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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Tuesday, Sept. 17, 1985
Harvard initiates Orientation offers unusual perspective
The Associated Press
BOSTON — One giggling freshman was lowered into a sewer yesterday, while others signed up for a tour of black history landmarks in field trips meant to give newcomers to Harvard University a fresh view of a new world.
"We want them to open their eyes," Burriss Young, associate dean of freshmen at Harvard, said recently. "I've talked to seniors who have never even been on a subway."
Young packed+500 freshmen into boats yesterday for a tour of Georges Island, a Civil War fort in Boston Harbor and one of several unusual stops on a weeklong orientation jaunt.
The dean had said the tour was meant to show students how immigrants must have felt as they approached Boston. "We want them
to land in the harbor the way immigrants did." Young said.
But that idea was dropped before the tour, and no mention was made of
'If all we ever look at are beautiful facades, all we will see are facades. In the end all this beauty here depends upon the sewer system.'
- John E. Stilgoe Harvard landscape historian
immigrants. "That was just some smart comment I made," Young said.
Instead, students were lectured on manhole covers as clues to the progress of civilization, and a young woman wearing a Princedown sweatshirt was lowered into a sewer to show her what it looked like and to calm her fears about rats underground.
"In the end, all this beauty here depends upon the sewer system," he said.
"If all we ever look at are beautiful facades, all we will see are facades." said John E. Stilgge, a Harvard landscape historian, who preceded the freshman into the sewer.
The odd introduction to college life was organized by Young when he realized that because of the Jewish holidays, he had a few more days than usual to orient freshman before classes started tomorrow.
"It's fun." Lisa Goodall, 18, of Holliston, Mass., said. "We're all up too late every night.
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MEXICO CITY – The Salvadoran government sent two negotiators to Mexico to meet with rebels suspected of kidnapping President Jose Napoleon Duarte's daughter, a Salvadorian official said.
FDR is the political wing of the leftist guerrillas, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN.
The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named, said Rey Prendes will try to open preliminary contacts with representatives of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, or FDR.
Duarte's men to meet captors
Salvadoran Communications Minister Julio Rey Prendes and Deputy Foreign Minister Ricardo Acevedo Peralta flew to Mexico City Sunday aboard a private jet, a Salvadoran government official in El Salvador said.
However, a rebel spokesman denied that talks were held.
Duarte's oldest daughter, Ines Guadalupe Duarte Duran, 35, and a second woman were abducted Sept. 10 by gunmen who killed one of Duarte's bodyguards and severely wounded another. No group has publicly taken responsibility for the abduction.
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A CONCISE REPLY TO CHRISTIANITY
Christians and Muslims who learn something of one another's religion find that a crucial issue is the nature of Jesus. The majority of Christians deify Jesus while Muslims say that he was no more than a prophet of God, a faultless human being. The doctrine of the Trinity avows that three distinct co-equals are. God. In particular, Jesus is said to be God the Son, or the Son of God. As the Muslim questions details of this theology, the Christian characteristically forms a common explanation for our differences: He complains that Muslims do not understand the Trinity: that we are actually accusing Christians of Tritheism and other heresies.
So the Muslim seeks clarification of the teaching and asks at every step: "How could that be so?" For example, we insist that the term "Son of God" cannot have a literal Interpretation. Sonship and divine nature would be necessary attributes of such an actuality, but these incompatible. The first describes a recipient of life while the second describes One who received life from no one. These are mutually exclusive requirements then. To be a son is to be less than devine, and to be devine is to be no one's son.
As a discussion proceeds, it is the Christian who will eventually take refuge in the response: "These are things that we cannot understand." His assessment of the Muslim's problem becomes his own confession. The Christian becomes self-defeating so there is a change of tactic.
tactic.
He complains that the Muslim refuses to accept what cannot be understood. But the modified approach is a diversion. Now the concepts of verification and understanding are confused. To illustrate: Chemical reactions may be verified but the atom is not thereby understood. Facts are catalogued but not always explained. This distinction is the key to our concise reply. It is the Muslim who must redirect the discussion. Our primary issue is one more basic than resolving the incongruities of Trinitarian doctrine. Rather than ask how the Trinity can be so. We ask, "Why must Jesus be devine? Can we verify; the necessity of this belief?"
The Muslim Position
of the authorities and the truth of the truth. Our purpose here is no more than the illustration that belief in the Trinity can only be based on Church authority. Many Christians admit that this is the case while others insist that the teaching was elaborated by Jesus himself. "Let them produce their proof," is the repeated admonition of the Quran, that is, 'provide the documentation that Jesus himself claimed unqualified deity, (Quran 21:24). Unless this evidence can be produced, authorities are subject to challenge. Then the Christian may not evade the Muslim's questions concerning understanding. The Christian will have no justification for maintaining an illogical position, unless he is content to rely on the opinions of men. If he will probe no deeper than this, the Christian-Muslim dialogue is finished.
A few centuries ago, European philosophers commonly felt that a conjecture was proven if it could be shown to be equivalent to an assertion made by Aristotle. Unfortunately, such an approach stopped short of challenging Aristotle and discovering truth. Similarly, resting the Trinitarian case on what people have said about Jesus stops short of establishing the integrity of the authorities and the truth of the matter.
For Christians, the only documents accepted as reporting the words of Jesus are the accounts given in the Bible. We leave the Muslim attitude toward the Bible for part II of this essay and find our motivation now in the Quranic verse, "Say: 'O People of the Book! You have no ground to stand upon unless you stand fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you from your Lord.'" (Quran 5:71). Christians are advised to support their claims by citing their books. Thus Muslims believe that no saying of Jesus can be produced which shows him grasping at equality with God. The primary issue is not whether Jesus is God. The first question is whether he said that he was equal to God.
Gary Miller
A Christianism Mathematician who
Converted to Islam
Sponsored by the Islamic Center of Lawrence If you have any questions about this article or the next 9 articles see Gary Miller on Sept. 23, Kansas Union Ballroom 7:30 P.M.
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