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