Torch, Spring 1998

• o annual theme has ever been more congruent with our purpose than our current one. "Timeless Truth for Contemporary Culture" reflects perfectly our credo, which is "For the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ." For truth as we can know it and the Truth as personified in the Living Christ is our bedrock. Everything we say, teach, or preach must be weighed against the revealed Word of God. You don't have to look far to see that Cedarville College goes against the mainstream with this commitment. Nearly all institutions of higher learning, sectarian as well as secular, operate under the postmodernist assumption that truth is relative, unknown, and unknowable. That is not the case at Cedarville College. Our commitment to the absolute truth of scripture is . . .well, absolute! Society is just now beginning to realize, thanks to the moral 2 Torch ~~__?)~ President Cedarville College vacuum evident at the highest levels of government and the outworking of destructive behavior patterns among young people such as we have witnessed in schoolyards from Edinboro, Pennsylvania to Jonesboro, Arkansas, that value– free education is neither education nor free of moral effect. Everything we say, teach, or preach must be weighed against the revealed Word of God. The articles in this issue may be unlike what you are accustomed to reading in Torch. They tend more toward the philosophical instead of the practical. This is by design. For the Christian community is not losing the battle over practicality. We are, however, losing the battle philosophically. The typical conservative, evangelical Christian cannot refute the arguments of postmodernism. There is a crying need for the ability to articulate a firm philosophical foundation, girded by the Word of God, to combat the moral relativism of our day. Professors Walter Schultz and David Mills, members of our Bible faculty, have done a masterful job of laying that foundation for us. As you consider these thoughts, remember that these are not vain arguments. The world around us suffers the effects of a meaningless existence based on an unfounded philosophy. Our mission is to do our utmost to rescue them from that plight. That rescue mission can only be launched from the moorings provided by the philosophical underpinnings of revealed Truth. May God richly bless you as you continue to seek Him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.