The Consortium • Volume 1, Issue 2 – A Journal of Classical Christian Education

THE CONSORTIUM

A Journal of Classical Christian Education

Promoting classical education and fostering human flourishing for generations to come.

Volume 1, Issue 2

The Consortium: A Journal of Classical Christian Education Volume 1, Issue 2.

Copyright © 2022 by Roman Roads Press

Published by Roman Roads Press in collaboration with Kepler Education and The Consortium of Classical Educators

Moscow, Idaho info@romanroadspress.com | romanroadspress.com

Editorial Advisory Board:

- Daniel Foucachon, Executive Editor

- Scott Postma, General Editor

- Dr. Robert M. Woods, Senior Editor

- Dr. Christy Vaughan, Contributing Editor

- Dr. Gregory Soderberg, Contributing Editor

Interior Layout by Carissa Hale

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by the USA copyright law.

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ISBN: 978-1-944482-77-0

Version 1.0.0 December 2022

Introduction: Identity and Classical Christian Education

by Scott Postma vii

What Does Athens Have to do With Abuja?:

Why a Christian Liberal Arts Education is Appropriate for and Essential to African Church Schools

by Karen J. Elliott

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

(From Redeeming the Six Arts )

by Brent Pinkall

Assessing the Pedagogical Power of Poetry for Poetic Knowledge

by Carrie Eben and Albert Cheng

The Lord’s Gifts to Human Nature: The Role of the Liberal Arts in the Educational Philosophy of John Calvin

by Lucas Vieira

Johan Huizinga’s The Autumn of the Middle Ages An Appreciative Review

by Dr. Robert Woods

63

77

93

INTRODUCTION

Identity and Classical Christian Education

An Introduction to the Winter Issue of Volume One

by Scott Postma

During the mid-twentieth century, the Western world entered a crisis about the identity of man. After two surprising World Wars, the unalienable rights of man could no longer be taken for granted in Europe, as “man” was being alienated and eradicated, altered and undone. The question, “What is man?” is of course a perennial question and has been asked for at least as long as man has been writing letters, but during the mid-twentieth century there was something unique and unsettling about this question at a time when Nazis, Soviets, and lesser fascists each had their own vision for a “new man” while simultaneously erasing “man” by the millions with gun barrels and gas chambers. The nature of the crisis being as prevalent as it was, a remarkable number of books appeared addressing this question. To illustrate just how prevalent the concern was, consider the sample of notable works that were produced during this span of years that attempted to address the question anew:

• The Nature and Destiny of Man (Reinhold Neibuhr)

• The Condition of Man (Lewis Mumford)

• “The Root is Man” (Dwight Macdonald)

• Existentialism is a Humanism (Jean-Paul Sartre)

• The Human Condition (Hannah Arndt)

• Man the Measure (Erich Kahler)

• Modern Man is Obsolete (Norman Cousins)

• The Science of Man in the World Crisis (Ralph Linton)

• Education for Modern Man (Sidney Hook)

• Human Nature and the Human Condition (Joseph Wood Crutch)

• Who is Man? (Abraham Joshua Heschel)

• New Leviathan: Or, Man, Society, Civilization, and Barbarism (R. G. Collingwood)

The implications of this crisis about the nature of man—is he miracle or monster?—“would echo for nearly three decades” transforming the tone and content of intellectual, political, and literary enterprises in ways that—because they are so intertwined with panic, piety, and the permanent philosophical questions of human nature—have still not been given an adequate accounting.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and like a SARS-2 virus, the crisis has mutated and taken on a new form. Identity and self are among the most imperative and polarizing contemporary issues of our postmodern times. In the prevailing worldview, clarifying, establishing, and signaling to which racial, ethnic, sexual, or religious group one belongs is paramount to achieving a proper understanding and acceptance of one’s self.

If the question of the twentieth century was “What is man?,” then the question of the twenty-first century is “Who am I?” It just so happens that the very clinical definition of identity, according to the Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology and Counseling , refers to one’s answer to that very question.1 Additionally, drawing from the works of cultural philosophers Phillip Reif, Robert Bellah, and Charles Taylor, Carl Trueman asserts that in our postmodern times, the popular culture’s answer to that question is only and emphatically attained by way of expressive individualism. “Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.” 2 Said another way, “the modern self is one where authenticity is achieved by acting outwardly in accordance with one’s inward feelings.”3

It is common knowledge that human beings have an inner life and are frequently introspective about their identity, purpose, and feelings. The Apostle Paul is a premiere example of this when he explains some of his own inner conflict in his letter to the church at Rome. He writes,

I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to

1 E. A. Gassin, “Identity,” ed. David G. Benner and Peter C. Hill, Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology & Counseling, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 604.

2 Robert N. Bellah quoted in Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 22.

3 Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution , 23.

the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. 4

St. Augustine penned his Confessions as a prayer to God reflecting on his inner self:

My soul’s house is too strait for thee to come into: let it be enlarged by thee: ’tis ruinous, but do thou repair it. There be many things in it, I both confess and know, which may offend thine eyes; but who can cleanse it? or to whom but thee shall I cry, Cleanse me, O Lord, from my secret sins, and from strange sins deliver thy servant; I believe, and therefore do I speak. Thou knowest, O Lord, that I have confessed my sins against mine own self, O my God; and thou forgavest me the iniquity of my heart. 5

While it is certainly the case that all human beings have an inner life, what is remarkable about the modern identity crisis contra classical inner reflection, is that it has become normative to assume that society must not only recognize but also affirm what are considered to be outward expressions of every individual’s authentic inner self. If one identifies as belonging to an alternative race, ethnicity, or gender, it is society’s responsibility to conform to every form of “authentic” expressive individualism, and not the other way around. This

4 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Rom. 7:21–25.

5 Augustine of Hippo, St. Augustine’s Confessions , vol.1, ed. T. E. Page and W. H. D. Rouse, trans. William Watts, The Loeb Classical Library (London; New York: William Heinemann; The Macmillan Co., 1912), 11.

existentialist ideology is the only means of establishing one’s authentic identity in popular culture.

In times past, however, a gospel-animated liberal education was a palliative for and restraint to one’s malordered loves and inordinate desires to the end that one might be wise and virtuous instead of “authentic” and foolish. In other words, one of the tasks of education was to prepare the individual for sharing in and contributing to the life of the shared community. Churches, schools, and other mutual civic institutions shared in the ennobling task. As literary and social critic Marion Montgomery rightly noted in Liberal Arts and Community: The Feeding of the Larger Body, “Education is the preparing of the mind for the presence of our common inheritance, the accumulated and accumulating knowledge of the truth of things.”6

Modern classical Christian education is the recovery of such an education, an education that while useless in terms of its market value, is not worthless in its humane value—an education that attempts to educate the whole person in the life of the community’s accumulated and accumulating knowledge of the truth of things.

Those of us committed to conserving the best of the Western Tradition recognize a person is more than his inner feelings. Each one, regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity, is created imago Dei, and it is outside ourselves—in Christ alone—that we find our true self, our authentic identity. And it is the classically educated person who knows that individuals, as much as societies at large, have a responsibility to

6 Montgomery as quoted in Ken Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians & Popular Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1989), vii.

submit and conform to the truth of things, to the Norms as it were—and not the other way around.

But we also recognize that neither the gospel nor education erase the individual self from its relationship with the community. Said another way, in its task of preparing the student to flourish within the culture’s common inheritance, he or she does not become just another insignificant bead in the cosmic bean bag of existence.

The articles in this issue of the Consortium journal take into account the various ways in which classical Christian education transcends any single group identity because it is a human education that seeks to apprehend and appreciate what is good, true, and beautiful and then to help each individual with his or her endowments and attainments approximate one’s self to that revealed or discovered truth.

In the first paper, long-time African missionary, Karen J. Elliott, addresses concerns regarding the value of the liberal arts for church education systems in the African continent. She contends that a liberal arts education is “not only appropriate for Africa but essential for its future development.”

Elliot makes the case that while vocational training is important for the survival of the people, it is a liberal education that is “the best education for cultivating human beings, developing free societies, and unifying and strengthening the continent through the church. Plus it cultivates great carpenters, engineers, farmers, artists, as well as theologians.”

The second paper addresses the cultural relevance of a classical liberal arts education for the Chinese in much the same way the West did with classical Western Pagans—by “spoiling the Egyptians” as St. Augustine advised early Western Christian educators—by redeeming the six arts of the

ancient Chinese Pagans. Chinese missionary and classical educator, Brent Pinkall, explains:

In Christ, all that the wise men of old longed for is fulfilled. All of their frayed philosophies are mended. The ancients could intuit much truth about God and His creation. “He did not leave himself without witness” (Acts 14:17). They could hear the song that He was composing, but they could only hear the rhythm. When we read their writings, we can sense the steady pulse of divine order and meaning echoing through the cosmos, but only in the crucified and risen Christ do we hear the melody.

In the third paper, Albert Cheng and Carrie Eben discuss their findings from an empirical research study at a classical Christian school in Northwest Arkansas on the merits of poetry and its effects on intuitive knowledge (i.e. poetic knowledge). Although James Taylor warns educators that knowledge of poetry and poetic knowledge are distinct and not the same thing, the research presented in this paper suggests the implementation of poetry cultivates intellectual space or categories of thought which prepare learners for developing poetic knowledge. Cheng writes,

We recently set out to address these questions by conducting an empirical study at a classical Christian school in Northwest Arkansas and found that engagement with poetry affects poetic (intuitive) knowledge of the natural world. Although empiricism is not the only way to know something, it is a way. Consistent with Taylor’s philosophical assertions about poetic knowledge, the findings of our study suggest that poetry, as an experience, integrated with a science curriculum, introduces students to other dimensions of knowledge that are beyond scientific.

The fourth paper in this issue looks at the role of the liberal arts in the educational philosophy of Protestants, particularly as held by Protestant Reformer, John Calvin. Here Lucas Vieira discusses the role of non-Scripture based studies in Protestant Christian education and suggests “Calvin’s doxological approach to Christian education offers insightful guidance to the classical Christian education movement today.” Wrapping up this issue are four important book reviews written by each of our editorial board members. The Autumn of the Middle Ages is an appreciative review of three separate translations of one masterpiece written by Johan Huizinga. In this review, Robert Woods analyzes these works and their “inherent value as intellectual artifacts approximating a modern masterpiece of cultural history.” In the review of The Battle for the American Mind , a journalist treatment of the broken American education system written by Pete Hegseth with David Goodwin, Christy Vaughan offers a critical review of the book she says is “at once pedagogical, historical, and yet accessible to all readers in a kind of Joe The Plumber sort of way.” Next, Gregory Soderberg reviews The Black Intellectual Tradition written by Angel Adams Parham and Anika Prather, who through their reading of authors like Frederick Douglas and W. E. B. Du Bois, “discovered their indebtedness to the classical tradition…[and] realized that many African American heroes were also shaped and formed by classical education, and that this was an important, if neglected, part of Black history.” Finally, we include in this issue of The Consortium a review of Abraham Kuyper’s On Education . I first published this review in Ad Fontes, the journal of The Davenant Institute, and it is reprinted here with the full permission of Ad Fontes because I believe Kuyper’s “unique gifts, experiences, and writings” on Christianity and education during his

long struggle for educational reform in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century Netherlands is a uniquely prescient guide for everyone concerned with the education crisis plaguing twenty-first century North America.

It is my hope, as well as the hope of our board, that readers will be edified by what is presented in this issue and discover the unique gift that is classical Christian education, and see that it is good not just for a White European West, but for the flourishing of all human beings regardless of ethnicity, race, or geographic boundaries.

On behalf of the editorial board and the entire Consortium of Classical Educators, it is by God’s Grace and for His Glory that I present to you Volume 1, Winter Issue of The Consortium: A Journal of Classical Christian Education.

Scott Postma General Editor

Editorial Advisory Board

Daniel Foucachon– Executive Editor

Scott Postma– General Editor

Dr. Robert M. Woods– Senior Contributing Editor

Dr. Christy Vaughan– Contributing Editor

Dr. Gregory Soderberg– Contributing Editor

THE CONSORTIUM

A Journal of Classical Christian Education

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

Why a Christian Liberal Arts Education is Appropriate for and Essential to African Church Schools

by Karen J. Elliott

Introduction: Carpentry—Sufficient for Human Flourishing?

The headline declared, “South Sudan: ‘Teach Us How to Become Carpenters’—South Sudanese Want to Shape Their Future” (Awad, 2021). The article goes on to describe the situation in South Sudan: “Secondary schools or any educational institutions are non-existent, save for one primary school. Illiteracy and the lack of learning means that children are left idle, their potential wasted. ‘We need schools for the children to learn and have the knowledge to live in a peaceful way,’ Martha says. More than 2.2 million South Sudanese children are out-of-school.”

The issue here was the desire for something more than just food drops but rather job training. “At the end of the

meagre market is a young man in his 30s who told us that his hometown needs more than airdrops of food. ‘Can you teach us how to become carpenters?’ he asks, adding that woodworking would be a popular source of livelihood for men in Likuangole. Another man nearby chimes in: ‘Your food helps us survive, but a job would give us a future’” (Ibid.).

Is that all that is needed to shape a country’s future—vocational skills and job training? Is there not something more to being a human being? Why should a Sudanese explore Socrates, Shakespeare, and Soyinka when he needs to survive? South Sudan is certainly an extreme case and needs basics in place before implementing a liberal arts education. But does that mean all of Africa does not need the liberal arts?

This paper addresses several concerns regarding the value of the liberal arts for church education systems in the African continent. Are the liberal arts universal or have relevance only for the West? Is not a vocational education more useful? The paper contends that a liberal arts education is not only appropriate for Africa but essential for its future development. It is the best education for cultivating human beings, developing free societies, and unifying and strengthening the continent through the church. Plus it cultivates great carpenters, engineers, farmers, artists, as well as theologians. Drawing from classic works from the Greeks and Romans, medieval scholars, theologians from the past two millennia, biographical sketches of Africans, and recent research, this article covers these issues under six major areas: theological, historical, philosophical, political, biographical, and practical. For the purposes of this paper, the terms liberal arts and classical Christian education are used interchangeably.

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

Theological: Cultivates Spiritual Formation

“In the past 100 years the most significant trend within global Christianity is that, demographically, Christianity has shifted dramatically to the South” (Johnson 2019). In fact, 25% of the world’s Christians live in Africa with over 50% of Africans affiliating with Christianity (Gordon Conwell 2021). The African church has grown exponentially over the last 150 years and continues to grow rapidly. With this predominance of Christianity in Africa, the liberal arts tradition has a particular application in loving God with all one’s mind and in spiritual formation.

Within the context of the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Lord Jesus, quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5 states, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). For one to love God with all his mind, would it not seem appropriate to develop the mind as much as possible? It has been understood throughout the ages that the liberal arts cultivate thinking, the mind, and wisdom.

John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon, written in 1159, is a classic of educational theory, and an encyclopedia of medieval pedagogy (John of Salisbury 2009, xxv). It defends the liberal arts in the development of a person’s ability to think, to reason, and to contribute to society. He observes that while people are endowed with natural ability if it is not developed then it will not benefit society very much. “Reason, the mother, nurse, and guardian of knowledge, as well as of virtue, fre -

quently conceives from speech, and by this same means bears more abundant and richer fruit” (10–11).

His entire book is a defense of the teaching of the liberal arts which, he asserts, develops the mind. “The liberal arts are said to have become so efficacious among our ancestors, who studied them diligently, that they enabled them to comprehend everything they read, elevated their understanding to all things, and empowered them to cut through the knots of all problems possible of solution.” He goes on to say, “the branches of learning are the Trivium and Quadrivium…which strengthens the mind to apprehend the ways of wisdom” (36). Grammar which is the foundation of logic and rhetoric “prepares the mind to understand everything” John of Salisbury says (60). He takes it a step further by noting that grammar plants the seed of virtue after God’s grace “has furrowed the ground” (65).

Cicero in his Pro Archia Poeta , a tribute to a teacher and a friend, confirms this idea of the liberal arts cultivating the mind for more than just knowledge but wisdom and virtue: “All literature, all philosophy, all history, abounds with incentives to noble action”…and these have guided his mind and his soul by “meditating on patterns of excellence” (Cicero 62 BC, 69).

Not only the classical Greeks and Romans but the early church fathers such as Clement of Alexandria (150–215 AD) noted that philosophy is a preparatory process; “it opens the road for the person whom Christ brings to his final goal” (Clement 169). Moreover, the liberal arts cultivate a mindset of inquiry and fosters reflexive praxis which can lead to a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ (Davis 2013). Certainly, the liberal arts do not make one a Christian nor do they make one virtuous, but they certainly pave the way better than any

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

other educational model. “The liberal arts do not conduct the soul all the way to virtue, but merely set it going in that direction” (Seneca 101).

Lastly, the liberal arts require an attitude of humility, “our willingness to acknowledge how much was known and learned before we ourselves ever were” (Schall 2012, 15). Inevitably we will have to encounter great books and the great minds within them and that will take a receptive posture. In these great books we find a pursuit of truth and in facing truth we come to know ourselves and God. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of the Lord comes from and results in humility, then the liberal arts which require humility would complement Christian formation.

Historical:

The Christian Liberal Arts—Education of the Church

Other objections to a liberal arts education reside in its emphasis on Western civilization and perceived lack of connection to African culture. However, it has been the education of the church, thus with 50% of Africans claiming Christianity as their religion, it only makes sense for them to benefit from the educational heritage of the church.

Examples of the influence of the liberal arts upon God’s people appear early on starting with the Apostle Paul. He knew the writings of the Greek poets for he cited them three times in Scripture. This is expounded upon by Jerome (342–420 AD) in his Letter to Magnus, a Roman orator. Jerome makes the point that Paul was using the weapons of the pagans much like David used Goliath’s sword to sever his head.

Augustine (354–430 AD), the North African bishop, commended reading the works of philosophers that were true (Jeffreys 2007, 1) (Schall 2006, 31). He indicated that we should judiciously make use of pagan writings and reclaim them for godly use, or as weapons against them and their heresies, and that all truth was God’s truth. He stated, “but let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found it belongs to his Master” (Augustine 397 Book II, Chapter 18). He justified his support of Christians reading Greek classics by comparing it to the time when the Israelites fled Egypt and God commanded them to plunder the Egyptians’ riches which eventually were used to build the tabernacle. There were items that were idolatrous and burdensome that should be eschewed but also there were beautiful jewels, gold, vases, and many ornamentals that the Israelites could put to better use for God’s kingdom. Augustine writes: “In the same way all the teachings of the pagans contain not only simulated and superstitious imaginings and grave burdens of unnecessary labor, which each one of us leaving the society of pagans under the leadership of Christ ought to abominate and avoid, but also liberal disciplines more suited to the uses of truth, and some most useful precepts concerning morals” (Jeffreys 2007, 3).

Augustine was classically trained and was thus able to refute the Donatist and Pelagian heresies. Without the disciplines of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, he might not have had that capacity. Certainly, Augustine would be the first to counsel one to guard against the vanity of knowledge and intellectualism, nonetheless, he had the necessary tools developed by this liberal arts education that were used for the benefit of the church. He says in his book On Christian Doctrine, “if those who are called philosophers and especially the

Platonists, have said ought that is true, and in harmony with our faith, we are not only to shrink from it but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it”

(Augustine 225).

In the ninth century, it was Charlemagne who had the classical scholar and monk Alcuin revive the trivium and quadrivium for central Europe for an illiterate clergy, which issued in the Carolingian renaissance. Charlemagne was concerned that the clergy who wrote in “uncouth language” were not able to read, write, and speak correctly and thus they would do damage to the understanding of Scripture for their congregations (Charlemagne 787, 245). He urged them not to neglect the study of letters to “penetrate with greater ease and certainty the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures” (245). Alcuin “envisioned a greater Athens with a greater Academy” and the schools did resurrect the liberal arts (Gamble 2007, 243). In one of Alcuin’s letters the reader gets a hint of what constituted a classical Christian education then. In lauding his teacher, Albert, he says this of the books and learning bequeathed to others: “There you will find the footsteps of the old fathers, whatever the Roman has of himself in the sphere of Latin, or which famous Greece passed on to the Latins, or which the Hebrew race drinks from the showers above, or Africa has spread abroad with light-giving lamp” (Gamble, 246). In another document from that era entitled “Education of the Clergy” there is a glimpse into the type of education provided during this time. Maurus stated that the liberal arts consist of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy giving witness to the full implementation of the liberal arts during this period (Phelan 2016). The preservation of the classics combined with an education founded on Scriptures ushered in a period that saw an

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

increase in literature, theological studies, the arts, reforms in the liturgy, architecture, even the development of a common written script (Latourette 1953, 356–358).

Africa is home to the next generation of the world, for two out of every five children in the world will be born in Africa over the next 30 years (Bandar 2020). It is also home to Christianity. With competing philosophies and false teaching in the church the question is not, is there Christianity in Africa, the question is, what kind of Christianity will be in Africa? If we want to see Christian men and women who can think and lead from a biblical perspective amid the “invaders”, they need to be classically educated.

The effectiveness of a classical Christian education in preserving God’s people and advancing the gospel in difficult times is highlighted by the aftermath of the Carolingian renaissance. While it is true that the Vikings and other invaders overwhelmed central Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries, “as Christopher Dawson puts it, the unparalleled devastation of England and the Continent was ‘not a victory for paganism.’ The Northmen who landed on the Continent under Rollo became the Christianized Normans, and the Danish who took over a huge section of middle England…also were soon to become Christians. The gospel was too powerful” (Winters 1981, 206). The people who had been liberally educated and preserved the classics, were so firmly rooted in their faith, that when they were overrun by the Germanic invaders, they converted their occupiers—“the conquerors became conquered by the faith of their captives” (Winters 1981 206).

This revival of the trivium and quadrivium laid the groundwork for the Christian schools in Europe for a millennium (Gamble 243) thus the appreciation for the liberal

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

arts continued throughout the Reformation. Martin Luther and John Calvin were not only educated in the liberal arts but advocated for it. Luther wrote to the councilmen at Germany, “If I had children and could manage it, I would have them study not only languages and history, but also singing and music together with the whole of mathematics…The ancient Greeks trained their children in these disciplines…They grew up to be people of wondrous ability, subsequently fit for everything” (Davis and Ryken 2013, 18).

John Calvin in his commentary on Titus 1:12 noted, “For since all truth is of God, if any ungodly man has said anything true, we should not reject it, for it also has come from God.” But his Christian Institutes makes an even more thorough defense by indicating that the natural endowments of ancient thought should not be avoided, but embraced, and to do otherwise, was to be ungrateful to God who gave us such men (Calvin 1989 Book II, ch. 2, section 15).

The church’s great tradition of the liberal arts did not stop at the Reformation; “in Catholic and Protestant countries alike, a version of the Greco-Roman gentleman’s education, supplemented with liberal doses of Christian ethics and theology, provided the basis of higher education from the Renaissance until the nineteenth century” (Lind 2006). Thus, a Christian liberal arts education, was the education of the church and as such it would benefit the church schools in Africa to drink from this well of wisdom and virtue. It is not simply the education system of the West, it was the church’s historical way of developing God’s people and therefore can be the African Church’s foundation for cultivating wisdom, virtue, and eloquence, all necessary for a flourishing church in the twenty-first century.

Philosophical: The Best Education for a Human Being

A liberal arts education aims to cultivate wisdom and virtue which results in human flourishing. The “longing to know” is the essence and heart of what constitutes a rational human being (Schall 2006, 9, 32). “Nature has given us a mind full of curiosity” (Seneca 2007, 96). Aristotle remarked, “‘To be learning something is the greatest of pleasures,’…‘not only to the philosopher but to the rest of mankind, however small their capacity’” (Schall 2006, 33). Being rational, thinking, and contemplative is what makes human beings unique in all of God’s creation.

Through carpentry one can know something; but not develop that capax omnium, the capacity to know all things, and to learn to think. While intellectual pursuits can be dangerous (Jeffrey 2003, 49), the liberal arts provide that disciplined exploration of truth, beauty, and goodness opening the heart to virtue, wisdom, and noble actions (Cicero 62 BC, 69).

Along with developing wisdom and virtue, it is also most suitable to humans (Cicero 62 BC, 84–85). We are not just tools, we are souls. The trades produce beautiful crafts; however, they are often solely for moneymaking, and the human becomes an extension of the tools. Vocational studies have their place, but they are our “apprenticeship, not our real work” (Seneca 2007, 98). Education systems in Africa focus on skills training and test taking thus teaching a student to do one thing, whereas the liberal arts teach one how to learn to do anything. With the rapidly changing economies of the world, a liberal arts education is better preparation for the

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

future. Computer courses come and go; however, Plato’s dialogues are still relevant (Schall 2006, 27).

Since it is the best education for a human being, a Christian liberal arts education would exceed the goals developed by UNESCO for universal learning. In 2015, as the Millennium Development Goals were being reviewed, 30 organizations came together to form the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF).The objective of the project was to “make recommendations to help countries and international organizations measure and improve learning outcomes for children and youth worldwide” (LMTF 2013).

Comprised of representatives from governments, donor agencies, and civil society organizations, it worked for 18 months to develop educational goals for children and youth worldwide. Soliciting feedback from more than 600 individuals around the world, it developed learning domains important for all children and youth to master—how it should be measured and implemented. Emphasized within the educational goals was the need for the development of critical thinking, good citizens, lifelong learners, and values (LMTF, 2013); a Christian liberal arts education, implemented across the church, would foster all these thus fulfilling these worldwide educational goals.

Political: Preserves and Nurtures Freedom

A liberal arts education is the education of free men; free materially and from themselves (Schall 2006, 28). The ancients viewed the vocations as work for slaves. Illiberal learning was focused on moneymaking tasks and servants were

viewed as property and instruments (Aristotle Book I part IV). Slaves are capable of virtue but only need it developed in so much as they can perform their duties well, whereas the free man needs to aspire to perfection and thus the liberal arts education (Aristotle Book I part XIII). Seneca in his letter titled, “On Liberal and Vocational Studies” made his views on a liberal education clearly known. No study focused on moneymaking had his respect. Only the liberal arts education was fit for a free-born gentleman. “But there is only one really liberal study,—that which gives a man his liberty. It is the study of wisdom, and that is lofty, brave, and great souled. All other studies are puny and puerile” (98).

Not only were the liberal arts viewed as the education of free men, but it was also the definition of education, period. Plato in his dialogues addressed this beautifully, “This [the liberal arts] is the only education which, upon our view, deserves the name; that other sort of training, which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere cleverness apart from intelligence and justice, is mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called education at all” (Plato Laws, 16). Why continue to educate people only for the work of slaves? Why not provide an education that fosters freedom both within and without? A job provides limited self-sufficiency or happiness, but the liberal arts expand self-sufficiency by enabling us to know our destiny and truth thus freeing us from ourselves (Schall 2006, 42). We are freed to become what we were intended to be because within that tradition there is an emphasis on acquiring virtue and avoiding vice, and it provides self-sufficiency even with limited means (Schall 2006, 32–33). Aristotle said, “For self-sufficiency and action do not depend on excess”…“and we can do fine actions even if we do not rule earth and sea” ( Ethics

1179a 2–6). Ordinary people can engage in actions that express virtue. This means that countries with large numbers of people living below the poverty line can live virtuously. Corruption does not have to be the result of poverty. Since the greatest hindrance to development in Africa is corruption (Hanson 2009), imagine what changes a Christian liberal arts education could provide. As one Kenyan church leader stated, “Classical Christian education is the solution to fighting corruption in Africa” (Kaniah 2019).

Not only fostering freedom from self, a liberal arts education also enables a people to be free from domination from others. The best citizens who can develop and maintain a free state are those who are liberally educated. Free societies are the exception and not the rule, it takes a liberally educated populace to maintain free civilizations. “But civic education for a free society cannot remain wholly political and pre-philosophical for long; because free societies are the exception rather than the rule, and because they are frequently tempted to abandon their freedom for the despot’s promise of comfort and ease, their citizens must learn to distinguish between liberty and slavery and to recognize the conditions of freedom”

(Papadopoulos, 2018). The prescription for shoring up democracies in Africa includes these constituents: “democratic principles and institutions, popular participation, and good governance” (Doss 2020). How can that be achieved if the citizens do not know what democracy and freedom really are? The roots of democracy lie in Athens and Rome. What does Athens have to do with Abuja? Plenty, if Abuja or rather Africa wants to avoid another round of colonization, then Athens or the liberal arts tradition provides a way. Unfortunately, the liberal arts education model has not been tried in a broad scale on the continent of Africa. This

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

situation has its roots in the early twentieth century as the educational policies taken in the United States (US) towards the freed slaves were adopted by the colonial powers and even mission agencies. This model emphasized vocational arts rather than liberal arts.

The Phelps Stokes Fund was set up by a US philanthropist in 1911 mainly for the education of blacks in Africa and the US. One of the chief architects of the education plans for Africa was Thomas Jesse Jones who had studied the education of blacks in America and served at the Hampton Institute. The Phelps Stokes commission conducted visits to east, west, and southern Africa territories to ascertain the necessary requirements for the improvement of education of blacks in Africa.

Their decisions had far-reaching implications. The overall philosophy adopted was that the best education for Africans was one that centered on industrial and agriculture skills. Thus, the liberal arts were deemed irrelevant to their needs as seen in these comments, “Thomas Jesse Jones, the study’s author, recommended that schools for Negroes should place more emphasis on the industrial and agricultural aspects of education. He found few redeeming qualities in the so-called ‘academic’ schools, e.g., Fisk and Howard, and suggested that the literary bias of these institutions should be curbed” (Berman 1971). “Education for the African masses—as for the Negro masses—was to be simple, utilitarian, and rooted to a strong agricultural bias.” (Berman 1971, 135). While this was the posture taken by the colonial office of the British, Africans in Ghana had a very different opinion, “To a man they are convinced that the teaching of the Classics is a sine qua non of higher education” (Berman 1971, 138). While in some cases, the liberal arts tradition was made available in Africa,

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

this commission had a significant impact, and the curriculum for education in Sub-Saharan Africa was dominated by an emphasis on basic literacy and functional skills.

The liberal arts, which are devoted to exploring truth wherever it is found, would be of great benefit to the African people because it not only would expose them to the great conversation but would also allow for the addition of African oral tradition and history that contributes to truth, beauty, and goodness to be included in the great conversation. Much of indigenous education was overrun by the colonial powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Within that tradition were oral histories, legends, stories, and fables. In addition, great societies did flourish on the continent, and those stories need to be told. Cultivating inquiring minds who are seeking truth in the past could launch much exploration into the oral literature, histories, and societies of the indigenous peoples of Africa.

For good or for ill, colonization did bring various international languages (English and French) and exposure to Western ideas, technology, and governance. Globalization is here to stay (Mosweunyane 2013), thus the African continent should receive the education that fostered some of the greatest minds in the world to thrive on the world stage.

Biographical:

Examples of Classically Educated Africans

A Christian liberal arts education can apply to people from all walks of life, in various states of economic ability, and across ethnicities. This is an important part of this

apologetic because one might object to a liberal arts education in Africa due to the high poverty and low literacy rates. While there has been significant progress in these two areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, compared to other parts of the world, the continent is still lagging substantially. In education, African countries have seen increased enrollments especially in primary school and while the “ratio of students completing lower secondary school increased in Sub-Saharan Africa from 23 percent in 1990 to 42 percent in 2014 [it] remains low compared with a global ratio of 75 percent. Increased enrollment at school leads to an empowered citizenry and a more productive labor force” (World Bank 2017). Along with these improved enrollment rates, literacy is on the rise as well. “The statistics show that the literacy rate for Sub-Saharan Africa was 65% in 2017. In other words, one third of the people aged 15 and above were unable to read and write. The comparative figure for 1984, was an illiteracy rate of 49%” (Shiundu 2018). Despite the improvements, the research indicates this might be misleading because it is possible governments are using school enrollment rates to measure literacy, which, in a continent where oral tradition still dominates, might not reflect the full picture regarding literacy on the continent.

When it comes to mathematics in Africa, “84 percent of children and adolescents have not achieved the minimum proficiency for mathematics; for context, the global average is 56 percent” (Madden, Kanos 2020). But this is not the entire story. Africans have quickly adapted to digital technology, and this is being dubbed the fourth industrial revolution which may propel the African continent to be an economic powerhouse (Ndung’u, Signe 2020). That being the case, a liberal arts education in the PreK–12 age range with exposure

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to digital technologies would prepare the next workforce to not only be able to use these rapidly developing tools but use them responsibly and for the benefit of others.

One might doubt that people in such materially impoverished situations with severely limited education resources would find a benefit from the Christian liberal arts. The lives of two Africans, one African American, and a West African college illustrate how people from any ethnicity and with challenging circumstances can embrace and navigate this type of education and not only benefit themselves but also benefit others.

Phillis Wheatley was a seven-year-old slave girl born in 1753 in what is today known as Senegal/Gambia, West Africa. She was abducted and put on the slave ship Phillis to Boston in 1761. Within one year she showed a propensity to learn and was taught the English alphabet by the daughter and mother of the family that owned her. She was trained as a domestic, but because of her intellect she received a religious, theological, and liberal arts education by the family and new England clergy.

Her abilities were astounding and cultivated through classical education which gave her a voice against slavery of her day. She learned to read Greek and Latin before she was 11 years old. She read Milton, Homer, Ovid, and Virgil and was baptized a Christian and was quite fluent in Scriptures. In 1773, she became “the first person of African descent to publish a book” (Carretta 2011, preface).

Wheatley was a student of orthodox Congregationalist theology. She wrote about natural and special revelation, the attributes of God, biblical authority, redemption, the image of God, the depravity of man, and the need for a righteous Savior. She also wrote against American Christians who preached

that the Bible justified slavery, exposing the inconsistency of defending slavery using Christ’s teachings (Ellis 2017). Inspired by classical Greek and Latin poetry Phillis used a style of writing called elegiac (Phillis Wheatley Historical Society 2021). Ovid, who was a leading elegiac Roman poet, greatly influenced her work, and she was known to translate his work into English. Phillis was also influenced by philosophers and eighteenth-century English poets and embarked into writing her own poetry. She was an abolitionist, and although she faced opposition, she was a poet whose work was recognized by leaders (such as George Washington) in the US and Britain. She was also supportive of mission work to Ghana and Sierra Leone (Ellis 2017 and Carretta 2011, 164–165). By giving her the liberal arts education of that time with a biblical foundation, she was able to have this impact.

Other Africans or African Americans in the early years of America who were liberally educated were Samuel Ajayi Crowther, who studied Latin and Greek at Fourah Bay College and was the first indigenous Anglican Bishop of West Africa, and Edward Jones, the first black man admitted to Amherst College in 1822 and principal of Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone. Bishop Crowther translated the Bible into indigenous languages and his training in Greek and Latin would have aided his abilities to do so accurately (Anderson 1994). Edward Jones is of note because of his classical education and his missionary work in West Africa. This demonstrates the appropriateness of liberal arts for Africans coming from a less than ideal background or situation (Anderson 1998).

One other development of note was the establishment of the Fourah Bay College in the nineteenth century in what is now Freetown, Sierra Leone. Fourah Bay College (FBC) was established by the Church Missionary Society in 1814 as

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

the Christian institution and developed into the first western style education institution in West Africa. It is now affiliated with the University of Sierra Leone and was once associated with Durham University (1876–1967) (FBC website). Freetown was populated by freed slaves and indigenous peoples, and Christian philanthropists and missionaries founded the college to spread the gospel and Western education. “Fourah Bay College…was the first institution of higher learning in modern Sub-Saharan Africa after the collapse of the one at Timbuktu. Until the Second War, Fourah Bay College offered the only alternative to Europe and America for British colony West Africans who wanted a university degree”

(UNESCO

2012).

It was the main place of higher education for West Africa and achieved the title of the “Athens of West Africa.” The curriculum under the leadership of Edward Jones, the Amherst graduate, who served as principal from 1840 to 1858 consisted of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Trigonometry, and theology. In addition to these subjects, students also studied the African languages of the region. Rev. S. W. Koelle, a German missionary, with FBC students produced in 1854 a collection of vocabularies of some 100 African languages spoken in Freetown—languages from the Sahara to Mozambique—resulting in FBC became a missionary center, the “literary and linguistic workshop of West Africa” (Paracka 2003, 39). Thus, not only did graduates of this institution start schools but translated the Bible into many indigenous languages. Many West African elites trace their education to FBC. These graduates were instrumental in the independence of West African states, resistance to racist and imperialistic colonial policies, and in the development of African studies to retain African heritage. What was lacking during this time

was minimal engagement of local culture or heritage. For the liberal arts to be fully embraced, this is an area that will need to be more fully developed in African church school systems. Unfortunately, from the 1960s onward, the university arising out of FBC neglected traditional culture and deemphasized the liberal arts much to the lament of Koso Thomas, Vice Chancellor of the university from 1985 to 1991. In an article in Sierra Leone Journal of Education (1970), he wrote, “the fundamental role of education in any country must be the fulfillment of the spiritual and material requirements of society. In developing countries, however, the haste to produce much more of their own skilled manpower has resulted in a sad neglect in their educational programmes, of those aspects of culture and art, which form the essential ingredients for developing moral and spiritual values in an educated man” (Paracka 2003, 175).

These individuals and this college demonstrate that this type of education can work across cultures, and it cultivates men and women who contribute to society. Practical:

Classical Christian Education Outcomes

In addition to the aforementioned reasons that the Christian liberal arts are appropriate and essential to Africa, recent research of classical Christian schools in the USA provides evidence of the outcomes that can result from a Christian liberal arts education.

In 2018 the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) sponsored a parallel study with the University of

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

Notre Dame to compare ACCS member school alumni to the Cardus data. This survey measured the alumni of ACCS schools against public, private evangelical schools, Catholic schools, prep schools, and homeschoolers. Remarkably so, on every metric, alumni from classical Christian schools did best.1 Not only is it working in America, but it also works in Africa too.

The Rafiki Foundation operates model classical Christian schools in ten African countries. Established in 1985 to bring Bible study and to help people raise their standard of living, Rafiki has concentrated its work in ten African countries. Now with a 50-acre campus in each country with a fully established children’s home, PreK–12 classical Christian school, and a teacher’s college in seven countries, Rafiki is poised to help not only the 3200 African students and staff cultivate wisdom and virtue but also to equip a thousand African church schools to do the same. The organization has developed an international level classical Christian curriculum and three-year teacher’s college courses for the purpose of providing this not only within the ten Rafiki Villages but for the many church schools in Africa. The material has been field tested for over 15 years with African children and African teachers and by initial local measures is providing an excellent education for young people in Africa in the Christian liberal arts. In these countries, graduates have performed well on national exams and qualified for tertiary education well above the national averages. In many of the countries, the pass rate on national exams runs 50% whereas Rafiki students have a 95% pass rate.

1 The full 57-page report can be found here: https://www.classicaldifference.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/The-Classical-Difference-Good-Soil-7-outcomes-full-research-report-Draft-3-28-2020.pdf

A day in the life of one of our schools noted this: “You would see children in grade one learning phonics, grade three introduced to writing and rhetoric, grade eight making pyramids in history class and later in the day studying formal logic, grade ten learning about famous scientists during biology class, grade eleven reading Much Ado About Nothing , and grade twelve finishing their two-year course in rhetoric” (Allinder 2021). Included in this curriculum is also African art, music, languages, history, and literature. Thus, not only would students have experienced this feast of an education, but also been exposed to a skill so that they could support themselves, and all students study the Bible daily in the classroom as the first class for the day.

This education can supply men and women who can be carpenters and corporate leaders, farmers and financiers, businessmen and women and theologians—all godly contributors to society.

Conclusion

The Christian liberal arts educational model is not only appropriate for the church schools in Africa but essential for the future development of Christianity and ensuring freedom across the continent. Scripture urges God’s people to make disciples and the liberal arts foster the reflexive praxis that can develop one’s relationship with Christ and the ability to think Christianly. With the diverse people groups within the church in Africa, the historical foundation of the church in the liberal arts would serve as a unifying basis (in addition to Scripture) thus spanning borders and tribes and strength-

ening the church. Christian liberal arts tradition would transcend tribal culture and strengthen the church. If we are what we remember, then the liberal arts would develop a common history across a multitude of people groups (Jeffrey 2003, 21). This is of interest not only to Africans but globally since it is the future generation of the world. The question is not, will there be a church in Africa, the question is what kind of church will there be? The Christian liberal arts would establish a firm foundation and birth the next generation of theologians and scholars who, much like the Irish who saved civilization, will preserve Christian doctrine, wisdom, and virtue for the next age.

From the early church fathers to present day scholars, there is support for a liberal arts education because much of liberal arts learning is more biblical than classical (Jeffrey 2007, 1). It is the best education for cultivating human flourishing, and it is the most suitable for a human being because we are souls, not tools. It fosters freedom from self and from domination by others, it has been the education of the church, and church scholars throughout the ages benefited from and endorsed the liberal arts.

The people of Africa have experimented with democracy in the last 75 years, and it is the liberal arts that will provide the definition for and enable the citizens to develop and maintain democracy in their countries. With the increasing influence from other ideologies, such as those from China (Barnett 2020), helping Africans strengthen their democracies with a liberal arts education would be beneficial not only to Africans but to other free nations. The liberal arts combined with a Christian education can work across various ethnicities and bears good fruit as shown by the Philis Wheatleys and Bishop Ajayi Crowthers of the past centuries

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

and the Kofis and Chimwemwas of today. Moreover, recent educational research surveys attest to classical Christian education’s effectiveness as an educational model outperforming all other types of schools.

Invite Africans to engage with the great conversation so that their voices can be added to it. It not only helps people to survive but thrive. Wisdom and virtue free humans and battle corruption, a common history overrules tribalism, and a thinking, strengthened church discerns contrary philosophies and grows in the likeness of Jesus Christ.

Karen Elliott is the Executive Director (since 2012) of the Rafiki Foundation, a Christian mission agency based in Florida serving in 10 African countries bringing Bible study and classical Christian education to children, youth, and the African church. After a ten year career in banking in Houston Texas, God called Karen to serve as a missionary with Rafiki in Nigeria for ten years. Karen returned (2002) to the US to to oversee the ministry’s orphanages and schools. She has a BBA in Finance/Accounting, a music minor, M.Ed from UTA and is pursuing doctoral studies at Faulkner University.

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

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Anderson, Gerald H. R.T Coote, N.A. Horner, J.M. Phillips. “Bishop Ajayi Crowther.” Mission Legacies: Biographical Studies of Leaders of the Modern Missionary Movement, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Jan. 92, Vol. 16 Issue 1, p. 15–21, 1994. Article used by permission and accessed at the Dictionary of African Christian Biography site, Crowther, Samuel Ajayi (A) - Dictionary of African Christian Biography (dacb.org)

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Aristotle. Politics. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Digireaders. com. 2017

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Augustine. “On Christian Doctrine” in The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007 224–227.

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Barnett, James. The “China Dream” and the African Reality: The Role of Ideology in PRC-Africa Relations. Hudson Institute. October 19, 2020. The “China Dream” and the African Reality: The Role of Ideology in PRC-Africa Relations—by James Barnett (hudson.org).

Berman, Edward H. “American Influence on African Education: The Role of the Phelps-Stokes Fund’s Education Commissions.” Comparative Education Review 15, no. 2 (1971): 132–45. Accessed July 3, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1186725.

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989.

Carretta, Vincent. Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage. Athens, Georgia. University of Georgia Press, 2011.

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Cicero, Marcus “De Officiis” in The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being. (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007) 83–85.

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Doss, Alan. “Safeguarding Democracy in West Africa.” Africa Center for Strategic Studies. September 29, 2020. Safeguarding Democracy in West Africa—Africa Center for Strategic Studies

Ellis, K.A. “Meet Phillis Wheatley.” The Gospel Coalition. September 21, 2017. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/meet-phillis-wheatley/

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A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education From Redeeming the Six Arts

by Brent Pinkall

The church fathers did not despise their own classical, pagan tradition. On the contrary, they greatly respected it because they understood that the wisdom hidden in the tradition was a gift of God. In the same way, Chinese Christians must not despise their own classical, pagan tradition. For God gave wisdom to their ancestors just as He did to the ancient Greeks. At the same time, they should not be content merely to recover the old Chinese tradition, for Christianity gives us a clearer, more accurate perspective of the world. We do not want to reject Chinese classical education, nor do we merely want to recover it. We want to redeem it. Like the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda, the Chinese classical tradition has spent its entire life on its back. It aspires to the towering peaks of wisdom, it thirsts for the vibrant waters of virtue, it longs for the lush-green pastures of ren —but it cannot move. It smells the fresh mountain air, it hears the trickling of the

streams, it sees the sun-kissed horizon—and yet it is confined to a mat.

We cannot read the classics without feeling a sort of quiet dejection. The ancients describe in breathtaking detail the glories of ren, and occasionally they even speak as though someone might possibly attain it. But in the midst of their impressive, high-minded rhetoric, they betray an unsettling conviction that no one will actually succeed. “Long has the attainment of ren been difficult among men!”1 “I have never seen one who loves ren and hates what is not ren .” 2 “‘Practice righteousness to attain the Dao ’—I have heard these words, but I have not seen such men.”3 “I have no hopes of meeting a good man.”4 “It is all over! I have not seen one who loves virtue as he loves sex.”5 Confucius is not only talking about other people in these passages—he includes himself in these indictments: “The Master said, ‘The way of the junzi is threefold, but I cannot attain it—virtuous (ren), he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear.’”6 He is deeply aware of his own inability:

1 “ 仁之难成久矣！ ” Biaoji 表记 [Record on example] in Liji 礼记 [Rook of Rites] 54.19.1477, trans. James Legge.

2 “ 我未见好仁者，恶不仁者。 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 4.6.49, trans. Robert Eno.

3 “ 行义以达其道。吾闻其语矣，未见其人也。 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 16.11.229, author’s translation.

4 “ 善人，吾不得而见之矣 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 7.26.93, trans. D. C. Lau.

5 “ 善人，吾不得而见之矣 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 7.26.93, trans. D. C. Lau.

6 “ 子曰：‘君子道者三，我无能焉：仁者不忧，知者不惑，勇者不 惧。’ ” Analects 14.28.197, trans. James Legge. I have slightly edited Legge’s translation, replacing “am not equal to it” with “I cannot attain it.” The original text literally means “I am not able.” I have also replaced “superior man” with “ junzi .”

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

The Master said: “…In the Dao of the junzi there are four duties, not one of which I am yet able to perform: To serve my father, as I would require my son to serve me—this I am not yet able to do; to serve my prince as I would require my minister to serve me—this I am not yet able to do; to serve my elder brother as I would require my younger brother to serve me—this I am not yet able to do; to set the example in behaving to a friend, as I would require him to behave to me—this I am not yet able to do.”7

The Chinese classical tradition is rich, but it is lame. It can teach us many things—not just about morality but about politics, philosophy, mathematics, and art—but apart from Christ, these arts are like legs that we cannot use. The tradition is remarkable, but it is maimed by sin. When Christ confronts it, however, everything changes. He looks down upon this ancient tradition long paralyzed by sin and with divine authority says, “Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk.”

In Christ, all that the wise men of old longed for is fulfilled. All of their frayed philosophies are mended. The ancients could intuit much truth about God and His creation. “He did not leave himself without witness” ( Acts 14:17). They could hear the song that He was composing, but they could only hear the rhythm. When we read their writings, we can sense the steady pulse of divine order and meaning echoing through the cosmos, but only in the crucified and risen Christ do we hear the melody.

7 “ 子曰： 君子之道四，丘未能一焉：所求乎子以事父，未能也； 所求乎臣以事君，未能也；所求乎弟以事兄，未能也；所求乎朋友先施之， 未能也。 ” Zhongyong 中庸 [Doctrine of the Mean] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 52.13.1431, trans. James Legge. I have slightly edited Legge’s translation, replacing “not attained” with “not able,” which better reflects the original text.

As Christians, we cannot be content merely recovering the Chinese classical Christian tradition, for we do not want our students simply tapping their feet to the rhythm of the divine song—we want them to sing. We want them to know the entirety of the gospel song, and this can only happen if the risen Christ is at the heart of our curriculum. At the same time, we cannot dismiss the Chinese classical tradition, for it is the rhythm over which the melody is played. It is part of the song. We cannot understand the gospel of Christ without understanding the world He came to redeem. The history of China’s redemption does not begin with Tang-dynasty missionaries, for God began composing this song long before any missionary stepped foot in China. He created this land. He created these people. He created this culture. He has been among the Chinese people ever since there have been Chinese people. He revealed himself first through the philosophers and the poets and the historians. “They knew God,” says the Scriptures (Rom. 1:21). His law was “written on their hearts” (Rom. 2:15). They knew they had an obligation to honor Him, but they also knew they had not done so. The beating of God’s law in their hearts was not to them the beating of a drum but the pounding of nails into a coffin. No matter how hard they tried, they could not live up to the impossible standards of ren . To them, life was little more than the incessant drilling of moral law, but when the fullness of time had come, Heaven sang the melody. Law turned into gospel; rhythm turned into song. And this time, it did not come through the mouths of the poets and philosophers, but through the prophets and evangelists. This is the same story the Apostle Paul tells the Athenians:

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth…that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way towards him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being” as even some of your own poets have said, “For we are indeed his offspring.”…But now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:26–28, 30–31).

Paul does not say that God was absent from ancient Greek culture. On the contrary, he says that God was with them from the beginning, and moreover, He intended that they should not only “seek” and “feel their way” towards Him but “find” Him. Paul quotes pagan classics to prove that even the ancient Greeks knew of Him. Nevertheless, their knowledge of God was very limited. They knew of God but they did not know Him. He was worshiped but “unknown” ( Acts 17:23).

But in Christ this God is finally and fully revealed. Through repentance and faith in Christ we can finally know Him. Chinese Christian educators must seek to tell this story, to sing this song. How do we redeem the Chinese classical tradition? How do we help Chinese children to see the history of Chinese culture as the history of God’s redemption? We must listen. God was not silent in ancient China, and He is not silent now. May He give us ears to hear.

Before considering the content of Chinese classical education, we must first consider what the tradition says about the nature of education itself. The Record of Rites contains the earliest systematic treatment of education in the world—the

Record of Learning (Xueji 学记). In the Record of Learning , we find a striking critique of “modern” education:

Nowadays, teachers drone on as they read through their texts, making them ever more opaque. They continue to convey information, but as they move forward, they pay no heed to conveying what is meant or whether it is understood. They are unable to help students develop into virtuous and honest persons. In their teaching, they fail to guide their students to grow to their full potential. What they provide is perverse, and what they demand is absurd. Such being the case, this is why students learn to detest their studies and come to resent their teachers. They have suffered the pains of trying without realizing the benefits of learning. The moment that students complete their course of study they abandon any further interest in learning. Is this not why such ineffective teaching is a waste of time? 8

We can hardly believe that this passage was written over two millennia ago. It is a stunningly accurate description of modern Chinese education (which just goes to show that “modern” education is nothing new). The Record of Learning refutes the pragmatism that characterizes much of modern education: “The Great Virtue is not limited to government office, the Great Dao is not a tool.” 9 The Great Learning ends on a similar point: “In a state, gain is not to be considered

8 “ 今之教者，呻其占毕，多其讯，言及于数，进而不顾其安，使人 不由其诚，教人不尽其材；其施之也悖，其求之也佛。夫然，故隐其学而疾 其师，苦其难而不知其益也，虽终其业，其去之必速。教之不刑，其此之由 乎！ ” Xue 学记 [Record of Learning] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 36.7.1060, trans. Xu Di, Yang Liuxin, Hunter McEwan, and Roger T. Ames.

9 “ 大德不官，大道不器 ” Xue 学记 [Record of Learning] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 36.17.1071, author’s translation.

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

prosperity, but its prosperity will be found in righteousness.”10 Many self-professed Confucians strayed from their master’s teaching on this point. They pursued learning simply to impress those around them and to attain high seats of power in the government. “Men of antiquity studied to improve themselves; men today study to impress others.”11 Christian schools should recover the original Confucian emphasis of learning as pursuit of the Dao. Confucius elegantly sums up his educational philosophy as follows: “Set your heart on the Dao, base yourself on virtue, lean upon ren, and journey in the arts.”12 First and foremost, learning is the pursuit of the Dao. The ancients understood the Dao as that creative Force or Principle underlying all reality and the ultimate Way or Truth toward which we all must strive. It is the very telos of education. In Christ, however, we learn that the Dao is not just a force or principle, it is a person:

In the beginning was the Dao, and the Dao was with God, and the Dao was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men…And the Dao became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (Jn. 1:1–4, 14). 13

国不以利为利，以义为利也 ” Daxue 大学 [The Great Learning] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 大学 1.16.1603, trans. James Legge.

10 “

古之学者为己，今之学者为人。 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 14.24.195, trans. D. C. Lau.

11 “

志于道，据于德，依于仁，游于艺。 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 7.6.85, author’s translation.

12 “

13 The Chinese Bible translates Word ( Logos ) as Dao .

In Christ, Confucius’s call to “set your heart on the Dao ” takes on a deeper meaning. All learning becomes a striving after knowing and enjoying Christ. In the words of Augustine:

You are to concentrate all your thoughts, your whole life and your whole intelligence upon Him from whom you derive all that you bring. For when He says, “With all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” He means that no part of our life is to be unoccupied, and to afford room, as it were, for the wish to enjoy some other object, but that whatever else may suggest itself to us as an object worthy of love is to be borne into the same channel in which the whole current of our affections flows.14

But how do we pursue this Dao ? The first step, of course, is to believe the gospel. We are united with Christ by faith alone in His death and resurrection for us. But the Christian life does not stop there. We continue pursuing Christ by pursuing holiness. The Bible describes this process of sanctification in many ways, but in short it entails being transformed by conforming our thoughts and actions to those consistent with Christ (Eph. 4:17–23).

The ancient Chinese similarly viewed pursuit of the Dao as a process of becoming a “sage” (literally “holy man,” shengren 圣人), or the more easily attainable “gentleman” ( junzi 君子), through self-cultivation. “The Dao of Great Learning lies in making bright virtue brilliant; in making the people

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

new; in coming to rest at the highest good.”15 Education is not merely about transmitting knowledge but transforming people. “From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides. It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered.”16

As Christians, we understand that personal transformation ultimately only comes through a knowledge of God. Many suggest that Confucianism entirely lacks this emphasis. They paint Confucianism as a secular philosophy that is only concerned with human affairs, but this is simply not true.17 Confucianism certainly focuses on human affairs, but it nevertheless acknowledges the importance of knowing and honoring Heaven. “In order to know men, [a ruler] must know Heaven.”18 “Unable to rejoice in Heaven, [a ruler] cannot perfect himself.”19 Although the duty of praying and sacrificing

15 “

大学之道，在明明德，在亲民，在止于至善。 ” Daxue 大学 [The Great Learning] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 1.1.1592, trans. Robert Eno. I have slightly edited Eno’s translation from “limit of the good” to “highest good,” following Legge’s translation of “highest excellence.” Shan (善) is usually translated as “good” when used as a stand-alone virtue.

16 “ 自天子以至于庶人，壹是皆以修身为本，其本乱而末治者否矣。 ” Daxue 大学 [The Great Learning] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 42.2.1592, trans. James Legge.

17 Weiming Tu, “The Sung Confucian Idea of Education: A Background Understanding,” in Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage , ed. William Theodore de Bary and John W. Chaffee (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 139–140. For a more in-depth treatment on the subject see James Legge, The religions of China: Confucianism and Taoism described and compared with Christianity (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1880).

18 “ 思知人，不可以不知天。 ” Zhongyong 中庸 [Doctrine of the Mean] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 52.20.1441, author’s translation. Literally, “In order to know men, [a ruler] cannot not know Heaven.”

19 “ 不能乐天，不能成其身。 ” Aigong Wen 哀公问 [Questions of Duke Ai] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 50.10.1379, author’s translation.

to Heaven was primarily laid on the shoulders of the emperor who acted as a mediator between Heaven and the people, the common man still had an obligation to honor Heaven with his life. Daily observance of rites was submission to the moral order established by Heaven. Mencius says that the common man worships Heaven through seeking personal cultivation: “By retaining his heart and nurturing his nature he is serving Heaven.” 20 Confucius warns us of sinning against Heaven: “He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray.” 21 We find this same emphasis in other schools of thought, such as that of Mozi: “If the rulers and the gentlemen of the world really desire to follow the Dao and benefit the people they have only to obey the will of Heaven, the origin of magnanimity and righteousness. Obedience to the will of Heaven is the standard of righteousness.” 22 Chinese classical education, therefore, is not secular education as many claim. It is rooted in Heaven: “What Heaven ordains is called one’s nature. To follow one’s nature is called the Dao. Cultivating the Dao is called education.” 23 Education is understanding the nature that Heaven has given us and seeking to live in accordance with it. Zhu Xi expounds on this idea in his preface to the Great Learning :

20 “

知其性，则知天矣。存其心，养其性，所以事天也。 ” Mencius, Mengzi 孟子 [Mencius] 13A.1.350–1, trans. D. C. Lau.

21 “ 获罪于天，无所祷也。 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 3.13.36, trans. James Legge.

22 “ 今天下之王公大人士君子，中实将欲遵道利民，本察仁义之本，天 之意不可不顺也。顺天之意者，义之法也。 ” Mozi, Tian zhi zhong 天志中 [Will of Heaven II] in Mozi 墨子 [Mozi] 25.9.115, trans. W. P. Mei.

23 “ 天命之谓性，率性之谓道，修道之谓教。 ” Zhongyong 中庸 [Doctrine of the Mean] 52.1.1422, trans. James Legge.

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

From the time Heaven (first) sent down and gave birth to the people, it did not fail to give anyone a nature with benevolence (ren 仁), righteousness (yi 义), propriety (li 礼), and wisdom (zhi 智). Nonetheless, their endowments of innate qi (气) are sometimes unequal. Consequently, some are unable to understand what their natures have and to bring them to completion. As soon as those who were intelligent and wise enough to be able to fathom their natures stood out among them, Heaven decreed that they were the rulers and teachers of countless millions, and made them rule over and educate others, so that they could revive their natures. 24

The purpose of education is to restore the natures given us by Heaven—our “heavenly natures” (tianxing 天性). This process is not something that man discovered but that Heaven “decreed.” Heaven decided of Its own volition to appoint men and women to teach us so that we might restore our God-given natures.

Zhu’s understanding of education is not entirely consistent with Christianity. For example, we know that our problem is not an imbalance of qi —it is sin. But we clearly see God’s fingerprints in these passages. Heaven did create us; we are ignorant of our true identities; our natures do need to be restored; and they are restored through teachers which Heaven has appointed. Compare Zhu’s words to those of Hugh of Saint Victor in the early twelfth century:

24 “ 盖自天降生民，则既莫不与之以仁义礼智之性矣。然其气质之禀或 不能齐，是以不能皆有以知其性之所有而全之也。一有聪明睿智能尽其性者出 于其闲，则天必命之以为亿兆之君师，使之治而教之，以复其性。” Zhu Xi 朱熹, Daxue zhangju xu 大学章句序 [Preface to the interlinear analysis of the Great Learning]

1.1.1, trans. Bryan W. Van Norden.

This, then, is that dignity of our nature which all naturally possess in equal measure, but which all do not equally understand. For the mind, stupefied by bodily sensations and enticed out of itself by sensuous forms, has forgotten what it was, and, because it does not remember that it was anything different, believes that it is nothing except what is seen. But we are restored through instruction, so that we may recognize our nature…This, then, is what the arts are concerned with, this is what they intend, namely, to restore within us the divine likeness. 25

Chinese Classical Christian schools are not promoting a form of education opposed to Zhu’s. On the contrary, we are perfecting it. In Christ, the Confucian program of education finds completion. The Confucian tradition says, “In order to know men, [a ruler] must know Heaven.” 26 In Christ, we know the true nature of Heaven and, consequently, ourselves. 27 The Confucian tradition says, “Unable to rejoice in Heaven, [a ruler] cannot perfect himself.” 28 In Christ, we are enabled to truly rejoice in Heaven and consequently perfect ourselves. In Christ, our sins are forgiven, our knowledge is renewed, and our natures are restored. In conclusion, then, we may summarize the goal of the Christian six arts curriculum as “self-cultivation through pursuit of the Dao (Christ).”

25 Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon , 1.1–2.1. 26 “ 思知人，不可以不知天。 ” Zhongyong 中庸 [Doctrine of the Mean] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 52.20.1441, author’s translation.

27 Some argue that the “Heaven” of ancient China was not the God of Christianity. I refute this objection in the section on Paganism in Chapter 10: Obstacles to Classical Christian Education in China. 28 “ 不能乐天，不能成其身。 ” Aigong Wen 哀公问 [Questions of Duke Ai] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 50.10.1379, author’s translation.

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

Having established the goal of learning, we must now consider with what attitude to approach it. The Chinese classical tradition stresses the importance of studying with a correct frame of mind. It is not enough for a student merely to show up to class and complete his assignments. If he does not do these things with a proper attitude, then his studies will prove fruitless. Specifically, the ancients emphasized three frames of mind with which a student should approach his studies: joy, reverence, and humility.

The Analects of Confucius begins, “To study and at due times practice what one has studied, is this not a pleasure?” 29 Joy is the motivating force behind proper learning. When learning is motivated only by duty, not only will students fail to remember what they have learned, they will also fail to understand the material as they ought. In order to properly understand a thing, we must engage it not only with our intellect but also with our affections. “Knowing something is not so good as loving it; loving it is not so good as taking joy in it.”30 This attitude should permeate Christian classrooms, for God does not want our students merely to know about the world He has created—He wants them to delight in it.

“For you, O LORD, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy” (Ps. 92:4). “Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them” (Ps. 111:2). We might successfully teach our students all about elephants—where they live, how long they live, what special traits and abilities they possess—but if our students do not come away loving elephants, then we have failed them.

[Analects]

trans. Robert Eno. 30

” Ibid., 6.20.78. I have slightly edited Eno’s translation, replacing “it” with “something.”

But approaching our studies with joy does not mean treating them flippantly like a party game. We must treat them with proper reverence. Confucius identifies three things especially worthy of our respect: “There are three things which the junzi reveres. He reveres the ordinances of Heaven. He reveres great men. He reveres the words of sages.”31 For the ancients, the ordinances of Heaven (what we call the “will of God”) were not perspicuous, for they did not come in the form of human language. When Confucius was asked why he spoke so little, he replied, “Does Heaven speak?”32 Heaven’s ordinances were not revealed through words but through history, tradition, and conscience. Of course, Confucius was right. At that time, God had not spoken to the Chinese through words. But eventually He did reveal His will to them through words. Now, “revering the ordinances of Heaven” primarily means honoring and studying Scripture, for it is there where we most clearly see the will of God. At the same time, we must continue listening to God through general revelation, for “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Ps. 19:1–2).

Secondly, students should revere “great men.” For Confucius, this primarily means great political and military leaders. The Apostle Peter similarly instructs us, “Fear God. Honor the emperor” (1 Pet. 2:17). This principle should influence what we study. Time does not allow us to study the words and deeds of every human in history—we must pick and choose. “Revering great men” means we should favor

is also sometimes translated as “fear.”

“ 君子有三畏：畏天命，畏大人，畏圣人之言 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 16.8.228, trans. James Legge. I have changed Legge’s translation of 畏 from “stand in awe” to “revere.” The Chinese

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

studying influential leaders, for God frequently directs the course of society and culture through people whom He has placed in special positions of authority. For Christians, this also includes great leaders of the church. Finally, students should also revere “the words of sages.” In His grace, God bestows a special measure of wisdom on a select few throughout history, and He calls us to seek this wisdom like gold (Prv. 2:4). Frequently, this wisdom is located in great thinkers who died long ago, which is why the classical tradition especially stresses studying the ancients. “The Master said, ‘I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.’”33 Confucius identified himself as “a transmitter and not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients.”34 However, this aspect of the Chinese classical tradition still needs to be redeemed by Christ, for in the past, it often veered off into ancestor worship. We ought to honor the ancients, but, as Augustine says, our love for them must be properly ordered. Our love for our ancestors must not exceed our love for God. Moreover, we must not treat the Bible as just another “classic” among many. The Bible is our ultimate standard to which all the words of the sages must submit.

Christianity also brings new meaning to the word “sage” or “holy man” (shengren 圣人), for according to Scripture, the holiest of men are not those endowed with much knowledge according to worldly standards but those who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards…But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise…Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit (1 Cor. 1:26–27, 2:12–13)

Therefore, “revering the words of sages” especially means revering the words of great Christian thinkers throughout history.

To summarize, the “three reverences” orient our hearts by instilling in us a proper respect toward our studies. They also provide guidance regarding what kinds of knowledge we should prioritize. We should revere the ordinances of God: “He who reveres the commandment will be rewarded” (Prv. 13:13). We should revere great men: “They stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him” (1 Kg. 3:28). And we should revere the words of the sages: “Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise” (Prv. 22:17).

Finally, besides joy and reverence, we must also approach our studies with humility. The Bible tells us, “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom” (Prv. 11:2). Learning requires humility because to learn something new we must first confess that we do not know it. The man who refuses to admit his ignorance cannot learn anything. “The Master said, ‘Yu, shall I tell you what it is to know? To say you know when you know, and to say

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

you do not when you do not, that is knowledge.’” 35 In fact, the more we learn, the more we recognize just how ignorant we truly are. As the Record of Rites says, “When he learns, one knows his own deficiencies.” 36 Humility also exposes us to a greater abundance of knowledge because the proud man refuses to learn from anyone he considers inferior to himself. Sometimes Christians fall into this trap when confronted with scholarship written by non-Christians. We do not want to admit that a non-Christian might actually have something valuable to teach us, so we refuse to study it and remain ignorant. Our pride prevents us from growing in knowledge. But Confucius reminds us that a true junzi “loves learning and is not ashamed to ask and learn of his inferiors.”37

Having acquired a proper frame of mind, students can then begin their studies. Chinese classical education promotes three kinds of self-cultivation—moral, intellectual, and physical, but it prioritizes moral cultivation:

A young man should be filial within his home and respectful of elders when outside, should be careful and

35 “子曰：‘由！诲女知之乎？知之为知之，不知为不知，是知也。’ ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 2.17, trans. D. C. Lau.

36 “ 学然后知不足 ” Xue 学记 [Record of Learning] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 36.3, trans. James Legge.

37 “ 敏而好学，不耻下问 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 5.15.62, author’s translation.

trustworthy, broadly caring of people at large, and should cleave to ren . If he has energy left over, he may study wen . 38

Christians should retain this emphasis, but in praising the Confucian pursuit of moral virtue, Christians must be careful to avoid moralism and legalism. We must stress that God himself is our ultimate aim, that we pursue virtue as a means of glorifying Him, and that we live up to His moral law only by resting in His grace through Christ. Nevertheless, God does call us to live upright lives. The pursuit of moral virtue is an honorable thing, and the specific virtues that Confucianism promotes are worthy of our admiration and pursuit.

As for intellectual cultivation, Christian schools should promote critical thinking as vigorously as Confucius. “There may be those who act without knowing why. I do not do so.” 39 “Learning without thought is labor lost.”40 This is entirely in keeping with the teaching of Scripture. “The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps (Prv. 14:15).” “Test everything; hold fast what is good (1 Thess. 5:21).” The Doctrine of the Mean helpfully summarizes the most effective method of study: “Study it broadly. Question it meticulously. Reflect on it carefully. Distinguish it clearly. Prac-

“

弟子入则孝，出则弟，谨而信，泛爱众，而亲仁。行有馀力，则 以学文。 ” Confucius, Lunyu 论语 [Analects] 1.6.7, trans. Robert Eno. I’ve slightly altered Eno’s translation, substituting “cleave to ren ” for “cleave to those who are ren .” I’m in agreement with Legge here that Confucius is speaking about cleaving to a specific virtue rather than a certain kind of person. I’ve also substituted “ wen ” for “the refinements of culture” so as not to confine the word to only one of many possible definitions. Wen can also refer to literature, culture, and the institution of rites and music.

39 “ 盖有不知而作之者，我无是也。 ” Ibid., 7.28.94, trans. James Legge.

40 “ 学而不思则罔 ” Ibid., 2.15.20.

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

tice it earnestly.”41 Christian teachers may imitate Zhu Xi by hanging this passage above their classroom door. Another valuable inheritance from the Confucian tradition—particularly the Neo-Confucian tradition—concerns the pursuit of li (理) (not to be confused with “rites” (li 礼)). In his commentary on the Great Learnin g, Zhu Xi explains “the investigation of things” ( gewu 格物):

“The extension of knowing lies in the investigation of things” means that if we wish to extend our knowing it consists in fathoming the principle (li 理) of any thing or affair we come into contact with…After exerting himself for a long time, one day [a man] will experience a breakthrough to integral comprehension ( guantong 贯通). Then the qualities of all things, whether internal or external, refined or coarse, will all be apprehended…”42

For Zhu, properly knowing a thing does not entail simply understanding its material cause—an emphasis of modern education. We can only truly know a thing when we understand its li, the mysterious “principle” that gives it form and order. All things share in one ultimate li, the taiji (太极), and when we comprehend that principle (qiongli 穷理) we can understand the true nature of all things and how they are interrelated. For Zhu, this principle was a mystery, but God has made this mystery known in Christ. “All things were created through him and for him. And he is 41 “

博学之，审问之，谨思之，明辨之，笃行之。 ” Zhongyong 中庸 [Doctrine of the Mean] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 53.22.1447.

所谓致知在格物者，言欲致吾之知，在即物而穷其理也 …… 至于用 力之久，而一旦豁然贯通焉，则众物之表里精粗无不到 ……” Zhu Xi 朱熹 , Daxue zhangju 大学章句 [Interlinear analysis of the Great Learning] 1.6.6–7, trans. William Theodore de Bary.

before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col. 1:16–17).” Like Zhu, we should not be satisfied with teaching mere “facts” about the world. The ultimate goal of Christian educators is to help students to see Christ in all things—to see “the moon reflected on ten thousand streams”43 —and through Him to understand how all knowledge is interconnected. In his treatise on Christian education, Hugh of Saint Victor uses very similar language as Zhu to describe Christ, calling Him “the primordial Idea or Pattern of things” in whose “likeness all things have been formed.”44 Hugh says that philosophy is essentially a love for and a pursuit of this Idea or Pattern.

Chinese classical education does not promote “specialization” like much of modern education, which compartmentalizes knowledge and leads students to believe that literature has no relation to biology or that history has no relation to mathematics. The ancient Chinese recognized the unity of the cosmos. Rather than promoting “majors,” they promoted “broad learning” (boxue 博学): “By extensively studying all learning (boxue), and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety (li), one may thus likewise not err from what is right.”45 Zhu Xi particularly emphasized this point. “Of the books under heaven, there is none not to be ‘broadly studied’ (boxue).”46 “Scholars should know about all things

43

44

45 “

46

“ 月映万川 ” Zhu Xi 朱熹 , Zhuzi yulei 朱子语类 [Classified conversations of Master Zhu] 94.2409.

Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon , 2.1.

君子博学于文，约之以礼，亦可以弗畔矣夫！” Confucius, Lunyu 论 语 [Analects] 12:15.165, trans. James Legge.

“ 天下之书无不博学审问 ” Zhu Xi 朱熹 , Huian xiansheng zhuwengong wenji 晦庵先生朱文公文集 [Collected Works of Master Huian, Zhu Wengong] 60.2891, trans. Yung Sik Kim.

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

under heaven.”47 This does not mean that students must have a thorough understanding of each subject they study (something no one can attain). The goal, rather, is to get a general sense of each subject and how it is related to the others. “Although one may not be able to see through their essences and subtleties, one should nevertheless know the general outlines.”48 This is the same principle that underlies the liberal arts tradition in the West.

The Chinese classical tradition also provides us with a number of very practical principles regarding the art of teaching:

The first precept of the academy is precaution (yu 豫): Guard against bad habits before they become ingrained. The second is readiness and timing (shi 时): Choose the most efficacious time for teaching. The third is felicity and flexibility (xun 孙): Adjust the structure and sequence of your teaching to suit subject and student. The fourth is observation and discussion (mo 摩): Let students improve each other through interaction. These four precepts are the way to ensure effective instruction. If you try to prohibit bad habits after they have formed, no matter how hard you struggle with them, you will fail. If students miss the right moment to learn, it will be difficult for them to succeed regardless of how assiduously they apply themselves. If the teacher lacks structure and fails to make the necessary connections, there will not be much that learners can make of the fragments and confusion they receive. If students study alone without the company of peers and friends, they become

idiosyncratic in their manner and limited in their learning. Students who always party with friends tend to turn against their teachers, and those who engage in too many frivolous activities and distractions tend to neglect their studies. These six failings will lead to ineffective teaching and learning. 49

Many classical Christian schools in America have designed their schools according to the blueprint laid out by Dorothy Sayers in her essay “The Lost Tools of Learning.” Sayers divides the classical Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) into three “stages” with each stage corresponding to the developmental stages of the child. As a child progresses through each stage, he is particularly receptive to certain kinds of knowledge and unreceptive to others. The key lies in teaching the appropriate subject matter at the most opportune time. And yet, two thousand years before Sayers, the Chinese were already stressing the importance of “choosing the most efficacious time for teaching” and “adjusting the structure and sequence of your teaching to suit subject and student.” This does not simply mean teaching age-appropriate content or using age-appropriate methods. The teacher must consider more than the students’ ages. She must consider their individual personalities and tendencies:

Teachers must understand the four errors that students make. In their attitude to their studies, some err on the side of overextending themselves, and some in focusing

49 “ 大学之法，禁于未发之谓豫，当其可之谓时，不陵节而施之谓孙， 相观而善之谓摩。此四者，教之所由兴也。发然后禁，则捍格而不胜；时过然 后学，则勤苦而难成；杂施而不孙，则坏乱而不修；独学而无友，则孤陋而寡 闻；燕朋逆其师；燕辟废其学。此六者，教之所由废也。 ” Xue 学记 [Record of Learning] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 36.8.1061–2, trans. Xu Di, Yang Liuxin, Hunter McEwan, and Roger T. Ames.

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

too narrowly; some err on the side of thinking it is too easy, and some in giving up. These four errors arise from differences in the temperament of the learners. It is only when teachers understand the temperaments of their students that they can save them from error. 50

The classical Chinese tradition does not view students as robots into which the teacher uploads information. It views them as people, and so should Christians. We are not training test-taking machines. We are raising up young men and women made in the image of God. As such, we should strive to know each student, to understand his God-given personality, to realize his individual strengths and weaknesses, and to adapt our teaching accordingly. The Record of Learning also provides us with many other practical teaching tips. For example:

The role of a junzi as a teacher is to enlighten: to lead students forward through reasoning and inspiration rather than to drag them, to offer them encouragement rather than to hold them back, to open their minds rather than to provide them with fixed answers. 51 […]

Those who would respond to questions by the mindless recitation of memorized texts are not worthy of becoming teachers. It is essential that teachers listen and respond to the questions that students have, and it is only when

50 “ 学者有四失，教者必知之。人之学也，或失则多，或失则寡，或 失则易，或失则止。此四者，心之莫同也。知其心，然后能救其失也。 ” Ibid., 36.10.1064.

51 “ 故君子之教喻也，道而弗牵，强而弗抑，开而弗达。 ” Ibid., 36.9.1063. I have slightly changed the original translation from “the role of exemplary persons as teachers” to “the role of a junzi as a teacher.”

students are unable to formulate their own questions that teachers offer them instruction. When students after having been instructed still do not understand, teachers may dismiss them and wait for a more opportune time. 52

[…]

Those who are good at asking questions approach their task as if carving hard wood. First, they chip away at the soft parts and then set to work on the knots. If they keep at it, the difficulties are gradually resolved. Those who are poor at asking questions do just the opposite. 53

Chinese readers will notice a stark contrast between these teaching methods and those employed in most modern public schools. They may even find these descriptions at odds with their understanding of ancient Chinese education. Many assume that traditional Chinese education emphasizes learning by rote with little emphasis on critical thinking. This is not true. Chinese classical education did eventually become corrupt, but this is not because teachers faithfully imitated the classical tradition. It is because they strayed from the tradition. The ancients criticized “mindless recitation of memorized texts” and “providing fixed answers.” Education was not a passive experience in which the teacher lectured and the students mindlessly absorbed the teacher’s words. It was a dynamic interaction between teacher and student. “To open their minds rather than to provide them with fixed answers”

52 “ 记问之学，不足以为人师。必也听语乎，力不能问，然后语之；语 之而不知，虽舍之可也。 ” Ibid., 36.14.1068.

53 “ 善问者，如攻坚木，先其易者，后其节目，及其久也，相说以解； 不善问者反此。 ” Ibid., 36.13.1067.

(kai er fu da 开而弗达) can be translated more literally as “he opens the way but does not conduct to the end (without the

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

learner’s own efforts).”54 In classical Chinese pedagogy, the teacher’s goal is not simply to get the student from point A to point B. It is to help the student get from point A to point B by himself. The teacher does not drag him. She “opens the way” to point B by asking questions that require him to use his own ingenuity and critical thinking skills to walk there by himself. We understand a truth best when we discover it ourselves. We can tell a child that three times three equals nine, and he might memorize the formula after much practice. But he will not understand why three times three equals nine. He will know the “answer” but he will not understand the concept. But if we give him three pieces of candy and ask him how many pieces he would have if we did this two more times, then he will discover both the answer and the concept. The next time he is asked what four times four equals, he will be able to reason his way to the answer, even if he has never memorized the formula 4×4=16. This is what it means “to lead students forward through reasoning and inspiration rather than to drag them” (dao er fu qian 道而弗牵). The student who simply memorizes multiplication tables will only be able to answer the question if he has previously memorized the formula 4×4=16, and even then he still will not be able to explain why four times four equals sixteen. The classical tradition does not discourage memorizing multiplication tables or other facts. What it discourages is mindlessly memorizing them.

So far, we have only discussed the basic principles of Chinese classical Christian education. In short, it is the pursuit of the Dao. It seeks wisdom primarily through the testi-

54 Xueji 学记 [Record of Learning] in Liji 礼记 [Record of Rites] 36.8, trans. James Legge.

mony of God and our ancestors. The goal of Chinese classical education is to restore our natures, which we attain through moral, intellectual, and physical cultivation, and this comes through broad study. But we are still left with a problem. We’ve discussed why to teach and how to teach, but we do not yet know what to teach. The classical tradition encourages us to seek to understand all areas of knowledge, but our time and abilities are limited. We cannot teach fifty different subjects on the first day of elementary school. We must discriminate between them and decide which subjects are most worth teaching. Our goal is not to turn our students into world-class scholars by the time they graduate high school. Rather, we want to lay a foundation upon which students will continue to build after they graduate. As Dorothy Sayers says of the classical tradition in the West, our primary goal is to equip our students with the “tools” of learning so that when they leave high school they will be able and eager to study on their own without the need of a teacher. It is after they leave high school when their true life of study begins. So how should we build this foundation? What subjects can best prepare a child for a life of learning? The ancient Chinese were unanimous: the six arts.

For the ancients, six arts education is simply an extension of the Dao. “The Bao clan has the authority…to raise up the children of officials according to the Dao. Therefore, the following six arts shall be taught…”55 These arts are at the very heart of Chinese classical education. They encompass everything we have discussed above. In the same way that the seven liberal arts embody the Western classical tradition,

55 “ 保氏，掌谏王恶。而养国子以道，乃教之六艺：一曰五礼，二曰六 乐，三曰五射，四曰五驭，五曰六书，六曰九数。 ” Zhouli 周礼 [Rites of Zhou] 14.113.352, author’s translation.

A Christian Approach to Chinese Classical Education

the six arts embody the Chinese classical tradition. Rites (li 礼) instruct a man in the formal principles of the universe established by Heaven, teaching him proper behavior and etiquette that are in keeping with these principles. It concerns every realm of human life from family to society to politics to religion. Music cultivates him inwardly, ordering his emotions and inspiring virtue. Script teaches language skills while instilling a love for beauty. Calculation trains him in mathematics and natural science, teaching him to think critically about the world around him and the sky above. Archery strengthens him physically while fostering mental acuity and moral resolve. Charioteering trains him in horsemanship, simultaneously sharpening his coordination and agility.

Confucius further enriched six arts education by emphasizing the study of wen (文) or classical literature, which culminates in the Five Classics, consisting of the Book of Poetry , the Book of Documents, the Book(s) of Rites, the Book of Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals. Although the Five Classics were sometimes thought to expound on the six arts, even sharing their name, in reality they significantly broadened the scope of six arts education, introducing the study of poetry, politics, social science, history, and metaphysics. Thanks to the tireless promotion of Zhu Xi during the Song Dynasty, four more books were added to the official canon, namely the Analects, the Mencius, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Great Learnin g.

If Chinese classical Christian schools want to redeem the Chinese classical tradition, the six arts and the Confucian classics must hold a central place in the curriculum. Chinese civilization was built around these studies. The emperors, philosophers, poets, and historians of the past who shaped the Chinese psyche all drank from this fount. Chinese Chris-

tians cannot understand who they are and who God wants them to be without drinking from the same waters. What might a contemporary Christian curriculum designed around the six arts look like? Only the Chinese church can fully answer that question. I am not Chinese, and my knowledge of Chinese culture and society are very limited. My goal here, therefore, is only to present a general outline and then invite to Chinese Christians to flesh out the details.

Brent Pinkall is a Lecturer of Rhetoric at New Saint Andrews College. He holds an M.A. in Theology and Letters (2017) from New Saint Andrews College and a B.A. in Mass Communications (2010) from Kansas State University. Before joining the faculty at New Saint Andrews, Pinkall taught rhetoric at a classical Christian college in China for more than five years. In addition to rhetoric, he has taught college-level courses in logic, epistemology, history of classical education, classical pedagogy, astronomy, English, and English literature. He has ministered in China for more than twelve years, with a focus on promoting classical Christian education there.

Assessing the Pedagogical Power of Poetry for Poetic Knowledge

by Carrie Eben and Albert Cheng

Those who engage with poetry should be watched carefully because “imitations, beginning in early youth and continuing far into life, at length grow into habits and become a second nature, affecting body, voice, and mind,” Plato admonishes.1 Regardless of whether or not Plato wished to ban poetry, he recognized its pedagogical power. Poetry massages the soul in a unique way. It creates imitative images with words that allow humans to experience reality through the eyes of another. It enables noumenal perception, a form of unarticulated intuitive knowledge, which James S. Taylor calls poetic knowledge. 2 By virtue of its focus on poetry in particular and musical education in general, classical pedagogy is distinctively situated to cultivate poetic knowledge in

1 Plato. (1990). The Dialogues of Plato; The Seventh Letter . (M. J. Adler & P. W. Goetz, Eds., B. Jowett & J. Harward, Trans.) (Second Edition, Vol. 6, p. 330). Chicago; Auckland; Geneva; London; Madrid; Manila; Paris; Rome; Seoul; Sydney; Tokyo; Toronto: Robert P. Gwinn; Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

2 James S. Taylor. Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education (Boulder, CO: NetLibrary, Inc., 1999), 6.

students—a claim we make not only for philosophical reasons but based upon our own empirical research.

Defining Poetic Knowledge

Poetic knowledge, or intuitive knowledge, is not knowledge about poetry, even though interaction with poetry can engender this special kind of intuition. Rather, as Taylor explains, such knowledge emerges from “an encounter with reality that is non-analytical, something that is perceived as beautiful, awful (awefull), spontaneous, mysterious…when the mind, through the sense and emotions, sees in delight, or even in terror, the significance of what is really there.”

3 This kind of sensory-emotional perception is not new. It has merely been buried and lost because of the positivist tradition of the last two centuries. It can be considered “intuitive reason” which is included in the five areas of knowledge articulated by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics : “…art, scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophical wisdom, intuitive reason.”4 Taylor, however, makes plain that the ancients held poetic knowledge sacred and essential for the basis of all learning and moral development.

The early twentieth-century Catholic Thomistic scholar, Jacques Maritain, adds that intuitive knowledge is the act of becoming self-aware and knowing in such a way that is neither scientific nor philosophical. Therefore, poetic knowl -

3 James S. Taylor. Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education , 6.

4 Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle , ed. M. J. Adler and P. W. Goetz, trans. W. D. Ross, 2nd ed., vol. 8 (Chicago; Auckland; Geneva; London; Madrid; Manila; Paris; Rome; Seoul; Sydney; Tokyo; Toronto: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 387

Assessing the Pedagogical Power of Poetry for Poetic Knowledge

edge comprises reality perceived through the experience of the beholder, whether it radiates from nature, story, art, or any received encounter with beauty, uniting him with the beheld in love. It is a first knowledge that understands particular givens about the cosmos, the spiritual, and right living. 5 When one discovers something true during a poetic moment, a delicious wave of understanding clears a path where a fog once hung. It is the experience of “Truth’s superb surprise,” as Emily Dickinson penned, or the resulting pleasure of the heart when memories “flash upon that inward eye / which is the bliss of solitude,” as William Wordsworth described.6

Assessing Poetic Knowledge

Yet, if poetic knowledge is unarticulated, how can others outside of the apprehender’s body know of its presence? Can classical school educators, for instance, detect it in their students? Can classical school leaders cogently claim to parents that their pedagogy fosters poetic knowledge? Modern ears more attuned to measurement, data, quantity, and scientific facts might be vexed because poetic knowledge seems difficult to assess. Although the ancient philosophers professed the value of poetic knowledge, as liberal arts advocates do today, how can the unpersuaded become more aware of its full worth for directing students to truth and virtue without empirical evidence? If one cannot measure poetic knowledge,

5 Jacques Maritain and William Sweet. Natural Law: Reflections on Theory and Practice (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), 18.

6 Emily Dickinson, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant;” William Wordsworth, “I wandered lonely.”

how can one verify that educators can even teach it to students, much less discover how it can be taught effectively?

We recently set out to address these questions by conducting an empirical study at a classical Christian school in Northwest Arkansas and found that engagement with poetry affects poetic (intuitive) knowledge of the natural world. Although empiricism is not the only way to know something, it is a way. Consistent with Taylor’s philosophical assertions about poetic knowledge, the findings of our study suggest that poetry, as an experience, integrated with a science curriculum, introduces students to other dimensions of knowledge that are beyond scientific.

We found evidence that students can, to cite an example used by Taylor, come to know a horse not only as “Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive” as Bitzer knew in Charles Dickens’s Hard Times. 7 Rather, like Bitzer’s classmate Sissy Jupe, whose father took care of horses, students can also come to know horses as something to be loved and cherished through kinship not only with particular horses but also with the poets and immersion in poetic language. While a poem about a horse is not a substitute for an actual experience with a horse, it is an experience in itself which can help students receive another dimension of knowledge about the nature of horses. A poem about a horse can introduce a student to more than disparate facts. It can expose a student to the way a horse smells, runs, neighs, paws the ground, feels under the saddle, or snorts through its soft whiskery nuzzle with words of imagery, highlighting aspects of prior encounters with a particular horse. Perhaps poetry propels pupils to participate

7 Charles Dickens. Hard Times (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.), 7.

Assessing the Pedagogical Power of Poetry for Poetic Knowledge in the “new Natural Philosophy” or “regenerate science” that C. S. Lewis tried to articulate. 8

Cultivating Poetic Knowledge through Poetry

Poetry might have a pedagogical power to foster poetic knowledge because of the way it touches the imagination and memory. In Confessions, Augustine argues that the external senses enable synthesis of ideas in the memory:

In [memory] are stored away all the thoughts by which we enlarge upon or diminish or modify in any way the perceptions at which we arrive through the senses, and it also contains anything else that has been entrusted to it for safe keeping, until such time as these things are swallowed up and buried in forgetfulness.9

Poetry, in particular, can arrest someone with beauty and a sense of wonder which, in turn, helps her see things as they are. At the same time, poetry creates placeholders and categories for new sensory experiences to rest as those experiences are synthesized into the memory.

Augustine then exclaims his wonder about the ways his internal senses organize things inexplicable to the external senses:

8 C. S. Lewis. The Abolition of Man (Quebec: Samizdat University Press, 2014), 39.

9 Augustine. The Confessions , in Great Books of the Western World , eds. M. J. Adler and P. W. Goetz, trans, R. S. Pine-Coffin, J. F. Shaw, and M. Dods, vol 16, 2nd ed (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990), 93.

But I must go beyond the power by which I am joined to my body and by which I fill its frame with life. This is not the power by which I can find my God, for if it were, the horse and the mule, senseless creatures, could find him too, because they also have this same power which gives life to their bodies. But there is another faculty in me besides this. By it I not only give life to my body but also give it the power of perceiving things by the senses.10

The other faculty of which he speaks is the imagination. It draws on the senses to define and synthesize what they perceive into a fuller picture of truth. The imagery and metaphor lining the lines of poetry stirs this imaginative potential.

Evidence of Poetry’s Influence on Poetic Knowledge

We conducted our study to assess the effects of poetry on poetic (intuitive) knowledge in the fall of 2021 through the Classical Education Research Lab at the University of Arkansas and in partnership with kindergarten through second grade classes at Sager Classical Academy in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. This research occurred during a two-week science unit in which kindergartners studied the weather, first graders studied birds, and second graders studied the moon. We divided all sixty-six students into two groups. For two weeks, teachers of one group of thirty-six students—the treatment group—taught poetry aligned with their nature study. For instance, first graders in the treatment group covered the usual

Assessing the Pedagogical Power of Poetry for Poetic Knowledge

curriculum about birds but also studied poems about birds, such as Emily Dickinson’s “A Bird, came down the Walk.” Meanwhile, teachers of the other thirty students—the control group—covered the same curriculum, except without poetry. Both before and after the two weeks, we held individual interviews with each student to assess them in three areas: attentiveness, curiosity, and affinity for what they studied as well as enjoyment of poetry. Attentiveness is the extent to which students notice and pay attention to the topic of study in their everyday lives. For instance, how often do first graders notice birds flying, birds hopping, or their colors when they spot one? Curiosity is defined as the extent to which students want to learn more about the topic. Finally, affinity refers to the degree to which students are delighted by the topic. For example, did first graders find birds beautiful? Did birds make them happy? How much did they enjoy listening to them sing? All of these measures constitute a sensory-emotional aspect of poetic experience or indicate some facet of poetic knowledge. Taken alone, none of these measures represent the whole of having poetic knowledge, but together they sketch a partial picture of the kinds of persons into which the students are being shaped. Researchers could undoubtedly add other measures to assess student growth in poetic knowledge.

Across all four of our measures, we found greater levels of growth among students who engaged with poetry in conjunction with their nature study (see Figure 1). To illustrate, the control group increased from 2.76 to 3.35 scale points on the measure of affinity, while the treatment group increased from 2.94 to 3.65 scale points. Critically, however, we cannot confidently conclude whether the relatively higher growth rate in affinity among the treatment group students was mate -

rial or occurred by random chance. In other words, the 0.12point difference between the 0.59 points of growth among the control group and the 0.71 points of growth among the treatment group is not statistically significant. Nor could we conclude with confidence that the difference in growth rates in a second outcome, curiosity, between the treatment and control groups was material, even if the growth rate was slightly higher for the treatment group.

Note: * Indicates that differences in growth rates between treatment and control groups are statistically significant at the 0.05 level. ** Indicates that differences in growth rates between treatment and control groups are statistically significant at the 0.01 level.

Figure 1: Results of Study

Assessing the Pedagogical Power of Poetry for Poetic Knowledge

However, the difference in growth rates between the treatment and control group for attentiveness was substantively large and statistically significant. The average of the control group students’ attentiveness scores increased about 0.13 points from 2.80 to 2.93. In contrast, the average of the treatment group students’ attentiveness scores increased 0.39 points—three times the magnitude of the control group— from 2.97 to 3.36. Similarly, the degree to which control group students enjoyed poetry did not change over the course of the two-week intervention, while treatment group students exhibited much more enjoyment of poetry over the same time period.

Next Steps and Implications for Future Research and Pedagogy

In summary, our scientific experiment demonstrates that integrating poetry into the study of the natural world fosters poetic experience. We would also like to suggest that poetry may have analogous impacts on poetic knowledge in other content areas such as history and mathematics as well as for students older than the ones in our sample. Conducting a similar experiment could provide empirical evidence to speak to that hypothesis. More generally, we encourage efforts to conduct studies with larger, representative samples to improve the quality of the available evidence about classical pedagogy. Widening the scope of the research in other ways by, for example, considering other outcomes or tracking students over time would likewise lend greater confidence about the validity of the claims of classical education. Moreover, these studies

would provide additional data for classical educators to reflect upon the quality of their practice and their pursuit of excellence in teaching.

Considerations for future research aside, what do our findings mean for pedagogy, particularly as it pertains to poetic knowledge and the everyday classroom? First, the integration of poetry in nature studies enhances knowledge of the natural world because “scientific knowledge…does not, cannot, give an experience of the whole thing,” Taylor asserts.11 An experience with poetry in relation to science reveals a fuller picture of the nature of things. It has the ability to arouse a new love and new view. For instance, some kindergartners in our study became more attentive to the effects of the wind. After reading Christina Rosetti’s poem “Who Has Seen the Wind?” they began to seek out new evidence of the wind as depicted in the poem and to know it as more than just an invisible atmospheric phenomenon. We encourage teachers to consider how to weave poetry throughout their curriculum to draw out an additional layer of understanding. Importantly, engagement with poetry requires a learner to practice the intellectual virtue of attentiveness. Contemplating a poem (as in this experiment) or any experience, necessitates a student’s undivided gaze. This cultivation of attentiveness is necessary for keeping students “focused, present, and alert” during the learning process according to Jason Baehr.12 Experience with poetry invites students to apprehend details of the natural world through various senses, and to “apprehend / More than cool reason ever comprehends,”

11 James S. Taylor, Poetic Knowledge , 172.

12 Jason Baehr. Deep in Thought: A Practical Guide to Teaching Intellectual Virtues (Cambridge, MA, Harvard Education Press, 2022), 141.

Assessing the Pedagogical Power of Poetry for Poetic Knowledge

as Shakespeare’s King Theseus observed.13 While many distractions compete with students’ attention today, poetry naturally directs students to attend to things worth loving and to wonder deeply beyond the surface. Finally, poetry offers a dimension of knowing unique to divine image bearers caring for creation. As David the poet-king announces, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.”

Poetry has the ability to help one develop poetic knowledge, to discern aspects of nature for deeper understanding about Who God is and humanity’s place in the world. It gives life, meaning, and coherence to scientific facts and reasoning. Ultimately, poetry helps souls discover God’s truth and goodness in beauty, fulfilling the aim of classical Christian education.

For over twenty-three years, Carrie Eben has championed classical education. Carrie leads teachers and parents in the classical model of education by developing and delivering customized workshops for administrators, teachers, and parents (www.classicaleben.com). She is currently a PhD student in the Humanities program at Faulkner University and teaches Integrated Humanities (adjunct) at John Brown University. Last summer she graduated from the CiRCE Institute as a Master Teacher and became a scholar in residence at the Society for Women of Letters. She also serves as founding board member at Sager Classical Academy in Siloam Springs, AR.

13 William Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993): 143

Albert Cheng is an assistant professor of educational policy at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. He also directs the Classical Education Research Lab, an initiative that conducts empirical research about the effectiveness of classical education and provides resources for classical educators. Dr. Cheng teaches courses in educational policy and philosophy. He is a Senior Fellow at Cardus and board member of Anthem Classical Academy.

Works Cited

Augustine. The Confessions ; The City of God ; On Christian Doctrine / Saint Augustine. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1990.

Baehr, Jason. Deep in Thought: A Practical Guide to Teaching Intellectual Virtues. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2022.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc, 7.

Dickinson, Emily. “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” Accessed May 23, 2022. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56824/ tell-all-the-truth-but-tell-it-slant-1263

Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. Quebec, Canada: Samizdat University Press, 2014.

Maritain, Jacques, and William Sweet. Natural Law: Reflections on Theory and Practice. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001.

Plato. The Dialogues of Plato; The Seventh Letter. Edited by M J Adler and P W Goetz. Translated by B Jowett and J Harward. 6. 2nd ed. Vol. 6. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago; Auckland; Geneva; London; Madrid; Manila; Paris; Rome;

Assessing the Pedagogical Power of Poetry for Poetic Knowledge

Seoul; Sydney; Tokyo; Toronto: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1990.

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Taylor, James S. Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education. Boulder, CO: NetLibrary, Inc, 1999.

Wordsworth, William.“I wandered lonely.”Accessed May 23, 2022.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud

The Lord’s Gifts to Human Nature

The Role of the Liberal Arts in the Educational Philosophy of John Calvin

by Lucas E. Vieira

Introduction

In the history of the Christian faith, there are few men as renowned as the protestant reformer, John Calvin. Trained in the schools of the scholastic humanists of the sixteenth century, Calvin was well-educated with his initial sights on entering the legal profession. Following his conversion to the Protestant faith, Calvin became a preeminent voice in the Reformation—most notably as a pastor, theologian, and writer based in the city of Geneva. While much academic scholarship and devotional reflection has focused on Calvin’s work as both a pastor and theologian, many forget the cultural significance and influence of Calvin’s work in the realm of Christian education. One central idea which pervaded the writings and sermons of the Protestant Reformers was the desire to educate the people so that they would not fall prey

to the theological errors of the Roman Catholic church due to their own ignorance. Thus, Protestants emphasized the importance of having Bibles in the vernacular and equipping the people to read and understand God’s Word for themselves. It is in this milieu that Protestants throughout Europe began to start schools.1 For John Calvin, the Bible was at the heart of his theological vision. 2 God’s Word was to be the guiding light for all of life. Because of this, Calvin launched the Academy of Geneva, a Christian educational institution. John Calvin understood that Christian education was to serve as one of the primary means by which Christians could be equipped to know the truths of the Christian faith.

In light of this, the following question arises: What role does non-Scripture based study hold in a Christian education? For the Protestant reformer and school founder, the liberal arts served as essential to his program at the Academy of Geneva. John Calvin highly valued the liberal arts in his educational philosophy due to the fact that he understood them to be gifts from God, he believed they provided the proper educational foundation upon which later theological study could occur, and he recognized that they existed to stir the hearts of men to glorify God. Rooted fundamentally in Calvin’s theological conception of the centrality of the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self found in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin’s doxological approach to Christian education offers insightful guidance to the classical Christian education movement today.

1 Karin Maag, Seminary or University? : The Genevan Academy and Reformed Higher Education, 1560–1620 . (England: Scolar Press, 1995), 1–2.

2 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , ed. John McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 1.6.1–2.

The Lord’s Gifts to Human Nature

From Student to Pastor-Educator: John Calvin’s Educational Career

In 1509, John Calvin was born to Girard Cauvin and Jeanne Le Franc in Noyon, France. 3 Girard understood the ability that schooling gave an individual to increase their social standing, and thus encouraged his son to have a thorough education. As a young boy, Calvin received a meaningful early education in Latin at the Collége de Cappettes due to the patronage of the aristocratic de Hangest family.4 Likely in 1523, Calvin then moved to Paris to study at the Collége de la Marche where he came under the tutelage of the influential humanist, Marthurin Cordier. After his time at the Collége de la Marche, Calvin studied at the College de Montaigu of the University of Paris due to his father’s expectation that Calvin would eventually enter the ecclesiastical profession. 5 There, it is highly likely that Calvin was immersed in the liberal arts— the trivium and the quadrivium. From the time he was a young child and throughout his adolescence, it was the study of the liberal arts that characterized Calvin’s education. After the University of Paris, John Calvin was sent to the University of Orleans by his father, who had instead determined that Calvin was to become a lawyer. 6 There, Calvin earned a degree in law. In addition, he studied at and was licensed by the University of Bourges to practice in the legal

3 Jacob Hoogstra, John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet: A Symposium , (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1959), 197.

4 Bruce Gordon, Calvin , (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 5.

5 Ibid., 6.

6 Hoogstra, John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet , 198–199.

profession. Once Calvin’s father died in 1531, Calvin chose to return to his studies in the humanities at the University of Paris.7 In the following year, Calvin published a commentary of the Roman philosopher Seneca’s De Clementia . At the same time, during the early 1530’s, Calvin was becoming disillusioned with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. 8 By 1534, Calvin had left the Roman church altogether, moved to Switzerland, and began writing the Institutes of the Christian Religion in which Calvin sought to provide a clear exposition of the Protestant faith.

In 1536, Calvin began to reside in the city of Geneva where he preached and became an influential voice in the ecclesiastical and political institutions there.9 Two years later, the city council of Geneva forced Calvin to leave. John Calvin then moved to Strasbourg for three years due to an invitation from Martin Bucer, a prominent Protestant reformer.10 It was in Strasbourg that Calvin came into contact with the educational leader, John Sturm. In his article, Calvin and the Founding of the Academy of Geneva , W. Stanford Reid identifies that Sturm’s educational system was built off of the motto “Wise and Eloquent Piety.”11 Sturm was a Christian humanist, and his vision for education heavily focused on ancient writings as well as the liberal arts. A model which would prove to be influential to Calvin’s thought, Sturm’s institution was to be

7 Hoogstra, John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet , 198–199.

8 Ibid.

9 Gordon, Calvin , 70–77.

10 Hoogstra, John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet , 202

11 The Latin motto was “sapiens atque eloquens pietas.” W. Stanford Reid, “Calvin And The Founding Of The Academy Of Geneva,” Westminster Theological Journal 18, no. 1 (November 1995): 5.

The Lord’s Gifts to Human Nature

composed of two levels: the Gymnasium and the Hochschule. 12 Latin and language-study would be the primary focus of the lower gymnasium, while the Hochschule “would stress practical subjects such as Greek, Hebrew, philosophy, mathematics, physics, history, law, and theology.”13 Reid points out that while Sturm’s vision of education never came to total fruition, Sturm’s ideas would carry great influence when it came to the institution established by Calvin in Geneva. In 1541, Calvin was welcomed back to Geneva with open arms. He immediately resumed the work of reformation, which encompassed all aspects of societal life—including ecclesiology, politics, and education. In the realm of education, Calvin promptly set his sights on establishing a school which would comprise of both the lower level (the schola privata) of language-learning and the arts, and an upper-level (the schola publica) primarily devoted to the study of theology and languages for the sake of equipping more preachers of the Gospel for the Protestant Reformation.14 Indeed, not only was John Calvin a Pastor-Theologian, he was also a Pastor-Educator. Alongside the theologian Theodore Beza, Calvin finally launched the Academy of Geneva in 1559. Calvin’s Academy of Geneva would go on to equip hundreds for the sake of the Gospel and its model was replicated throughout the world.15

12 Reid, “Calvin And The Founding Of The Academy Of Geneva,”6.

13 Ibid.

14 T. H. L Parker, John Calvin: A Biography . (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 159.

15 Karin Maag, Seminary or University? , 7.

The Gifts of the Liberal Arts: Calvin’s Educational Philosophy in Books 1 & 2 of the Institutes

Having provided an overview of the historical narrative in regards to the educational career of John Calvin, we now turn to analyze the specific role of the liberal arts within Calvin’s educational philosophy. Having been immersed in the liberal arts himself, Calvin understood the value and the shortcomings of studying the arts. Calvin was most concerned with man’s ability to know God through God’s revelation of Himself in His Word. Yet, Calvin believed that there was a place for studying “earthly things.”16 His most renowned work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, provides helpful insight into the role of the liberal arts in a Christian education, and it is clear that the system of education practiced at the Academy of Geneva aligned with Calvin’s thoughts found in the Institutes.

In the opening pages of the work, Calvin emphasizes a two-part knowledge which was essential for the Christian life, namely, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self.17 These two knowledges are interdependent. In order to have a right knowledge of God, we must have a proper knowledge of self, and in order to have a proper knowledge of self, we must have a right knowledge of God. Furthermore, Calvin states clearly, “The final goal of the blessed life…rests in the knowledge of God.”18 John Calvin sought to provide

16 John Calvin, Institutes , 2.2.13.

17 Ibid., 1.1.1.

18 Ibid., 1.5.1.

an educational system which existed for the sake of aiding man in coming to a proper knowledge of God, which is most clearly revealed in the Scriptures.

Calvin first mentions the liberal arts in chapter five of the first book of the Institutes. He posits, “Men who have either quaffed or even tasted the liberal arts penetrate with their aid far more deeply into the secrets of divine wisdom.”19 Calvin understood that the study of the liberal arts served as an aid to the study of God. 20 Through His creation, God reveals His attributes and divine wisdom. How, then, might the liberal arts equip the Christian in their knowledge of God? The liberal arts function to raise men’s minds to behold the works and deeds of God. Calvin states, “As God’s providence shows itself more explicitly when one observes these, so the mind must rise to a somewhat higher level to look upon his glory.” 21 When one studies that which God has established in His universe, they come to know better the wisdom of God—thus giving God the glory that He is due. While Calvin sees the value of the liberal arts in this way, he makes clear that the study of the liberal arts and human philosophy by itself is ineffective in providing a full, saving knowledge of God. It is for this reason that the study of the Scriptures is of greater and more essential importance to a Christian education. Calvin claims,

19 Ibid.

20 Reid insightfully points out, “Calvin believed that physical science should be taught simply because nature was God’s vesture in which He continually reveals Himself to all men everywhere…To Calvin, the study of nature was a God-given responsibility to be carried out in the light of His Word.” W. Stanford Reid, “Calvin And The Founding Of The Academy Of Geneva,” 15.

21 John Calvin, Institutes , 1.5.1.

It is therefore clear that God has provided the assistance of the Word for the sake of all those to whom he has been pleased to give useful instruction because he foresaw that his likeness imprinted upon the most beautiful form of the universe would be insufficiently effective 22 (emphasis added)

Nevertheless, Calvin does not reject the liberal arts altogether as if they lacked any value, but instead speaks highly of the arts when they are directed towards their proper end. The arts are not God’s given means of salvation, but they exist as gifts from our God for His glory and our good. 23 The arts, included under Calvin’s categorization of “earthly things,” serve to aid the believer in the affairs of the present life, while the “heavenly things” exist to equip us with the true knowledge of God. 24

In book two of the Institutes, Calvin provides a discourse on the doctrine of God the Redeemer. Herein, Calvin also continues to give justification for the role of the liberal arts in the life of the Christian. The arts, while unable to provide saving knowledge of God, act as gifts of God’s common grace towards mankind. 25 These gifts still come by way of

22 John Calvin, Institutes ,, 1.6.3.

23 “But because sculpture and painting are gifts of God, I seek a pure and legitimate use of each, lest those things which the Lord has conferred upon us for his glory and our good be not only polluted by perverse misuse but also turned to our destruction.” John Calvin, Institutes , 1.9.12.

24 Calvin states, “I call ‘earthly things’ those which do not pertain to God or his Kingdom, to try justice, or to the blessedness of the future life; but which have their significance and relationship with regard to the present life and are, in a sense, confined within its bounds. I call ‘heavenly’ things the pure knowledge of God, the nature of true righteousness and the mysteries of the Heavenly Kingdom. The first class includes government, household management, all mechanical skills, and the liberal arts. In the second are the knowledge of God and of his will, and the rule by which we conform our lives to it.” John Calvin, Institutes , 2.2.13.

25 John Calvin, Institutes , 2.2.16.

The Lord’s Gifts to Human Nature

God’s Spirit, and Calvin even contends that neglecting these gifts ought to incur punishment from God. He states,

We ought not forget those most excellent benefits of the divine Spirit, which he distributes to whomever he wills, for the common good of mankind…But if the Lord has willed that we be helped in physics, dialectic, mathematics, and other like disciplines, by the work and ministry of the ungodly, let us use this assistance. For if we neglect God’s gift freely offered in the arts, we ought to suffer just punishment for our sloths. 26

The arts are gifts given by God for the sake of mankind’s common good. 27 Therefore, the arts should be studied diligently and utilized for the Creator’s glory. It is clear that for Calvin, there exists both truth and error in the ancient writers who are studied in the liberal arts. Any truth found there is true by virtue of God’s common grace, but any error found is simply a result of the depravity of man. In Calvin’s theology, anything that is true is true only because it comes from the Spirit of God, which he calls “the sole fountain of truth.” 28 Calvin asks rhetorically,

Shall we deny that the truth shone upon the ancient jurists who established civic order and discipline with such great equity? Shall we say that the philosophers were blind

26 Ibid.

27 On this point, McCormick helpfully quotes Calvin’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 1:17, “As for those arts, then, that have nothing of superstition but contain solid learning and are founded on just principles, as they are useful and suited to the common transactions of human life, so there can be no doubt that they have come forth from the Holy Spirit; and the advantage which is derived and experienced from then ought to be ascribed exclusively to God.”

James

Edward McGoldrick,

“John Calvin—Erudite Educator.” Mid-America Journal of Theology 21, no. 1 (2010): 127.

28 John Calvin, Institutes , 2.2.15.

in their fine observation and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably? Shall we say that they are insane who developed medicine, devoting their labor to our benefit? What shall we say of the mathematical sciences? Shall we consider them the ravings of madmen? No, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration. 29

The truth that shines through in the liberal arts is rooted in God Himself, and that truth comes through divine inspiration. 30 Thus, where truth is found in the arts there is great value in studying them. But what of the error? Speaking of the philosophers again, Calvin exclaims, “Although they may chance to sprinkle their books with droplets of truth, how many monstrous lies defile them!” 31 Therefore, Calvin exhorts his reader to use the arts wisely. With the Word of God as his guide, the student must learn to embrace the truth found in the arts, but to discern and reject the error in light of the Scriptures.

The Foundation of the Liberal Arts at the Academy of Geneva

Calvin’s theological approach to the liberal arts was embodied in the curriculum of the Academy of Geneva. Prior to launching the Academy, Calvin articulated his intentions in

regards to establishing a school in Geneva in his Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1541. The Ordinances state,

Because it is only possible to profit from such teaching [in sound doctrine] if one is first instructed in languages and humanities, and also because it is necessary to lay the foundations for the future…a college should be instituted for instructing children to prepare them for the ministry as well as for civil government. 32

Here, Calvin makes clear the reason for which languages and humanities must be studied. The reason is twofold: the study of the humanities lays the proper foundation upon which later theological study can occur, and the study of the humanities provides a foundation for the future of the community. This twofold reason is also demonstrated in the vocations outlined as the goal of education in the Ordinances; Calvin wanted to create a school that would equip future ministers and future civil magistrates.

With this method and end of education as the guiding objective of the Academy of Geneva, two parts of the school were established. The lower school, called the schola privata or college, focused on religious education, language learning, and the liberal arts. The schola publica primarily served as the theological training center for future ministers. The guiding document of the Academy was the Order of the College of Geneva , which was written in 1559 accompanying the commencement of the Academy. The Order outlined the program, curriculum, and rules of the Academy of Geneva. It provides a helpful

32 From the Genevan Ecclesiastical Ordinances , 1541 translated in John Calvin, Jean Calvin , trans. G. R Potter and M Greengrass. (London: Edward Arnold, 1983).

insight into the practices and pedagogy enacted at the influential institution.

In terms of religious education, the Schola Privata made use of a daily catechism, as well as the recitation of the school’s confession of faith, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. 33 In addition, students were to practice singing psalms one hour every day for the sake of preparing them for corporate worship. This training served as the primary method of musical education in the program, and its importance to the Academy was demonstrated by the fact that the singing was to occur for a significant portion of each day. 34 Beyond the religious education of the students, the arts were heavily emphasized.

In the lowest class, the seventh class, the students studied the Latin and French alphabets and began writing. 35 In the sixth class, students continued their study of the Latin and French languages. The fifth class was also marked by language study, accompanied by the Bucolics of Virgil. In the fourth class, students were introduced to a variety of classical authors including the Letters of Cicero, Elegies of Ovid, De Tristibus, and De Ponto. In addition, the fourth class began the study of the Greek language. The third class continued this language study, and the works of De Amicitia , De Senectute, Virgil’s Aeneid , the Commentaries of Caesar, and the Hortatory Speeches of Isocrates were to be studied. In the second class, students studied history in Latin through the work of Titus Livius, as well as in Greek through the works of Xenophon,

33 The Order of the College of Geneva is found as the appendix to W. Stanford Reid, “Calvin And The Founding Of The Academy Of Geneva,” 22–33.

34 Jacob Hoogstra, John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet , 200.

35 See note 33.

The Lord’s Gifts to Human Nature

Polybius, and Herodian. Moreover, second class students began to learn the basics of dialectics, to read the works of Homer, to study the paradoxes or speeches of Cicero, and to translate the Gospel of Luke in Greek. In the first class, students spent their time learning Dialectics, practicing Rhetoric, studying the speeches of Cicero, Olynthiacs and Philippics of Demosthenes, reading Homer and Virgil, and translating the Epistles of the New Testament from the Greek. In the upper school, while much time was spent studying theology, Hebrew, and Greek, the liberal arts were also contemplated. 36 For example, the Academy’s Professor of Arts would teach Advanced Rhetoric by utilizing both Aristotle and Cicero. 37 Truly, the liberal arts and the study of humanities were foundational to the educational program of the Academy of Geneva. The arts served as the preparation required for the study of the queen of the sciences—theology. 38

At the commencement of the Academy in 1559, the school’s first rector, Theodore Beza, said the following in his speech:

Indeed, you have not gathered in this place as many of the Greeks used to do, heading to their gymnasiums to engage

36 Commenting on the use of ancient works at the Genevan Academy, Reid helpfully remarks, “Strange as it may seem, the Professor of Greek was not to deal with the New Testament. As the students would already have learned Greek, New Testament exposition was left to the Professor of Theology, the Greek professor being given the work of expounding various books on ethics. The authors suggested were Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, or ‘some Christian philosopher.’ The afternoon lecture he was to debate the study of a Greek poet, orator or historian, always ‘choosing the purest.’ Here again one sees very clearly the humanist in Calvin as well as an indication of his attitude towards the knowledge and learning of the non-Christian world.” W. Stanford Reid, “Calvin And The Founding Of The Academy Of Geneva,” 16.

37 W. Stanford Reid, “Calvin And The Founding Of The Academy Of Geneva,” 15.

38 T. H. L Parker, John Calvin , 160.

in vain endeavors, but rather, imbued with the knowledge of the true religion and liberal arts, to be able to magnify the glory of God and to be a support to your families and an honor to your homeland. 39

What was the end of the religious and liberal arts education for the Academy of Geneva? Beza stated boldly that the goal of the education was to equip students to glorify God, support their families, and honor their homeland. Indeed, the liberal arts were to serve as foundational in the educational model established by John Calvin, specifically for the sake of God’s glory and man’s good. In the first twenty years of the Academy’s existence, more than two hundred graduates went on to serve in ministerial positions throughout Europe, over fifty graduates entered civil service, and others became lawyers, medical doctors, merchants, and nobles.40

Conclusion:

God’s Glory as the Goal—A Doxological Approach to Education

For John Calvin, the glory of God was central to his theological and educational vision. He instructs the reader in book one of his Institutes, “For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the Author of their every good, that they

39 Quoted in R. Ward Holder, John Calvin in Context . (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 111.

40 Between 1559 and 1580, out of the graduates whose later careers were documented, 246 graduates became ministers, 54 entered civil service, 9 became lawyers, 15 became medical doctors, 4 became merchants, and 13 became nobles. Karin Maag, Seminary or University? , 29–30, 33, 56.

The Lord’s Gifts to Human Nature

should seek nothing beyond him—they will never yield him willing service.”41 The liberal arts, for Calvin, aid man in glorifying God. As demonstrated in the Institutes, the liberal arts are gifts from God which He gives to men in His common grace. When mankind utilizes those gifts wisely, they magnify the Creator’s glory. At the Academy of Geneva, the study of the arts aided the student in their study of the Scriptures. The arts served as the foundation which made higher theological study possible.

The classical Christian education movement of today has sought to reclaim the study of the liberal arts under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. As this educational retrieval continues into the twenty-first century, Christian educators would be wise to find inspiration in John Calvin’s vision for education—one that appreciated the proper role and status of the arts, the need for the utmost emphasis on the study of Scripture, and the understanding that the liberal arts are to be studied with the glory of God as their end.

Lucas Vieira serves as the Dean of the Logic School and teaches a variety of humanities courses at Beacon Hill Classical Academy. He has earned a Graduate Certificate in Classical Christian Studies from New Saint Andrews College, a Master of Legal Studies from Trinity Law School, and his BA in Philosophy & Religious Studies from Westmont College. Lucas lives in Ventura, California, with his lovely wife, Madelyn, and their sweet daughter, Evangeline.

41 John Calvin, Institutes , 2.2.1.

Bibliography

Calvin, John. Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. 1–2. Vol. 1–2. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960.

Calvin, John. Jean Calvin. Translated by G. R Potter and M Greengrass. Documents of Modern History. London: Edward Arnold, 1983.

Gordon, Bruce. Calvin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.

Holder, R. Ward, ed. John Calvin in Context. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Hoogstra, Jacob T., ed. John Calvin, Contemporary Prophet: A Symposium. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1959.

Maag, Karin. Seminary or University? : The Genevan Academy and Reformed Higher Education, 1560–1620. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1995.

McGoldrick, James Edward. “John Calvin—Erudite Educator.” Mid-America Journal of Theology 21, no. 1 (2010): 121–32.

Parker, T. H. L. John Calvin: A Biography. [Rev. ed.] ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.

Reid, W. Stanford. “Calvin And The Founding Of The Academy Of Geneva.” Westminster Theological Journal 18, no. 1 (November 1995): 1–33.

Johan Huizinga’s The Autumn of the Middle Ages

An Appreciative Review

by Dr. Robert M .Woods Headmaster, Veritas Christian Academy Instructor, Kepler Education

There are some books that reveal not only a different time and place but even shed light onto our own moment. Occasionally there are books that do both of these wonderful things and even more stand as a model for parallel studies. In the span of publishing history, there are only a handful of history books that have seen as many editions in as many different languages as Huizinga’s masterpiece.

Since its original publication in Dutch, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen has seen numerous translations across various languages and cultures. In this review, three will be considered for their enjoyment and benefit for Classical Christian

education. The three English translations this review takes into consideration are:1

• The Waning of the Middle Ages Translated by Frederik Jan Hopman.

• The Autumn of the Middle Ages Translated by Rodney J. Payton & Ulrich Mammitzsch.

• Autumntide of the Middle Ages Translated by Diane Webb.

This appreciative review is not as much a scholarly consideration of the quality of the three translations as this would require a polyglot of significant magnitude knowing Dutch, Latin, French, English, and German. This essay is reflecting on the three separate volumes as translated works and their inherent value as intellectual artifacts approximating, in translation, a modern masterpiece of cultural history.

Johan Huizinga, author of several volumes of cultural history including a fine biography on Erasmus and a fascinating study, informed by anthropological insights, on the play element in human culture titled Homo Ludens, is also the author of two collections of essays on contemporary American life and mass culture. This includes a powerful essay on writing cultural history that would serve the budding cultural historian. Huizinga is actually recognized by many modern

1 Respectively, from the earlier to the most recently published, The Waning of the Middle Ages , Johan Huizinga, London: Edward Arnold & Company, 1924; The Autumn of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga, Translated Rodney J. Payton, Ulrich Mammitzsch. University of Chicago Press, 1997; Autumntide of the Middle Ages: A Study of Forms of Life and Thought of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in France and the Low Countries ed. Graeme Small and Anton van der Lem, trans. Diane Webb. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2020.

Johan Huizinga’s The Autumn of the Middle Ages writers as the founder of the discipline that came to be called cultural history.

Each of these volumes considered has its own distinct value. While the earliest translation in English has significant limitations in terms of illustrations and scholarly apparatus, it is the edition included in the Great Books of the Western World. 2 The fact that it was included in this august set also means that it is included in the Author to Author Index, and the Author to Idea Index. 3

In addition to being a sound reading, with the above referenced indices, this edition is also a tool for research. This translation within the Great Books collection affords the opportunity to engage in the Great Conversation with authors and writings including The Holy Bible, Euripides, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Chaucer, Dante, Erasmus, Goethe, Herodotus, Homer, William James, Nietzsche, Plato, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Tacitus, Thucydides, and Virgil because of the way the Great Books index is structured. Using the unique research tool called the Syntopicon, students of Huizinga’s work also interact with some or all of the following Great Ideas: Art, Being, Custom and Convention, Emotion, Experience, Family, Habit, History, Honor, Justice, Knowledge, Language, Law, Life and Death, Math, Nature, Poetry, Religion, Science, Sign and Symbol, State, Time, Truth, and Wealth.

The translators of later English editions graciously suggest that earlier translations, while bringing to English this masterpiece, lacked some of the original text and textual apparatus to aid the scholar. Despite the fact that the original

2 Robert M. Hutchins, The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.: 1991), 82, 93.

3 Ibid.

English 1924 translation occurred under Huizinga’s involvement and consent there were elements missing from the earliest English edition. Huizinga’s direct influence as editor was not recognized in later translations in other languages.

Huizinga noted earlier that his original intention was to examine the art of the van Eyck brothers by placing this within the context of everyday life in Burgundy. As his research expanded, Huizinga widened his scholarly lens to include the end of the Middle Ages in both France and the Netherlands. This resulted in a move from a generally practiced chronological approach to a thematic study. Each chapter, within the various translations, offers what could be interpreted as a “framing” proposition about medieval life at that moment and in that place. Huizinga frequently offers insight into an anecdote or literary text that sheds light on the customs, conventions, mores, convictions, and practices. Huizinga’s constant references to the form of an idea or beliefs embodied in practices is most engaging. In addition to several key references to everyday life, Huizinga significantly interacts and interprets numerous literary sources. His commentary on these texts provides helpful guidance. Even when Huizinga takes a dissenting interpretive position from what was common in that day or even the consensus of the traditional view, he provides rationale.

The reader should not approach Huizinga’s work on the Middle Ages with a conventional chronological model in mind. In this unique work, he divides his material by subject. Within each chapter, each keenly titled, he moves around in both time and location. At times this can seem arbitrary. Huizinga has imaginatively entered into the era he explores and often has a sympathy for the medievalists he considers. It is clear that he understands and at times shares affinities with

Johan Huizinga’s The Autumn of the Middle Ages

what he refers to as “the medieval mind.” While some would criticize him for this, it is actually grounds for commendation. Among the many important contributions of Huizinga’s scholarship is, similar to historian Christopher Dawson, an acknowledgment of religious reality. Divine truths and other worldly priorities are given prominence. Religious faith and practice informed and shaped every area of life. This was a fully, religiously enchanted era. This was a world where the Christian faith shaped and was shaped by transcendent reality. As a matter of truth, the students of contemporary secularized society could learn a great deal simply in terms of contrast. Everyday habits, gestures, widespread customs and conventions were infused with the reality of supernatural truths.

Both the Payton and Mammitzsch and the Webb translations attempt to capture a good bit of the lyricism of Huizinga’s original Dutch. Additionally, these two translations attempt to retain in English many of the neologisms. Finally, these two volumes retain much of the scholarly foundation with copious notes and an apparatus (Webb’s version). While the Payton and Mammitzsch edition has approximately forty-five black and white images, the Webb edition has a plethora of stunning examples of art—historical sites and structures and various artifacts that wonderfully serve to illustrate the written text. In addition to providing a rich education of its own right, this volume could easily serve as a template for cultural and historical studies. For an older student, a Rhetoric school level course in a Classical Christian school, or even a graduate course in Medieval studies, much could be gained from this work in any of the translated versions, but more so in the Payton and Mammitzsch and the Webb translations.

Dr. Robert Woods has long enjoyed the Great Books and the education found within them. He has been an educator and Headmaster within Classical Christian institutions for more than 20 years and has degrees in religious studies (B.A.), religion (M.A.), and Humanities (Ph.D.). Dr. Woods lives in North Carolina with his wife and children.

Review of Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation

by Dr. Christy Anne Vaughan, Ed.D.

In this article about Battle for the American Mind , the reviewer will address how it compares with other types of literature and how successful the authors have been in accomplishing the purpose they set out to achieve. This book is co-written by authors David Goodwin (a Classical Christian administrator and current President of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools) and Pete Hegseth (an investigative television news reporter and military veteran). In tone, it feels more like a fireside chat than a news documentary. Much of that can be attributed to Hegseth, who alternates between narrating from Goodwin’s point of view and his own as a parent demanding to know how we arrived at our current state. This editorial team-up seems to make the book at once pedagogical, historical, and yet accessible to all readers in a kind of Joe The Plumber sort of way. It is more than a documentary or a political action treatise, this book is directed at parents and grandparents as not only a call to action but also a call to repentance.

The book is not a classical text because it lacks the literary depth of a great text. It is not a weighty historical text, although it contains a great deal of history outlining our country’s godly heritage and Christian founding as well as the dawn of the Progressive era of educational thinking from the authors’ point of view. It is a type of popular literature best resembling a call to social change. More specifically, it is a call to action for Christian parents who perceive, as the authors suggest, that America is poised to fall into the pit of anti-God materialistic, secular humanist if not Marxist, idolatrous destruction. The authors spend some time describing the current state of affairs in American public schools and society in general in the first two of the three parts of the book which take up roughly half of the book’s text. War and battle rhetoric flow throughout underscoring the authors’ assessment of dire situations and consequences requiring swift and often self-sacrificial actions. They are not used simply due to Hegseth’s military background but are well chosen to illustrate the authors’ premises. The metaphors often are explained in the text from Hegseth’s battle expertise. The second section of the book titled “The Unauthorized History of American Education” describes changes in public policy regarding the form and end goals of education including the writings of Lawrence Cremin and John Dewey with references to historians, theologians, and philosophers from both the Progressive and traditional/conservative points of view such as Jacques Barzun, David V. Hicks, Francis Schaeffer, James K. A. Smith, Werner Jaeger, and Howard Zinn. Political strategists are included in the mix as well. While engaging, the brief, thirty-nine-page section attempts to explain a major shift in American enculturation away from character formation, or what the authors call the Christian Paideia, in

favor of job skills training. What is more surprising than the brevity of this overview are the citations that are left out. There was at least one well-known C. S. Lewis quote left unattributed as well as some more contemporary works. Dorothy Sayers appeared in the index, but her work was not cited in the notes. Perhaps the book was only lightly cited for ease of use or to get it into publication more speedily, but in any case, it does not stand up to academic rigor or formatting and so cannot be placed into those categories on proper library shelves. Most surprising in its absence in the book is John Milton Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching (1886). Gregory’s work was later edited and promoted by anti-Progressivist William Chandler Bagley, a contemporary of William Heard Kilpatrick, Dewey’s colleague and successor who is mentioned in the book. Hegseth and Goodwin’s book may have excluded mentions of Essentialist movement educational philosophers and practitioners (who pushed back against the Progressive movement in the early 1900s) as a matter of convenience, but in academic fairness, it is a historical oversight. With these several criticisms gently set aside, let us consider what this book is. It is opinionated. It is political. It calls for parents to remove their children from public school in favor of private or at-home Christian education. It is timely, with references to the American military in Afghanistan and the aftermath of our country’s reaction to Covid-19. Most importantly, it is Biblical. The authors are careful to point out that their published and promoted view of education comes from a Biblical worldview taken from the Holy Bible and writings of early church fathers. Early on (page 49 of 251) in the second and longest of the book’s three parts, the authors state that “for most of the past two thousand years” church and state played related but separate roles in human civili-

zation because the eternal king, Jesus, superseded earthly governments. It is only in recent memory that the separation of church and state has been seen as removing the church from public view and not as it was originally construed in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The authors then zoom in and point to what they perceive as the real problem: modern political activist Marxists have infiltrated teacher training colleges and departments of education and slowly, during the past century, removed America’s firm foundation in the Scriptures. Into that vacuum the post-modern Progressivists took over with a religion of democracy over the republic, state over self, and materialistic pseudoscience over transcendent knowledge.

The balance of the book outlines what has happened in a sort of postmortem of Western Christian Paideia, or WCP, as coined by the authors. The WCP, the authors assert, has been replaced by a Progressive—and more recently an openly Marxist—paideia. The book’s conclusion is that while this is the current state of affairs, a crack in the status quo wall is present. Christians are no longer the majority point of view, but a minority that needs new tactics. They say we can retake our cultural high ground advantage. The authors call for an “educational insurgency” using Afghanistan and pop cultural Star Wars metaphors in illustration. Classical Christian education in all its forms (home school, home/school cooperative, private religious school) is offered as a model for such a return to America’s Biblical worldview foundations. Hegseth likens our “battle for the American mind” to a firefight where believing that we can vote our way out of this situation is like bringing a Nerf gun to a machine gun battle.

So what are readers who agree with Hegseth and Goodwin to do? On pages 249–250, while acknowledging that clas-

sical Christian schools will have imperfections or “warts” as well, the authors call for parents to make a move in faith to strengthen the cultivation of wisdom and virtue in children by removing them from the government educational system. Hegseth and Goodwin speak directly to readers to make personal, sacrificial lifestyle changes: “Get your kids in church. Get them off social media. Get them into ‘training and instruction of the Lord’ every day in school.”

On page 251, the authors close with this final exhortation and request: “Join the insurgency! And then spread the word.”

How well did the authors do in effecting change through a paper-and-ink book as a catalyst? As with other call to action books, only time will tell.

Great minds like C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot suggest that the best way to recover our former standing is to return to our beginnings. In Scripture, Jesus tells the Church in Ephesus to remember, repent, and return to their former works (Revelation 2:5). If readers heed the authors’ call and are motivated to act after reading this book, it would seem that the authors succeeded in their purpose.

Dr. Christy Vaughan holds an Ed.D. from Liberty University in Educational Leadership and serves as Secretary for Classical Christian Education International, Inc. (www.2CEI.ORG) and Head of Curriculum and Instruction at Brown County Christian Academy in Ohio. She has more than 10 years of experience in public and private education in both online and brick-and-mortar classrooms, and she currently offers courses in preparation for a career in Christian education through Kepler Education.

Book Review of The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature

by Dr. Gregory Soderberg

This book seeks to fill a hole in the current revival of classical Christian education. It endeavors to show the relevance of the classics for all students—not just students of a particular ethnic, or economic, background. This is important because of recent attacks on the classical tradition, from leftist intellectuals like Johanna Hanink and Dan-el Padilla Peralta. Hanink penned the now infamous “If Classics Doesn’t Change, Let It Burn” in 2021, claiming that “The field is a product and accomplice of white supremacy; scholars are fighting to change that.”1

This is what Dr. Anika Prather, co-author of The Black Intellectual Tradition, used to think as well. Her parents started a classical Christian school and asked her to teach there. At first, she refused because she believed that “classical ed-

1 Johanna Hanink, “If Classics Doesn’t Change, Let It Burn,” Real Clear Books&Culture , Feb. 16, 2021, https://www.realclearbooks.com/2021/02/16/if_classics_doesnt_change_let_it_burn_660567.html, accessed Oct. 27, 2022.

ucation was rooted in racism” (137). However, through her reading of Frederick Douglas and W. E. B. Du Bois, she discovered their indebtedness to the classical tradition: “Both men were avid readers of the canon and those classical texts helped to shape their work in abolition and civil rights” (139). Through further study, Prather realized that many African American heroes were also shaped and formed by classical education, and that this was an important, if neglected, part of Black history.

Just as classical education shaped black leaders in the past, Prather and Parham hope that it will shape future leaders for the black community, and for every community. Because classical education is about what is best, it can appeal to our shared humanity, no matter our skin color: “[W]hile each of these [black] writers helps us to enter into the pain they experienced, they never leave us there. Having acknowledged the reality of injustice, they press on toward a firm hope rooted in a time-tested faith” (68–69). Parham states the “core argument” of the book: “any education that is committed to truth, goodness, and beauty will achieve only a pale vision of this commitment if it fails to engage the writings of Black intellectuals in a serious and substantial way” (2). This book presents a series of portraits of black authors who were influenced, to varying degrees, by the tradition of classical education. These authors are presented as exemplars to follow, as they refused to stay stuck in their oppression, but moved forward through the liberating effects of classical education and—in most cases—their Christian faith. The book contends that these authors should be included in classical curricula, especially in schools with diverse populations:

“Who better than exceptional Black writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglas, and Toni Morrison to address

the question of what it means to be human? These writers, who were thought of as inhuman or not fully human, wrote back against this negative judgment, calling Western writers to live up to their own standards” (2). There is much that is salutary in this approach, and this book is an important contribution to a discussion that we need to have in the world of classical Christian education. How can we bring the wealth and treasures of the classical Christian educational philosophy to those who need it most—rather than confining it to those of a certain ethnic or socio-economic standing? I have some first-hand knowledge and experience with schools and ministries that are trying to do this, and I know how challenging it can be. But, while this book is an important step forward, I believe there is more work to be done.

For instance, Dr. Prather writes: “This book is an invitation to rethink the works of the canon by revealing how they have intersected with the story of Black people. Join us in stepping away from the traditional perspective of ‘preserving the West,’ and see the Great Books as a sort of portal into understanding the very soul of humanity. We invite you to see it as the canon of human civilization” (4). While this sounds admirable in principle, where are the brakes on this train? The authors do not speak much about classical Christian education. If we are pursuing classical Christian education, then we must privilege the texts of the West. This is not to deny the existence or importance of non-Western texts—it is just to recognize that in God’s providence, the Gospel took root most deeply in Western culture. Therefore, the texts of clas-

sical Christian/Western civilization should retain a place of prominence in our curricula. 2

I would argue that the “canon” of classical education is solidly-fluid. It’s like a glacier. It’s massive, well-defined, but still moving. So, authors can enter and leave the canon somewhat capriciously. J. S. Bach was ignored and forgotten for a time, only to be resurrected by Mendelssohn, to now reign supreme in the canon of Western music. Similarly, certain classic authors might be preferred over others in different ages. But the canon is not open to all, just because we want to make the canon more diverse. There must be some credentials, some street-cred, before letting the latest popular author into the canon-club. I believe the authors would agree in principle, but this is where further discussion needs to happen. 3 In a world of “so many books, so little time!” we must consider which authors deserve our attention. In some ways, this might depend on the cultural context of the school, and its students.

Part I is entitled “Black Writers as Guides to Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.” Chapter 1 deals with “In Pursuit of the Truth: Grappling with Our Difficult and Controversial Past,” which treats the lives of Olaudah Equiano, Phil-

2 This is also not to downplay the contributions of Africans to the Western tradition. Thomas Oden’s How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Recovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2007) has demonstrated the profound debt that the Western Christian tradition owes to African theologians and thinkers.

3 Dr. Parham writes: “If a mere increase in the diversity of authors were the aim of this book, I too would be wary of such a goal. I have too often seen the disappointing results of unreflective and superficial mixing in of ‘diverse’ authors, which results in a kind of box checking for diversity. But this is nothing like what we are proposing. We are after something much deeper: hearing and learning from the voices of great writers who are already part of what Robert Hutchins called the ‘Great Conversation’ but who, despite nimbly and powerfully addressing major themes of this conversation, have not been well-represented in classical education,” The Black Intellectual Tradition , 1–2.

lis Wheatley, and Frederick Douglas, who were all born into slavery but managed to attain freedom, education, and a Christian faith. Chapter 2 is “Seeking the Good: Learning from Martin Luther King, Jr., and Anna Julia Cooper.” Anna Julia Cooper is really the star of this book, with all of Part 2 devoted to her life and legacy. She was a remarkable black Christian scholar, and should be an inspiration for all educators, and especially for those working with diverse students. Born a slave, she pursued a classical education—against all odds—and eventually attained a doctorate from the Sorbonne, in France. She worked tirelessly for the cause of classical Christian education, especially for the black community. The Appendices contain three short writings by Cooper and are a helpful introduction to her work. However, it is ironic that, in a chapter focused on “seeking the good,” the authors make no mention of the moral failings of Martin Luther King, Jr. I do not bring this up to discredit King or the importance of his life and work. On the contrary, reading the Great Books should enable and equip us to sift through the good, the bad, and the ugly, in both texts and in people. It seems well established that King was a serial adulterer.4 This does not automatically discredit his life or work, but it should be acknowledged and lamented. This is particularly important when many want to discredit the work of the American Founding Fathers because they owned slaves, or perhaps even had illegitimate children with them. If there’s one thing that studying the classics should teach us, it is that people are a glorious mess of contradictions. None

4 Jason Miller, “I’m an MLK scholar—and I’ll never be able to view King in the same light,” The Conversation , May 30, 2019, https://theconversation.com/iman-mlk-scholar-and-ill-never-be-able-to-view-king-in-the-same-light-118015, accessed Oct. 27, 2022.

of the great writers or thinkers was an angel. That should be admitted on all sides. But their moral failings should not be covered up. Rousseau’s moral life was a wreck—that should give us pause when we read his writings. (On the questionable private lives of Rousseau and others famous artists and writers, see Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals). I am not qualified to pass judgment on King’s corpus, simply because I have not read enough of it. However, we should keep his moral failings in mind. Our words and ideas are not separated from our actions in airtight boxes. Classical education demands honesty with a text—and with the authors who write the texts we study.

I was also not sure about the overall goal of the authors’ treatment of King and its relationship to classical education. They write: “King’s education and his close reading of classic and canonical texts is a model for students in classical Christian schools” (91). That point did not seem substantiated by the evidence presented. The chapter demonstrated King’s interaction with Thoreau, Marx, Niebuhr, and Ghandi. If anything, this shows King’s engagement with modern thought— not classical, or “canonical” texts. They also stressed King’s “dialectical” reading, which they claim was the process whereby he “scoured classic and canonical texts, using both his reason and the lens of faith to determine which insights to take from them and which to reject” (78). No source was provided to explain this use of the term “dialectical” reading, and I know just enough about King to know that he was deeply influenced by the philosophy of Hegel, which has dialecticism at its core. I’m not a philosopher, but I’ve also read enough to give me some serious misgivings about Hegel, and Co.

(Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Tillich, etc.). For the process of taking the good in texts, and leaving the bad, a much better model is St. Augustine’s metaphor of “plunder -

ing the Egyptians” (see On Christian Doctrine, Book II.XL). We don’t need Hegel to teach us how to sift through texts.

Chapter 3—“Contemplating Beauty: Entering Toni

Morrison’s Poetic Imagination” was an interesting and informative close reading of Morrison’s novel, Song of Solomon . It uncovered many layers of symbolism and showed areas where Morrison draws on both traditional African cultures, as well as the classical tradition. However, the claims about Morrison and the classical tradition seemed a little tenuous (the main point being that Morrison echoes The Odyssey in her novel). The chapter functioned more effectively as exemplifying an approach to reading and understanding diverse authors. For educators who are working within non-white contexts and are seeking to bring in literature from diverse authors, this chapter will be very helpful. Here, classical education, as used by the authors, broadens to focus more on “methodology” rather than on concept of “canon.” Perhaps Toni Morrison will eventually be included in the canon of classic literature, but I’m not sure we’re in the best place to judge that yet. This relates to one of the main questions I have about this entire book, which reflects the “diversity” of the twentieth-century revival of classical education. Is classical education more about the “canon” of texts that withstood the test of time, or primarily a methodology suited to stages of child development, or ways of teaching (such as Socratic dialogue), or is it simply finding the “true, good, and beautiful” in a variety of texts? Or perhaps a combination of all of these?

At times, the authors use “classical education” in ways that are vague and seems motivated more by their desire to make the classics relevant to diverse students than faithfulness to how the tradition has been defined and practiced throughout the centuries.

For example, Prather writes that classical educators “value that which is good, virtuous, and beautiful, and inherent in the classical education philosophy is a belief that all minds, hearts, and voices are important” (196). It’s not clear to me how it is “inherent” in the classical education philosophy to value all voices. In fact, this seems to contradict one of the central tenets of the classical tradition—that there are works of literature, art, history, philosophy, and theology that are inherently better than others, and that these should be the focus of our studies and our life-long pursuit of wisdom. The authors focus on the ability of the “classics” to engage our common humanity, which seems to be a helpful way to view the matter. This approach would be especially helpful to those who have to justify studying the classics in an increasingly hostile context. As Dr. Prather writes:

Children from diverse communities may not speak our language or understand our culture. There will be a veil even if you are of the same race. This is why classical education is so critical: through it we are giving our students the language and literacy of the country and one with which most of humanity has intersected. In addition, the thoughts and narratives shared in the works of the canon contain themes universal to all of humanity. Classical education provides a common ground so that teachers and students can connect (184).

Although this book raises many questions, it is an important contribution to the growth and maturity of the classical Christian education revival. I hope it will prompt many more charitable and informed discussions on these topics.

Dr. Gregory Soderberg (Ph.D. VU-Amsterdam) is a Lead Teacher for Logos Online School, a Teaching Fellow at the BibleMesh Institute, and a Mentor-Professor for Redemption Seminary. He is the author of As Often As You Eat This Bread: Communion Frequency in English, Scottish, and Early American Churches (V&R), and has contributed chapters to three other books. He has written for Intellectual Takeout and blogs at The SoderBlog.

Book Review of On Education by Abraham

Kuyper

by Scott Postma

Well-known for the doctrine of “sphere sovereignty,” Abraham Kuyper once famously declared: “no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: “Mine!”1 Kuyper is also notable for delivering the 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton’s Theological Seminary in which he offered a profound and lasting treatment of Calvinism which remains relevant to us who are living in the postmodern era. But it is his significant work of educational reform in the Netherlands spanning nearly fifty years (1869–1917) that features in On Education .

On Education is a substantive anthology of Kuyper’s thoughts on Christian education, published as part of a twelve volume series of Kuyper’s works, produced by the Abraham

1 Stated in a public address delivered at the inauguration of the Free University on October 20, 1880. “Sphere Sovereignty,” Dr. Abraham Kuyper. Translated by George Kamps, 28 pgs.

Kuyper Translation Society, the Acton Institute, and Kuyper College. And it is precisely because of Kuyper’s “unique gifts, experiences, and writings” on Christianity and education that On Education is more than just a helpful resource; it is a uniquely prescient guide for everyone concerned with the education crisis plaguing twenty-first-century North America (vii).

The volume is divided into four parts, tracing Kuyper’s involvement with the Netherlands’ seventy-year political battle over parents’ rights to choose schools representative of their religious convictions. Part One introduces the beginnings of the struggle: in 1868, the Society for the Common Good issued a manifesto stating what it perceived was a need to protect its gains of having achieved “the religious neutrality of the public school;” Kuyper responded that his party was not attempting to take back the Society’s perceived gains but, instead, to “make it possible for more children to receive the religious education desired by their parents” (9). This section further treats Kuyper’s grave concern about Dutch public schools “teaching the immortality of the soul,” something he contends is not “safe in the hands of the state school teachers” (22).

Part Two consists of four chapters dedicated to Kuyper’s anti-revolutionary vision of sphere sovereignty which, when properly applied, would protect Christian schools from the revolutionary spirit of “false mingling,” whereby the state “sought to mix together precisely what God had separated” (53). Kuyper argued that it is only by properly distinguishing between the boundaries and bonds ordained by God that Christians can keep their schools from falling prey to the state and resist those secularists who would use the public trough to take away their freedom to preach Christ.

Book Review of On Education by Abraham

Kuyper

Part Three consists of six chapters of parliamentary addresses, journalistic articles, public speeches, and theological writings that address Kuyper’s pluralistic program for national education. At the time, the Netherlands was a nation that consisted in near equal measure of Rationalists, Calvinists, and Roman Catholics. In short, it was Kuyper’s position that, “The state may not use its supremacy to favor one part of the nation over another. All spiritual compulsion by the state is an affront to the honor of the spiritual life and, as an offense to civil liberty, is hateful and abominable” (xi).

Finally, Part Four consists of five chapters that treat Kuyper’s appeal to the public conscience, his concern for the injustice done to the poor of the nation, the political struggle, and ultimate victory—albeit a compromised victory. Kuyper sought a political policy of “principled structural pluralism”(xlii). And his Anti-Revolutionary Party “worked diligently to establish the right of all parents to provide their children with a quality education in accordance with their deepest convictions and values” (xii). Directed by his motto, “Free schools the norm, state schools a supplement,” (361) and by the foundational Christian principles of “freedom of conscience, equal treatment of religion under the law, and the place of schools within civil society” (365), Kuyper fought for a national system of free schools for the entirety of his public life. He firmly believed that free schools were the best way to serve all parents, not just Christian parents because “it was best for all children to experience a unity of world view and values between school and home” (361).

In 1917, his Anti-Revolutionary Party won a great victory. “As a culmination of these efforts, the Dutch constitution was amended to guarantee this right, and in 1920, the year Kuyper died, a new education bill was passed which put

that amendment into practice” (xii). Although Kuyper made three substantial, albeit pragmatic, compromises to his ideal, he believed they were ultimately successful since compromise is always necessary when working in an imperfect political system. Nevertheless, while their own struggle culminated in a victory for free schools, Kuyper also recognized that the “struggle of the spirits” behind the struggle of the schools was far from over. In his speech marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Christian Teachers Association, Kuyper exhorted the teachers saying:

Brother and sisters, our struggle for the principle of Christian education has come to an end, and God grant that it never return. But that does not mean that the struggle of the spirits is over. On the contrary, the contest between the two forces that contend for the soul of the nation has only intensified. The waves of unbelief are pounding our shores with increasing force and threaten to flood the entire nation. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, nor against specific people. We face a struggle, rather, that arises from the spiritual world and penetrates life in the very heart of the nation…What spirit will control the heart of our nation: the Spirit poured out on Pentecost, or the spirit from the abyss? (359).

Kuyper was well aware that the battle over education is a spiritual battle for the soul of a nation. But as he concluded his public service and entered the twilight of life, it seems he was also forced to come to terms with the “skyrocketing costs of education,” and “a reality which he had only just begun to understand, that of the state as being of benefit to society, not merely by curtailing sin, but also by providing a necessary ‘backbone’ to the social spheres, especially in an era of

Book Review of On Education by

Abraham Kuyper

huge undertakings and expensive tasks” (396). One clear and relevant example of the way modern thinking tended to see the state as providing the necessary backbone for the benefit of an expanding, progressive society is the railroad subsidies in the nineteenth-century United States. Without the backing of the U. S. government, investors were unwilling to put their money behind such a risky and expensive project as the transcontinental railroad, notwithstanding its acknowledged benefit to the public good. As detailed in the National Archives, “In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act, which designated the 32nd parallel as the initial transcontinental route, and provided government bonds to fund the project and large grants of lands for rights-of-way.”

2 In other words, the modern age which encompassed Kuyper’s work for education reform in the Netherlands underwent a significant shift in thought, globally, about the role of government. 3 Government, as it had primarily functioned prior to the modern period, was no longer merely responsible for curtailing sin and keeping the peace of the kingdom; in the progressive and expansive modern world, it now represented an agent for securing and underwriting the public good.

2 National Archives and Records Administration. (2022, May 10). Pacific Railway Act (1862). National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved July 7, 2022, from https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/pacific-railway-act

3 The kind of autonomous democratic thought stemming from the Enlightenment brought about a global spirit of revolution that defined the modern age—from the storming of the Bastille in France (1789) to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and fall of the Soviet Union (1989–1991). The revolutionary spirit co-existed in part with the spirit of the Reformation (roughly 1517–1650), which also advocated for individual liberty but a liberty that was rooted in another source—the gospel of Jesus Christ and the resultant theology of sphere sovereignty. Thus, Kuyper formed and led the Anti-revolutionary Party (ARP) in the Netherlands which advocated for the reformational kind of freedom for all which he argued should be protected and supported by the modern state. The state, however, which itself claimed to advocate for the same kind of democratic freedom, only actually supported that freedom which was characterized as secular.

Given the significant shift in thought about government’s role and the enormity of social needs and circumstances created by the modern progressive state, Kuyper seems to have reluctantly come to terms with the fact that his ideal would likely never be realized. As editor Wendy Naylor notes, Kuyper was forced to make three pragmatic compromises during his lifetime of working for educational reform. In the Afterward, Naylor concisely lays out the nature of the compromises:

Given the powerful opposition to the ARP (Anti-Revolutionary Party) educational program in Parliament, progress, he knew, would be slow, and in the interim free schools needed to be kept alive. If there had been a more democratic system of suffrage, independent of any property qualification, Parliament would have represented the people far more accurately and a system of subvention would have met with success far earlier. But the Netherlands was only slowly emerging from a class-based society with its census democracy, and the ARP had to be patient and accept steps of progress which, when considered out of context, could appear inconsistent. From the beginning, Kuyper proposed short-term measures, stop-gap solutions which would enable free schools to survive until such time as either the suffrage laws were changed or they were able to appeal to their opponents’ sense of justice and fair play, or both. Thus, from 1869 until 1889, Kuyper proposed a system of Restitution; from 1869 until 1910, he argued for Partial Subsidy; and from 1911 until 1920, he put his weight behind a program of Full Subsidy for all schools. 4

4 Wendy Naylor, “Afterword: Faith, Finances, and Freedom,” in On Education , ed. Wendy Naylor et al., Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press; Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, 2019), 373–374.

Book Review of On Education by

Abraham Kuyper

Notwithstanding his unfortunate but necessary compromises, and notwithstanding the fact that the nineteenth and early twentieth-century Dutch educational and political system is obviously much different than that of the twenty-first-century U.S. educational and political system, Kuyper’s application of Christian principles to education in his situation continues to offer valuable principles for modern educators who are facing our own unique situation. For in both situations, we strive from the belief that there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, Who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: “Mine!”

This review originally appeared in Ad Fontes, the journal of The Davenant Institute. It is reprinted here with the full permission of Ad Fontes.

Scott Postma is the President of Kepler Education and has been an educator for nearly 30 years. He has earned degrees in Christian and Classical studies (M.A., Knox Theological Seminary), religion and English literature (B.S., Liberty University), and creative writing (A.A., College of Southern Nevada); and he is completing his Ph.D. in humanities at Faulkner University (est. summer 2023). Scott lives in the panhandle of Idaho with his wife, Tammy.