(First Published in The HillTop News, the student newspaper of LaGrange College in May 2012)

Committed to its relationship with the United Methodist Church, LaGrange College’s mission statement calls the school to challenge the minds and inspire the souls of her students.  Yet how do we meet the dual demands of expanding minds and souls within one institution? What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? What does the classroom have to do with Christ?

Writing for students in his realm almost three thousand years ago, King Solomon explains the way of intellectual and spiritual development when he states, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7a).  For Solomon, a sound pedagogical philosophy begins with faith (i.e. fear) in the living God. Note that faith precedes understanding for Solomon. Augustine later answered similarly, Credo ut intelligam, “I believe in order that I may understand.”

Augustine, of course, drew his view of faith preceding reason from the Apostle Paul who states that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).  All things were created by Him in the beginning (1:16). Thus, in all the disciplines of the liberal arts, (math, science, history, literature, arts, music, etc.), Christ is Lord who holds all academic subjects together as a part of His creation (1:17). 

Thus, the Bible teaches and Augustine affirmed that faith in Christ must precede understanding because faith in Christ as Creator, Sustainer, and Governor provides the only firm foundation for intellectual development with ultimate significance and meaning.  The unbelieving scholar who rejects Christ has no firm foundation for his worldview and builds his intellectual life on the sinking sands of his own autonomy (Matthew 7:24). Education without Christ crumbles in significance to a mere heap of utility. Knowledge becomes vain without Truth.  Yet, even in the supposed intellectual self-sufficiency of the unbeliever, the skeptic scholar must steal from God and the Christian worldview in order to proceed in his intellectual pursuits, for the universe belongs to God and all it contains. It declares the truth about Him.

However, the Christian scholar, scientist, philosopher, artist is unleashed to study the universe to the glory of God with abandon.  Every academic discipline becomes a means to study and glorify the Creator. The heavens explored in science tell of the glory of God (Psalm 19:1).  Mathematical equations reveal His creative genius. History understood as the revelation of God’s Providence now has a telos.  Literature, art and music seek to imitate the beauty, truth, and complexity of the original Author.  Indeed, what makes academics so exciting for the Christian is that all thoughts, disciplines, and subjects are to be taken captive and made obedient unto Christ (II Corinthians 10:5).  Thus, there is nothing irrelevant in God’s universe, for it all points to Him. Even the mundane matters of eating and drinking are done to the glory of God (I Corinthians 10:31).

And while God’s common grace ordains that many unregenerate persons make important discoveries in His creation even to the betterment of humanity, man without Christ suppresses the rightful conclusion of that discovered truth that there is one God over all.  Original sin within the scholar apart from regeneration creates a bias and blindness against the Creator (Romans 1:18). Thus as Paul states, “Professing to be wise, they became fools,” filled with absurd notions, idolatry, and immorality. This foolishness is not without consequence.  We reap what we sow intellectually. General revelation needs the light of special revelation, even as general revelation provides tools for the better understanding of special revelation. 

General revelation and special revelation are not competitors, but complementary partners that declare the glory of God to both the mind and the soul.  We say with the Psalmist, “In Thy light, we see light” (Psalm 36:9b), which means that in the light of God’s word, we understand the truth of God’s general revelation in creation more clearly.  If we are to follow our college mission statement faithfully, we must begin with faith in God, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit’s inspired word, the Bible. And when a student grabs this truth, the mind and soul will be stimulated, liberated, and enlightened.         

A. Boyd Miller, IV has been campus minister for Reformation! at LaGrange College for the past sixteen years and is Pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC) in LaGrange.