Arthur Holmes (1924-2011)

In case you haven’t heard, Dr. Arthur Holmes was recently promoted to glory. A philosophy professor at Wheaton College, Holmes wrote The Idea of a Christian College, a book I found very helpful when I was writing Thriving at College. Among other things, Holmes rebuffed the common student question “When am I ever going to use this stuff?”  His response:

The question to ask about an education is not ‘What can I do with it?’ but rather ‘what is it doing to me, as a person?’ Education has to do with the making of persons; Christian education with the making of Christian persons.

Some students seem more desirous of a credential than an education. They seem less interested in the internal transformation which education is meant to foster, and more concerned with just “getting through.”

Holmes got so much right in The Idea of a Christian College – I highly recommend it.