This need is greater today than it was when Malik first proclaimed it. Higher education long ago distanced itself from its originating Christocentric purposes. But today, the condition of Western universities is even more disordered. Institutions of higher education lack any common vision of what is true and what is good for human flourishing. The postmodern university is not only post-Christian, it is post-humanist, and for the same reasons. Humanism, after all, is the product of a culture that believed in the Incarnation.

In their book The Passionate Intellect, Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann argue that the Incarnation is after all the only reliable foundation on which to build a properly humanistic education. "Christians are supposed to be the paradigm for a new humanity founded by Christ and inaugurated by his resurrection from the dead, a decisive event signaling the reconciliation of humanity to God and anticipating the full redemption of God's creation."

Ronald P. Mahurin, vice president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, has commended this book warmly. "The authors argue convincingly," he writes, "that Christians need to think—with humility, conviction, and an understanding that God's common grace extends to the world of ideas. Christian students and faculty will find this book an immense resource in their collective task of 'taking every thought captive' to Christ."

A downloadable set of study questions and a list of books for further reading suggested by the authors is available here. This book is read by Ken Myers.

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Norman Klassen (D.Phil., University of Oxford) is associate professor of English at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ontario. He is the author of Chaucer on Love, Knowledge, and Sight. Jens Zimmermann (Ph.D., University of British Columbia) is associate professor of English and Canadian Research Chair in Interpretation, Religion, and Culture at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia. He is the author of Recovering Theological Hermeneutics: An Incarnational Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation.

"This is a welcome addition to recent Christian writing on higher education. While addressed primarily to the prospective student, teachers and administrators too should benefit from its discussion of Christian humanism and humanist education in a postmodern world."

—Arthur F. Holmes, emeritus professor of philosophy, Wheaton College

"Regarding the challenge of Christian involvement in higher education, this book gets right at the heart of the matter—what does Christianity contribute to the life of the mind? And it does so with great erudition and aplomb. A very helpful contribution to the burgeoning literature on Christianity and the university."

—Robert Benne, author, Quality with Soul—How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions, and director, Roanoke College Center for Religion and Society

"In the increasingly secular atmosphere of contemporary university life, Klassen and Zimmermann's The Passionate Intellect provides an excellent practical guide for those Christian students (and scholars generally) committed to an integration of faith and the intellectual life. Providing concrete directions through the increasingly labyrinthine corridors of academic ideologies, the book offers useful insights into the long tradition of Christian humanism, its defense of full human dignity, the goodness of creation and personal endeavors within that creation, and the joy of learning and critical analysis, 'embraced in humility and trust'—the crown of incarnational humanism and common grace."

—Peter C. Erb, visiting professor of Catholic Studies, Centre for Christianity and Culture, University of Prince Edward Island

"Intended as a primer for Christian freshmen, this text has study questions concluding each chapter and a bibliography for further reading. It nicely summarizes the philosophical and historical developments that have transformed academia from its 'holistic medieval beginnings' to its 'postmodern fragmentation' while erroneously constructing Christian faith as 'anti-intellectual.' The interest is in reclaiming holistic, intellectual inquiry based on 'the rudiments of Christian theology.'. . . The authors are to be applauded for attempting to resurrect a term such as 'humanism,' even an 'incarnational' one, especially in Evangelical contexts. . . . Even the noncollege freshman will find this a helpful treatise on 'thinking' as an essential part of Christian identity."

—Randall J. Pannell, Religious Studies Review

"[The authors] direct The Passionate Intellect at the university student struggling to understand how to reconcile Christian faith and university study. . . . They write warmly and invitingly, and are careful to build their argument with patience and as much attention to detail as one can expect in a modest book-length study. . . . Unlike contemporary titles about the Christian worldview that take a superior or triumphalist tone, The Passionate Intellect is written with the same humility that its authors call for in others. It would serve as an excellent textbook or supplementary reading in first-year Christian worldview courses or intellectual history courses. Students attending universities where this book is unlikely to be chosen as a text would also benefit immensely from this work, in campus study groups, for example. Libraries should certainly include it in their collections. Klassen and Zimmermann are to be commended for furnishing their readers with such an inviting and clear map of a territory that contemporary readers find increasingly foreign and strange."

—Ken Badley, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

"[A] wise book. . . . Klassen and Zimmermann make helpful distinctions between the more humanist (Gadamer, Levinas) and more antihumanist (Heidegger, Foucault, Lyotard) postmoderns, and how such figures complement and critique each other. . . . [It is] intended as a guidebook for Christian university students beginning to wrestle with intellectual currents of the day and seeking to understand how they can both learn from and address such currents with integrity. Within that context, the book does its job well. . . . I hope [this book's] light radiates to far corners. Amid polarizations, our era does provide avenues for rejoining subject and object, for thinking 'within' and 'through' and not just 'above' our traditions, biases, bodies, faith commitments, or objects of study. Christian and not-Christian, we need such [a book] to help us conceptualize, critique, and share in this moment of opportunity."

—Michael A. King, Conrad Grebel Review