“I have been asked to speak to you about Rose Hill, a tiny and regrettably short-lived Orthodox great books college. In order to keep myself organized, I can do no better than to borrow from Plato, the author of the Republic, surely one of the greatest of all the great books, and a man from whom I borrowed much in laying the groundwork for the college.
The conversation Plato records in this book begins to take shape, as you may recall, when his master Socrates is asked to describe a perfectly just human being. Saying that it would be easier on the mental eyes to look first at something larger than a man, Socrates proposes to describe instead a just polis or state, where the functions and faculties of the individual person reveal themselves more clearly in different classes of people, each having a distinct set of civic responsibilities.1 My assignment is to tell you about a Christian college. But a college, like a state, may be regarded as a large human being, and a human being—according to Saint Paul (1 Thess. 5:23)—consists of three basic parts: a spirit, a soul, and a body. I propose that we consider the collegiate version of each of these in turn. I shall begin with the last, with the body of Rose Hill College, turning next to its soul, and saving its spirit for the final part of my talk.” -James Cutsinger
Read the entire lecture about Rose Hill College here.
