When a prospective coach asked me “Is physicality and athletics at Coram Deo Academy the icing on the cake or is it part of cake,” I answered “Part of the cake.” The reason for this answer is rooted in the Christian conception of incarnation and the historic content of education at the gymnasium. 

 

In the beginning, God created the seen and the unseen world, the physical as well as the social, intellectual and spiritual as one created order. He did not emphasize a distinction between them calling the whole creation very good at the end of each creative day including after the creation of humankind in physical bodies on the sixth. God instructed humankind to live a full-orbed life populating and taking dominion over the creation. Later the Son of God, the Word made flesh dwelt among us born of the Virgin Mary. He was born, He lived, He was crucified dead and buried and He was raised again from the dead in a physical body on the third day. The Christian lives out the human calling by loving God and loving his neighbor in a physical body. God promoised the believer eternal life in a resurrected body counteracting the fear of death with hope. Christians should enjoy the whole of life including the physical as part of a whole life lived in the presence of God. 

 

The gymnasium has it roots in the idea of training the whole youth in body, mind and spirit. My favorite Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, whose writings inspired our academy’s incorporation of Coram Deo as our name, attended the gymnasium or what we know as K-12 school prior to entering the university. The Greeks employed the gymnasium in various forms hundreds of years before Christ as their organized youth training program in literacy, ethics, sport, hunting and warfare. At Coram Deo Academy, students sweat on the brain and in the body. Physicality and athletics is not just the icing but part of the whole of the cake.