One of the first questions I often get as Provost of an Orthodox College is about the relationship between those two words: Orthodox and College. Orthodox means, literally, "correct worship", and, as we explored in my previous post, college as we see it is an apprenticeship of the young adult in the Liberal Arts. What does the correct worship of God have to do with the liberal arts of Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy? This question has been asked since the earliest era of the Church, and many wiser than I have sought to answer it. In fact, one of the most long-lasting versions of the question has been the one posed by Tertullian: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? The Medievals asked it in a more theoretical sense: What place has the science of theology among the arts and sciences we have inherited from antiquity? 

Though a few Christians have taken an extreme negative answer to these questions, denying any connection between Athens and Jerusalem, and deeming no science but that of Theology worth studying, this hasn't been the main view of the Church over time. From great Fathers of the Church like St. Justin Martyr, St. Basil the Great, and St. Augustine of Hippo to more modern Christian leaders like St. Philaret of Moscow, John Henry Newman, and Martin Luther King Jr., Christians have seen a continuity and reciprocity between the doctrines of Christianity and the Liberal Arts. 

This is because, fundamentally, Christian doctrine and the liberal arts share a basic understanding of the human. According to both, humans possess a soul endowed with reason, a soul that is able to observe, contemplate, and know reality. Moreover, all of reality is able to be known and meant to be known. The liberal arts and the Church of Jesus Christ are both truth oriented, and call their adherents to be seekers of truth. And because God's creation encompasses everything from rocks and trees to horses and birds to numbers and virtues, the truths that the reason-endowed human discerns in reality will be coherent and in harmony with one another. The nature of the rock and the nature of the heavens will rhyme and resonate with one another: the number 4 and the virtue of justice will have some kinship that we can discern. 

But what of Theology proper, that is, the study of God Himself, the One who is beyond creation? What has that to do with the unity of truth found in the liberal arts which, by their very nature, focus on the nature of created things? First, writers like St. Basil and St. John of Damascus remind us that the liberal arts prepare our minds to be able to study Theology. The very exercises of understanding and interpreting the words and numbers of others, and the exercises of combining words and numbers ourselves into beautiful, expressive wholes: these are necessary exercises to condition our soul for encountering and expressing the most important matters, namely the revelation of God to man. Thus the study of the liberal arts is a way of respecting ourselves and making ourselves responsible enough to turn to divine doctrine. 

In the medieval era, Christians often spoke of Theology as the queen of the sciences. I love this description, and it guides our approach to Theology at Saint Constantine College. All arts and sciences are the handmaids of Theology; under her loving care, the liberal arts wait upon Theology, serve her, and pave a way for her people to honor her well.