Dissertation Abstract

Trying to Say in 1 Page What I Said in Nearly 300

I am rapidly approaching, with great anticipation, the defense date for my Doctoral Dissertation. November 14 will be a culminating event in my life. I have been a student for the last nineteen years straight from the time I started college when I was 21. I would appreciate your prayers as I approach this last great hurdle of my academic career (as a student).

I thought I’d share with you the abstract which I have written for my dissertation. The title of my dissertation is ON THE PLACE OF STORY IN VIRTUE EDUCATION. An abstract is a summary of the content and conclusions of an academic work, and it is supposed to fit on one double spaced page. I found this very challenging. How does one condense nearly 300 pages of work onto just one page? I don’t mind telling you I am not satisfied! Nevertheless, it is also the case that at some point you just have to say, “I guess that’ll do.”

Lord willing, I hope to publish my dissertation (possibly in a slightly modified form) for public consumption sometime in the next year. I am hopeful it will be a blessing to my fellow Christian educators and parents as we labor together to raise a new generation of young Christian men and women who love what is true, good, and beautiful and who will follow Christ Jesus our Lord with courage and hope!

Here is my abstract:

Storytelling plays an essential role in the formation and preservation of virtue in every generation. The first part of this work centers around questions like “What is virtue?” and “Why should anyone desire to live a virtuous life?” The answer to these questions is that virtue is a kind of excellence of human behavior, acquired by habitual practice, resulting in a sense of well being or “happiness” which is universally desired by all men. A critical notion defended in this work is that virtue, and thereby happiness, can only be acquired through submission to reality (and reality’s God). The principle seven virtues are discussed and divided into two categories; Cardinal and Theological. The Cardinal virtues represent the highest achievement of moral virtue possible by the will and effort of natural man. The Theological virtues are gifts of divine grace which grant supernatural life to the possessor and they, in turn, infuse the Cardinal virtues with new potency. The second part of this work demonstrates that stories are essential to the process of virtue education. Daily life does not provide sufficient models of virtue to develop the moral imagination (which is a critical component in the process of acquiring moral virtue and also in its prudent exercise), therefore stories are necessary to provide for that lack. Stories create vicarious experiences wherein the moral virtues can be modeled for, and participated in by, story receivers. These vicarious experiences, when interacting with morally praiseworthy stories, create a desire for virtue which elicits the choice to pursue virtue. Vicarious participation in stories also provides a meaningful kind of practice of virtue. Various mediums and modes of storytelling (oral, visual, written), as well as the genres in which stories may be told, are considered in this work for their strengths and weaknesses as vehicles for storytelling. The study of literature, written from within the Christian myth (worldview), is determined to have the greatest overall benefit for the purposes of training human hearts to desire and acquire virtue.

That’s it. That’s the preview, but there is so much more inside! There is so much I couldn’t say here! I can’t wait to share all of it with everyone.