The challenging and highly rewarding task put to ACU faculty members as Christian scholars is to develop new curriculum that is fully relevant to Africa, deeply derived from the Christian worldview and that informs the wholelife purpose of students. It is important that each faculty member rethink, and as necessary, reconstruct the knowledge base of his or her particular academic discipline for this multifaceted purpose. This task requires the critical assessment of each academic discipline from the historic roots to the contemporary accomplishments. This process will equip ACU faculty members in worldview understanding of the fundamentals of his/her particular academic discipline. There are many advantages to (re-)developing each discipline from the foundations. Here we will consider a few.

Advantages of Developing the Fundamentals from Historic and Classic Literature

1. Anti-pragmatism - Students must realise that theories, methodologies and knowledge useful to their education and vocations have a broad development history. Tracing the history of ideas in a respective field through the classic literature helps students to understand the worldview and cultural settings of those ideas. From that foundation, competing worldviews and ideologies can be discerned to provide examples for each student's critical thinking development. Students must develop an appreciation for ideas and the process through which they were developed to help mature their own innovative thinking, thereby equipping them for proposing new ideas. They must escape the mode of seeing ideas, knowledge and methods for their narrow, pragmatic applications and appreciate the beauty and excellence of the knowledge of truth itself. Contemporary education has imbibed either a pragmatic, preparation-for-a-job mentality, where the professor views the job to be information transfer from the teacher to the student, or a process of ideologically conforming students as political activists for the latest, elitist academic trend to revolt against previous generational tradition. Students need to be challenged from their existing worldviews to increase in knowledge, wisdom and the grace of God in seeking truth, beauty and goodness through all avenues of learning and development.

2. Discernment - A student must first establish their understanding of the fundamental developments of an idea or base of knowledge from a particular thinker or a developing school in an academic discipline through the classic, original literature sources. From there, the progressive maturing of the idea or theory can be traced through history where various worldview and cultural influences can be parsed out in order to aid students in exercising their discernment in aspects of assessing where constructive truth-building is being accomplished versus influences that may corrupt or deter truth (suppressing truth). As the students have opportunity to read original literature sources and realise how ideas can be corrupted or misappropriated versus realising constructive and beneficial additions and applications of ideas, it adds to their own discernment and experience-base in understanding the influence of worldview and culture on thinking and discovery.

This exercising of a student's discernment is a fundamental or core value of ACU that must be purposefully and rigorously developed into each course by the instructor. It is hard work, but is also the source of greatest joy and accomplishment in the work of teaching and mentoring students. This exercising of a student's discernment should provide constant opportunity to reinforce the Biblical worldview in contrast to alternate, faulty worldviews. Study of the Scripture and consultation with others, especially those well-practiced in theology, should be a privileged part of this academic and holistic endeavour. Keep Hebrews 5:12-14 in mind. Students should be guided in maturing in their ability to apply Scripture to their discernment by constant practice, exercising their discerning of good and evil.

3. Critical/Liberal Arts Thinking - This repetitive process of developing ideas from classic or original source literature, tracing the historical development of those ideas through classic literature, emphasising worldview and cultural influences in shaping ideas and the branching-off of alternate ideas, should be a repetitive experience in each course that ACU students are enrolled. This repetitive exposure to a process of rigorously discerning truth from error from a Biblical perspective will greatly form each student's ability to think and reason systematically, clearly and critically. This approach to developing the knowledge base in every academic discipline from classical literature sources will afford a well-practiced, critical thinking, liberal arts student. Again, this is a fundamental value of ACU and one that should bring great joy to ACU instructors, mentors and Christian scholars.

4. Equips Students and Faculty - Lastly, because much of higher education has long abandoned such rigorous approaches to holistic exercising of students' discernment through exposure to the world's great literature, the results of these efforts in curriculum development should afford great dividends to ACU and its faculties.

(a) Curriculum developed in this manner will be the seedbed for fruitful, Biblical worldview development and innovative thinking in the application of ideas to issues of direct relevance to Africa. The students should be motivated through readings, assignments and exercises to passionately pursue ideas that will best prepare them to image God in their vocations and various spheres of life.

(b) Such efforts in curriculum development will provide the platform for scholarly work for all of ACU's faculty members. A well-researched lecture can develop into a meeting presentation, a meeting presentation into a publishable research article, a series of published articles into a book, and a combination of articles and books into a unique, Christian worldview textbook with an African emphasis. Such scholarly efforts will significantly contribute to a field of study. As Christian scholars, all ACU faculty members should honour Christ in their display of minds rigorously engaged in the discovery and exaltation of truth in every academic discipline. This will be a powerful source of mentoring students in Christian scholarship and display a life devoted to "do all things as unto the Lord."