As Christians, we need to resist this inclination. One way we can preserve the sacredness of Christmas throughout all phases of life is to uphold our elders and the wisdom that often comes with the privilege of having lived many years. 

Renowned poet Malcom Guite gestures in this direction with a particular poem in his Advent anthology Waiting on the Word (Canterbury Press, 2015). The piece he directs us to is “Old Age” by Edmund Waller, a 17th century English poet and politician whose style was built upon later by Alexander Pope. 

“Old Age” by Edmund Waller:

The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er;

So calm are we when passions are no more.

For then we know how vain it was to boast

Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.

Clouds of affection from our younger eyes

Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made:

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

Drawing from this poem, what follows are three ideas to stir up hope in Christ this Advent season, particularly as they relate to old age.

First, Waller compares youthful passions to the winds that stir up a rough sea. If you have ever been to the ocean or a large lake, you will know how quickly the water can become choppy as the winds pick up. In contrast, the seas become calmer as the winds dissipate and the water returns to a peaceful state. Similarly, youthful passions–the enthusiastic hunger for pleasure, adventure, and exhilarating experiences–certainly bring lots of excitement to life. But they also bring unpredictability and, at times, unsettledness.

This Advent season, we can easily get swept into the thrill and busyness of the season: listening to sentimental Christmas music around the clock, feeling the pressure to take advantage of the latest shopping deal, and attending as many Christmas parties as possible. But this poem prompts us to pause, slow down, and rest in the quiet. There is a deep and lasting joy to be found when life is slow and the day is unscheduled. Find times during this season to rest and meditate on the promises of Christ.

Second, the poem cautions us against putting our confidence and pride in fleeting things that are “…certain to be lost.” Our culture’s approach to the Christmas season is fleeting, practically, by definition. As Thanksgiving comes to a close, the shopping ads come out and the rush to put up Christmas lights begins. The next four weeks become a blur of activity that leaves most of us surprised at how fast it all went. One way we can put our confidence in the right things this Advent season is to set healthy rhythms of focus on lasting things. To be clear, I have no objection to gift-giving, decorations, and holiday parties. But the eternal things that will last with us this season will occur through deepening our walk with Christ and strengthening our vision and love for the beauty of the incarnation. What can you do each day to focus on things that will not be easily lost when this season is over?

Third, Waller observes that wise men become stronger through weakness. Most of us, I am sure, would express a desire to grow in wisdom. But less of us, I suspect, have counted the cost. For one sure way to grow in wisdom is to experience the humility of weakness.

Across time and place, the natural human condition has gravitated toward strength, honor, and success. But the truth is that moments of weakness and failure have the most impact on deepening our faith and shaping our character. We need only look to the God we worship, who became a man, entering the most helpless state as a mere infant. This Advent season, take time to reflect honestly on your weaknesses and ways in which God provided for you in those moments. Remember, as the apostle Paul reminds us, that Christ’s power is made perfect in our weakness, and therefore, when we are weak then we are strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10 ESV). 

Amidst the noise, activity, and focus on youth, this short poem prompts us to consider a different approach. There is a joy that comes in the quiet, the peaceful, even in old age. As Malcolm Guite remarkes, “He (Waller) is realistic about weakness, but not bitter or resentful; rather he sees in the calm, and even the melancholy, the sense of emptiness that sometimes comes with age, an opportunity to God for a new wisdom” (38). 

This Advent season, may we experience this for ourselves, and as we encounter our finitude, take joy in the “eternal home” for all who put their faith in Jesus Christ.

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The modern world of education is characterized by the opposites of integration: isolation and reductionism. Colin Gunton, in the 1992 Bampton Lectures at Cambridge, entitled The One, The Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity, uses the terms, “disengagement” and “fragmentation” to describe the predicament of modernity. The term “disengagement” he attributes to Charles Taylor, and he describes “fragmentation” by stating “that the cultural disarray that is so marked a feature of our times derives from our failure to integrate or combine the different objects of human thought and activity: in brief, science, morals and art” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; 13-14, 114-115).

The modern and post-modern cultural project has abandoned God, has denied the reality of the transcendentals (truth, goodness and beauty) and forsaken the cultural heritage of wisdom. Because of this it has majored on the centrifugal (center-fleeing) forces of the mind, that is, the tendency to divide, distinguish, dissect, and deconstruct, without strong enough centripetal (center-seeking) forces—the power to unite, integrate, enliven, and edify—in order to balance them out. Analytical thinking is not bad in itself, but synthetic thinking is more primary and necessary. The modern and post-modern project has been an attempt to deny the primacy of synthetic thinking. 

So much has been said before by many. A good example is the first chapter of Stephen Turley’s Awakening Wonder: A Classical Guide to Truth, Goodness and Beauty (Classical Academic: Camp Hill, PA, 2014; 1-8). Turley draws a strong contrast between “what we might call the moral age versus the modern age, or the sapient age versus the scientific age” (2). This is another way of explaining what I am getting at through the analogy of centrifugal and centripetal forces. Not so often recognized is the fact that the theology of wisdom in Proverbs provides the needed centripetal forces of integration.

Jews, and later Christians, developed a theology of wisdom from Proverbs in ways that made possible the classical-Christian synthesis of the patristic and medieval eras. Careful study of this theology of wisdom in Proverbs and later traditions thus provides scriptural foundation for the Christian appropriation of the classical liberal arts tradition.

The Need for Integration

Why was it right for Christians to adopt pagan learning, and to read Greek philosophy and myths? How were we able to get beyond the oft-quoted dictum of Tertullian, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” and into St. Augustine’s call to plunder the Egyptians? I believe the answer can be found in the development of a theology of wisdom. In particular, for Augustine the Jewish book Wisdom of Solomon was likely instrumental in helping him make this move in the direction of a careful appropriation of the pagan liberal arts tradition (see particularly Wisdom of Solomon 7.15-8.8). 

Tertullian’s rhetorical question comes from De praescriptione haereticorum 7:9 (“Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?”). The observation is often made that this quote, taken out of context, has been used to criticize Tertullian unfairly. However, the standard critique is justified given three factors:

1. his sweeping dismissal of Greek philosophers using 1^st Corinthians and Colossians out of context earlier in ch. 7,
2. his strong discouragement of curiosity in 7:12-13, and
3. his naïve take on the relationship of Solomon’s wisdom to that of the surrounding world in 7:10 (“Nostra institutio de porticu Solomonis est qui et ipse tradiderat Dominum in simplicitate cordis esse quaerendum.” “Our education is from Solomon’s portico, who also had passed on that the Lord must be sought in simplicity of heart.”).

In actual fact, both Paul and the Solomonic tradition drew from and engaged with sources of wisdom from outside the Hebrew tradition. Paul quotes from a Hymn to Zeus in Acts, and the Proverbs has many features and exact wordings in common with other ancient near eastern wisdom traditions. Augustine’s call to plunder the Egyptians (see Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana 2:40) calls for wise and careful integration with other sources of knowledge without compromising fundamental Christian beliefs.

The situation of the early church is analogous to our predicament today. Teachers in classical schools are not unaffected by the fragmentation of the modern and post-modern world. Whether the teacher has an education background or not, there is no escaping the various movements, philosophies and techniques of the broader world of education. Everyone in classical education is concerned about not falling into the trap of simply recapitulating the problems of modern education. What is not so clear is how to go about doing that, and the extent to which this requires a refusal to engage with the world of modern education. We have enough to worry about with keeping our own catechumens faithful, not to mention the exhausting work of recapturing something of the traditions of the ancients. What has the classical school to do with modern pedagogy?

If we add to that the confusing array of ideas about teaching propagated within classical education—a wonderful and edifying array, to be sure, but confusing nevertheless!—then we should understand that there is perhaps even greater possibility for confusion for the average classical educator in how to make sense of it all. Not every expression of classical education is alike, and how am I to sift, how am I to integrate, how am I to synthesize all these ideas into a practical vision for my day-to-day realities as a teacher, into a conviction of priorities for my vocation as a teacher? The pressure on the classical teacher to integrate various ancient philosophies, modern pedagogy, and a holistic Christian vision of education is truly enormous. Only the power of a developed theology of wisdom can energize and guide such a task.

A Theology of Divine and Human Wisdom

In Proverbs and later Jewish texts like Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon, particularly where Wisdom is personified as a figure mediating for God, we have been given some broad but nevertheless illuminating parameters for a philosophy of education or pedagogy. Moreover, the pedagogy that this theology of wisdom implies majors on the centripetal forces (integration, unification, edification), rather than the centrifugal forces (analysis, dissection, deconstruction) of the mind. 

Because of this an understanding of the theology of wisdom can help the classical education movement in three key tasks:

1. sustaining an ongoing dialogue with historical pedagogies,
2. guiding the use of the many modern technical resources and quantitative assessments of teaching and learning through qualitative values, and
3. involving a holistic and engaged account of morality and human formation. 

The theology of wisdom developed in the Jewish and Christian traditions provides such an integrating power, and it does so through what I would call a traditional and transcending pedagogy.

By “traditional” is meant both its commitment to a continuing dialogue with historical sources of wisdom and its prioritization of qualitative concerns. This should be carefully distinguished from “traditionalism,” which would hold that all significant knowledge is derived from tradition.

The term “transcending” recognizes both the transcendent quality of Wisdom itself—as in the transcendental triad (truth, goodness, and beauty)—precisely because it is God’s Wisdom, while at the same time acknowledging the inability of humans to fully capture or contain its essence. For instance, consider Job 28:12-13: “But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man does not know its worth. And it is not found in the land of the living” (ESV). We cannot master Wisdom, but we can participate in it.

Because of Wisdom’s immanent presence within the world and human culture, however, there is that real access to wisdom, without which we would search for it in vain: “Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding…” (Prov 3:13ff.). The human educational endeavor is thus a continuous communal process of transcending in accordance with and development of the tradition of wisdom, as a response to God’s invitation to us through the immanent presence of his transcendent Wisdom.

Applying a Theology of Wisdom to the Problem of Technicism

As a test-case of the value of developing a theology of wisdom, and an illustration of what it might look like in practice, the rest of this article will develop how a theology of wisdom can address a problem within modern education, which plagues classical schools as well: the problem of technicism.

Technicism is not simply an over-fascination with technology as a means of stimulating learning out of students, though that problem plagues modern education as well. Instead, technicism refers to a broader ideological approach to education that has become captivated by quantitative measurements and the economic evaluation of success. In technicism education has been reduced to something that can be measured in numbers alone. Teachers are made into technicians, who simply pull the levers and push the buttons assigned to them by the ruling technocrats. Technicism focuses on quantities and techniques, rather than quality and values.

It is not only classical educators that view technicism as a problem. For instance, in a leading educational journal David Carr and Don Skinner note the wide influence of technicist models on theory about learning and the professional role of the teacher, and then bemoan how “their baleful influence—on, for example, latter day talk of learning objectives, attainment targets, performance indicators and curriculum delivery—is everywhere apparent in the contemporary ‘audit culture’ of educational theory and policy….” (“The Cultural Roots of Professional Wisdom: Towards a Broader View of Teacher Expertise,” in Educational Philosophy and Theory 41:2 (2009), 144). Now let’s not get this wrong. An ‘audit culture’ is a very fine thing, if what we are concerned with is factories, markets, money and products. But it is at least a questionable theoretical assumption that schools should be modelled on this plan. Inevitably, such a pattern turns the focus away from many of the things that really matter in education, like the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. A government bureau of education can hardly be concerned with such things, when handy charts and graphs stand before them emphasizing the bottom line and the achievement gap. 

If there is a defense for a technicist model of education, it rests on the assumption that education is an applied science, like the medical practice. In this line of thinking teachers themselves need not be concerned with the theory behind the practices they employ (Who cares for all that heady stuff, anyway?), only with efficiently employing them in order to get results, measured, of course, in high test scores. After all, the average doctor only needs to be able to diagnose and treat patients, rather than understand all the detailed scientific theory that may undergird such practices. It is hard to argue against an analogy with so revered a profession as medicine, but here the analogy must fail. Who will be a better teacher? One who has been given five ways to manage behavior in the classroom and eight types of lesson plans, or one who has refined and honed teaching practices over years of seeking the truth in the tradition of educational philosophy? How can an unreflective teacher impart and embody wisdom?

The theology of wisdom in Proverbs 1-9 provides an antidote to the technicist over-fascination with techniques and quantitative assessment. The Hebrew concept of ḥokmâ or wisdom likely grew out of the idea of skillful expertise in some craft, i.e. technical skill (for instance, see Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1-15, NICOT; Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2004; 76-77). Yet in Proverbs we see the concept broadened and deepened into the masterful understanding for life that the English word ‘wisdom’ evokes for us today. The roles of parent and sage are fused within this holistic and value-laden passing on of the tradition. In Proverbs the prototypical son is being educated for life, the royal son is being educated to rule, and the noble’s son to carry out his official duties in the royal court. This training in technical proficiency is carried out by the father/sage in a heavily value-laden context. The student is to love wisdom and to seek it above riches; he is to reject folly in both his princely duties and his personal life. 

A theology of wisdom does not reject technē, all the techniques and quantitative measures. It simply puts them in the proper role of subservience under qualitative values and ideals for life. This will inevitably transform them, since all the techniques classical educators use must be fitted to wisdom’s ends. Nevertheless, techniques, arts, and judgments themselves remain intact under the guidance of wisdom. After all, Wisdom herself rules over all technē as a master craftsman, who was with God at the beginning as he wisely ordered all of creation (Proverbs 8:22-31). Yet this holistic vision of education requires much of the teacher.

In classical education the teacher must be a magister of the arts, a sage, a philosopher; must be a participant in the Wisdom that comes from above (cf. James 3:17). Only then can the teacher cultivate wisdom in the young and simple. Only then will the teacher wisely order techniques, practices and assessments to the right ends.  The theology of wisdom thus helps us avoid the trap of technicism through its integrative vision, in which qualitative values rule quantitative measures. Moreover, the traditional and transcending pedagogy that a theology of wisdom implies prevents us from reducing education to modern technicism, even as it provides us with a way of integrating the valuable techniques it has birthed.

In this way a modern book of teaching techniques, like Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College, can be mined for its wisdom and then integrated into a classical vision of education that has broader aims than students’ mere economic success in life. Wisdom cries aloud in the educational marketplace, “You who are simple, seek wisdom!” Her path of wise integration is hard, but all other by-ways and shortcuts represent the easy roads of Folly.

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(See Jason’s article on CSI “7 Steps to Narrating the Bible”!)

In biblical studies we seek to cultivate the habits of reverence, humility, submission to the text, and other qualities of faithful scholarship. But I propose another goal should rise to the top: enjoyment. The enjoyment that students have in reading a novel, or an eerie poem, or an adventure epic. 

When students are engaging with the Bible, we should hear laughter and gasps. We should see quizzical eyebrows and wide-eyed shock. I love to see students jumping out of their seats to be picked to identify a ‘hidden’ motif of Joshua. To see awkward blushes and grins, in unfolding the romance of Ruth and Boaz. To see shock and dismay over the violence of Genesis. And I had to laugh at my student’s obvious frustration, annotating her way through the book of Judges, with its noted cycle of idolatry: “Oh no… This is so wrong… Oh why? … That was cruel… This is just sad… Be smart and think!… Not again!”

My students read through the entire biblical canon in community, and their literary enjoyment of it is a memory that will last. Whether visually depicting the imagery of a Psalm or orally narrating the downward spiral of Genesis, students will remember Scripture as profound, holy, and artistically compelling. St. Augustine quipped, 

“Perhaps someone inquires whether the authors whose divinely-inspired writings constitute the canon, which carries with it a most wholesome authority, are to be considered wise only, or eloquent as well. A question which to me… is very easily settled. For where I understand these writers, it seems to me not only that nothing can be wiser, but also that nothing can be more eloquent.” 

 On Christian Doctrine, section 9

Why have we often missed the literary beauty of the Scriptures? Why do we move so quickly to “personal application,” while failing to linger in the episodes and the larger, sweeping narrative? Many a theologian has noted that we throw out good reading skills when it comes to the Bible—cutting the text into bite-size daily chunks, reading without context in mind, failing to find the author’s key themes and motifs. 

We have our modernity to blame. Theologian Peter Leithart depicts the Enlightenment and subsequent theological disputes as having moved evangelicals toward only half of the equation: unfolding the literal meaning and the moral application. But in Rehabilitating the Quadriga, Leithart explains that modern readers have missed out on the riches of Scripture by overlooking the medieval fourfold approach. We have ignored allegorical (or typological) reading and anagogical (or forward-looking reading, in light of final things). He urges us to recover more ancient ways of reading Scripture. 

Many modern advocates of theological interpretation of scripture are seeking to revive the more ancient, literary and typological approach to Scripture, and the good news is that we can implement this in K-12 Bible classes, even without personal training in the field. We can apply best-practices from teaching other literature as we study the canon. Here are 5 practical tactics to cultivate an enjoyment of scripture through a literary approach:

1. Annotating a Reader Bible 

This methodology revolves around close-reading and annotating of the text, so it is crucial that students have their own copy of a simple pew Bible or reader Bible to serve as their consumable textbook. Most reader Bibles are published in 4-6 volumes to complete the canon, and they are available in most translations. Students will build a personal library of the whole biblical canon. The embossed hardcover on these reader Bibles simply say “Pentateuch” or “Poetry,” but inside, the Bible looks like a novel or set of poems. 

Students are taught to treat this book as the valuable resource it is—to mark it, underline, and annotate neatly in pencil. A black-and-white composition book completes the required resources. Students will add quotes to this commonplace book over the six years that they read through the canon. It is a solid setup for a literary approach: a hardcover “novel” plus a growing journal of quotations. 

2. Seeking Simplicity: Multum non Multa

In keeping with the classical principle of “much, not many things,” we should cultivate long-term focus on a text rather than jumping between many resources. Students can sustain attention through a whole book or whole canonical section.  

To strip away distractions, students are asked to read with a pencil on the text, annotating their way through a full book. But there are two ways to practice sustained attention: 

1) Close reading of dense chapters, full of meaning. (Read at least twice.) Or

2) Longer periods of reading through several chapters in one sitting. 

“Long form reading teaches the students to follow a plot, poem, or letter from start to finish,” noted Zach. “It also sharpens the students’ attention span by requiring them to work and remain focused. Long form reading isn’t done every class period, because we take time to dive-deep at key moments, but either way, students should interact with the text first-hand prior to the teachers dispensing information.”

It is best to read in a good translation, to follow-along on a hard-copy as a skilled reader reads relatively swiftly, and then stop and do a close reading at key moments. Since they wouldn’t stop after every paragraph of the Iliad (because it’s lengthy), they keep up a similar pace with much of the Bible’s historical narratives. Otherwise, it can be hard to finish! 

Both reading methods seem . . . basic. Does this reduce the role of the teacher or eliminate direct instruction? By no means. But it does mean that the teacher’s role switches from lecture to hands-on coaching in skills. “Students benefit from habits and routines,” Zach explained. “Learning to read Scripture is like apprenticeship. The teacher is the lead learner and should model habits that the students will acquire over time, after much repetition. Good biblical reading should be seen as training.” 

3. Embracing Literary Skills 

Students at Veritas Christian Academy (the school where I teach Pentateuch and OT historical books) quickly learn that they will utilize literary skills daily in Bible class. There is no way to follow a complex text without using tools of genre, structure, precise vocabulary and synonyms. 

Precise attention to language is also how biblical theologians do their work. Many insights found by scholars are missed by average readers only because one’s literary understanding has to be increased to see the connections. Bible study tools that have been discussed for decades (“Listen for repetition”) only work when students understand the range of synonyms for a given word. 

4. Connecting with Ancient History

Since the canon is a collection of texts written in ancient Hebrew and Greek, we need to spend more time entering into the world of ancient history. Zach notes,

“Those who authored the biblical text had many similarities to us, but they also saw the world differently and we should learn from their worldview. It requires the reader to take on an ancient imagination.”

But discussing ancient history doesn’t have to be a dry, scholarly affair. In fact, since Veritas’ reader Bibles don’t contain scholarly footnotes or commentary, students have to use class discussion to work out their existing knowledge of ancient cultures and enter into “what this probably meant.” 

And don’t underestimate how much ancient knowledge is gained simply through broad reading of the Old Testament. The importance of land, agriculture, fertility, offspring, local gods, and differing gender-social roles is evident directly in Genesis.

Unleash your students’ creativity in wondering what life was like before the modern era! How did the ancients pass on writing, produce needed goods, utilize power, or reason about natural and supernatural forces? Even a bit of ancient background and ancient imagination goes a long way. 

5. Unleashing a Hunt for Imagery

Recurring words and images create through-lines across the Bible. Teach students to listen for repeated ideas, even if they don’t use the exact same word, and even if they seem like a minor concrete detail. These details will add up to a richer, more beautiful story when we keep track of them. But because motifs lie under the surface, we have to act like detectives. Have you heard repetition and wondered, “Is this a whole-Bible motif?” Check a scholarly work like the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Then do some thinking: What would this image mean to ancient people? Where did we see this motif earlier? Does it run all the way from Genesis to Revelation?

“We can be a lead learner, training students as apprentices,” Zach encourages. “Equip them with skills they need to be those with ‘eyes to see’ and ‘ears to hear’ God’s words, and then let them experience their own journey. My students often see aspects of the biblical text that I haven’t even noticed. I appreciate how we get to journey toward truth together.” 

A literary approach to the Bible lays a rich feast of manifold, complex meaning. What better could we spread before our students? Yes, they will have the choice as they grow, whether to go on believing. But I don’t think people want to walk away from a feast of meaning that is so very rich. When you start to see everything in existence illuminated by the light of Christianity, with all these layers of meaning—every concrete thing having a deeper, poetic, symbolic meaning. That is very hard to walk away from. It would constitute a loss to move from sacred, poetic living into non-meaning. Bare atoms. Nothingness. The richer the theology, the more lasting the faith. The imagery of the Bible can fuel new imagination for a kingdom way of living.

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The starting premise may be surprising to some, especially those who tend to think of Christianity as a western religion. How can missionaries bring the gospel to a culture that has lived and breathed it for two millennia? Indeed, how can a civilization that has benefitted more than any other from Judeo-Christian values experience a renewed missionary encounter?

Some pastors, including Tim Keller, have suggested that reaching contemporary western culture for Christ may be the most difficult missionary frontier yet. The majority of westerners have some knowledge of Christianity, a vestige of a bygone era, but this knowledge is usually false or distorted. As a result, these caricatures of the orthodox Christian faith have come to serve as vaccinations (a fitting metaphor for our present moment) from hearing the gospel rightly. Newbigin himself believed that western culture had devolved into a pagan society, and its paganism is born out of the rejection of Christianity (20). 

Unfortunately, these caricatures are about all that is left of the so-called Christian West. The latest pew research is clear that Christianity is on the decline in North America and Europe, even if it is growing elsewhere. While it is true that many westerners still identify as “Christian” to describe their religious affiliation, and may even continue to participate in the Christian rite of baptizing their children, genuine and orthodox faith is absent. Whether it is due to disillusionment with tradition, the alleged conflict between faith and science, disdain for outdated religious moralism, or some other factor, westerners are abandoning orthodox Christianity.

With this backdrop in view, in this article I want to share three starting premises for teaching theology to our students. But first, I will comment briefly on our present cultural moment and the cheap theology our students often receive as a spurious substitute. Ultimately, I hope to encourage teachers and parents that the Christian faith can be effectively passed on with confidence when a proper theological foundation is put in place.

A Post-Post-Enlightenment

When Newbigin was writing in the late 20th century, western culture was still very much influenced by post-Enlightenment modernism, the belief that human reason could lead humanity out of the darkness of religious superstition and into a promising scientific era. Harnessing the power of inductive reasoning, modernists developed a scientific method to deliver humanity from the errors of the past and lead them to fact-driven certainty grounded in empiricism. 

As it turns out, there are multiple problems with this approach, though I won’t have space to spell them out here. But suffice it to say, we have learned through the aforementioned modernistic experiment that human reason is far more limited than once thought and human morality far less noble. The prophesied utopia was never realized, leading cultural analysts like Ross Douthat to believe we have entered instead into an “Age of Decadence.”

Most recently, western culture has entered a post-post-Enlightenment era (also known as Postmodernism) in which truth itself has undergone a re-tethering from objective reality to subjective experience. Truth can be found in each person, we are taught, and, consequently, what is true and right is dependent on the individual. There is no big story (i.e. a meta-narrative) that binds humanity together, whether it be religion, modern science, or something else. Each person is on their journey, seeking to cultivate the good that lies within.

The rise of the internet and, specifically, social media, hasn’t helped matters either. With the sheer amount of information available to users today as well as the algorithms designed by computer engineers to sort and present information users want to believe is true, it is difficult to know where to turn for reliable information, much less objective truth.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

If Christians in the West are going to raise their children in the faith, the first step is going to be a proper grounding in theology. When it comes to the development of our beliefs about God, i.e. the discipline of theology, we are heavily influenced by the culture around us. Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), a Dutch reformed theologian, makes precisely this observation when he writes, “In no domain of life are the intellect and the heart, reason and conscience, feeling and imagination, the epistemic source of truth but only the organs by which we perceive truth and make it our own” (Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt; 16). He goes on to explain that all humans are situated in particular concrete contexts and necessarily influenced by the world around them. This includes, in our case, the religious and theological formation of our students.

So what does the world around our students believe?

In 2005, sociologists Christian Smith and Melina Lundquist Denton published research on their findings about the religious beliefs of youth at the time. Compiled in their book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Today’s Teenagers (Oxford: 2005), their research indicated that the religious and spiritual practices of the day look very different from orthodox Christianity. They coined the term Moralistic Therapeutic Deism to describe this emerging religious phenomenon.

According to Smith and Denton, the creed of this “religion” reads as follows:

1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die (pp. 162-163).

As the authors observe, this religion is not about repenting of sin, keeping the Sabbath, living as a servant of the divine, observing religious holy days, or praying fervently. In other words, it looks nothing like traditional religion. Instead, it is a human-centric worldview in which God serves as the cosmic butler. He exists to answer the beck and call of our creaturely whims, being sure to not interfere when not summoned, and certainly not to give any divine mandates.

It hardly goes without saying that this cultural theology is a far cry from the theology taught in scripture and carefully handed down by the Christian tradition. It strips God of any real authority to govern his creation as he sees fit and instead places humans as the moral arbiters of the universe. Perhaps most importantly, it lacks the richest and most defining feature of Christianity: the grace available to all through repentance and trust in Jesus Christ.

Three Premises for Teaching Theology

While Smith and Denton published their research back in 2005, I think it is safe to say that much of the content of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism remains influential today. The high school students they were observing are now millennials in their early 30’s, beginning to raise families of their own. Meanwhile, Gen Z, today’s high school students, are even less likely to remain solidly orthodox in their beliefs (see this article from Barna, for instance).

Parents and teachers must therefore be intentional to pass on the faith, which includes teaching good theology. In the remainder of this article, I will offer three premises for teaching biblical and orthodox theology.

Premise 1: God is the transcendent creator of the universe, who exists independently of our thoughts about him.

God is the all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal and benevolent creator of the universe. There was not a time when He did not exist and there never will be. He is self-existing and self-sustaining. He created the world out of nothing to serve as a theater for His glory. He sent his Son into the world to rescue people from the domain of darkness and transform them as citizens of His kingdom. The Christian life is a matter of understanding and embracing this vision of reality. This is the gospel recorded in scripture and passed down through the centuries. 

As much as God desires our good, he doesn’t exist to make us happy. He desires to make us whole, to sanctify us through the power of the Holy Spirit. All of this he seeks to accomplish for his glory, to magnify his great name throughout his creation.

Premise 2: We would not know God without his divine self-revelation.

It was tempting during the modern era to approach the discipline of theology using the same empirical method as the natural sciences. Of course, committed modernists quickly realized that God is not a material being and therefore cannot be studied using the five senses. The result was either to ground theology in morality (Kant), a feeling of absolute dependence (Schleiermacher), or history of religions (Troeltsch).

Herman Bavinck, the Dutch theologian I mentioned earlier, offers a strong critique of these approaches. He writes, “One arrives at metaphysics, at a philosophy of religion, only if from another source one has gained the certainty that religion is not just an interesting phenomenon–comparable to belief in witches and ghosts–but truth, truth that God exists, reveals himself, and is knowable…the first theological step for a person of faith is to acknowledge revelation” (13). 

Here Bavinck makes the profound point that true theology, as an academic discipline, is only possible if God himself has revealed himself to us. This is a result of who God is: “If God exists and he is truly God, he cannot, by definition, be contained by our senses and reasoning. An accessible God, called up by our will, and under our our control cannot be said to be God” (14). 

Humans are completely incapable of knowing God, much less speaking about him, if he did not divinely disclose himself to us. Otherwise, he would not be God, but some finite entity our minds were capable of conjuring up on our own. Bavinck writes, “For a theologian to work with the reality of God, God must speak first. If theology is to deal with real knowledge, God must be knowable and have made himself known, and we human creatures must have the capacity to know God” (15).

Thanks be to God that he did speak first and did so through the gift of holy scripture. God has made himself known through the Old and New Testaments, and Christians can study the Bible with confidence that their beliefs come not from some human source, but from God’s own self-revelation.

Premise 3: All truth is God’s truth.

This may sound cliche at times, but it is a key starting point for basic Christian epistemology. In the quest for knowledge and understanding, this is an incredibly liberating yet guiding principle. Christian scholars can confidently engage in discussion, ask hard questions, and seek to discern the truth, knowing that when they do, it is truth grounded ultimately in God’s being himself.

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul writes,

“He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven, and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together .

Colossians 1:15-16, ESV

Here Paul explains that Christ is lord over all creation. There is not an aspect of the material world that is independent of Christ’s lordship, which in turn means that knowledge about the world ultimately concords with Christ himself. This does not mean, of course, that Christian scholars hold the corner on truth across the academic disciplines. It may be that some non-Christian scholars arrive at the truth on a matter before believers do. But what it does mean is that whatever the truth is, it exists under the domain of Christ.

When it comes to scholarship and the Bible, we don’t have to fear coming to believe something that is antithetical to the truths of scripture. The Bible is God’s Word and all truth is God’s truth. At the end of the day, all apparent conflicts between current scholarship and the Bible will fade into the distance. The truth will come to the light because the truth is ultimately God’s.

Conclusion

While there is much more that goes into raising children in the Christian faith, our approach must be grounded in good theology. This theology must be coherent, orthodox, and biblically-informed. As Lesslie Newbigin discovered when he returned from his time as a missionary in India, western culture is very much the new frontier of missions. There is more confusion and disbelief in the West today since the gospel first descended upon the Roman Empire, and it falls to today’s Christian parents and educators to ensure that this next generation is raised in the core doctrines of the Christian faith.

Among other things, we can do this through calling our students to narrate stories in the Bible and learn good habits for Christian scholarship. All of these efforts go to into the craft of teaching, a lifelong pursuit we can give our lives to as we seek to pass on what has been generously given to us.

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In today’s article, we will explore how Jesus founded a school of the prophets by gathering to himself a group of disciples. Thinking about Jesus not only as a prophet, but as a leader of a new prophetic schools will help us see his training methods in a new light. The insights we gain from this study of Jesus can transform our own classrooms into places where our students are cultivated to reach their full potential.

Previous articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 1: The Educational Heart of God

Part 2: Speaking Truth to Power

Part 3: The Schools of the Prophets

Prophets as Master Teachers

In my previous article in this series, we saw how the classic prophets were leaders in the schools of the prophets. The passing of the baton from Elijah to Elisha was a case in point, as the students – designated as the “sons of the prophets” – saw how Elisha bore Elijah’s mantle and accepted him as their new master prophet. The Old Testament establishes a mode of discipleship that is taken up in the New Testament. In the case of Elisha, we learn of the call of Elisha as a disciple of Elijah, who then follows Elijah on his prophetic mission. We can imagine that Elisha joined a number of other adherents to Elijah, but none of the other “sons of the prophets” is named or given a call narrative.

The article I wrote on Jesus as a learner proposed that Jesus joined the disciples of John the Baptist. This seems to have been an important fact to establish, since each of the gospels place John the Baptist at the very beginning of Jesus ministry. In fact, we can see ways in which Jesus’ early ministry is patterned after that of John the Baptist. When Jesus begins calling his own disciples, several are drawn from the group of disciples surrounding John the Baptist. In this way, the transition from John the Baptist to Jesus mirrors the transition from Elijah to Elisha.[1]

So a major insight into the person of Jesus Christ is that he is a master teacher in the tradition of the classic prophets who oversaw the schools of the prophets. This helps us understand why the gospels relate so many episodes of Jesus’ teachings. On one level, the teachings of Jesus are a storehouse of divine wisdom for all of his followers to live in light of the kingdom of God. On another level, the teachings of Jesus operate as a sign of a new work of God through Jesus to inaugurate a new people of God with Jesus gathering about him a new prophetic school.

Another major insight into the person of Christ is his nature as message itself. Not only is he the teacher, he is the teaching. From the beginning, the second person of the trinity was the mouthpiece of creation and the source of all revelation. In my book Ecclesiology and the Scriptural Narrative of 1 Peter, I make the case that in 1 Peter 1:12 we learn how Jesus spoke through the Old Testament prophets.

“The Spirit of Christ manifests the prophetic message of salvation and grace proclaimed by the prophets. Literally, the pre-existent Christ ‘pre-witnesses’ (προμαρτύρομαι) the work of Christ. While the prophets were mediators of divine messages regarding the Christ, it was Christ himself who spoke through them.” (53)

Patrick Egan, Ecclesiology and the Scriptural Narrative of 1 Peter (Pickwick, 2016), 53.

From this we gather that Jesus, as the incarnation of the second person of the trinity, was always the vessel of divine wisdom. It is in his nature to reveal prophetically. Therefore, we could say that from the beginning of time, Jesus was the master prophet in charge of prophecy, and that the process by which he assumed the role of prophetic leader was a mere formality.

The Disciples as a School of Prophets

The call of the twelve disciples can now be seen as a reinstatement of the discipleship pattern established in the old prophetic schools. Just as the prophets of old had disciples, Jesus calls to himself a group of disciples who will learn from the master prophet about the kingdom of God. The disciples walk and talk with Jesus during his travels throughout the Palestinian region. They bear witness to his miraculous works of healing and learn from his teachings. Sometimes his teaching episodes are exclusively for the benefit of the twelve, but often Jesus’ teachings unfold amidst the gathering crowds. The disciples sometimes asked probing questions after these large group teachings, clarifying difficult aspects of Jesus’ divine insights.

A stunning aspect of Jesus’ mentorship of his disciples is the fact that he sent them out on short missions. Matthew 10:5-15 records one such mission for the twelve. They were sent out with specific instructions. What I find particularly interesting is the correspondence between the message of the twelve and the first message of Jesus. The twelve are instructed to proclaim, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (10:7). Minus the initial charge to repent, this is the exact message of Jesus in Mathew 4:17. In my article on Jesus as learner, I noted how Jesus first message corresponds with that of John the Baptist, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (3:2) The modeling and rehearsing of the simple prophetic message gives us a profound insight into Jesus’ role as the head of a new school of the prophets.

The Gospel of Luke also contains the sending of the twelve (Luke 9:1-6). This is followed up with a mission on a much larger scale. In Luke 10, seventy-two others were sent in pairs. The message and procedures are very similar to the other commission narratives in the gospels. This next group is six times as large as the core group of disciples. Jesus seemed to be having a good season of enrollment in his school of the prophets! At the very least, we can say that the message of Jesus was being disseminated through the careful training of quite a number of students who were given opportunities for genuine field practice.

Prophetic Discipleship

In Peter’s second sermon in Acts, speaking in Jerusalem at Solomon’s Portico he carefully defines the role of prophecy for the people of God. He grounds prophecy in the speech of God, such that divine revelation is the true power behind prophecy (Acts 3:18). He also demonstrates that the proper response to prophecy is repentance (3:19). Peter then develops the concept that the entire lineage of prophets spoke about the restoration of the people of God through Jesus. In this context, Peter uses the phrase “sons of the prophets” to tell his audience that they are the sons of the prophets inasmuch as they respond appropriately to the call of God (3:25). From this we could say that the call to discipleship is a call to join the school of the prophets. This does not mean that we will have the kind of dynamic ministry that, say, Elijah had. But it does mean that we will live our lives in accordance with God’s revelation and that our speech aligns with this divine wisdom.

There is a pattern of discipleship throughout the Bible. One of the most meaningful passages for me has been 2 Timothy 2:2 where Paul advises Timothy to entrust the deposit of faith with faithful followers who will in turn teach others. In the prophetic tradition, discipleship does not make a follower into the image of the mentor. Instead, discipleship seeks to help the follower to learn the words of God and to be able to handle them well. This is actually the heart of effective teaching.

The Church as a School of the Prophets

Whether we draw upon the principle of discipleship in 2 Timothy 2:2 or consider the implications of the written Gospels, present-day followers of Jesus are part of a school of the prophets, so to speak. Jesus’s teachings were such that his disciples learned, shared and recorded them so that generations could learn from him. As the incarnate Word of God, we have that direct contact with God’s revelation through Jesus Christ in the gospels. The careful preservation of this word is expressed well in Richard Bauckham’s landmark work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Jesus the teacher carefully crafted his teachings to be easily memorable to promote preservation. Bauckham writes:

“In a predominantly oral society, not only do people deliberately remember but also teachers formulate their teachings so as to make them easily memorable. It has frequently been observed that Jesus’ teaching in its typically Synoptic forms has many features that facilitate remembering. . . . These teaching formulations were certainly not created by Jesus ad hoc, in the course of his teaching, but were carefully crafted, designed as concise encapsulations of his teaching that his hearers could take away, remember, ponder, and live by.”

Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans, 2006), 282.

We see this encapsulation in the early message of Jesus (“Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”) which has been shown to match exactly the message of John the Baptist and is then handed to the disciples as their message. Jesus deliberate teaching strategies has enabled generations of Jesus followers to continue to teach his words. The church has been handed the words of prophecy and the charge of prophecy. The Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20) is the passing of the baton to the disciples to take upon themselves a prophetic ministry. This commission is handed down to us, the church, to proclaim in the world God’s message of salvation.

Training the Prophetic Voice

There are several practical implications for us as teachers today when we think about Jesus as a teacher as well as the founder of a school of the prophets. First, our schools should be inundated with God’s word. Scripture is God-breathed and “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” (2 Tim 3:16) C.S. Lewis was concerned that modern education, with its focus on job training, was producing “men without chests.” One of the best ways to build up our students with warm-hearted Christianity is to help them learn the Bible as God’s message to them.

This leads to my second practical implication, which is very close to the first. We must help our students understand how to handle God’s word. It can be tricky learning about an ancient text with multiple authors and various genres. Some episodes in the Bible can be indelicate for young ears. We also need to be cautious about collapsing all subjects into a Bible lesson. So, we need moments in the day when we are intentionally training our students in how to interpret the Bible effectively. This doesn’t need to be done comprehensively, forming them into Bible scholars. But we do need to provide enough to stimulate their natural curiosity and interest as well as to enable them to engage in fruitful study on their own. We can also demonstrate in our different subject areas how to view the subject with a biblical worldview. How do we, as bible-believing Christians, think about mathematics, science, literature, or history? For me, I rarely bring in a specific Bible passage, but demonstrate through discussion that biblical faith is consistent and compatible with what we are exploring in different subjects.

Okay, so your students have learned lots of Bible passages and they’ve learned methods to interpret the Bible effectively, the next practical implication is for them to know how to translate God’s message for today. Most of my students walk in the door hearing lots of perspectives on the news today. It might be political in nature or it might pertain to the latest gossip out of Hollywood. There are moments when I need to divert the conversation away from controversy when I know the students can’t handle these things effectively. However, there are times when I take on board whatever topic they’ve brought in order to ask them, “What does the Bible have to say about this?” or “Is there a divine perspective on this?” or “What do you think God thinks about this?” Guiding students in this way helps them to see that a biblical worldview can help them navigate the complex issues of today. The goal is for them to make the connections between God’s divine wisdom and the contemporary problems that need to be addressed. Here’s where they get to practice their prophetic voices. Even though I am not sending them out two by two, they still get that training expressing God’s message for today.

Finally, as Christian schools, we should cultivate a Christ-centered approach to schooling. If Jesus is the eternal message – in John’s terms, the Word – spoken by the prophets of old and speaking through his followers today, then we should be constantly refocusing ourselves on the reality of his presence in our schools each day. “For where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matt. 18:20) This becomes the life blood of our schools. We cling to the cross of our salvation, being prompt to apologize and ask forgiveness. We celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, trusting in the transforming power of his holy spirit in our lives and the lives of our students.

Other articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 1: The Educational Heart of God

Part 2: Speaking Truth to Power

Part 3: The Schools of the Prophets

Part 5: Internalizing the Prophetic Message

Part 6: Classical Rhetoric for the Modern World

[1] Most commentators see a connection between the Elijah-Elisha narrative and the depiction of the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus. Perhaps Thomas Brodie has taken this idea the furthest by proposing that the Elijah-Elisha narrative was instrumental as a literary model behind each of the Gospels. See Thomas L. Brodie, The Crucial Bridge (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000).

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Similarly, within the Christian classical school movement, some have asked, “What has Charlotte Mason to do with Dorothy Sayers?” In other words, can the pedagogical insights of the British educator Charlotte Mason be conducive for classical education today? Where is there harmony? Where is there discord?

While a full treatment of this question, and the subsequent questions I posed, would require more than a single blog post, I want to begin the conversation by highlighting one prominent interpretation of classical education and then dispelling of two myths that would suggest Charlotte Mason and the tradition are at odds. The interpretation of classical education I will highlight comes from Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain’s The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education, which has become a seminal text in the Christian classical school movement.

A Paradigm for the Liberal Arts Tradition

To get started, let me first summarize Clark and Jain’s proposed paradigm for the liberal arts tradition. To be clear, I am not suggesting, nor do the authors, that this paradigm gets everything right about the western tradition of education. The history of education in western civilization spans millennia and cultures. It therefore encompasses a variety of thinkers and ideas that vary depending on their context and position within its development. Nevertheless, to suggest that there is no tradition at all is equally incorrect. Through careful study, we can observe some common threads present across time and place, which together bear witness to a single living tradition. It is precisely this rich heritage of education which Clark and Jain seek to uncover and illuminate for modern day scholars and practitioners alike.

The authors define the purpose of the liberal arts tradition in the West as follows: “Grounded in piety, Christian classical education cultivates the virtues of the student in body, heart, and mind while nurturing a love for wisdom under the lordship of Christ.” To unpack this purpose statement and help their readers keep the big picture in mind, they divide the paradigm into multiple categories—Piety, Gymnastic, Music, Arts, Philosophy, and Theology—or PGMAPT, for easy remembering. Let me briefly walk us through each category now.

Piety is the abiding love, gratitude, and loyalty members of a tradition share for their heritage. When fully realized, piety harnesses the heart and will toward a proper sense of duty for what has come before.

Gymnastic is the focused and intensive training of the physical body. As embodied souls, or ensouled bodies, humans must gain mastery of their physical bodies if they are to truly flourish in a physical world.

Music (not to be confused with the modern “subject” of music) tunes the heart to wonder, delight, and love. It forms the affections and moral imagination of the youngest students. Rather than focusing exclusively on instruments or singing, musical education is directed toward joyful engagement with reality. 

The Arts refer to the Liberal Arts, both the Trivium (language arts) and Quadrium (numerical arts). Together they are to be understood as the tools of learning, the intellectual skills required to create and justify knowledge.

Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge about the world, understood in a threefold division: knowledge about humans, nature, and metaphysics. Together these divisions point toward a single unified and synthetic view of knowledge and reality.

Finally, Theology is the study of divine revelation, which is the culmination of knowledge in the western educational tradition. Theology provides the unifying framework for all the liberal arts and sciences. 

The Learning Tree

Together these categories work together sequentially, resulting in a paradigm, or a comprehensive structuring, of the liberal arts tradition. To help their readers grasp this structuring, Clark and Jain liken it to a tree. 

The roots of the tree are piety, for, without piety, a person would have no reliable map or compass for one’s purpose in life. Piety serves both as a launching pad and source of sustenance for one’s understanding and approach to a meaningful life. Next come Gymnastic and Music, located on the lowest part of the tree trunk, indicating that these categories begin during the earliest years in a child’s education. Physical development and self-control, for example, are crucial during this stage. What initially begins with basic head movement and rolling on the floor quickly turns into crawling, walking, and soon enough, running and jumping. Likewise, the minds of children are incredibly active and curious, seeking to absorb everything in their paths. Therefore, the right stories, songs, and art should be offered and assimilated for their moral imaginations to flourish. 

With this foundation laid in the early years, training in the liberal arts occurs next. Not understood as stages in childhood development, but rather as dynamic tools of learning across grade levels, students learn how to use these tools as they engage with linguistic and mathematical content. The language tools have to do with all that is necessary to read and interpret a text, think critically, engage in discussion, and communicate both orally and in writing with eloquence. The number tools have to do with understanding the complex relationships between quantity, size, location, and shape, and then applying this knowledge toward practical outcomes. 

Together the liberal arts of language and number are the tools of learning that equip a student to think independently and dynamically. And while the training in these skills includes the transmission of some knowledge content, the focus is on honing skills that they may then go on to utilize in their own pursuits of knowledge down the road. Philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom, consists of all the subjects, or fields of knowledge, that one can study, such as chemistry, biology, economics, history, or literature. Philosophy, as the domain of all knowledge, is located at the highest point on the tree trunk, indicating that if a student has made her way up to this point, she is now ready to begin the real work of the tree: bearing fruit. This feature of the illustration is crucial for it reminds us as educators that the ultimate purpose of education is not mere knowledge, but virtue formation and the cultivation of desire directed toward the good, true, and beautiful.

And where does theology belong on the tree you might ask? Interestingly, theology itself is not located in any one particular place on the tree, but instead is situated above the tree. This unique positioning communicates that knowledge and understanding of the Triune God transcends all the other categories of education.

Dispelling Two Myths about Charlotte Mason and the Liberal Arts Tradition

Now that I’ve sketched out Clark and Jain’s comprehensive interpretation of the liberal arts tradition, I want to now dispose of two myths that question whether Charlotte Mason’s educational principles fit within the tradition.

The first myth is the simplistic notion that while Charlotte Mason emphasizes ideas, classical education focuses on something else entirely: facts. While it is true that Charlotte Mason greatly emphasizes the power of ideas, it is not accurate to say that classical education, or the liberal arts tradition more broadly, focuses on facts. The popularization of this viewpoint is, of course, understandable. The birth of the classical Christian school renewal movement began, in some ways, with Doug Wilson’s interpretation and application of the Trivium as he understood medievalist Dorothy Sayers to be explaining it. According to this treatment of the Trivium, the elementary years should focus exclusively on fact memorization as a way of honing the liberal art of grammar.

Recently, however, this view of grammar has been shown to be insufficient and inconsistent with the liberal arts tradition. The liberal art of grammar, as it would come to be shown, has more to do with reading and interpretation of language rather than fact memorization, and, additionally, was never historically confined to a particular stage in childhood development. So the idea that classical education necessarily elevates facts over ideas isn’t historically accurate and therefore not essential to the liberal arts tradition. More and more classical schools today are moving away from this approach, in fact, while retaining Sayers’ fundamental insight that young minds can and should be intellectually challenged appropriately. 

The second myth I wish to dispel is that Charlotte Mason elevated, above all else, the cultivation of a love for learning, while classical educators prioritize academic rigor. In response to this myth, let me say that Charlotte Mason was indeed passionate about awakening the minds of children to real knowledge. She believed that each child was a person made in the image of God, and, therefore, parents and teachers are limited to certain methods for raising and teaching these young scholars. She was deeply committed to educating children in a way that is befitting of their personhood: morally, spiritually, intellectually, and physically.

But this conviction is in no way incompatible with an academically rigorous education. In fact, it is reasonable to argue that this high view of children warrants an academically rigorous education properly defined. Children are not be treated as mere cattle on a farm or products on an assembly line. They enter this world with immense potential to think, create, explore, write, observe, perform, analyze, and more. As a result, the sort of work we give children to do in the classroom ought to activate and strengthen these capacities to the limits of each child’s potential. Charlotte Mason herself pokes fun at the sort of educational environments that are free of hardship, adversity, and genuine challenge. Humans, as it turns out, thrive in the face of challenge and experience real joy when coached to achieve excellence.

Now, to be sure, Charlotte Mason did question the usefulness of grades and competition as tactics for motivating children to learn. Stemming from her view of human minds as living and hungry for knowledge, she firmly believed that knowledge itself ought to be the reward for the worthy work of learning. Interestingly, the strength of intrinsic motivation for learning has been confirmed in recent literature. For example, in David Pink’s Drive, the author shows that modern research has revealed that for worthy tasks, like learning, intrinsic motivation is more powerful for long-term gains and sustained achievement. So although Charlotte Mason was careful to not permit motivators often associated with academic rigor to enter her classrooms, there turns out to be good reasons, which are actually a,menable toward academic rigor, for doing so.

Hopefully I have whet your appetite for the possible harmony Charlotte Mason and the liberal arts tradition may share. In my next article, I will continue the conversation through providing some specific examples, such as narration (download Jason’s eBook here), habit training (download Patrick’s eBook here), and nature study from Charlotte Mason’s pedagogical practices that fit within Clark and Jain’s PGMAPT paradigm. For now, I encourage educators today who are interested in synthesizing these inspiring approaches to education to step back into their classrooms and give these ideas a try!

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