Pacific Lutheran University, born of the Reformation spirit, maintains the privilege of exploration and learning in all areas of the arts, sciences, and religion. The basic concern of Martin Luther was religious, but his rejection of church tradition as primary authority, and his own free search for religious truth, served in effect to liberate the modern mind in its quest for all truth. The total impact of Luther's stand has permanently shaped the modern world and helped provide the modern university with its basic methodology.
Pacific Lutheran University is a community of professing
Christian scholars dedicated to a philosophy of liberal
education. The major goals of the institution are to inculcate a
respect for learning and truth, to free the mind from the
confinements of ignorance and prejudice, to organize the powers
of clear thought and expression, to preserve and extend
knowledge, to help men and women achieve professional competence,
and to establish lifelong habits of study, reflection, and
learning. Through an emphasis on the liberating arts, the
University seeks to develop creative, reflective, and responsible
persons. At the same time, the acquisition of specialized
information and technical skill is recognized as a condition of
successful involvement in the modern world. The University seeks
to develop the evaluative and spiritual capabilities of the
students and to acquaint them honestly with rival claims to the
true and the good. It encourages the pursuit of rich and
ennobling experiences and the development of significant
personhood through an appreciation of humanity's intellectual,
artistic, cultural, and natural surroundings. The University
affirms its fundamental obligation to confront liberally educated
men and women with the challenges of Christian faith and to
instill in them a true sense of vocation.
By providing a rich variety of social experiences, Pacific
Lutheran University seeks to develop in the student a joy in
abundant living, a feeling for the welfare and personal integrity
of others, good taste, and a sense of social propriety and
adequacy. Distinguishing between personal Christian ethics and
normal social controls, the University adopts only such rules as
seem necessary for the welfare of the educational community.
The physical development of students is regarded as an integral part of their liberal education. Hence the University encourages participation in physical activities and respect for health and fitness.
Professing a concern for human nature in its entirety, the faculty of the University encourages wholesome development of Christian faith and life by providing opportunities for worship and meditation, offering systematic studies of religion, and encouraging free investigation and discussion of basic religious questions. The University believes the essence of Christianity to be personal faith in God as Creator and Redeemer, and it believes that such faith born of the Holy Spirit generates integrative power capable of guiding human beings to illuminating perspectives and worthy purposes. The University community confesses the faith that the ultimate meaning and purposes of human life are to be discovered in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
As an educational arm of the Church, Pacific Lutheran University provides a locus for the fruitful interplay of Christian faith and all of human learning and culture, and as such holds it a responsibility to discover, explore, and develop new frontiers. Believing that all truth is God's truth, the University, in achieving its educational and spiritual goals, maintains the right and indeed the obligation of faculty and students to engage in an unbiased search for truth in all realms.