Cal Dewitt wrote, when he was asked to summarize his spiritual beliefs:
In my life and work, I operate within a paraphrase
of Chicago’s
Professor
Emeritus Wayne C. Booth's definition of religion, as "the passion to live
rightly and spread right living — all in accord with the way the world
works." In
doing this, I hold together, in full integration, a triad of questions:
1) How
does the world work (science and scientia)?
2) What ought to be (ethics)? and
3) What then must
we do (praxis)?
My principal source material for the science and
scientia corner
of this triad is the natural world, sometimes called “the
Book of Nature” or “the Book of God's World”;
my principal
source for the ethics corner is the Bible, sometimes called “the Book of
God's Word.”
The praxis corner completes the triad, to bring the
answers
to the first two questions to bear on responsible and effective environmental
stewardship and conservation.
My spiritual belief is that the pursuit of right
living should emerge from reading
the Book of God’s World and the Book of God’s Word coherently — coherently
within each book and coherently between both books. I believe that I
must live my life passionately, must do my best to gain a coherent understanding
of the
two books, and must then put this to useful and practical work. My faith
is that right makes might, and that in that faith I must dare to do my duty
(to
paraphrase
Abraham Lincoln and make reference to Matthew 5:5 and 6:33).
These ideas, and others, are developed with more depth
— when Cal DeWitt "considers
the structure and controls of complex systems, and from this develops a consideration
of the necessity of holding together — in one integrated system [in
the life of a whole person or a group of people] — scientia, ethics,
and praxis" — in The
Professor and the Pupil: Addressing Secularization and Disciplinary Fragmentation
in Academia. (published by the American Scientific Affiliation
in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, June
2007)
Stewardship of Life as a Christian Worldview