Relationship between science and religion
It is important to integrate faith with learning in most Christian institutions while ensuring that the lifestyle is defined by way of living and the modes of teaching. The faith, soul, and the heart are important components for the perfect functioning of one’s spirituality and disciplinary aspects so as to ensure that they all have a synergetic functioning so that the students may feel fully empowered. Through the integration of biblical faith into the academic disciplines; the students have the opportunity to reach their full intellectual potential while concurrently developing their hearts and minds. Embracing religious values and the biblical stipulations help one to develop principles that are aligned with exceptional social morals. People develop to become highly competent with all-rounded values. Integration of biblical values into the learning helps students to enhance their relationship with Christ as they have to learn Christian values in every aspect of their learning process. Biblical values teach of love and unity as well as other important moral values. Therefore the students go through a process of constant enlightenment and a path of truth and eternal love.
There are three main strategies that contribute to the integration of biblical faith into the academic studies and disciplines. These tools are referred to as Cosgrove’s models that differ in the mode of assessment regarding the present forms of relationships across the faith and the disciplines thus helping one to understand the essentials of the undertaking so as to pursue integrity with discipline. The first strategy is the compatibility strategy that seeks to emphasize the areas concerning harmony and the compatibility of the knowledge that comes from unique revelation obtained from academic inquiries (Beers, 2008, p.63). When one embraces the compatibility strategy, then they utilize the truth voids into the academic disciplines but mostly focus on unity between the Christian faith and the academic discipline without the consideration of the underlying assumptions under the discipline. This strategy mostly entails connection, identification, and elaboration of the points identified in the given field.
Science and religion relationship
The second strategy is the transformationist strategy where the scholars who implement this strategy make an assumption that there are aspects of commonality when it comes to the Christian worldview and the discipline. This strategy ensures that the scholar fully examines the disciplines while evaluating the arguments and the claims in the discipline that oppose a Christina worldview with the aim of transforming the discipline to one oriented towards a Christina worldview. The transformationist identifies the flaws that exist in the discipline and identifies while implementing amendments to the discipline so that it can match a Christian and a biblical view. This strategy is beneficial in the manner that it recognizes the disciplines and sorts them out especially the ones that do not implement their theoretical background on Christian worldview but rather non-theistic views (Beers, 2008, p.64). These non-theistic worldviews lead to some faulty and skewed interpretations of the disciplines and the theories. This strategy also helps to identify the strong role played by the ideologies as well as the hidden roles that it eventually addresses. This strategy can be somehow challenging to the scholars as it takes much effort in the identification of the ideologies that lie behind a given discipline, implement transformationist strategies that address the matter and finally see to their success.
The third strategy in which biblical values may be integrated into academic disciplines is through the reconstructionist theory. This theory is highly rigid and has led to tensions between disciplines and the Christian worldview theories. However, the strategy implements that the discipline either be fully scrapped off or fully reconstructed to fit into the strategy. The theory, therefore, leads to measures of the radical reconstruction of the disciplines on the basis of full biblical foundations (Beers, 2008, p.65). However there is another strategy referred to as the foundational theory that implies that the worldview is a set of beliefs and assumptions about the reality and consequently affect how we live and think (Beers, 2008, p.59). It further argues that what is assumed to be true can be termed as the faith component in the considerations made in the integration of academic learning, disciplines and learning. Through this strategy, the worldview is described as a given set of lenses through which the world is viewed. This comprises of two segments that are; the descriptive lens and the prescriptive lens. The descriptive lens is what most presumes to be true and the reality while the prescriptive lens is the manner in which an evaluation is done on what is true, its meaning and the manner in which people should live (p.60).
Christian philosophy of education
It is essential for Christian scholars to integrate the biblical values into their disciplines, however choosing the right strategy is the major achievement as it determines the level of success. It is important for the incorporation of the three strategies together rather than leaving them to be mutually exclusive. The most important objective is to indulge faith into learning so that there is an overlay of a faith perspective in academics and personal values. Therefore, this requires the coherent system that is unified in a holistic manner so that the physical realm associated with academics can connect with the spiritual and the rational realm.
The disciplines that are offered across the platforms are different and have different subject content. The subjects have different philosophies embedded and methods; other disciplines entail just a single school of thought while the others have a similar setting for the mode of change, controversy, development, and adaptations reflect in a similar manner. These factors thus make it more reasonable and efficient to use the three strategies in the incorporation of biblical faith into academic disciplines as they can provide the best results and prove most reliable for use on the circumstance. The main objective is to ensure that faith and learning are integrated so as to ensure a Christian worldview is implemented and prevent the possibility of false knowledge negatively impacting the scholars.
References
Beers, S. T. (2008). The soul of a Christian university: A field guide for educators. Abilene Christian University Press. Accessed from http://www.apu.edu/live_data/files/219/integration_of_faith_and_learning.pdf
