“Liberal arts on steroids”: theological education and the meaning of life

[Editor’s Note: Jeffrey Oak ‘85 M.Div. ‘96 Ph.D. is president of the YDS Alumni Board. We have invited him to periodically share some of his reflections about YDS.]

In his book, Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale, observes that an institution of higher education is one of the few places where the question of the meaning of life can be explored in an organized way.  Kronman, who now primarily teaches undergraduates in Yale’s Directed Studies program, maintains that colleges are not just places for “the transmission of knowledge” but forums for “the exploration of life’s mystery and meaning.”  He laments that “the question of what living is for” no longer occupies a “central and honored” place in the curriculum of most colleges.

Kronman’s plea to revive the humanities is part of a larger debate about the aims and purposes of a liberal arts education.  One of the most enduring studies of the topic is, of course, John Henry Newman’s classic from the 19th century, The Idea of a University.  Following Cicero and Aristotle, among others, Newman maintains that knowledge is “its own end,” and asserts that this is the “first principle” behind the idea, the very concept of a university.

To suggest that knowledge is its own end and that the exploration of what living is for is perhaps the most important dimension of self-knowledge, raises the larger question, What should colleges be up to?  Andrew Delbanco, in his book College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, argues that colleges should help students cultivate the “qualities of mind and heart” that are necessary for “reflective citizenship.”  He identifies five such qualities:

1. A skeptical discontent with the present, informed by a sense of the past.
2. The ability to make connections among seemingly disparate phenomena.
3. Appreciation of the natural world, enhanced by knowledge of science and the arts.
4. A willingness to imagine experience from perspectives other than one’s own.
5. A sense of ethical responsibility.

Jake Schrum ‘73 M.Div., president of Emory and Henry College and before that, Southwestern University, once observed that “theology is liberal arts on steroids.”  I take Schrum to be saying that the study of theology at a place like YDS has many important and noble effects, and one of them is the process of cultivating—in a supercharged manner—the qualities of mind and heart about which Delbanco speaks.  And it is mind and heart.   

As colleges, universities and schools around the country and the world begin a new academic year, I am acutely aware of the hundreds, even thousands, of YDS grads who are fine-tuning syllabi, reviewing lecture notes and greeting students.  If their experience at YDS was anything like mine, I imagine they were deeply influenced by faculty who gave attention to both mind and heart in exploring life’s mystery and meaning. 

I’m also acutely aware of the central role which YDS grads play in countless colleges, universities and schools, because I suspect they are among a select group of faculty who have most certainly not given up on the meaning of life.