Christ-centered

Contrary to our culture's present dualistic assumptions, at Petra, we believe that all things are under the purview of Jesus Christ. All things were created and are preserved by him. Men and women were created in his image which bestows on them both an inherent dignity and an awesome responsibility, what C.S. Lewis called “the weight of glory.” Furthermore, the redeeming work of his death and resurrection reaffirms his original purpose for creation and his sovereign place over it, including a clear purpose and direction to all of history.

When it comes to education—or anything else--, this faith has consequences. For one thing, it compels us to see the academic disciplines as parts of an integral whole rather than piecemeal divisions of essentially unrelated knowledge. It also gives primacy to the inspired Word of God as the final authority of all wisdom and consummately relevant in the pursuit of all knowledge and direction in how we live our lives. Finally, it compels us to “glean our Saviour,” as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, in every field of learning: to see “Christ-figures” in literature, the movement of God in history, the beauty and order of God in the maths, sciences, and arts: in a word, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable...”