light to all creation, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Creation

The doctrine that God is the creator of heaven and earth is the Magna Charta of Christian education. God’s creation of all things means (as people like Justin, Clement, and Donne affirmed) that all truth is God’s truth wherever it may be found. It also means that the Christian is free to pursue this truth anywhere and anytime.

It is helpful to distinguish three distinct ‘moments’ within God’s act of creation. The Christian doctrine of creation affirms, first, that God is the origin of all that is. Second, every major Christian theologian has further affirmed that each created thing has its own existence and its own power to act upon other created things. The existence and power of a created thing, while totally dependent upon God’s divine existence and power, are nonetheless numerically distinct from that divine existence and power. And third, all creation is called to serve and glorify God and is to be judged by its obedience to that call.

The second point in the doctrine of creation is worth considering in some detail. The second point may be called the ‘secular’ moment in Christianity. That is, each created thing has its own identity and can truly interact with other creatures. This secular dimension of the Christian doctrine of creation is one (but only one) of the primary causes for the development of physical science in Europe.

Christian scholars in late medieval Europe drew an important conclusion from their doctrine of creation: because God created each entity with its own integrity and power (this power being dependent on God while remaining numerically distinct from God) and because these entities can truly interact, a science of causes between created things was possible. Thus, when the necessary technological and economic advances had occurred and when the Greek heritage of mathematics, logic, and dialectic had been recovered, the Christian doctrine of creation resulted in the evolution of modern science out of the soil of Christian Europe.

Several important implications for education flow from the existence of this secular moment within the Christian doctrine of creation. Christians are free to accept the truth about the world that emerges from any source, such as modern physics or sociology, even if that source makes no religious appeal. We may even say that there is nothing in principle to prevent one from learning philosophy, say, from Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists. Christians should also be taught to delight in exercising their own creative powers, whether in music, writing, physics, mathematics, painting, or architecture, for these powers are both truly their own and yet also a gift from God.

And yet the secular moment is neither the first nor the last point in the Christian doctrine of creation. Creation begins in God, and its end is to serve and glorify God. The Christian must never be content with purely ‘secular’ knowledge, for it is radically incomplete. The truths of modern physics or of ancient Zen art must be related to and tested by their origin in God and must be made to serve God. If this is so, then even in the case of the obviously secular disciplines such as physics or anthropology, it is always appropriate to relate the contents of these disciples to their divine source and goal. While this need not be a daily endeavor, it surely needs to be attempted regularly during the student’s education. Moreover, it is important that the teacher of physics or anthropology be intimately involved in the process; otherwise the theological perspective becomes a mere ‘add-on’ and not an essential part of the student’s education in physics or anthropology.

Sin

The Christian faith affirms not only the goodness of creation but also its corruption in sin. The modern notion of sin makes it something personal and, usually, private. The classical doctrine of sin, in contrast, asserts that sin has corrupted all of God’s creation.

The doctrine of the fall or sin implies that even our capacity for knowledge has become distorted. There is no uncorrupted and undistorted knowledge available to us. The bleak, ominous shadow of sin is particularly unwelcome in the context of the liberal arts, for it implies that we must look skeptically at all human activity, including the secular sciences as well as philosophy and theology. Our creativity in the arts, divine gift that it is, must be cross-examined in the light of our propensity for sin. Most dramatically, the reality of sin prevents us from knowing our own identity, from knowing at the deepest level who we are.

What are the educational implications of the doctrine of sin? First, all human knowledge, both about ourselves and about our world, is to be held tentatively and with some skepticism. Only God can provide certain knowledge.

Second, it is therefore quite impossible to obey fully the Delphic oracle to ‘know thyself’ unless God gives us such knowledge. Disciplines such as biology, psychology, history, and literature offer the student some degree of self-knowledge. But in a Christian context, the student should be encouraged to view the insights of these disciplines as something less than definitive. Because of our sin, we can establish our deepest identity only when God chooses to disclose it to us.

Third, even when we turn away from the inner knowledge of the self to the external knowledge of the world, the student must never be encouraged to assume that the methods of contents of the disciplines are beyond criticism. Even the scientific method itself is not above suspicion; and the master artist, while appropriately delighting in the divinely given powers of creativity, necessarily distorts that creativity. Thus, as a teacher one of my educational goals would be to cultivate a wise and humble skepticism towards one’s own achievements, whether academic, artistic, scientific, or athletic.

Fourth, the reality of sin implies that we need some criterion by which to measure our achievements. As a Christian, I believe that God has provided such a touchstone in Jesus Christ, who embodies truth.

Redemption

The last of the three main motifs of the Christian religion is redemption. Christian faith holds that God has provided for the redemption from sin of his creation through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.

First, as God’s act of self-revelation, Jesus Christ reveals perfect selfhood to us. This perfect selfhood is expressed not only in Christ’s divinity but in his humanity as well. For this reason, Christianity asserts that Christ, in his life, death, and resurrection, gives us a model of true human selfhood and that he shows us our own truest and deepest identity. When we look at the life of Christ, we discover the potentiality for growth which God gives to us when he creates us; but when we look at his crucifixion, we discover the depths of degradation into which sin thrusts us. Anything that biology, psychology, anthropology, or literature claim to teach us about our human identity can, therefore, be put to the test — the test of Christ.

The adolescent and the adult are alike in that, while the project is newer to the adolescent, both are looking for a self to be. Christian teachers in any of the disciplines mentioned will point to Jesus Christ as the model and test of true selfhood, and yet such teachers will also affirm the legitimate insights of their disciplines (the doctrine of creation, as we said, alerting us to the possibility of true insights into human selfhood emerging from secular disciplines or even from a non-Christian religion that makes no first-order theological claims, such as Buddhism).

Second, for the Christian, salvation is both already completed in Jesus Christ and, at the same time, is yet to be completed. But when God’s redemption of the world does come to its final completion, it will be totally the result of the accomplishments of Jesus Christ. The implications of this for education are enormous. Cultural achievements, even of Christians, are ambiguous. Luther said that throughout our lives, we are simul justus et peccator (simultaneously saints and sinners). Since redemption is not yet final, the dialectic between creation and sin has not yet ended. On the one hand, we are not to despair. Christians, and others too, can achieve some success in the sciences and can express a beauty in art that is not merely illusion. The reality of Christ’s conquest over death and decay proves that the goodness of God’s creation is not lost. On the other hand, since Christ’s victory over sin, while complete in outline and in principle, is yet to be finished in detail, we must be careful to continue a healthy skepticism toward all cultural achievements, especially our own.

Third, we participate in this redemption only through faith. Salvation is always God’s gift and never our own achievement. This means that our cultural accomplishments are never the means of redemption. Christians do not engage in education in order to bring in the Kingdom of God; that is, Christians must not view education as a means of salvation.

Fourth, What then is the positive role of human culture and education? My answer is that for the Christian, the successful artifacts of culture — religion, medicine, law, business, management, art, music, science, and marriage at their best — are all parables or expressions of redemption. For example, Marxist critics from Western Europe have argued that Tchaikovsky’s beautiful and harmonious music, which was written under the numbing cruelty of the Czars, is merely escapist and therefore utopian art. They reason that since this harmony did not reflect the objective situation, and since it could not contribute to the objective realignment of political power, its beauty was misleading, dangerous, and inauthentic.

While I don’t doubt that for some nineteenth century Russians, attending a Tchaikovsky ballet was merely escapist, it is also possible that its beauty helped keep alive the hope of God’s redemption, where that redemption will include perfect harmony and beauty. One could also argue that works such as Tchaikovsky’s (or, for example, the landscape paintings of Ming dynasty China) provide hints of a salvation already partially accomplished and present. As Christians, we believe we’ve received news announcing where that salvation is accomplished — at the cross and empty tomb of Jesus. To my way of imagining, an education in the arts ought to climax in a recognition of Jesus Christ as the one towards whom all beauty and harmony ultimately points.

Fifth and lastly, God’s redemption in Jesus Christ required the incarnation. Christian salvation is not, as the Gnostics would have had it, a purely ‘spiritual’ reality, but rather it includes the physical presence as well. This physical presence is to be found in the historical ministry of Jesus; it is ‘there’ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist; it is in some sense symbolized in the priest’s bodily presence, and this physical presence continues in the holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Thus education insofar as it claims to be ‘Christian,’ requires the physical presence of the Christian teacher.

Without that physical presence of the Christian teacher, no educational method can adequately teach a student how to integrate faith and learning; that is, how to integrate the incarnate salvation of Jesus Christ with academic discipline and the life of the mind. One of the highest priorities of a Christian education, therefore, would be the recruiting and retention of faculty who evince a classical and eclectic kind of Christianity, who are competent teachers, and who can embody the integration of the Christian faith with their various disciplines.

[I wrote this eighteen years ago while under consideration for a faculty appointment in the Religion Department at Phillips Exeter Academy. Most of what I wrote that long ago now seems to me naïve and requiring serious reconsideration. This survives discarding.]