Liberal Arts Under Christ
The Modern Problem of Christian Education
Up to the end of the 19th century, New College Franklin would have been one among many like-minded institutions, since all higher education pursued common goals of truth and wisdom. Theirs was an education that sought to address fundamental questions:
What is truth?
Who is God?
What is man?
How is man to love, serve, and worship the Lord God?
Education in modernity no longer asks these questions. In the place of classical and Christian pursuits in higher education, the goal of education became vocational-technical training. Education no longer entailed the search for knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Instead, it sought pragmatic, utilitarian purposes. Instead of the liberal arts, mechanical arts and agriculture took precedence; and higher education inherited new goals for a new end— a vocational-technical end. As man studies and acts, so he is, and under this new philosophy, the culture of higher education treats man primarily as a utilitarian being. This is the predominant mode of education in modernity, and this mode is rarely true education—at best it is simply training.
This shift has been costly as people’s priorities have shifted. Now, most students expect college to be job training or career certification—goals that reduce the holistic value of a classical college education. This is not to say that liberal arts education does not value job training; but it is to say that job training is not where education begins, nor is it where it ends. When the goal of education is utility, man will become utilitarian. When the goal is pragmatic, so is man, and the value of education is grossly reduced — as is man himself. Education that seeks utilitarian ends externalizes the focus of higher education. The emphasis is on passing a course of study for the sake of a degree rather than for the knowledge, understanding, and wisdom that the degree should represent.
The Care of Souls: A Humane Education
In contrast to the modern approach to education, the ordo salutis provides a helpful model for how education works. The call of the Lord comes from the outside, but the change is within, and then this internal change bears fruit in action. The same is true in education. While education should take into consideration a student’s vocation, the student—not the vocation—is the proper focus of education. Education that follows this truth imitates the natural order in which the Holy Spirit moves man. True education directs God’s light to the heart of man, and then a flame is lit within that alters every part of him — from within to without.
Scripture is clear that man is called to seek more than marketplace success: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33). True education cultivates the whole person—spiritual, physical, and mental—into the image of Christ.
For centuries, the liberal arts, the freeing disciplines, have served as the curriculum for this holistic education. The student who encounters the Trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) will emerge with a stronger mind and soul that can know and enjoy God and His creation. New College Franklin embraces this classical Christian tradition not simply to continue a tradition, but rather to see the redemptive richness of this tradition feed Christ’s Kingdom, seeking to carry out the ancient vision of the Christian liberal arts as displayed in the work of Jan Amos Comenius and Thomas Chalmers at New College, Edinburgh. We stand on this broad time-tested foundation.
With this vision, all courses at New College Franklin examine human culture, emphasizing the basic classical scholastic approach of moral philosophy. Our students are entrenched in the moral drama of history by experiencing the great literary classics of theology, philosophy, poetics, mathematics, and science, including the resulting technological developments. Our curriculum explores the wide sweep of art, architecture, music, and language; and we approach all these disciplines with an emphasis on a Christian life paradigm.
The idea is to study human achievement in context — both in terms of its providential and cultural importance. Out of this integrated understanding of God’s world every other subject and discipline is formed.
Imago Trinitatis
New College Franklin exists to meet this need — to offer genuine education of the whole man. In Latin, education (educere) means “to lead out of,” which implies that a student is led from somewhere to somewhere: there must be a specific goal of education.
We seek to cultivate the next generation of Christians, leading them out of darkness and ignorance through the light of the Spirit into the truth of the Son by the love of the Father. This Trinitarian education is the journey of maturity in Christ, the perfect Whole Man.
Moreover, this purpose of education makes New College Franklin a rare opportunity in today’s fragmented culture of higher education. Made in the image of God, man is a Trinitarian being, and thus ours is a reforming education that humbly seeks Trinitarian life.
In an age of secularism, New College Franklin exists for Christ’s Kingdom —
pursuing wisdom, virtue, and service.
STATEMENT OF FAITH
TRINITARIAN
New College Franklin exists to glorify our Triune God and enjoy communion with Him forever. We believe that God has spoken supremely in our Lord Jesus Christ and in Holy Scripture, teaching us to trust in the sovereign, eternal, just, and merciful decrees of the Father; the atoning life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; and the work of the Holy Spirit as our ongoing Counselor, Guide, Equipper and Friend. These fundamental Trinitarian truths define us first and foremost as mere Christians.
CREDAL
We are orthodox Christians: grateful heirs of the historic Christian Church and of the pioneers and patriarchs of faith who gave us the creeds and the early Church councils—the Apostles Creed, The Nicene Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon. We continue to be linked with that historic line of faithfulness as it has continued, uninterrupted, across the centuries.
CONFESSIONAL
In keeping with this historic line of faithfulness, New College Franklin holds to the reformational confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries, including the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort. We believe that these confessions best articulate orthodox Christian doctrine revealed in the Holy Scriptures. New College Franklin stands in this rich confessional Protestant tradition as a system of ideas intimately connected with the living faith.
PRACTICAL
Because sound theology is inseparable from holiness, we believe that the fruit of the Spirit, love and humility, and service in word and deed are essential marks of true theology. These manifestations of faith are essential to our theological perspective. As our motto “Wisdom, Virtue, Service” proclaims, godliness exists in word and deed. As John writes, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (I John 4:7)
TRINITY
We believe in one, true and living God, infinite in being and holy perfection, immutable, eternal, and incomprehensible. In Him is all life, glory, and goodness for He alone is in Himself all-sufficient. In the unity of the Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
INCARNATION
Christ, the Son of God, is of one substance and equal with the Father. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and took on flesh yet without sin, being in two whole, perfect and distinct natures, one person, fully God and fully man.
HOLY SCRIPTURES
We hold Scripture as our highest authority. We believe that God’s inerrant, infallible, and inspired Word, the Bible—including the Old and New Testaments—is altogether sufficient as our guide for life, practice, and godliness. As a people we are committed to read it, study it, sing it, pray it, teach it, preach it, obey it, and practice it.
CREATION
Not of any necessity, but of His own pleasure, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. All things were created out of nothing in the span of six days, all very good. We believe that science and theology are compatible disciplines that both must operate under the authority of the Holy Scriptures.
FALL
Adam, our federal head, fell from original righteousness by disobeying God, and sin en- tered the whole world. In choosing rebellion and lawless separation from God, our first parents became dead in sin, and their original sin is passed on to all mankind.
SALVATION
Our loving and merciful Father has called a unnumbered elect out of spiritual death in Adam into eternal salvation and life in Christ. Those whom He effectually called are united to Christ’s death, burial and resurrection by no work of their own but by God’s free gift.
COVENANT
God’s elect, united in Christ, are His children, and He is a gracious, loving Father. God’s children, moved by the proclamation of the gospel, are gathered together as the visible and invisible catholic Church.
ESCHATOLOGY
As Christ bore God’s love to the world, so Christ’s Church bears the gospel unto the farthest corners of the world. God works through the Church to preach and to embody the gospel, and we long for the day that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge and glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Habakkuk 2:14