A Theology of Higher Education by Mike Higton (review)

In A Theology of Higher Education Mike Higton, senior lecturer in theology at the University of Exeter and co-director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, maintains that the modern secular research university ought to be both a secular and a religious institution. And only as such a hybrid institution, he insists, can our modern universities “approximate to their proper good more fully” (1), by which he means recognizing that what he calls “university reason” is not simply a tool devoted to achieving an independent good called knowledge, but rather that it is a “spiritual discipline” and a “form of devotion” (40). Higton believes that the Christian theology of higher education he develops here can provide justification for that claim. He sets out to achieve this by dividing his task into two parts. In the first part—chapters 1 through 4—he deals with other people’s claims about the history and nature of the Western university. In the second (chapters 5 through 9)—after noting that his own “Christian theological tradition makes claims about the nature and good of all learning,” that learning involves gaining a knowledge of God, and that he engages in his university activities as part of his Christian vocation—he argues that “such a theological voice” or “theological construal of learning” can assist the modern university in recapturing the true meaning of “university reason” as a spiritual discipline.

In part 1 of this project Higton rehearses what he considers landmarks in the development of the Western university, allotting a chapter each to the history of the University of Paris, the birth of the University of Berlin, John Henry Newman’s understanding of the truly religious, that is Catholic, university, and a range of contemporary Christian theological views on the acceptability of Christian participation in the ordinary practices of the secular university.

It is in the history of the University of Paris that Higton sees the emergence of an understanding of what he calls “university reason” as a form of Christian devotion. Such reason, he maintains, was a corporate spiritual discipline concerned with the right ordering of the world and the knower and therefore constituted a form of Christian worship. Even though he acknowledges that the medieval university did not always function in this way, he thinks this description establishes a set of coordinates against which not only the medieval but also the modern university can be measured. As he puts it, “It is on this ground—the ground of virtue and sociality orientated towards the good ordering of life before God—that I will be erecting my own theological account of university reason in the remainder of this book” (41).

In chapter 2 Higton argues that the widely held view of the University of Berlin as a research institution that contributed to the secularization of reason is a myth. A proper view of the establishment of that institution, he maintains, will see that it espoused a social view of the nature of reason that parallels the notion operative in the University of Paris insofar as it was committed to achieving the right ordering of society. However, he also admits that in some respects the notion of reason espoused in Berlin stands adamantly opposed to the notion of reason as a spiritual discipline or form of worship, but believes that it can, so to speak, be repaired if participants in the research university are free to speak in their own tradition-formed voices. Higton’s treatment of John Henry Newman’s conception “university reason” (chapter 3) is highly critical. He finds the view to be too exclusively Catholic and concerned more with the diffusion of knowledge than with its advancement. Chapter 4 adds little to Higton’s implicit argument in part 1. The contemporary theological voices raised about the secular university, he suggests, are very much like those presented by Newman. And like Newman’s views, they are of little help in shoring up...