“Isn’t it marvelous to see a college that defies the typical pattern of institutional entropy?”
By Joshua Mayo ’10 · Contributing Writer
As we celebrate the 150th birthday of Grove City College, we reflect on what this institution means to us.
We take stock of the goods we have received from this place and marvel at the audacity of its mission, which remains just as compelling today as it must have been at its inception — perhaps even more so, given the present challenges of our cultural moment.
It is not easy to put such weighty matters into words, but gratitude obliges us to try.
First, I am grateful for the college’s commitment to Truth. And not just any truth, the generic truth of academic inquiry or the rarefied truth of tenured expertise, but the living Truth incarnate, as manifested in the person of Christ and proclaimed in the mystery of the gospel.
When Jesus boldly proclaimed in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” he was making an important intellectual claim, identifying himself as the archetypal human ideal and thus the focal point of every truly humane enterprise.
Make no mistake: In the next 150 years, Christian colleges will either double down on their theological convictions or cease to be. Isn’t it marvelous then to see a college that defies the typical pattern of institutional entropy? Isn’t it invigorating to watch a school become increasingly Christian over time, not less Christian?
Second, I want to express my gratitude for the college’s mission to conserve good things.
I choose my direct object here advisedly, for, as any true conservative will tell you, there is nothing intrinsically righteous about being traditional. Wisdom sometimes demands that we hold onto the past; at other times, she asks us to embrace the new. As the Preacher teaches in Ecclesiastes 3:3, there is “a time to tear down, and a time to build.”
But is there any question right now about which direction the prevailing winds are blowing? Is there any doubt about which side colleges and universities are more likely to err — the Scylla of blind tradition or the Charybdis of radicalism?
At times like these, we need institutions of higher education willing to tack into the wind, believing, with the likes of Roger Scruton, that “good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”
Some reading these reflections might find these points unextraordinary. There is nothing unique, they might say, about these commitments, because other schools share the same core convictions — and these readers would be right.
Still, I am not sure our primary task during this 150th celebration ought to be a focus on what makes Grove City College absolutely unique. Rather, we should celebrate those distinctives that will make us last.
Consequently, my notes of gratitude here have more to do with beauty than with branding. For it is not uniqueness alone that will enable a college to survive the 21st century — not its state-of-the-art dormitories, its technological fanfare or specialized majors — but the beauty of its academic vision.
May Grove City College ever be committed to Truth—not just any truth, but the Way, the Truth and the Life! And may it conserve what is good, drawing its inspiration not from its own institutional identity but from the object of its vision!
With such propitious conditions for education, we can be confident that we will celebrate its legacy for many years to come.
