Dear Student, 

Welcome, or welcome back! Let’s pause at the outset of the year to reflect about our purpose here. I believe God, in his providence, has brought you here, to this place at this time, for a particular purpose. I also believe he given us a shared purpose as a Christian university.

Why are you here? To build skills and prepare for a career? Yes. To build your resume and position yourself in a competitive job market? Sure. To prepare for effective service in your profession? Alright. To enjoy community and build friendships? Of course. 

Those are all fine reasons. But there is a deeper reason you are here, at a Christian university with a liberal arts tradition. I’ll take inspiration from John Henry Newman’s thoughts in The Idea of a University to get at it. 

The whole point of an education like ours, a Christian liberal arts education, is simple: to train your mind to seek, grasp, and contemplate Truth. Such an education presumes that Truth exists, and we can seek, find, and cherish it. It presumes Truth is worthy of pursuit and enjoyment for its own sake, not only as a means to some other goal at which a technical or professional education might aim. 

And what is Truth? we might ask with Pontius Pilate (Jn 18:38). Truth is the nature of reality. It is the essence of all that exists and how each component part fits together with the whole. 

According to the Christian faith, Truth is not, ultimately, an abstract idea, though the study of ideas and concepts can point us toward it. Truth, the logos of the universe, is at its center a person, the Lord Jesus Christ: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).

The Apostle Paul further expounds on this: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:15-17). Pursuing and knowing Truth in its fullness means pursuing and knowing Jesus. 

You can know Christ. He came into the world, a man in full and yet very God, “full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). God has also sent the “spirit of Truth,” a counselor (Jn 14:16-17). You can know Christ better by reading the Bible, for this same spirit of Truth spoke through the prophets (2 Pet. 1:21), and the law and the Psalms to tell of Christ (Lk 24:44).

The apostolic witness in the gospels, letters, and writings of the New Testament testify to Jesus’ teaching, deeds, and the meaning of his death and resurrection. You can know and actually participate in Christ most fully by believing and trusting in His name, putting Him on in baptism, and becoming part of His body, the church. 

Abstract knowledge and worldly wisdom alone are not enough to lead you to Truth. Without Christ, knowledge and wisdom, however subtle and refined, are only partial. They can even lead away from Christ, who is Truth: “‘Knowledge puffs up,’ but love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1). 

Still, your various studies, pursued in light of the knowledge revealed in scripture, can help you know Truth, know Christ, better. Christ is before all things, and all things hold together in Him. He is the logos, the meaning and fullness of the universe. We can approach Truth by studying God’s creation in all its intricacy, beauty, and order (Rom. 1:19-20).

Literature and the arts, the workings of human minds and the culture of human societies, too, can deepen our knowledge of Truth. For humanity, though corrupted by sin, is yet created in God’s image (Gen. 1:27). 

God is concerned with the training of our minds. We are to love God with our whole selves, including our minds (Matt. 22:37). We are to pursue transformation through the renewing of our minds, that we might understand and approve God’s will (Rom. 12:2).

Though God’s thoughts are higher than ours, God reveals Himself through creation and revelation, and chiefly through Christ. In Christian tradition, we find the notion of study and scholarship as thinking God’s own thoughts after him. The 16th-17th century German scientist Johannes Kepler famously described science as an attempt to “think God’s thoughts after Him.”

Likewise, St. Thomas Aquinas’s prayer before study includes a request for a ray of God’s divine brilliance to penetrate our own darkened understanding. 

The search for Truth is not a one-time effort, but an inexhaustible, continually rewarding pursuit. We won’t fully know Truth in this life—we see only through a glass darkly (1 Cor. 13:12)—but we can come to really know Christ in some measure, attaining a foretaste of full communion with Him in the age to come. As Jesus promised His disciples, “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). 

Dear student, I hope you keep this in mind as you embark on this semester. Build skills, add to your resume, make friendships. But recall this passage from Luke 10:42: 

Now as they went on their way, [Jesus] entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.” 

Pursue the one thing needful, the good portion. Pursue Truth. Pursue Jesus. He’s pursuing you. 

With regards, 

BP