By the time a student reaches 7th grade, most curricula have sorted themselves into tidy, separate boxes. History happens at one time. Literature happens at another. Theology, if it appears at all, is somewhere else entirely. The implicit message is that these are different things, studied for different reasons.
Omnibus is built on the conviction that this is exactly backwards.
The name is Latin for "all-encompassing," and that's precisely what it attempts. Omnibus is a Great Books curriculum for grades 7 through 12 that treats history, theology, and literature not as three subjects running on parallel tracks, but as three angles of vision on a single pursuit: learning to think clearly and faithfully about everything.
What Omnibus Actually Is
Each year of Omnibus combines primary-source historical texts, works of theology, and great literature into a unified course of study organized around a specific historical period. Students aren't reading Homer in one class and studying ancient history in another. They're reading Homer as part of ancient history, in conversation with what they're learning about Greek civilization, philosophy, and the biblical world that overlapped with it.
This is what classical educators mean when they talk about the unity of knowledge. Subjects don't exist in isolation. Ideas have histories. Literature reflects theology. History is inseparable from the beliefs of the people who made it. Omnibus holds all of that together in a way that few curricula attempt.
Two Tracks, Three Credits
Each year of Omnibus runs two simultaneous courses: Primary and Secondary.
The Primary course focuses closely on primary-source works from the time period covered — the original texts, read seriously and in depth. The Secondary course offers balance, with a somewhat lighter workload and a stronger emphasis on literature and theology. Together, the two courses earn students three credits: one each in history, theology, and literature.
A concrete example makes this clearer. In Omnibus I, the Primary course puts students inside the works of Plato, engaging directly with the Socratic method and the questions Socrates spent his life asking. In the Secondary course, some of the reading includes Peter Kreeft's modern works presenting fictional dialogues between Socrates, contemporary university professors, and others — the ancient questions placed in conversation with the present. Primary and Secondary aren't redundant. They're complementary. One gives depth; the other gives range.
Students who complete all six years of both Primary and Secondary courses will have done something else worth noting: they will have studied all 66 books of the Bible in context. That's not an accident of the curriculum design. It's the point. You can read more about why that matters in The Veritas Approach to Bible.
The Six-Year Arc
Omnibus moves through three historical periods — Ancient, Medieval, and Modern — and then cycles through them a second time.
| Year | Time Period |
|---|---|
Omnibus I | Ancient |
Omnibus II | Medieval |
Omnibus III | Modern |
Omnibus IV | Ancient |
Omnibus V | Medieval |
Omnibus VI | Modern |
Learn how credits are best recorded on transcripts.
The repetition is deliberate. A 7th grader encountering the ancient world for the first time is gathering information, building a framework, learning to place people and events in relation to each other. A 10th grader returning to the same period is doing something different — interrogating sources, weighing arguments, forming and defending judgments. The texts are similar; the student is not. The second pass is where the deeper work happens.
This is also why the grammar-stage history program matters so much as preparation. Students who arrive at Omnibus I with 160 events already mapped in their minds — who know where the ancient world sits relative to the biblical timeline and to everything that followed — engage at a completely different level from those starting without that foundation. The Veritas Approach to History describes how that groundwork gets laid in grades 2 through 6.
On the Question of Difficulty
When families first encounter the Omnibus reading lists, the honest reaction is often something like: that's a lot. Herodotus. Thucydides. Augustine. Dante. It's an ambitious program, and it's worth naming that directly.
A few things are worth keeping in mind. Students are encouraged to engage with different texts differently — Herodotus's Histories rewards skimming in places, while Homer's Odyssey rewards slow, attentive reading. Not every page of every text demands the same intensity. And the class exercises and discussion formats are varied enough to hold the interest of students with different learning styles and aptitudes.
The goal isn't to produce students who have technically finished a long list of books. It's to produce students who have joined what scholars call the "Great Conversation" — the ongoing dialogue across centuries between the greatest minds about the questions that matter most. That conversation rewards patience.
Any Amount Is Worth Doing
Families sometimes ask whether it's possible to do only part of Omnibus — a year or two, or only the Primary or Secondary track. The answer is yes, and the value is real regardless of how much you complete. Any serious engagement with the Great Books, in service of learning to think biblically about everything, will shape a student for life.
Omnibus is available in all three Veritas learning formats: You Teach, Self-Paced, and Live Online through Veritas Scholars Academy.
