Philosophy of Christian Liberal Arts Education

Robert Milliman

Education may be defined as an action or process of formal teaching by precept, example,

or experience that results in the knowledge of information and skills, and mental,
spiritual, and aesthetic development.

This definition includes five essential components of education that each may be
identified with a word beginning with the letter “a”: (1) The actors of education are the
teachers and students. (2) The aim of education is the outcome in the students desired by
the teachers, i.e., that which must be learned and that into which one must develop. (3)
The actions of education are teaching by the teachers and learning by the students. (4)
The avenue of education is the curriculum or course of study taught by the teachers to
achieve the desired outcome in the students. (5) The assessment of education is the
evaluation of the desired outcome, curriculum, teaching, and learning in order to
maximize each of these components

Effective education depends upon the extent to which each of the actors, teachers and
students, understand and fulfill their roles with respect to the other essential components
of education. Teachers have the primary responsibility for successful student outcomes.
Furthermore, this responsibility of teachers is the one over which all educators, not only
teachers, but also administrators, have the most control.

Teachers initiate education by establishing desired student outcomes: the desired

knowledge of information and skills, and mental, spiritual, and aesthetic development.
Next, they create the curriculum in the form of programs, and the courses of which these
programs consist, to accomplish these objectives. They then teach the curriculum with
methods designed to elicit learning. Finally, they assess the learner for the achievement
of outcomes, and they also assess their teaching for its effectiveness in obtaining the
outcomes

The curriculum utilized to accomplish student outcomes in Christian education will

center on the liberal arts. The liberal arts are comprised of those disciplines that seek to
describe and interpret the cosmos and human existence. Therefore, they deal largely with
metaphysical issues, matters that have the greatest significance for life. For example, the
liberal arts equip one to make judgments about ideas and values, answering such
questions as the following ones: What is the meaning of life? What is true? What is just?

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What is moral? What is beautiful? Consequently, they also concern themselves with
relationships.

The disciplines that historically have comprised the liberal arts overlap. Therefore, the
disciplines ideally should not be taught discretely, but holistically, with teachers working
across disciplines in dialogue and collaboration with one another. These disciplines
typically have included the humanities, which are more subjective in their orientation
(e.g., theology, philosophy, literature, rhetoric, music, art, and history). They also include
the more objective sciences, both the natural (including mathematics) sciences and social
sciences.

The desired outcome of a liberal arts education is the development of fully integrated
individuals who are able to think critically and soundly about ideas, values, and
aesthetics. Christian institutions of higher education refine this goal as the integration of
faith, learning, and life. In constant collaboration with one another and with their key
discipline, theology, instructors in the liberal arts begin with an understanding of God’s
revelation and humanity’s relationship with Him. By so doing, proper instruction in the
liberal arts models biblical integration and provides students with a biblical world view
from which they can interpret all of life. Thus, instruction in the liberal arts gives students
the lens through which they can clearly see and understand life. In other words, liberal
arts instruction at a Christian university seeks to cultivate people that are truly human, the
full expression of what God intended in the imago Dei. And part of the imago Dei is
creative expression. Therefore, the liberal arts both critique and give expression to human
existence. And, both this critique and creative expression enable students to influence the
culture in which they find themselves.

One also may view the goal of liberal arts instruction as the creation of the context
through which the hermeneutical spiral that characterizes all learning is traveled. At the
Christian university theology is both the spiral’s starting point (orthodoxy) and
conclusion (orthopraxy). In other words, the desired result of a liberal arts education is
the formation of what once was called an educated person. A liberal arts education,
particularly at a Christian university, seeks to teach students how to live, not just how to
make a living.

It is crucial to note that a successful liberal arts education cannot simply relegate the
liberal arts to the components of a general education requirement. Rather, the liberal arts
must form the foundation of a Christian education on which the entire curriculum must be
based. From another perspective, they must form the core of the entire institution’s
curriculum. Therefore, this core curriculum in the liberal arts must cohere with itself and
the entire curriculum. The educational objectives and assessment of both the core and
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specialized curricula should be essentially the same. This approach gives the institution
the best hope of leveraging strategic opportunities to equip students to formulate
judgments about and make biblical contributions to the key forces of cultural influence in
our time.

Please also see the following document by Robert Milliman for a more extended
treatment from a different point of view:
“A Vision for Christ-centered Higher Education: Toward the Development of a
Philosophy of Education at Cedarville University”