Richmont Annual Report 2023-2024 - Flipbook - Page 27
ANNUAL REPORT 2024
RICHMONT GRADUATE UNIVERSITY
26
THEOLOGY IN MOTION
Integration: Our Guiding Star
Exemplifying a Christian faith that brings reconciliation and healing to a broken world is the guiding star of
Richmont. The world-transforming love at the heart of the gospel compels us always in a twofold direction: We must be
ambassadors of Christ (2 Cor. 5:20) and strive to become all things to all people (1 Cor. 9:22). These biblical affirmations
mean that our University sees no inherent conflict between the church and the academy, or between faith and science,
for Christ is Lord of all (Matt. 28:18; Rev. 19:16). In every academic discipline, new discoveries and insights are to be
cherished and faithfully examined, as they reveal more of God’s deep wisdom woven throughout his creation.
From the earliest days of Christianity, this all-encompassing view of God’s truth has been championed. Ancient
Christian thinkers, in their engagements with Greco-Roman ideas, saw “seeds of the Word,” as elements of truth,
scattered, waiting to be found and connected to their true source. All truth is God’s truth, for God is truth (John 14:6).
Such a stance empowers our University to be deeply concerned about human beings, who are made in God’s image, and
also about how best to honor them through scientifically rich scholarship and service. Our Christian witness is thus
deeply integrative. Integration refers to exploring and seeing together the mutual truth to which faith and science both
attest, resulting in a fuller, richer, and more nuanced vision of reality. In many ways, “integration” is simply theology
made practical. It is applying the deep affirmations of the historic Christian faith to the empirical world of human life,
whether in ministry, counseling, or other domains of learning, helping, and healing.
This practical and integrative outlook means that the faculty and staff of Richmont strive to serve and study fearlessly.
A robust view of God’s truth means we have nothing to fear in the pursuit of truth, for the love of God casts out fear (1
John 4:18). And so we boldly research and fiercely love the good world of our creator and all his image-bearers that dwell
within it, so that the hope of the gospel might be proclaimed in manifold witness.