One in a series of "President's Perspectives" in which Dr. Richard J. Mouw discusses Fuller's core values.

Fuller Seminary’s focus on interdisciplinary integration was a key attraction for me in deciding to join the faculty in the mid-1980s. This interest had been a big factor in my previous career of teaching philosophy in a Christian liberal arts college. I had been very enthusiastic about the idea of helping students form and articulate a Christian worldview. I wanted students preparing for careers in medicine, law, business, and the like to think Christianly about what God was calling them to do and be. I saw it as important to guide them in thinking carefully about how the various areas of academic study—natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities—could be integrated within a biblically shaped framework for discerning God’s will for all of life.

Fuller Seminary impressed me as a place where I could continue that kind of integrative teaching in new and creative ways. I was excited about a graduate-level institution of Christian learning that encouraged the integration of theology, psychology, and intercultural studies. I joined the Fuller faculty with an enthusiasm for the mission of the seminary.

If anything, I am even more enthusiastic now about that mission than I was when I first signed up for it at Fuller. This increased enthusiasm has much to do with two factors. The first is that our collective understanding of the scope of the integrative task has been expanding significantly during the past few decades.

The emphasis on “integration” at Fuller got started with the founding of our School of Psychology in 1965. In those days, there was much suspicion about psychology in the Evangelical community. Many Christians saw it as a substitute for faith in Christ—relying on “secular,” even “godless,” methods for dealing with the basic problems in our lives.

Fuller insisted that psychology could be a positive Christian instrument for wrestling with the challenges of the human condition. The problem with much psychology is not due to any intrinsic characteristics of psychology as such, but that it is often guided by an inadequate understanding of human nature. Psychology must be shaped by a biblical understanding of God’s creating and redeeming purposes. So: psychology needs theology.

All of that was wonderful, providing a solid basis for Fuller’s pioneering efforts in promoting Christian psychology. The problem, though, was that the integrative project was often viewed in “uni-directional” terms. Yes, it is true that psychology does need theology, but what we have learned over the years is that theology also needs psychology. Equipping people for “the manifold ministries of Christ and his Church” requires that we draw upon all the resources being made available by the human sciences. Increasingly at Fuller, our educational mission features the need for an integrative process that flows in both directions.

Correction: it’s actually three directions. We have a School of Intercultural Studies in addition to Schools of Theology and Psychology, and increasingly in recent years, the integrative movement has flowed throughout all of our programs. For example, “Children at Risk” has become an important focus in our Intercultural Studies curriculum. We want children around the world to come to know the Savior’s embrace, and in order to make that possible we must couple the evangelistic task with a concern for poverty, homelessness, the HIV-AIDS crisis, sexual trafficking—and much more. This in turn requires, among other things, understanding child and adolescent development—thus the link to psychology. But if Christian psychologists, in turn, are to address these matters, they must also be sensitive to intercultural realities—which we are learning in China, where Fuller psychologists are offering training in faith-based mental health services. And all of that requires a biblical and theological grounding. An exciting integrative trialogue!

The second factor has to do with the way in which my own personal understanding of the integrative task moved from using nouns to employing gerunds in characterizing it. I mentioned earlier that I came to Fuller with a history of strongly emphasizing the need for having the kind of Christian worldview that assists us in achieving interdisciplinary integration. In recent years, though, I have come to see the need to shift from the idea of “having a worldview” and “attaining integration” to the more dynamic sense of engaging in worldviewing and integrating.

The “-ing” endings are very important here. Arthur Holmes, who taught philosophy at Wheaton College for many years, was fond of insisting that the Christian intellectual quest has to be characterized by both humility and hope. The humility is necessitated by the realization that we are finite human beings, who are, as the psalmist reminds us, called to serve a God whose thoughts are far beyond our ability fully to comprehend: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139:6). At the same time, though, we live in hope that things will get clearer because, even though we presently know “only in part,” there will come a day when we will know more fully (1 Corinthians 13:9–12).

Our Christian lives are pilgrimages, and this means that intellectually too we are on a journey. We cannot expect that we will easily come to “have” a worldview or to “achieve” integration. Instead, we must engage in the processes of worldviewing and integrating—shining the light of God’s Word on new realities and challenges as we proceed along the way.

The social sciences are constantly expanding in both methodology and subject matter. Within psychology, sociology, and anthropology, new subdisciplines keep emerging—areas of inquiry that we knew nothing about two or three decades ago. It is unrealistic to think that we as Christian scholars could have somehow mastered all of this and put it together into a perfectly coherent system of thought.

This is not to suggest that we should give up on the integrative project. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it” (Psalm 24:1). In Jesus Christ “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). We can keep at it, knowing that our efforts are not in vain.

Fuller Seminary is a community of men and women who approach the equipping for “manifold ministries” with both humility and hope. We want to honor the Cross of Christ in all that we do, making it the center of our efforts to understand God’s creating and redeeming will for humankind. For the present, we know that, at best, we know only in part. But we do know that we are called by the Lord to keep at the process of worldviewing and integrating in the light of God’s Word. And we can do so in the confidence that the One who calls us to those dynamic tasks is himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Our ongoing “trialogue” is exciting—as is a way of serving the cause of Truth in which gerunds are often more important than nouns!