What is Christian Education?

By Eric Anderson

April 24, 2008

Over the years I have discovered that education–my education–means returning to the books and ideas I didn’t fully understand the first time. It means wrestling again with difficult concepts and texts, ideas and works that had been over my head.  Education, I’ve discovered, involves finding more of the truth.
In my senior year in college, for example, I read a book entitled The Idea of a University by the brilliant Victorian thinker John Henry Newman.

I pulled out my book review of The Idea of a University the other day and noted my teacher’s courteous and accurate comment: “Competent abstracting of JHN’s ideas, but a bit underdeveloped in your own critical evaluation.”  He wrote a red “B+” at the top of the page and he was probably being generous.
 
I had closed my review with a flourish, accusing Newman of being “a little naive” for believing in the cultivating and refining effects of education.  Over the years, I have turned back to Newman’s book several times, each time seeing how weak my college understanding was.  Today I would say that, far from being “naive,” Newman was ruthlessly realistic in what he said about education.  By itself, a University education did not have the power, according to Newman, “to make men better.”  Understanding, breadth of knowledge, careful analysis–all those things we associate with “liberal arts,” that is, the training of a free citizen–were not, he said, the same as virtue.

“Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another…  Liberal Education, makes not the Christian,…but the gentleman.”  A gentleman’s good taste and well-trained mind, he said, are “no guarantee for sanctity,” and may, indeed, be associated with an irresponsible or heartless person. 

Newman, in short, said something that was deeper than I realized back in 1970.
 
In one respect, of course, his assertions might be controversial for a Seventh-day Adventist.  Instead of separating education and salvation, Ellen G. White’s philosophy of education went in the other direction, insisting that true education, as we used to put it, must take into account eternal life, the whole range of existence possible to human beings. 

It might be stimulating to imagine a debate between Ellen G. White and John Henry Newman, but perhaps that creative work is best left to someone else.  It is possible that with careful definitions of our terms, we might discover that Newman and White were in basic agreement, since each believed what was left out of the standard definition of education was of eternal importance.  Each affirmed that choosing Christ, partaking of the divine nature, and passing from death to life were more important than mere refinement.  The Catholic and the Adventist knew that the independent, articulate, well-informed, cultivated person prized by educators might well lose his soul.      
 
Wherever we draw the line between education and salvation, we face a problem.  We say we are committed to preparing students not just for “the life that now is,” but also for eternal life.  And yet the achievements that we celebrate when we give students grades are not directly based on one’s acceptance of the teachings of Christianity, affirmation of Seventh-day Adventist “fundamentals,” or signs of the steady illumination of their lives by the Holy Spirit. 

How can we explain this paradox? 

Here’s why we grade students on important, but secondary matters. Their freedom matters to us. Although Southwestern is a Christian college, with clear and distinctive commitments, it does not follow that we may indoctrinate, that is, tell them only one side of the story, and reward them for agreeing with us.  Just as it is wrong for a teacher to foist his political views on students, so it is also wrong for a Christian college to deny a diploma to the student who masters the curriculum but still questions our faith. 

But it is not only a question of what we ought to do.  There is another sense in which we cannot grade on those truly primary matters.  Even as they pray for students, teachers and mentors must wait to see what choices they will make over the next few years. 

Before that education is complete, students will need to learn one central insight:  understanding cannot be separated from participation.

Educated people learn to analyze ideas, to debate interpretations, and to discover context.  But that is not enough–even if our goal is simply to know.  At some point, both Ellen White and John Henry Newman would tell us, we must ask “Is it true?” and then act.

Being a Christian, in short, cannot be a spectator sport.  Knowledge of God is not “knowledge from a distance.”  If your faith is to be a living thing, in other words, you must move from analysis to participation.
That’s the heart of a Christian education.  

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