This is a longer statement about what makes Comeford College distinct written by Philip Kulishov, Comeford Board Member
A Strategy for the Resurgence of Higher Education
With the evident misalignment of higher education, more people are refusing to participate in America’s colleges and universities. College lost its way decades ago, and people are not blind. Even apart from statistic data, mere anecdotal evidence demonstrates the shift in value that parents and students have had towards continuing education after grade-school. Many families are simply not interested. America’s higher education institutions are themselves to blame. Their misdirected pursuits have served to undermine the credibility not just of the specific institutions propagating them, but higher education altogether.
The devaluing of continuing education has not seen its final blow or its final consequence. Less people wanting to know more is not something to celebrate. It is a crisis. We are commanded to love God with all our mind, and so we must. The shattered walls of Western thought and application must be rebuilt through a resurgence of higher education. However, before we can see such a resurgence, we must realign with the purpose of education.
HIGHER EDUCATION
Few would argue that higher education in America is in a good place today. The top-heavy, overblown budgets of American Universities have established a misplaced focus on skill-training, extracurricular programs, and administrative bureaucracy, creating institutions with enormous footprints but light feet. Graduates of these programs are all but ready to fulfill the purpose for which education is supposed to prepare them. Instead, they come out ready to play the role they have been prepared for as cogs in the machine. Higher education in America accomplishes this by having a three-fold focus: credentialism, college life, and Cultural Marxism.
Credentialism
With the rise of globalism and managerialism, the 20th century brought in the need for and availability of highly specialized skills. A certain kind of division of labor that allows for efficiencies of scale has resulted in much of the economic progress we’ve realized in the last hundred year. However, this has come at a price. To feed the machine of economic production, higher education became the stamping press of credential job skills – or worse, just credentials with no skills. The purpose of the University took a major shift, as it became a means to a well-paying career.
Finding your place in this life by securing a job is the pointed purpose for which parents now seek to educate their children. Starting with grade-school, and exasperated in higher education institutions, all education has been hijacked towards serving our specialized economy. The skills trained for have become ever so niche, that they are either irrelevant in the fast-moving economy by the time the student graduates, or are in no way transferable across industries. Most skills that are valuable for the job can be, and are, trained for on the job. Higher education does poorly in serving the purpose of training for a job.
Historically, skill training was accomplished in a mentorship with the master of the trade. An apprentice would shadow a master, learn the trade, and mature into a specialist. But trying to craft this sort of training in a higher education program has been all but successful. The market is not blind to this. There has been a substantial vibe shift in the way parents, and upper high schoolers, look at higher education. In their pursuit for securing a job, they have realized that college will not help them. And so, they forfeit the path of higher education altogether.
Even though there are still a myriad of families following the well-worn path of College Credentialism, there is a rising tide of contrarian thinkers who refuse to join in the cog-making program. Even if they may be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, their reason for doing so is understandable and rational.
College Life
Following the university rebellions of the 1960s and the Sexual Revolution that resulted, another key component of higher education has been the “College Life.” Perhaps students, and their parents, aren’t after credentials and career-security. But they do want to have the college experience ever so magnified in the media. Dorm-room parties, frat-houses, and clubs – where booze and sex are abundant – is what many have in mind when considering why and where to go to college. It’s not about the education. It’s about the experience.
The university system itself does not help in this misdirection. It reinforces it. If budget speaks to priorities, the money directed towards college sports programs says it all. College sports is a world in itself. Even if the number of players are limited, the participants are not. College sports are almost indivisible from the current college experience. It’s indivisible from the entire community. Fanatics who themselves have graduated decades ago obsess over their Team.
Other extra-curricular activities are not lacking. Clubs and communities are an integral part of the college life. Yes, much of this could be valuable networking that would foster great opportunities. But reality speaks. Apart from the few, most students do not take productive advantage of networking opportunities for their future. They’re in it for the experience of today.
Just like with Credentialism, there is a rising shift away from the “College Life.” After seeing two or three generations throw out their life for the “College Life,” many potential students today refuse to follow the experiential pursuit. Parents also have woken up to the expensive emptiness of the college life. And so, for this reason also, they turn their backs on higher education.
Cultural Marxism
The third focus that the Universities have established is in the realm of ideology. Battling against the core of Western Civilization, higher education has been training its graduates in the worldview of Cultural Marxism. Instead of carrying and advancing the culture which birthed it, higher education has worked to deconstruct every notion that smells of Western Christendom – the white, Christian man being presented as the epitome of evil. Race, religion, and reproductive classification are all recategorized in the Marxist ideology of the oppressed and the oppressors.
Our media, politicians, and educators themselves are all products of this indoctrination effort. The eighty million people who put Joe Biden into office in 2020 (and the 75 million who fell short of doing so with Kamala Harris in 2024) did not do so blindly. They were trained to accept their extreme views. The Marxist lens became acceptable, then demandable. Higher education has effectively served its purpose of indoctrinating a generation in the likes of Cultural Marxism.
However, this too has been exposed and seen through. Even though the battle still rages, and universities haven’t been darker, it has become clearer what sort of product they’ve been creating. The rooms are still full but are becoming less so. Fearing the results Cultural Marxism produces, more people have been losing interest in higher education altogether. Parents aren’t willing to sacrifice their children to destructive ideologies. If going to college means becoming a commie, many aren’t interested.
No To College?
The advertised and agreed purpose of higher education in pursuing a job through credentialism, an experience in the “college life,” and an ideology with Cultural Marxism has served to undermine Western Civilization and infect a generation of Americans. However, more than that, this three-fold misdirected purpose has served to undermine the credibility not just of the specific institutions propagating it, but higher education altogether.
Students and parents are dismissing the need for college. Because of this misdirection, college enrollment across the nation has drastically declined. “Why do I even need college?” Is a question more and more high schoolers are pointedly asking. It makes sense. If you want a solid job, a good life, and a true worldview, and you see that higher education does not offer that, why pursue it? Apart from credentialism, the college-life, and Cultural Marxism, the credit that is required monetarily to participate in these college fiascos is by itself an argument to abstain.
Foregoing higher education because it doesn’t offer what it promises is of more wisdom than diving into the garbage headlong. However, deciding to cancel college altogether still starts with the wrong understanding as to what higher education is for. It’s the other side of the same coin.
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
There has been a educational realignment in the last few decades – both in grade school and higher education. With the resurgence of Classical Education in America – following the lead of schools like Logos (K-12) and New Saint Andrews College, both founding member schools of the Association of Christian Classical Schools – educators have put much effort in expounding the purpose of education. Even in the secular world, professors such as Dr. Jordan Peterson have had enough of the crazy in college and started their own education movements. There is indeed an Educational Reformation in the air, gaining exponential traction – both among Secularists, but more so among Christians.
Christians in particular have taken charge with educating their children with integrity. It’s only the beginning, as there are still many more Christian families in the cog-machine then out of it. But the future looks promising. The trajectory has shifted.
However, Christian Education in America also has its categories and labels. It comes in one of three flavors, if you may. And if we are to have a true resurgence as to fulfilling the purpose of education, none of the current approaches will bring us there – at least not consistently or completely.
Compromised
Following down the Ivy-League path, much of Christian Education is ripe with compromise. Whether it’s doctrinal misdirection – teaching lies and heresies – or toying with liberal ideologies such as Feminism and Wokism, Compromised Christian Education trains its student body in worldliness.
This pattern, like all things, is on a spectrum. The Ivy League schools, which began as explicitly Christian institutions, are nothing of the sort any longer. America’s leading Universities are at the forefront of the demise of higher education. But other compromised Christian colleges are more subtle in nature. They propagate a Christianized Secularism – a secularism with a Christian veneer. Perhaps they offer Chapel and Bible class, but that’s as far as their Christianity goes. In other subjects, God is kept out of the lecture hall and lab rooms. Making God irrelevant to the life of the mind, these institutions are effectively Christian in name only. They may have a verse plastered on the wall somewhere, but it never penetrates the minds and hearts of the students.
We know the future of the Compromised Christian College. We’re living it now. This sort of mushy, soft, evangelical education has not and will not be able to carry the real substance of culture. Like tofu, it takes on the flavor of its surroundings. Instead of training its students how to think, or even what to think, it undermines the source of all thought. With Compromised Christian Education, the mind is disconnected from life.
Compartmentalized
Standing in contrast to the Compromised, another sort of Christian Education is Compartmentalized. Reacting to the worldliness surrounding them, many Bible Colleges and Christian Higher Education programs stand apart from the world in a way as to keep the purpose of education hidden and secured.
Compartmentalized Christian Education comes in the form of dualism, seeing a value distinction between the spiritual and physical division of life. As the spiritual is deemed sacred, and the physical, secular, an emphasis is placed on the important nature of the spiritual life. Spirituality has been sainted by the Compartmentalized, imbued with holiness, and anointed with oil drippings straight from the beard of Aaron. The ordinary world of work, food, and family is deemed to be at best an opportunity to merely demonstrate our ethics and evangelism, and at worst a distraction from the things God really cares about.
This sort of higher education teaches that the physical realm is morally neutral, if not simply a temporal necessity. And, therefore, it too cannot carry and advance the purpose of education.
Compartmentalized, dualistic, Christian education can only explain the sword – and even then, only the one side. It can never effectively use the double-sided nature of God’s truth. With Compartmentalized Christian Education, the source of thought is there, and so the mind is alive, but not living in the real world.
Covenantal
The most prominent and promising (at least by comparison) category of Christian Education can be labeled as Covenantal. This is a broad label, and meant to be so. Covenantal Christian Education extends beyond the Reformed traditions, including both Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Universities. Most Universities of any significance in Christendom – institutions that have indeed done much good for posterity – have streamed from one of those three traditions, all intersecting on the point of Covenant Theology.
Covenant Theology has many nuances and qualifications, placing people even of the same tradition into different camps of thought. However, there is a broadly unifying theme that undergirds all Covenant Theologians of whatever stripe. Across the contrasted traditions of Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox education, an intersection emerges on what forms the base of their approach to all thought. What unites the institutions in the Covenantal stream of Christian Education is a typological-first hermeneutic in the life of the mind.
Stemming from the Medieval Quadriga – the allegorical hermeneutic of the Four Senses, which expected to find four layers of Biblical interpretation – Covenantal Education is built upon a typology-first approach to all thought. The source for a typological hermeneutic spans back to the works of Origen in the 3rd century, and Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century, and has tried to provide a foundation of Christian thought ever since. Covenant Theology proper was not established until the 17th century, following the Protestant Reformation, when the Westminster Assembly of Divines – English members of Parliament – gathered to structure the Church of England. Even though Covenant Theology was defined then, its typological springs were upstream.
At the root of Covenantal thought of whatever tradition is a typological hermeneutic which sets out to redefine the Covenants that God made with Israel, putting the Church in the place of Israel as the receiving member in those Covenant promises. This sort of typology is formally known as Supercessionism. Like an ever-giving wellspring, Supercessionism has laid the standard in Christian thought on how to approach both God’s Word and his world. Typology underpins Covenantal Christian Education.
The friendliness with allegory is on a spectrum. But to whatever degree, it is always there. Every substance is also a shadow of a greater reality. Every “thing” is a type. And as we set out to study all the “things,” Covenantal Education says we cannot fully know them unless we see through them to a greater reality. Symbolism and allegory are at the highest echelon of Christian higher education.
The End of Covenantal Education
But how can we know the truth if we cannot interpret from observation? How do we know we’ve landed on reality if what we observe in God’s Word and world is to be preconditioned with a typological interpretation? In that case, what is reality? “What is truth?” A typological interpretation in the life of the mind puts interpretation before observation. The problem with the Medieval allegorical hermeneutic in the Quadriga wasn’t that typology and allegory is unhelpful, but that it required a truer meaning than simple observation of the text. What is to guide our interpretation of God’s revelation in Word and world if we force a typological hermeneutic for everything we read and see?
The end of this sort of approach to the life of mind has been demonstrated throughout the history of the Church. On the one extreme end of Covenantal Education, we have theologians questioning the ultimate authority of Scripture as they set out to reinterpret all of it in their own light. “Did God really say?” is the first death blow the Serpent gave to Man. It’s a death blow that keeps taking us by surprise. The Serpent of Liberalism continues to ravage Covenantal institutions, with, what some have called, “Lesbyterianism.” It’s no surprise we have women pastors and homosexual priests. If we can put our own meaning into Scripture, where does it stop?
On the other extreme end of Covenantal Education, we have theologians advocating for destructive forms of nationalism, often pervaded with antisemitism/a hatred of Jews. The history of the Church has its black mark. Supersessionism, whether soft or hard, tills the soil for sinful forms of nationalism – participants of which justify their behavior by flashing their Covenant of Grace membership tokens. In times past, as well as current history, the Serpent of Nationalistic Vainglory ravages Covenantal institutions from the other end. The end of Covenantal Christian Education is either Liberal or Anti-Semitic theology, both of which sprout from a typological hermeneutic.
The Problem with Covenantal Education
A typological hermeneutic – for the Word and world – effectively dismantles our faith in the concrete and objective nature of God’s revealed will as it allegorizes reality into spirituality. It puts a haze over God’s revealed Word, and, by doing so, makes God out to be a liar. How can we trust the infallibility and inherency of Scripture if the terms and parties of God’s promises can be redefined? When God says that He cares about bloodlines and earthly nations, are we to believe Him? Or are we to spiritualize bloodlines and nations, as we replace Israel with the Church? How can we believe any of God’s promises if He changed the terms and members of His original promises? We may claim that we need a “Theological Context,” but where do we draw that context from? A typological hermeneutic is a presupposition that we bring into our reading of Scripture, instead of drawing out of it.
A typological hermeneutic also clouds over God’s world into obsolescence. Because typology interprets God’s physical promises with a spiritual meaning, all reality is to be interpreted in that light. When God says that He cares about the molecules of the DNA and the smell of specific dirt; when He measures out the land and borders with attentive specificity, we see that God cares about this world. But Supersessionism typologizes all of that away. It’s allegory. It’s a spiritual reality. Once we have the anti-type, the type is irrelevant. It’s a shadow quickly fading.
How are we to consistently study God’s Word and world if we start with a typological hermeneutic? Consistent Supersessionism gives way to dualism. It spiritualizes earthly realities in a way that makes their earthly fulfillment irrelevant. In claiming that God’s Word and world primarily matters to the extent that it’s all a shadow of what has or will come, a typological hermeneutic effectively says that neither matter. How are we to study if our mind is not present in the context of our study? With Covenantal Christian Education, the mind is in fact alive and living. However, it’s living somewhere else.
THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION
The recent efforts of resurgence in the Christian Higher Education movement have already brought good things. However, if we are to have a true resurgence as to fulfilling the purpose of education, none of the three approaches will bring us there – at least not consistently or completely. Whether the mind is not alive – as it is with Compromised Christian Education – or not living – as it is with Compartmentalized Christian Education – or living somewhere else – as it is with Covenantal Christian Education – the purpose of education is left unfulfilled.
The purpose of education is to love God with all your mind, not to pursue credentialism for a job, to have an experience of the “college life,” or to conform to the ideology of Cultural Marxism. We are to love our Maker and Redeemer as we study His Word and world. We love God, and because we do, we love His creative and redemptive works. We want to know God more. Because God is infinite, our learning about Him is as well. We are never to be done learning.
We are to deploy our intellectual energy to know and love the things God has said, has done, and is doing for the purpose that God intended. God has a specific purpose for what He says and does. It is our job to understand and delight in that purpose. God delights in His works, and so are we to.
Fulfilling the purpose of education requires our mind to be alive. We must be connected to the source of truth as we read, and are formed by, His Word. A Compromised Education can’t give us what we need. For us to love God, we must know and accept Scripture in its proper context.
Fulfilling the purpose of education requires our mind to be living. We are not merely to be connected to the source of truth, but live by it in every aspect of our lives. We are to participate in God’s reality for its intended purpose. A Compartmentalized Education can’t give us what we need. We need to not just know, but apply. We need to not just hold the Sword, but use it. We must know and participate in the works of God’s Reality.
Fulfilling the purpose of education requires our mind to be living here and now. We are not to reinterpret the past in light of future revelation, and neither are we to interpret future promises in light of our reinterpretation of the past. God’s intended purpose for human history is His own glory in the context He displays it. Whether He is working with Israel, the Church, or any pagan nation, God is glorified as a Covenant-keeping God. We must know and appreciate God’s unfolding plan in History.
COMEFORD COLLEGE
The purpose of education is to love God with all our mind. We want to know and love God more, so we are to deploy our intellectual energy to know and love the things God has said in Scripture, has done in History, and is doing in Reality, each for the contextual purpose that God intended. We are to study the subject for the love of the subject itself.
This is not being done at any consistent or meaningful scale in any halls of higher education. In all the effort to align with the purpose of education, there is no Contextual Christian Education. There is a critical hole in the world of not just higher education, but of Christian thinking and application in general. A contextual hermeneutic for the Word and the world is difficult, if not impossible, to find in foundational academia, which is what drives a full-fledged Christian worldview. There must be a resurgence of Contextual Christian Education if we are to taste and see the love of God in the life of the mind.
A consistent, contextual Biblical hermeneutic demonstrated in a life of faith with the fullness of blessing under the Lordship of Christ is the way forward. In other words, reading the Bible for what it says and applying it in joyful living here and now.
As such, we aim to advance a contextual hermeneutic for the Word and the World, as demonstrated by rigorous scholasticism that works to understand what God has revealed in Scripture, History, and Reality, so that we can taste and see the love of God in the life of the mind.
This looks like:
- a literal, grammatical-historical hermeneutic in Scripture,
- an appreciation and study of God’s unfolding plan for his glory in History,
- and a delightful and intimate study of and participation in the works of Reality.
A contextual hermeneutic is where the Reformation started but fell short. However, even with that missing component, the Reformation unleashed much blessing for the world. The Reformation of the 16th century blew the dykes for the truth of 1-Corinthians 3:21-23. All are yours! We are Christ’s! We have unmediated access to all the things.
However, all those things have a contextual purpose intended by God, without merely being types to a greater anti-type. This sort of contextual hermeneutic is known in some circles as Dispensationalism, which has too often not been associated with delighting in and advancing the things of earth. But this “bunker” tendency does not come out of dispensational theology proper, which is very, literally so, rooted in the things of earth. The consequence of the theology is an invitation to enjoy the King of Glory now, and even more so upon His imminent return.
We believe that unfettering Christians from a typological hermeneutic for Scripture and life, as we see the love of God in the life of the mind, will bring about great blessing for the Church and the world.
Comeford College exists to display God’s blessing in order for more people to taste and see the love of God in the life of the mind.
THE WAY FORWARD
- Offer a clear and positive vision
- Build a network of people drawn to the vision
- Develop an adult-class program to increase academic appreciation in our own community.
- Build and launch a BA program.