The Good and Goods of a Christian Liberal Arts Education

The seasonal nature of higher education provides meaningful opportunities to think about what it is that we are all doing here. The start of a semester is one of those moments. I teach a variety of classes at my school, including many within our honors program, which is a Great Books program. For advocates, these books are not only good, but somewhat easily identifiable. It is obvious to some people why our program should be like the title of Nadya Williams’s book and podcast: Christians Reading Classics. But for skeptics or the uninitiated, it may be unclear which books count and why. New students are arriving, about to undertake years of education. Freshmen may wonder how we have selected the books on our reading list and what we hope them to gain from reading them.

What makes a Christian Great Books education so valuable? As is often the case, Josef Pieper can serve as a guide for understanding the Great Books curriculum at our university. In his essay “Work, Spare Time, and Leisure” in Only the Lover Sings, Pieper contrasts the world of work, and the things which matter because they serve some other purpose, with the things that are meaningful in themselves. He says:

What constitutes, here and now, an activity meaningful in itself? I have stated it before: if we are unable to answer this question, then we will also be unable to resist convincingly the claims of a world absolutely defined by work. The answer contained in our Western philosophical tradition could be summed up in this way. Whenever in reflective and receptive contemplation we touch, even remotely, the core of all things, the hidden ultimate reason of the living universe, the divine foundation of all that is, the purest form of all archetypes (and the act of perception, immersed in contemplation, is the most intensive form of grasping and owning), whenever and wherever we thus behold the very essence of reality—there is an activity that is meaningful in itself taking place.

This can also be a helpful guide to the books in our honors curriculum. The books and authors we assign all encourage contemplation and reflect attempts to touch “even remotely, the core of all things.” They may not all clearly apprehend the “hidden ultimate reason of the living universe, the divine foundation of all that is,” but they are seeking it. You can see it from Aeschylus to Arendt, from Hildegard to Hobbes. Every author we assign is trying to understand reality, beyond the surface level. 

Through it all, we are hoping our curriculum and programming will teach our students to see. In “Learning How to See Again,” Pieper argues that “Man’s ability to see is in decline.” Pieper is not worried about whether or not students need glasses, he is concerned about “the spiritual capacity to perceive the visible reality as it truly is.” From his perspective, “To see things is the first step toward that primordial and basic mental grasping of reality, which constitutes the essence of man as a spiritual being.” This type of seeing has animated the authors in our program, not least figures like Plato and Descartes. These thinkers offer students models for seeing.

Even outside of honors, our curriculum reinforces the importance of seeing. Students who are not in our honors program are still attending a Christian liberal arts university. They take Humanities I, II, and III as part of our general education (Faith, Roots, and Reason) curriculum. These classes involve fewer authors, but often the same ones. Humanities students read Shakespeare and Dante and learn about Gothic cathedrals and the Enlightenment and modern art. 

At a secular school, it is more likely that the curriculum has been captured by what Pieper describes as “the claims of a world absolutely defined by work.” This is how the secular world typically operates. After all, the government is using wage data to evaluate universities. At a Christian liberal arts school, or in a Great Books program, we want our students to be employable. But we don’t want to just teach them things to transition smoothly into the working world. We want to help them transition into a way of being in reality that rests on the divine foundation of all that is. And we want them to learn to contemplate the deeper things, because we’re not just hoping they do well in the workplace, we also want them to be prepared for a place like Heaven. We want them to have deep thoughts and deep experiences and consider the nature of things seen and unseen.

Pieper argues that “reaching out in contemplation to the root and foundation of all that is, to the archetypes of all things, this activity that is meaningful in itself can happen in countless actual forms.” Our curriculum reflects this, in honors and in humanities. We assign philosophy, poetry, politics, biblical texts, Reformation writings, and science. We assign plays and epics and utopias. We want students to appreciate art and to listen to good music. Last year several students in our program memorized Seamus Heaney’s poem “The Rainstick” after Malcolm Guite visited and charmed us all with it. We also have students involved in run club, or who sing in school choirs, or who study ceramics. Reaching out in contemplation is more than one type of reading or assignment or extracurricular activity. 

Our curriculum is designed to encourage our students to peer into the deeper realities of the universe, and our faculty is selected in the same way. Our faculty are interested in the very essence of reality and believe that we can see God’s hand at work in it. They do not all encourage seeing and contemplation in the same way. Some are funnier than others, some more stylish, others more studious. Some inspire with big words, others with big silences. Even awkward silences. But all care about the deeper things and care deeply about our students. They write letters of recommendation, have long conversations, attend and officiate student weddings, have relationships with alumni, and more. Some of our faculty are now teaching a second generation within a family.

The liberal arts are in decline almost everywhere, but they may be especially vulnerable within Christian higher education, because so many smaller Christian colleges and universities are closing. And, in many cases, the liberal arts are treated as ballast by universities in trouble. Attempts to right the ship often involve committing, almost exclusively, to professional programs. We submit to “the claims of a world absolutely defined by work.” And while across the country, K-12 classical education is on the rise, Christian colleges are not fully capitalizing on the opportunity presented. It is almost as though we have lost faith in what it is we do best. 

While liberal arts students are indeed employable, the arguments in favor of Great Books and liberal arts education in Christian higher education rest on something much deeper. Many students who come to Christian colleges want to attempt “to touch, even remotely, the core of all things, the hidden ultimate reason of the living universe, the divine foundation of all that is.” They are interested in employment, but they are also interested in the nature of their existence and their relationship to things beyond the workplace. Exclusively vocational curriculum or exclusively secular pedagogy do not deliver these goods.  

What is it that we are doing here, in Christian liberal arts higher education? We are attempting to teach and train students to “perceive the visible reality as it truly is.” Our curriculum and community can be understood as fitted to that purpose. It is a good thing to participate in and well worth perpetuating.