humanities professor mentioned above, already complained in the early eight-
eenth century that universities were so enchanted with the scientificidealof
measurable truth that training in wisdom fell by the wayside:We devote all our efforts to the investigation of physical phenomena, because
their nature seems unambiguous, but we fail to inquire into the human nature,
which, because of the freedom of man’s will, is difficult to determine. A serious
drawback arises from this preponderance of our interest in the natural sciences.
Our young men, because of their training which focussed on these studies, are
unable to engage in the life of the community, to conduct themselves with
sufficient wisdom and prudence.^96
Vico laments that his graduating students lack the skill of interpretation. They
have so swallowed the black and white notion of truth conveyed to them that
they can no longer apply eternal truths to a constantly changing social environ-
ment. In other words, they lack wisdom, the ability to discern general truths in
the changing circumstances of life and so they fail to develop a long-range view.
According to Vico, liberal arts education should produce a sage,‘who
through all the ambiguities and uncertainties of human actions and events,
keeps his eyes steadily focused on eternal truth, manages to follow a round-
about way whenever he cannot travel in a straight line, and makes decisions, in
thefield of action, which in the course of time, prove to be as profitable as
the nature of things permits’.^97 Vico complains that universities, with their
emphasis on practical results, produce instead fundamentalists or‘doctrinaires’,
highly trained specialists with narrow minds who take a small corner of the
truth for the whole picture. Vico’s solution to this dilemma is for universities
to devise a coherent liberal arts core curriculum in which the professors co-
ordinate all disciplines and teach them in the humanistic light of Christianity.
Some such solution is also needed today. The modern West’sproblemswith
integrating different ethnic groups, the reign of individualism and relativism, the
loss of a unifying goal for universities all have much to do with the loss of a
transcendent order of things.^98 There are many ways in which the modern univer-
sity could try to reclaim the liberal arts and humanistic learning as the central
institutional force for the transmission and formation of culture. I want to conclude
by focussing on confessionally affiliated institutions as offering one such possibility.
Christian liberal arts universities that embrace the humanistic spirit inher-
ent in the gospel are uniquely placed to speak effectively into the present crisis
of the universities because theycanlink our studies and research to a unifying
source of truthwithoutthereby becoming fundamentalist. A Christian liberal
(^96) Giambattista Vico,On the Study Methods of Our Time(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1990), 33.
(^97) Vico,Study Methods of Our Time, 35.
(^98) See Brunner, Christianity and Civilization, 106–7, on the problem of justice and
natural law.
Christian Humanism and Contemporary Culture 159