If I were a betting man, I would be willing to bet a large sum that the best teachers at biblical integration are teachers who read important books. There really can be no substitute for a teacher who regularly interacts with ideas by reading books. Let's face it, we are in the business of ideas. In order to be effective in our business we need to know the basic commodities in which we deal.

A couple of thoughts on this:

• Obviously, we need to be readers of scripture. If we do not have some depth of knowledge in the foundation, we will not have a proper grid to evaluate other texts.

• Sola scriptura, however, was never meant to mean that scripture is the only book we should read. Even the Grace Brethren motto, The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, should not mean that. If they did, we could never have even a sermon, let alone a book. Rather, these words mean that scripture is the perfect (though not exhaustive)revelation of the God from which all goodness, rightness, and truth flow. Other texts may have truth, goodness, and rightness in them (and certainly many do, even many books written by unbelievers) but those traits always flow from God himself, even in a text written by a fallen person. Sola scriptura, then, says that scripture is the only original source of truth. Other texts containing truth pull from that original source.

• Read important books. When I walk into Christian bookstores I am usually saddened because it is flooded with books that the church could do without. And the church's legacy of rich, important books is forgotten because they are no longer marketable. Do yourself a favor and do not shop for your next read off the rack of the Christian bookstore. More than likely, the books we ought to be reading are not found there. A quick look at a list by Christianity Today of the top 100 religious books of the 20th c. ( http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/005/5.92.html) tells me I could find seven or eight of the titles, at most, available at the typical large Christian bookstore. And if you go back into earlier centuries, there is even less likelihood of finding one.

• Read old books. C.S. Lewis said that for every two contemporary books we read, we should read one old book. And by old, he did not mean last decade. He meant last century or even older. (He was a professor of medeival lit., after all.) Not because writers back then did not have problems or errors, but because they were not the SAME problems or errors that we have today. And the different perspective allows us to identify our own error and problems more easily. If you have not picked up a book by Augustine, or Luther, or Assisi, or Kempis, or Edwards.

• Don't search for books ABOUT biblical integration. Find books that DO biblical integration. Find Christian authors in your subject area and absorb their works. If you teach history, grab Mark Noll or George Marsden. Literature teachers (of course, you are probably the best readers among us) find Leland Ryken, or Gene Veith or Flannery O'Connor. Art teachers would benefit from Thomas Schirrmacher, Hans Rookmaaker or even Francis Shaeffer. Math teachers could check out James Nickel. Elementary teachers would gain from Ruth Beechick or Susan Macaulay.

• Don't ignore books from outside evangelicalism. Though we obviously have doctrinal differences with other streams of Christianity,we still can gain a lot from their work and they often point to easily missed blind spots within evangelicalism.

• Don't ignore works by non-Christians. If we truly want to engage with ideas and teach our students to do the same, we must be familiar with those ideas.

If you haven't already done so, go as soon as possible and grab a copy of the latest issue of Christian School Education (Vol. 10 Number 1) that just came out. There should be copies in your school office. If not, send me an email and I'll mail you one.

The lead article is a very important one by Nancy Pearcy, one of the best public minds the church has. The article is worth reading and discussing.

One of the vital arguments she makes is that Christian schools often suffer from a "failure of nerve, " or a lack of confidence in their own distinctive vision. They fail to articulate a biblical worldview that relates their religious commitment to the academic disciplines taught in the classroom.

Notice that she does not claim that they become "liberal" (whatever that may mean) or that they compromise on doctrinal issues. What she is arguing is that conservative doctrinal purity is not necessarily sufficient to ensure taht a school has a soldly biblical understanding of their disciplines. She relates the story of Tom, a Christian college student who lost his faith while at an evangelical college. Why? Not because the college lacked doctrinal purity, but, at least in part, because when he asked his teachers how they related their faith to their academic work, "Not one could give me an answer. It became clear that they had only a tenuous understanding of how to reconcile their faith with their academic disciplines. [Eventually], I came to believe that faith in God was without solid intellectual foundation. It was shattering."

The rest of the article deals with the fact/value split that is so common today. Definitely an article worth picking up.

One of the oldest philosophical questions (and it has real implications for education) is the question of the many and the one. Simply put, is the universe made up of many different parts with no apparent relationship to each other (the many) or is the universe fundamentally of the same substance, lacking distinction between its parts (the one)?

The writer/poet Peter Saint-Andree explains the how the problem works out in people's lives. After humorously describing how many different names exist for clusters of animals (herd, school, pride, etc.), he ends the poem with a sobering note:

What can we learn from animal terms against which you may rail,
From teams of horses and ducks, from coveys of partridge and quail?
The question, I’m sure, is on the tip of your tongue:
Am I just a part of a swarm or clan,
Mere member of a coterie?
Or perhaps, perhaps, am I a man-
Alone, myself, uniquely me?

If the universe is many and there is no unity among its parts, Saint Andree was right – we are alone, disconnected, and alienated. This is the solution the existentialists and nihilists offer. No wonder there is such a sense of despair today.

But if the universe is one, with no real distinction among its parts, we lose any ability to distinguish things. Is courage any different than cowardice? Is justice different than oppression? Is right different from wrong? Even worse, is a person essentially the same as a horse? Or a rock? As strange as it sounds, this is the natural outworking of the pantheists and new agers.

As it turns out (surprise, surprise) Christianity offers the best description of reality and the solution to this problem. If all reality flows from the person of God, and that God is triune, wouldn’t we expect reality to mirror that triune nature? The solution to the problem of the many and the one is the mystery of the three-in-one God. The divine nature displays a unity in multiplicity (and a multiplicity in unity) that we cannot easily comprehend but that we know is true. If God designed the universe to glorify himself, it is natural that we would see the same dynamic between unity and multiplicity in it as in his own nature. If we affirm only his unity, we Islamicize him. If we affirm only his multiplicity, we Hellenize him. It is dangerous to ignore one or the other aspect of his nature. The same is true of the created world.

How does this idea affect our teaching? I believe it has implications for every grade level and every content area. Consider these examples.

Curriculum design: How exactly do we divide the curriculum? If there is a unity to truth, should there really be a difference between a theology class and a biology class? Or between and art class and a math class? Nearly everyone would recognize these as different spheres but still there is the urge to reintegrate them. How do we go about integrating (uniting) our curriculum while still recognizing its different (multiple) spheres? How do we keep our instruction from becoming a jumble of disjointed and unrelated facts (multiplicity with no unity); or a thinly developed generalization with no distinctions (unity with no multiplicity).

Biology: What is the human relationship to other living organism? Do humans have a place in biological classification or are the completely distinct from the animal kingdom?

Sociology: How are issues of race and ethnicity to be approached? How are different sovereign nations to relate to each other?

Mathematics: How do the whole and the parts fit together? How are addition (composition into one unit) and subtraction (decomposition into many units) related?

Discipline: How do you deal with a student as an individual but also within the context of a larger group?

The point is not to provide illustrations of the trinity. Just like a three leaf clover (or any other such illustration) fails to thoroughly describe the trinity, so do any we can pull from our curriculum. The point is to begin thinking how we can use trinitarian thinking to address important content knowledge issues so that our students begin to understand a biblical solution to an ancient problem.