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Knight wrote:For a college boasting about its "classical" emphasis, it's odd that they have no faculty with doctorates in Classics, Ancient History, or Medieval History.

temporal1 wrote:Scroll Publishing has a FB post regarding Sattler:

if this link does not work, look for Scroll’s FB page.

zjohnsonr wrote:I attended an institution that was far from Kingdom oriented, and it took a heavy toll. I just wanted to give Sattler College another mention on this thread. They are now accepting applicants for the first class in the fall of 2018. Beside Finny Kuruvilla the board and faculty also includes David Bercot among other well credentialed followers. If I were a college bound student I would be doing everything I could to learn from Bercot about the early Christians. Also, Sattler won't be taking any government money or the shackles that comes with it. In my mind it would be on the top of my list for a Kingdom oriented college experience.

I’ve never met Finny or tried to contact him. I realize Sattler College is just getting started and experiencing some growing pains. I could easily have missed Finny correcting something in the media or at one of his talks. So with that in mind…

1. Their website used to invite applications from students who had “studied at least one other modern language and, preferably, at least one classical language, such as Latin, Greek or Hebrew.” (Hebrew is not traditionally considered a classical language but in modern American “Christian classical education” it can be). But this language requirement has disappeared… now they want students who merely “demonstrate interest in studying other classical and modern languages.” That’s a huge shift… and in the right direction, in my opinion: most CMs never had the chance to study those languages in their church schools. Is that why Finny made the change? It may suggest he is willing to admit mistakes and learn from them. It may also suggest he is lowering his standards to try to attract students. I’d like him to explain this.

2. Finny said: “If you look at the original colleges, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, all of them, in order to graduate, you had to show proficiency in Hebrew and Greek, Latin, Old Testament and New Testament… You had to show that you were competent in these subjects. Today, literally zero colleges in America have that requirement. I think it is a shame that we went from 100 percent of our colleges requiring that a couple hundred years ago to now, zero. We are going to be the college that brings that back.”

Sattler’s course catalog is out now, and it looks like whoever wrote the course descriptions for Greek doesn't know Greek. Latin will not be offered at all. So how can Finny claim to be returning to Harvard’s original standard of proficiency in Latin? How a college that only requires a year of Greek and Hebrew claim to be returning to Harvard’s original standard of proficiency? What was that anyway? How much research has Finny actually done in what those colleges required in 1800? (I think he would be quite surprised). Some upper year students are going to try reading some of the Fathers in Greek.. what about those who wrote in Latin? What about the (original) anabaptists who wrote in Latin?

3. Finny makes grand claims about leading a revolution, about being an innovator, and Sattler being unique. But it looks to me that he’s borrowed heavily the jargon, ideas, and claims from existing colleges like New St. Andrews College.

Nelson wrote (in 2011) “At New Saint Andrews College, students toss around Latin terms and sometimes don black robes. Academic terms have proper names: Jerusalem, Nicaea, Chalcedon and Westminster. The curriculum, mostly primary source readings, is based on Harvard University’s -- from the 17th century. The details are meant to create an atmosphere of reverential tradition, but New Saint Andrews, founded in 1994, is as new as its name suggests. The college and its founders see themselves as drawing inspiration from a purer time in higher education, before specialized majors, large lecture halls, prime-time football games and much of the rest of the popular image of the American university. They are also on the vanguard of a new movement with the ambitious goal of reshaping Christian higher education. That movement calls itself “classical Christian” education, and it combines a Great Books curriculum -- featuring primary source documents from the Western tradition, but few or no specialized majors -- with a theologically conservative, Protestant Christian perspective.”

All students at NSAC must take 3 years of classical languages (compared to 2 at Sattler), and 1 year must be Latin. They also teach classical Greek, which means their students can read both Homer and the NT. They even have a program for translating neglected Latin texts from the Reformation. I don’t think they are accredited, but their students have been accepted at graduate programs in classics at secular universities and done well. I’m not recommending NSAC… but I think they have a far better claim to being the heir of Harvard than Finny does. And considering how similar his language is, I find it hard to believe that Finny has never heard of them. I’d like Finny to clarify this.

4. Finny says, “Higher education is academically weak.” Yet Finny boasts his faculty was trained at those “academically weak” institutions and he’s relying heavily on free courses developed by those “academically weak” institutions, and he’s going to rent lab space from them, and use their libraries. A parasite should be more respectful… and grateful.

5. JM wrote: “Finny’s reference to translations of the Bible as "Secondary Sources" in a lecture, which is a term that has very specific meaning in historiography. I, as a former missionary have a real problem with that.”
Finny is college educated, but lacks a liberal arts education. I’m not surprised he makes even elementary mistakes like that.

5. I’m glad to see that Finny has started looking for profs with advanced degrees… I really hope he hires someone with a PhD in Ancient or Medieval History who will sit down with him, and kindly explain to him that he needs to revise some of the courses, and he needs to dial back the rhetoric.

6. And if anyone thinks he has the equivalent of a PhD in Ancient History just by reading on his own, and it’s a matter of “a piece of paper,” please take a look at a college website that outlines the requirements for the degree. Let me know how many of the 40 (or more) ancient authors you have read even in translation, and how well it worked when you tried to learn Latin and/or Greek on your own. Have you read Thucydides and Herodotus? Can you explain their differing approaches to writing history? What do you think of the Cornford thesis? Do you think Luke was familiar with them? or with the Iliad?

Knight

temporal1 wrote:A word from Knight:

I’ve never met Finny or tried to contact him. I realize Sattler College is just getting started and experiencing some growing pains. I could easily have missed Finny correcting something in the media or at one of his talks. So with that in mind…

1. Their website used to invite applications from students who had “studied at least one other modern language and, preferably, at least one classical language, such as Latin, Greek or Hebrew.” (Hebrew is not traditionally considered a classical language but in modern American “Christian classical education” it can be). But this language requirement has disappeared… now they want students who merely “demonstrate interest in studying other classical and modern languages.” That’s a huge shift… and in the right direction, in my opinion: most CMs never had the chance to study those languages in their church schools. Is that why Finny made the change? It may suggest he is willing to admit mistakes and learn from them. It may also suggest he is lowering his standards to try to attract students. I’d like him to explain this.

2. Finny said: “If you look at the original colleges, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, all of them, in order to graduate, you had to show proficiency in Hebrew and Greek, Latin, Old Testament and New Testament… You had to show that you were competent in these subjects. Today, literally zero colleges in America have that requirement. I think it is a shame that we went from 100 percent of our colleges requiring that a couple hundred years ago to now, zero. We are going to be the college that brings that back.”

Sattler’s course catalog is out now, and it looks like whoever wrote the course descriptions for Greek doesn't know Greek. Latin will not be offered at all. So how can Finny claim to be returning to Harvard’s original standard of proficiency in Latin? How a college that only requires a year of Greek and Hebrew claim to be returning to Harvard’s original standard of proficiency? What was that anyway? How much research has Finny actually done in what those colleges required in 1800? (I think he would be quite surprised). Some upper year students are going to try reading some of the Fathers in Greek.. what about those who wrote in Latin? What about the (original) anabaptists who wrote in Latin?

3. Finny makes grand claims about leading a revolution, about being an innovator, and Sattler being unique. But it looks to me that he’s borrowed heavily the jargon, ideas, and claims from existing colleges like New St. Andrews College.

Nelson wrote (in 2011) “At New Saint Andrews College, students toss around Latin terms and sometimes don black robes. Academic terms have proper names: Jerusalem, Nicaea, Chalcedon and Westminster. The curriculum, mostly primary source readings, is based on Harvard University’s -- from the 17th century. The details are meant to create an atmosphere of reverential tradition, but New Saint Andrews, founded in 1994, is as new as its name suggests. The college and its founders see themselves as drawing inspiration from a purer time in higher education, before specialized majors, large lecture halls, prime-time football games and much of the rest of the popular image of the American university. They are also on the vanguard of a new movement with the ambitious goal of reshaping Christian higher education. That movement calls itself “classical Christian” education, and it combines a Great Books curriculum -- featuring primary source documents from the Western tradition, but few or no specialized majors -- with a theologically conservative, Protestant Christian perspective.”

All students at NSAC must take 3 years of classical languages (compared to 2 at Sattler), and 1 year must be Latin. They also teach classical Greek, which means their students can read both Homer and the NT. They even have a program for translating neglected Latin texts from the Reformation. I don’t think they are accredited, but their students have been accepted at graduate programs in classics at secular universities and done well. I’m not recommending NSAC… but I think they have a far better claim to being the heir of Harvard than Finny does. And considering how similar his language is, I find it hard to believe that Finny has never heard of them. I’d like Finny to clarify this.

4. Finny says, “Higher education is academically weak.” Yet Finny boasts his faculty was trained at those “academically weak” institutions and he’s relying heavily on free courses developed by those “academically weak” institutions, and he’s going to rent lab space from them, and use their libraries. A parasite should be more respectful… and grateful.

5. JM wrote: “Finny’s reference to translations of the Bible as "Secondary Sources" in a lecture, which is a term that has very specific meaning in historiography. I, as a former missionary have a real problem with that.”
Finny is college educated, but lacks a liberal arts education. I’m not surprised he makes even elementary mistakes like that.

5. I’m glad to see that Finny has started looking for profs with advanced degrees… I really hope he hires someone with a PhD in Ancient or Medieval History who will sit down with him, and kindly explain to him that he needs to revise some of the courses, and he needs to dial back the rhetoric.

6. And if anyone thinks he has the equivalent of a PhD in Ancient History just by reading on his own, and it’s a matter of “a piece of paper,” please take a look at a college website that outlines the requirements for the degree. Let me know how many of the 40 (or more) ancient authors you have read even in translation, and how well it worked when you tried to learn Latin and/or Greek on your own. Have you read Thucydides and Herodotus? Can you explain their differing approaches to writing history? What do you think of the Cornford thesis? Do you think Luke was familiar with them? or with the Iliad?

Knight

joshuabgood wrote:I have never felt like it was necessary to learn Greek to know everything one needs to know regarding being a follower of Jesus. It doesn't make sense to me that one couldn't get what one needs from a quality translation.

But that is by one who doesn't know any Greek. And having said that - I support people who want to learn it...that said, I'd lean more reliably on the translators who translated the NIT, ESV and KJV than I would on folks who are just part time Greek scholars.