The Amiens Cathedral Project, Professor Stephen Murray, Media Center for Art History, Columbia University    http://www.learn.columbia.edu/Mcahweb/Amiens.html
Read about the Amiens Cathedral Project at
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/udar/magazine/96-summer/amiens
Obtain the Amiens Cathedral video at
http://www.arch.columbia.edu/DDL/projects/amiens

The Alethia Foundation is embarked upon a fairly unique enterprise.  Although it is the business of theology to meet the new knowledge and experience of every era, and faithfully to interpret the gospel within the evolving context of human history, in our age, it has become possible, and necessary, to undertake this task on a more comprehensive, encompassing scale

We are dedicated to articulating a Christian version of  the paradigm shift taking place in our age. 

This mission amounts to tracing out a new Christian synthesis for our age, using the best tools and resources we have. Such an undertaking is no longer something that can be done by one person.

Now such attempts at synthesis will have to be a group, rather than an individual, effort.

We are beyond the age when an Aquinas, sitting alone in his cell, with the help of some epistolary dialog and a lot of books, could more or less single-handedly construct a tenable Christian synthesis for his age.

We will have to work together.

This is an ensemble, not a solitary, adventure.

Construction of a Christian synthesis for our time requires direct participation by people of all fields and specializations. No one person can master enough of the relevant material to do what we want to do. There’s too much of it, and it is all too highly specialized. Bringing themes together in a Christian schema, or any schema for that matter, requires both the exacting proficiency of specializations, and the transcendence of them.

It requires that bodies of knowledge relate to each other

•  at underlying levels of epistemology and method
•  at meta-levels of implications and entailments
•  at moral levels of judgment and application
•  at creative intersections where new fields of study appear;
•   and that these relationships be related.

Ambitious as it is, it may turn out to be a less difficult and more agreeable task, than it might sound, but it will take teamwork.

The Alethia Foundation moreover seeks the means most in accord with the end. Method must match mission. What we do for the sake of Christ is no more important than how we do it. These changing times lend the advantage to a method reflective of "power"as Christ exercised and taught it.

This is method marked by cooperative rather than adversarial interaction, by energetic argument that is exploratory and searching rather than combative, and by healthy, good-humored alliance rather than rivalry and contention. Yet, by requiring peer dialog and review process both within and across disciplines, a collaborative method provides lively, fruitful and protective natural tensions.

Such a process offers a living model of something we are trying to say: we need to come together in the fullest variety of our callings and training, to come together ecumenically, in order to contribute what each person and group has, toward a unified Christian vision for our time. Such a process is the only means by which we can take fully into account the range of new knowledge we have at our disposal in this moment, at the dawn of a new millennium. 

We see this process, with its mutuality and reciprocity as a biblical mandate, as a matter of obedience to the teaching and example of Christ. And, if the sheer joy of such an undertaking is not  motivation enough, the fact is, human survival may depend on whether or not we learn to work cooperatively.