David Alexander on What Makes the Liberal Arts Truly Liberating

On this episode of Anchored, our Vice President of Partnerships Soren Schwab is joined by Dr. David Alexander, Vice President of Academic Affairs and a professor of philosophy at Providence Christian College in Pasadena, California. The two discuss Dr. Alexander's educational and spiritual journey and how it revealed to him the necessity and value of the liberal arts. They also explore what makes the liberal arts truly “liberating” and the subsequent danger of a hyper-focused, fragmented education geared toward merely acquiring skills. 

Transcript

Soren Schwab:
Welcome back to the Anchored Podcast, the official podcast of the Classic Learning Test. My name is Soren Schwab, VP of Partnerships here at CLT, and today we're joined by Dr. David Alexander. Dr. Alexander is the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a professor of philosophy at Providence Christian College in Pasadena, California. In 2008, David received his PhD in philosophy from Baylor University, after receiving a master's in philosophy also from Baylor, and a bachelor's in philosophy from Arizona State University. Prior to coming to PCC, Dr. Alexander held faculty positions at Huntington University in Indiana and Calvin College in Michigan. He has also been a visiting professor of philosophy at various Chinese universities. He has published articles in philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the history of philosophy. To date, he has published two books, ''Goodness, God, and Evil,'' as well as, ''Calvinism and the Problem of Evil,'' together with Daniel Johnson. He and his wife, regularly takes students to India where they learn about Indian culture and history. Dr. Alexander's wife is one of the residential directors at PCC and they have two children, Julian and Angel. Dr. Alexander, thank you so much for being on today.

David E Alexander:
I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Soren Schwab:
Absolutely, I am very excited about this conversation. We're going to talk about the liberal arts. We're going to talk about the importance of love and education. And maybe at the end, we'll even be able to talk a little bit about hip hop. So I think our listeners are going to be intrigued. But as we always do, we start the Anchor podcast by asking about our guests own educational journey. So talk to us a little bit about growing up. What kind of schools did you attend? Did you enjoy education?

David E Alexander:
Yeah, so I went to a public high school. I actually dropped out of high school and then had to complete high school, both in person, and there was no such thing as online schooling at that time. So I had to complete it at what they call like accelerated and accelerated class or an alternative school in order to actually graduate. So... I was not a fan of sort of the formal education systems. We did not mesh very well together, hence my dropping out for a while. And then after graduation, I just bounced around and did all sorts of different things. And then... came to know Jesus when I was about 20, 21 years old. As they say, Jesus sort of wrecked my life and completely rearranged all of my loves and desires and aspirations and college suddenly looked like the proper, rational. Path for me to go down. So I started college at about that age And then from there I started off actually at a community college and was pretty much from day one just Incredibly excited Mesmerized wanted to learn everything if I could have majored in 40 different majors I would have And really not much has changed since then. I went from there to Arizona State, as you mentioned already, and then Baylor. I knew I was going to major in philosophy before I ever stepped foot on a college campus.

Soren Schwab:
Wow, wow, so were you in high school or even before that? Did it just not connect, did learning? Were you a reader or was it just something where you didn't see a purpose in it? And is there a connection between finding Christ and then kind of more of an intrinsic desire to learn? Was there a connection there?

David E Alexander:
Yeah, great questions. So I grew up in an environment where being smart or being learned or educated was actually a negative, not a positive. So I was always interested in deeper conversations and I would have them with my friend group as often as possible, but I kind of had to. Looking back, I think I kept it under wraps, I suppressed it as much as possible because it wasn't valued in that kind of community that I was in. But it was always there. I was always curious, always and really what probably gripped me the most beginning in adolescence and moving into adulthood was the purpose of life, the meaning of life. I couldn't figure it out. It didn't make much sense to me. And so I lived basically in accordance with an idea that a philosophy that there really is no meaning, there is no purpose. And, you know, my life really resembled that. I think I lived that out fairly consistently. So, and then, you know, through a series of various kinds of tragedies, circumstances, I really faced that question head on in ways I had never really faced it, I had considered it, grappled with it, but it had, I had never sort of faced it in the most, in the intense way that I had to at about 20, 21 years old and through that I began investigating more and more thinking more and more talking, reading, doing all of those things. And it was. in that moment through those investigations that calling them investigations actually is probably just too mild of a term right these were existential crises that I was encountering or experiencing and it was through that that I ended up giving my life to to Jesus and I mean it it was within like the next moment that the whole world came alive to me. It really was sort of, you know, people maybe described these kinds of experiences when they fall in love or something, but the world became colored when it had previously been black and white. The world became multi-dimensional when it had previously been one-dimensional. It became textured when it was previously, you know, completely untextured. And so I wanted to learn, I wanted to know, I wanted to understand everything in ways that I just had never experienced before. And that's still, I think, motivates a lot of what I do.

Soren Schwab:
Still a lover of wisdom. Did, I guess, what have Athens do with Jerusalem? Did you ever feel like attention of, well, I now come to know Christ, but also I want to pursue philosophy. Did you ever see attention there? You know, you said before you even stepped foot, you knew you wanted to pursue philosophy, but not theology. Of course, we know they're related, right? But was there ever a... a thought to theology or was philosophy, you know, I guess it was their particular idea or particular text or a book that you read were just like, Oh, that's what I want to pursue longer term.

David E Alexander:
I never experienced a tension with the distinction sort of between faith and reason or, a distinction maybe between philosophy, theology, I never experienced that tension. I still have never actually felt it. I'm aware of it, of course. And I think could, could perhaps articulate it, but no, I never personally experienced that in part because it was philosophical considerations that led me to the most radical life change a human can undergo, right? It was these philosophical, I believe now, of course, prompted by the Holy Spirit, guided by the Holy Spirit that made me aware of the emptiness of my life and more and in deeper and deeper ways. And so put me on this quest to investigate. And so during that time, when I was not a Christian, I was reading all sorts of people, and, and listening to all sorts of people who were not Christians and finding a lot of it fascinating and interesting and nevertheless, incomplete. I would put actually Tupac as one of my major instructors during that time. And noticing various kinds of inconsistencies and a kind of lack of integrity in him that I recognized in myself and not being content with that kind of lack of integrity. I actually couldn't live with it. It kept me up at night. that I sort of resembled him and the lack of integrity that I had identified in him in ways that were shameful and embarrassing to me. And so it was those kinds of considerations that I think are philosophical considerations guided by the Holy Spirit that sort of led me to Christ. Now, interestingly enough, during that time period, again guided by the Holy Spirit, I think, I picked up at a bookstore with a girl that I was dating, Augustine's confessions.

Soren Schwab:
Oh my goodness.

David E Alexander:
And neither of us were Christian, but at this time, you know, I'm, I'm wanting to understand things. It was like, you know, on one of these centerpieces in a store. So displayed prominently, this is kind of what smart people read. So I picked it up. it turns out terrible translation of, of the confessions, but it was like five bucks. And so I began reading one section. You know it's broken down, right? You've got a book one chapter one, and then that's even broken down into these smaller sections. I would read one section a night. Every night. And probably by the time I got to, I don't know, book five, book six. I was handing my life over to Christ.

Soren Schwab:
You know, I was I was chuckling over here because as you were talking about kind of your quote-unquote condition, I was thinking of that restlessness, right, that Augustine talks about. And then you see that book and you pick it up, and I don't want to be too cynical, but not a lot of bookstores probably still would have, you know, Augustine prominently

David E Alexander:
Mm. Mm.

Soren Schwab:
displayed today. So who knows what you would have picked up today? but I'm glad that that particular bookstore did. Yeah, absolutely fascinating. Well, let's talk about the liberal arts. You've spent obviously a lot of time immersed in the liberal arts, studying the liberal arts, teaching philosophy. I guess very simplistic question, but I think our listeners would be interested in your response to that. What is deliberating about the liberal arts?

David E Alexander:
I think the liberal arts as the liberating arts is to really be understood as it opens up for people a world, a more I think fundamental, a more even real aspect of reality that you otherwise may not encounter or only encounter in really inchoate of vague fuzzy cloudy way so for example. The liberal arts liberate you open you up to a world of truth beauty and goodness. I'm but it's the deepest truth it's it's true is there beyond the scene it's the unseen it's it opens you up to beauty. That again is beyond the superficial and shallow and it opens you up to. Goodness is a realm of goodness that otherwise is difficult to apprehend without that kind of training and instruction and guidance. And so that's incredibly liberating. It's as though you have stumbled upon, you know, a garden, stumbled upon this realm of the universe that you did not encounter before you were unable to encounter in the liberal arts. sort of free you from that, it is like Plato's allegory of the cave. It really is that kind of experience, right? You leave this dark place where your entire world is two-dimensional and you enter into a world that is richer and more... And then actually the two-dimensional world that you formally inhabited ends up becoming itself more beautiful because you see how it relates to this realm that is just far richer, far more fundamental. know, the eternal infinite and unchangeable realm. And so the other part of the liberation, the liberating quality of the liberal arts is that I think it trains you to order your passions, order your desires, order your appetites in ways that you otherwise might not. And again, that's in conjunction with this. awareness, this experience of this sort of this other part of reality beyond the tangible, the visible, the empirical. And so as you encounter that and you see it as actually where all of the visible is pointing, and now your affections, your appetites, your desires, your loves become ordered differently. And so I think it allows you to live a more integrated life.

Soren Schwab:
Wow, that's powerful. I feel like a lot to follow up on. So given that, would you then argue that the purpose of education is the ordering of those loves and that the liberal arts are the best way to accomplish that?

David E Alexander:
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Look, I have, this is really influenced by Augustine as well. You can think of sort of heaven and hell as heaven being the place where complete integration is occurring. A person becomes more and more integrated as they become closer and closer. more and more united to God, hell as the eternal disintegration of the person. And so I think of, um, that disintegration as just disordered loves, right? There's this sort of cacophony in my head where all of these desires, all of these passions, all of these different beliefs and, and, and loves are sort of vying for my attention every moment. and I have to choose and I don't have a way of choosing that is a rational structured way. And so I'm sort of the sensualist today, I'm the intellectualist tomorrow, I'm the athet the next day, I'm the ethicist, you know, to use Kierkegaardian sort of language, I'm the ethical man the next day, but there's no rhyme or reason, there's no coherence to this sort of life. It's almost as though, hell, this kind of disintegration of the person is a person whose life is more like a sound bite. Their life is more like a commercial. And the heavenly move is a narrative life. It's a life that makes sense, right? It's a life that is more of a coherent story. And so I think that the liberal arts, right, in this integrating of the self, Another way of putting an identical way, perhaps more illuminating way to put it is it's an ordering of loves into a coherent ordering, whereas the opposite is a disordered, incoherent grouping of loves.

Soren Schwab:
Wow, yeah, that's really, really well put. And I, some of the listeners might know I grew up in Germany and even though I didn't receive a liberal arts education per se, we still read a lot of the great books. It was fragmented, right? It was completely incoherent

David E Alexander:
Mm.

Soren Schwab:
until I came to Hillsdale and I was kind of upset, almost upset at the college for... blowing away my mind like, oh, this is all connected and now I got to go back and I got to reread all this because it all makes sense together interconnected,

David E Alexander:
Wow,

Soren Schwab:
right?

David E Alexander:
wow.

Soren Schwab:
And so I, yeah, anyways, I think one of the reasons why we're such strong proponents of the liberal arts because a lot of us are converts. We didn't receive that kind of education and we want to prevent students from having that experience than we did and having to go back, right?

David E Alexander:
I think that yeah, that's exactly right. It's fascinating. I was on a plane just the other day and sitting next to a guy graduate from UCLA who's now I think he's about seven eight years out of UCLA and He was telling me about what he's doing now and so we ended up talking the entire plane as a five-hour plane ride and I was describing telling him about Providence Christian College and what we do and and how we're different from UCLA. And as he's listening, he's saying, it's only been since I graduated from UCLA and I'm in this new job that I realize that I needed that kind of education. He's now seeing that his education was a completely fragmented mess. There wasn't a kind of integration to it. And so now he's having to do that on his own after graduation. And he looks back and thinks, man, I wish I would have known. than what I know now. And so again, testimony to the truth of what you're saying.

Soren Schwab:
Wow, yes, I wish we fly on the airplane wall, I guess, listening to that conversation. But I guess give us a SparkNotes version of what did you tell him is the difference between Providence Christian College and the education that your students are receiving and maybe the average student at UCLA or any other kind of typical public research university.

David E Alexander:
Yeah, I mean, I think part of what I was telling him is that this kind of integration conversation that we're having right now where our students are, the curriculum is designed right to show the students that none of these subject matters are independent of the other, that they all overlap in really profound, interesting ways. And so these myopic, of course, our finitude requires us right to not be able to comprehend at all. So we need community. This is another reason why it's good to surround yourself right with these these sorts of people. But the this sort of myopic hyperfocus on a particular subject matter, especially at the undergraduate level, right ends up actually resulting in radical distortions of reality of the subject matter itself, fascinatingly, right. And so We want our students to see that English literature is relevant for economics, which is relevant for history, which is relevant for mathematics, which is relevant for music and relevant for... And then, of course, I think a solid liberal arts institution, that stuff carries over into the residential life, right? And so they see how it actually integrates in terms of their viewing habits, listening habits, eating habits, conversation habits. play habits of play all of that ends up getting incorporated in integrated. So it's this it's this almost requirement for seeing how all of this stuff connects and points to and at Providence Christian College, right? We want to see how it all points to God. How does this all reveal God and how does this all you know, in a sense, right? How does this all sort of? allow me to become a clear image of God. So in describing that sort of thing where we're requiring our students to just read widely, but constantly attempting to see the interconnections between it all, and then ultimately how it all connects to love of God, love of neighbor, how all of that is sort of pointed, directed in towards those two pillars, love of God, love of neighbor. You know, he's listening to me and he's saying, you know, his area was economics and he said, now in my current job, I have to read so much outside, so many different areas. And then he has to write and then he has to present. And he said, you know, my focus was on really just the formalisms of economic theories. And it... did not prepare me to write coherent arguments that are persuasive for persons that do not necessarily have that kind of formal training, um, or to do this kind of research in, in areas that are outside of this really narrow, thin band that he was prepared for. Um, so yeah.

Soren Schwab:
Yeah, no, that's absolutely my experience. You probably acquired a lot of skills, right? And I'm sure if you ask folks there, you know, what's the purpose of education? That's probably it, right? 21st century skills and

David E Alexander:
Mm.

Soren Schwab:
job preparation and all these things. What you're talking about is transforming lives. You know, you're forming and shaping human beings. And they're also learning skills, I assume, right? And they're going to be better writers and thinkers and mathematicians. But I mean, the value proposition of higher ed, I mean, that's a whole other topic, right?

David E Alexander:
Mmm.

Soren Schwab:
But if it's really just about acquiring skills, then I mean, these colleges are going to go out of business, and many already have. Because they're not going

David E Alexander:
Yeah,

Soren Schwab:
to be difficult.

David E Alexander:
great point. I mean, what we're seeing now, right, is more and more Fortune 500 companies and other companies, right, are actually dropping their college degree requirements. For new hires. And this of course is going to transform the landscape of higher education because you're absolutely right, not only the public sector, but also the private and even the Christian sector. have sort of whether they say it or not, everything, the curriculum, the brand new buildings, where the money gets spent, what they try to sell to parents and prospective students is all geared towards development of skills, which are geared towards the acquisition of a good job, which is geared towards material wealth and comfort. What you communicate there is that's the point, that's the purpose, that's the purpose of education. And I actually think you wind up communicating that's the purpose of life. So what's interesting to think about, and I don't know if I can say this in a really clear, articulate way, let me give it a shot, is at these institutions where it's really just skill development to get a good job, to make decent living. They actually are engaging in a kind of holistic education. What they're assuming is that the person that they're educating is this incredibly thin, they are training these people, they're training these people to love making lots of money or to love material possessions or to love being comfortable. They're training these people that those are the things that matter. And so the question then really becomes what is a human, right? So, you know, what are humans, what are we for? What are we supposed to be aiming our lives towards? And if, if, if they're wrong, then it is the, it is education for the destruction and disintegration of a human being, and if the Christian model, if they're right, right, if we're right, um, then we have to take that on board very, very seriously. The purpose of life, the educational curriculum and the environment in which that curriculum is embedded will direct our hearts, our minds towards what we think is the ultimate purpose of life. So that's that. Yeah.

Soren Schwab:
I'm nodding here. I don't know if I can eloquently put what I'm thinking right now. But in a way, the folks right now, whether it's on K-12 or even in higher ed, oftentimes it's younger generation that is defending public education and this kind of model of education that you're describing are the same people that also rail against corporate America. and capitalism and not treating us like you, but they're defending a model of education that was designed to, for lack of a better word, create cogs in a machine.

David E Alexander:
Yeah.

Soren Schwab:
It's almost like this perpetuation and I don't think they're seeing that that's a problem. Right?

David E Alexander:
Yeah, that's good.

Soren Schwab:
It's almost like it's ironic in a way, but what you're offering is so different. Well... Not to defend what UCLA is doing, but let's just say, okay, there's secular institution, they're doing what they're doing. I think we got to be a little bit more critical with institutions, like Christian institutions, right? That have gutted their core curriculum and we see those left and right that have forsaken the liberal arts. And without naming names, you've probably noticed that too. I guess let me put it this way. In your mind, is it even possible to be an authentic Christian institution, Christian higher ed institution without the liberal arts? And how does one do that?

David E Alexander:
Yeah, I don't think I really don't think it is. Not, not especially if you're considering yourself a college or a university, right? So I could imagine maybe a Christian nursing school, or I could imagine a, a, a Christian business school or something like that. And, I could certainly imagine those things, especially maybe beyond an undergrad education. But I think at the undergrad level we're still forming, right? Habits have yet to be cultivated. Virtues and vices have yet to be acquired. They're still in that process of development. And so I think at that level, right, all of a curriculum has to be aimed at some ultimate purpose. And so the curriculum has to be aimed towards, given the truth of Christianity, Christian institutions have to aim the entire curriculum towards the ultimate purpose of human beings, which is loving God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and loving your neighbor as yourself. So the curriculum has to be saturated with that. Now, I've got a quick sort of argument for why that has to be sort of the liberal arts, why that has to be at the center. And it's just this, right? The purpose of my life is to know God, right? It's to love him with all of my being. God reveals himself most clearly. most deeply in creation in humans. His image-bearers reveal God more clearly, more deeply, more extensively than anything else in the creation. So take those two things together and you can see how they imply then that the study of humans, the humanities, what distinguishes humans from non-humans should be at the center of our educational curriculum. Because the purpose of life is knowing God and therefore and humans reveal God more clearly, more extensively than anything else. So the study of humans, the humanities should be at the core and the liberal arts, right? The core of the liberal arts is the humanities, right? These areas where we try to understand what it is to be a human. what it is to be a human in every aspect of our lives, right? How to enhance, how to understand, how to develop those distinctly human traits, distinctly human capacities. Now, there's because that's true, the humanities are unbelievably important. And because they're so unbelievably important, they're unbelievably dangerous. If you screw them up, if you pervert the humanities, If you distort the humanities, what you're doing is you're perverting or distorting the human. And if you pervert or distort the human, you invariably pervert or distort. The God in which the humans in whose image humans are made. So perversion of the humanities is a perversion of God. And that is incredibly dangerous. And we are seeing this, of course, right now in our educational settings. So. Maybe some Christian institutions have sort of backed off the humanities because there's this concern, there's this fear, right? That they're aware of the power of the humanities, they're aware that distortions in the humanities are incredibly dangerous. So let's just ignore. That's sort of maybe even a charitable take. My charitable take on why the... the liberal arts and the humanities are experiencing a decline in Christian institutions of higher education. Um, but of course, there's no avoiding it, right? That that's, that's actually giving up the educational mission, right? That's gutting the educational mission. What we have to do is teach the humanities in a faithful way.

Soren Schwab:
Right. Yeah. And if you do gut them, ultimately you're indistinguishable from the UCLAs. And your value proposition becomes pretty narrow. I think the good news is that, and your institution is leading the way there, the colleges that have either re-embraced or fully embraced the liberal arts and humanities, their enrollment is not declining. They're actually defying... the enrollment trends, especially since COVID. And that's great news. And we certainly appreciate the work you're doing, that Providence Christian is doing. And that in California, right? In the heart of what a lot of folks probably wouldn't necessarily say is the heart of liberal arts, right? But, and that's somewhat connected. I recently read an interview with Mark Cuban, and he was talking about, you know, kind of Silicon Valley and just the tech industry. And he was talking about how... how important liberal arts majors will be in the next 10 to 15 years. And I thought, wow, there's a tech guy, right? Like these tech guys that often sent their own kids to liberal arts colleges because they know it, they understand it. Well, we do have time for one more question. Well, actually two because we always end with the same one. But I do want to pick your brain just briefly because we don't have a whole lot of time left. But I mentioned earlier, we're going to talk about hip hop. And I do want to ask. When you go to a Christian school conference or a classical school conference, I don't know, it doesn't often come up,

David E Alexander:
Hahaha

Soren Schwab:
hip-hop stuff. Give me your own fascination with hip-hop and as a Christian, as a lover of the liberal arts and classical education, kind of your quote-unquote defense of hip-hop.

David E Alexander:
Yeah, so, okay, um I'm going to have to be very brief. I think I could say a lot more in defense of it. I think a lot of traditional hip hop actually articulates in really powerful, visceral and accurate ways. Um, a lot of the, um, a lot of the, the, the vices, um, a lot of, as I was talking earlier, Tupac, right, sort of showed me. who I was in ways that I would not have heard otherwise. I listened to him and I would hear someone championing in one song, the empowerment of women, championing in one song to end violence, to come together, to love one another. And he'd do so powerfully and energetically, passionately. And then literally the next song, he's talking about degrading women. He's talking about increasing violence and he's talking about hating his enemies. That was me, right? So I saw myself, I heard myself there. It was a clear articulation of a disintegrated human life, right? This, by disintegrated, I mean it lacked integrity, right? It lacked integration. And so it was fragmented and that's who I was. And I noticed it and saw it more clearly in contemplating Tupac and a bunch of other hip hop artists that expressed me. And so I think of like maybe Picasso, some of Picasso's work, especially during like his cubist periods and things like that. I think of what he's doing there, perhaps, as sort of seeing humans in this kind of fragmented way. Maybe that's not his intent. Maybe that's just... But I'm, you know, my interpretation of that is it's sort of this fragmented kind of way of seeing the world. I think Tupac, I think hip hop. illustrates that in really powerful, powerful ways. And the other thing that's, that's incredible about hip hop is, is in rap music, you can include way more propositional content in a song than you can in pretty much any other genre. So you can say a lot more in one song than you can in any other musical style. And so, so, you know, it's, it's powerful. in all of those ways. I think of the Psalms, when I read the Psalms, I sort of think of them as like ancient versions of hip-hop, ancient versions of, you know, its poetry. We can chant them, right? You know, I went to a Reformed Episcopal Seminary and at the beginning of every day, we would chant the Psalms. And that chanting, right, it was rhythmic, right? It had this kind of to it. And I think, you know, you can, it can reveal to us the depths of our despair. And it can also, you know, I think there's ways of redeeming it, where it can sort of help you think into, you know, in terms of various types of rhythms of your life and sort of see it, see the Psalms and those kinds of things a bit more musically than maybe some people are inclined to.

Soren Schwab:
Oh, fascinating. Yeah, I wish we had more time to talk about that. I especially the poetry kind of resonates with me. And I think that don't quote me on this, but I believe Andrew Lloyd Webber when he was working on Cats said something along the lines of that. That he thought that T.S. Elliott was like the original rapper, you know, that that that hip hop and rap. I mean, it really almost originates with with T.S. Elliott and his in his poetry, which I thought, Whoa. That's pretty good.

David E Alexander:
Homer's works, I think, used to be, I think, don't quote me on this either, but I

Soren Schwab:
Thank

David E Alexander:
think,

Soren Schwab:
you.

David E Alexander:
I think, right, that the oral tradition regarding them was that they were chanted to a drum beat. Right? You would have various, you know, battalions in wars that would chant the Psalms in like increasing intensity as they made their way onto the battlefield. Right? That to me, you know, that all of that resonates and sounds, you know, hip hop ask to me.

Soren Schwab:
Right. Yeah, absolutely. Amen to that. Well, I got one more question, as we always do in the Anchored Podcast, probably the most difficult question to answer. What is the one book or one text that you can point to that that has been most impactful or influential on your life and why?

David E Alexander:
I mentioned confessions already. I'll mention it again. I think Augustine's confessions actually is an apologetic for a liberal arts education. Augustine's own liberal arts education ends up, he criticizes it, he points out all sorts of problems, but it ends up playing a major role in his own conversion. And so I think the confessions is one of the most beautiful, powerful written pieces. in the world in the history of humanity. And I think, you know, what you get there is you get a taste of almost every single subject that a liberal arts education would cover. And you get it articulated in an incredibly powerful way. I often tell my students when I teach the confessions that it would be advantageous to them to sort of see their life in the sort of order that Augustine has articulated his own and to try to sort of map their own life onto what he's doing in the confessions, what he's describing in the confessions. And so I think you get that kind of ordering of a life, right? I think in the confessions you see creation, fall, redemption. and hints at consummation in there. And so you get a kind of biblical sort of Augustine's mapping his own life onto the biblical narrative in really powerful ways. I think that's what we're probably called to do as well.

Soren Schwab:
Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. Again, we're here with Dr. David Alexander, who's the vice president of academic affairs and a professor of philosophy at Providence Christian College out in California. Dr. Alexander, this was absolutely delightful. Thank you so much for joining us today.

David E Alexander:
Yeah, thank you for having me. I wish it was longer.