Tuisem A. Shishak
I am honored to address the first convocation of Patkai Christian College (PCC). Let us be reminded of the God who brought this College into being 35 years ago: “Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain” (Ps. 127:1).
I call upon Christians in our land as well as our prayer partners and supporters overseas to join the psalmist saying: “Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Ps. 103:1-2). The 1000-acre property of PCC, donated by Chumukedima and Seithekiema villages, is the home of a Christian liberal arts college (not a Bible college) offering arts and science, commerce, computer technology, Bible, and music.
I have always believed faith and learning must coexist, and ideally be integrated, at Patkai. For the primary rationale for this, I turn to John Henry Cardinal Newman who, in his classic book, “The Idea of a University,” argues that since God is the Creator of the heavens and the earth and everything in them, “all branches of knowledge are connected, because the subject matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself, as being the acts and the work of the Creator” (p. 127). Thus all knowledge forms a single whole and each subject is but a partial view of the whole. Based on such Christian worldview, the broad subject matters upon which a liberal education concentrates are God, Man, and Nature (the Universe).
A university or college reflects these subjects in its faculties of theology, humanities and social sciences, and natural sciences, and I may add modern technology. In other words, liberal arts education broadly means the study of God and His Creation (Man and Nature): (1) Theology studies God; (2) Humanities and Social Sciences study Man and his works; (3) Natural Sciences and Technology study Nature (God’s created physical universe). Hence God as the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer should be the foundation for Patkai’s educational enterprises.
The term “liberal arts” comes from a Latin phrase, artes liberals, meaning work or activity befitting free men. All men and women are created equal in the sight of God. A liberal arts education is not that “skill” for which employers pay wages. The student has been cheated if the college, while pretending to provide him with a liberal education, has done no more than train him for a job. Characteristics of a liberally educated person include civility, ethical maturity, literary ability and rationality. Study of the past in order to learn its lessons and avoid repeating its mistakes is a basic objective of liberal education. Morality is that characteristic which distinguishes human beings from animals, and virtue is the unique quality of humans. Theology was considered the queen of the sciences in the Middle Ages (‘science’ meaning knowledge) because of all disciplines it best reveals the harmony and orderliness of the universe God has created. Hence a liberally educated man should be distinguishably a good man—balanced, rational, and righteous, a student and lover of virtue.
To quote Calvin D. Linton, “If the student while in college can learn to write with some clarity and facility; to think with reasonable vigor and orderliness; to become acquainted with the past (and with a foreign language or two); to begin to explore the vast realms of literature and art and music; to take a few paces into the marvels of science and number; to sense in some measure the power and beauty of virtue; to practice at least a little civility and compassion toward others; to inaugurate (in short) an acquaintanceship with and a desire to emulate the best that has been thought and said in the history of the world—if he can do such things he will not only bring greater effectiveness to whatever money-earning skill or profession he may later choose, but he will make an investment that will pay dividends both to him and to society.”
Patkai is the first and still the only autonomous college among more than 500 colleges in North-East India. But in spite of that status, I must admit that we have fallen short in nurturing an intellectual culture in our institution. I see little competitive spirit among the students or the faculty in research and scholarship. Christians have the tendency to be content with mediocrity in all they do: in studies, in business, etc. Perhaps that’s one reason why non-Christians get all the Nobel prizes. If Patkai ever hopes to provide leadership in the field of higher education, its faculty and students will have to be convinced that liberal education, considered in itself, is simply the cultivation of the intellect as such, and its object is nothing more or less than intellectual excellence. Mere information imparted by teachers and memorized by students is the least desirable of all the products of teaching and learning.
Some of you may wonder how Patkai can achieve intellectual growth if it insists on Bible study, prayer and worship for spiritual growth, as if there is a dichotomy between them.
Long ago the Church Father Tertullian asked: “What has Jerusalem got to do with Athens?” By Athens, Tertullian means intellectual culture, the life of the mind, the study of philosophy, literature, history, and theology. By Jerusalem, he means redemption through the blood of Jesus, faith, hope, and love. But Patkai as a Christian liberal arts college needs both Jerusalem and Athens because they are complementary.
To me “Jerusalem” means, in the words of the Scripture, “In your hearts set apart Christ as Lord,” and “Athens” means, “Be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have [in Christ]” (I Pet. 3:15). Putting Christ at the center of our life and the intellectual preparedness to defend our faith in Him are two sides of the same coin. This is well expressed by Charles Wesley in the 18th century: “Unite the pair so long disjoin’d, Knowledge and vital piety.”
Today two modern imperatives—the need for the quick acquisition of marketable skills, and vocational specialization at all levels of school and college career—have created confusion about the primary focus of college education. Let it be understood by Patkai faculty and students, and their parents, that cultivation of mind and intellect—the core of liberal education, is the primary business of higher education.
According to Newman: “One who has learned to think and to reason and to compare and to discriminate and to analyze . . . will not indeed at once be a lawyer . . . or a statesman, or a physician . . . but he will be placed in that state of intellect in which he can take up any one of the sciences or callings…with . . . ease, . . . grace, . . . versatility, and success.”
Liberal education is good career preparation. But liberal education and liberal pursuits are first of all exercises of mind, of reason, and of reflection.
Education has to be all about learning the truth, and the truth means facts and their relations. To quote Kenneth O. Gangel, “Integrating of truth refers to the teaching of all subjects as a part of the total truth of God, thereby enabling the student to see the unity of natural and special revelation”. According to Prof. Arthur Holmes: “From a Christian perspective, all truth is about either God, or God’s creation, or things God knows but never himself created—like technological and artistic possibilities he left for us to bring to actuality”.
To quote Dr. Elton Trueblood, “Every good investigator wants to learn the truth, if he can, but the committed Christian has an added motive in that his intellectual task is a sacred task because it is God’s truth that he is trying to learn.”
History tells us that Christianity and the liberal arts have reinforced each other. Learned people tell us that one reason why there has been no final split between liberal education and Christianity is because “it is our joint heritage from Athens and from Jerusalem, a fusion of Graeco-Roman respect for man as something more than the beast, and Judaeo-Christian respect for man as made in the image of God”. Comenius, the great 17th-century Christian educator prescribed three main tasks of education: “(1) Erudition which aims at man’s reason, (2) moral education which aims at man’s character and independence, and (3) piety which aims at his understanding of God.”
Hostile forces anchored on selfish interests, or the status quo, have in every century opposed institutions like Patkai, dedicated to the advancement of learning and the betterment of human life. Nevertheless, no Christian college should surrender its role as foregazer and critic—as searching mind and probing conscience—of our society. A Christian college is not merely an instrument responsive to popular pressures, but with due temperance born of a heritage and enduring tradition, must be willing to stand up as a judge of society’s tastes and actions. The critic and the judge are not always popular, but the greatest teachers throughout human history have preferred hard truth to comfortable fiction, and self-respect to popular esteem. Courage, with temperance, is always needed to hold the college to its role and mission. If Patkai has this courage, it can be sure of its foundation, and be proud of its present status and its future goal. Patkai can boldly and unhesitatingly fulfill its proposed aims and commitments in order to provide sound liberal education to those who deserve.
Again Trueblood: “Since education and religion provide us with the most enduring societies of human history, it did not seem strange to our ancestors that the two should be combined in one continuous effort. The combination of God and the love of learning was one which commended itself to the early [American] colonists because it seemed eminently reasonable”. The motto of Harvard University, the first university established in the USA (in 1638) was: Truth: for Christ and for the Church; the official motto of Princeton University, established in 1746, was: Under God’s Power She Flourishes.
America’s faith in God was the key reason America grew and became a great nation. She was a society which had its roots in the Bible. The founding fathers were products of Western civilization which developed over several centuries after Gutenberg invented the printing press and published the Bible. America grew great in a Bible-friendly society. The founding fathers of America were educated in homes and schools based on Biblical principles – even if many of them didn’t declare themselves Christian. It would be hard to find men with the wisdom, courage, ethics and selflessness of John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln among the political leaders of today.
Today, economically, technologically and militarily America has become the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth, but sadly America as a whole has forsaken the God who brought the first Pilgrims to her shores in the 1600s to form a new nation under God. America as a whole has taken God out of her education system, textbooks and classrooms. John Dewey and his disciples who trained school teachers and propagated pragmatism in colleges and universities in the 1900s succeeded in promoting an atheistic philosophy of education. Dewey rejected fixed moral laws and eternal truths and principles, and adopted pragmatic, atheistic, relativistic concepts as his guiding philosophy. Today American children in public (government) schools learn in a permissive atmosphere and behave more or less as they please without much respect for their teachers. Classroom indiscipline in turn is destroying quality education. This reminds me of Prof. Diane Christian’s remarks: “Many fear religion as oppressive superstition and a rationalization of violence; many others see it as our best hope for peace, a stay against meaninglessness and anarchy, fearing with Dostoyevsky that if God doesn’t exist, everything is permitted”. Let this be a wake-up call to us.
I challenge Patkai faculty, staff and students, trustees, alumni, and the two sponsoring bodies (Nagaland Baptist Church Council and Manipur Baptist Convention) to make a new covenant with God today in the presence of this congregation that they will be committed to making Patkai Christian College a truly Christian university both unapologetically Christian in commitment and uncompromisingly excellent academically.
Remember, our College motto is “Light and Truth.” We believe that academic excellence and Biblical Christian faith and practice are essential to a meaningful and purposeful life. “Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell” (Ps. 43:3).
As you leave the corridors of this college, may God bless all the graduates present and absent. Remember your alma mater wherever you may be from today. And let the Light and Truth guide Patkai Christian College now and always!
(The writer is Founder Principal Emeritus of Patkai Christian College and this is the text of his address made during the Convocation of the college on June 30, 2009)
