Purpose and Vision

Westmont was founded "for the systematic and comprehensive study of the Holy Bible, and any and all other courses which are academic in nature, … and for practical and efficient training in Christian work; to create, maintain, and operate a center for the diffusion of Christian and secular knowledge ... for the dissemination of missionary information and the quickening of the missionary spirit ... for the publication and distribution of the Holy Scriptures and other evangelistic and academic literature" (Westmont Articles of Incorporation, 1940).

This course, then, serves those original purposes: study centering in the Bible but not restricted to it, training in Christian work, diffusion and publication of especially Christian knowledge, and enlivening the missionary spirit. Like Westmont itself, it stands or falls on how it succeeds or fails to do so.

The God of Israel plays a long game. What am I hoping you'll have gained from this class ten years out? Here's the intended fruit of a semester's engagement with course materials and concepts, from most important to least:

A manifest life change in the direction of new creation, bearing fruit of divine love (which of course means far more than mere feeling, as God is love).
A life-trajectory-altering facility with key resources: the Bible, church practices such as worship and prayer, and so on.
Lasting skill acquisition in thinking and acting "theologically."
Affection towards the discipline, with a resulting enthusiasm for pursuing its learning further (say, by reading good books or listening to good teaching).
A persisting (if foggy) knowledge base in the Christian tradition, with more precise memory of a few key centers that will have been reinforced by your study, worship, and service as a graduate.

How can this little course do that? Simply by staying true to its subject, and by a medium that suits its message. A formidable challenge here is the present structure of college, its coursework, grades, costs, intellectual culture, social pressures, and taboos. Then there's popular culture, the anemic state of many of our churches, rivals claiming and demanding our loyalty, confusions of the gospel with human traditions and ideologies and of the Triune God with other gods and lords, and on and on. These forces are much stronger than when I started teaching here, so the challenge is growing. But the power of the gospel outdoes all that and more—if we receive it with our whole hearts. And sometimes even if we don't.

I believe God sees this course as a 'way' that we all will travel, together but not in lockstep, along these lines in a season of growth through self- and mutual challenge. God intends to give every participant a new, lasting, and fruitful exposure to the core teachings of the living Church of Jesus Christ and to their divine source and focus, and to give every participating follower of Jesus a new, lasting, and fruitful theological formation for more confident and powerful service in God's Kingdom.

The challenge really is daunting. A Westmont education is a costly, demanding jar of clay in which you can find priceless treasure. This course is part of that. You need to pay attention to the jar, but stay focused on the treasure. Help others do so, and don't become a distraction for them. And don't forget that the real treasure is available in other jars too, not just this one.

I describe more general objectives of all my courses in my rules of the game. I also endorse the following list of aspirations for our course. A group of my colleagues from other disciplines articulated it this way many years ago:

We want our students to be able to reason about their faith, and then be able to apply their reasoned faith to all other disciplines and to all areas of their lives. We want students to recognize ways in which this reasoned faith is both biblically based and historically located. We want to acquaint students with both the basic grammar of theology and the complexities of its syntax in competing theological traditions. We want students to know that theology is both a useful and a limited tool. (For example, each model of the atonement seems to contribute something to our understanding of the crucifixion, but no one model of the atonement seems completely to account for the mystery of the crucifixion.)