142 Chapter 3 Christian-holistic education values and seeks all dimensions of human development from early childhood on, including physical, social, emotional, cognitive, spiritual and values-based learning, aiming at the person’s heart as the undivided principle of its existence that precedes head and hands, placing it with pedagogical optimism based on Christian hope before God, to seek its restoration and the longing and ability to serve in all the organic relationships God placed him into; with the self, the neighbour, and nature as a whole. (van Olst, 2023a, p. 11) 3.3 TOWARDS SHALOM-SEEKING CITIZENSHIP The definition of holistic Christian education (Section 2) based on a critical evaluation of WCD in light of historic Christian anthropology (Section 1) refers to the restoration of originally good but later (in the fall) broken relationships. In this restoration, that can be seen as a reconnection of fragmented relationships, both the intrapersonal (the heart before God) and the interpersonal (including community, society and the world) play a role. This all refers to a profound need for Godly grace in education, although it also provides direction to educational practices instrumental to that grace. It brings this study to the pedagogical question of how Christian citizenship formation should be exercised to foster this restoration of relationships and combat both reductionism and fragmentation. To answer this question, I turn to Nicholas Wolterstorff (2004, 2017), a former Yale philosopher in the tradition of Dooyeweerd’s cosmonomic philosophy. More particularly, I turn to his shalom idea for (higher) education, which I think can provide the teleology that WCD is lacking and is based on Biblical ontology. The shalom idea is the fruit of Wolterstorff’s lifelong publishing, although it has received renewed and more coherent attention following a bundling of his essays on the topic by Clarence Joldersma and Gloria Stronks (2004). In the book’s introduction, Joldersma (2004) stated that Wolterstorff’s call for Biblical shalom is meant to preclude ‘withdrawal from the world and society into the safety of a homogeneous Christian community, instead asking Christian institutions of higher education to become voices for social justice and human flourishing’ (p. xxi). Christians need to recognise that all human beings are ‘unavoidably hermeneutic creatures’ who disagree on many topics, but who all interpret experiences and find meaning in doing so, on which basis they all ‘desire, feel, and act’ (Joldersma, 2004, p. 103). To this end, Wolterstorff’s (2004) shalom idea presents a teleology, which I will summarise as ‘shalomseeking citizenship’.
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