As the newly-appointed director of the Marshall Space Flight Center at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Dr. Wernher von Braun was invited by the Wheaton College Student Union as its final guest for the 1960-61 Lyceum season. Scheduled to speak at 8:00 on June 3, 1961, in the newly-constructed Edman Chapel, Dr. von Braun delivered his lecture, entitled “Why We Must Conquer Space” to a capacity crowd. His talk was accompanied by a Disney-animated film, featuring the various stages of rocket deployment as the piloted craft thundered toward the stars. From 1947 to 1976, he presented approximately 500 speeches, speaking on topics ranging from education and religion to the Cold War and space travel.

A former member of the Nazi party and decorated war hero, Dr. von Braun during WW II supervised the development of German V-2 rockets, a deadly new weapon employed by Hitler to blitz London. After the war, von Braun and his colleagues surrendered to the Allies and were brought to the the U.S., where they were stationed at White Sands Proving Grounds in Alamogordo, New Mexico, continuing their research on intermediate range ballistic missiles. As rocket technology matured, von Braun and his team were incorporated as the visionary nucleus of NASA, lending their expertise to its stated goal of space exploration. Later operating from his lab in Huntsville, Alabama, he developed the Saturn V booster, which propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon in 1969.

According to W. Albert Wilson, a former NASA employee and Gideon Society member, in 1962 a troubled-looking von Braun requested a private session after hearing Wilson present the Gideon ministry to a church in Alabama. “When I left the office, I knew that he had become a Christian,” recalled Wilson. Strengthening his faith, von Braun attended a Lutheran church and often read from the Gideon Bible Wilson had presented to him.

Scattered throughout von Braun’s lectures are intriguing remarks about God and faith:

We do not expect to find, through the exploration of space, tangible proof of the existence of God. But as scientists we cannot but admire His handiwork more deeply as we learn more about creation. And indirectly we learn more about the Creator…For spiritual comfort I find assurance in the concept of the Fatherhood of God. For ethical guidance I rely on the corollary concept of the brotherhood of man. Huntsville Ministerial Association, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Nov. 13, 1962.

Although I know of no reference to Christ ever commenting on scientific work, I do know He said: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Thus I am certain that, were He among us today, Christ would encourage scientific research as modern man’s most noble striving to comprehend and admire His Father’s handiwork. Religious Implications of Space Exploration: A Personal View, Belmont Abbey College, North Carolina, November 22, 1971.

In 1976 von Braun was invited by the Lutheran Church of America to present a paper at its synod. Confined to a hospital for cancer treatment, von Braun worked on his presentation for months, but was finally unable to read it when the date arrived. He died on June 16, 1977, at age 65.

In this reaching of the new millennium through faith in the words of Jesus Christ, science can be a valuable tool rather than an impediment. The universe as revealed through scientific inquiry is the living witness that God had indeed been at work. Understanding the nature of the creation provides a substantive basis for the faith by which we attempt to know the nature of the Creator. Responsible Scientific Investigation and Application: A Talk Presented to the Lutheran Church of America, Philadelphia, October 29, 1976.

September 17, 2010 marked the inauguration day of Philip Graham Ryken, eighth president of Wheaton College. One year later it is fitting to remember a powerful prayer given seventeen years earlier to the day by Dr. Haddon Robinson on behalf of Duane Litfin, Wheaton’s seventh president.

Our sovereign Father, we come to You at this solemn moment to ask You for this president, Your servant. We recognize that this is a significant moment in his life–an auspicious moment in the history of this school–and he must be terrified. He is here to lead this institution, so it will enhance Your reputation. He is here so that Your work will be advanced in the world. And he is here to see to it that the desires of Your heart will be done on this campus, as they are done in heaven where angels do Your bidding. We ask You for Your servant, to carry out this impossible task.

Oh, Lord God, give Your servant vision and wisdom and courage and grace and love, so that in the days to come when we look back on the time he has spent here, Your name will have been honored, Your kingdom will have been advanced, and Your will will have been done on this campus as it is in heaven, And we ask this for Jesus’ sake, we ask it for the sake of this institution, we ask it for Your servant’s sake, and for the sake of a world for whom Christ died, Amen.

We ask that You would give him vision. Help him to see clearly what others may not see. And on those days when clouds come in, may he keep in mind what this school is about and why You have brought it into existence. Help him to see clearly what You want this institution to do and be in the years that lie ahead. Eternal God, give your servant, vision.

Our God, we would ask that You would give him wisdom, that the vision that he has and others share with him might be grounded in reality. Give him wisdom to listen to the divergent voices on this campus–to hear those that are saying something that is important and eternal; to ignore those that are simply speaking the fad of the hour. And give him wisdom, God, to know the difference. Eternal God, give your servant, wisdom.

Our God, we would ask that You would give him courage–courage to do nothing when everybody calls him to do something, and courage to act when others are afraid to move, Give him courage to confront, And in those moments when he feels most alone, give him the courage that comes from knowing You have placed him here, and you are his guide. Lord, give your servant, courage.

Lord God, we ask that You would give this president, Your servant, grace. We pray that as he endeavors to stand for truth, he shall combine in himself not only the love for truth but the love for people that characterized our Lord, Help him, Lord, as he loves truth, to hold it with grace. And as he shows grace, never to diminish truth. Give him grace as he confronts. And at times in which he must say no to everyone’s yes, may he do it with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, give Your servant grace.

Lord God, we pray that You would give this president, Your servant, love–a passionate love for You and for Your Word; a steady love for his wife, and for his children; an embracing love for the faculty of this school; a submissive love for the trustees; and a creative love for the women and men who study here. May they know his heart, that is really Your heart in him. Give Your servant love.

We would be embarrassed to ask for all of this for him, but You have called him here, You have placed him in this office, And You are responsible, Lord, to give him what he needs, to be what he needs to be beyond himself. And so we boldly ask that You would give him these things and any other things he needs to be the president of Wheaton College.

Oh, Lord God, give Your servant vision and wisdom and courage and grace and love, so that in the days to come when we look back on the time he has spent here, Your name will have been honored, Your kingdom will have been advanced, and Your will will have been done on this campus as it is in heaven, And we ask this for Jesus’ sake, we ask it for the sake of this institution, we ask it for Your servant’s sake, and for the sake of a world for whom Christ died. Amen.

Ebay brings forth some of the oddest things around. Sometimes it gives a glimpse into history and sometimes it just plain rips it wide open. Today’s post would fall into the latter category.

Several months ago, the picture shown here (really the negative) appeared on Ebay. It purported to have been taken on the campus of Wheaton College and clearly had Wheaton connections with the individuals shown. On the far left is football coach Jack Schwartz and next to him is Harv Chrouser, athletic director. Also in the picture is a player, Jim Kielsmeier. Of course, the “800-pound gorilla” in the picture, or more accurately the 7,300 pound item, is a massive petrified oak log. What makes this picture unusual is not the subject matter so much, though this is intriguing, but that this huge log should be on Wheaton’s campus. Geologic specimens on college campuses are not unusual, but what is unusual is when they disappear, especially those of such weight and size.

The fossilized oak log was said to have been presented to Wheaton College on October 23, 1964. However, today it can’t be found. Where does a four-ton piece of rock go to? And, not just any rock, but one shaped clearly like a log and on a large base? For those unaware, petrifaction occurs when a tree or log is buried underground and is deprived of oxygen and fails to decay. The organic material of the wood is replaced with mineral material such as quartz and the tree or log eventually becomes preserved in a solid “rock” form.

The listing on Ebay sparked several emails to current Geology faculty, all of whom post-date the original gift by several decades, in order to determine the log’s whereabouts. However, the inquiries returned no answers as the log had not been seen during their tenures. Further inquiries continued to turn-up nothing. Diligence paid off as departmental archives were consulted which revealed some correspondence about the petrified log. Now that the connection was verified the whereabouts of the log were still in question. Former faculty were consulted to determine its former location. It certainly had not been stored outside the science building, though it would make a nice monument outside Wheaton’s new science center.

The tale of the lost log continued until recent days when further digging uncovered a connection to Wheaton’s Facilities Management (formerly Physical Plant) staff. The “investigation” indicates that the large oak log had at some time been stored under the football stadium (built in 1956) and roughly a decade ago it needed to be relocated. Somehow a breakdown of communication occurred and the log was broken down and disposed of. Not a simple feat. Accounts indicate that a small piece was salvaged and retained as a personal keepsake.

This tale can certainly illustrate all that can go wrong in an organization as it grows larger and segmentation occurs. Silos emerge and the left hand may not know what the right is doing. Talking about and breaking down the silos may very well be the real “800-pound gorilla.”

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine featured a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus Arthur F. Holmes (who taught at Wheaton from 1951-1994) began the series in the January 1991 issue.

When Wheaton Alumni asked me to tell alumni what I am thinking about nowadays, my mind turned to a recent best-seller that both Christian college and public university educators have been talking about for the last three or four years. Alan Bloom complains in The Closing of the American Mind that today’s students talk as if no such things as right or wrong exist; he adds that they have no world-view in which any such values might be grounded, and that as a result they lack a strong sense of personal identity. Instead we hear talk of “alternative lifestyles,” as if morality is simply a matter of personal preferences.

This is hardly new: many alumni will recall from college philosophy courses Sartre’s existentialist theme from the forties and fifties, that since God is dead we now must create our own values. Or the positivist’s claim that, if I say honesty is morally good or dishonesty is wrong, I am in reality just venting my emotions. Someone has called it the “Booh! Hoorah! theory.” Even Christians sometimes talk as if God imposes his law on otherwise morally neutral situations. This implies that morality has nothing to do with the essential nature of human beings and that ours is not in any sense a moral universe. On the other hand stands the claim that we do live in a moral universe, ordered in ways that bear witness to what is good and right. If this is the case, then we do not create our own values, for they are already inherent in God’s creation.

Recently, I have been researching the historical roots and development of our belief in a moral universe. For more years than I like to think, I have been teaching a year-long course on the history of Western philosophy. I am now retracing that story from the standpoint of this topic and, having come to the beginning of the Middle Ages, am hoping to complete the resulting manuscript–along with revisions to my history course–before retirement catches up with me a few years from now.

The story begins with the emerging idea of cosmic justice in Homer and Hesiod, Aeschylus, and Sophocles. A just person and a justly ordered city-state are but microcosms of an entire universe ruled fur just ends. The presocratic philosophers, speculating about such order in the universe, proposed that a cosmic Mind, a logos, lies behind both nature’s laws and the moral life. As a result, concern for the moral improvement of the soul naturally led Plato to his famous theory of forms and the belief that God must be good–a view Aristotle echoes in his claim that everything has purpose, a natural end that is good. And so foundations were laid for theories of natural law, natural rights, and objective moral values that have shaped Western civilization. From this standpoint Bloom is right when he claims that objectively grounded moral values point to an overall world-view, within which framework I can define my own identity.

Our history was, of course, shaped by the convergence of this Greek tradition with the biblical heritage of the Christian church. So my story must also include the interplay of philosophy and theology in the early church, the medievals, the Protestant reformers, and beyond.

But with the rise of modern science it takes a new direction. In an impersonal world of matter in motion, moral concerns seem alien. “Can I take a thing so dead,” Tennyson asks, “Embrace it for my mortal good?” Empirical methods had no way of getting from observable facts to intrinsic values. So ethics became a matter either of subjective feeling or else of predicting desirable consequences. In both cases, subjectivity ruled, relativism resulted, and there was really no such thing as right or wrong. The world-view was in effect that of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: God is dead, so “we must become the meaning of the earth.”

It is little wonder that voices arose in protest, and Bloom is far from alone. Forty years ago the British Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe wrote that for half a century the concept of moral law had seemingly been excluded from ethics. Yet, she continued, how could the idea of moral law survive without the idea of a lawgiver? In that sense, the Greeks were closer to the truth than are many of our contemporaries. Even Bloom fails to get that point.

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Dr. Arthur F. Holmes is Professor Emeritus and former chair of the philosophy department. A native of England, where he received his early schooling, Holmes completed his education with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1957. He has been the recipient of several awards, including Illinois Professor of the Year presented by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Dr. Holmes has authored several books, including, Shaping Character: Moral Education in the Christian College (1991), All Truth is God’s Truth (1977), and The Idea of a Christian College (1975).

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Professor of Theology Dennis Okholm (who taught at Wheaton from 1989-2003) was featured in the April/May 1992 issue.

The first annual Wheaton College Theology Conference has been “on my mind” for the past year. (Just to make sure it can rightly claim to be “annual,” the second one will be on February 25-26, 1993, dealing with “Theology and Science”) The conference is now a fait accompli, but the issue it dealt with remains with us: the challenge of pluralism. My colleague, Tim Phillips, and I selected this topic for the conference because it is the crucial issue before the Christian community today. It is especially crucial for evangelicals who make exclusive claims such as “Jesus Christ is the Lord of the universe–in a world that prides itself on letting each person have his or her own opinion when it comes to matters of religion, artistic expression, or moral behavior.

John Hick’s An Interpretation of Religion is a key intellectual defense of this pluralism. His thesis is that “we always perceive the transcendent through the lens of a particular religious culture with its distinctive set of concepts, myths, historical exemplars and devotional or meditational techniques.” If Hick merely described the diversity of religious beliefs, his statement would be undeniable. But he insists that this plurality is not just a description of the world; it is a religious truth. All religions end up referring to the same ineffable transcendent Reality.

This will set well with many people– from academics to talk show hosts. The point of many discussions in the university and on the [Phil] Donahue show is not to arrive at the truth of the matter, if the “matter” has to do with religious beliefs and moral values; the point is simply to keep the discussion going and respect the divergent points of view, because, as one talk show guest said about pornography, “The great thing about our society is that you can have your opinion and I can have mine.”

How did we get to this point? Lesslie Newbigin helps us to understand in his book Foolishness to the Greeks. We have divided the world into two realms. One realm is the public world of scientific fact that explains everything in terms of cause and effect relationships; we have agreed that in this world some statements (such as “atoms exist”) are true and people would he fools to deny them. The other realm is the private world of religious beliefs and moral values, which are based on assumptions about the purpose of human existence. But as a society we do not agree what human life ought to be. So, statements like “Homosexual behavior is morally wrong” and “It is only through Jesus of Nazareth that a person can be saved” are relegated to the realm of private opinion. This is a democratization of religious beliefs and moral values. It makes for good ratings on the Donahue show. It should not be acceptable to the Christian who confesses her credo on Sunday.

The frightening thing for me is that so many evangelicals have bought into this agenda. We have trouble insisting that “Jesus of Nazareth is the only way to God” without adding, “At least, that’s my opinion,” But for a Christian, such a religious claim is stating a truth about reality itself. Jesus did not die for some general religious or moral conception that we can all discover by ourselves. When the death and resurrection occurred, the universe was changed.

The problem even gets worse when evangelicals buy into the bifurcation and put politics in the public realm and religion in the private realm. For example, one clergyman in the Chicago area recently said of Oliver North’s visit to his church: “I hope people can separate his politics from his personal faith.” As Newbigin points out, if we start doing that we are going to have to dismiss much of the Old Testament, for everything political that concerned Israel had to do with her claim that Yahweh is Lord over all life public and private.

What I have said is perhaps the easy part. The harder part comes in the second half of our conference: How does the church respond? Do we reconstruct an Anabaptist vision, not expecting the world to understand what we’re about unless they join in? This is what Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon propose in their provocative book Resident Aliens. Do we strategically try to challenge the world with a chastened Reformed agenda, such as Newbigin seems to propose in his book? Whatever we choose, it seems that the former methods (like rational proofs) will no longer convince people in our society of the truth of the gospel.

The discussion of pluralism is today’s hot topic. And it’s crucial. If evangelicals in the pew and in the academy do not grapple with this issue, we’ll either end up being mere reactionaries when segments of our society take issue with our exclusive religious claims and dogmatic moral values, or we’ll find ourselves among those who are merely entertained by the television talk shows.

The task will largely fall on my students’ shoulders. I pray for them a lot.

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Dennis Okholm (B.A. Wheaton; M.A., M.Div. Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; Th.M., Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary) currently teaches in the department of theology and philosophy at Haggard School of Theology, Azusa Pacific University. Previously he was professor of theology at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He is also an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and an oblate of a Benedictine monastery (Blue Cloud Abbey, SD). He has coauthored and coedited several books, including two collections of papers presented at the annual Wheaton Theology Conference and Welcome to the Family: An Introduction to Evangelical Christianity (all in partnership with Timothy R. Phillips).