Hugh Nibley on Education

Last updated on: January 9, 2015 at 8:57 am by David Bokovoy

Hugh Nibley on Education 2015-01-09T08:57:54-06:00 David Bokovoy

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Hugh Nibley

Anyone interested in the topic of scholarship as a spiritual pursuit should certainly consider the writings of Hugh Nibley. I would especially recommend his classic essay, “Zeal Without Knowledge.” It’s wonderful, to say the least. Yet as great as it is, perhaps my own favorite part of the essay is the introduction given on page 261 in the collection titled, Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless. For Nibley, education was a spiritual rather than a secular pursuit. He writes:

This talk was given on request as part of the celebration of Academic Emphasis Week [at BYU]. Once a year, for a whole week, our students are free to turn their minds to things of an intellectual nature without shame or embarrassment. After this cerebral Saturnalia, the young people mostly return to their normal patterns: concealing the neglect of hard scholarship by the claim to spirituality and strict standards of dress and grooming. Yet from time to time a student will confess to wayward twinges of thought and find himself wondering: “If ‘The Glory of God is Intelligence’ (our school motto) might there not be some possible connection between intelligence and spirituality?” Under temporary license from the Academic Committee, we have presumed to touch upon this sensitive theme.

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