About Us
Our Mission
Coram Deo Classical School exists to help students become fully alive in Christ (Rom. 6:11). Following the two greatest commandments of our Lord, we believe that becoming fully alive in Christ requires loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself:
I. “With all your heart”
One of the principal lessons of Scripture is that we become like what we worship. Man is a worshipping being, and we are far more loyal to the things we love than the things we merely know. As James K.A. Smith put it, we are what we love. It is not enough for students simply to know the right things; they must learn to love them as well. Coram Deo, then, centers on training the affections and rightly ordering the student’s loves.
II. “With all your soul”
The classical conception of the soul included three distinct compartments: the mind (that which calculates), the will (that which chooses), and the appetite (that which craves). An education that caters merely to one of these is an insufficient education. Man is not just an intellectual thing (like a computer), nor is he simply a creature of instinct (like an animal). He is what C.S. Lewis called a man with a chest, able to balance the extremes of cool reason and indulgent passion with a virtuous will. Coram Deo, then, aims to turn the souls of students toward virtue through transformative encounters with the true, the good, and the beautiful.
III. “With all your mind”
The life of the mind may be the first thing we think of when we hear the word “education.” Scripture tells us it is the glory of God to conceal a matter and it is the glory of kings to find it out (Prov. 25:2). In other words, God is honored when we try to figure out the world that He has made. As we strive for knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, we draw closer to Him, having our minds renewed and our worship of God deepened. Coram Deo, then, invites students into greater understanding, greater complexity, and greater mystery as they mature in scholarship from the milk of youth to the strong meat God offers.
IV. “With all your strength”
Though Scripture advises that godliness is of greater value than physical training (I Tim. 4:8), we are also counseled to persevere, to endure, to run the race of faith with our eyes fixed on Jesus. These injunctions demand courage and faithful stewardship of our bodies, for spiritual disciplines can most certainly be reinforced by physical disciplines. As one sage said, every time we put our feet to the starting line, we’re given a chance to say no to the coward within. Coram Deo, then, strengthens the student spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and physically through constant opportunities for sacrifice and courage.
V. “Your neighbor as yourself”
There is no such thing as a self-made man. We are made in community and for community. As we are made in the image of God, who is Love, we reflect Him in loving one another (John 15:9). Contrary to the current ideology, we are not atomized individuals or completely disconnected, autonomous selves. We share our humanity with one another; we are members of one body, the body of Christ. Coram Deo, then, functions not as a transactional supplier of a service but as a relational body of like-minded believers who share our gifts, our time, and our lives with one another as acceptable acts of worship to God.