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 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).

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

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 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 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).

What Does Athens Have to Do With Abuja?

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.