by Tom Trevethan

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For though we live in the world we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. — 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Every call to ministry, to the service of the Lord Christ, is a call to war. We live in a ferocious battle zone. This is no less true for us as we consider ministry within the university world to graduate students than it was for Paul in his tortuous, even physically dangerous ministry to the wayward Corinthians. Unless we come to our situation with a good soldier's zeal, willingness to suffer, and discipline, we will deceive ourselves about the realities we seek to understand and change.

However, this talk of spiritual conflict and use of military metaphors is thoroughly repugnant to many who love the university. Some will read no further than this first paragraph and turn aside in distaste and even disgust. So let me suggest some grounds for viewing spiritual and intellectual warfare as a fruitful foundation for thinking about Christian engagement with the university.

I begin by observing that spiritual struggle and warfare are basic Biblical categories for understanding our place as followers of Jesus in a fallen world. Both Testaments make this plain, from the conflict in Exodus to the war of the Lamb in the Apocalypse. Our Lord himself clearly was locked in a great spiritual struggle, and his life, death, and resurrection make deepest sense when seen in this light. Equally clearly, as Biblical revelation proceeds, the struggle becomes less a flesh-and-blood military encounter. "Love for enemy" is clarified as our calling as followers of the suffering Servant. And the conflict is located in the realm of the spirit, involving "principalities, powers, and rulers of this present darkness" [Eph 6:12]. But that makes the conflict no less real or present. No amount of misuse of this persistent Biblical motif (and there has been considerable misuse) should cause us to ignore it. Indeed, we ignore it to our spiritual peril.

Further, the intellectual life is inherently filled with conflict, with the struggle to understand truly. Consider these wise words of Paul Griffiths, professor of divinity and South Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago:

The intellectual life is essentially and constitutively agonistic. It progresses almost entirely by struggle, by challenge and response, by thesis and antithesis, by getting it wrong and then moving, always asymptotically, toward getting it right.... This sort of thing is what is meant by the word "polemics." I take it to denote an intellectual virtue. Perhaps more precisely, I take it to denote a mode of intellectual engagement that flows directly from a proper and clear realization of what serious intellectual work is for and how it should best proceed. If you properly engage in this work, you will be interested in arriving at a position on [your subject] that is preferable to any other that you know of on that question, and you will concomitantly want to be clear as to what th[at] position...is, what it excludes, how best to show that its competitors are less adequate..., and in what sense [it] is true. "Polemics," as I use it here, does not denote or connote simple hostility, or opposition for its own sake - even though the term has come to mean something like this in ordinary English usage. It points, rather, to the kind of engagement that does and should occur when those who take what they believe seriously encounter others equally serious about, and committed to, their beliefs. [1]

If the university is to be an institution that exalts and deepens the life of the mind, it must be a place of struggle and conflict. To avoid this conflict is to avoid truth altogether.

Finally, the sense of being engaged in a furious intellectual and spiritual battle does not preclude a posture of genuine respect and even love for the university and its people. [M]any fear that those who use [military] metaphors are engaged in a red-necked, superstitious crusade against elite culture in general and the university in particular. Indeed, we must acknowledge that American popular culture and fundamentalist religion, in particular, do harbor deeply and destructively anti-intellectual sentiments and forces. [2] So the concern about folk who talk in terms of "spiritual warfare" [against academia] is not completely misplaced. But it ought to also be obvious that not all who think in these terms ought to be tarred with the same brush. It is possible to genuinely love and honor the life of the mind and the university and still believe that spiritual and cultural warfare are central to our calling in the university under God.

...As we consider our place in the line of battle, the university world and graduate students in particular, we need to be informed by all three of these realities: The university is fallen, and incapable of realizing its true and wonderful promise as a result. In many ways it is one of the "principalities and powers," infested as it is with evil and the evil ones. But equally the university, in its calling as an institution committed to truth and knowledge, has a continuing nobility and achieves wonderful results by God's sovereign, persevering, and redeeming grace. Our call to war is not to join the enemy in the rebellion (a mindless and unfaithful total acceptance of the current state of life in the university) nor to "nuke the whole mess" (an equally mindless and unfaithful total rejection). We are called to a war of liberation, of restoration and transformation. Indeed Paul's description of the battle as demolishing strongholds of false argument and proud pretension and bringing every thought - not just private religious thought - captive to make it obedient to Christ has special relevance to the university world.

Looking at graduate students as a part of the university world, we need to be reminded of their importance. In the major centers of the academic world the sheer number of graduate students makes them important. At the University of Michigan, graduate students [make up] slightly more than 40% of the student population, for example. There are two further, more significant reasons for our concern for ministry among graduates. These are folks who tend to be involved and committed to the university as more than a vocational institution and party scene, and as a result, the future university faculty, administrators, and leaders are found among this group. In short, they have a large present influence and future, decisive effect on the life of the university.

In seeking to understand graduate students, I find it helpful to look at them from both a personal and professional perspective. Obviously graduate students are people with the same range of sorrows and joys, weaknesses and gifts, as any other [group]. The gospel of the Lord Jesus speaks to all sinners. Still, there are some unique personal qualities and situations we need to consider. One that has been...fruitful for me is to seek to understand the unique blend of insecurity and pride that characterizes most graduate students.

Consider first the insecurity generated by the situation of most graduate students. They enter a higher (perhaps in many cases the highest) level of academic work and competition. They are conscious that the stakes in this competition are higher; certainly they are very high on the vocational level. Furthermore, most find themselves in a new, unknown setting. The place is unfamiliar and so are the people. They need to construct a new social circle, and it is fair to note that [despite] their exceptional intellectual skills, graduate students display no discernibly greater social skills than the rest of the people in the world. Add to these real financial insecurities and the fact that many are newly married..., and you have a recipe for profound insecurity. "Will I make it?" is a very important question, which has no necessarily [affirmative] answer. Its corollary is the assertion, "You must be single-minded and even ruthless in your pursuit of academic success. No time for distractions like Christian gatherings and service. That was maybe OK for undergraduate days, but this is the real thing now!"

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