The New Saint Andrews Experience

Mr. Joshua David Appel, M.A.

B.A., Class of 2001
Student Address
Commencement, May 2001

To the graduate looking backward, trying to sum up four years of life at New Saint Andrews College in a few short minutes is something like trying to fit a vast ocean into a thimble. To include is to exclude and to expound is to hide away. Yet in the short space that lies before us I would like to offer you the thimble as a representation of the immense wealth that must be passed over. A few reflections on what New Saint Andrews College has meant to us, the graduating class of 2001.

For those of you who know anything about New Saint Andrews College, you know that big fat books and hard work are a way of life. For many of us it was just this academic rigor and serious devotion to the Western Tradition that set New Saint Andrews apart from other Christian institutions of higher learning. We came expecting to find an education by losing ourselves in the world of Herodotus, Plato, Calvin, and Dostoevsky. But surprisingly, as I look back over the course of our study, I realize now that the education that I came to find was far different from the education that found me.

The Enlightenment has long loved to deceive her children, and there is perhaps no place where this deception is perpetuated with greater subtlety and destruction than the field of education. Since the time of Descartes, philosophy’s conception of knowledge has been the unquestioned foundation for the means and methodology of modern education. Descartes’ epistemology concluded that the process of knowing was a disembodied rational process that does not involve the body, imagination, or emotions. By describing the mind as a “ghost in the machine” Descartes departed from the older medieval understanding of knowledge as a sensory-emotional experience which involved the whole person: heart, mind, and body. To them, not only was knowledge a process that required the whole man, it was also directed by an inner disposition of the heart. Emotion and particularly love were central to the medievals’ understanding of what it meant to possess knowledge. Within this paradigm education is not, as G.K. Chesterton put it, the transfer of information from one mind to another, it is rather the inculcation of a way of life. It is the preparation of men and women whose hearts are as full as their minds, and whose lives are characterized by grace and all that is true, good, and beautiful.

In this sense, education is one of the most important forms of discipleship, one in which the heart, mind, and body are united in the pursuit of truth. And it is in this sense that our education at New Saint Andrews College has, I think, been an unexpected one. We have been given so much more than the information from a certain reading list or group of classes. We have had the privilege of living within a community of Christian scholars who have shared their lives with us and have taught us to love what they love. Each of us has come to love these men because they have each given us a gift that we would not have without them. Through their example, they have taught us to think, laugh, and most of all to live. From them we have not only learned the shape and importance of Christian scholarship, but we have also learned the shape and importance of the Christian life. We have seen them in their respective roles as teachers, fathers, husbands, and friends, and they have shown us that for the Christian academic, wiping runny noses, loving your wife, and feasting with your family are inseparably related to the lecture on Dickens, Thucydides, or Nietzsche. As your disciples, each of our lives bears the stamp of each of yours, and it is with great delight that we see our lives becoming like those of our teachers.

In looking to the education of the future, in which the dichotomies of the Enlightenment would be rectified, Jacques Maritain identified another essential element of true learning: that of Community. He said:

The education of tomorrow must bring to an end the cleavage between religious inspiration and secular activity in man, it must bring to an end, too, the cleavage between spiritual life and disinterested joy in knowledge and beauty. Everyone must work or share in the burden of the social community, according to his own ability. But work is not an end in itself; work should afford leisure for the joy, expansion, and delight of the spirit.

Community is essential to education. And there are few that understand the existential import of this truth better than the graduates assembled on this stage. Each one of us owes so much to each one of you who are assembled in this room. Our experience at New Saint Andrews has been what it is because we have lived in a covenant community of believers who love and serve our Lord. You have received us into your homes and allowed us to live beside you. You have welcomed us to your feasts, encouraged us, prayed for us, and entered into our studies. It would be impossible for us to conceive of our education apart from all of the dear and beloved people who have filled our lives over these past four years. We owe you an immeasurable debt of gratitude and on behalf of the graduating class, I offer you our heartfelt thanks.

As we leave this stage and set out on the paths that the Lord has prepared for each one of us, we intend to take the beauty that you have shown us and freely give it to others. The blessings that have been bestowed upon us are humbling indeed, and we know that, as we shall affirm in a few moments, “To whom much is given much is required.” We are very grateful for the Lord’s kindness to us, and we thank Him for the privilege of being numbered among the graduates of New Saint Andrews College. 

Mr. Joshua David Appel

Mr. Joshua David Appel, is the son of John and Betty Appel of Leavenworth, Washington. He received his B.A. in Liberal Arts and Culture, Summa Cum Laude, from New Saint Andrews College in May, 2001. The administration and faculty of the College invited Mr. Appel, as the representative of the Class of 2001, to give this student address at Commencement. Mr. Appel’s senior thesis was entitled, “Faith, Theodicy, and the Righteousness of God.”

Following graduation, Mr. Appel studied philosophy at the graduate level for a semester at Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington, before attending Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, where he completed his M.A. in Christian Thought in May 2004. Mr. Appel returned to New Saint Andrews as a part-time Fellow and coordinator of the College's third-year integrated humanities colloquium, Traditio Occidentis, in July 2004. He also serves as a pastoral assistant at Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow. His wife, Sara (Ramsey) Appel (B.A., 2004) is the College's alumni director and assistant for advancement and development.

Both of Mr. Appel’s brothers attended New Saint Andrews College: Daniel, a 2001 New Saint Andrews graduate, studied law at Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, and is now a clerk with the Washington State Supreme Court in Olympia, WA; Justin, a gifted pianist, attended the College for one year before pursuing his music studies at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA, he will graduate shortly.

 

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