Are Christian Colleges Worth the Trouble?

The church college is fighting for its life. To many, the problem is primarily one of dollars and scholars. There is a dollar drain. Runaway inflation and reduced denominational support make it increasingly difficult to pay competitive salaries, construct attractive physical facilities, and offer a wide range of student services. There is also a brain drain. It is becoming harder to recruit good students and teachers. The church school once enjoyed a virtual monopoly in higher education; now it must compete for students with the much less expensive state universities and community colleges. In this struggle the church college often is hindered by a poor image; besides being “too expensive,” it is “too paternalistic” and “too pietistic.” Moreover, it is not easy to find professors who are well trained, creative in the classroom and laboratory, concerned for the students’ personal maturity, committed to evangelical Christianity, and willing to work long hours in trying circumstances for low pay.

Some suggest that since all these problems are essentially financial, there really is nothing wrong with the church college that money could not cure. But the problem is much deeper than these matters of faculty, funds, and facilities. The real crisis is one of function and philosophy. Just what is the real purpose of a church college? Our affluent generation could support the church college if a convincing case could be made for its temporal relevance and eternal value. Our difficulty is that we have often offered the public an inadequate rationale for our existence. The two most common arguments in favor of the church school have to do with Christian humanism and personalism.

1. It is frequently suggested that the church college deserves support because of its commitment to a liberal arts education. But this theory is seldom substantiated in practice. Many church colleges are really mini-universities, including professional schools of theology, music, law, nursing, and education. Liberal arts offerings affect only some of the students. This situation is a consequence of the history of the church college. These schools were founded, not to educate a small elite in the liberal arts, but to train pastors and teachers to serve the people. Christian service in church and community was the initial motivation. Although many church schools have excellent programs in the liberal arts, this was neither their original nor their primary purpose.

2. It is often suggested also that the church college deserves support because of its commitment to “person-centered” education. The campus is said to be characterized by “smallness” and “friendliness.” It is true that many of these colleges have limited enrollments; but would they cease to be true church colleges if they grew larger? Furthermore, smallness is not necessarily a virtue. Instead of leading to community and collegiality, it can generate complacency, a sense of cozy stagnation, and a kind of monastic isolation from the larger society. In an age of bigness smallness can be a liability. Smallness can mean a lack of opportunities for personal and professional growth because of a narrow and confining atmosphere. As one critic quipped, “This is a small Christian school, all right—a school for small Christians.” Furthermore, the church college holds no monopoly on “friendly personal attention”; it is available at secular institutions as well. Also, what kind of personal attention is meant—academic, moral, or spiritual?

The real case for the church college is grounded neither in humanism nor in personalism but in a radical theism. The church college insists that all dimensions of man’s life rest under the sovereignty of God. It therefore begins the educational process with a declaration of man’s dependence upon the Deity. Such an institution confesses that the values of humanism and personalism are impossible apart from God and that the entire man, not simply his aptitudes and attitudes, must be nurtured. Because of this conviction, the church college, as one university charter states it, is pledged to the promotion of religion, learning, and morality. This threefold purpose is its uniqueness.

Religion And Society

Promoting religion is the primary function of a church college. If this purpose is minimized or compromised, the institution is reduced to mediocrity. Professor Elton Trueblood has described such a tragedy:

The plight of the ex-Christian college is a really deplorable one. Once the commitment to Christ is rejected or forgotten, such an institution, lacking the strength of the state institutions, becomes nondescript. As long as the Christian college maintains its vision of wholeness, it is often a place of tremendous hope in the creation of a civilization, but its major effectiveness ends when the wholeness ends. Its greatness declines when it ceases to hold the love of God and the love of learning in a single context [The New Man for Our Time, p. 41].

As a service institution, the Christian college promotes religion for the sake of both church and society.

The church college’s services to the Church are fairly obvious. It is the mind of the Church at work, wrestling with the Word of God. The result is sound biblical theology. It is the school of the Church, training a new generation for leadership in the Christian community. The result is an enthusiastic and educated ministry—both lay and clerical. The church college is the ministry of the Church, witnessing to the academic sector of society that Christ is the Truth they seek. The result is high-caliber evangelism and stimulating apologetics.

Less clear, however, is how the church college makes itself useful to a secular society. By its very existence the Christian college says that religion is the leaven of society, and that without theology, technology results in mechanized barbarism, and that apart from loyalty to Christ, culture deteriorates into hedonism. The Christian educator is convinced that a religious faith stands at the center of every great civilization. Undergirding the cultures of India and China are faiths rooted in supernatural values. Behind the brilliance of the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman empires stood the influence of Islam. Byzantine civilization was sustained for over a thousand years by Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It is, however, especially Western civilization that is a product of the Gospel. Occidental culture was born in the Church. It was Christianity that preserved the classics of antiquity and passed them on to the Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic barbarians of Europe. To unlettered peoples the Church brought an evangelistic message that not only saved souls but also made literary languages out of obscure dialects. The medieval synthesis of Christianity and the classics, the first independent flowering of a distinctly European civilization, occurred in the nourishing context of Roman Catholicism. The amazing artistic, literary, scientific, and commercial explosion of early modern times received strength and inspiration from the Protestant Reformation.

But is religion still vital to the needs of civilization? Here contemporary critics aim their attack. Perhaps religion was central to culture in a rural, traditional society. Today, however, we live in the “secular city” and man has “come of age.” Our need is for “religionless Christianity.” The church college, therefore, by promoting a theocentric kind of religion has become irrelevant and obsolete.

Or has it? To affirm the absolute sovereignty of God is the most relevant thing a church college can do! This is its greatest service to society for two reasons:

1. It is a call to wholeness. A healthy society is one with a strong sense of community. For community to exist, something or somebody must be shared in common. There must be a powerful center that pulls isolated individuals together into a meaningful unity. What that integrating idea of individual is determines the character and direction of the community. And here is our present predicament. Contemporary culture is fragmented. We have subcultures and social agglomerations, but no real community. None of our modern ideologies has been strong enough to create lasting community. Lacking the power of a persuasive faith, our century has turned to military dictators who use coercion to create a social collective. Force and terror declare that modern civilization lacks a heart, at its center there is only a void. The secularism loosed by the Enlightenment has eroded the spiritual ties that once bound society together and has banished from its center the only Person who truthfully said, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”

Nowhere is the resultant disintegration more visible than in the university. The function of a university is to be the mind of humanity. And yet the corporate intellect, lacking any integrative convictions, has fallen victim to a severe case of academic schizophrenia. A veritable babel of voices rises from the multiversity, and no clear line of direction is indicated. Mental confusion is combined with purposeless agitation. Could there be any greater indication that modern man is sick?

The church college, if it is true to its calling, can offer a corrective message. Religion unites, as a suggested Latin root, religare (“to bind together,” or “to integrate”) indicates. Religion provides the framework for community. At the heart of this community stands the Individual who said, “I am the truth.” This Healing Saviour, if we ask him, can cast out the seven demons that have occupied the empty house of intellect. The mind finds its Master, and sanity and wholeness are restored to school and society.

2. It is a call for help. As Josiah Royce wrote:

Man is an infinitely needy creature. He wants endlessly numerous special things—food, sleep, pleasure, fellowship, power …, peace in all its elusive forms, love in its countless disguises—in brief, all the objects of desire. But amongst these infinitely manifold needs, the need for salvation stands out … as a need that is peculiarly paramount.… [The Sources of Religious Insight, pp. 11, 12].

Modern man needs God more than ever before—because he is more dependent upon the Deity than any of his ancestors! Never in the history of Western civilization has the biblical affirmation of man’s dependence upon God been more relevant. As the British Methodist scholar C. Cyril Eastwood has observed, “every new discovery increases our moral and spiritual responsibility. The truth is: man is now more dependent upon God, not less” (Life and Thought in the Ancient World, p. 49). In an era of immense power, we need more than ever before the restraining force of God’s Law and the redeeming might of Christ’s Love. Without them, we will perish. The mission of the church college is to make known the law and love of God by the persuasive promotion of biblical religion.

Faith And Learning

Perhaps it is granted that there is a need for an institution to promote the study of biblical religion. But is that a proper function of a university? Isn’t this need already fulfilled much better by theological seminaries and Bible schools? Why should we attempt to combine in one institution the study of both sacred and secular knowledge? Indeed, is it possible to pursue the study of truth from revelation and reason simultaneously without confusing the two? Two groups have steadfastly insisted on the incompatibility of Christianity and a college of arts and sciences:

1. On the one hand there are the radical evangelicals who regard reason as the “devil’s whore,” who insist that biblical revelation contains the only truth that is profitable to a believer. With Tertullian, they ask:

What is there in common between Athens and Jerusalem? What between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians?… After Christ Jesus we desire no subtle theories, no acute inquiries after the gospel.… [De praescriptione haerecticorum, vii].

2. On the other hand there are the thoroughgoing secularists who regard revelation as superstition. Truth is discovered, not donated, they believe, and investigation, not inspiration, is the way to understand the world. This approach is highly empirical and places a great premium on experience. Since doubt, not faith, is the basis of knowledge, genuine scientific studies could never occur in a church college context where there is a prior commitment to theistic values; this is an unwarranted restriction on the freedom of thought. Furthermore, the church college is not open to the world. Because it is a closed society, it could not possibly be interested in new knowledge. It is committed to indoctrination and the collection of decision cards.

Perhaps it would be sufficient to answer both objectors with a sentence from St. Bernard of Clairvaux: “It ill becomes a spouse of the Word to be stupid.” But a deeper issue is involved. Despite their differences, the radical evangelicals and the secularists share certain misconceptions concerning the relation of faith and knowledge. They fail to realize that biblical religion makes the three fundamental affirmations that are indispensable to the educational process:

1. The Bible teaches the unity and universality of truth. Before the Greeks discovered this insight through philosophy, the Hebrews received it by means of revelation. It is the confession of the Pentateuch—“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deut. 6:4)—that makes the academy possible. The oneness of God implies and insures the unity of knowledge. Because of monotheism, the Hebrews were able to reject polytheism, with its plurality of revelations, and henotheism, with its relativity of loyalties. Armed with this faith, the evangelical educator has an important ministry to perform. He can affirm the harmony of truth received through all the sciences (sacred, natural, and social), for the three books of God—Scripture, Nature, and History—all have the same Author. Clement of Alexandria said it quite well in the third century: “God is the source of all good things; of some primarily, as of the old and new Testaments; of others by consequence, as of philosophy” (Stromateis, I, v. 28). The Christian scholar is called upon to be an agent of reconciliation in an academic world that is severely compartmentalized. By witnessing to the unity of truth he will correct two further faults in the modern university: the alienation of facts from values and the rampant relativism that has deprived academic man of the power to discern and judge.

2. The Bible teaches the reliability of sanctified reason. Next to relativism, the biggest crisis on campus is the revolt against reason. In the institutions devoted to intellectual endeavor, we often witness the use of force rather than persuasion. Action, not reflection, is the current message, power, not principles, the motto.

The loss of confidence in the rational process is a sort of academic death-wish. Professor Abraham Kaplan has written:

The new treason of the intellectuals is that we have shared and even contributed to the current loss of faith in the power of the human mind to cope with human problems, faith in the worth of reasoned discussion, faith even in the possibility of objective truth [The Travesty of the Philosophers,” Change, January–February, 1970, p. 13].

The collapse of rationality has led to a form of scholastic insanity on campus. The university has not “blown its mind”—it has lost its mind.

The task of the Christian scholar today is to reaffirm the reliability of reason. Paradoxically enough, we do this not by reason but by faith. The problem is that nothing in this world, including the rational process, is self-explanatory, self-sufficient, and capable of self-justification. That reason is a trustworthy guide to the mysteries of the universe, that the laws of logic are valid, and that the mind is not simply a byproduct of chemical-physical processes—these are all confessions of faith. But our faith has its Reason, the Eternal Mind of God disclosed to us in Jesus Christ. The Christian educator believes that reason is a guide to truth, not illusion, because his mind has met the mind of the Master. Behind the events of history, the life-processes, the patterns of nature, the motion of the universe, and the matter all around, there is a Mind—Reason Eternal. He has revealed himself to us; as Paul exclaims, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33). “For who has known the mind of the Lord …?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 1:16). Christ, our Brother and Saviour, is also, as John discloses, the Reason (Logos) by which the world operates (John 1:1). By his indwelling, our minds are renewed (see Ephesians 4:23) and are freed from illusions, fantasies, and myths. In his communion we find the unity of subjective and objective knowledge in a Person. Through the Master we find the integration of all dimensions of selfhood—emotion, mind, and will—in a total love that is passionate, intellectual, and volitional (see the Great Commandment, Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). Because Christ is faithful, we realize that the world is a place of purpose, pattern (ratio, the stem of our word reason, implies the notion of “pattern”), and personal values. On the basis of these assumptions, donated by revelation, we can go on to make discoveries by human reason.

Apart from this meeting of human and divine minds in Christ, there is no assurance that reason is reliable, that the universe is one of meaning, not simply one of absurd coincidences and random chance. Natural intellect is bound to end up with confusion and despair. Bertrand Russell, regarded by many as this century’s most noteworthy philosopher, ended up with only cosmic chaos. Without the guidance of Christ, the Reason, he could perceive only that “man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving” and that human history is but the result of “accidental collocations of atoms” (Mysticism and Logic, and Other Essays, p. 47). But thanks be to God for the Light of Reason, the revelation of Jesus Christ! Because of this we envision purpose and our minds find rest. With Isaiah, the evangelical educator testifies, “Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.…” (Isa. 26:3).

3. The Bible teaches the priority of experience. Scholarship requires more than a belief in the unity of truth and the validity of reason. It has to rest in experience. As Josiah Royce has written, “Without intense and intimate personal feeling, you never learn any valuable truths whatever about life, about its ideals, or about its problems …” (The Sources of Religious Insight, p. 30). The empirical nature of knowledge and the importance of experience have been demonstrated by contemporary science.

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no inherent conflict between science and religion; both rest on experience. In this sense evangelical Christianity is quite “scientific” because it is thoroughly experiential. Throughout the Bible the appeal is to a personal experience of God. The psalmist states, “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8), an admonition fulfilled in the spiritual eating and drinking of the Lord’s Supper! “Come and see” is his invitation (Ps. 66:16), for—

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

Day unto day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

… their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

Psalm 19:1, 2, 4

The biblical writer urges us to “come and see what God has done: he is terrible in his deeds among men” (Ps. 66:5). The Prophet Isaiah reports his moving experience with the angel of the Lord, who “touched my mouth, and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven’ ” (Isa. 6:7). Paul, in his sermon to the scholars on Mars Hill, stressed the experiential nature of religion, confessing that the Lord made men so “that they should seek God, in the hope they might feel after him and find him” (Acts 17:27). Christianity, therefore, is very empirical, very experiential, very “scientific.” The supernatural is known, not by philosophical speculation nor by vivid artistic imagination, but by direct personal participation in the Spirit of God—through conversion, prayer, Scripture, the sacraments, and service. Here the natural and the supernatural intersect. Because of its strong emphasis on experience, evangelical Christianity can speak meaningfully to men of science. The church college, therefore, will have two types of laboratories on its campus: a science hall, in which to experience the wonders of the world, and a chapel, in which to encounter that world’s Author and Redeemer. For is it not the personal knowledge of God as Saviour that gives meaning and direction to the objective knowledge of the creation?

The fundamentals of scholarship—a belief in the integrity of truth, the reliability of reason, and the experimental method—all have roots deep in evangelical Christianity. When they are severed from their source, it is doubtful whether these procedures can continue to bear fruit. They simply are not self-sustaining. The vocation of the Christian scholar is to be a bridge-builder between a confused and atrophying culture and its origins in the Living God. If we don’t construct that bridge, who will?

Personality And Morality

Perhaps we can see the contribution of the church college to faith and learning. Does it also have a role in morality? Indeed! It is a teacher. The church college affirms moral values because of Christ’s command to share the entire revelation with the world (“teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,” Matthew 28:20). It also realizes that the most urgent demand of today’s youth is for meaning. “The Graduate,” soaked with sun, suds, and sex, wanders through his affluent society and says, with Septimius Severus, “I have had everything and nothing was worth very much.” Our ministry is to witness to what is really worthwhile. Furthermore, true Christian knowledge is impossible apart from piety. As Philip Jacob Spener wrote,

To obtain a genuine, living, active and salutary knowledge of divine things it is not enough to read and search the Scriptures, but it is necessary that love of Christ be added, that is, that one beware of sins against conscience, by which an obstacle is raised against the Holy Spirit, and that one earnestly cultivate piety [Pia Desideria, translated by Theodore G. Tappert, p. 106].

But the ministry of the Christian college goes beyond simply teaching the way. It has a word for moral dropouts, for it is a pastor with absolution for the learner who gets lost. Guilt is our predicament. We need to hear again the good news that God accepts us—even when we are ethical failures. Isn’t this the heart of the message of the Scriptures, which are given to make us “wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15)? Let it therefore be at the heart of every church college that we, “who were dead in trespasses … God made alive … having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:13, 14). If this is our message, then the church college is really relevant, for it results in not merely a diploma but an eternal rendezvous with the Truth himself!

C. George Fry is assistant professor of history at Capital University. He is an ordained Lutheran minister, and he holds the Ph.D. degree from Ohio State University.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.