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3 1 8 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3Most date the beginning of American higher education to 1636, whenHarvard opened its doors. At this time the aim of the college was not to helpstudents discover the meaning of life as much as it was to shape, or save, thestudents’ souls. Piety was most important, as it trained students in the rightcharacter, or intellectual and moral habits. Still, the American colleges weresomewhat more tolerant than their older and more impressive counterpartsin England. If there was instruction in the pagan authors, they were placedin the “proper Christian perspective.” 12 At a time when Oxford and Cambridgewere requiring belief in (or adherence to) the thirty-nine articles ofthe Book of Common Prayer, Harvard did not apply any religious tests forentrance into the school. It did not even require a promise from its studentsto enter the ministry. Students knew, however, that they would be instructedin the biblical knowledge of God and Jesus Christ. It was in that sense that thecolonial colleges rested on a religious foundation and operated as Christianinstitutions. 13 But Harvard had its share of troubles. The school did not toleratedissent from its faculty or administrators. When the president of Harvardquestioned whether infant baptism was required, he was forced to resign. YetHarvard still had its critics.In the mid-seventeenth century, Harvard was embroiled in a great debatewhen fundamentalist Puritans, who believed that schooling should not containanything absent from the Bible, attacked the school’s method of teaching,and that meant no teaching about, or from, the pagan philosophers. Salvationwas from faith alone, and instruction should be from scripture alone. CharlesChauncy, Harvard’s president, answered this criticism in a commencementaddress in 1655. He stated that the Bible cited human authors to emphasizecertain points because certain truths were accessible to all. The president thenasked: “Who can deny that there are found many excellent and divine moraltruths in Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Seneca, etc.?” 14 Chauncy was not elevatingthe pagan authors above scripture. He was simply stating that their workscontained some truth. Pagan philosophy was not coequal with the revealedOxford University Press, 1994), 4 and 31. This argument was made famous by Marsden.12Kronman, Education’s End, 48.13Bernard J. Kohlbrenner, “Religion and Higher Education: An Historical Perspective,” History ofEducation Quarterly 1 (1961): 45–46; William C. Ringenberg , The Christian College: A History ofProtestant Higher Education in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 25. Of course,colleges were formed out of a strict denominationalism and there was usually clerical control of theboards that conducted oversight of the colleges. The schools required chapel services and teachingfrom the Bible. Most of these colleges were Protestant in nature. No Catholic school had any successuntil after the Revolution. See Kohlbrenner, “Religion and Higher Education,” 47–48.14Quoted in Marsden, Soul of the American University, 43. Italics as in Marsden.