Our Professors Are the College

A student, when he is mature, will be like his teacher. Luke 6:40

The most important factor Christians should consider when choosing a college, according to Jesus, is the character of their teachers. New Saint Andrews believes that its professors are the College. Because our teachers are the ones who will shape the minds and lives of our students, nothing – not majors, facilities, rankings, traditions, nothing – is more important than ensuring the unimpeachable integrity and quality of our professors. We limit, therefore, the size of our faculty because genuine accountability means, at minimum, that our College president is able to honestly say he knows his colleagues personally, he knows their spouses and children, and their character and manner of life. He worships with them and prays with them regularly and is, in turn, held responsible for their academic and spiritual integrity. True accountability cannot happen when a faculty is so large that the president cannot know his colleagues or even their names. True education is learning wisdom and knowledge from faithful, godly teachers. Everything else is secondary or dross.

Not Just the Liberal Arts
Classical higher education’s attention to the liberal arts, inspired by the wisdom of the ancient Hebrews, inherited from the Greeks, modified by the Romans, and refined with the Christian worldview of the Medievals, gives special attention to the integration of knowledge. The Trivium includes grammar, rhetoric and dialectic—the arts of language, oratory and logic. The quadrivium—includes the arts of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.  In contrast to “vocational teaching,” these liberal arts have always been part of an education designed to “liberate the life” of a "free man" or citizen, one who is not a slave. The distinctively Christian character of the liberal arts is captured in the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to fathers in Ephesians 6:4, “… raise up your children in the nurture [paideia] and admonition of the Lord.”  If the unbelieving Greeks believed in the total immersion of their children in Greek history, philosophy, religion, language, literature, arts and sciences, how much more should Christian fathers provide the paideia or total enculturation of their children in Lord? Paul expects fathers to immerse their children in the liberal arts (and all things) from the Christian worldview, as unto the Lord. At New Saint Andrews we teach the classical liberal arts not simply as “subjects,” but as integrating principles that equip students to show the world how and why everything coheres in Christ -- The Archimedean Point. The paideia of the Lord is total enculturation in all things under His sovereign rule. Not merely seven interesting subjects.