Athens, Jerusalem, and Wherever You Are

Learning in the Light of Faith

What is the role of education in God's eternal plan? Are scholarship and discipleship compatible?  What is the relationship between reason and revelation?  What should we study and learn?  Why?

These are just a few questions that disciple-scholars of the past have frequently posed.  Here follows a brief selection of quotations, speeches, and articles that may be helpful in exploring the answers to such questions:  

Quotations:

• "The kind of people we are is more important than what we can do to improve the world; indeed being the kind of people we should and can be is the best, and sometimes the only way to improve the world." - Richard John Neuhaus, C.S. Lewis in the Public Square 

• "To be ignorant and simple now–not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground — would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered." - C.S. Lewis, "Learning in War-Time," in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

• "Though argument does not create conviction, lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish." - Austen Farrer

• "The LDS scholar has his citizenship in the Kingdom, but carries his passport into the professional world—not the other way around." - Elder Neal A. Maxwell

• "We should have our citizenship in Jerusalem and have a passport to Athens." - Elder Neal A. Maxwell 

Speeches:

The Disciple-Scholar, Neal A. Maxwell

Enhancing Secular Knowledge Through Spiritual Knowledge and Faith, Elder James E. Faust

 

Reason, Faith and the Things of Eternity, Elder Bruce C. Hafen

On Becoming a Disciple-Scholar, Elder Cecil O. Samuelson

Articles and Publications:

Learning in the Light of Faith, Henry B. Eyring

What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?, Daniel C. Peterson

Of Mormon Studies and Apologetics, Daniel C. Peterson

Revelation, Reason and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, Edited by Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and Stephen D. Ricks

Key to the Science of Theology, Parley P. Pratt

Laws of Marriage and Procreation, Parley P. Pratt

Reason and Revelation, Ralph C. Hancock 

Concluding Thought:

Finally, as Elder Neal A. Maxwell repeatedly emphasized, "Though I have spoken of the disciple-scholar, in the end all the hyphenated words come off. We are finally disciples-men and women of Christ (see  3 Ne. 27:27)."