San Elijo College

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San Elijo College [1] is a newly formed classical college in San Elijo Hills [2] , San Marcos, California. The college is one of several great books colleges which follow the general educational great books style of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Several great books colleges have been formed in recent years including: Thomas Aquinas College [3] in Santa Paula, California; New St. Andrews College [4] in Moscow, Idaho; and Gutenberg College [5] in Eugene, Oregon.

San Elijo College is unique among these schools in its initial formation as it is a "merely" Christian classical college in the great books tradition, open to all.

The college is "merely Christian" and is committed to the Nicene Creed as its foundational theological documents (see: [6] and [7]). Belief in the Creed is required by the board and leadership of the college but not required of students or all faculty.

The college is a classical college, and is committed to the "objectivity of knowledge" defended by Dallas Willard, philosophy professor at the University of Southern California. (See Willard's article "How Reason Can Survive The Modern University" [8]). Given the objectivity of knowledge, it follows that human beings can know what is good, true and beautiful (see: [9] on the transcendentals and Jan Aertsen's "Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas", Brill Academic Publishers, 1996).

As a classical college, the college is also committed to the seven liberal arts, which compose a large component of the curriculum (see: [ Dorothy Sayer's "The Lost Tools of Learning (http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html).

As a college in the great books tradition, the college is committed to the idea that one's knowledge of the great books of western culture is central to becoming a free citizen (see John Henry Newman's "The Idea of a University" [10] and Allan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" Simon and Schuster, 1988, and Mortimer Adler, see "How to Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization" Open Court Press, 2000).

References: [11] [12] http://www.nsa.edu/community/history.html [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]