“Bridging Chasms of Suspicion” ft. Westmont College’s Jeff Schloss I Saturdays at Seven – Season Two, Episode Seventeen

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In the seventeenth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Jeff Schloss, the T. B. Walker Professor of Natural and Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Center for Faith, Ethics, and the Life Sciences at Westmont College. Schloss opens by discussing whether humans are inherently collaborative or competitive beings, the ways relevant disciplines converge and diverge in terms of providing possible answers, and what theological understandings concerning being human add to the debate. Ream asks Schloss to explore how and when Schloss’s fascination with biology began, the experiences and teachers who influenced that fascination, and how that fascination eventually became the foundation of Schloss’s commitment to the academic vocation. Schloss also discusses how environments and cultures such as Westmont College (where he serves as a faculty member) and institutions and organizations such as the University of Notre Dame, the University of Oxford, the Center for Theological Inquiry, and BioLogos (where he served as a visiting scholar or fellow) shaped that commitment. Ream then asks Schloss to explore the virtues Schloss sought to cultivate in service of the academic vocation as well as the vices against which Schloss finds it important to remain vigilant. Their conversation then closes with a brief discussion related to Schloss’s views of the Church and the role the Church plays in grounding the aspirations and orientations of the Christian scholar.

Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.

Our guest is Jeff Schloss, the T. B. Walker Professor of Natural and Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Center for Faith, Ethics, and the Life Sciences at Westmont College. Thank you for joining us.

Jeff Schloss: It’s great to be with you, Todd.

Todd Ream: Let’s start with a real simple question here, Jeff. Are humans inherently competitive or cooperative beings?

Jeff Schloss: Oh yeah, that’s a simple one all the way back to Hobbes, right? And still debated in the egocentristic theory and psychology and rational self-interest and economics theory. And of course, in biology, debates over the selfish gene. It isn’t a simple question, but the simple answer is both. But I do want to nuance that just a bit, if I can.

First of all, when a biologist hears that question, a lot of other fields of inquiry think of competition and cooperation in terms of motives. Biologists think of it in terms of consequences or outcomes in terms, usually in terms of fitness. And so if you think of cooperation as mutually beneficial fitness interactions, it turns out even there, there’s a continuum from on the one hand, what biologists call by-product mutualism, just organisms doing what they do anyways, and it ends up helping another organism with reciprocal benefits. Plants and animals each contribute metabolic acids to all the way on the other end, synchronized and oftentimes, costly investments that are nevertheless compensated for. So the bottom line is virtually every living thing is cooperative. 

At one end of the continuum, we all need positive interactions with other organisms. There’s debate over to what extent and what it takes to do what costly cooperation but many biologists think that humans are unique in their capacity to cooperate with those who aren’t related to them and to whom they don’t keep strict records of reciprocity.

One other little comment of course, cooperation or any behavior, any phenotype is an interaction between genes and environment. For humans, a hugely important part of the environment is the cultural environment. And you might think of sometimes as culture being an overlay or a modifier of some inherent disposition of genes. But actually it’s, it’s more than that. Culture actually changes the expression of genes. 

I’ll give you, with respect to cooperation, a really, I think, fascinating example. There’s one particular gene for the receptor side of oxytocin, an attachment hormone in the brain, and in Western cultures, it’s positively correlated with pro-social behaviors. In Asian cultures, it isn’t the same gene. 

With respect to what it means that you use the word inherent. And so you could have an inherent disposition toward a particular behavior, or you could have an inherent, you might think of it in terms of an Aristotelian telos or entelechy, you could have an inherent end, and those aren’t necessarily the same things. So you could have an inherent disposition toward a behavior that doesn’t help you reach your end. 

And one of the things about human beings, and this is a biological, fascinating biological observation with, I think, really important theological implications, Simone de Beauvoir is often cited as saying, human beings are that creature that by nature has no nature. But we might say this, human beings are that creature that by nature is disposed to behaviors that don’t fulfill their nature. 

So with all the way looping back to your question, we now know that certain pro-social behaviors like forgiveness, gratitude, generosity, I mean even radical forgiveness, love your enemy forgiveness, is associated with all sorts of measures of flourishing. It looks like it fulfills our nature, but we’re not inherently disposed to do that.

Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Just the current, you mentioned, you know, you were going to answer it initially as a biologist and then you started talking in relation to lessons that you’ve drawn from other disciplines. Now, in what ways is the current architecture of the disciplines such that it allows for such answers to come or conversations that lead to answers to come, or are there barriers that we still need to navigate when we grapple with questions such as the one we’re discussing right now?

Jeff Schloss: Well, I think both. There’s a certain sense in which, first of all, the autonomy of the disciplines can be really helpful. They can develop their own unique causal genealogies for, for certain behaviors or dispositions. Again, in biology, it’s really fascinating to see genetic and hormonal contributions to certain modes of attachment and cooperation and even love. So there are causal genealogies that are unique to the disciplines. Of course, that task is integrating those or relating to those to the other. 

But then there’s another, there’s another contribution. The different disciplines have kind of overarching explanatory paradigms. So in biology, it would be evolutionary theory and the notion of natural selection, selecting for certain dispositions or traits that contribute ultimately to the fitness of individuals. I think that’s a really potentially helpful mode. 

But back to your point about challenges. There can be a challenge here when one particular mode of explanation is triumphalistic and seeks to reduce the other modes of explanation to its particular perspective. And I think that has happened to some extent with evolutionary biology.

So I think it’s really helpful to think of, you know— Mary Midgley made a comment. She said that biologists and social scientists for many years had an unspoken truth. They agreed that the social scientists wouldn’t question the truth of evolutionary theory so long as evolutionary biologists never attempted to make any serious use of it. And that truce, of course, broke down with the emergence of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology and their tremendous potential benefits, but also suppression of conversation if that’s the only explanatory paradigm we think of.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Within the human sciences, say fields such as biology, when do we know when disciplinary thinking and ways of pursuing truth is sufficient to the questions we’re asking in comparison to knowing when those resources are not going to be sufficient and we’re going to need to foster bridges that are going to yield interdisciplinary thinking in order to come to terms with the answers that we’re trying to pursue?

Jeff Schloss: Two thoughts there. One is how you frame the question to begin with. So if you want to ask to what extent our certain dispositions of cooperation, for example, heritable, then we’re going to want to turn to biology for that. 

On the other hand, if you want to ask what’s the domain of behaviors that we can expect human beings to evidence? And what’s the domain that we can expect to contribute to human flourishing? We’re not going to want to restrict ourselves to one particular discipline. 

I’ll give you an example of that. The originator of sociobiology said evolution holds human culture on a leash. And by that, he meant that there are certain kinds of behaviors or even cultural values, that because it’s not clear how they would contribute to fitness, we can’t expect them not to exist.

In fact Michael Ghiselin, another biologist, evolutionary biologist, said, scratch an altruist, watch a hypocrite bleed. No hint of genuine charity ameliorates our vision of society once sentimentality has been laid aside. So in those cases, we’re going to need to break out of a discipline if, in fact, the predictions or of the discipline don’t match what we actually observed to be the case. 

By the way, to his credit Wilson later on mentioned that the scale of human cooperation, and this is a direct quote, he said is “The culminating mystery of all biology.” Well, we’re going to want to ask some hard biological questions there, but we’re going to want to look to other disciplines too, to make sense of it. 

Todd Ream: The practice that we often refer to then as Christian scholarship. In your opinion in what ways, if any, is it an inherently interdisciplinary practice?

Jeff Schloss: That’s a fun question. 

Well, I mean, first of all, it depends what you mean by Christian scholarship, right? If, if you mean bringing certain Christian values to the scholarship, a just balance is the delight of the Lord. All the weights of the bag are His concern. If you want to bring some sort of integrity to your scholarship or the willingness to be wrong, I don’t think that is intrinsically interdisciplinary. In fact, it’s not even uniquely Christian, but it certainly is Christian. But if you mean by this, by Christian scholarship, and this is my particular approach, I don’t know that it would work in every discipline. 

But Al Plantinga, the philosopher, has this notion of what he calls Augustinian science. And it wouldn’t have to just be science, where he argues that Christian pre-commitments don’t determine your conclusions. You don’t try to be a lawyer arguing for specific conclusions that are consonant with Christian commitments, but given your commitment to them, a priori commitment to these things being true, it may expand the reservoir of plausible hypotheses that you think warrant investigation.

An example of that would be the altruism hypothesis that I just mentioned. So there’s a while where biologists thought it’s impossible, no genuine altruism exists, a Christian might think it not only exists, it’s the telos of human existence. And so the reservoir of hypotheses deemed worthy of investigation expands. And once that’s happened, well, that’s intrinsically interdisciplinary. You’ve already integrated theology with your hypothesizing, and you may recruit other disciplines as well.

Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to ask you now about some biographical details and how they come together in terms of how you’ve understood your vocation. You earned an undergraduate degree at Wheaton College and a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from Washington University in St. Louis. At what point did the dynamic nature of the created order capture your attention? And then at what point did it become the focus of your life’s calling?

Jeff Schloss: That’s a fun question. I’m not sure about other natural scientists and even other biologists, but there’s kind of a joke amongst ecologists that most of us can harken back to something in primary school: a butterfly collection or an insect collection. It’s actually hard to meet an ecologist for whom that’s not true, but it is true for me. 

When I was in second grade, I had my morning cloaks, my tiger swallowtails, and I was just in love with it. And then a crucial moment was, I can still remember this, the first time that I looked through a microscope and I saw the caverns of a salt crystal, and I was just odd, and I wondered what aspects of the world could I yet see. And I actually knew from second or third grade that I wanted to be a scientist. 

Now, your second question: when did it become a life call? I dropped out of college, wrestling with existential questions. But when I went back, I asked myself, okay, I don’t need my studies to answer the deepest life questions. What do I just love? And it was biology, but I think that was my first moment of experiencing what, what C. S. Lewis describes as appreciative pleasures. Lewis talks about these pleasures, which are innate, drinking a glass of water when you’re thirsty, and those kinds of pleasures which have to be cultivated or learned. 

And my first plant classification course, what previously was just a sea of green going up a mountain slope, beautiful!, became really a symphony with different instruments and, and movements as I learned different plant species. And I thought I want to do this for the rest of my life. I want to cultivate this appreciative pleasure and share it with others.

Todd Ream: Well, that’s wonderful. 

Jeff Schloss: The man who introduced me to that is on my desk, John Leedy from Wheaton College. So in any case, a testimony to the impact that mentors and instructors can have on. 

Todd Ream: Thank you. Serving in a liberal arts environment, such as Westmont College, in what ways has it nurtured your vocational formation as a scholar?

Jeff Schloss: Several ways. First of all, in terms of what we were talking about earlier, in terms of being informed from perspectives across the disciplines that was not only welcomed at Westmont, but the community was small enough that conversations across the disciplines were just a phone call or a lunch away. And we had a lot of conversations. 

Secondly, and again, I can’t speak to other institutions, but there’s an ethos at Westmont where there’s been really profound encouragement of one another far from it being competitive in terms of brandishing where you are on the academic status hierarchy. My experience here is then that faculty colleagues celebrate one another’s work and I’ve been profoundly encouraged by colleagues. 

And then lastly, probably most important there’s been tremendous freedom here. I could ask questions that I don’t think I could ask at some other Christian colleges and that I definitely could not ask at secular institutions.

Todd Ream: You’ve also held fellowships and appointments at a range of institutions and organizations, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Oxford, the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, and BioLogos. In what ways did your relationship with those entities then also proved beneficial to your vocational formation?

Jeff Schloss: Oh boy, those experiences were sources of lifelong gratitude and really important, but they were quite different. At Notre Dame I just mentioned there’s tremendous freedom of inquiry at Westmont, that was amplified at Notre Dame. My appointment there was in the Center for Philosophy of Religion.

So I was an undergraduate philosophy major for a while, and this really took me from, I think, being an embarrassing amateur to less than embarrassing, but still an amateur. They had an appointment every year for a fellowship from somebody outside of philosophy. And I was really nurtured by conversations with Robert Audi and Al Plantinga and Michael Rea and others. So that was a fabulous experience. 

CTI was a year-long residency across disciplines and across perspectives. We were looking at evolutionary perspectives on human nature and on religion and morality in particular. I’ve never had an experience like that, where we met together every week formally, and tons of times informally, and we forged lifelong friendships, not just across disciplines, philosophy and anthropology and evolutionary theory and psychology, but across, you know, metaphysical worldviews. There were Christians and non-Christians, atheists, Jews. It was really a fabulous experience.

Todd Ream: I want to ask you now about the relationship shared by theology and science, especially when it focuses on debates around origins of creation. One historian Andrew Dixon White in 1874 referred to the relations between these two as warfare. In what ways do you believe the use of such a term is accurate? Or in what ways do you believe it’s perhaps inaccurate given how relations have developed over the years? 

Jeff Schloss: I don’t want to oversimplify this, but I just, I honestly don’t believe there’s any way in which that characterization is accurate. Of course, there have been modes of tension between religion and the sciences, but there are tensions within the sciences. Two truth claims can be conflicting or concordant, but the overall depiction of there being intrinsic conflict, which was part of his thesis, I think is just very widely rejected by historians of science Ron Numbers and David Livingstone, Ted Davis, John Hedley Brooke, and Peter Harrison, many others, have, have debunked them as being exaggerated or actually invented cases of conflict. 

So, but in addition to debunking the mischaracterizations, I think what has largely been left out is the way in which the rise of science was embedded in and consonant with the Christian tradition. I mean, some of these are clichés, but they’re clichés that merit not forgetting the whole notion of Francis Bacon’s two books is itself rooted in the 39th Psalm, the heavens declare the glory of God, the law of the Lord is perfect. This very notion of laws, of nature, seems to have emerged from the notion of a Lawgiver in Proverbs 8, in particular. 

Peter Harrison mentions that the notion of the fall and that the corruption of human reason may have given rise to the commitment to the experimental method. And the notion of a sovereign God may have given rise to the notion that the relationships of nature are not deducible a priori, but because God can do what He wants, we need to investigate them empirically.

So I think that, that notion of intrinsic conflict is a really sad notion that is lacking support. Ironically though, there has been in the evangelical tradition, more recently, has had some real problems with valuing the credibility of the natural sciences. That’s an interesting question in itself.

Todd Ream: Perhaps the answer to this question I’m about to ask comes through examples such as you were previously sharing with your experiences, say, at Notre Dame or CTI in Princeton, but in what ways can scientists and theologians be brought into closer dialogue with one another, and perhaps even forge interdisciplinary and collaborative lines of research, work together, towards questions?

Jeff Schloss: That’s really, really a good question. And, you know, I only talked about two of those, I think Notre Dame and CTI, but I’ve had the privilege of being involved in a number of ongoing collaborative projects. So I think there are two levels to answer that. 

One is, how can you forge interaction, could be as simple as requesting book reviews or respond target articles that are responded to by folks outside your discipline. Or multi-year interactive projects. All of those things bring the scholars together from different disciplines in interaction. But what they don’t do and what in my experience has been more uncommon is to bring folks across the disciplines together in a way that don’t merely respond to one another’s work, but actually collaborate in shared work. And I think that’s more important and it’s difficult, more difficult to do. 

I’ve had the privilege of editing some books and writing a number of papers with colleagues in philosophy. My experience is that philosophers and theologians are more open to the input from natural sciences than natural scientists are interested in collaborating with philosophers, but I would sure like to see more of it.

Todd Ream: In what ways, when we can forge this kind of collaborative work, can theologians and scientists then be of greater service to the Church?

Jeff Schloss: Well, I think greater service to the Church, interdisciplinary work in a couple of ways. I mean, first of all the Christian life is ultimately a pursuit of truth. And I think we’re more likely to come up with understandings of the world that we live in that is true, and that is useful for our understanding if we do collaborate. So we’re just more likely to come up with a robust, true, and useful understanding of the natural world. 

But second of all, and maybe more importantly, I think collaboration across the disciplines would be a model for bridging chasms of suspicion in both the Church and the academy. And that I think more recently is really important to do.

Todd Ream: Thank you. In addition to the dialogue you’ve fostered across disciplinary lines, you’ve also spent a considerable amount of time in the field. For example, in California’s Yosemite, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the rainforests of Costa Rica, and the barrier islands of New Zealand. I have to pause here and say, this sounds like a rough life, Jeff to be able to visit these, these spaces and these places and working with students. But in what ways have these spaces and the time you’ve spent there also shaped your sense of vocation?

Jeff Schloss: Well, I already mentioned my, you know, from the second grade my time immersed in nature, shaped my life goals and those were confirmed through appreciative pleasures, learning the different plants and animals. 

Actually what I didn’t mention is that my last semester as an undergrad, I spent at a biological field station, completely immersed in the Rocky Mountains. And those places that you’ve mentioned, the Rocky Mountains and Yosemite, tropical rainforest, the Great Barrier Islands, those were all just experiences of immersed awe in the natural world. And those experiences were really the germination of my, my sense of call.

Where that became actually tough is and it still is, I still take students regularly to all these places, where it became tough was juggling really two different domains of interest. The first 10 or 15 years of my faculty position were spent with my primary research being field research in forest ecology. And kind of a secondary domain was interdisciplinary work. And, and those became switched. 

And I have to say, I couldn’t actually maintain field work as the primary focus of my professional life. So, and I’ve, to be honest, I’ve, I’ve second guessed myself on that. I love what I do, but I feel like I’ve lost the deepest touch. For my first 10 years here, I spent every summer in the field teaching field courses with students. And that became switched with collaborative work with philosophers and theologians. 

Todd Ream: If I may, I was going to ask you a question here that’s related, but I’ve come to understand and appreciate that you learned to surf somewhere along the lines, taking advantage of what life in Santa Barbara and the California coast may offer. Can you confirm those rumors? And in what ways might they have helped fuel at least a little bit of these interests and such, when you couldn’t be afar in the field?

Jeff Schloss: I did learn to surf when I was 13. And by the time I was 18 I would say the two dominant commitments in my life were finding out if there was a God and surfing. And it has been a really important activity for me. 

As I paddle out on the surfboard, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the encumbrances and the worries and the knocks on the door of the land are left on the land. And it is a time of it’s an antidepressant in a sense. It’s a Sabbath and it is a time of worship.

Todd Ream: That’s wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for indulging me with that question too. 

Unfortunately, our time is getting short. I want to ask you about the composition of your vocation in terms of how you’ve come to understand it. We’ve talked about important domains and spaces, communities in which you’ve been a part that may have shaped it.

But how have you come to understand the academic vocation in particular for you? What characteristics are most definitive of the Christian academic vocation?

Jeff Schloss: I’m really glad how you framed that question. I thought you might frame it, how do you understand your calling or life as a scholar? But you framed it more broadly in terms of the academic vocation. And so I’d say a couple of things. 

First of all, I do understand it primarily in terms of a lifelong commitment to learning, but that doesn’t necessarily mean scholarship. My commitment to learning is, and this might not be the case with all my colleagues, but it isn’t necessarily learning something that hasn’t been known before and contributing to the edifice of human knowledge. It’s just learning things that I haven’t known before. 

Now, it’s not just wayward curiosity, it’s learning things I haven’t known before with a commitment to mastery and a commitment to rigor. Paul Griffiths makes the distinction between what he calls curiosity and studiousness, the latter being fueled by profound intellectual appetite or appetite for knowledge. 

And then Harry Blamires’s have long ago talked about the distinction between a thinker and a scholar, the former reflecting on the meaning of what they’re learning. So those are lofty goals, but that has been the motivating factors of my life in academia. 

But secondly, and again, this is not true for everyone, but, when I dropped out of school and then went back, the investment in my life, of the Wheaton College faculty in the life of this college dropout was life changing for me. And for me part of what means a life in academia means conveying the understanding that I have to others, but deeper than that, mentoring individuals, pouring my life into theirs and welcoming them into my life. And I have to say that’s, I wouldn’t have guessed this, but that has been the most rewarding aspect of life in the academy.

Todd Ream: That’s wonderful. Thank you. You mentioned studiousness and as an exercise in virtue that has a particular telos or an end. Are there other virtues that you would highlight that you found to be important to cultivate in terms of how you’ve expressed the Christian academic vocation?

Jeff Schloss: Well, primary would be epistemic humility. We could be wrong. Well, actually, that’s an understatement. We know that we are wrong on many things, and one of the joys of learning is to find out where you’ve been wrong. You know, the psalmist says, deliver me from hidden faults. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart.

I think that may be the single most important and it doesn’t stop there with the recognition that we’re wrong and the delight in being corrected, but also the notion that even if we are right that’s not an adequate basis for life. There’s this puzzling dialectic in Proverbs. We’re to seek understanding above silver, but we’re not to lean on our understanding, but trust in the Lord with all your heart. So I would think that dual aspect of humility epistemic humility is foundational. And I have found that that can be cultivated. It’s not native. I have to pray with the psalmist, deliver me from hidden faults. 

And secondly, I would say awe, awe at the, at the shimmering truth and the beauty of what it is that we’re learning. You know, I mentioned before C. S. Lewis’s notion of appreciative pleasures. They’re pleasures that have to be cultivated by education. But I think for a Christian, it can go beyond pleasure to actually reverential delight.

So with the rise of science, you have Bacon on the one hand talking about the improvement of man’s estate, kind of a means toward an end, but then you have the tradition of the laboratory as my cathedral. And I think that we can cultivate that awe before the beauty of what it is we’re studying in God’s earth.

Todd Ream: Along these lines then, you’ve talked about, say, in the laboratory, what you encounter through a microscope. In the field and in nature, what you encounter when you look at a grassy hillside. And also, you identified the greatest joy of the time that you’ve spent in education as engaging and serving students and colleagues as a mentor. Are there particular, any other practices that you might highlight that you found have been important in which to invest?

Jeff Schloss: I’ve obliquely already mentioned, but I have found prayer to be really important. At the beginning of each semester, I actually go around to each seat in the classroom and pray for the student who’s going to inhabit it. I take my course lists that have pictures of students and I pray over each one. If I’m working on a paper or before I give a talk, I pray. 

And you know, after you’ve been done something for a long time, you think, I’m tempted to think that there’s certain levels of failure, which I’m immune to. I mean, if you’re a professional basketball player, you’re probably not going to miss 53 free throws in a row. 

But I actually found that that’s not true. There’s no degree of failure that I’m incapable of and I pray for my students and I pray for myself. And the delight of entering that portal through prayer is that if it does go well, I have the privilege of gratitude rather than pride. And I’d rather have the gratitude over the pride any day.

Surfing, I’m actually kind of being serious. I found that it is really important for me at least to cultivate commitments outside of the academy that helped calibrate my sense of how important things are.

Todd Ream: In terms of the academic vocation and the manner in which we find ourselves expressing it today, are there any vices against you would caution us?

Jeff Schloss: Well, I don’t know about the us, but there are vices that I would caution myself against. I already mentioned one. It’s the, I got this vice. But I think there’s another one that’s more profound. Again, drawing on Lewis in The Great Divorce, he has the artist ghosts go to heaven and he sees one of his friends from earth and he says, whoa, this is beautiful. I want to paint this. And the heavenly ghost says, no, no, put away your paint. Just, just appreciate the reverential beauty of what you’re seeing. And he says, no, I got to paint it. 

And then the heavenly ghost says, no, you’re forgetting on earth. It was first of all, just the beauty of the light, and then you wanted to paint it, but that was an expression of your reverence, but then you got absorbed with excellence in painting. The focus was not the light. It was your excellence. And then lastly, it wasn’t even the excellence. It was reputation for being excellent. And I think that is an intrinsic risk in the academic life. Maybe in business, it’s money. But in academia, it can be reputation for being excellent, or deep, or insightful. 

And for me, I don’t think that I have been consumed with the issue of reputation. But there has been some thrill of seeking for some level of excellence can threaten displacement of the actual act of worship itself. 

I’ll just use the surfing metaphor one more time. I love to surf. And as I paddle out to progressively bigger waves and more challenging waves, there’s a certain thrill. It’s not a matter of pride that I’ve overcome it. It’s just thrilling. 

And for me in academic life, as you get invitations or opportunities to engage more challenging topics or more discerning audiences, there’s a certain thrill. Can I do this? I think maybe my colleagues who are more accomplished and more mature would not feel that thrill. But there’s a certain innocence. Can I do this? And there’s also a certain risk that that becomes the focus the thrill rather than the reverence.

Todd Ream: Thank you. For our last question then, I’d like to ask you in what ways, if any, do you believe the health of the Christian academic vocation is dependent upon the health of the relationship the university shares with the Church?

Jeff Schloss: Well, Todd, I don’t, I don’t know about in terms of the relationship of the university as an organism, as a community but I think the health of academicians, of individuals is profoundly dependent on relationship with the Church. I mean first of all, all of us as believers are utterly dependent on the body that we’re members of the gifts and the encouragement and the correction. 

Secondly, and more specifically, I think there’s perhaps a unique need for us academics to be enmeshed in the life of the Church. I’ll be candid here. I did a survey quite a number of years ago of faculty colleagues and I asked them I actually had students go out and ask their faculty in other departments, do you think what you’re doing as a professor is more consonant with what it means to be made in the image of God than an automobile mechanic? And 85% of the faculty responded, yes. 

I think that’s profoundly untrue. I think there’s something in the academic vocation that the Scriptures say knowledge lifts up. And Pascal says that a mathematician, what a mathematician is doing is no more valuable than that of a farmer. And I think we need to be reminded of that. 

We are to think of ourselves in accord with the measure of faith that is given to us, not in accord with the measure of our academic accomplishments. And I think the Church is a good place to keep our feet anchored in what, in fact, is the ultimate telos which is not knowledge but is loving God and loving others.

Todd Ream: Thank you. Our guest has been Jeff Schloss, the T. B. Walker Professor of Natural and Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Center for Faith, Ethics, and the Life Sciences at Westmont College. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.

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Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.