Journal: Grace Journal
Volume: GJ 03:3 (Fall 1962)
Article: Towards a Christian Philosophy of Education - Part 2
Author: Frank E. Gaebelein

GJ 3:3 (Fall 62) p. 12

Towards a Christian Philosophy of Education - Part 2

Frank E. Gaebelein

II. The Major Premise of Christian Education

The major premise of any Christian philosophy of education may be put in a single sentence: All truth is God’s truth. But the problem is that of the application of this principle to every area of knowledge and every aspect of life. In the third chapter of his Gospel, John wrote, “He that doeth the truth cometh to the light.”1 Doing the truth, the application of the major premise of Christian education, is, therefore, the question before us in this lecture.

This is a subject that must be treated with humility, because of its wide dimensions and great depth. Yet, great though it is, we must in thinking further about the philosophy of Christian education, grapple with the problem of a thorough-going doing of the truth.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a new chapel of striking modern design stands within a water-filled moat. It is, as it were, an island. The design may be effective architecturally, but it could hardly be more inadequate spiritually. What the chapel stands for on any campus would be far better symbolized by a room for worship in the physics building, in the library, or even in the gymnasium, than by a church on an island.

It is, however, too little recognized that the isolationism of the spiritual is a major problem even in Christian education. What makes a campus really Christian? Is it Bible classes, worship services, revival meetings? These things play a significant part in making a campus Christian. Yet a school or college may have them all and others like them and still be deeply imbued with secularism. In a pungent comment, Prof. Gordon Clark speaks of schools where such good things as “giving out tracts…holding fervent prayer meetings, going out on gospel teams, opening classes with prayer” are the accepted practice; “yet the actual instruction,” he says, “is no more Christian than in a respectable secular school… The program is merely a pagan education with a chocolate covering of Christianity. And the pil1, not the coating, works…Christianity, far from being a Bible department religion, has a right to control the instruction in all departments. The general principles of Scripture apply to all subjects, and in some subjects the Scriptures supply rather detailed principles, so that every course of instruction is altered by a conscious adoption of Christian principle.”2 These are strong words. They are not quoted with the implication that they apply totally to a college like this, any more than that they apply totally to the school which I serve. Yet honesty compels the statemen...