33

Theses

on

Culture

Shaping

“For everyone to whom much is given,

from him much will be required.”

Luke 12:48, NKJV

THIS VERSE is part of the graduation ritual at each commencement ceremony at New Saint Andrews College. We believe that by God’s grace, we have given much to our graduates and that as a result, much will be required of them. God has given us abundant fruit already in the form of faithful graduates, but, as the leadership of the college, we are ambitious for more. We desire to be faithful servants who increase what we have been given to steward by ten- or even one-hundredfold. The following theses reflect that ambition. They are a combination of both what is being given to students and what will be required of them.

IN ALL of this, we sow in faith with a vision to produce graduates who shape culture by living faithfully under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Join us in praying that God will continue to bless our work, bring the harvest, and require much from us and our graduates in the process.

Luke Jankovic

Chairman of the Board

New Saint Andrews College

NEW SAINT Andrews College is an academic community that is centered on the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all things; therefore, we are pursuing a robust liberal arts education in the classical Christian tradition in the context of real Christian community. Our purpose is to graduate leaders who shape culture living faithfully under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. As we have undertaken the education and formation of our students with an eye to culture-shaping, we often have been asked: Precisely what is entailed in the task of cultural leadership, and what is not entailed by it?

THE COLLEGE seeks to operate within the following board-approved description of what liberal arts education in the classical and Christian tradition means to us here at New Saint Andrews College. We will keep this statement in print, readily available to students, donors, prospective students and their families, and any others. When revisions are made, as they will be from time to time, the date such revisions are approved by the board will be listed on the copyright page. This set of theses is a description, not a definition nor a pedagogical statement of faith, such that every faculty member has to subscribe to every jot and tittle mentioned. Nevertheless, this stands as an accurate summary of our project, which we trust will be clearly and regularly reinforced to the students.

HOWEVER UNCONVENTIONAL in its design, the following array of affirmations contains a carefully considered structure and order.

WE AFFIRM the absolute authority of Scripture. As the Word of the almighty God, this authority extends over all things. The Scriptures are authoritative in all that they address, and, in principle, the Scriptures address everything. Because Jesus is Lord, there is no neutrality anywhere. In order for our graduates to engage in the task of shaping culture with boldness, once honest exegesis is done, we want them to identify no “problem passages” in the Scriptures that would challenge their view of biblical authority. This is not to imply that biblical exegesis is always easy; however, once the meaning of a passage is understood, submission to the teaching of that passage is a given. What the Bible teaches, we believe, confess, and seek to apply. This includes the general equity of the Old Testament law, because the Old Testament is as authoritative as the New Testament. We intend for our graduates to be thoroughly familiar with the contents of Scripture, to be able to appeal to its content in support of their views, and to be devoted to Bible reading and study for the rest of their lives.

WE DENY that our presupposition of exhaustive biblical authority negates or diminishes in any way what we are to learn from natural revelation and from persons benefiting from common grace. We are biblical absolutists, not biblical exclusivists. But we do acknowledge the inability of the natural man to reason ultimately, either morally or consistently, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit and the specific revelation of the Scriptures.

WE AFFIRM that the Lordship of Christ extends over every aspect of human existence, and that this sovereignty is to be acknowledged by all Christians in worship every Lord’s Day. There is no place for neutrality, no realm that is outside the realm of His authority (Matt. 28:18-20). In this respect, we affirm the crown rights of the Lord Jesus and celebrate them on a weekly basis. We are content to have Christ’s rule called a theocracy. We intend for our graduates to labor productively in every lawful pursuit and want them to always remember that unless this pattern of worship is at the center of their endeavors, those endeavors will all come to nothing.

WE DENY that theocracy in this sense mandates an ecclesiocracy in any way; rather, it prohibits one. If mere Christendom were a town, then the church is the cathedral at the center of town, and its ministry is that of grace and peace. The civil authorities over the town constitute the ministry of justice. And it follows that the families of the commonwealth are the ministries of health, education, and welfare.

WE AFFIRM that man is fundamentally homo adorans (worshipping man) and cannot enter into the glory God has prepared for us apart from worshipping the Lord in accordance with His Word. All that we seek to accomplish in this world must be built upon the foundation of worship, and all that the liberal arts represent are nothing apart from that worship. We therefore affirm that worship is the highest of the liberal arts. As theology is the queen of the sciences, so worship is its crown.

WE DENY that worship is a withdrawal from the affairs of the world. Rather, worship is the engine of culture. It is the shame of much contemporary Christianity to have sought to engage culture with little or no engine.

WE AFFIRM the ancient ecumenical creeds of the church, and we further affirm the system of doctrine that is set forth in the Westminster Confession and other Reformed standards. In addition to this, we confess that mere assent to orthodox, biblical doctrine is insufficient to please God. It must rather be combined with a holy zeal for righteousness and the glory of God that results from a living and evangelical faith in an experienced Christ. As we begin our Christian walk by faith alone, so we continue in that path by faith alone with the consequent fruit of honoring our parents, loving our wives, respecting our husbands, nurturing and educating our covenant children, and working honorably in our vocations.

WE DENY that our identification with the Reformed tradition requires a hidebound traditionalism or sectarian blinders or a provincial approach to our studies. At the same time, while embracing a Reformed catholicity when it comes to the boundaries of our fellowship, we insist that the transformation of the world comes through gospel preaching on fire, Reformed scholarship on fire, and Christian-worldview living on fire.

WE AFFIRM that unless the Lord builds the house, the one who builds it labors in vain. All our educational endeavors and all the endeavors of our graduates who represent the education we provide are wholly dependent upon the blessing of God for their success. If God does not bless our labor, no matter how virtuous it appears on paper, it cannot thrive. “And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us, and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it” (Ps. 90:17). When the blessing of God is on our college, we will be enabled to graduate leaders who shape culture through their contributions in home, church, and vocation that embody the true, the good, and the beautiful.

WE DENY that this understanding of dependence on God’s blessing invites resignation or apathy. While we know that we cannot make the fire fall, we are certain that we must build the altar.

WE AFFIRM that objective standards exist, grounded in the nature of the infinite God, and that these standards are doctrinal, ethical, and aesthetic. We aspire to see all our graduates firmly convinced of the objective reality of the true, the good, and the beautiful. In our cultural endeavors, we want whatever we make or shape—whether art, stories, homes, churches, organizations, businesses, or communities—to embody these values to the fullest measure possible in a fallen world.

WE DENY that these objective realities can or should be reduced to simplistic slogans or rules. The pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful must be conducted in wisdom, and wisdom is as expansive as the world. It does not need to be truncated in order to be objective.

WE AFFIRM that God’s purpose for the world is the salvation of it. This salvation will be both extensive, reaching all the tribes of the earth, and intensive, affecting all that men do as they learn how to obey the Lord Jesus in every aspect of life.

WE DENY that an optimistic eschatological expectation requires us to adopt a fragile and short-sighted optimism. We believe that our labors in the Lord are not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58), while understanding that our labors will bear fruit in the Lord’s time. It may well be that future generations will consider us a part of the early church. The yeast expands slowly. The mustard seed grows into a plant slowly.

WE AFFIRM that God’s purposes for this world include and are well described as “times of refreshing” (Acts 3:19). As we seek to see the authority of Jesus Christ instantiated in every human endeavor, it is our desire to see that the right keynote is established in every instance, and that keynote is joy. Christ is our Sabbath; the gospel is our glory; and our work is to plow and seed an enormous field. We turn to this work with a spirit of eschatological optimism and joy. The one who plows should plow in hope (1 Cor. 9:10).

WE DENY that having such a high hope means that we will be unable to cope with hardship, danger, defeats, corruptions, or betrayals. Rather, our hope through Christ sustains us through such trials (Rom. 8:35).

WE AFFIRM that the great story that God is telling in the history of redemption is a story accompanied by music. In all the great reformations that have occurred in history, music has been a prominent cause and consequence. God inhabits the praises of His people (Ps. 22:3). There is a season for all the things that men do (Eccl. 3:1-8), and a music appropriate to each.

WE DENY that the music we produce and the songs we sing must be of one kind only. Rather, our music will be as varied as our activities. Yet we identify psalm singing as the orienting center and paradigm of our musical expression.

WE AFFIRM that Scripture knows nothing of faithful culture apart from generations. Generations are the realization of the fruitful calling of man and wife in marriage. A sine qua non of biblical culture-making is therefore fruitful marital lovemaking. By the grace of God, a transformative community is going to be disciplined, married, moral, joyful, and fruitful.

WE DENY that traditional marriage and childbearing alone are sufficient to biblical culture-shaping, but it cannot exist without them. And in our era of family disintegration accompanied by legal redefinitions of persons and their family relationships, it is necessary for us to affirm that leaders of a viable culture must know what men and women are for.

WE AFFIRM that God has established three governments among men: the government of the family (Gen. 2:22-25), the government of the civil order (Rom. 13:1-5), and the government of the church (Eph. 4:11-13). The integrity of these governments depends on the virtue of individual self-government. Without self-governance, the other governments among men will suffer, tending toward anarchy or tyranny. The liberal arts education we provide seeks to train students in the self-governance that supports the structure these governments provide while honoring individual liberty in calling and excellence.

WE DENY that secularism is capable of providing the liberty and structure that it promises. Its apparent successes are parasitic on the achievements of Christendom. A return to and improvement upon Christendom (a “mere Christendom”) is the way forward to a properly grounded and oriented social order.

WE AFFIRM that masculine leadership is crucial in every cultural endeavor. Masculine leadership is mandatory in the government of the church and is normative in the governments of the family and the state. In order to be successful in the task of sanctifying culture, it is necessary for us to welcome and embrace the leadership of men. In pursuit of this, the college will cultivate a student culture that encourages young men to take responsibility and to learn the meaning of sacrifice on behalf of others. In order to educate our students for this kind of leadership, faculty members must exhibit this same kind of leadership themselves, making all due allowance for different kinds of gifts. As we encourage our faculty in this crucial task, we reject a false dichotomy between up-front leadership (e.g. public speaking or publishing) and quieter forms of leadership (e.g. mentoring or hospitality). Our faculty and students will demonstrate an informed refusal of egalitarianism, particularly in the realm of sex roles and responsibilities.

WE DENY that male leadership is in any way a denigration of women. Moreover, we provide the same education to our male and female students. We do this not because we believe their tasks will be identical, but rather because they are paired and complementary. Woman is the glory of man, and so an educated woman is the glory of an educated man.

WE AFFIRM that because the student must be educated as a whole person, and not simply as a disembodied intellect, the encouragement of physical or athletic exertion is an important form of attention to embodiment. One aspect of this will include the promotion of athletic opportunities (whether through intramural competitions or intercollegiate clubs) within the framework of a thoroughgoing Christian discipleship that avoids the imbalance present in the contemporary prioritizing of athletic over scholastic achievement.

WE DENY that men and women should be treated in the same way when it comes to athletic competitions. Women who are enrolled in our college receive the same rigorous classroom education as the men but with the intention that it will prepare them for their distinct roles and callings complementary to those of men. The design of our athletic opportunities takes into account the creational distinctives that God gifted to men and women.

WE AFFIRM that the living God is God of all the living and that all who hate wisdom do so because they are in love with death (Prov. 8:38). Human endeavor in culture building that does not submit to the God of Scripture will spiral downward into a culture of death. This city of death is a slum of back alleys filled with promiscuity, easy divorce, abandoned children, pornography, lesbianism, sodomy, and the carnage of abortion. The culture of life we represent stands against this anti-culture, this culture of death, at every point.

WE DENY that any of our graduates can compromise in any way with this sexual revolution and yet represent our vision. We brook no compromise here.

WE AFFIRM that we are to understand all of human existence in terms of two kingdoms: one invisible and internal, the other visible and external. Because Christ is Lord of both the inner and outer man, we affirm that while there may be two such kingdoms, there is only one King. The invisible and spiritual realm cuts across all forms of governments established among men, whether church, state, or family, just as the external and physical realm also cuts across all such forms of societal organization.

WE DENY that these two kingdoms are to be understood in terms of the church on the one hand and the civil sphere on the other. Both church and state have aspects of their existence which are external, and both have aspects which are internal and spiritual. Consequently, we do not understand Deuteronomic blessings for obedience as necessarily limited to the old covenant era (Eph. 6:1-2), and in seeking to shape culture, we understand ourselves to be pursuing such blessings. In every generation, the Lord is glorified by His martyrs (Heb. 11: 35-38). In every generation, the Lord is honored by those who put armies to flight and close the mouths of lions (Heb. 11:32-35). We walk by faith and not by sight.

WE AFFIRM that God created the heavens and earth and placed us in that world in order to communicate with us and not to lie to us. We affirm that He sent His Son into the world in order to embody the truth for us and not to lie to us. We affirm that He inspired the Scriptures in order to communicate the truth to us by means of words and not to lie to us. We therefore embrace a form of common-sense realism with regard to the external world and the correspondence view of truth. God created the world in such a way as to enable us to draw valid inferences from it. We affirm the objective reality of truth. We do this because Jesus Christ is the eternal Logos of God.

WE DENY that we are beholden in any way to secular philosophies. By appealing to the “common-sense realism” above, we do not mean to exclude or marginalize what Pascal called esprit de finesse, an intuitive grasp of the whole without stacking up the parts. This poetic knowledge, this understanding of the centrality of metaphor, this grasp of mystery in plain sight is not a slide toward relativism. Rightly understood, it is a firewall against it.

WE AFFIRM that our fallen world contains many destructive sins, but few of them are as ruinous as envy. “Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?” (Prov. 27:4). This sin is prohibited under the name of covetousness in the Tenth Commandment, and it is a great destroyer. The hidden driver in many of the destructive ideologies of the modern world is envy. For example, envy in economics brings socialism, and envy in sexual matters grounds feminism. Envy has devoured millions of human lives. To educate students to be shapers of culture without teaching them how to counter the foul workings of envy is like educating doctors without teaching them anything about cancer. If we want the healing leaves of the tree of life to be applied to the nations, we must understand that the actual disease the nations will be healed from is the disease called envy.

WE DENY that a principled biblical hostility toward envy requires any kind of complicity in or acquiescence to the injustices that fill our world.

WE AFFIRM that God the Father Almighty is the Maker of heaven and earth and that He appointed mankind as His vice-regent and steward, appointed to tend and care for the earth and all its resources on land and sea, including mankind’s responsibility for all the animals. This creation mandate was, in effect, a dominion mandate (Gen. 1:28). Since the mandate was reiterated after the Flood (Gen. 9:1), we note that it was not canceled or erased by the Fall. Moreover, our responsibility in this mandate was intensified by the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) and placed within our reach.

WE DENY that God created all of nature indiscriminately. Consequently, we must deal with more than just nature collectively—we also have distinct and discrete objects within the created order, each of them with a distinct nature. Mankind has dominion over these created beings but has no authority to ignore or obliterate them. In all our works of dominion, we must therefore respect the character and telos of nature. Thus, enhancing the yield of a wheat crop is lawful, while so-called sex change surgeries are defiantly unlawful.

WE AFFIRM that mankind was assigned work to do prior to the Fall and that our vocational calling—to work with our hands and minds in a way that provides for others—is not a consequence of the Fall. Every Christian is called to work, not just those on the mission field or in some other form of ministry.

WE DENY that any lawful calling should be considered second class or beneath our dignity. In fact, a willingness to serve in such roles is one of the ways the Lord teaches us to climb to a place of cultural influence (Mk. 9:35; 10:31).

WE AFFIRM the goodness of the material world and the good of affluence. The strength that the idol of mammon has is to be found in the human heart, and it is impossible to guard against these snares by limiting or redistributing the amount of material goods we have. Covetousness is idolatry, and the only power that can remove such an idol from the human heart is the gospel of Christ. Recognizing the reality and strength of this idol in the hearts and lives of many, we nonetheless recognize that it is something we must traffic in (Lk. 16:9). Some idols, by their very nature, must be toppled and removed (2 Kgs. 15:4). Other idols, by their very nature, must be dethroned and set in their proper place. We cannot be leaders and shapers in culture without resources. However, we must possess these resources without being possessed by them in turn.

WE DENY that such an affirmation encourages us to be complacent when it comes to the temptations and snares that are endemic to those who are blessed with wealth. Those who are wealthy in the goods of this world must take care never to set their hope in riches, which perish so easily, but rather in God alone. No man can serve two masters.

WE AFFIRM that economic liberty is a positive good, a gift rendered to us in the kindness of God. As confessing Christians, we have sought to identify the invisible hand of Adam Smith’s description as the hand of our Lord Jesus Christ. We therefore resist all attempts to pretend that the hand of this gracious provision belongs to anyone else.

WE DENY that man in his selfish, unregenerate condition is able to create or sustain free markets. Free markets are dependent upon free men to function within them, and free men are not possible apart from free grace.

WE AFFIRM that the actions of conserving and progressing are good or bad based entirely on what we are seeking to conserve and what we are progressing toward. We have a responsibility as Christians to conserve that which is good about the world that God gave us, along with all the improvements that the Holy Spirit has brought about through the course of human history. We do have a responsibility to be progressive, but only in the sense that we are progressing toward the things that the Spirit is intending to establish in the future of the world. That said, because nature and the Scriptures must both be considered “old paths,” and because we are seeking a second instantiation of Christendom—a “mere Christendom”—we confess that our essential outlook is profoundly conservative.

WE DENY that such conservatism relieves us of responsibility to discern and remedy evils embedded within our traditions.

WE AFFIRM the central role that a true liberal arts education must play in the paideia of God. Such an education is not vocational training, or anything of the like, nor is it the curriculum of a Bible college, as valuable as those things are in their place. We are not preparing students for jobs but for life. We affirm students’ need for a rigorous liberal arts education in which an exegetically grounded theology serves as the queen of the sciences.

WE DENY that a liberal arts education replaces the need for vocational training or the importance of being ambitious to excel in the world of vocation. Rather, we believe that to train for a vocation without first equipping the heart, mind, and soul to love and serve God is like building a house without a foundation. If we seek first the kingdom of God, we should not be surprised when all these things are added unto us.

WE AFFIRM that in any culture worth having, a number of people will necessarily be called to develop particular areas of expertise, and, of necessity, this will result in specialization. While many of our graduates will go in this direction, and will do so honorably, we are providing a liberal arts education for the additional purpose of instilling a generalist approach to life and to knowledge that we are convinced is most necessary for a life well-lived, regardless of vocation. We are not trying to shape culture by producing an array of specialists but rather generalists who understand the importance of all specialties in a way that specialists frequently do not. A good life is what generalists are called to specialize in.

WE DENY that this distinction undercuts our commitment to the importance of vocation, the importance of providing for one’s own family through honest work, or the importance of paying one’s dues before embarking on the task of leadership. We would recall that the time the Lord spent as a carpenter was not wasted (Mk. 6:3).

WE AFFIRM that genuine cultural engagement is a long-term, inter-generational endeavor, and requires those who participate in it to do so with an intelligent grasp of eschatology. Cultural endeavors that are not supported by an eschatological vision either will be a drudgery, a mere eked-out living, or an attempt to find stimulation—often from the latest invention or idea. As to the latter, we aim to immunize our students to the temptations of such fads, equipping them with biblical insights rather than secularist expressions of reaction. If it is true that the just shall live by faith, and it is, then those who engage with culture must do so by faith.

WE DENY that this necessitates a principled withdrawal from all that is contemporary or new, but it does require that we have no unexamined tools or techniques or pursuits.

WE AFFIRM that the human race was created for a great and glorious end and that we will necessarily be restless and aimless unless we are pursuing said glory. It is sinful to fall short of glory (Rom. 3:23). Mindful of the fact that God will render to every man according to his works, and mindful of the fact that this applies to us in our corporate undertakings as well, with patience we seek glory, honor, and immortality (Rom. 2:6). There is no way to seek this glory without godly ambition, and so we seek to instill in our graduates a desire to attempt great things for God while expecting even greater things from God. As Thomas Chalmers once put it, “regardless of how large, your vision is too small.” The fuel for this aspiration is a godly imagination, which is to say, faith.

WE DENY that the pursuit of glory is necessarily sinful or that the pursuit of great glory is sinful. The sinfulness of our ambitions is a function of whose glory we are seeking not whether we are seeking glory. Men and women seek glory of necessity; it is embedded in our nature. Sin occurs when we twist that impulse in idolatrous directions.

WE AFFIRM that God created the heavens and earth out of nothing and that He did so in six days precisely in the way described in the first two chapters of Genesis. We understand the ultimate divide that necessarily exists between the Creator and His creation, and this understanding allows us to keep all of our labors in perspective. We have this understanding by faith, knowing that without faith it is impossible to please Him (Heb. 11:6). And with this faith, we know that the things which are seen were not made out of things which are visible (Heb. 11:3).

WE DENY that there can be any true Christian impact on culture if not attended by faith in what God teaches in His Word about human origins. This is because the progress for which we labor is a species of sanctification, not a form of evolution.

WE AFFIRM that God governs the world in predictable and orderly ways. The natural world is not governed by impersonal natural laws but rather by the personal and authoritative word of God. This world and its abundant forms of creation have enduring natures that can be consistently studied and objectively known. The world, created by divine wisdom, is simply the way it is, fixed in its created purpose and integrity, unheeding of our desires to the contrary. When God as the Lord of nature intervenes in the world directly, we call this a miracle. But this is not so common as to unsettle our ability to navigate a world that is predictable. Thus, we affirm that there is a reality outside ourselves that must be reckoned with and that our knowledge of this reality is science.

WE DENY that we are shut into a materialistic and impersonal universe. The world we know through our five senses is physical and is physically apprehended, while our knowledge of that objective world is spiritual. We deny a juxtaposition or division between the spiritual and material which instead cooperate in unity. We distinguish them but do not separate them.

WE AFFIRM that a liberal arts education under the Lordship of Jesus Christ is the kind of education that should prepare the student to live a life of integrity in all realms of endeavor. We seek to instill biblical, doctrinal, intellectual, and cultural faithfulness, and to do so in such a way that our graduates ascend to leadership in their areas of service, whatever these areas may be. We are aiming to educate future leaders in media and the arts, law and politics, entrepreneurial business and finance, education at all levels, ministry in the church, the academy, the mission field, the civil government, and much more.

WE DENY that this educational goal disparages the faithfulness of the unsung heroes of the faith. We seek to educate future cultural leaders, which means we are equipping them for that role. This is not the same thing as determining the course for their lives. If an individual graduate is led by the Spirit of God to labor in an obscure corner, the last day will reveal the cups of cold water that he gave to others in the name of Christ, and we do not in any way consider that a failure of our mission. It is, rather, a striking success. At the same time, if after graduating scores of “cultural leaders,” no signs of biblical cultural leadership manifest through them, we might want to consider changing our mission statement. Honest acknowledgement of failure would be better than the hypocrisies entailed in mission drift.

WE AFFIRM that education is a form of discipleship and character formation, and not a sort of intellectual manufacturing. When referring to leaders, we are not pretending to manufacture them the way a factory might produce a product. Because they are image-bearers, we want our graduates to go everywhere, into every lawful vocation—some recognized, and others not. But everywhere they go, our desire is for our graduates to become the kind of leaders who develop other leaders, not just followers. We want them to prepare themselves to be replaced; we want them to focus on reinforcing strengths, not correcting weaknesses; we want them to develop the kind of talent that will challenge them as leaders; and we want them to give themselves away.

WE DENY that this can be done using an industrial model. There is no such thing as three credit hours of theology, or history, or literature—as though knowledge could be counted in bushels, yards, or metric tons. Our use of such things (on student transcripts, for example) is a necessary evil in communicating with other schools and accrediting bodies, but it does not represent our understanding of how education succeeds or fails.

WE AFFIRM that, as culturally engaged Christians, we have the responsibility to pursue like-mindedness, the way all Christians are to pursue it (Rom. 15:5; Phil. 2:2, 20). Dissent for the sake of dissent is counterproductive.

WE DENY that such like-mindedness is the kind of groupthink that is characteristic of schools of thought, movements, ideologies, and isms. We strive for a Spirit-given like-mindedness that has little in common with the herd mentality. In our educational project, we aim to graduate tough-minded thinkers who are capable of standing firm against mob or media hostility, yet who also are affable and easy to work with. The wisdom that is from above is easily entreated (Jas. 3:17).

WE AFFIRM that the religious neutrality that secularism claims for itself is an impossibility. The choice of governing authority is not whether, but which. It is not whether we will live in a theocracy, but rather which god we will serve. It is not whether we will impose morality in the law, but rather which morality we will impose.

WE DENY that this acknowledgment ratifies an incipient tyranny. It instead acknowledges the inescapable nature of the condition in which we exist. The presence or absence of tyranny is a result of who rules, and how.

WE AFFIRM that we are an academic community centered on the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all things. We are pursuing a robust liberal arts education in the classical Christian tradition in the context of real Christian community. Our purpose at New Saint Andrews College is to graduate leaders who shape culture living faithfully under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

WE DENY that we can accomplish this purpose unless the board, administration, and faculty understand and love the kind of education we are providing to our students. Our expectation is that all board members, administrators, faculty members, and students should be able to explain our college’s foundational mission.

1. What is the only ultimate and only infallible locus of authority in this world?

The locus of such authority is to be found in Holy Scriptures alone.

2. What is the center of authentic Christian community?

Worship of the one true God is the center of authentic Christian community.

3. What is the highest of the liberal arts?

Worship is the highest of the liberal arts. There is no true freedom apart from the worship of God in Christ.

4. In the broad sweep of church history, where do we locate ourselves?

We locate ourselves as historic evangelicals in the Protestant and Reformed tradition.

5. What is the blessing of God on our work?

The blessing of God on our work is to find that we are walking in the works that He prepared beforehand for us to do (Eph. 2:10).

6. What do we mean by our commitment to objectivity?

We believe in objective truth, objective morality, and objective aesthetic standards.

7. What is God’s intention regarding our kingdom work?

His intention is for the nations to be made disciples of Christ and to be taught all that He commanded.

8. What must be our demeanor as we undertake this work?

Our demeanor is to exude joy and gladness.

9. What is to accompany our labors?

We are called to go forth singing.

10. What is basic to all culture making?

Marriage, and within it, sex and fruitfulness.

11. As we train men to lead, what institutions are we preparing them to lead in?

We want to educate men to lead in the realms of the family, the church, and the civil government.

12. As we include athletics in our form of education, what are we careful to remember?

We remember that collegiate athletics is a great idol in our culture, and we also take care to treat men and women differently when it comes to athletics.

13. What is excluded when students are educated in the ways of the culture of life?

Excluded is any compromise with the culture of death, specifically the seductions of the sexual revolution.

14. What form of government is foundational to all others?

Self-government is foundational to family government, church government, and civil government.

15. What do we understand by the “two kingdoms”?

We understand one kingdom to be external and visible to man and the other to be internal and visible only to God. These two kingdoms spread across all the activities of man.

16. What is important about the correspondence view of truth?

If the correspondence view of truth is not the case, then how do we know that we are not all still in our sins?

17. What is the great destroyer of civilizations?

Envy is the great destroyer.

18. What is the creation mandate?

It is the charge that God gave to mankind to exercise wise dominion in the earth.

19. What is work?

Work is the means by which we are to glorify God in our vocational livelihoods.

20. Is wealth a curse?

Wealth is a covenantal blessing, though it may present the temptation to forget the God who gave it.

21. Why is it important to have free markets?

Where markets are not free, men and women cannot be free.

22. What do we mean by being conservative?

Being a Christian conservative means that we want to conserve and maintain anything that the Holy Spirit has brought about in the course of history.

23. What is a liberal arts education?

It is an education that prepares students for lives as free men and women.

24. What is the point of a generalist education?

The point is found in teaching students to understand what is the point of a task before teaching them where and how to perform it.

25. Why is a liberal arts education not a fad?

It is not a fad because it is an education in the permanent things.

26. What is the role of imagination in exercising dominion?

Faith-based imagination rules the world.

27. How did this world get here?

God created it out of nothing.

28. Why is empirical investigation to be trusted?

Because God does not lie, and the world is ultimately personal and coherent.

29. How does an education prepare students for leadership?

By teaching them to be free.

30. Is higher education a form of manufacturing?

No, it is not. Education is character formation and is not simply a data transfer. Knowledge does not come in quantifiable units.

31. What is the difference between like-mindedness and groupthink?

The former is the gift of God and the latter is the work of man.

32. Why do we reject neutrality as a myth?

Authority is an inescapable concept—not whether, but which. It is not whether the word of God must rule, but rather which word of which god will.

33. Who, What, and Why?

Q. Who are we?

A. NSA is an academic community centered on the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all things.

Q. What are we doing here?

A. We are pursuing a robust liberal arts education in the classical Christian tradition in the context of real Christian community.

Q. Why are we doing this?

A. Our purpose at NSA is to graduate leaders who shape culture living faithfully under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.