Christ-Centered Higher Education: Athens, Jerusalem, and the School of the Cross

Justin D. Barnard - Director of the Institute for Intellectual Discipleship

The early church father Tertullian famously questioned the compatibility of the Gospel and the Greek philosophy of his day with his of quoted quip: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian’s challenge is typically construed as a question about the relationship between faith and reason. However, it serves just as well as a metaphor for thinking about the history of education.

One might arguably conceive of the history of education as two great traditions of learning: the school of Athens and the school of Jerusalem. Each tradition is distinguished from the other by its end. In the school of Athens (or “the University”) the goal of learning is human understanding. The ancient Greek dictum “Know Thyself” serves as a concise summary of the university’s aim: knowledge of oneself, of the world, and of one’s relationship to the world and others. By contrast, the school of Jerusalem (or “the Seminary”) aims at the knowledge of God. This tradition of learning is rooted principally in the Judeo-Christian tradition, one that views the earlier rabbinic traditions of learning in continuity with the later development of the medieval seminaries. This continuity is founded in Scripture. [See for example, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Proverbs 9:10, and John 17:3] The different aims of the two schools account for their differences in focus.

Whereas the school of Jerusalem is, in some senses “other-worldly,” the school of Athens is firmly rooted in those aspects of knowledge that concern this world. One way of capturing this distinction is to think about each school as focusing on different dimensions of knowledge: one horizontal, the other vertical.

As the “horizontal” school, the tradition of Athens concerns itself with those dimensions of human knowledge that pertain to both human culture and the natural world. In this tradition, we explore and come to understand truths about ourselves and the world in which we live. Such learning occurs through God-given means of cognition (e.g., reason, senses, and imagination). The horizontal school encompasses the full range of subject areas one encounters both in the history of the liberal arts tradition and the modern university. Yet, its focus is decidedly on those aspects of knowledge that are “horizontal” – who we are and where we have come from, what the world is like now and how it has come to be the way that it is.

By contrast, the “vertical” school or the school of Jerusalem concerns itself with those dimensions of knowledge that pertain primarily to God. Learning in this tradition is rooted in Divine revelation (Scripture) and enabled by the work of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the tradition of the seminary is intimately connected with the life and ministry of the Church. This school is “vertical” in the sense that it focuses on the Transcendent God as well as our ultimate end as human beings – i.e., where we are headed and how to get there.

Each of these traditions of learning is integral to the whole of truth and human knowledge. Sadly however, the history of higher education often reveals these two traditions of learning in tension, if not direct conflict, with each other. How might these two traditions be brought together in a way that recognizes their unique contributions to learning while simultaneously unifying them so as to avoid fragmentation?

The answer to this question is suggested in the phrase that characterizes part of the mission of Union University. Union aims to be “Christ-centered.” To be “Christ-centered” is to bring together the best of these two traditions of learning, Athens and Jerusalem, in a way that unifies, while preserving distinctness. One image that encapsulates such a possibility is the image of the cross. The School of the Cross unifies the horizontal and the vertical even as it symbolizes Christ-centered higher education.

The School of the Cross or Christ-centered higher education is distinct from each of the two great traditions of learning. What distinguishes the former from the latter is both where it begins and where it is headed. Despite the differences in emphasis on the horizontal and vertical dimensions of knowledge, both the schools of Athens and Jerusalem begin with a summons to self-discovery through learning. The preoccupation in learning, whether horizontal or vertical, is how such learning relates to me. Thus, the knowledge pursued is knowledge that serves the purposes of the learner. It is pursued for purposes possessed by the learner – for my own sake, so to speak. The end of such a process is one in which the knowledge acquired becomes a backdrop against with the self stands out more clearly. 1 In contrast to this, the School of the Cross begins with a call to put oneself to death. Death of the self is required because the end of education in the School of the Cross is conformity to the likeness of Christ. Thus, in the pursuit of knowledge, the self becomes a backdrop against which the person and purposes of Jesus Christ shine out more gloriously.

Dying to oneself in Christ-centered higher education might be conceived of as “cruciform learning” – learning that conforms to the image of the cross. Before the cross was a symbol of triumph, it was an instrument of torture. The torment endured on a cross stretched the victim to the point of being torn apart. If the School of the Cross is about dying to oneself, then cruciform learning is about being stretched – pulled to the point that one is drawn out of oneself, one get’s beyond oneself, and one gets over oneself. But it is essential to recognize that cruciform learning – death to oneself – is the means of Christ-centered higher education not its end. For, there are those in both the traditions of Athens and Jerusalem who conceive of the end of education in exclusively destructive terms. They offer a secular counterfeit to cruciform learning – one that destroys students by stretching them but leaves them in tatters. Cruciform learning must have a redemptive telos. It must stretch students to the point where they a drawn beyond themselves not for the purpose of gloating over the intellectual ruins, but to be restored and conformed to the image of the risen Lord Christ whose cross is the basis for Christ-centered higher education.

1 Some might object that this is a mischaracterization of the seminary or the school of Jerusalem. After all, the vertical emphasis of this tradition of learning places the focus on God. While it is true that some particular (esp., Christian) seminaries make a concerted effort to work against the cultivation of the self as I have described it, this is not essential to the seminary tradition of learning as such. That this is so is evident from the fact that many institutions of learning in the tradition of the seminary continue to exist even when both students and faculty alike refuse to acknowledge the existence of the very God who is the object of their inquiry! In this case, the pursuit of vertical knowledge is clearly self-serving.