Tag: Covenant College

Comparing Christian Liberal Arts Colleges (part two)

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

The first of these posts compared Hillsdale College and Covenant College as Christian liberal arts colleges by their course requirements in each respective institution’s core curriculum. This follow up calls attention to Professor Jay Green’s initial suspicions about Hillsdale calling itself a Christian college because its mission is more civilizational than confessional.

Any two-kingdom confessional Protestant who read Dr. Green’s first column had to be amused if not frustrated by the way he positioned Covenant College along with its peer institutions in the Coalition for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). Evangelical colleges (some of them turned universities) have for almost forty years marched under the banner of the integration of faith and learning. They converted to the Neo-Calvinist cause somewhere around the time that Francis Schaeffer popularized Abraham Kuyper among American evangelicals. This was also around the time that evangelical faculty and students began to read The Reformed Journal and discovered how darned smart Calvin College (now university) professors were (sometimes they were even funny). With the integration of faith and learning came the elixir of w(orld-and-life-vie)w. In that intellectually pietistic hothouse, faculty and students attempted to bring every square inch of the arts and sciences under the Lordship of Christ. One goal of these institutions was to redeem or transform the culture, and a primary way to do that was to bring a Christian perspective to every single human activity — from goat breeding to Division III men’s football. If you think that sounds sort of civilizational, you’re right.

Reformed confessionalists of the two-kingdom type pushed back against the line blurring that such w(orld-vie)w thinking encouraged. The church and the world were separate categories, just as were general and special revelation. Christianity might require a definite perspective on Christ’s deity or the place of the Hebrew monarchy in the plan of redemption. But on matters of interpreting Andrew Jackson’s electoral victory in 1828, Christians had liberty to come to differing conclusions, most of which would depend on the best scholarship produced overwhelmingly by unregenerate scholars who had no trace of a Christian w(orld-and-life-vie)w.

In other words, confessional Protestantism, not the kind to which Dr. Green appeals, produced critics of the confessional-non-civilizational-but-nevertheless-cultural-integration of faith and learning or transformation of culture that institutions like Covenant College promoted. From a truly confessional Reformed perspective, the mission of many evangelical colleges was civilizational. And that transformationalist outlook and mission undermined a churchly or confessional understanding of Christianity irrespective of what it meant for higher education.

But now Dr. Green has tried to use confessionalism to undermine Hillsdale’s claims to be a Christian college. Again, he has largely recanted his original piece. But the argument he initially made is useful for gaining clarity about confessional Protestantism.

One point in particular bears mentioning. In his first piece about Hillsdale, Dr. Green worried that civilizational Christian colleges would make the work of confessional Christian colleges more difficult:

As Christian nationalism grows more attractive and widely accepted, some colleges are feeling pressure to shift toward defining themselves by their civilizational rather than their confessional priorities. I’m guessing that development offices find it easier to raise money for a college actively committed to saving Western Civilization than for one that promises only to walk in the way of Jesus.

Claiming to be taking the high ground where Jesus walked over against those in the ditches of saving Western Civilization has an inspiring WWJD-feel, but it does not actually describe well “the way of Jesus” in which evangelical colleges that are part of the CCCU execute their Christian mission. Dr. Green said specifically that institutions that belong to the CCCU are “‘Christian’ in the sense that their faculty (and sometimes their students) submit to clear statements of faith.”

But when you look at the CCCU website, here‘s what you will find in reply to the question, “What is Christian Higher Education?”

First, we integrate biblical truth not just into “spiritual” aspects of the institution but throughout the academic enterprise. Our professors pursue academic excellence because they are committed to God as the author of truth, and that truth has implications for every academic discipline. The classroom and the laboratory are just as much arenas of Christian integration as the college chapel.

There is the classic Neo-Calvinist move of blurring the spiritual and temporal, sacred and secular. All of life is religious and so all of religion is civilizational or cultural

Second, we are committed to the moral and spiritual formation of students. Education that instructs the mind without deepening the soul is not true learning. Our schools seek to develop students who, in the words of the Old Testament prophet, “act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God” (Micah 6:8). . . . This task gives meaning and coherence to every part of the academy, from the classroom to the fine arts studio, from the internship placement to the residence hall and the athletic field.

Again, in the Neo-Calvinist world of higher education, it’s hard to see where civilization begins and confessional ends because an activist, civilizational Christianity is co-extensive with confession — though so far the confession of faith has little theology (but lots of justice).

Third, we are committed to graduating students who make a difference for the common good as redemptive voices in the world. Our schools offer a wide variety of academic programs because we believe that Christians are called to use their vocations as vehicles to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to a fallen world. Our graduates . . . play a redemptive and restorative role in the world as doctors, teachers, marketers, engineers, parents, soccer coaches, and in a host of other ways. In other words, we are private religious institutions that exist for the public good and contribute to human flourishing. 

So integration of faith and learning extends across the curriculum to redeem and transform the world, one that has many civilizations in need of redemption. One has to suppose that if successful, graduates will build redeemed civilizations that could well qualify as Christian. And how is such a transformationalist understanding of Christian education any less civilizational than Hillsdale College’s self-professed Christian identity?

To Dr. Green’s credit, he does acknowledge that CCCU institutions might do better at being explicitly Christian in their mission.

To hear a call for confessional Christianity is encouraging. But in Dr. Green’s case, his brief for confessional Christian colleges needs the clarity that comes from distinguishing the arts, sciences, and theology as separate branches of learning, the way Protestants did before Kuyper.

Comparing Christian Liberal Arts Colleges (part one)

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

Professor Jay Green’s thoughts about Covenant College and Hillsdale College have come and gone but his two articles do raise a couple of questions that may be worthy of further comment. The first has to do with the curriculum of a Christian college. The second has to do with that vexing question of Christ and culture, which runs to notions about transforming culture or integrating faith and learning. This post is about the former — curriculum — and it will read like a college catalogue because it relies on course descriptions from Covenant and Hillsdale to compare the religious dimension of a liberal arts college purporting to be Christian.

In his first post, professor Green distinguished between civilizational and confessional Christian colleges. Part of the difference stems from whether faculty actually need to affirm (believe) Christian statements of faith. At Covenant they do. For Green, Hillsdale is different because it “is a civilizational Christian college” in the sense of “acknowledging and honoring the strategically important role the faith played in laying the foundations of both Western Civilization and the American Founding.” He knows that many faculty at Hillsdale “also embrace Christianity in a confessional sense.” But because belief is not required at Hillsdale, “less time and attention are given to using Christian insights to critique things like Western Civilization and the American Founding.”

By the way, somewhere in here is a big point about ecclesiology and whether colleges should function like churches.

Not to be missed as well is an apparent assumption that Green does not develop — the idea that if you believe and teach Christianity you will critique Western Civilization and the American Founding. Does he mean to suggest that true believers will automatically be skeptical of the West and the United States? Or will they simply be willing to be critical, just as they would criticize Chinese or Islamic civilization and China and Indonesia? Or is he simply hinting that because Hillsdale is not sufficiently critical of the West and America — it is very political according to Green — the college loses its Christianness.

Whatever Green means about the relationship between Western civilization, the United States, and Christianity, his understanding of a confessional college leaves out what the apostle Paul included, namely, that those who preach the gospel out of envy or spite should be praised as long as they preach the gospel. That is, no matter the motives of the preacher or the faculty member, the content of what they preach or teach should be of first importance.

If catalogues are revealing, here is Covenant College’s description of basic courses in their core curriculum.

COR 100 The Christian Mind
This course is designed to introduce newly enrolled students to the general scope and distinctive emphases of a Covenant College education. The first portion of the course focuses on our calling in Christ and some of its implications for the task of being a student. The second portion introduces students to the Reformed tradition; and the third portion invites students to join with the faculty in addressing challenges that the tradition currently faces. 2 hours.

COR 225 Cultural Heritage of the West I
This course fosters cultural literacy by surveying important philosophical, theological, literary, scientific, and aesthetic ideas which have shaped Western culture. It begins with the earliest origins of Western culture in ancient Semitic (including Old Testament) and Greek cultures, then considers the transformation of these earlier influences successively in Roman culture, the rise of Christianity, the medieval synthesis of classical and Christian sources, and the Renaissance and Reformation. The course includes exposure to important works or primary sources, critiqued from a Christian perspective. 3 hours.

COR 226 Cultural Heritage of the West II
This course fosters cultural literacy by surveying important philosophical, theological, literary, scientific, and aesthetic ideas which have shaped Western culture. It considers the emergence of Modernism in the physical and social sciences from roots in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment as well as the effect of later reactions like Romanticism and Existentialism. The effect of these philosophical and scientific ideas on literature and other arts is also explored. The course includes exposure to important works or primary sources, critiqued from a Christian perspective. 3 hours.

Hillsdale in contrast spends a lot more time with the West’s cultural heritage though its catalogue says less about teaching from a “Christian perspective.” As part of the core curriculum students at Hillsdale take at least six courses — two in history, two in English, and two in Philosophy and Religion — that add up to 18 hours (ten more than Covenant). Here is what those courses are supposed to cover.

HST 104 The Western Heritage to 1600 3 hours The course will focus on the development of political cultures in Western Europe before 1600. It begins with a consideration of Mesopotamian and Hebrew civilizations and culminates in a survey of early modern Europe. The purpose of the course is to acquaint students with the historical roots of the Western heritage and, in particular, to explore the ways in which modern man is indebted to Greco-Roman culture and the Judeo-Christian tradition.

HST 105 The American Heritage 3 hours This course, a continuation of HST 104, will emphasize the history of “the American experiment of liberty under law.” It covers from the colonial heritage and the founding of the republic to the increasing involvement of the United States in a world of ideologies and war. Such themes as the constitutional tensions between liberty and order, opportunity in an enterprising society, changing ideas about the individual and equality, and the development of the ideal of global democracy will be examined. Attention will also be given to themes of continuity and comparison with the modern Western world, especially the direct Western influences (classical, Christian and English) on the American founding, the extent to which the regime was and is “revolutionary,” and the common Western experience of modernization.

ENG 104 Great Books in the Western Tradition: Ancient to Medieval 3 hours This course will introduce the student to representative Great Books of the Western World from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Selections may include the Bible and works by authors such as Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Vergil, Ovid, Augustine, and Dante. The writing content includes a variety of writing exercises that incorporate traditional compositional and rhetorical skills.

ENG 105 Great Books in the British and American Traditions 3 hours A continuation of English 104 but with a focus on Great Books in the British and American traditions. English authors may include Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Wordsworth, Dickens, Yeats, Eliot; American authors may include Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, Frost, Hemingway, Faulkner, and O’Connor. The writing emphasis continues with a variety of writing exercises that incorporate traditional compositional and rhetorical skills.

PHL 105 The Western Philosophical Tradition 3 hours A general overview of the history of philosophical development in the West from its inception with the Pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece to the 20th century Anglo-American and Continental traditions. The contributions of seminal thinkers and innovators such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Nietzsche are studied. Major works by these and other important philosophers are read, analyzed, and discussed with the aim of understanding what they argued for and against in regard to metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical issues. The course investigates to what extent they influenced their own and subsequent societies, how these philosophical systems create varying views of the world and human life, and how they address the perennial questions humans universally ask, existential questions such as, “Is there purpose and meaning in life?”; epistemological questions such as, “What are the limits of human knowledge?”; metaphysical questions such as, “What is the ultimate nature of the reality in which we live?”, “Is there life after death?”, “Are humans identical to their brains?”; and ethical questions such as, “What is the fundamental criterion of right and wrong human action?” In short, the course examines the main Western philosophical thinkers and traditions in an effort to understand what they have taught, why they have so taught, and how they have helped form and shape Western civilization.

REL 105 The Western Theological Tradition 3 hours A survey of the history of Western theology, analyzing and exploring the teachings of the various theological traditions that have influenced Western Civilization. Given the dominant influence of Christianity on Western culture and society over the past 2000 years, the course makes clear the theological teachings of the major Christian traditions that have prospered and played a significant role in shaping Western societies. The connections between theology and notions of proper community and individual life, theology’s influence on Western metaphysics and ethics, and the influence theology has had on the development of modern institutions and enterprises, such as modern science, are explored. In addition, the conceptual innovations about the nature of man and his abilities which theological disputes over the nature of God and Christ have provided are pointed out and discussed. Moreover, particular notions of the religious life and of the role of religion in life that have dominated Western thought on these matters are also explored. In short, students are instructed in the basic teachings of that faith that has dominated and, until recently, to a large extent directed the course of Western civilization in order to understand how religious belief informs self-understanding, provides a comprehensive view of reality, and, by instilling a vision of human life, its purpose and proper comportment, shapes the larger culture.

One aspect to notice, irrespective of the personal convictions of professors, Hillsdale’s curriculum is set up to present Christian context for the West and American government and culture. This instruction may be too friendly to Western culture and the United States, but it is very positive about Christianity. No specific confessional tradition claims to be at the center of Hillsdale’s Christian identity (though some faculty may try). But for Hillsdale to call itself a Christian college hardly looks like a bait and switch.

What is also striking is that Hillsdale delivers these courses on the West and America through specific academic departments. These courses are both in the core and at the beginning of a sequence of an academic major. Because they are not set apart in an interdisciplinary “Core” area which may be staffed by sociologists, English professors, historians, or musicians, Hillsdale’s “Core” curriculum is not set apart in a nebulous, required, general education or interdisciplinary part of the curriculum, something that students check off before getting to real courses in English, history, and philosophy. At Hillsdale, the core courses are the real courses (even if students still check boxes when taking them because of curricular requirements). This likely accounts for why Hillsdale has so many majors in English, history, and philosophy.

The exception to this pattern at Covenant are the required “Core” courses in Bible and Theology.

BIB 111 Old Testament Introduction
This course introduces the basic theological themes, chronological framework, and literary character of the Old Testament with a focus on Genesis – Kings. It aims to provide: 1) the foundations for theological interpretation of the Old Testament, giving special attention to the covenantal framework for redemptive history; and 2) an introduction to critical theories concerning the authorship, canonicity, integrity and dating of the documents. 3 hours.

BIB 142 New Testament Introduction
The course will deal with 1) questions of introduction (authorship, canon, inspiration, integrity of the documents, dating, etc); 2) beginning hermeneutics; 3) inter-testamental history as a background to the New Testament, as well as 4) a study of the historical framework of the New Testament as a whole, and key theological concepts. 3 hours.

BIB 277 Christian Doctrine I
A survey of the major doctrines of the Christian faith. First semester investigates the biblical data on Scripture, God, man and Christ. Second semester investigates the biblical data on the Holy Spirit, salvation, Church and last things. The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms serve as guidelines and resources. 3 hours.

BIB 278 Christian Doctrine II
A survey of the major doctrines of the Christian faith. First semester investigates the biblical data on Scripture, God, man and Christ. Second semester investigates the biblical data on the Holy Spirit, salvation, Church and last things. The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms serve as guidelines and resources. 3 hours.

These four courses give Covenant a leg up on Hillsdale, especially if you are a Presbyterian. Covenant requires two courses that survey study of Scripture, and two that summarize Christian doctrine. These arguably constitute the most confessional pieces of Covenant’s education. But because professor Green is more concerned with what faculty believe and profess, he spends little time in his published pieces on curriculum and academic departments.

What may be the most important difference between the two colleges is the way they conduct a liberal education. Both schools advertise themselves as liberal arts colleges. But at least at their websites, Hillsdale uses language that informed a long line of liberal arts colleges in the United States. Covenant’s statements are much less liberal education-inflected and bear some of the conviction of a Bible college where the Bible is pre-eminent and the arts and sciences are second string.

Consider this answer at Covenant to the FAQ, what makes Covenant different from other top-rate liberal arts colleges?

At Covenant, why you learn something is every bit as important as what you learn. Here, you will learn to see God in every facet of your life, and you will be personally taught by acclaimed professors who could teach virtually anywhere in the world and choose to be here.

At Hillsdale’s website the following describes the College’s commitment to a liberal arts core curriculum:

Liberal learning produces cultivated citizens with minds disciplined and furnished through wide and deep study of old books by wise authors. . . . It does so by leading forth students into a consideration of what has been called, “the best that has been thought and said.”

For what it’s worth, until the so-called fundamentalist controversy, Protestant denominational colleges (even Free Will Baptists) had no trouble offering a Christian and liberal education. Those colleges offered way more courses in the arts and sciences than they did in Bible and theology. Then when the mainline Protestant denominations started to go liberal (theologically) and dabbled with notions of God revealing himself as much through literature as through Scripture, fundamentalist-leaning Protestants turned to the Bible as the core of the college curriculum — first at Bible colleges and then at liberal arts schools like Wheaton, Gordon, and Westmont. How Hillsdale pulled off what it has — a return to the Protestant denominational Christian liberal arts college without being exclusively Protestant — is anyone’s guess.

If professor Green is a bit befuddled in pigeonholing Hillsdale College, he is not alone.

Not So Fast

Published on by D. G. Hart111 Comments

Neo-Calvinist lions have buried the hatchet with two-kingdom lambs, at least according to Matt Tuininga’s report on Mike Horton’s roundtable discussion of 2k with Covenant College faculty earlier this week:

When it comes to the two kingdoms doctrine and Christian liberal arts institutions like Covenant College (the college of the Presbyterian Church in America) in Lookout Mountain, Georgia there may not be that much conflict after all. That, at least, is the conclusion to which one might come in response to a panel discussion on the topic yesterday between Michael Horton, a professor at Westminster Seminary California, and several Covenant College faculty.

The proof of agreement (though Dr. K. is not buying) comes from a list of propositions that Horton believes 2kers and neo-Calvinists affirm. I paste them below italicized but offer comments in normal font. I do so not to be disagreeable but to attempt to clarify the disagreements (I still regard Mike as a better drinking companion than Mark Dever, and now we have a lot to discuss over adult beverages):

1) Both clearly distinguish the form of cultural and political engagement obligatory on Christians from the model of Old Testament Israel.

If neo-Calvinists look to the Bible for models of political engagement, where are they looking other than the Old Testament since the New Testament is silent on political strategies unless you count “my kingdom is not of this world” as a form of political engagement. In which case, the neo-Calvinist insistence on biblical politics (see James Skillen) paves the way for theonomy even if Kuyperians are uncomfortable with Greg Bahnsen.

2) Both maintain a sharp critique of the militancy and culture war mindset that marks much of the Christian Right, which has its own version of the social gospel.

Since many neo-Calvinists do actually denounce 2kers for not lending adequate support to the culture wars or for criticizing statements like the Manhattan Declaration (think Chuck Colson, Nancy Pearcey, and some disciples of Francis Schaeffer — say, didn’t Schaeffer have a connection to Covenant?), I am waiting to see the neo-Calvinist critique of culture war militancy. Criticizing the evangelical baptism of the Republican Party and George W. Bush does not count.

3) Each perspective affirms basic neo-Calvinist concepts concerning common grace, the antithesis, and sphere sovereignty.

This is one of the more agreeable affirmations in the list, but the fine print is important. Since some neo-Calvinists construe the antithesis in a way that obliterates the proximate goods of the earthly secular city, or insist that special revelation must interpret general revelation (fine, but what if the Bible is silent on plumbing?), affirmation of antithesis is not going to produce synthesis. Meanwhile, this 2ker finds the notion of common grace unhelpful. Christianity already has good doctrines — creation and providence — that teach what common grace attempts to affirm. Adding grace to something common only gives license for speaking about realms like culture and politics redemptively. As for sphere sovereignty, see here.

4) Both seek to distinguish the work proper to the institutional church (church as organization) and the way in which believers serve Christ and witness to his kingdom in every area of life (church as organism).

Perhaps, but all of that talk about kingdom work and every member ministry leaves me thinking that neo-Calvinists share with evangelicals an inability to understand the kingdom of Christ aright, that is, as a realm of redemption (as opposed to creation and providence). In other words, the American Historical Association is not but the visible church is, as the Westminster Confession teaches, the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

5) Both agree that Christians cannot bring the kingdom of God to earth through their cultural work.

If this is true, why did Abraham Kuyper describe the cultural task as holy?

6) Each perspective insists that Scripture has much to say about how Christians should be involved in culture through their vocations.

Maybe, but 2kers are much more cautious about reaching for their Bibles to justify their political, philosophical, or scientific convictions and tasks. That is to say, that 2kers come closer to the Belgic Confession’s distinction between the books of general and special revelation than Kuyperians do. Those cosmological passages (e.g. Col. 1:15-20) give neo-Calvinists inches that look like the entire canon.

7) Both agree that the church must proclaim what the word of God says about God’s law to the state, while avoiding false claims to expertise in matters of economics or policy.

Actually, 2kers are much more inclined to cite Westminster Confession chapter 31.4 on the church’s duty to refrain from meddling in civil affairs, while neo-Calvinists (or those inspired by its broad claims) are inclined to tell government officials how they are godless nincompoops.

8) Both affirm that while the actual objective work of Christians often looks similar to that of unbelievers, in terms of motivation, worldview, and sometimes objective results such work is profoundly different.

Some 2kers wonder whether anyone can be as self-conscious as w-w language suggests. They even think that when a mother sees her child spill a plate of spaghetti over the new dining room carpet she is not necessarily thinking about how she can glorify God or extend Christ’s Lordship when she instructs little Sammy about the importance — for the eleventh time — of staying in his chair, sitting up, and not playing with his food. Some 2kers even think that this believing mother will act to rear her child in ways common to most female parents (as part of the created order) rather than consulting a Kuyperian handbook on child discipline and carpet cleaning. (She may wish for a neo-Calvinist cookbook that would yield a recipe for spaghetti sauce that little Sammy would eat.)

9) Both affirm the value of Christian parachurch organizations like colleges and seminaries, while at the same time preserving the liberty of Christians to participate in non-Christian organizations as well.

The irony here is that denominational colleges like Covenant and Calvin fail to meet neo-Calvinist criteria of sphere sovereignty and in so doing put their respective churches in an awkward place of having to oversee matters over which their pastors and elders have no competence (such as the arts and sciences, since the Bible does not reveal German, Shakespeare, or Austrian economics).

I apologize if these comments rain on the warm and fuzzy fog that descended on Lookout Mountain, but many points of disagreement remain to be clarified.

And one of the greatest is the very criticism that 2kers regularly endure from neo-Calvinists. Notions of sphere sovereignty, church as organism or institute, w-w, and cultural engagement are not in the Reformed confessions. In other words, they have never been confessional matters, that is, until neo-Calvinists expressed shock — simply shocked — that 2k thinking is going on here. Do 2kers ever receive praise for defending the gospel (as in justification by faith alone), the regulative principle (of Reformed worship), the importance of keeping the Lord’s Day holy, what the Second Commandment says about images of God, or maintaining a lively opposition to the errors Roman Catholicism? 2kers have taken positions on all of these pieces of Reformed faith and practice that have been central to Reformed Protestantism’s development and witness. Neo-Calvinists, in contrast, have been largely silent on these same topics. Yet, neo-Calvinists react to 2k as if its teachings were a denial of the fundamentals of the Christian religion.

That is why some 2kers (me, anyway) are not going to join any common affirmation with neo-Calvinists until Kuyperians show that they can tell the difference between Reformed Protestantism’s central and peripheral matters.

Postscript: Matt also summarized Horton’s presentation with these lines about the spirituality of the church:

[Horton] clarified that the two kingdoms doctrine does not amount to a distinction between material and immaterial things but between the present age and the age to come. For that reason he rejected versions of the doctrine of the spirituality of the church that have been used to argue that the church should not speak out against patent evils like the racial slavery of the Antebellum South.

This is the second time within the last month or so that Mike has taken a swipe at the spirituality of the church. Without getting into a lengthy discussion, I would try to correct this assertion by noting that the reason some Presbyterians did not speak out against slavery was not to preserve the spirituality of the church. The reason was that Paul and Jesus and Abraham and Moses did not speak out against slavery. Whether or not Presbyterians read the Bible correctly, they were starting with Scripture and from that followed the spirituality of the church — as in the church may not speak where the Bible is silent. It is the same idea that led and leads some Presbyterians to oppose the church’s support for the Eighteenth Amendment and the church’s ban on women serving in the military.