What do we mean by the term “liberal arts”?  By a “liberal arts college” or a “commitment to the liberal arts”?  The definition is important, but even more important is why we should care that a college has a commitment (at the least) to the liberal arts?  Moreover, what is the difference between simply liberal arts and Christian liberal arts?  I hope to address some of these questions satisfactorily.  I hope more than that to revive or kindle a passion for the liberal arts as something more than just a series of courses to be taken to get on to the more important courses in one’s major.

Many, almost all, private colleges and universities assert a commitment to the liberal arts.  Christian colleges do the same.  But all too often they are only giving lip service to the ideal.  Reasons vary.  Often they really have no idea what a liberal arts education looks like.  The trustees, presidents, academic officers, and even faculty simply have not really thought much about it.  Their own educations have frequently been narrowly focused or primarily in professional fields.  And the little they were exposed to liberal arts courses only reinforced their indifference or hostility to liberal arts.  Who wants to sit through a really boring, irrelevant, and rambling course in philosophy, history, politics, English literature, etc., where the class is taught by a grad assistant or if by a professor, one whom would (obviously) rather be doing research than teaching you.  Moreover, the liberal arts curriculum at many colleges today is incoherent.  It has no discernable pattern or goal.  Those who have put it together don’t know why they are even doing it, and in some cases that has resulted in abandonment of any effort.  OK, that is a pretty dismal picture.  Unfortunately I have seen it at work in my own education at times (and that was a very long time ago) and have been reading extensively on what is happening at many universities.  All is not lost everywhere but it also isn’t in great shape most places.

What is liberal arts?  The word liberal came from the Latin liberalis, meaning “worthy of a free person.”  It came to be associated with a course of study consisting of knowledge that was indeed worthy of a free person.  But what was that knowledge?  It was what made one a truly educated person.  This was the person trained to reflect on the really important issues of life:  What is the good?  What is right, versus wrong? What is truly beautiful, worthy of admiration?  What is true?  What is real?  What is man?  Who is God?  How did God make man for communion, that is, for sociability?  There are others, but you can see that these also overlap with worldview thinking.  No surprise, as we have seen.

A truly educated person was one who could go into the world, not withdraw from it, and be in it without being of it (for the Christian).  He could make valuable contributions, he could help govern, he could be creative and innovative.  He could respond well to changing conditions, because he was broadly trained to think well, and to think about living well, that is living a good life.  He could be but did not need to be trained narrowly after exposure to the liberal arts, because he was then prepared to attain new knowledge as needed and to fit into new situations.

This was achieved with a certain expected core of classes or study, usually rigorous but hopefully fulfilling—at least later in life.  These included and include philosophy, theology, art and music, literature, politics (as part of philosophy), economic thinking (again, as part of philosophy), ethics, history, and the hard sciences such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology (both coming a bit later than the others).  All this began to break down first in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and accelerated in the 1960s, when the students began to demand a different curriculum (“Hey Ho Ho, Western Civ has got to go, “ they sometimes chanted).  They wanted relevant courses.  In time, professional programs began to make their own inroads and pushed for less liberal arts.  Their own accreditors helped catalyze this effort.  And colleges began to look for new ways to get students, with new majors, to replace or marginalize the old standards, which did not have enough of a payout in the end in terms of salary.  Now I am not here to bash professional programs, but to tell a story of whay the decline happened.

One more development helped the decline.  More and more departments began to want a “piece of the action.”  After all, they argued, if we are going to continue this liberal arts core, we want some of our courses in it too.  The curriculum degenerated from traditional liberal arts to a hodgepodge of varying courses that students could take to satisfy requirements for graduation.  In fact, fewer and fewer departments even required traditional liberal arts courses.  The decline was well under way.

But a funny thing happened along the way.  Students had more “stuff” in their heads but were less prepared to actually think and respond to changing conditions, or to be as creative and innovative.  They were less prepared to function as citizens of a nation.  Employers have complained too.  The graduates lack that “something” that makes them adaptable.  The graduates were well, but narrowly trained.  They could crunch numbers or program a computer or design a bridge.  But if more was required, many were unable to go further.  And for some majors, all most graduates got was a lot of debt and no job at all.

At present it is painfully true that liberal arts salaries don’t match their counterparts in most professional fields.  But then I am not advocating for everyone to major in a liberal arts field.  My point is to argue for the importance of an entire foundational curriculum in the liberal arts, whose benefits will last for a lifetime, even over several career changes.  This my argument is for a coherent and limited core of liberal arts courses, chosen on objective grounds that accomplish the task of producing that truly educated person, that person who can flourish for the glory of God, who can energetically and competently fulfill the dominion mandate for the Kingdom.

And here is where the “Christian” in liberal arts comes in.  Without God, the one true God, permeating and suffusing the liberal arts, it is all just at best a little useful and at worst, an exercise in human hubris, since in that case, “man is the measure of all things.”  The liberal arts then need the Christian worldview and Christian theology. But theology also needs a Christian liberal arts, since theology is part of the story, but it has to be taken into the world by people who can think about their disciplines and vocations Christianly.

What does such a curriculum look like?  Perhaps I am stepping on toes here, by omission.  But my intent is to lay out what ought to be in a liberal arts curriculum, not what should be omitted from a university.  Here is my brief and tentative list:

History (of civilization and of American civilization)

Politics (broadly), including American constitutional principles, some political thought (great thinkers) and law

Economics

Ethics and Moral Philosophy

Philosophy

Theology, with Christian Moral Theology

Literature (American and Western, the Canon)

Logic (primarily informal)

“Hard science” but with emphasis on its philosophical and historical underpinnings (for non-majors)

Mathematics, but perhaps primarily Statistics

The Global World

Art (History)

Music (History)

Aesthetics for Christians

Writing

Rhetoric

Language (preferably Latin, yes, too elitist, but good in several ways)

I am not married to all of these, but they seem fairly cohesive and related.  It is time for all colleges, including Christian colleges, to re-think the place of the liberal arts.  Their value has, in my estimation, been proven.  Yes, we live in different times and I can’t go back to the Middle Ages or the nineteenth century, but what I have laid out above is more than workable.  And it is good for the student.  It is also time for academics to be clear that we do know what is best for the students long-run well-being, if we ourselves have a solid grasp on what is truly important.