Saving Western civilization one student at a time.
Summer 2018
at he n s jerusalem by Dr. John Mark N. Reynolds
Humanism Is Not the Problem by Martin Cothran The Myth Made Fact by Louis Markos
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
WHAT HATH ATHENS TO DO WITH JERUSALEM? by Martin Cothran
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hat does reason have to do w it h f a i t h? W h a t d o e s t he i ntel lec t ua l have to do w i t h t h e s p i r i t u a l? W h a t does philosophy have to do with Christianity? These are q u e s t io n s t h at Te r t u l l i a n , one of the early fathers of the Church, summed up when he asked, "What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Tertullian's question seems to pit t he c u lt u r e of t he s e two ancient cities against one another, as if they are somehow inconsistent. And, indeed, there are important differences. T here h ave be e n ma ny answers given to Tertullian's question over the last 2,000 years. Some agree with him that there is something irreconcilable about the two cultures—one based on the reason of man, and the other on the revelation of God. Christians were the inheritors of the classical culture that came from the Romans and the Greeks. As Rome fell, it left the scattered remains of the learning of antiquity among the other ruins of its culture. It was left to the Church to collect and preserve the things that remained. Thomas Cahill, in his book How the Irish Saved Civilization, tells the story of how Irish monks copied and recopied the ancient texts throughout the Dark Ages to preserve them for posterity. In the tenth and eleventh centuries these manuscripts containing the learning of the ancients were rediscovered by the Christian scholars of the West, who compared them with what they knew from the Scriptures, and placed them in the service of their faith. The learning of the Greeks and Romans, transformed by the Christians of the Middle Ages, became what we now know as "classical education." 2
Letter from the Editor
It was handed down generation by generation and became the foundation of the Christian culture of Europe and America. Classical education was what the Puritans brought with them and institutionalized in schools such as Harvard and Princeton, and it was the system of learning on which the founding fathers were nourished. The response of the historic Church to Tertullian's question was not Tertullian's answer. It was Augustine's answer. What Augustine knew was that what some call "human reason" was not really human at all. The "reason" that we call "human" is really our own ability to perceive, by virtue of the image of God in us, the truths we find in the created world. Augustine, acknowledged by many as the greatest thinker of the first thousand years of the Church—and himself thoroughly classically educated—argued in his great work, On Christian Doctrine, that the learning of the ancients was "Egyptian gold." As the Hebrews left Egypt, the Egyptians, chastened by the plagues sent from God, showered the Hebrews with gold, which the Hebrews took with them into the wilderness (Exodus 12:35). With it they foolishly made a golden calf—but they also used it to fashion, at God's command, the vessels of the Tabernacle. The truths of classical learning were discovered by pagans, but they were still gold. They were "taken," said Augustine, "from the mines of God's providence" so that we might do with them, not as the pagans had done, but as God would have us do. MemoriaPress.com
Summer 2018
FEATURED ARTICLES
Letter from the Editor by Martin Cothran...................................................... 2 Why Caesar? by Bonnie Graham Rojas ............................................................ 4 Stephen Hawking's Many Universes by Martin Cothran................................. 6 Athens & Jerusalem by Dr. John Mark N. Reynolds............................................. 8 Humanism Is Not the Problem by Martin Cothran....................................... 10 School Spotlight: Bishop Ryan Catholic School.................................. 13 Evangelium Eternum by Cheryl Swope....................................................... 14 Wardrobes Are for Grown-Ups Too by Joseph Pearce................................ 16 So What If Beethoven Was Deaf? by Carol Reynolds................................... 18 The Myth Made Fact by Louis Markos........................................................ 20
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LATIN
WHY CAESAR? by Bonnie Graham
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hy is reading Julius Caesar's account of his conquest of Gaul the next logical step for a student who has completed a study of grammar forms and basic syntax? There are sound reasons that Caesar's Commentarii De Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War) has traditionally been the preferred choice for the first immersion in reading Latin.
CAESAR’S STYLE OF WRITING Caesar's concise, lucid prose and elegant style are challenging but not overwhelming. The great orator Cicero himself praised Caesar's prose as "unadorned, straightforward, and graceful." Literary scholar J. W. Mackail wrote of Caesar: "He used the Latin language with a purity and distinction that no one else could equal." It is widely acknowledged that Caesar adhered to the rules of the Latin language more closely than any other Roman author. The reader of Caesar is able to systematically apply the rules of Latin syntax. He is not forced to Bonnie Graham is currently writing a Memoria Press study guide for Henle Second Year Latin. A homeschooling mother for 13 years and a Latin tutor, she is fascinated by Caesar's De Bello Gallico, the writings of Caesar scholar T. Rice Holmes, and the Latin language.
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Why Caesar?
contend with the oddities of poetic license before he is ready to do so. Poets had license to bend, break, and ignore rules. When faced with an irregularity in Caesar's prose, the student is able to logically work out the reason, to see Caesar's intended effect, and to advance his understanding of Latin. Reading Caesar prepares the student to progress to Cicero's more intricate style and to Virgil's poetry. This is the logical way to master a subject: first learn to apply the rules and later deal with more complicated applications and exceptions.
THE LESSONS OF THE GALLIC WAR In Caesar we learn about ancient concepts of honor and glory. More importantly, we are steeped in matters that transcend timelines and cultures. De Bello Gallico provides a profound study of loyalty to comrades, decision-making and bravery under duress, man's burning desire for freedom, and valorous defense of family and homeland. The great classical historian Theodor Mommsen commented, "The noble work deserves all the labour that can be spent upon it. The enormous difference between these Commentarii and everything else that is called Roman history cannot be adequately realized."
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CAESAR’S PLACE IN HISTORY
CONCRETE AND EXTENDED MEANINGS
A study of De Bello Gallico also provides a wealth of knowledge about European geography and an important period of Roman history and politics. T. Rice Holmes, often cited in the Henle text, called Caesar "the greatest man of action who has ever lived." He was the first Roman to lead an army across the Rhine into Germany and the first Roman general to cross the English Channel to Britain. He wrote the first eyewitness account of Britain and the Britons. He also wrote the first authentic accounts of Gauls/ Celts and Germans. So high was interest in De Bello Gallico in the Middle Ages that in 1469 it was one of the first books to be printed on the newly invented printing press. Such was Caesar's influence that his name has lived on in the titles of some of history's most powerful r u l e r s: t h e C a e s a r s o f Ro m e followi ng Julius h imself, t he Kaisers (German), and the Czars (Russian). This is not to claim that Caesar was necessarily a model for emulation, but he was an exemplary military leader and a gifted politician and statesman. A s M a c k a i l n o t e d , "…t h e combination of literary power of the very first order with his unparalleled military and political genius is perhaps unique in history." And Caesar was not just a brilliant general and important writer. Military historian Theodore Dodge described him as "the patron of learning who founded libraries in all the great towns, and filled Rome with men of science, culture, and letters, as the legislator who drafted laws that still control the jurisdiction of the world, as the profound scholar who dictated the correction of the calendar…." For two millennia, people have acknowledged that he was remarkable in what he undertook and accomplished. Dante, Petrarch, and Longfellow featured him in their works. Shakespeare, no less, devoted a play to him, and Handel, an opera.
Another benefit of reading Caesar is the opportunity to learn the many words he uses with a concrete meaning. This makes it easy to recognize derived figurative meanings in other writers. For example, Caesar's concrete obsidio, or "siege" in battle, becomes the figurative obsidio of Cicero, the "pressing danger" to the Republic. The soldier's heavy sarcina ("pack, bundle") filled with grain and personal belongings later becomes the more figurative "burden, weight, or sorrow." To look at one small example in more detail: The student of Caesar learns that angustiae is a narrow place, like the pass in Gaul through which 368,000 Helvetians could pass only in a long, narrow train. The student learns that it connotes danger and is related to the adjective angustus, which means "narrow," or "tight." He easily sees that this word may have related concrete meanings as in a narrow strait, bridge, gate, or harbor. When the student meets the word in other writers, he will extrapolate from its concrete meanings to understand its abstract meanings of "a tight spot," "difficulties," "distress," "tribulations," and even "troubled times." When he sees a reference to the Mass by Haydn, Missa in Angustiis, composed when Napoleon was turning Europe upside down, the student will at once comprehend the title. He will understand the English word "anguish" and its German cousin angst. Countless rich rewards are gleaned from reading Caesar.
Caesar's concise, lucid prose and elegant style are challenging but not overwhelming.
AP LATIN EXAM Caesar still endures as a fascinating topic of study and speculation. Furthermore, a very pragmatic reason for studying Caesar was provided by the redesign of the AP Exam in Latin, effective in 2013, to expand its scope from the poetry of The Aeneid to include the prose of De Bello Gallico.
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A CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY FOR THE STUDENT All readers of De Bello Gallico have the chance to delve more deeply into the genius of the Latin language. But many treasures lurk within the pages of Caesar's work, and they may be different for different readers. Some students are fascinated by Caesar, the great commander and politician. Some may find themselves rooting for the Celts struggling to defend their homeland. Some are fascinated by the might and discipline of the Roman military. Some are intrigued to see which characters Caesar singles out for special mention, and why. Some have an interest in travel and European geography and will someday visit the countries in which the Gallic War was fought. What will you find for yourself in the pages of De Bello Gallico?
Why Caesar?
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LOGIC
STEPHEN HAWKING'S MANY UNIVERSES by Martin Cothran
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tephen Hawking once pronounced that he thought his brain was little more than a computer and that, because of this, he was unafraid to die: "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark." Hawking, a famous physicist who died in March, demonstrated by remarks like these the irrational lengths to which some are willing to go in order to deny that God exists and that He is the ultimate explanation of the world. Not long before Hawking made these remarks, he made another pronouncement: M-Theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or God. Rather these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law.
DOES MULTIVERSE THEORY MAKE GOD UNNECESSARY? Hawking argued that if we assume there are multiple other universes than our own, then an explanation of how the universe got here without God is possible. And if there is a possible explanation of how the universe got here without God, then we need not bother about God. Martin Cothran is the editor of The Classical Teacher and author of Traditional Logic Books I & II, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric.
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Stephen Hawking's Many Universes
What Hawking never explained was why the theory that there are multiple universes is any more rational an explanation than that God created the universe. Nor did he explain why one possibility necessarily excludes the other. Let's grant him for the sake of argument that multiverse theory is a possible explanation. Why is it a better explanation than the God hypothesis, if the God hypothesis is also a possible explanation? Why choose the former over the latter? The Oxford mathematician and philosopher John Lennox comments on the natural law out of which Hawking says these multiverses arise: [Hawking] asks us to choose between God and the laws of physics, as if they were necessarily in mutual conflict. But ‌ laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions. What Hawking appears to have done is to confuse law with agency. His call on us to choose between God and physics is a bit like someone demanding that we choose between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle [who invented the turbojet engine] and the laws of physics to explain the jet engine.
Hawking's position betrays a reductionist view of reality, something C. S. Lewis called "nothing buttery"— the idea that something must only be this, or only that, when, in fact, reality does not work that way. MemoriaPress.com
WHY IS MULTIVERSE THEORY ANY LESS FANTASTIC THAN THE GOD HYPOTHESIS? The second problem is that there are a lot of questions about whether multiverse theory is any less fantastic than the God theory. Scientists are constantly invoking the principle of "Occam's Razor": the idea that the simplest theory is the best one. But if you want to make the argument that multiverse theory is simpler than the God hypothesis, then you're going to have to explain why the God hypothesis, which is simple enough to be readily understood by the common person, is superior to the multiverse theory, which is so complicated that only highly trained physicists seem to really understand it. Another physicist, Paul Davies, points out that cosmologists envisage sweeping "meta-laws" that pervade the multiverse and spawn specific bylaws on a universe-by-universe basis. The meta-laws themselves remain unexplained—eternal, immutable transcendent entities that just happen to exist and must simply be accepted as given. In that respect the metalaws have a similar status to an unexplained transcendent god.
Is the theory that there are multiple universes any more rational than that God created the universe?
IS MULTIVERSE THEORY SCIENTIFIC AT ALL? The third problem is the status of multiverse theory as science. In fact, all of the things we are told science should do—be observable, be testable, and have predictive power—are absent to a large degree from multiverse theory. In other words, there is not only a question as to whether this scientific theory can explain God away, but there is a debate about whether the theory is scientific at all. And once all the purported advantages of being scientific are no longer possessed by a theory, then why are we to prefer that theory of the origin of things to the religious theory of the origin of things? "The core problem," says astrophysicist and scientific journalist Adam Frank, of newer theories like multiverse theory, is that, as of this writing, there is no experimental evidence that hidden dimensions or alternate universes exist. There might, indeed, be a multiverse and I like alternative universes as much as the next science fiction groupie. … Still how much effort do we put into explorations based on the potentially unobservable while shifting away from the tradition of exploring only the actual?
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In fact, it is precisely because such theories are inadequate as scientific theories that they have to be jerry-rigged with extra-scientific assumptions to make them work at all. This has happened in string theory, another unverifiable scientific hypothesis. Frank points out that string theory is one of the theories employed to explain quantum gravity. But, as it turns out, string theory cannot do this in a world of only four dimensions. So what do its proponents do? They posit six other equally unverifiable dimensions in order to salvage their theory, giving us ten in all. Presto! Instant scientific plausibility. It could be argued that the Oldest Theory of How the Universe Got Here (that God created it) involves far fewer intellectual contortions than this.
CAN NATURAL LAWS REPLACE GOD?
But even the scientists who acknowledge the problems with multiverse theory still have trouble explaining God away. Physicist Sean Carroll tries to salvage the atheist project by saying that you don't have to posit other universes in order to dispense with the necessity of God:
You could imagine an understanding of the universe— why it came into existence—without ever leaving the laws of nature—without ever invoking some divine, some supernatural being. The universe could just obey its own laws. It could be a natural, physical, real universe, obeying the laws of physics, and that can be a complete explanation of everything.
But natural laws must themselves be explained, a point that has apparently never occurred to Carroll. In fact, he goes further than Hawking seems himself to go: "The question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?'" Carroll says, "has been answered." It has? How exactly do you answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing by simply pointing to something (which is what he and other physicists do by positing an ostensibly empty space that is filled with fields and forces)? Lewis once asked how someone could say anything about anything outside nature "by simply studying nature?" In fact, the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is simply not a scientific question; it is a philosophical question. It's a bad mistake to confuse the two, since science and philosophy are two entirely different universes.
Stephen Hawking's Many Universes
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at h e n s I
n God's providence, Christianity was born at a time when Greek and Roman thought dominated the ancient world and influenced everyone and everything—including the Jews and Judaism. Christendom, the culture of Christians after Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, was the product of Christians making sense of both Greek and Jewish heritages. Christianity in the East and the West formed cultures that had roots both in the classical world of Greece and Rome and in the faith of Jerusalem. This is true in the Christian West, where Greek and Jewish thought together shaped aesthetic and civic ideals that produced both the cathedrals of Paris and the parliamentary government of Great Britain. It is also true in the Christian East. Eastern Christendom formed a new empire that shielded Western Europe from invasion and destruction. For one thousand years the great capital city, Constantinople, John Mark N. Reynolds (Ph.D., University of Rochester) is president of The Saint Constantine School in Houston, Texas. This article was excerpted from his book When Athens Met Jerusalem (2009: Intervarsity Press).
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Athens & Jerusalem
maintained unbroken study of both ancient biblical and pagan texts. It honored both the "inner wisdom" of the faith and the "outer wisdom" of the Greeks and Romans. Constantinople evangelized an entire commonwealth of states that stretched from the Balkans to Russia. This fusion of Athens and Jerusalem can be seen in the buildings and the books of cities in Britain, Ethiopia, Romania, and the United States. It is no accident that the United States Supreme Court is housed in a building with biblical references carved onto it—a structure built in the classical style of Rome and Greece. So then, how did the church deal with the massive intellectual and cultural heritage of this classical civilization? Generally speaking, there were three reactions. The first was to reject "secular learning" in order to keep the church "pure"—the idea being that theology had nothing to learn from philosophy. But Judaism itself had been influenced by Greek learning. There was no "pure" stream of knowledge that did not run through Athens. The very Greek language that the early Christians used to communicate their message was soaked in centuries of classical thought. Trying MemoriaPress.com
BY DR. JOHN MARK N. REYNOLDS
jerusalem to pry Athens and Jerusalem apart usually led to inconsistency and heresy. It was the Greeks who set down the rules for proper reasoning. Any attempt to understand the Bible requires the application of these rules. Christians often go on for years after their conversion with a fully functioning mind but without the proper guidance on how to use it. Faith needs reason. The second reaction was to go to the other extreme and worship Athens. Persecution made this rare, but it was still a problem. Origen, one of the greatest Christian thinkers of the early church, often pinned his understanding of Scripture more on his NeoPlatonic philosophy than on the biblical text. This extreme devotion to Plato caused Origen to develop a defective view of Christ and his nature. But there was a third reaction: Mainstream Christians, such as Augustine in the West and Basil in the East, found a middle way. Jerusalem gave the basic, rational, religious truth on which to build an understanding of the world. It was the starting place of wisdom. Athens gave the technical language and categories to help define and extend this truth. Out 1-877-862-1097
of this complementary coexistence came the classical Christian civilizations that shaped most of the world in which we live. For centuries these two cities, Athens and Jerusalem, were the driving forces of intellectual and cultural growth. Tensions between the rationalism of Athens and the faith of Jerusalem have always existed, but it was in the harmonious resolution of these tensions that the new Christian kingdom was established. The kind of culture that produced John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, or C. S. Lewis no longer exists. For some Christians, the rationalism of Athens dictates the nature of reality. Other Christians have condemned Athens and left it to burn. Christians must recapture the middle way of Augustine and Chrysostom. Athens and Jerusalem are not two cities, but two districts in one city: the city of God. Christian schools and a few colleges have seized on the classical model. When allowed to coexist in creative harmony, Athens and Jerusalem caused a cultural explosion. They have done so in the past and will do so again, if an attempt at revival is made soon. Athens & Jerusalem
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Humanism Is Not the Problem by Martin Cothran
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hat precisely is Western culture? In a nutshell, it is the civilization that derives from the cultures of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, that was conquered and transformed by Christianity, and which has been handed down through the centuries by an education system which in more recent times has been referred to as "classical education." These three civilizations—what we might call the "Three Cultures"—each contributed something unique to European culture, the culture which was the foundation for our American culture. And the most important thing they contributed was the idea of what a human being is.
The Humanism of the Greeks The Greeks represented philosophical and artistic man. Alfred North Whitehead once said that "all philosophy is a footnote to Plato." Plato was Socrates' student, and Aristotle was Plato's. Dante said of Aristotle that he was the "master of those who know." And it wasn't only philosophy in which the Greeks excelled. With the possible exception of Shakespeare, there are few poets to equal Homer, and perhaps no playwrights comparable to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. In many ways the Greeks can be said to have invented philosophy and art as we know it—and to have raised it to a level rarely rivaled since. The Greeks were humanists, a term we Christians often view with undue severity, partly because of the prevalence of the term "secular humanism." But secular humanism is not the only kind of humanism. I was recently in a panel discussion on classical education and one of the other panelists, when asked what was wrong with modern education, said, "Humanism." Humanism is exactly what is not wrong, either with the modern world or with modern education. In his book The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton speaks of the sophistry that drives much of modern secular thought, a sophistry that works "first to soften the sharp transition from animals to men, and then to soften the sharp transition from Martin Cothran is the editor of The Classical Teacher and author of Traditional Logic Books I & II, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric.
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heathens to Christians." In other words, there are two distinctions essential to the Christian view of the world: that between man and beast, and that between God and man. It is these distinctions that modern thought obfuscates. What we need to understand about Greek thought is that it at least, unlike the paganism that preceded and still surrounded it, got the first part of this right: The Greeks knew the difference between man and beast. While other pagans were worshiping man-beasts fashioned out of stone―an idol with the body of a man and the head of a bird, or with the head of a man and the body of a lion― the Greeks alone among the pagans idealized the human form. "Wonderful are the world's wonders," said Sophocles, "but none more wonderful than man." Try to find in Greek statuary any such mongrel deities as those of the Egyptians or Babylonians, and you will look in vain. (Among the few exceptions are the centaur and the satyr, which largely served the symbolic purpose of representing the nature of man at his wildest and most bestial.) And while the Greeks did not understand the relation between the human and the divine—as evidenced by their own gods, who were merely men writ large—much of their philosophy and art reflected the subcreative imagination of beings made (though they did not know it) in the image of God. The humanism of the Greeks was remarkable for its belief in areté. This word has many shades of meaning, but it generally has the sense of some kind of human or moral
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excellence. To have areté was to live life according to one's essence or nature: It was the art of being human. Of course this assumed some kind of human ideal to which men were expected to approximate. The closer they approximated this ideal, the more they were thought to have areté. To the Greeks, human perfection involved two things primarily: strength and intelligence. These traits were on prominent display in the two works the Greeks looked to as the primary articulation of their ideals: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. It was the strength of Achilles and Ajax―and even the Trojan, Hector―that they admired, along with the craft and intelligence of "Odysseus of many wiles."
The Humanism of the Romans The Romans knew the Greeks to be their cultural superiors. They conquered the Greeks militarily, but intellectually and culturally the conquered were the conquerers. Well-to-do Romans sent their children to boarding schools in Greece to be educated, or employed well-educated Greek slaves to tutor them. And, like Russians in the nineteenth century who bowed to superior French culture and often spoke French in their homes, Greek was often spoken in Roman homes. Consequently, the Romans imbibed much of Greek culture and made it their own. The Romans, too, believed in a human ideal, although its makeup was slightly different from that of the Greeks. The Romans, like the Greeks, were humanists. The Romans called this human ideal humanitas (literally, "humanity"). The old Romans were people of civil order, and filial and sacred obligation. Unlike the Greeks, who speculated about the idea of the Good, the Romans were people of practical virtue. They brought Greek philosophy down to earth. Theirs was an ethical, more than an intellectual, culture, with Aeneas as their model. He was known to schoolboys as "Pious Aeneas" up until the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a Trojan prince who, in Virgil's epic Aeneid, flees the burning city of Troy, his father on his back and his family in tow, and who founds the "new" Troy on the banks of the Tiber River. Although the Romans bowed to the superiority of the Greeks in philosophy and art, they excelled them in administration and efficiency. The study of the Romans is a study in political and ethical man. The Romans, said Russell Kirk, "were a people of strong classical endowments, grand engineers, tireless political administrators, organizers of military success; most of all they were men of law and strong social institutions, who gave the world the pax romana, the Roman peace." If speculation was the watchword of the Greeks, it was order, both civil and moral, that characterized the Romans. Humanism Is Not the Problem
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The Religion of the Hebrews But to this recipe for Western civilization, we must add the ingredient of the Hebrews. If the Greeks exemplified speculative man and the Romans practical, the Hebrews exemplified spiritual man. We look to the Hebrews to see how God deals with individuals and with nations. The Greeks speculated on the nature of wisdom and virtue; the Romans attempted to practice these ideals; the Hebrews alone among men knew their Author. The Greeks and Romans were the stepchildren of truth; the Hebrews were its natural offspring. Christianity came organically out of Judaism. But when the classical, pagan cultures of Greece and Rome were subsumed into Christianity, the fathers of the Church did not reject the best ideals of these cultures. The cardinal virtues―justice, temperance, courage, and prudence―were fully accepted by Christian thinkers, but at the same time they saw the insufficiency of these. To the cardinal virtues of the ancients they added the theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. Rather than rejecting the concept of an ideal man, the Christians informed the concept with new life. While this human ideal for the Greeks and Romans was embodied in characters in stories written by men, the Christians could appeal to a character in a story written by God―a character who was not only real, but God in human flesh, the second Adam. While Achilles was born of a mortal father and an immortal mother, Christ was born of a mortal mother and an Immortal Father; while fictional Achilles was half-god, half-man, the historical Christ was "fully God and fully man."
of his higher possibilities. The gods of the Greeks were ill-conceived: products of their imaginations and projections of themselves. They worshiped deities made in their own image because they had no access to the revelation of the God in whose image they themselves were made. They had no revelation other than natural revelation, which could only take them so far. This understanding of man was an essential aspect of the classical worldview that was shared by Christian thinkers from Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to Richard Hooker, John Henry Newman, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien. It is why these thinkers are often called "Christian humanists." When Chesterton said that Christianity was the "fulfillment of paganism," this is what he meant: Not that Christianity was merely a further development of ancient paganism, but that Greek and Roman thought was the stunted form of a Truth that could be perceived but not truly known or understood until it was revealed in the full revelation of Christ. This is what Lewis meant too when he said that, in relation to Christianity, paganism was as a virgin, and modern secularism like a divorceé. While the Greeks and Romans accepted truths they had no way of truly knowing, modern secularism rejects the truth it has no excuse for not knowing. Modern thought, being fundamentally Darwinian, rejects any real distinction between man and animal, asserting that man is merely an animal, and rejects any distinction between man and God, contending that God does not exist at all. And it cannot accept the concept of an ideal man because it does not believe in man (the ideal), but only in men. In fact, it rejects all transcendent truth. Humanism is not the problem with modern education and culture; it is anti-humanism—not believing in a human ideal. While Christianity renounced the vices of the classical cultures, it did not reject their virtues. Modern thought rejects their virtues and has sought to revive their vices. This is why classical Christian education is needed today: to bring a fuller, Christian humanism to a generation which has abandoned it altogether.
While Christianity renounced the vices of the classical cultures, it did not reject their virtues. Modern thought rejects their virtues and has sought to revive their vices.
Christian Humanism The problem with classical humanism was not primarily that it was wrong—though it was in some cases—but rather that it was incomplete. This is something that we forget at our peril. It is not wrong to say that man is the highest and noblest of earthly creatures. He is, in fact, made in the image and likeness of God, and therefore he is all this―and more. The Greeks understood the proper metaphysical location of man―above the beast and below the divine. He was, as religious historian Mircea Eliade pointed out, the one animal who walks erect—a sign 12
Heading Goes Humanism Is Not Here the Problem
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CULTIVATING A PASSION FOR THE IDEALS OF A CLASSICAL LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION by Fr. Jadyn Nelson our actions. That kind of education is simply not happening in the context of public, private, or even many religious schools that do not take on the problem of secular and progressive curricular materials. I am naturally cautious about declaring something As a Catholic priest, I received an education that opened to be a success until it has proven itself over time. It will my eyes to the perennial importance of classical authors, take more time to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the as well as the tremendous importance that culture has in curriculum. Nevertheless, what we have seen so far is our ability, both individually and socially, to be happy and nothing short of astounding. Our elementary teachers, remain faithful to God. In my role as president at BRCS, many of whom are veteran teachers, are totally and my dissatisfaction with the banal and religiously sanitized completely won over by the curriculum in only seven materials produced by the major educational publishing months of use. The amount of growth that they have seen in houses in the areas of language arts, literature, and history their students at this point is beyond what they thought was led me to seek an alternative. So I directed my principals to reasonable to expect. Even more exciting is the confidence try and find a classical curriculum, which I knew would be and enthusiasm that our parents are exhibiting about the our best chance to find something that would work for us. new curriculum. In short, I couldn't be happier with what A simple internet search led us to Memoria Press. we are experiencing as a result of moving to Memoria Press. My hope is that this curriculum will be a catalyst for our At this point, we are making students and teachers to discover an preparations to extend our use of approach to learning and teaching Memoria Press materials into the that is aligned with the nobility of middle school and high school. the human person created in God's I believe that Latin, logic, and image. We live in a world that is The Classical Latin Memoria Press literature selections largely influenced by utilitarianism School Association? are the most obvious elements to and pragmatism. While education begin with at those levels. Beyond certainly ought to assist students adopting new curriculum, though, in their ability to participate in CLSA Member School: remains the important work of society and the economy, it is most cultivating passion for the ideals certainly not reducible to those 30% off Teacher Training of classical liberal arts education ends. Above all, I agree with the Registration amongst our faculty and providing Italian educator Fr. Luigi Giussani opportunities for them to experience that education is an "introduction to On-Site Teacher Training for themselves the fruits of the reality."1 In other words, education kind of education we are trying to is the means by which we are made Accreditation provide for our students. capable of living intelligently and freely because we grasp the truth of 1 Luigi Giussani, The Risk of Education: things and have been taught how to ClassicalLatin.org Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny. New York: relate to these "things" virtuously by Crossroads Publishing Co., 2011, p. 50. Bishop Ryan Catholic School in Minot, North Dakota, was founded in 1958 and currently has over 430 students in PreK-12th grades. Fr. Jadyn Nelson, the president of BRCS, is leading the implementation of Memoria Press' curriculum at the school.
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SIMPLY CLASSICAL
EVANGELIUM AETERNUM by Cheryl Swope
O
ne evening my son came to me beaming: "Mom, you have to read this!" Earlier he had been "in a mood," so I had sent him to his room with clear instructions: "Do not to speak to anyone the rest of the night until you have read two chapters of your C. S. Lewis literature assignment for this week." C. S. Lewis often helps my son's thinking more effectively than I can, so I lean on the author heavily. Classically educated himself, Lewis expertly weaves truth into allegory that speaks to my son. Michael returned about an hour later, humble as if transfigured, ready to apologize and eager for me to read what he had seen. "I think it's Jesus," he said quietly. What I tell you is the evangelium [a]eternum. This has been known always: ancients and moderns bear witness to it. The stories of the Landlord in our own time are but a picture-writing which show to the people as much of the truth as they can understand. Stewards must have told you—though it seems that you neither heeded nor understood them—the legend of the Landlord's Son. They say that after eating of the mountain-apple and the earthquake, when things in our country had gone all awry, the Landlord's Son himself became one of his Father's tenants and lived among us, for no other purpose than that he should be killed. The Stewards themselves do not know clearly the meaning of their story; hence, if you ask them how the slaying of the Son should help us, they are driven to monstrous answers. But to us the meaning is clear and the story is beautiful. It is a picture of the life of the Spirit itself … for the whole world is nothing else than the Eternal thus giving itself to death that it may live—that we may live."1
Warring Within This was not the first time Lewis helped my son. Prone to sullenness, mood swings, and dabbling where he ought not, my son finds a sometimes reluctant solace in the writings of Lewis that heartily affirm all he learns, sings, and prays on Sunday mornings. Lewis has become a literary mentor in our home. A classical education is infused with eternal truths at every turn, and few accomplish this for us like this Christian writer. Respectful of a good book and its author, when Michael learned that Lewis wanted a person to read The Magician’s Nephew (Creation) prior to reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Redemption), Michael did. Good and evil war royally, majestically, spiritually in The Magician’s Nephew. Chilling portraits of the wickedly deceptive Jadis and her dangerously cruel tyranny sober the reader to silence. As we read, we realize the warring is not ethereal, but personal. "Let your world beware."2
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Evangelium Eternum
ClassicalSpecialNeeds.com
Then the sobered reader learns where to turn, as the children in Narnia look squarely into the face of Aslan. Miraculously, the gloriously warm and loving face of Aslan is as gracious and merciful as it is stern and just. In this my son finds comfort. So do I. The face seemed to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even alive or awake, before.3
This is not just for the moment, we remember as we read. "As long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness … would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well."4 As a writer, C. S. Lewis never turns our children to himself but rather to our children's true source of life and hope. Only One can change—transfigure— our children in ways that matter for all time. "When he remembered the face of Aslan he did hope."⁵ This gives us hope.
Eternity As we continue to feed our children from the Fount of Goodness, we can look forward to the
Simply Classical:
A Beautiful Education for Any Child by Cheryl Swope Text $24.95 | eBook $22.00 This book guides parents and teachers in implementing the beauty of a classical education with special-needs and struggling students. The love of history, music, literature, and Latin instilled in her own children by a classical education created in Cheryl the desire to share the message that classical education offers benefits to any child.
day when all necessary "ransacking of the Witch's fortress"⁶ will end for the eternal good of our child. Until that day, through hallowed teachings in the castle of our children’s minds we see "every door and window open and the light and the sweet spring air flooding in to all the dark and evil places which needed them so badly."⁷ When our own wisdom falters and our words fail us with our teens and older children, we can turn with confidence to those who think and write and breathe the faith more compassionately, more effectively, more beautifully than we do. We can lean on hymn writers, poets, writers of good literature, and especially the Holy Scriptures to give our children meaningful truth to refresh minds and nourish souls in ways that will continue to transfigure far beyond today.
C. S. Lewis, Pilgrim's Regress (Eerdmans, 1943), p. 129 C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, (HarperTrophy, 1983), p. 194. The Magician’s Nephew, p. 194. The Magician’s Nephew, pp. 194-195. The Magician’s Nephew, p. 198. C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, (HarperTrophy, 1978), p. 171. 7 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, p. 171.
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Simply Classical Journal Sign up today: MemoriaPress.com/SCJournal Do you wish there was a Classical Teacher magazine devoted entirely to specialneeds education? Well, now there is. The new Simply Classical Journal, edited by Cheryl Swope, author of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child, has the same features as the Classical Teacher—insightful, informative articles, and descriptions of new and existing programs—but geared toward you as a parent or teacher trying to provide a classical education to your student with special needs, whatever his or her challenges may be.
Cheryl Swope is the author of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child and Memoria Press' Simply Classical Curriculum.
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Evangelium Eternum
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LITER ATURE
WARDROBES ARE FOR GROWN-UPS TOO by Joseph Pearce
B
y any stretch of the imagination, and by any criteria, the Chronicles of Narnia are among the most popular books ever written. Several major surveys of the bestselling books of all time place The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the Top Ten, a few places below The Lord of the Rings by C. S. Lewis' friend, J. R. R. Tolkien.1 Although exact global sales figures are hard to verify, it is estimated that 3.5 million copies of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are sold annually around the world, in editions published in thirty-three languages, and these figures don't include the millions of copies of the other six titles in the series.2 Clearly it is no exaggeration to speak of a C. S. Lewis phenomenon or a C. S. Lewis industry. Such phenomenal success will do nothing to assuage the contempt with which the books are held by those who allow their judgment to be clouded
Joseph Pearce is the series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions, the Tolkien and Lewis Chair in Literary Studies at Holy Apostles College and Seminary, and the author of several biographies of major Christian literary figures.
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Wardrobes Are for Grown-Ups Too
by the arrogance of ignorance. The response of such people was epitomized by the manner in which the triumph of The Lord of the Rings was greeted after it was voted "the greatest book of the century" in a nationwide poll in the UK in 1997. "Tolkien—that's for children, isn't it?" scoffed the writer Howard Jacobson. "It just shows the folly of these polls, the folly of teaching people to read. Close all the libraries. Use the money for something else. It's another black day for British culture."3 Griff Rhys Jones on the BBC's Bookworm program was equally dismissive, stating that Tolkien's epic went no deeper than the "comforts and rituals of childhood,"4 a judgment he would no doubt extend to the Chronicles of Narnia. And yet, for all their superciliousness, and all their pride and prejudice, don't the critics have a point, at least where Narnia is concerned? Even if we concede that The Lord of the Rings is for grown-ups, surely the same can't be said of the Narnia books? Unlike The Lord of the Rings, the seven books that comprise MemoriaPress.com
the Chronicles of Narnia were written specifically for children. Surely they are just for kids. Not so, says anyone who sees the true value of fairy stories. Take G. K. Chesterton, for instance. Although he never had the pleasure of entering Narnia, having died before Narnia was born, we can be sure that he would have been one of its greatest champions. "[F]airy-tales are as normal as milk or bread," Chesterton wrote. Civilisation changes: but fairytales never change. Some of the details of the fairy-tale may seem odd to us; but its spirit is the spirit of folk-lore; and folk-lore is, in strict translation, the German for common sense. … The fairytale means extraordinary things as seen by ordinary people. The fairy-tale is full of mental health. … For all this fairy-tale business is simply the ancient and enduring system of human education. A seven-headed dragon is, perhaps, a very terrifying monster. But a child who has never heard about him is a much more terrifying monster than he is.5
If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of “Jack the Giant Killer”; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. … There is the lesson of “Cinderella,” which is the same as that of the Magnificat—exaltavit humiles ["he exalted the humble"]. There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the “Sleeping Beauty,” which tells how the human creature was blessed with birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfland, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.8
Fairy stories give us the moral framework necessary to see the world as it is, from the perspective of the way it should be.
Yes indeed! One thinks of that terrifying monster Eustace Clarence Scrubb at the beginning of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, who is much more terrible as a child than he is when he is transformed into a dragon later in the story. A few years later, Chesterton returned to the theme of fairy tales in the wonderful chapter, "The Ethics of Elfland," in his book Orthodoxy, a chapter that would greatly influence both Tolkien and Lewis. "Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense," he wrote. "It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticized elfland, but elfland that criticized the earth."6 Chesterton is not saying, of course, that heaven and the things of heaven are mere fairy stories. (Heaven forbid!) He is saying that heaven and the things of heaven, specifically the God of heaven, preceded the things of earth. The heavenly things came first. Indeed the heavenly Being made the earthly beings. Since the supernatural precedes the natural, and the natural proceeds from the supernatural, it is obvious that the supernatural supersedes the natural. This is why heaven judges earth and why earth does not judge heaven. The value of fairy stories is, therefore, discovered in the way that they reflect this heavenly reality. They serve as a lens by which the heavenly can be seen on the earth, a lens by which the deepest and most important realities are grasped. They allow us to judge evil from the perspective of the good, and the imperfect from the 1-877-862-1097
perspective of perfection. This is why Tolkien insisted that fairy stories are "plainly not primarily concerned with possibility, but with desirability."7 They show us what is from the perspective of what should be. "I deal here," Chesterton wrote, "with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales":
In other words, and to reiterate, fairy stories give us the moral framework necessary to see the world as it is, in all its glorious heights and goriest depths, from the perspective of the way it should be. We learn to value the underdog and spurn the tyrant; we learn that small things need to be defended from the power of the mighty. We learn to love the poor and rejoice in the exaltation of the humble; we learn that the ugly, the disfigured, and the disabled should be loved and not rejected; we learn that even the power of death can be defeated. Such lessons are not merely valuable and desirable, they are priceless and necessary. We are more than merely impoverished if we don’t receive such gifts—we are dehumanized. We become less than we should be, less than we are meant to be. We become dragons who devour the innocent and lay waste to the world around us. Christine Hall and Martin Coles, Children’s Reading Choices, London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 45-6. 2 Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 224. 3 Sunday Times, January 26, 1997. 4 Bookworm, BBC1, July 27, 1997. 5 G.K. Chesterton, “Education by Fairy Tales,” Illustrated London News, November 18, 1905; reprinted in The Chesterton Review, Vol. XXVIII, nos. 1 & 2 (February/May 2002), p. 9. 6 G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995, p. 54. 7 J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in J.R.R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1988, p. 39. 8 Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 55. 1
Wardrobes Are for Grown-Ups Too
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FINE ARTS
SO WHAT IF BEETHOVEN WAS DEAF? P by Carol Reynolds
eople often tell me they are teaching classical music through "Composer Studies," choosing one composer at a time, listening to his music, and reading about his life. But are biographies necessary or even a good tool for teaching the arts? Let me offer an example to explain why I am likely to say "no." Almost any child who knows Beethoven's name knows one specific fact: Beethoven was deaf. Kids are fascinated by this information and quickly develop an image of a man holding an ineffectual, trumpetshaped hearing device to his ear, desperately trying to hear the music he is writing. But this is wrong. First, a disclaimer: Few things are more fascinating for an adult to read than a thoroughly researched, Dr. Carol Reynolds is a speaker, an educator, and the widely acclaimed author of Discovering Music and other books on music, art, and architecture. She regularly leads arts tours throughout Europe and the Mediterranean for the Smithsonian Institute.
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So What If Beethoven Was Deaf?
well-written artist biography. Much understanding can be gained from such a book, not only of the subject, but of an entire era. Elementary and middle school students, however, do not yet read this kind of biography. Biographies for their ages are necessarily highly selective and simplified. Consequently, the "facts" that are presented can be problematic, distracting, or even distorting. Beethoven's deafness was real. But like many facts that children latch on to, it can be learned without context. Thus, wrong conclusions can be deduced. Similar cases might include memorizing facts about Van Gogh's self-mutilation of his ear or Bach's oftdescribed identity as the father of twenty children. In the case of Beethoven, children too easily conclude that he was great because he wrote music while deaf. They see overcoming this obstacle as his singular, miraculous achievement. Here's the truth about Beethoven's deafness: His loss of hearing began in young adulthood and MemoriaPress.com
progressed to the point of total deafness in his older years. It was a source of annoyance, frustration, and fear, as would be any medical handicap ‌ but not because he couldn't hear to compose music. Beethoven from childhood had internalized the tones of string, wind, and percussion instruments. He knew the sounds and capacities of instruments like the organ and piano. And he understood how to wield vocal ranges and choral textures. B u t m o r e i m p o r t a n t l y, Beet hoven (like virt ually a ny composer) wrote music inside his head. If you stop and are quiet, you can replicate this experience, since most people can "hear" a familiar piece of music in their minds, whether it be a song, a dance, or a theme from a favorite movie. Yes, composers sometimes do use the stimulus of playing a keyboard (or other instrument) to reinforce their creative choices and test out sounds they are considering. But the physical sound waves from these instruments are rarely the source of a composer's ideas. Furthermore, composers usually draft their compositions on paper (or today in a computer-generated score). They wrestle internally with problems of form and content the same way writers do: try it, cross it out, try it again. Therefore, long after Beethoven was deaf, he could compose. He could sit at a piano and play through his works, hearing at least a version of them inside his head. He could still write a string quartet guided by his internal genius for compiling rhythm, harmony, melody, and form in extraordinary ways. Some scholars argue he could do it even better in his later "deaf" years, because he was not distracted by physical realities of the sounds, or more importantly, limitations of the instruments of his day. What he could not do, once fully deaf, was something flight attendants call a "cross-check." He could not double- and triple-check to make sure that the notes he had written would work well in an actual performance. He could not be sure that his coupling of an oboe and clarinet sounded as effective as he had intended in a given passage. He could not tell if a copyist had recorded a wrong note that his horn players were blithely reproducing. He also could not walk to the back of a hall during a rehearsal and assess the acoustical vagaries of the space where his music was to be performed. He had to rely on others for this information. Not surprisingly, his deafness made him grumpy, as such a limitation would make anyone. It made him
defensive and anti-social in the very years when he most needed his friends and patrons. He could not partake in social chit-chat or avail himself of opportunities such as crossing a drawing room to greet "Countess So-and-So" after overhearing a rumor that she was seeking a composer to write a festive overture. Such things had to be communicated in writing, or not communicated at all. The good news is that we moderns have inherited thousands of pages bearing one side of people's conversations with Beethoven, scribbled on miscellaneous sheets of paper and in little notebooks today called Konversationshefte (Conversation Books). It is a unique legacy. Does a child need to know all of this? Well, actually, I think so, or at least part of it. Otherwise I would discourage presenting the "Beethoven was deaf" badge as a starting point in introducing a student to his music. Like most biographical facts concerning any creative artist, it offers at best a very limited window of understanding. So much more could be learned from comparing Beethoven's music to Mozart's or Haydn's, or from discussing the enormous upheavals of Beethoven's time (which corresponded closely to the lifespan of Napoleon). None of this supersedes the power of the art itself to communicate. Children are very good at hearing, or seeing, that power—honing in exactly on what we might call the intrinsic value of an artistic creation. I've been amazed how many times I've witnessed young children identify shifts from major to minor keys, long before they have the vocabulary to do so. They respond instinctively to changes in tempo and orchestration. And they develop preferences very early about what is called texture in music: the stacking of musical voices from a "thin" or single melody line to a full palate of choral or orchestral lines woven together. Not only do children respond to the joyful, bombastic qualities of music, but they also embrace its poignancy. They gravitate towards what they like, yet they are marvelously open to the full gamut of artistic expression. So, yes, Beethoven went deaf. And yes, he was a musical genius, the like of which the world rarely sees. But the two facts are not connected in a causeand-effect relationship! If this example alone causes us to think more carefully about how we present an artist's biography, I'm willing to bet that Beethoven himself would smile.
Beethoven's deafness was real. But like many facts that children latch on to, it can be learned out of context.
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So What If Beethoven Was Deaf?
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THE MYTH MADE FACT 20
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BY LOUIS MARKOS
T
hough most readers are aware that C. S. Lewis spent many years as an atheist before becoming a Christian at the age of 32, fewer know that his conversion occurred in two distinct stages. Before embracing Christ
as the only-begotten Son of God, Lewis spent over a year as a theist, believing in the existence of God but still rejecting the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Among the events and influences that led Lewis to make the leap from theism to Christianity, the most important was a long evening talk he had with a close friend, a devout Roman Catholic named J. R. R. Tolkien.
As Lewis and Tolkien walked along the grounds of Magdalen College, Oxford, Lewis confided in Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, that his knowledge of mythology prevented him from accepting the gospel narrative as true. After all, the mythologies of the world were filled with stories of gods who came to earth, took on human form, died violent deaths, and returned again to life: Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz, Mithras, Balder, etc. Was not Christianity just another such myth, albeit a more sophisticated one? In response, Tolkien acknowledged the prevalence of god-men in pagan myths and legends, but then went on to suggest a different way of interpreting this phenomenon. What if, Tolkien challenged his skeptical friend, the reason the story of Christ sounded so similar to the pagan tales of dying and rising gods was because Jesus was the myth that came true? Tolkien's challenge revolutionized Lewis' way of viewing mythology and not many days would pass before he would surrender his life to Christ, the historical God-Man. No longer a stumbling block, the ancient Greek, Roman, and Norse tales that Lewis so loved would become for him one of the mainstays and bulwarks of his new faith. Rather than dismiss the miraculous elements of Christmas and Easter as
having no more historical validity than the scapegoat tales of Oedipus or Prometheus—as many moderns do—or reject the myths themselves as either irrelevant to faith or lies of the devil meant to deceive—as many Christians do—Lewis came to view the myths as glimpses, road signs, pointers to a greater truth that was someday to be revealed literally and historically in a specific time and place. For Lewis, it is just as vital that we proclaim and accept the full historicity of the Christian gospel as it is that we celebrate and experience its full mythic power. Yes, Lewis asserts, Christ is more than Balder, or Hercules or Dionysus, in the sense that His death and resurrection occurred in real time and had real consequences. But we must not allow His status as the historical Dying God to rob Him of His mythic splendor. Christ should speak not only to our rational, logical side, but to our sense of wonder and awe as well. If Christianity is true, then it means that the God who created both us and the universe chose to reveal Himself through a sacred story that resembles more the imaginative works of the epic poets and tragedians than the rational meditations of the philosophers and theologians. The historical enactment of the Passion did not render the old
Louis Markos (LouMarkos.com), Professor in English & Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University, holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities. His 18 books include On the Shoulders of Hobbits, Atheism on Trial, and two children's novels, The Dreaming Stone and In the Shadow of Troy, in which his kids become part of Greek mythology and the Iliad and Odyssey. This essay is adapted from the conclusion of his From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics, available from Memoria Press.
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The Myth Made Fact
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pagan tales unclean; on the contrary, it had the reverse effect of baptizing and purifying them. The relationship between Mary and the baby Jesus has made potentially sacred the relationship between every mother and child, both B.C. and A.D.; in a like manner, the gospel story spreads out its light both forward and backward to uplift and ennoble all stories that speak of sacrifice and reconciliation, of messianic promise and eschatological hope. It was through the poetry of the Psalms and the Prophets, as well as through the more "epic" tales of the Old Testament—Abraham's long, circ uitous jour ney, Joseph and his brothers, the Passover and Exodus—that Yahweh prepared the hearts and minds of His people for the Incarnation of the Christ. Does it seem so unbelievable that He should have used the greatest poets, storytellers, and "prophets" of antiquity to prepare the hearts of the pagans? Indeed, as these pagans were without the Law and cut off from the direct (special) revelation given to the biblical writers, how else could God have reached them? Yes, God certainly spoke to them through the natural world (general revelation), but how was He to reach them at the deeper levels of their being? As Lewis argues in Book II, Chapter 3 of Mere Christianity, before the full revelation of Christ, God communicated with men in three basic ways: through their consciences, through His historical struggles with a single, chosen race of people (the Jews), and through what Lewis calls "good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men." Perhaps the most famous example of a pagan writer catching a glimpse of the myth that would become fact is to be found in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue (c. 40 B.C.), which celebrates the coming of a divine child who will bring peace and order to earth. Throughout the Middle Ages, Virgil's pre-Christian, Isaiah-like poem was interpreted as a pagan prophecy of Christ. In the twenty-second canto of the Purgatorio, Dante introduces us to Statius, a first-century pagan poet whom he portrays as having converted to Christianity late in life. Statius ascribes both his early yearnings for Christ and his final conversion, 22
The Myth Made Fact
not to the Christian martyrs and theologians, but to Virgil. In an ecstatic, magic moment in which pagan myth reaches out to Christian fact and the two embrace, Statius exclaims: "You [Virgil] were the lamp that led me from that night. You led me forth to drink Parnassian waters; then on the road to God you shed your light. When you declared [in the Fourth Eclogue], 'A new birth has been given. Justice returns, and the first age of man. And a new progeny descends from Heaven'— you were as one who leads through the dark track holding the light behind—useless to you, precious to those who followed at your back. Through you I flowered to song and to belief."
Statius goes on to add that when he first heard the gospel preached, he hearkened to it immediately, for it agreed so well with what he had read in Virgil. In this lovely testimony of Statius, Virgil emerges as almost a Christ-figure, as one who sacrifices himself for others, who devotes his life to uncovering truths that, though useless to him, will provide light and guidance for those who come after. He is a bearer of good news, not of the full gospel of Christ, but of a lesser gospel that yet points to the greater: a candle that directs our eye to the moon; a moon that directs our soul to the sun. And what of today? Do we who live on this side of Calvary still need such mythic candles? I would say we do, that we need them even more, for the secular, rationalistic, postEnlightenment world in which we live has dissected, demythologized, and denied many of our most cherished myths. To make matters worse, Christians are often the first to distance themselves from that which is mythic, not, as they try to convince themselves, because they are believers, but because they have absorbed, usually unconsciously, the modern world's suspicion of fairy stories. Yet the hunger remains. Despite 250 years of Enlightenment rationalism, people still yearn for myth, and, if they yearn, then they can be wooed back: perhaps not directly to Christ, but at least to a pre-Christian mindset that will open the door for a later embrace of the historical God-Man. Childhood precedes adulthood as the seed the tree: just so, the pagan mind, whether B.C. or A.D., cannot perceive God face to face until it has first peered darkly into the crazy glass of myth. MemoriaPress.com