Knowing Christ & the Founding of Harvard
Jesus is the organizing principle of all knowledge and the ground of all good thinking. He is both the beginning of wisdom and the end goal of all knowledge. Historically, when Christians have understood this best and practiced this the most, they have been the pacesetters in their society.
Take for instance the founding documents of Harvard. “In a pamphlet of 1643, the founders of Harvard…wrote their mission statement for the [then] new school…..” “The founders said this: ‘Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed, to consider well [that] the maine end of life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, Jn. 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as well as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning.’” (Plantiga, Engaging God’s World, p. ix, sic)
Such an approach is not only powerful in the transformation of culture, and laudable in its aspirations, but also absolutely necessary in its piety. If Jesus is Lord of all, then we must work at seeing the connectedness of all things in Him. To do anything less is to say with our lives that He is not truly Lord. And that is unthinkable.
Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
~Colossians 1:15-20
