Testimonies of Professors

GORDON J. VAN WYLEN

Chairman, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan

While I believe the Christian faith apart from its particular benefits, it touches my life in the university in three specific ways, namely: my work has purpose and significance because this is God’s world, and all study and learning are gifts of God to be used for his glory and the benefit of our fellow men; it provides enlightenment and understanding on many problems, from the pride of man to the future destiny of the human race; and it gives a motive and pattern for service through the example we have in the character and the incarnation and suffering of our Lord.

Robert B. Fischer

Professor of Chemistry, Indiana University

The explosively expanding frontiers of knowledge and its implications and applications make this an intensely exciting, yet awesome age in which to live. All these serve to intensify, but not really to modify, the relevance of Christ to the world. Man is a spiritual being, as well as a physical being, and only through personal faith in Christ can any individual be made complete. We as Christians, individually and collectively, must be ever alert to the urgency of bringing the fullness of the Gospel to the whole man.

C. C. Morrill

Chairman, Department of Veterinary Pathology, Michigan State University

The scholar in whatever field constantly searches for relevance. According to God’s Word, this search, to be most fruitful, must involve Jesus Christ for “in [him] are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge … and ye are complete in him” (Col. 2:3, 10). By opening our spiritual eyes, he gives all of our knowledge new meaning—new relevance. Thanks be to God who has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son!

Richard D. Campbell

Assistant Professor of Chemistry, State University of Iowa

Modern science seeks to understand more about the strange, adverse creation in which man finds himself. By the power of disciplined human reason the scientist seeks knowledge which will hopefully improve man’s physical well-being. To believe that the knowledge of science is enough to fulfill the needs of the whole man would be a denial of man’s experience and a false hope.

From some minor triumphs of reason in the physical realm and dark gropings in the human intellect, the mind of man has been led by his own pride and conceit to the belief that he can solve all of his problems, physical, mental, and spiritual.

Only when man realizes the limits of human reason and turns to his Creator-God revealed in Jesus Christ, can he find a purposeful and satisfying life. “In Him is Life, and that Life is the Light of man.”

Robert H. Cameron

Dept. of Math, College of Science, Literature and the Arts, Univ. of Minnesota

Communism offers the hope of an ultimate Utopia for the bodies and minds of men, but nothing for their (supposedly non-existent) souls. Though some claim that medical science will ultimately cause men to live forever, none dare assert that it will ever raise the dead; so Marx will never see his Utopia. Death has conquered Marx and Lenin, but Christ has conquered death. He has lived in my heart ever since fellow students at Cornell University explained Christ’s atoning death and triumphant justifying resurrection in terms that I could understand and accept. I await with confidence his everlasting kingdom.

Orville S. Walters

Director of Health Services, University of Illinois

Troubled students on campus today have a high incidence of anxiety that is primarily spiritual. When we penetrate their superficial symptomatic concerns, focused upon study or interpersonal relations, we often find a substrate of lostness and yearning for some sense of purpose. The Christian understanding of personality has long recognized this hidden hunger. The deep need of man for forgiveness and reconciliation cannot be satisfied by technological achievement and intellectual excellence. Commitment to Christ is relevant to today’s human need, as it has always been.

A. M. Rempel

Acting Head, Department of Education, Purdue University

For some years now it has been my privilege to be a part of college campus life—as student, as professor, and as administrator. I am grateful for this opportunity. I have found, however, that scholarship and the quest for knowledge, although often exciting, do not completely satisfy. Added to them must be a life which alone gives them unity and meaning. I have found this life in Jesus Christ. To experience his redeeming and energizing love, to share in his passion and purpose, is to discover a reality “which surpasses knowledge.”

David H. Ives

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Agricultural Biochemistry, The Ohio State University

Not only is the university preparation for life, but it is life. Yet during this same period, so full of exploration and intellectual ferment, students often forget or misunderstand the relevance of the Christ they knew as children to the more sophisticated world they now find themselves in. In an era when the very continuation of life seems dependent upon the whim of a few powerful world leaders, when an errant flock of geese on a radar screen could release destructive forces of unimaginable proportions, when evil so often seems to triumph over good, it must be recalled that Christ is still the Lord of History. The great miracle is that this same omnipotent Lord chooses to work through the lives of individuals to carry out his purposes.

James H. Roberts

Professor of Physics, Northwestern University

Mankind has tapped the basic source of physical power in the universe—nuclear (atomic) power. This power can be used for terrible destruction or for great benefits. Thinking people—students and faculty alike—feel helpless to guarantee its proper use. Some realize we must depend upon a still more basic source of power—God himself. His love and concern are made known through Jesus Christ. He alone is able to give inner peace, courage, and wisdom, and to motivate us to use the knowledge of the atom for the good of mankind as we exercise personal faith in Jesus Christ.

JOHN W. ALEXANDER

Assistant Dean, Letters and Science, University of Wisconsin

Our main objectives in the academic world are to advance the frontiers of knowledge through research and to communicate truth through teaching. The fund of knowledge by now is so vast that no human mind can comprehend it all. Hence the question: Is there any knowledge of such significance that every learner (whether sociologist or pedologist, historian or geographer, chemist or musician or whatever) should know it? The Christian answers, “Yes, the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ who said, ‘I am the Truth.’ ” But it is not enough to know about Jesus Christ; one must know him. The good news to every searcher for truth is that he can personally know Jesus Christ, who then satisfies the deepest hunger of his mind and heart.

JAMES H. SHAW

Associate Professor of Biological Chemistry, Harvard School of Dental Medicine

In world crisis or calm, in personal turmoil or satisfaction, Jesus Christ rightfully is the “Source, Guide and Goal of all that is” (Rom. 11:36, NEB). In the search for truth, the eternally important question through the ages and today was and is centered in every individual’s response to Christ’s claims about himself and to his message about salvation and adoption into his spiritual family. Belief in, personal commitment to, and dependence upon Jesus Christ by student or faculty member are essential for understanding life’s true meaning. This vital personal relationship to the Lord brought previously unknown joy and fulfillment to my life.

J. Marshall Miller

Associate Professor of Planning, School of Architecture, Columbia University

Collegiate education today stresses the acquisition of “knowledge” with little or no attention to the acquiring of “wisdom.” Even less time is devoted to the understanding of the relevance of Christ, his teachings, or the potential power of the Holy Spirit. The language of the Bible is a foreign language to teacher and student alike. And yet it is a substantiated fact, certainly in my own life, that daily, personal fellowship with Christ and the powerful working of the Holy Spirit hold greater significance than all the lectures, research efforts, and reference books combined.

John A. Mcintyre

Sloane Laboratory, Physics Department, Yale University

Today, the university student is seeking. He speaks for himself in this, the last editorial of the Yale Daily News in 1962: “Most of us graduate unsure of life’s calling. Yet Yale, which has determined the kind of life we seek, has imposed substantial barriers in the way of that life’s accomplishment. The university has demonstrated how the daily existence of most Americans can be criticized, even ridiculed, without prescribing the formula for a useful, rewarding life—and without showing how one can reconcile himself to a ridiculous world.” Was the call to preach the Gospel in Macedonia any more clear and urgent than this?

Ronald C. Doll

Professor of Education, Hunter College of the City University of New York

Today’s student lives in an era of fear and tension; of abounding knowledge, which doubles every 8½ to 12 years; and of impermanent ideation, which replaces much that was recently considered verity. No wonder despairing cries go up from our campuses: “I’m afraid!” “There’s just too much to know!” “Tell us what we can believe!” The very special answer to Herbert Spencer’s famous question, “What knowledge is of most worth?,” is to be found in the Person of Jesus Christ, whom to know is inner peace, ultimate truth, and entire confidence that he is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

Cyrus W. Barnes

Professor of Science, School of Education, New York University

We moderns need a goal, a plan for action, and the opportunity to proceed. The Christian life gives me a purpose bigger than my life, meriting and requiring commitment, and thoroughly challenging. One can have direction for today and means of proceeding toward eventual achievement of His kingdom, a universe characterized by love and respect. One’s efforts, though microscopic in large perspective, have worth and significance. Failure is possible but temporary; the cause will prevail. A privilege I value highly is association with Christians whose presence is a tonic: friends, colleagues, relatives, and committed youth of campus and camp.

S. I. Fuenning

Medical Director, University of Nebraska

As stated in St. Paul’s letter to the Christians at Colossae, “Your own completeness is only realized in Him, who is the Authority over all authorities, and the Supreme Power over all powers.” This phenomenon is the mystery of the ages, which is, as St. Paul further states, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The full realization of Christ in man does free him from the infantile core in human nature and creates in man a new nature which has as its characteristics “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, adaptability and self-control”.

Walter R. Hearn

Assoc. Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Iowa State University

Scientists devote themselves to studying the works of God in the universe, imitating their Creator when they seek to be creative with their minds and hands (although some know little of God and care little to acknowledge him). Christians love the living Word of God enough to devote their lives to Him, imitating the Lord Jesus Christ by seeking to redeem the whole world through him (although some know painfully little about that world and care little to study it). What a privilege for some of us to be active citizens of both communities—Christian scholars with the opportunity to live both creatively and redemptively!

Rene De Visme Williamson

Professor of Government, Louisiana State University

Students on our secular campuses want to “belong” and to believe, but their loyalty waits for a worthy object in an age when institutions are unstable and ideologies have been unmasked as idolatries. It is for us Christian professors to confront these students with the claims of Christ, who alone can impart new meaning to life, new strength to institutions, and new vitality to human thought. Even the pagan world must reckon all history as before or after Christ. So must each individual reckon his own personal life as before or after Christ’s birth in his own life. Faith in Christ is not the end of the road: it is the beginning of a new road on which each person is assured of guidance and companionship, the only road whose destination is his destiny.

Philip C. Munro

Instructor in Electronics and Engineering, Washington University

Since becoming a Christian 2½ years ago, I have seen the Lord Jesus guide every detail of my life, as I have asked to see this. The truth of the Bible is not only a sufficient truth, but the necessary truth for every university person to understand and to personally trust.

CALVIN D. LINTON

Dean, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, George Washington University

Man’s estrangement from the universe, and his loneliness within it, are not assuaged by his vastly increased information about it but are rather made the more acute. The comfort of Newton’s neat machine, predictable, comprehensible, and controllable, has vanished, and man stands at the edge of a dimensionless abyss, not only doubting his own mastery of his environment but growingly fearful that the nature of reality is ultimately unthinkable. His fear of physical death has been transcended by the greater fear of total meaninglessness. He must descend the stair of arrogance, self-conceit, and self-righteousness—and be still. Only thus can he hear the words of the One by whom the worlds were made, without whom was nothing made that was made, who declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Only the heart which puts its trust in this Jesus of history and of eternity can face today’s world and today’s universe without fear.

CHARLES HATFIELD

Chairman, Mathematics Department, University of North Dakota

The church of tomorrow, if not its secular historians, may well record as the sickest sin of this age that we saw this global crisis as anything but spiritual. How can we afford such superficiality? If we cannot confront the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and all its implications for life today, we shall have failed. But if we live to exalt Christ and him alone, I believe that God will bare his strong arm and forge his own instrument for the defeat of Communism and the other conspiracies that seek to smother his truth.

Kenneth Scott Latourette

Sterling Professor of Missions, Emeritus, Yale University

Use the present opportunity to the full for these are evil days. That injunction is as imperative and that description as accurate as when first uttered. The days are fully as significant for the eternal welfare of the billions who now constitute the human race as they were for the few hundred millions who were the total of mankind in the first century. The current situation on the planet threatens that welfare as strikingly as it did then. For all, now as then, Christ is the door to life eternal.

Today the world has more who bear the Christian name than at any previous time in history. But it also has more who have never had the opportunity intelligently to accept or to reject the Good News than in any earlier century. The obligation upon Christians should be apparent.

THE CLIMATE IN THE COLLEGES

A UNIVERSITY EMBLEM—In Thy Light we shall see light.—Inscription on the seal of Columbia University.

DEFECTION AND ITS CAUSE—A Catholic report published in America (April 8, 1961) quotes Bishop Robert E. Lucey: “The dangers to faith and morals are at least as great in a downtown office as on a secular campus.” The national survey of Time magazine (1952) is cited to the same effect: “No appreciable number of defections,” say Newman Club chaplains at the University of Illinois and the University of Iowa; those which do occur “result rather from weak religious background prior to college than from campus living and experiences.” The Harvard Crimson poll [1959] … records a high rate of defections—40 per cent among Protestants, 25 per cent among Catholics, 12 per cent among Jews—among the 310 students who answered. But in almost every case the defection had its roots in precollege days, especially in high-school experience.—MICHAEL NOVAK, “God in the Colleges,” Harper’s (Oct., 1961).

EDUCATIONAL CLIMATE—The new educational climate is more favorable than the former to the pursuit of the liberal arts which have been historically associated with a Christian culture. In fact the new emphasis paves the way for a distinctively Christian education.—MARTIN HEGLAND, Christianity in Education (1954).

CRISIS IN COMMUNICATION—The university faces the problem of the Tower of Babel; the church faces the problem of glossolalia, strange tongues.

Theologians can contribute to the cure of both ills by boldly adopting a language common to humanity, or at least by seriously searching for such a language.—H. JACKSON FORSTMAN, assistant professor of religion, Stanford University, “Theology in the American University,” Encounter (Autumn, 1961).

OPTIMISTIC ANALYSIS—Behind the masks, the disguises, of this student generation, I see alert minds, (honed sharp by the present age of intellectual competition), generous hearts (with a compassion and concern for their fellow man, unequaled in any age), strong bodies (when challenged to meet the test to defend a principle which they believe in), and a sound philosophy (which needs only an understanding of the nature of man and of the grace, mercy, and love of God). It is this generation the church must address. To do so calls for (1) confession of failure, (2) proclamation of the revelation of God’s forgiving love in Jesus Christ, and (3) a demonstration of the love, trust, and confidence in the lives of those who claim to be a part of her, both the ministry and the laity.—VAN D. SPURGEON, university minister, Oklahoma State University, “The American College Student Today,” Encounter (Winter, 1962).

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