Too often, classical Christian education is talked about as if it is all about the humanities and has little to do with math and science. Perhaps this comes from Sayers’s essay on the Trivium of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. These arts are more closely related to reading and words. Of course, Sayers is applying them in a more all-encompassing way, including math and science. Sayers was giving a sales pitch in “The Lost Tools of Learning.” A sales pitch that worked and for which all in classical Christian education should be thankful. The four Liberals Arts that she discusses minimally in the essay: the Quadrivium of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy are arts more focused on numbers. This leads some to ask, “So, does classical Christian education think math and science are important?”

The other reason that lends some validity to this concern is some of the early findings of surveys done about 15 years ago. The findings were terrifying. When it came to the Humanities, classical Christian educators believed they understood the philosophy behind what they were teaching and the philosophy behind it. It also showed that they were ready to fight to the death anyone who wanted to change their approach. So far, so good, but the next finding showed how shallow our understanding was. When it came to art and music, experienced classical Christian educators proclaimed that they didn’t know why we taught these things and were ready to cut them if they had to make cuts. This finding caused a lot of soul-searching and the creation of the Lancaster Declaration on Classical Christian Education and the Fine Arts.

While this might be scary, the findings on math and science might have been even worse. The survey found that classical Christian educators did not understand the philosophy behind teaching math and science or how to view these areas Christianly. However, we thought we were doing pretty well in these realms because our standardized test scores were good.

We pleaded ignorance regarding the Fine Arts. Regarding math and science, we proudly asserted how much we had accomplished because the College Board was clapping for the accomplishments of our students on the SAT. That’s really bad. We need to have a symposium or something on this.

I think that there has been some measure of repentance in both of these areas. There is still much work to do. Today, as a Humanities guy, a B.A. in History, a Master of Divinity, and editor of Omniubs; I would like to make an argument that it is critically important that students going into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) receive a classical Christian education. Here are my top three reasons:

Reason 1: Science Divorced from a Christian Worldview Wrecks the World

After the 20th Century, this seems fairly evident, but let me unpack it. Science and technology have expanded and accomplished some really amazing things. Technology has shrunk the world. I can wake up in Arizona and be back home in Lancaster for dinner—unless I am stuck in the Denver airport! My wife, Emily, had cancer last year. She had minimal surgery and some radiation treatment. She missed only two days of school. I had two cataract surgeries. The surgeries took less than 10 minutes a piece, and I was talking with the surgeon while she was working inside my eyeballs. I have to wear readers now, but my vision at mid-range or distance is 20/15. These blessings are real, but these have to be measured against the harm that much technology has produced.

We heal disease, but we also divorce sex from reproduction, and if our efforts fail, we have created technology to make the womb a place of death for millions of children. We have created an online world that blesses us in so many ways, but this world has also convinced many that life is so “plastic” as Carl Trueman proclaims in Strange New World that many deny nature and believe that they can change their identity through surgical and chemical interventions that end in mangled people who have paid massive fees to be made to look different than what they are at costs, both monetary and emotional, that are staggering.

Classical Christian education can help scientists learn about the human tendency toward hubris and the glorious image of God in mankind that has been marred in every area by sin. Lord willing, this can help wise scientific leaders think through the impacts of the technologies being created and keep and grow much that is good while minimizing the destruction that comes when power is lost without reference to what would please God.

Reason 2: The Technologies of the Future Need to be Fitting to Bless and Not Harm Humans

Classical Christian education helps scientists and technologists have stable standards to answer questions about foundational definitions to begin to judge whether technology is in the interest of human good. What is a human? What does the good life look like? What is a community? What is love, and does the technology being created help humans love each other and care for each other in community?

Without answers to these sorts of questions that drive scientists, they are likely to create technologies that harm and mar rather than bless and help. I’m reminded of Monty Python’s famous “Architect Sketch,” in which a team of architects asked to create a residential building for tenants. As John Cleese describes his model, it becomes clear that he has designed a slaughterhouse rather than an apartment building. When challenged by the people who commissioned the designs, he asks them to reconsider and consider the tourism angle. This is hilarious, and it makes the point that if there is no definition of good and bad, no definition of human dignity, then what makes a slaughterhouse any better or worse than a retirement home?

Classical Christian education should help people use these foundational understandings of the world to ask good questions as technology is being developed and employed. Lord willing, this can lead to technologies that are fitted to humans rather than vice-versa.

Reason 3: Jesus is Lord of All Things, Not Just the Humanities

Finally and overarchingly, the Lordship of Jesus demands that all areas of life be conformed to His rule and that all people bow their knees to Him if they are to continue. During the Industrial Revolution, many demanded that Christianity be reworked to fit the assumptions of the modern world. The theological liberalism that J. Gresham Machen battled in the early 20th century was an attempt to fit religion into a diminished role in the modern world. Machen rejected this, as did many of those who stood with Machen, fighting for the fundamentals of the faith. Some of those “fundamentalists” rejected the modern world because they were fearful of compromise. Herman Bavinck, one of my heroes and a great Dutch Reformed theologian, took a different approach. He didn’t reject the modern world. Instead, he embraced the insights and explosion of knowledge that resulted from the science in the modern world, but he proclaimed that every area of life, every area of the modern world with all its blessing, must be conformed to Christ—or be lost. If we are to maintain the blessings of the modern world, all that would continue must bow before Jesus.

The world is changing, as Tolkien said. Today, it is changing at breakneck speeds. Christians must be leaders in all fields and thoughtfully develop new technologies in accordance with the Christian worldview that they have learned, building on the sound foundations of basic definitions to create blessings for humans and with the full acknowledgment of Christ’s Lordship over every inch of the world.