Building the Christian Academy - Softcover

Holmes, Arthur F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802847447 ISBN 13: 9780802847447

Publisher: William B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2001

Synopsis

Until Relatively Recently, the history of higher education in the West was the story of a Christian academic tradition that played a major role in both intellectual history and the history of the church. Over the last one hundred years, however, we have witnessed the progressive secularization of higher education. George Marsden goes so far as to suggest that the American university has lost its soul. But what was that putatively Christian soul? Precisely what in the Christian tradition has now been lost? And what should we know about that tradition as a condition of practical wisdom for the present? Seeking to answer these questions, Arthur Holmes here explores the Christian tradition of learning, focusing on seven formative episodes in history that pertain to building and maintaining a strong Christian academy today. Holmes's fascinating treatment is set within the history of ideas -- the early church in a pagan culture, Augustine's formative influence on monastery and cathedral schools, the rise and decline of scholasticism, Renaissance humanism's contribution to the Protestant Reformation, the utilitarian view of education that accompanied the scientific revolution, and struggles with Enlightenment secularization -- and incorporates the educational thought of Plato and Isocrates, Clement and Origen, Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor, Aquinas and Bonaventure, Erasmus and the Reformers, Francis Bacon and John Milton, and John Henry Newman.

About this title

About the Author

Arthur F. Holmes (1924-2011) was professor emeritus of philosophy at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Besides The Idea of a Christian College, his many influential books on philosophy and Christian higher education include All Truth Is God's Truth, Shaping Character: Moral Education in the Christian College, and Building the Christian Academy.

Edition details

• Publisher: William B Eerdmans Publishing Co
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802847447
• ISBN 13: 9780802847447
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 132