Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Spring 2014 | Page 53

PRESIDENT'S perspective Philip G. Ryken ’88, President “We value a Wheaton education for its intrinsic worth. Our students and faculty are called to pursue learning out of love for Jesus Christ and the world that he has made.” “d ad, I hate to admit it, but this is the second time this week that my liberal arts education has really paid off.” My favorite Wheaton College junior—who tries not to believe all the hype about the school where his father is the president— recently went on to explain how the writing skills he cultivated freshman year helped him get an A on his research proposal for geology. Earlier in the week he sent me a text about how reading Plato’s Republic with Dr. Talbot in Introduction to Philosophy laid the foundation for understanding political theory in his political science courses with Dr. McGraw and Dr. Hawkins. Hopefully, a lot of other Wheaton students are having similar experiences. The Christian community has a long history of engagement with the liberal arts. In the early centuries of the church—in places like Antioch and Alexandria—Christians who admired the Greek tradition of liberal education taught their young people mathematics and philosophy as well as Bible and theology. These early Christians wanted to learn as much as they could about the world and sought to integrate learning with faith, seeing every branch of learning as an opportunity to know Jesus Christ as Creator-God and Savior-Lord. The tradition of Christian liberal arts education, which survived the Middle Ages and gathered strength through the Reformation, has exercised a wide influence on higher education in the United States. Most of our nation’s liberal arts colleges were founded on distinctively Christian principles. That legacy is now being squandered—not only spiritually, but also intellectually. Acco ɑ