03.10.10
God on Campus: Harvard's First Heretic
by Trent Sheppard
Truth is not only that which awaits discovery, but also that which was once known and is now threatened by forgetfulness.
-Robert Fong
Puritan pioneers of the Massachusetts General Court founded Harvard in 1636. The college was originally described as the “School of the Prophets” because, “according to a medieval tradition,” explains Harvard historian Samuel Morison, “the prophet Samuel presided over the world’s first university.” The school received its proper name in 1638 when minister John Harvard left his entire library and a generous endowment of £779 to the young “wilderness college” upon his death.
In the College Laws of 1642, written under the able leadership of President Henry Dunster, the original purpose of Harvard is stated simply:
Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know
God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all
sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord giveth wisdom, let everyone seriously set himself by prayer, in secret,
to seek it of Him.
Imagine that—God and Harvard in some sort of sacred pact from the very beginning: a holy conspiracy of education and conviction woven into the earliest foundations of America’s original college.
Obviously much has changed since Harvard was founded, and change is certainly not a negative thing. During Harvard’s early era, Latin was the only language allowed on campus unless there was a specific presentation assigned in English. The library then largely comprised 320 donated volumes, whereas Harvard’s library today has more than sixteen million books. The original endowment from the General Court was £400 in 1636, which combined with John Harvard’s £779 in 1638, made for a sizable amount of cash in the seventeenth century. Harvard’s endowment in 2008, in comparison, was $36.9 billion. Clearly, change can be a really good thing.
With the remarkable reputation and intellectual influence Harvard has gained in the last 370 years, however, also comes profound responsibility and tremendous temptation. President Dunster foresaw this dilemma when he warned his students, “Take heed…lest desiring to be as gods, we become as devils.” The power of knowledge, as the opening chapters of Genesis so poetically remind us, can be used for good and evil.
When writing of Harvard and the campuses of America returning to their roots, please do not misunderstand me. The point is not that there would be some sort of Puritan uprising to take Harvard back. (Surely the image of a posse of militant seventeenth-century ministers, dressed in black-and-white camouflage, with the Bible in one hand and an antique musket in the other, stealthily scaling the ivy towers of our campuses is more frightening than it is inspiring.) Rather, the point is that students and professors, engaged parents and concerned presidents would begin creating some sacred space on campus to engage with God again.
In the words of the late Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History at Yale, “Knowledge and virtue are not identical, and the expulsion of ignorance by knowledge will not be enough to deal with the spiritual realities and moral challenges of the future.” Professor Pelikan was absolutely right: knowledge, on its own, has never been enough to deal with the moral complexities and spiritual uncertainties of our lives. Even the world’s best brain surgeon cannot remove the cancer of violence from the mind of a murderer, anymore than an expert heart surgeon can remove the systemic sin of selfishness from a society that always insists on having more, more, more. There are somethings in life we simply cannot learn from a lecture.
That is why the earliest laws of Harvard include knowing God as the “main end of... life and studies.” That is why the founders of the College of William & Mary (1693) forged ahead with their vision to create “a seminary... of the Gospel” even when the diplomat in charge of their endowment responded to their plans by shouting, “Souls! Damn your souls! Make tobacco!” That is why the seal of Yale University (1701) is an open Bible with the words Lux et Veritas [Light and Truth] inscribed beneath it. And that is why ministers transformed by the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century founded Princeton (1746) with the motto Vitam Mortuis Reddo [I restore Life to the Dead]…
[Read a longer extract here.]
God on Campus: Sacred Causes & Global Effects by Trent Sheppard. Copyright © 2009 by Trent Sheppard. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press PO Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515.