How One Homeschool Dad Built a Christian College in Oxford

Timothy Edwards (0:00)

I am utterly convinced about the efficacy of translation. Jesus would have taught in Hebrew or Aramaic, there's a dispute over that. And possibly in Greek in some areas, in Decapolis, which is a Greek speaking region. But on the whole, what we have are translations of His words.

And it's the translations of those His words that are the inspired scriptures. And therefore, it's well able, there's an efficacy in translation that means we don't have to think we're second class if we're reading English.

SPEAKER_2 (0:41)

Your organization is known worldwide and we certainly appreciate every facet that you do.

SPEAKER_3 (0:45)

I do believe in what you're doing because I've seen it in my family.

SPEAKER_4 (0:49)

I'm so excited about all the things that Robert, you guys do with Classical Conversations. It's been a huge blessing for our family. Grateful for the work at Classical Conversations.

Robert Bortins (0:57)

You're a leader and you have been in this movement for a long time.

SPEAKER_3 (1:01)

We love Classical Conversations. I do feel like I have a debt of gratitude to you, your family, all of CC for just the fruit that has come from CC.

SPEAKER_2 (1:12)

I appreciate all that you guys do both through this wonderful podcast and also through Classical Conversations which I am convinced is the best education resource out there. Thank you very much for all that you do for the cause of Christ and for our families and for our children. Really, really appreciate it.

Robert Bortins (1:28)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another informative episode of Refining Rhetoric. And today, I'm super excited to have Dr. Timothy Edwards with us. He's the founder and first principal of Selden College. It's a new Christian liberal arts college in Oxford, England. He owns a PhD from Oxford University and MA from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and from Western London Institute of Higher Education. You have a degree, so you've been to college a long time, I can tell. And now you started a college. So you've taught biblical Hebrew at Oxford Central in the Hebrew and Jewish studies, graduate tutorials for Oriental Institutions, serving as dean and fellow of theology at New St. Andrews College in Idaho. So you've—I call them the boys up in Idaho. You've been hanging out with them before. And I love all Dr. Ben and all those people.

And yeah, you are now starting a college. You're married to Anna. You've got six children and two grandchildren. Wow, congratulations.

Timothy Edwards (2:30)

Thank you.

Robert Bortins (2:32)

And without further ado, welcome to the show.

Timothy Edwards (2:34)

Thank you for having me, Robert. Good to be with you.

Robert Bortins (2:37)

Yeah, so tell us a little bit about your journey from, you know, from being a, I guess, young man to deciding to get into education, to starting a college.

Timothy Edwards (2:49)

Yeah, that's, that could be a long story. I'm going to keep it very brief.

When you grow up in England, there's a saying, if you can't do anything, teach. If you can't teach, teach PE. So that tells you how successful I was at school because I ended up at college studying to be a PE teacher.

And the first formative aspect for me, which has got me to this stage where I am now, is my senior thesis at college.

I didn't fancy doing it on anything to do with physical education. I was a Christian. And so I did it on the burgeoning private Christian school movement in the United Kingdom. So back in the 80s, there was an explosion by British standards, not by American standards, of private Christian schools giving a genuine Christian education. So I did my senior thesis on that, which got me committed to Christian education in principle. So that's the first marker on that journey. The second would be when I had my own children. And the question is, how do you educate them? And when my eldest was, I think, six, approaching seven, second was five, we began the home schooling journey. And of course, every year after that, that you're out of the system, the more confident you get. So you experience the joys of educating your children at home, and the blessing of a Christian education in that context. And so that obviously was the second sort of big marker for me to get to where I am today. And the third one would be when we moved out to Idaho to take up the post as fellow of theology at New St. Andrews College. And then very soon, I was appointed academic dean. And then I had nine years there experiencing Christian higher education, which was a whole new idea to me in many ways because we didn't have that in the UK. And seeing, what, four years from 18 to 22 in a young person's life, being mentored and taught by a faculty of men at that time who were utterly committed to a Christian formation of a student, both intellectually and morally and spiritually, became completely convinced that this was a good thing. So when we returned to the UK for family reasons, the question is, what do you do? And I've been infected by the American, if there's something to be done, go and do it, type thing.