Unstupiding Ourselves - Part 4

Classical Education Must Be Christian or We Will Miss the Mark

Jul 20, 2024

In the previous post, I unpacked what I believe are the seven characteristics of Classical Christian Education regardless of the epoch in which we examine it. I further argued that Classical Christian Education is the optimal vehicle to help us recover sensus communis, and thereby, unstupid ourselves.

My assertion is rooted in the belief that the liberal arts (the heart of Classical Christian Education) are a timeless and harmonizing approach, thus preparing the next generation for wisdom, virtue, and sensus communis—the three ingredients for a stable, thriving culture.

A Harmonizing Education

As the medieval scholar and educator, John of Salisbury, noted in his cardinal treatise, Metalogicon, “The creative Trinity, the one true God, has so arranged the part of the universe that each requires the help of the others, and they mutually compensate for their respective deficiencies, all things being “members one of another.” He then proceeds to demonstrate that the kind of education that harmoniously reflects the created order and has as its object “to effect man’s liberation, so that, freed from cares, he may devote himself to wisdom” is called the liberal arts. He thus concludes, “Whoever tries to ‘thrust asunder what God has joined together’ for the common good, should rightly be adjudged a public enemy.”

John is saying that the universe God created is one that has various working parts each with its own purpose and function, so arranged to be mutually dependent on the help of the other parts where it is deficient, and offering its strengths in the areas where it is more competent in function. This understanding of cosmology echoes of the ancient understanding of the human soul, particularly the Platonic vision, that it is virtuous when the noetic, spirited, and appetitive natures are all working together in harmony according to their respective strengths. The noetic nature is where wisdom resides, but cerebral logic is weak at the task of accomplishing what it ought. The appetitive nature, or the passions, where we feel and where we desire, is much stronger than the noetic nature and tends to overpower reason. The spirited nature, where discipline and courage resides, is strongest of all, and must be employed to keep the passions in check with wisdom. Or, to put it in C.S. Lewis’s words, “The head rules the belly through the chest.”

The Broad Tent of Western Education

Nevertheless, returning to my original point, we must be conscientious of the fact that classical education (or liberal arts education) was not univocal throughout the ages but what made it effective was the fact that is was animated by Christianity, the Incarnation of Christ.

Consider briefly that early classical Greek thought (i.e., Pythagoreans) emphasized what would later be called the Quadrivium. “All is number” was their mantra.

And when Cicero was writing in the 1st century BC, the liberal arts paideia and what later came to be called studia humanitatis during the Renaissance, were actually equivalent—and language, logic, and rhetoric were emphasized.

During the early middle ages, the emphasis shifted to strongly toward the Trivium. This was mainly due to the growth of Christianity and the emphasis on logos, Word.

By the high middle ages, the Scholastics emphasized logic above the other seven liberal arts (i.e., Aquinas) in their approach to education.

The classical revival during the Renaissance, however, displaced the late medieval priority on logic within the liberal arts and championed studia humanitatis. This was an emphasis on the form and style of the texts, an attempt to emulate wisdom and eloquence. In other words, education was mostly memetic again, attempting to emulate the best writers of the classical period.

By the seventeenth century, the focus returned to the Quadrivium, and a Pythagorean revival led to the Scientific revolution.

All of this merely demonstrates that while a sensus communis largely existed in some real sense in the West prior to the Enlightenment, it would be untrue to say that its cultivation was found chiefly in one specific pedagogy. Classical education had a broad tent with various aspects of the pedagogy being prioritized over other aspects, depending on which epoch one examines.

Even now in this modern renewal of Classical Christian Education, distinct emphases are emerging. As early as we are in this modern revival, the siloing has already begun. This means we need to be mindful of the glue that held the West together for a thousand years after the fall of Rome, and even now is what is holding together the modern revival of classical education, the Incarnation of Christ. Christianity is the soil in which our common sense must grow.

The Illusion of Secularism

To this point, I want to carefully assert that while I respect the efforts of some of our friends in the Classical Education movement who are attempting to modify or suspend their theological belief or distinctions to accommodate public education by starting classical charter schools, the effort will ultimately fail. It cannot stand. It is ephemeral by nature because real secularism in education is an illusion.

All education is founded on worldview—presuppositions about the nature of the cosmos. It can be no other way. Education, like each of us, can stand on one foot, stand on both feet, and even shift our weight between our feet. But none can stand on no feet.

For example, modern education claims to be secular. That is, it claims to be neutral, only providing students with the knowledge they need for living in the world but without any religious or philosophical bias. Modern educators claim this is because the religious and philosophical aspects of the student’s life should remain private and not interfere with or influence his public education. This is not only untrue, but absurd. At best, it is impossible. At worst, it is dishonest.

This is why C. S. Lewis, in his notable lecture, “Learning in Wartime,” said, “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

Thus, an education without the principled and disciplined study of philosophy, especially Theology, is no education at all.

Of course, modern educators do teach philosophy but they do so on two levels: overtly and covertly. Overtly, they may teach philosophy as a discipline (i.e., here is what others have thought), but they also teach students covertly (even if sometimes unwittingly) because all education is built on presuppositions. The secular ideology, for example, is a philosophy.

Classical Christian educators, on the other hand, follow in the vein of St. Thomas Aquinas, who said, “The purpose of the study of philosophy is not to learn what others have thought, but to learn how the truth of things stands.”

Instead of pretending philosophy is a private matter, Classical Christian educators need to take a principled and disciplined approach to helping students discover and think about the truth of things as they stand.

The High Calling of Classical Educators

This means the high calling of Classical Christian Education is to acknowledge the reality of the cosmos—that reality is Jesus Christ is Lord. The sensus communis, the common mind of the community, must center on the Lordship of Jesus Christ, irrespective of our Christian tradition. As Paul wrote to the Philippians:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Or, to put it in the words of the great Dutch educator and theologian, Abraham Kuyper, “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!”

C. S. Lewis famously noted, “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.”

If we want to recover human flourishing in the 21st century, we must recover a true common sense of reality. The Incarnation animated classical education and made human flourishing possible in a way that no other philosophy or humanism has been able. Our common mind is Christ and to draw from David Hicks in his acclaimed book, Norms and Nobility, our Tyrannizing Image is Jesus Christ.

So says the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians,

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. —Ephesians 4:11-16