Abstract
For religious believers, receptivity and responsiveness to God is a necessary prerequisite for right receptivity and responsiveness to the world. The place given to prayer and worship distinguishes the religious from the secular person. In part one of the chapter the focus is on how worship provides a context for unifying the principal concerns and commitments of believers. In part two the focus is on how the practices and associated attitudes and virtues of prayer can enrich learning. In part three intellectual life is envisaged as a sacred calling, interconnections between academic endeavour and spiritual and moral qualities are indicated, curiosity and studiousness are distinguished and the reciprocal relation between worship and learning is confirmed.
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Notes
- 1.
For a thorough and systematic philosophical exploration of liturgical theology, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, The God We Worship (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015).
- 2.
Debra Dean Murphy, Teaching That Transforms. Worship as the Heart of Christian Education (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004), p. 15.
- 3.
‘Worship is where the code is transmitted, the grammar learnt. It is the performance that, when well done, condenses and communicates formative retrieval, engagement, thought, and expression.’ David F. Ford, The Future of Christian Theology (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 93.
- 4.
‘The liturgy is a school, and the knowledge that is taught in it is of all things in relation to God, and God in relation to all things.’ Mike Higton, A Theology of Higher Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 147.
- 5.
‘The liturgy can be seen as a school in which the mind is educated towards its proper end: to know God in love and worship.’ Higton, op. cit., p. 146.
- 6.
‘For Christians the liturgy is the real world.’ Murphy, op. cit., p. 151.
- 7.
‘The community of disciples gathered together for worship seeks to have its imagination and identity so shaped by these formative liturgical actions that its entire life outside the liturgy will itself be a powerful expression of the worship of this God.’ Catherine Cowley, book review [in The Heythrop Journal 47 (3) July 2006, p. 496] of The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, edited by Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells .
- 8.
For a valuable study of the rarely analysed functions and effects of the chapel in higher education, where the role of the chapel is viewed in the light of such diverse metaphors as chapel as laboratory, as monastery, as song circle, as classroom and as church, see Common Worship in Theological Education edited by Siobhan Garrigan and Todd E. Johnson (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010).
- 9.
‘Prayer steels its performers to challenges and steers them to appropriate practices.’ William FitzGerald, Spiritual Modalities (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), p. 22.
- 10.
John Sullivan, ‘Theology as Partner for Educators’, in New Perspectives in Philosophy of Education edited by David Lewin, Alexandre Guilherme and Morgan White (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 209–210, at p. 209.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Ibid., p. 210.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
The image of the pilgrim on the journey towards God is of ancient lineage in Christian scholarship: Augustine’s Confessions, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Anselm’s Proslogion and Dante’s Divine Comedy each figure a pilgrim as a principal character.
- 15.
Naomi Hodgson, ‘The Researcher and the Studier: On Stress, Tiredness and Homelessness in the University’ Journal of Philosophy of Education vol. 50, No. 1, 2016, pp. 37–48, at pp. 38–39.
- 16.
Hodgson , loc. cit., pp. 41, 42.
- 17.
Ibid., p. 44.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Andrew Prevot, Thinking Prayer (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), pp. 238–239.
- 20.
Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘Catholic Universities: Dangers, Hopes, Choices,’ in Higher Learning and Catholic Traditions edited by Robert E. Sullivan (University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), p. 10.
- 21.
Calian , in ‘Prayer and Higher Education’ in Should God Get Tenure edited by David W. Gill (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 171–178, at p. 175.
- 22.
Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings. Translation and notes by George Berthold (London SPCK, 1985), p. 11.
- 23.
Michael J. Baxter and Frederick C. Bauerschmidt, ‘Eruditio without religio?: The dilemma of Catholics in the academy’, Communio 22 (summer 1995), pp. 284–302, at p. 298.
- 24.
Athanasius and Hugh both quoted by Bradley G. Green, The Gospel and the Mind (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), p. 73. in footnote.
- 25.
David L. Schindler, ‘Sanctity and the intellectual life,’ Communio 20 (Winter 1993), pp. 652–672, at p. 668.
- 26.
Paul J. Griffiths , ‘Pray without Ceasing’ Christian Reflection series of booklets, issue on Prayer, Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, 2009, pp. 11–17, at p. 13. Elsewhere Griffiths proposes, as a preliminary definition of studiousness: ‘appetite for closer reflexive intimacy with the gift.’ In Griffiths, Intellectual Appetite (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), p. 21.
- 27.
Griffiths, ‘Prayer without Ceasing’, pp. 14–15.
- 28.
Deborah C. Bowen , ‘Literature and Shalom: Teaching Freshman Students to Read’ in Teaching to Justice: Christian Faculty Seek “Shalom” In Different Disciplines. Edited by Julia Stronks, Whitworth College. Online anthology, 2008, pp. 141–152, at pp. 150–151.
- 29.
Fitzgerald , op. cit., p. 81.
- 30.
Antonin-Gilbert Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life. Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, translated by Mary Ryan (Cork: The Mercier Press, 1946).
- 31.
Ibid., pp. 34–36; 29.
- 32.
Ibid., p. 76.
- 33.
Ibid., pp. 92–105.
- 34.
Ibid., p. 165.
- 35.
Donald Nicholl, The Beatitude of Truth (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1997), pp. 6, 8.
- 36.
Ibid., p. 8.
- 37.
Bonaventure, Prologue to The Soul’s Journey Into God translated by Ewert Cousins (London: SPCK, 1978), pp. 55–56.
- 38.
Tyson E. Lewis, On Study (Abingdon, UK & New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 12, quoting Giorgio Agamben.
- 39.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Human Phenomenon, new edition, translated by Sarah Appleton-Weber (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1999), p. 177. I show the contribution made to the scholar’s academic ‘repertoire’ by his or her spiritual and moral qualities in John Sullivan, ‘Scholarship and spirituality’ in Spirituality, Philosophy and Education edited by David Carr and John Haldane (London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003), pp. 127–140.
- 40.
John Webster , ‘Curiosity’ in Theology and Human Flourishing edited by Mike Higton (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011), p. 214.
- 41.
Webster, Ibid.
- 42.
Joseph Torchia , O.P., Restless Mind (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2013), pp. 16–17.
- 43.
Torchia , pp. 178, 281.
- 44.
Stephen T. Pardue , The Mind of Christ (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
- 45.
Ibid., p. 170.
- 46.
Torchia , op. cit., p. 175.
- 47.
Mike Higton , A Theology of Higher Education, pp. 165–166.
- 48.
Philip H. Phenix , Education and the Worship of God (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966), pp. 11, 24.
- 49.
Ibid., pp. 10, 26.
- 50.
Ibid., p. 26.
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Sullivan, J. (2018). Worship and Learning. In: The Christian Academic in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69629-4_6
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