A careful look at our subject, “The Word of God in Education,” will provide a clue to the manner in which it ought to be treated. Quite evidently, two things are placed side by side—the Word of God and education—one in relation with the other. The first of the two, “The Word of God,” needs close definition; the second, “education,” must be brought to focus upon the particular kind of education with which we are here concerned, namely, the Bible college or Bible institute. This is a specific type of institution, to be sure, but the principles that will be discussed apply as well to other fields of education.
Consider the first phrase, “The Word of God.” Though a synonym for the Bible, this by no means exhausts the meaning of the phrase. In a Supreme Court opinion, Justice Holmes once wrote this sentence: “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content, according to the time when, and the circumstances under which, it is used.” Here we have one of the first principles of exegesis of any book, the Bible included.
Viewed then in its scriptural usage as “the skin of a living thought,” we may identify three aspects of “the Word of God” in its relationship to education. They are: first, the written Word of God, the Bible; second, the Word of God manifest in creation; and third, the Word of God incarnate in our Lord Jesus Christ.
THE BIBLE AND AUTHORITY
We begin with the Word of God as Scripture. Among Christians in general and evangelical Christians in particular, the Word of God is synonymous with the Bible. The equation is fully justified because it is made again and again in the Old and New Testaments. Here, as the names “Bible college” and “Bible institute” imply, is the central point of integration. But why so? Why not theology, as in many seminaries? Or why not the officially sanctioned philosophy of a great doctor of the church, as in the Roman Catholic institutions with their Thomism?
Before dismissing the question as being so obvious as not to require an answer, let us look beneath the surface to see some reasons why this Book, and no other, must be central in Christian education.
The first reason is the sheer, unapproachable greatness of the written Word of God. Considered just as a book, it holds the first place by reason of the criterion voiced in the classic treatise On the Sublime, in which Longinus declares, “That is really great which bears a repeated examination and which it is difficult or rather impossible to withstand and the memory of which is strong and hard to efface.… For when men of different pursuits, lives, ambitions, ages, languages, hold identical views on one and the same subject, then the verdict which results, so to speak, from a concert of discordant elements makes our faith in the object of admiration strong and unassailable.” This is the doctrine of literary criticism known as the Law of Universal Consent and it applies to the Bible as literature. It is a fact that over and above any other piece of world literature from Homer down through Virgil, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe, no book has been more fully acknowledged as great simply as a book than the Bible.
Let no Christian educator ever apologize to the sophisticated of the educational world for such a designation as “Bible College.” It should be for all who are committed to this kind of education a badge of honor. To take as the center of the curriculum the one book to which alone the superlative “greatest” can without challenge be applied—this is neither narrow nor naive. It is just good judgment to center on the best rather than the second best.
But there is a deeper reason why the written Word of God must be at the heart of our schools and colleges, and that is its authority as the inspired, inerrant Word of God. At this point plain speaking is in order. The current movement to express in contemporary, understandable terms the eternal verities of the faith, so that the people whom we must reach for Christ will know what we are talking about, deserves support. We should rejoice at the renaissance of good and enlightened scholarship among evangelicals which is sometimes called neo-evangelicalism. But at the same time we must not blink the evidence that there is current among some evangelicals a subtle erosion of the doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture that is highly illogical as well as dangerous.
It is illogical for this reason. We live in a day when archaeology has come into conformity with Scripture to such a degree that the number of alleged discrepancies used by destructive critics of the past in their effort to discredit Scripture has been greatly reduced. Today scholars are writing such chapters as “Reversals of Old Testament Criticism” and “Reversals of New Testament Criticism” (see the recently published symposium, Revelation and the Bible). Those who over the years have held a suspended judgment regarding Bible difficulties, while still adhering to the inerrancy of the Book, have found question after question cleared up by new knowledge. Therefore, with all our openness of mind and emphasis on scholarship, we need to be careful to maintain the historic, Reformed view of a Bible infallible in the autographs (a view not to be equated with the dictation, mechanical theory of inspiration, but one held by our Lord and the apostles). And we need to maintain this position against neo-orthodox views of the Bible that may infiltrate even the Bible college and Bible institute. Let us by all means redefine and restate the evangelical position, but never at the cost of yielding any essential part of the authority of the Bible.
CRITICISM AND EDUCATION
The second reason why Scripture must be at the heart of education concerns its indispensable critical function. In a day of debased values and satisfaction with the second and even third rate, education requires a standard and point of reference by which the cheapened standards of our day may be judged.
Writing at the beginning of the industrial revolution in England, the poet Wordsworth declared: “… a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.” And he went on to speak of the literature of violence and sensationalism of his day. But now, under the impact of far greater changes and forces than any industrial revolution, and beset with the debasement of plain, everyday decency, this violent age in which we live has far more need of discriminating judgment than that of Wordsworth.
No other book can fulfill this critical, discriminating function like the Word of God. As the writer of Hebrews put it, “the word of God is quick, and powerful, sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner [Greek, kritikos] of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” In a time which Sir Richard Livingstone has rightly called “The Age without Standards,” the Bible alone qualifies as the supreme critic of life and thought.
Dr. H. Langmead Casserly has called our world “The Bent World.” The “bent” refers to the distortion of sin that stems from the fall and runs through all of life. And from this “bent,” even Christian education is no exception. We do not always realize that this distortion affects areas of knowledge and education to different degrees. As Emil Brunner has pointed out, the twist resulting from sin is most marked in the humane subjects like theology, philosophy, history, and literature. It is less marked in areas like physics and chemistry, and in mathematics it approaches zero. Thus there is Christian theology, Christian philosophy, or Christian literature, but not Christian mathematics. It is in the humanities that the curricula in our schools and colleges have their strongest emphasis; and it is here that the critical, penetrating, revealing function of the Bible is most needed.
Now true as this principle is in practice it needs care and courage. Let us in Christian education be fearless enough in our reliance on Scripture as the critic to subject even our cherished formulations of the Bible to its own divine, discriminating judgment. Let us see in searching scrutiny of the Bible that some of the neat and pat outlines and schemes we taught a former generation may need revision. For God has yet more light to break forth from his Word. Let us therefore seek to the glory of God to develop in our students a proper critical-mindedness that subjects all the thinking and formulations of men to the ultimate principles and judgments of the divine kritikos, the Word of God.
Acts chapter 17 gives us a significant example of this function of Scripture. The Christians at Berea, we are told, “were more noble than those at Thessalonica, in that they received the word [in this case doubtless the kerygma or proclamation of the Gospel] with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” In other words, these Christians subjected even the apostolic preaching to the test of the Scriptures. And, it should be pointed out, there is an extension of this Berean principle beyond even doctrine. I am not saying that technical knowledge in science or any other field must be checked point by point with the Bible, but that in respect to ultimates, to the comprehensive frame of reference in Christ by whom (Col. 1:17) “all things consist [hold together],” the Bible is the final critic.
There is a third reason why the Bible must be at the heart of Christian education. This relates to the all-important matter of knowing and finding the truth. The natural tendency of man (very evident in secular education) is to go it on his own. He is prone unwittingly to slip into the error of assuming that human effort, working independently, leads to the truth. Thus man tends to become in relation to knowledge what Emile Cailliet calls “a pseudo-maker,” with truth coming at the end of a process of human rationalization.
TRUTH IN EDUCATION
On the contrary, the whole thrust of the Bible is different. It does not give us truth by way of rationalization but by way of revelation. Truth is not something worked out by men; it is received by faith and then acted upon. Here the biblical method of knowledge is what Anselm of Canterbury expressed in three great words—“Credo ut intelligam” (“I believe that I might know”)—a principle voiced also by Augustine some six hundred years before Anselm, when he wrote, “Nisi crederitis, non intelligetis” (“Unless you believe you will not come to know”). This great insight, so thoroughly biblical, is not, as Professor J. Harris Harbison of Princeton University points out, any “advocacy of blind faith, but the testimony of one of the greatest minds in Christian history to the fact that truth can never be grasped by man’s mind alone.” Going back to Solomon, we must add this: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;” for there can be no “fear of the Lord” without humble belief and reverential trust.
Moreover, basic knowledge in any field, including scientific insight, has this ultimate revelational factor. As Cailliet in his recent book, The Recovery of Purpose, again reminds us, reality was “there in the first place and then literally happened” to man. Witness, among many instances, Archimedes with his unexpected discovery of the principle of hydrostatics and Newton’s experience that led to a comprehension of the law of gravitation. In the deepest sense, knowledge is something that “happens to man” by way of faith acting upon faith; it is not “spun out of the human self.” And the Bible is the book of faith leading to truth.
THE WORD AND NATURE
But the great phrase, “The Word of God,” has two other meanings aside from Scripture itself. These also must be seen in relation to the Bible college. Consider creation as the Word of God, or nature as God’s other book. The Psalmist says: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.… For he spake, and it was done” (33:6, 9). And the prologue of John’s Gospel declares: “In the beginning was the Word.… All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” So also, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psa. 19:1); and, looking about us in the natural world, we may see “the invisible things of him … even his eternal power and Godhead” (Rom. 1:20).
Now this aspect of “The Word of God” has its clear implications for the curriculum of the Bible college or Bible institute. We are living in an age of science and mathematics. Therefore, we must, if we are to communicate with those about us, speak their language. For obvious reasons the schedules of most Bible colleges are preponderantly loaded in the direction of Bible, theology, language, philosophy, music, and the like. However, must not room be made for science and mathematics, not so much in the way of technical laboratory courses (most Bible colleges have neither equipment nor time for such) but rather through setting up good survey courses in these fields so that Bible college graduates will be to some degree literate in contemporary, world-changing concepts of science and mathematics?
Caution should be given at this point. The Bible college must be a Bible college. Even though the trend towards its becoming a liberal arts college is clearly discernible, a Bible college should never be regarded as just a half-way house to the regular college. It is an institution in its own right, and it has its own distinctive contribution to make. The crying need to include in the curriculum something of science and mathematics should not be pressed to the extent of making the Bible college only an attenuated form of the liberal arts college. If God leads a school towards liberal arts, well and good; let it cease being a Bible college. Otherwise let it stay what it is.
I have one other comment about broadening the curriculum. There are those who charge Christian education, centered in the Bible, with narrowness and provincialism. In his book, Christian Faith and Higher Education, Nels Ferré says, “Some writers … advocate the teaching of the Bible as central to the Christian curriculum. When this suggestion is understood … namely, that the Bible is the source book and standard of all other truth, the Bible is wronged and higher education is imperialistically attacked. This is parochialism of the first order.” But if Dr. Ferré had read his reference, Christian Education in a Democracy, carefully, he would have seen that nowhere is the Bible set up as the source book of all other truth. Instead he would have seen that the Bible invites Christian education “to range over the realm of science in all its forms, over the treasures of literature, the mansions of philosophy and theology, and the beauty of music and art; according to its [the Bible’s] warrant, all the best that has been thought and said and done by men through the ages … comes within the province” of Christian education. By this token, the Bible college has a right and obligation to graduate men and women with some degree of literacy in fields of science and mathematics.
We look again at the phrase, “The Word of God,” to see its third meaning. While the Bible is assuredly “the Word of God” and while creation is God’s other book, the Word of God is something even greater than these. As every Christian knows to his soul’s salvation, the Word of God is also Christ. To the first two meanings of the phrase, “the Word of God,” He sustains an indissoluble and pre-eminent relation. In Hebrews 4:12–16, we see the writer’s thought moving from what most commentators take to be the written Word, to the Son of God, the incarnate Word. The plain fact is that Christian education must always see the Bible not as an end in itself but as pointing to Christ who is its theme and subject from Genesis to Revelation.
THE INCARNATE WORD
The moment we lose sight of the fact that the incarnate Word, the eternal Son of God, is greater than and above the written Word which with all its inspiration and infallibility, is still a product of the Holy Spirit, we are in danger of bibliolatry. As Adolph Saphir said, “By bibliolatry I understand the tendency of separating in the first place the Book from the Person of Jesus Christ, and in the second from the Holy Spirit, and of thus substituting the Book for Him who is alone the light and guide of the church.”
For a school to be called a college or school of the Bible is in itself no guarantee of power. It is even possible for the orthodox to become so devoted to technicalities of biblical scholarship as to lose sight of Him whom the Bible is all about. Said D. L. Moody in his forthright way, “The key to the whole Bible is Jesus Christ. You remember that on the way to Emmaus with those two disciples, ‘beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he [Jesus] expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.’ Notice those two ‘alls.’ The one theme of the Old Testament in type and prophecy is the Messiah; and the New Testament deals with his life on earth, and with the Church which is his body, and with his coming glory.”
When the Bible is really at the center in education, the one chief subject is not just the Bible in its linguistic and historic or even doctrinal sense. It is, over and above this, Jesus Christ. As Professor T. W. Manson remarked in a comment on Ephesians 4:20 (where Paul says by way of exhortation, “You have not so learned Christ”), “The writer speaks of learning Christ as you might learn algebra or French. It is an extraordinary statement and one, I think, that goes to the heart of the matter.” Spencer Leeson, Bishop of Peterborough in England, in his Bampton Lectures at Oxford, titled Christian Education, heads his chapter on “The Content of Christian Education” with the eighth verse of Hebrews 13: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” And how does a Bible college or any educational institution teach Christ? In the classroom, yes, but also by the kind of administration and teachers it has. By its ethical, disciplinary, and social tone, and by all that it is and stands for, it teaches Christ.
THE CURSE OF MEDIOCRITY
In conclusion, consider the implications of what we have been discussing. The implications for the Bible college, as well as for all Christian education, commit us in one direction, namely, toward the continuing obligation of excellence. At the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Cum Laude Society in 1956, one of the country’s distinguished educators, Dr. Claude Fuess, Principal Emeritus of Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, spoke on the subject, “The Curse of Mediocrity.” In his comment on the prevailing satisfaction with the average and second rate in our schools and colleges he quoted this evaluation: “Dismal and hopeless mediocrity is the most serious menace to present-day primary and secondary education in America.” And, we might add, it is the most serious menace to college education also. If mediocrity will not do for public and secular education, it is doubly a curse, even a scandal, for evangelicals contentedly to tolerate it in education that is committed unreservedly to the Word of God with all the depth of meaning that accompanies such commitment.
Someone will say, “But we in Christian education just do not have resources in equipment and endowment that secular institutions have.” That is true. In this world’s goods Christian education is comparatively poor. But good taste and excellence and high personal standards and lofty intellectual achievement are not confined to the rich. Granted that the quest for excellence is a continuing one and that humility forbids anyone a feeling that he has arrived, the Bible college, along with every other part of Christian education, cannot evade the unremitting pursuit of excellence to the glory of God.
Hudson Taylor once said: “Every work for God has three states—Impossible, Difficult, Done.” Most Christian schools and colleges have been through the “Impossible” stage, when it hardly seemed that they could ever begin. All of them are in the “Difficult” stage right now, and here they stay; to make the Word of God central in education, and to do this without mediocrity and with a growing attainment of excellence, is a day by day adventure. Only at the final time of accounting, when we stand before the throne of him whose Name is called “The Word of God,” will “Done” be written over our endeavors to make the Word of God the center of education.
Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.
