Reigniting the Life of the Christian Mind | Austin Stevenson

On this episode of Anchored, Jeremy is joined by Austin Stevenson, Assistant Professor of Theology at Palm Beach Atlantic University and former Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Austin reflects on his experience at Oxford and his transformation from initially seeing academia as a barrier to finding fulfillment and enjoyment in it. They explore why Christians have withdrawn from academic institutions in the past, and the current shift as more Christians begin to reengage with higher education. They conclude by discussing his book, Consciousness of the Historical Jesus: Historiography, Theology, and Metaphysics, and Austin's venture to bridge the work of theology with biblical scholarship. 

Transcript

Jeremy Tate (00:01.938)
Folks, welcome back to the Anchored Podcast, the official podcast of the Classic Learning Test. We have with us today a true intellectual heavyweight, Dr. Austin Stevenson from one of our closest partner colleges, Palm Beach Atlantic University. Dr. Stevenson, before coming to PBA, was a junior research fellow at the University of Oxford, where he studied Christian vaccine hesitancy and collaboration with the Oxford Vaccine Group and the Vaccine Knowledge Project.

He's taught theology at Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Theology, the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at Ridley Hall. Dr. Stevenson studied music in college and served in full-time ministry as a worship pastor for five years before pursuing graduate education in theology. He's passionate about theological education, bridging the gap between systematic theology and biblical scholarship, and reclaiming the riches of Christian tradition for contemporary theological reflection.

6czwmh5d5r (00:36.27)
So, thank

Jeremy Tate (00:57.308)
His research specializes in the resourcement of classical Christian thought in conversation with an interdisciplinary range of topics. He is the author of The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus, Historiography, Theology, and Metaphysics. He has published articles and edited special issues of peer-reviewed journals, including Modern Theology, Scottish Journal of Theology, Journal of Theological Interpretation, and the Journal of Religion and Science. Austin, Dr. Stevenson, great to see you. Thanks for being with us.

6czwmh5d5r (01:05.517)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Jeremy Tate (01:29.202)
So I always love, especially someone who has pursued the life of the mind so much at the most prestigious institutions in the world, Oxford, Cambridge, where you have taught as well. I want to know what your parents did right, you know, when you were growing up. Did you always have a deep love for learning or did that develop later in life?

6czwmh5d5r (01:33.325)
Yeah.

I think that I always had a kind of secret love for learning, it certainly didn't develop very much until much later in life. I grew up in Wyoming. I would say my family didn't care that much about the life of the mind. We read kind of popular fiction a lot. John Grisham was my favorite author as probably too young of a child.

And so I always loved reading, that kind of thing. But I always had a hard time seeing school as anything more than a sort of barrier to the stuff I wanted to be doing. I went to a private Christian school for grade school and then public school for middle school and high school.

Jeremy Tate (02:24.712)
Public school, Christian school, home school.

Jeremy Tate (02:34.334)
We're in Wyoming. not every day you hear folks say they grew up in Wyoming.

6czwmh5d5r (02:37.965)
Yeah, so I grew up in Cheyenne, the capital about two hours north of Denver, Colorado. And yeah, it was, yeah, so growing up, it was, you know, I did construction with my dad and very much kind of outside the world of any academic things. And yeah, and so, you know, I went to college to study music. And again, most of the academic stuff outside of music, I just felt was a kind of barrier that I had to get through.

But I was always good at that stuff. you know, so high school me would have pretended not to know the answers to things, that kind of student, but would like secretly get good grades. and so it really wasn't until late in university, when I took some classes in philosophy and theology. And I thought this, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it was really college that I thought, actually, I really care about a lot of this stuff.

Jeremy Tate (03:26.34)
This is as an undergrad.

6czwmh5d5r (03:35.806)
and I love it and I want to take it seriously. I think I'm quite late in terms of when I discovered my sort of academic interests.

Jeremy Tate (03:46.086)
Okay, and then these kind of three, you the life of the mind, your deep love for music and, you know, your Christian life. Was it about the same time that these things kind of came together or did, you know, were these compartmentalized growing up? How did they come together?

6czwmh5d5r (04:02.612)
Yeah, I think they were compartmentalized. think, you know, the form of kind of evangelical Christianity that I grew up in was heavy on emotion and really light on intellect. I think I always thought, you know, having, you know, sort of knowing God happens through feeling and not thinking, you know, a lot of sermons about even faith as the sort of undoing of reason or the opposite of reason. And if you think too much, you'll lose your faith, that kind of thing. And so I

Yeah, so I think it was was it was really it was in college where I discovered that you know, my mind might play a role in in my sort of faith and and then music. Yeah, I think it was also in some ways for me. Unfortunately, I think the move towards doing academic stuff was a move away from doing music. But obviously that doesn't have to be the case.

Jeremy Tate (04:56.68)
Well, was there a moment where you first thought, I could see myself as a professor, I could see myself in academia?

6czwmh5d5r (05:04.403)
Yeah, I mean, was certainly probably senior year of college. was a worship pastor and realizing that that's not what I wanted to do with my life. it was funny in college, the only students at the university they went to that had to write a senior thesis were music students, which is probably abnormal. So I had to write a thesis, it was supposed to be about music, but I convinced them to let me write it about Karl Barth and his theology.

And I really enjoyed that. It was a great process. And the professors I was working with were like, have you thought about going to grad school? And I was like, honestly, I barely know what grad school is. But they were like, well, you seem to be quite good at this. You might enjoy it. You could be a professor. So that was the first time I had ever even thought about it. But it very quickly captured my imagination as far as a possible life path.

Jeremy Tate (05:32.168)
Huh?

Jeremy Tate (05:56.742)
Okay, where was your undergrad?

6czwmh5d5r (05:58.241)
Colorado Christian University in Denver.

Jeremy Tate (06:00.44)
Yeah, great, great CLT partner college, love Colorado Christian. And then before you get to Oxford, Cambridge, did you do graduate work in the US?

6czwmh5d5r (06:08.795)
In Canada, was in Vancouver at Regent College.

Jeremy Tate (06:12.74)
was Packer still alive and well at that point?

6czwmh5d5r (06:14.964)
He was, yeah, he was still teaching well into his 90s.

Jeremy Tate (06:19.23)
Incredible. I'm sure many listeners of the Anchor podcast were influenced by the work of J.I. Packer. I know I certainly was myself. You know, I think Oxford, Cambridge, they loom so large in the imagination. So many folks within the classical renewal movement, you know, just the beauty of campuses, the campuses of the history, the inklings, all of it, right? Yeah. And for many, it's just an unrealized dream, but you got to live the dream.

6czwmh5d5r (06:42.836)
but

Jeremy Tate (06:48.479)
So tell us about that and how did it change who you are today?

6czwmh5d5r (06:51.749)
Yeah, it was, it really was a dream, I think. And I often was, you know, something of an odd one out, given my background at places like Oxford and Cambridge. know, most of the students were sort of Ivy League trained or something like that. But yeah, so one of the big part of how I got there would be Regent College, they send a lot of students to Oxford and Cambridge. It's a really, really excellent kind of graduate theological school. And

Yeah, so it was, I think it was such an interesting experience because it's a completely different world, right? And even applying to a place like Cambridge, I was like, I don't know what the colleges are. You just pick a college. All these kinds of things were so foreign to me. But it really was a dream. As soon as I arrived, I was like, is Disneyland for academics.

Jeremy Tate (07:39.39)
Wow, I love that. Oxford is Disneyland for academics.

6czwmh5d5r (07:43.146)
Yeah, like these places, you know, it was the library has every book that has ever gotten a copyright. You have all of the you know, everyone you're reading is coming through to give talks and lectures and you get to meet them in person. You're constantly sitting around tables or you know, having having sort of hors d'oeuvres at events with other academics in a you know, all kinds of different fields. And and the system is very much trained to sort of teach you to engage with people in all the different disciplines and in converse.

Jeremy Tate (07:50.109)
Yeah.

6czwmh5d5r (08:13.002)
you know about scholarship and stuff. And I just I came alive. I just felt like this is a world that I absolutely adore and had such a wonderful time. And you know it was very rigorous, quite intense, know a PhD at Cambridge's. Here's the library, write your dissertation. And so you know if you, US system has a lot more kind of direction and help along the way. But I just loved that. I really, really enjoyed it.

Jeremy Tate (08:40.228)
And tell us about that. What was your dissertation on?

6czwmh5d5r (08:42.762)
So the dissertation has turned into what my first book is that you mentioned. But essentially the project I was interested in was thinking about the development of critical historical methods in the modern period, the philosophical assumptions that are sort of baked into those methods, and then how those methods have impacted what he means to think about Jesus as a historical figure. And so engaging with kind of historical Jesus scholarship with a critical lens to

how much of their conclusions are coming from assumptions baked into the methods already, and how might different philosophical assumptions lead us to do history differently. So trying to bridge some gaps between theology and biblical scholarship and Christian doctrine and what some critical history might say.

Jeremy Tate (09:31.902)
Okay, and it tells about the move from the UK to Palm Beach, Florida. If you've ever been to Palm Beach Atlantic University, in my experience, my first thought when I saw it is like, this cannot be, this is like a resort. This cannot be a university. It's right there in the inner, I mean, it's like, it's insane. It's ridiculous. I know it's a very popular destination for CLT test takers. Of course, the Honors College is,

6czwmh5d5r (09:45.85)
Ha ha.

Jeremy Tate (09:56.85)
Very well known, where you do, where you teach as well. But how did, had you already known about PBA? How did you discover it?

6czwmh5d5r (10:00.329)
Yeah, so actually my best friend in Cambridge was hired to teach New Testament at PBA and then we were looking to maybe come back to the States. I actually left my job at Oxford early and my friend was like, well, we're hiring a theologian. And so that was sort of how we knew about it. He had studied here. He was an alumni. And so we had sort of talked about it at times.

So that was the kind of personal connection that got me to apply. And yeah, and just seeing the level of scholars that we're teaching at PVA, the kind of work that was being done both in the School of Ministry and the fact that our honors program has such an excellent curriculum and history. And it is beautiful. mean, growing up in Wyoming, one of my ultimate dreams was to live near the beach because Wyoming's about as far away from the ocean as you can get.

And so we had lived for a little while in Vancouver. We lived somewhere near the ocean But it was always kind of a dream and yeah, PDA is right on the the ocean. It's really gorgeous So yeah, so that was that was sort of the the move it was you know It's quite a change from Oxford South Florida is very different from from England and basically every way But yeah, it's beautiful here

Jeremy Tate (11:21.302)
I want to try to formulate this question in a way that makes sense, but my take is just a layman is that especially in the later half of the 20th century, early 2000s, that there is kind of an option facing parents and students that you could have kind of your Christian-like university college experience that may have like some serious academics, or you could have your very faithful Christian college experience, but it may be light.

in academics. my take is that that is beginning in a big way to change where you've got so many institutions that I could name many of these and many of these very close CLT partner colleges that are both serious about their Christian identity, but serious in terms of academic excellence as well. then now it used to be this kind of hard thing to find is my take. And now places like the Honors College at Palm Beach Atlantic,

6czwmh5d5r (11:48.777)
Hmm.

6czwmh5d5r (12:10.492)
So.

Jeremy Tate (12:16.106)
are leading this with intellectual giants like yourself, where students can come and be taught by top faculty, but in a way that affirms and encourages their faith rather than undermines it. I wonder if you can speak into that. Is something substantive changing in higher ed, in Christian higher ed in that way?

6czwmh5d5r (12:36.533)
Yeah, I think it absolutely is. You know, we if you think about the history of particularly American Christianity in the 20th century, you know, maybe think about Mark Knoll's book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, we had a period of time where evangelicals

were, and Christians, more conservative Christians especially, were sort of worried about what was being taught in universities and so often didn't pursue academic pursuits that much. And so you had academic institutions where the kind of committed Christians hadn't actually done that much in academia. They had sort of shied away from academic centers. And so you would, you know, the more robust kind of Christian experience often didn't have this sort of intellectual side. But there has been, you know, a few generations of us Christians

who have partly, you I read Mark Nolan as an undergrad and thought, wow, this seems like something we could do about this. And so there's a lot of us who then went and reached the very top levels of academia and, you know, the sort of leading institutions around the world. And what that allowed us to do, I think, is to realize that, right, the highest level of academic pursuits are completely compatible with our beliefs as Christians, which shouldn't be surprising because...

know, Christians are involved in founding the idea of the university in the first place and, know, the history of Western thought. And so I think reclaiming ways of doing that, doing very high level work in our disciplines to think about the relationship between sort of faith commitments and how these disciplines work in really robust ways rather, you know, not just assuming that there's incompatibility here or, you know, it might be awkward, but really pushing in and finding, you know, ways to bring these things together well.

And then we've come back to these kinds of institutions. As a theologian, I think it's interesting, if you're gonna teach theology, you're probably either at an elite university that has a theology department, you're not really at state schools, they don't have much of that, or you're at a sort Christian liberal arts university. so a lot of us from leading institutions are at places like PBA, where you can do really, really excellent work.

6czwmh5d5r (14:40.39)
And so I think that is a shift then that we're seeing in these kinds of places is that we just have multiple generations of Christians who have said, you know, let's sort of reclaim our academic identity and role and bring that back into the basis.

Jeremy Tate (14:54.718)
Sure, sure. I love, you know, I think one of the aspects of being deep in history is coming to a sense of what's peculiar or just odd about our own lived experience. And I was probably out of seminary before I really started to grapple with the reality that for most of the history of, you know, the church for the past 2000 years, for at least 1500 years, Christians were the academic establishment.

6czwmh5d5r (15:16.774)
.

Jeremy Tate (15:23.576)
We're the intellectual authority and that all changes, you know, really in the early 20th century, maybe the late 19th century. But maybe in a few hundred years that will be viewed as just a historical anomaly. And I wonder that because the center seems to have not been able to hold, right? And that by the estimation of most Americans, there is something deeply amiss in higher ed right now. In fact, the majority of Americans

I think this is Pew, are saying that it's a net negative higher ed overall on America. Now we have the outliers, the Hillsdales and the Grove cities and the PBAs that are doing great work in terms of forming the next people in all the right ways. we're living through pretty seismic shifts in higher education and even a lot of colleges and universities closing right now.

Well, what do you think the next 10 or 20 years is going to bring in terms of further disruption and developments and changes in higher ed?

6czwmh5d5r (16:25.509)
Yeah, it's a really good question. It's a little bit hard to tell because I think we're at a space where we can do something about what that's going to look like. But will we? I think is the question. For me, I think one of the biggest things that has happened has just been the fact that university has transformed into career credentialing. And I think that if it continues on that path, there's no real reason for universities. I think it makes more sense that big corporations are going to have their own training centers and

Jeremy Tate (16:43.752)
Sure.

Jeremy Tate (16:53.242)
That is a very honest statement. That is great, you know.

6czwmh5d5r (16:56.818)
Yeah, I think it's true. Universities aren't for that. It doesn't make any sense. And so the hollowing out of the humanities curricula and all of that so that you can have these professional degree programs, think those are just going to replace everything at a university and then it's not a university anymore. It's a tech school. And that might be where things go and then we have to find alternative institutions to do the kind of work that universities do. But I think the question is

you know, do we have the courage to double down on the fact that forming humans to live to flourish is more important than credentialing so they can make money in a career that's going to change a bunch of times anyways, given our sort of economy.

Jeremy Tate (17:35.582)
I get the chills when I think of C.S. Lewis here. He says, education is beaten by training, civilization dies. There's a lot at stake. There's a lot at stake here.

6czwmh5d5r (17:43.448)
Hmm

There is, right? There absolutely is. And it's not just an institutional problem. Our students are taught from birth that they should only do stuff if they're getting a grade or they're getting credit or they're getting money. And so teaching them that they are the product, that doing the work is forming them into a different kind of person is also a tough sell for a lot of students. so realizing that that's not what they're looking for when they're looking for a university because they don't know to look for it necessarily. That's not always what their parents are looking for.

Jeremy Tate (17:55.836)
Yeah.

6czwmh5d5r (18:15.608)
and so that's, you know, the, the, I think the, the future of higher education is just going to be a question of, you know, which of those directions and maybe there's a balance to be, to be had there. but I think, you know, from my perspective, whether Christians are going to be leading that right is going to be whether Christians are capable of creating spaces where people can do genuinely, important work with a broad range of people.

Jeremy Tate (18:38.782)
F.

6czwmh5d5r (18:42.284)
for the purpose of what education is actually for, right? And that's in the past, that's why Christians were sort of leaders in academia. And so I think, you know, that's sort of, I think it's very much up in the air right now in terms of where that's gonna go in the next few decades.

Jeremy Tate (19:00.21)
I spend a lot of time touring K-12, classical Christian schools, Catholic schools, and when you walk the hall, especially this time of year, you'll typically find somewhere where you can see where the current seniors are heading. And some of these schools, it's so encouraging. You got so many of these schools now, they're sending tons of kids to places like PBA and Grove City and Hillsdale and these great schools. But some of them, it's surprising. Sometimes you'll see it's almost entirely

know, IVs or big state schools or public universities. And I think there's this question that college counselors at classical schools are having with students and parents are having with faculty. And the students are trying to say, look, I've had a great K-12 education, you know, at some of these top schools, know, Veritas School of Richmond, you know, places, I was just at Trinitas in Pensacola, Florida, an incredible classical Christian school there. mean, these young people are years ahead.

of their peers. I'm just blown away by them. But that question and that itch of, I've experienced this kind of education. I want to go stand out at the University of Florida or Florida State, these big public institutions where in some ways we want these students to be the leaders at these big publics. What is your advice for parents, for college counselors as they're trying to think through?

6czwmh5d5r (19:57.316)
Yeah.

Jeremy Tate (20:24.668)
you know, these big decisions about where to go to college.

6czwmh5d5r (20:28.03)
Yeah, and you know, it's not easy. There's so many questions, I think, that are involved. I will say, you know, on the one hand, I personally really have thrived at, you know, secular institutions as a sort of Christian. I find it

But that's in part because I was deeply formed by Christian institutions that did education well. So I think it is that question of balance, who is the student? But also, know, the broader questions of do they have a sort of community and tradition around them supporting what they're doing and where they're going? So, you know, I think there's so much value in a place where they can...

do an integrated thing, right? So if a university is supposed to give us a sort of cohesive whole vision of the whole, know, places like PBA can do that. They have, we sort of have a sense of how all of this fits together. And that's one of the challenges that you would face at sort of maybe a state school or an Ivy League is the kind of fragmentation of knowledge and what do students do with that. There are many resources, I think, to help them deal with that well in those sorts of spaces.

But it is the question not only of what kind of career do they want to do, which I think is often, again, at the forefront of everyone's mind is how is this going to position them for their career, but just the kind of life that they want to lead. And there are important questions to be asked about certain paths that they want to go on. They're going to be really well served by going to like a Yale or something like that. But many of them, that's not fully necessary.

I went to a Christian liberal arts university and was able to end up at Oxford and Cambridge because that's the trajectory I wanted to do. So you're certainly not limiting yourself by attending these sort of smaller liberal arts universities. yeah, so I mean, don't think that there's an absolute answer one way or another. But I do think that there's a lot to be said for in these formative years, thinking about the sort of formation of the whole person and these students.

6czwmh5d5r (22:35.939)
finding a space that's going to enable them to do that well, but also is going to have the resources for them to pursue the kind of academic pursuits that they're serious about to the highest level.

Jeremy Tate (22:47.707)
Tell us about your book, The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus.

6czwmh5d5r (22:52.554)
Yeah, it's based on my doctoral dissertation, expanded a decent amount from that. It works a lot with the thought of Thomas Aquinas. So that's a sort of area of specialty that I have. particularly sort of recovering his metaphysics, his understanding of ontology for both thinking about Christ and thinking about sort of historical method. One of the big arguments in the book is that

For those who are familiar with historical Jesus scholarship, this is a field that really begins as a way of trying to take down Christian beliefs about Jesus and say, actually, historically Jesus was somebody else, right? And that's shifted over the years and there's a lot of different things going on in that field. But what I argue is essentially that one of the biggest differences between what Christians confess about Jesus and what historical Jesus scholars say isn't necessarily his divinity.

but it's his humanity that they differ about. They have a different vision of what humans are. so Christians believe that Jesus was fully divine and fully human, but by fully human, they mean something different than what typically historical Jesus scholars mean by Jesus was fully human. So in the book, I deal with kind of theological anthropology, thinking about the nature of those kinds of questions and then how that shapes what it means to do history. So when we're thinking about a historical figure, we're thinking about their self-understanding.

their intentions with their characteristic actions, that sort of thing. And I think about how that would shift if we had something like Aquinas's understanding of reality and of humans, as opposed to what we get in this sort of 18th, 19th century German historicism. Yeah, so that's that's basically the book.

Jeremy Tate (24:37.598)
It was one of my greatest surprises in seminary, the amount of time we focused, and I want to reform theological seminary, but the amount of time we focused on the changing view, especially in the 20th century of historical Jesus and the humanity, exactly what you're saying. So very interested in that. Now we always end the Anchored Podcast asking your guests, what is the book that has influenced you the most? Maybe a book that you reread every year or recommend to students.

6czwmh5d5r (24:56.342)
Hmm.

6czwmh5d5r (25:06.081)
Well, yeah, there's so many, but the one that I find really, really helpful and the one that I think this was a book that I was assigned in grad school and I sat down and I just read the whole thing straight through and couldn't stop and and then it changed so much for me. It's actually luckily right here, but Andrew Louth's book, Discerning the Mystery.

It's an essay on the nature of theology. So Andrew Louth is a patristic scholar based in Cambridge. this, he wrote this in the 80s, I think. He's an Eastern Orthodox priest, but I think at the time he was Anglican. But it's an incredible text about the nature of theology. And essentially, he's outlining people like Gadamer and a number of those thinkers, but he's thinking about the fact that in the modern period,

historical method is about, right, if we have a method to get to objective facts, we should use that on things like the Bible or these broader questions. And he's thinking about the fact that for most of the history of Christianity, we feel like truth resides in subjectivity, in this sort of the engagement of a subject with something beyond them that transforms them. And that that theology should be more in that realm, what we would call the humanities, than in this, you know,

the humanities aping the sciences using kind of scientific methods. So I think it does a remarkable job of sort of arguing for a patristic vision of the nature of truth and theology. And I use it a lot to help the students understand what's happening in pre-modern Christian thought, because it feels quite foreign to us.

Jeremy Tate (26:51.56)
Fantastic. We're here with Dr. Austin Stevenson, professor in the Honors College at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Again, students, parents, if you've never been to PBA, it is a mind-blowing campus and one of the most solid colleges and honors college that we recommend here at CLT to our listeners. Dr. Stevenson, thanks so much for being on the Anchor Podcast. Love to have you back on again in future.

6czwmh5d5r (27:15.076)
Absolutely, thanks so much for having me.