The Christian College in the Twentieth Century by BERNARD RAMM Eerdmans, 1963, 125 pages, price $3.00
This delightful volume aims to state what a college must be in order to merit the name Christian.
The author’s approach is historical. He relates the views of Aurelius Augustine, philip Melanchthon, John Henry Newman, Abraham Kuyper and Sir Walter Moberly on Christian higher education. The emphasis falls on what we may learn from these outstanding Christian educators.
Augustine (345–430) held: “If we are to interpret Scripture properly, we must be educated in those secular sciences which the Scriptures touch upon.” To that rather restricted end he reclaimed pagan Rhetoric with its division of the basic liberal arts into the Trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric and the Quadrivium of arithmetic. music, geometry and astronomy. But his “humanism” was decidedly Christian. He insisted that in all these studies the greatness of the Christian revelation must be magnified and that the Christian teacher is in duty bound to diagnose the unchristian elements in pagan learning.
Melanchthon (1497–1560) was profoundly influenced by the Renaissance and by such humanists of his day as Erasmus and Reuchlin. Hence he strongly emphasized the liberal arts as the necessary foundation for theological learning. Ramm says: “He would not allow theology to swallow up the liberal arts.” However. unlike those humanists who remained in the Roman Catholic Church, he showed himself to he “Christian first, humanist second.”
John Henry Newman (1801–1890) faced a situation quite different from that confronted by Melanchthon. In Melanchthon’s day there was a danger that theology would crowd classical studies out of the university; in Newman’s time the secular curriculum threatened to crowd out theology. Newman insisted that a university which omits theology has lost its claim to he a university, for the banishment of theology constitutes a denial of the unity of truth. According to Newman the task of the university is to produce “the gentleman,” and the task of the Christian university is to produce “the Christian gentleman.” As a consistent Roman Catholic he taught that the entire life of the university must be under the guidance of the organized Church. Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) was primus inter pares of the founders of the Free Reformed University of Amsterdam. It was his firm conviction that a Christian university is demanded by the Scriptural doctrines of creation and common grace. And in line with the principle of sphere sovereignty he took the at that time radical position that a university is to be controlled by ncither chureh nor state. Ramm omits the fact that already in Kuyper’s day there existed a “contractual connection” between the Church and the theological faculty of the Free University. For Kuyper Christianity was synonymous with Calvinism. He demanded that in the conflict between theocentricity and anthropocentricity the former be upheld uncompromisingly. For good reason Kuyper came to be known as the man of the antithesis.
Incidentally, that may account for Ramm’s failure to include in his book a chapter on John Calvin. Possibly he felt that the presentation of the views of both Calvin and Kuyper would entail needless repetition.
Sir Walter Moberly (1881–) is the author of The Crisis In the University. The Christian college was, and today is, caught in a twofold revolution. In the first place, it has been affected by the fact that vocational training has to such an extent replaced liberal arts education that many a university no longer deserves to be called a university. In tile second place, numerous Christian colleges have succumbed to a theological liberalism which is not Christian. In facing the question what is to be done under these circumstances, Moberly considered various proposals. among them the Christianization of the secular universities. Rejecting that proposal as well as others, he came to the conclusion that the one solution for the Christian college is to make sure it has an actively Christian faculty, an expert faculty of theology included. Under Christian theology he subsumed Incarnation, Cross and Resurrection.
After this historical survey Ramm makes a “Summary statement” under four heads:
(1) “A university is Christian only as it is Christian throughout”; (2) “A Christian university has the liberal arts at the center of its curriculum”; (3) “A Christian university, within the common grace of God, shares in the transmission of culture”; (4) “A Christian university relates itself Vitally to the Christian Church.” Under the last of these propositions Ramm, without insisting that a Christian university must be ecclesiastically owned and controlled, gives helpful suggestions as to the exercise of academic freedom. One of them is that, in case a professor departs from the Church’s confessions, integrity demands that he spontaneously say so without being sought out. How right!
It is regrettable that so well-written a book is marred by several typographical errors. Likely the author is not to blame. However, he is responsible for an occasional reprehensible statement. For instance, it is said of Augustine: “He refused to be the Fundamentalist of the early Church by refusing to negate the truth in classical learning” (p. 23). Surely, not nearly all who would be known as Fundamentalists deserve this reproach. For another example. the statement that “heresy trials are odious and harmful. no matter where the truth or the right lies” (p. 123) is, to put it mildly, far too sweeping. To be sure, the professor who departs from the confession of his Church should frankly state his position. should strive to convince the Church of the correctness of his position, and, en failing in the latter. should voluntarily depart from the Church. Thus a heresy trial can be avoided. But that procedure is not always followed. As it is, heresy trials may become necessary and even decidedly wholesome. Their absence has contributed immeasurably to the dechristianization of many all erstwhile Christian college and thus to the decadence of the Church to which that college was related. The corruption of a Church usually begins in its institutions of learning.
This reviewer cannot suppress the wish that Ramm had dealt more explicitly with the place and function of tho Bible in the Christian college. God has given us a revelation in nature and history, a special revelation in the Bible. The two cannot contradict each other. Contrariwise, they complement each other and arc interdependent. Knowledge of general revelation is necessary for the proper understanding of special revelation. That is one reason, among others, why a Christian college must stress the liberal arts. On this Ramm is insistent. Should he not have said just as emphatically, and more emphatically than he does, that general revelation can be properly understood only in the light of Holy Scripture?
All in all, this little volume is replete with valuable material. It is a worthwhile contribution to the cause of Christian higher education.
R.B. KUIPER