Christian Education (cont.)
Why We Do What We Do
Our concept of our educational mission is not new. It is rooted in the divine plan of human redemption that overarches Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. This connection of education with biblical redemption has, in fact, been well recognized in the past. The seventeenth-century Puritan poet and controversialist John Milton stated it as follows in his treatise Of Education.
The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection. (John Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes [New York: Odyssey, 1957], p. 631.)
The Reformers held a view of education that put spiritual and moral development to the fore, tying it to the purpose of God to recreate in the believer the person He had in mind from the first before the corruption of His creation by original sin. They believed that a biblically centered, reverently guided student experience in the liberal arts was valuable, indeed little short of necessary, for the perfecting of Christian youth in the will of God. We are their descendants in this regard.
Responsibility of Christian Education
Accordingly we draw from Scripture our sense of what we must do in our ministry to our students. We share responsibility with the Christian home and church in the general purpose of Christian education: the directing of the process of human development toward God’s objective for man, godliness of character and action. To develop our students in the image of God, we must teach them to know God and to imitate Him in His character and in His works.
Knowledge of God
This commitment embraces all we do in our educational endeavor. Knowledge of the written revelation of God, the Bible, remains at the center. The disciplinary studies radiate from this center as studies of God’s works. Biblical truth is not confined to the required courses in the Bible but is diffused throughout the curriculum.
