Dei Sub Numine Viget (Princeton), In Deo Speramus (Brown), Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae (Harvard), Lux et Veritas (Yale). I don’t know when Harvard dumbed down their motto to Veritas, leaving Christ and the Church out of it, but the mottos of Ivy League schools are part of a long-ago history the colleges washed their hands of for reasons having to do with expedience. It wasn’t the first time. One thinks of a middle-management bureaucrat asking Jesus, “Quid est veritas?” If you’ve the eyes to see Pilate in the best possible light your heart almost breaks for the guy. Almost.

In contrast, Wheaton’s motto is in plain English; For Christ and His Kingdom. One of my great teachers during my graduate studies at Wheaton, Frederick Buechner, in his memoir Telling Secrets wrote of his experiences teaching at Harvard and Wheaton. The latter he compares favorably to the former. “What made it different from any [college] I have known can perhaps best be suggested by the college motto, which is more in evidence there than such mottos usually are… . [I]t seemed to me that insofar as their resounding motto can be true of any institution, it was true of Wheaton.”