A Christian Approach to Interdisciplinary Studies

In an academic world that has rejected a Christian ontology, metaphysic, and epistemology, as well as the secular foundationalism of modernity, one is hard-pressed to find any secular academician in the field of interdisciplinary studies (IDS) advocating a definitive starting point and methodology for IDS. In A Christian Approach to Interdisciplinary Studies, William D. Dennison asks, is such a study truly integrative that does not have an ontological, integrative starting point and the constitutive component of method? To put the question another way, without the God of the Bible as the author of integration within creation, can there truly be IDS? Indeed, Dennison calls for the integration of approach and method, integration provided and modeled by the triune God of Scripture. Adapted from the Preface ""In a careful critique that calls for a response from his fellow interdisciplinary theorists, Dennison asserts that interdisciplinary studies has failed to achieve its purported defining characteristic: integration. In his bold proposal for a Christocentric foundation for interdisciplinary studies, Christian academics of all disciplines will find a challenging, even rebuking, call to conformity to Christ in our profession. Perhaps most important, Dennison establishes a vital role for interdisciplinary studies in Christian colleges and universities--not in weak imitations of anemic secular models, but in uniquely Christian programs built on the truth that integration is already achieved in Christ, who is before all things and in whom all things hold together."" --Christopher Horne Assistant Professor of Public Administration University of Tennessee at Chattanooga ""Let's face it. As colleges and universities overhaul their general education, core, and honors programs, let alone their majors, many are replacing the separate disciplines with an interdisciplinary approach, whether faculty like it or not. William Dennison's A Christian Approach to Interdisciplinary Studies arrives just in time to give us the 'ontological integrative starting point' and justification for a Christian approach to IDS. A joy to read, this scholarly work defends and articulates the interdisciplinary approach provided by the Triune God of the Scripture, the 'author of integration.'"" --Mary J. Dengler Associate Professor of English Dordt College William D. Dennison is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and Visiting Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Northwest Theological Seminary in Lynnwood, Washington. He is the author of Paul's Two-Age Construction and Apologetics (Wipf and Stock, 2000) and The Young Bultmann: Context for His Understanding of God, 1884-1925 (Peter Lang, forthcoming).