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.

Licensing and permissions: info@romanroadspress.com

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 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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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