I am a junior at Cedarville University, and I am majoring in Spanish and History & Political Science with minors in Bible, honors, and TESOL. I desire to add my voice to the protest against the dissolution of our philosophy program.
God gave us His Word to guide us as we daily take up our crosses to follow Him, but the Bible does not prescribe answers to all the questions with which we grapple. As fallible human beings, we love black-and-white situations with clear-cut solutions. But the beautiful aspect of our Creator is that He cannot be explained with our finite logic, and He has gifted us with incomprehensible mysteries to admire and think through. The field of philosophy embraces these grey areas and helps its students ask the important questions. As some writers have said, if God had merely given us all the answers, we wouldn’t need each other. However, God purposefully left vague many components of living out the faith so that we foster community through discourse, even as we disagree and challenge each other to never settle for easy answers. If Cedarville University eliminates its philosophy program, it also destroys the unity of God’s people that springs from an open-minded respect and love for each other and our diverse opinions.
On a more personal note, I have sat under the teaching of Dr. Dave Mills, and his articulate expression of his faith—both in word and through example—have impacted me more than any other aspect of Cedarville. He challenged me during my freshman year to find out why I believe what I had always claimed to believe, and he continues to guide us students as we struggle with how to practically live out our faith in today’s world. It was he who taught us through philosophy that we must always consider people as important and valuable, selflessly serving them instead of fitting them into our own agendas. Intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, and Christ-honoring professors such as Dr. Mills and Dr. Graves are vital to the development of all students longing to pursue Christ with eyes wide open to the world around them.
In Defense of Philosophy 
Yikes! If I may agree with you in reply, Ashley, any ‘liberal arts’ university’s dropping of a well-funded (or at least well-staffed) philosophy program is grievous! For whatever personal differences I may have with current faculty (who are in probably every department, the Biblical studies most prominent of them all), their value as articulate communicators of complex philosophical truth is still undeniable, even if they get 10% of some of their statements wrong (we’re all human). I recall fondly Dr. Mills personally sitting with me over lunch to help me hash out the history behind postmodernism. As a mathematician, I have groundings in some 18th century philosophies that have been “disproved” to the utmost satisfaction (even of mathematicians). Though I still hold some of these antiquated notions, having men and women who understand current philosophical context so we can speak in current language about things like truth and knowledge is vital to having a legitimate place in academia. Otherwise, it seems maybe we should just demote ourselves voluntarily back to being just another small-town college (which does not help us influence the world in a greater way for Christ).