“Umm,” you begin.

“It’s the trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric.”

“It’s…classical art and music. Like Beethoven and Mozart. Plus math and science.”

“It’s the pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty. And Latin.”

Now I would not say any of this is incorrect per se, but as Chuck Evans, author of Wisdom and Eloquence, has noted, the focus is on the features, or the “how” of classical education, not the “why.” The “why” of a movement or organization is going to be its ultimate purpose, cause, or belief. It will be rooted in a story that generates a visceral reaction.

To explore the “why” of classical education, this article will focus on a a pivotal time in the development of Western Civilization: the Golden Age of Greece.

What is Civilization?

Before I examine the history of ancient Athens, it is important to reflect briefly on the nature of civilization. As I discussed in my previous article, civilizations are difficult to create and even harder to preserve.

Historian Will Durant defines it as such:

“Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end.

For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.” 

Notice the defining feature of civilization: cultural creation. When the four elements Durant identifies are present, the resulting outcome is creativity and constructiveness for what can then become, what we will see in the Greek’s case, a free and flourishing society.

The Beginning of Democracy

In light of these insights about civilization, let us now to turn to the development of ancient Athenian society, specifically how democracy emerged in this context. To be clear, the Athenians did not necessarily weigh the different forms of government—dictatorships, aristocracies, and democracies—and choose democracy. Rather, they stumbled into it, classical warfare style.

In 507 B.C., a conflict broke out as Athenians sought to overthrow the tyrant Hippias. While the Spartan king Cleomenes was able to defeat this tyrant, he soon set up a pro-Spartan oligarchy, essentially a proxy state for Sparta. But then, in a surprising turn of events, an Athenian named Cleisthenes rallied his people and was able to take over control of Athenians, setting up equal rights for all citizens within a democratic structure.

Cleisthenes was instrumental in setting up ten districts, replacing a familial clan structure, in order to mitigate bias and align loyalty with the new democracy. Each district selected fifty representatives by lot to serve on the Council, which would submit proposals for approval or rejection by the Assembly, the gathering of all citizens, to make laws and resolve civil disputes.

Incidentally, Cleisthenes also introduced the idea of ostracism, whereby one could be banished for up to ten years with a vote of 6,000 citizens (of about 43,000 citizens total). In a tragic case of irony, we are told that Cleisthenes himself was ostracized at one point.

Now it is helpful to clarify here that the Greek view of citizenship was not rights-based. That is, citizenship was not grounded in natural human rights as we understand them today. Citizenship was based on one’s heritage. Both men and women could be citizenship, but only men could vote. So, as we can see, this Athenian democracy was far from perfect, but it was a step in the right direction for with citizenship comes responsibility, and responsibility implies freedom. Indeed, as Will Durant puts it, “Never before had the world seen so liberal a franchise, or so wide a spread of political power” (Will Durant, The Life of Greece, 267).

Democracy is Threatened

But would this nascent democracy last?

In 490 B.C., the Persian king, King Darius I (not to be confused with King Darius from the Bible), attempted to conquer Greece, a conglomerate of city-states such as Athens, Sparta, Argos, Syracuse, and so forth. But surprisingly, the Greeks held them off at the Battle of Marathon. The “Great King,” as he would be known, apparently did not realize that he was opposed by men who “owned the soil they tilled” and who “ruled the state that governed them.” They were free citizens, and with freedom, it turns out, comes fierce responsibility. 

As the story goes, after the Athenians won, one soldier, covered in blood, ran a far distance on foot back to Athens in order to share the news and declare victory. Upon arrival, he praised the goddess of victory, Nike, declaring “Rejoice, we have conquered!”, before falling over dead. This endeavor would inspire both the “marathon,” a long-distance foot race, and the name for a particular modern athletics company.

After his defeat, King Darius retreated back to Persia and was eventually succeeded by his son King Xerxes (known as King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther). King Xerxes sought to conquer Greece again, this time with an alleged two million soldiers. He defeated the Spartans at the famous Battle of Thermopolae, despite the courage and sacrifice of King Leonidas and his three hundred men.

Ultimately, at the decisive Battle of Salamis, the Athenians were able to give the Persians a final blow. By assembling a massive naval fleet, they soundly defeated the Persians. The story goes that Xerxes watched his ships burn to the ground from a distance, left a lieutenant in charge, and retreated back to Persia. The Persians would not return for over 1,000 years, during the rise the Ottoman empire.

With the Persians soundly defeated, the Athenians were now able to focus on creating and constructing their civilization. They rebuilt their city and set up a strong naval defense through founding the Delian league, uniting city-states across Greece, and moving the treasury to Athens.

This pivotal time in history would allow for one of the earliest and certainly the most well-known democracies of the ancient world to flourish. It would be marked by rule of the people, not a dictator. In fact, the military victories that occurred during the Greco-Persian Wars are so crucial for the future of Western Civilization that John Stuart Mill, the great economist, once stated the following:

“The Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings.” -John Stuart Mill      

The Golden Age of Greece

With the Persians dispelled, the golden era was ready to begin. It would be characterized by the rise of free peoples and an experiment for a short while in the exercise of individualistic freedom over communal dependence.

This era would also be known as “the Age of Pericles,” named for the great statesman who led many of the reforms and historic architectural feats. He built strong defensive walls around the city of Athens, strengthened the navy, and secured thirty years of peace with the Spartans.

It was during this time that an explosion of creativity occurred, including the building of the Parthenon, the great temple in honor of Athena, on the Acropolis. The arts, architecture, literature, mathematics, history, and philosophy all experienced historic creative innovations during this time.

Some examples of the art and architecture include:

Luminaries of this brief eighty-year period includes names such as:

• Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, and Aristophanes (Literature)
• Anaxagoras and Hippocrates (Math and Science)
• Herodotus and Thucydides (History)
• Parmenides, Democritus, and Socrates (Philosophy)

The Centrality of Education

In addition to all of this innovation in the arts, sciences, and learning, the Athenians also knew how important education would be for this civilization to continue.

If Athens was going to be ruled by the people, that is, citizens, not a group of oligarchs–or worse, a tyrant–then the citizenry needed to be educated. They need to think carefully about what makes for just laws, along with the virtues to promote, and vices to suppress. What leaders of character, called archons, to elect. How to ensure the right laws were well-argued for and represented in the assembly.

Freeborn boys were educated from age six to sixteen. They were brought to school by slaves called pedagogues where they were then taught by their teachers. The curriculum had three main divisions—writing (reading and math), music (the lyre), and gymnastics (wrestling, swimming, and using the bow or sling), and later drawing and painting.

Higher education was provided by professional rhetors and sophists, who offered instruction in oratory, science, philosophy, and history. These instructors were quite expensive, and would later be critiqued by Socrates as disingenuous at times, but they did their part of educating the citizenry to represent themselves well in assembly. For if a civil dispute occurred, citizens had to represent themselves in court before a jury of peers.

After age sixteen, boys were trained for military service and civic participation as soldier-youths. Through physical training and instruction in democratic governance, literature, music, geometry, and rhetoric, they were preparing for full-freight citizenry. At age 21, they would be formally admitted by taking a solemn oath to the state, ancestral faith, and legal order (Durant, 291).  

Thus the seeds of the liberal arts, the tools for a free people to create and construct, were born.

Conclusion

Although the Golden Age of Greece, manifested through Athenian democracy, only lasted around eighty years (480-399 B.C.), it would impact the future of civilization for centuries to come. Due to war with Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and encroaching Macedonian invaders led by Philip II, the Athenian democracy would eventually end. Historians often point to 399 B.C., when Socrates was tried and convicted in the assembly for impiety and the corruption of youth, as the turning point in this crucial age.

To be clear, the Athenian democracy was not perfect. Nor was Greek morality. It is important to note that there was a separate, and even more important civilization developing, which ran parallel to the Greeks at this time: the call of Abraham, the nation of Israel, the giving of the holy scriptures, and ultimately, the coming of Christ.

The eventual meeting of Athens and Jerusalem would become the great nexus of Western Civilization. With the fusion of the legacies of these two cities, this civilization would spark a new era for humanity. It would go on to produce some of the world’s first hospitals, orphanages, and universities. And it would promote distinct values of objective truth, human rights, equality, compassion, modern science, and human innovation. To be sure, this civilization has its flaws and dark moments, as all civilizations do, and yet we can also so say that it provided pivotal contributions for the flourishing of humanity. Future eras such as the Hellenistic period, the days of the Roman Empire, Christendom, the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment would all harken back to ancient Greece for inspiration and insight.

As classical Christian educators, the story of ancient Greece, particularly the “golden age” examined in this article, offers a glimpse into the sort of education we seek to pass on to our students today. For as G.K. Chesterton famously stated, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”

And as Will Durant cautions:

“For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization.”

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So begins the first chapter of the first volume of an eleven volume series by Will Durant entitled, “The Story of Civilization.” This series, which Will and his wife Ariel wrote over the course of four decades (1935-1975), covers the history of western civilization, from the ancient Near East to the Napoleonic conquests.

Durant begins his series by noting the preconditions and causal factors for a civilization to emerge in the first place. For example, if a region is frozen over by ice or if its soil is barren of nutrients, social order promoting cultural creation becomes very difficult. But as soon as these geological and geographical preconditions are met, the four causal factors for a civilization (economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and education) can begin to do their work. 

To illustrate the necessity of each of these factors, Durant turns first to economics. He writes, “A people may possess ordered institutions, a lofty moral code, and even a flair for the minor forms of art…and yet if it remains in the hunting stage…it will never quite pass from barbarism to civilization” (2). In this way, the economic transition to agriculture is a key form of development for a people as well as the building of towns and cities. For in cities, the wealth and brains of the region gather–to invent, to trade, to debate, and to create.

In the context of the civitas, the gathering of citizens, the other causal factors for the development of a civilization begin to gain traction. Political organization occurs through the creation of laws and formation of government. Moral traditions, rooted in values for the good of the community, develop. And the pursuit of knowledge and the arts launch a broader pursuit of truth and beauty that transcends mere survival. The harshness of life, from infant mortality to severe weather to social conflict, is offered meaning through moral narratives of purpose, hope, and redemption.

As the process of civilization unfolds, the civilization itself becomes its own form of independency, in some ways moving from effect to cause. Durant writes, “It is not the great race that makes the civilization, it is the great civilization that makes the people; circumstances geographical and economic create a culture, and the culture creates a type” (3). This type becomes the anchor of the civilization, the north star to which it it perpetually points. It is the set of ideals, the defining characteristics, of the city, the family, and the individual.

Thus we can see how civilizations begin, and can use this criteria to generally predict how they might end. The disappearance of any of the aforementioned conditions threaten to destroy them. For example: a geological catastrophe, a deadly pandemic, the failure of natural resources, mental or moral decay, the decline of social discipline, a lack of leadership, a pathological concentration of wealth, financial exhaustion, or declining fertility rates. 

Of course, the end of a civilization is not necessarily sudden or dramatic. Though Rome was sacked in 410 C.E., it was another fifty years before the empire fell. Nevertheless, the end of a civilization is in sight when its enduring values are lost. The set of ideals that define a civilization is its precious inheritance, a treasure that is to be faithfully passed on from generation to generation.

But what if this type, this set of ideals, is lost?

Five Crises Facing Western Civilization

In How to Save the West (Regnery Publishing, 2023), classicist Spencer Klavan identifies five major concerns that threaten the future of Western civilization specifically, moving this question from a theoretical exploration to an actual crisis. While he admits that it is a relatively recent practice to talk about “the West,” as a distinct historical phenomenon, historians and scholars are “…observing, in good faith, threads of continuity that stretch back through time and space” (xx). He therefore goes on to offer a working definition of “Western” as “the vast and complex inheritance of ‘Athens,’ the classical world, and ‘Jerusalem,’ the Jewish and Christian monotheists of the near east (xix).

This “inheritance,” I suggest, functions as the type, which Durant refers to as the foundation for a civilization. In the case of Western civilization, it is the set of ideals and masterpieces treasured through the generations that fit within a broader Great Conversation, full of wrong turns and dead ends, that nevertheless pursue a common vision for goodness, truth, and beauty. This conversation is not bound by race, ethnicity, or even geography. Nor is it restricted to a particular gender or social class. Rather, it is an unfolding story of humanity’s united search for meaning, composed of luminaries as diverse as Cicero and Frederick Douglass, Aeschylus and Shakespeare, Hildegard von Bingen and Abraham Lincoln.

While Klavan does frame his concerns in terms of a looming crisis at hand for the West, as a classicist, he helpfully reminds his readers that at every turn, a civilization can appears to be on the verge of collapse:

The intoxicating rise of Athens in the fifth century B.C. came to an abrupt and gory end in the Peloponnesian War. No sooner had the ancient Israelites made their way to God’s promised land than they strayed after foreign gods and suffered under foreign oppressors. The Western Roman empire crumbled into warring tribal oppressors; France’s revolution devolved from utopian optimism into terror and bloodshed; Communist uprising in Russia led to socialist dictatorship and millions of deaths” (xiv).

At the same time, here I am, in the twenty-first century, writing about Western civilization…in the West. Obviously certain events occurred which led for the transmission of the heritage to continue, for the ideas and values to be passed on. Whether it to be Jerome writing the Vulgate translation of scripture, Charlemagne sponsoring new schools, Celtic monks building libraries in medieval Europe, Johannes Gutenberg creating the moveable-type printing press, or American colonists creating a new republic, the civilization has endured.

Nevertheless, Klavan identifies five modern crises that could lead to its undoing, briefly stated as follows:

Crisis of Reality: A rejection of the eternality of objective truth and moral facts in favor of relativism, expediency, and virtual reality

Crisis of the Body: A rejection of the physical body with a turn to the inner self and posthuman technologies

Crisis of Meaning: A rejection of metanarrative, a transcendent explanation for existence that is grounded in objective truth

Crisis of Religion: A rejection of belief in God in exchange for a misplaced confidence in modern science

Crisis of the Regime: A rejection of the principles for a republic to endure, such as rule by law, popular sovereignty, and checks and balances

Solution: Educate One Child at a Time

It is beyond the scope of this article to explore each crisis in detail, much less to review the solutions Klavan suggests. A strategy for saving the West from the crises above is complex, multi-layered, and requires a deeper dive into ideas and philosophy.

At the risk of appearing simplistic, however, I want to suggest one straightforward strategy that could slow down these trends, if not reverse them: educate one child at a time according to enduring biblical values.

The 19th and early 20th century British educator Charlotte Mason famously championed the idea that children are persons. Created with immense potential as divine image-bearers, they enter the world eager to explore, create, build, think, and love. Education, then, is the process of helping children encounter the relations of the world they are born into–relations with God, others, creation, and knowledge. In this way, Mason famously called education “the science of relations.” By simply teaching children in a way that exposes them to enduring stories, poetry, nature, music, art, math, and science, we are forming them in a biblical view of reality that will enable them to respond accordingly.

After all, the underlying thread of the five crises described above is simple: a rejection of goodness, truth, and beauty. By offering an education that introduces children to these ideas, we shape their views of knowledge, reality, morality, and desire. This, in turn, will shape them into people who not only keep the economy going (one of the four factors of a civilization), but can run government, pass on moral traditions, and uphold an unrelenting pursuit of knowledge.

Mason writes,

We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. ‘Thou hast set my feet in a large room;’ should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him? (School Education, p. 170).

Notice the end goal for Mason: living a full life. Is this not the proper end of education and civilization itself?

And how do we go about this education for a full life? Mason gives us a clue:

I know you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. We give him miserable little text-books, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination; or we give him various knowledge in the form of warm diluents, prepared by his teacher with perhaps some grains of living thought to the gallon. And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children. (School Education, p. 171)

Conclusion

G.K. Chesterton famously stated, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” Through this exploration of civilizations–factors for their beginning and crises that can lead to their demise–we can understand this insight with fresh perspective. Great civilizations do not occur by accident. Certain preconditions must be met, and, on top of these preconditions, specific causal factors are at play.

Civilizations continue when they take on an existence of their own, grounded in an ideal type, which functions as the north star for the ongoing formation of its inhabitants. When this type is preserved, the civilization flourishes and human flourishing is the result. But when we lose sight of this ideal, the ground becomes shaky, moral intuitions uncertain, and truth itself up for grabs.

There is, therefore, work before us now as there is in every era. For, as Will Durant puts it, “For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization” (4).

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It is a great irony, therefore, that even while western society continues to secularize, leaving belief in the Christian faith behind, its moral instincts remain largely unchanged. Westerners do not question the existence of human rights. Nor do they doubt the equal moral standing of all people, the obligation of the strong to care for the weak, the rich to care for the poor, the benefits of education, the importance of a scientific understanding of the world, or the value in reforming society of its evils and injustices. Westerners do not need to be convinced of these values. They are, as Scrivener puts it, “the air we breathe.” 

Tom Holland, a British historian who himself is an atheist, has played a key role in shaping Scrivener’s thinking on the topic. In Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (Basic Books, 2019), he contrasts the moral universe of modern western society with its ancient form in classical antiquity. Holland admits that even while his belief in God has faded over the course of his lifetime, he did not cease to be “Christian” in his thinking. The historian observes, “So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilization that it has come to be hidden from view” (17).

In other words, just as a goldfish has no conscious awareness of the concept of water, much less its H20 chemical composition, westerners today do not realize they live in a “Christian” world. They are living off the moral inheritance of a bygone era, prompting the question: What if the inheritance runs out?

In this article, I will explore one theory regarding how we reached this paradoxical moment in which society has left Christianity behind but retained vestiges of its moral foundation. Then I will offer some thoughts regarding how educators can equip the next generation of Christians to not only steward the inheritance, but contribute to it. Ultimately, I will argue that the new (ex-Christian) moral order, characterized by individual pluralistic spirituality and a preoccupation on happiness in this life, requires Christian educators to point students back to biblical, orthodox Christian thought and practice. This approach should be characterized by emphasizing the transcendence of God, the riches of Christian tradition, and the joy of following Christ within a local church community.

The Paganism of Secularism

In Remaking the World (Crossway, 2023), pastor and author Andrew Wilson offers a nuanced explanation for the rise of secularism in the Modern West. While simplistic explanations point to the displacement of religion via modern science, Wilson suggests that two ideologies emerged in the post-Reformation era that together became the theological parents of secularism: paganism and protestantism.

When Wilson refers to paganism, he does not have in mind animal sacrifices and witchcraft. Following intellectual historian Peter Gay, he observes that underlying the Enlightenment’s focus on progress and human reason lies a common appreciation for pagan antiquity and classical learning. There was something about the classical era that captured the attention of Enlightenment philosophes such as Diderot, Gibbon, Kant, and Hume. They revered the Greeks and Romans for their contributions to philosophy, mathematics, science, rhetoric, and lyrical beauty. This is easy enough to see on a visit to Washington D.C. The neo-classical architecture of a city erected following the Enlightenment is evident.

The reverence and appreciation for this pre-Christian intellectual era is one shared element between paganism and what will become modern secularism. But more importantly, the philosophes of the Enlightenment adopted the pagan worldview about the location of the sacred. Numinous encounters of the divine are a shared universal human experience. But where do these experiences come from? There are basically two answers: from this world or somewhere else. In classical paganism, the gods and goddesses possess supernatural power, and yet, they are still contained within this world. In contrast, the Christian response is that the origin of the sacred is a different world entirely, a spiritual realm ruled by a transcendent God.

There is therefore a surprising analogy between ancient paganism and modern secularism. Pagans and secularists alike look to life on earth for meaning and purpose. As Wilson puts it “The holy, the numinous and the sublime were essentially immanent rather than transcendent. And right across the ex-Christian spectrum, this had a significant impact on the way people thought about nature, art, sex, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (151). Why search for the sacred in a world beyond if it can be found here in our cosmos?

The Disruption of Protestantism

The other theological parent of modern secularism, according to Wilson (a practicing Anglican), is protestantism. In Wilson’s view, there are four main ways protestantism contributed, in partnership with modern paganism, to the present “Christian” society albeit without Christianity:

1. Protestantism created an ecclesial disaster, shattering medieval Christendom into a thousand pieces, by replacing church authority with the autonomous self. Salvation became a matter of heartfelt faith rather than a religious state overseen by the Catholic church.
2. Protestantism caused division within the Church by turning its guns, not merely on church leaders, but on Church doctrine itself. The Church was replaced by churches, which inevitably led to the call for religious toleration and the privatization of religion. With a vacuum for central authority up for grabs, experimental science took its place as the modern uncontested gatekeeper of truth. 
3. Protestantism engendered disenchantment by replacing a spiritually-infused enchanted world with an approach in which the individual’s inward experience takes precedent over pious practices and superstition. Insisting on the authority of Scripture alone and the importance of personal faith, spiritual flourishing became possible through an immanent frame, as philosopher Charles Taylor would put it.
4. Protestantism weaponized religious doubt through normalizing public skepticism and disdain for Church doctrine and authority. Thus, skepticism became a natural step in the modern religious experience and not all pilgrims, including today, successfully overcome doubt to reach enduring faith.

While each of these points requires further elaboration, which Wilson provides, the upshot is that protestantism brought about significant change in the way Christians in the West approached their religion. It inadvertently led to the emergence of a religious menu, full of attractive options, to be selected by the consumer. Coupled with the paganism described above, the modern milieu emerged in which a person’s religious and existential needs for the sacred and a higher purpose could be met individualistically and pluralistically in this world.

Educating Protestant Pagans

This modern mindset toward religion is what Wilson calls protestant paganism. He writes, “Ex-Christianity in the modern West is the unwitting product of both these forces working together. Paganism, which has always seen the sacred as immanent and ultimacy as located within this world of space and time, reacted with the divisions and doubts brought by Protestantism, and produced a new entity” (156). It is a religion in which its adherents focus on the inward spiritual experience of the individual and practice moral virtues that bring happiness in this life.

Now we need to talk about education. In light of this proposed account for the “Christian air” society “breaths” without realizing it, how can we educate our students to be orthodox Christians rather than protestant pagans? 

I want to make five suggestions:

First, we ought to incorporate into our schools the recitation of historic Christian creeds. As a Protestant myself, I am in full support of shepherding each student to make a personal decision to put their faith in Jesus Christ. We can nourish individual faith with corporate confession of what we believe as educational institutions in support of the church.

Second, we ought to lead our faculty and students to reflect on the transcendent and holy character of God. This can happen through public scripture readings, worship, and prayer. But the focus of the time should be on God’s being and works, not merely ourselves. The integration of faith and learning can lead students to experience harmony between what they believe and what they think.

Third, we should pass on the riches of the classical tradition–the art, the philosophy, the myths–as a foil for Christianity. As classical schools, we share with pride that our students can recite the myth of Heracles, explain Plato’s forms, and read the epic of Virgil’s Aeneid. Sometimes we can lose sight of the fact that as Christians we pass on this legacy because of the role it plays in a greater legacy, the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

Fourth, we should explicitly help students make connections between the modern values of the day with biblical teaching and Christian thought. Our students need to understand that human rights, science, justice, and compassion are God’s ideas. While contemporary culture has found a way to divorce its inherited morality from its Christian theological origins, at least for now, we can brighten the lines around the genealogy of our culture’s morals (to quote Nietsche!).

Finally, we must lift up the name of Christ over and above these inherited values. As Scrivener himself indicates, if western society abandons Christ, but retains the values, we will be left with legalistic judgment (200). Values can only judge while persons are required to forgive. Our students need to be regularly reminded of the gospel. Moral values and virtues do not save them. Jesus does.

As Western society continues to live off the inheritance of its Christian heritage, there is a crucial role Christians can play. Through are unity with Christ, we have an opportunity to not merely live off the inheritance ourselves, but contribute new deposits. It may be that the inheritance will one day run out. If it does, I hope I am not around to see it. Or it may be that through the faithful and quiet laboring of churches and schools, the inheritance grows and the light once again shines.

As Jesus taught his disciples:

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:14-16 (ESV)

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Previous articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 1: The Educational Heart of God

A Sweltering Day in August 1963

His white, button-down shirt with rolled up sleeves shows a man working diligently. With pencil in hand, he revises some thoughts that had been rehearsed in small settings over the course of the preceding years. This is the calm before the storm. A simple office provided to Martin Luther King, Jr. offered a little space to think and to write on the eve of the March on Washington, August 28, 1963. It’s an image of Rev. King alone, cerebral and dispassionate. According to legend, the prepared notes had no reference to the phrase “I have a dream.”

It was in this setting that a masterpiece was prepared. Rev. King referred extensively to the Bible, with allusions to the Psalter, Isaiah, Amos and Galatians interspersed, anchoring his speech to the biblical prophetic tradition. American patriotism rings through as well, with references to the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the national hymn “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” Literary allusions permeate the speech, with a deft rephrasing of one of Shakespeare’s famous lines in Richard III. The man was clearly a well-educated minister, perhaps seizing a moment of national television coverage to showcase his rhetorical sophistication.

Contrast the staid moment of solitude with the thronging crowds on the National Mall gathered near a body of water (the Reflecting Pool) looking at the mountain of steps leading up to the Lincoln Memorial. It was a full day, with numerous speakers and singers preceding Rev. King. The recently deceased John Lewis had spoken earlier in the day. Many celebrities and dignitaries turned out for the event. This was a charged moment, so much so that Rev. King caught a moment of lightning that took his prepared notes to another level.

As legend has it, Mahalia Jackson, who had sung “How I Got Over” earlier in the program, called out in the middle of speech, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” Rev. King departed from his notes and improvised with cadences of “I have a dream” punctuating the speech about two-thirds of the way through. It became something more than a speech. Martin Luther King, Jr. experienced a moment of transcendence that crystallized what the civil rights movement was all about. This speech directly contributed to a wellspring of support for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation and outlawed discrimination.

Speaking Truth to Power

The phrase, “speaking truth to power,” is the essence of the prophetic voice. The nature of truth is funny, though. The Correspondence Theory, as expressed by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, says that a statement or proposition is true to the extent that it corresponds to the way the universe actually is. If I were to say I live in Chicago, the truth of that statement would have to correspond to factual reality. For most people living outside the Chicagoland area, to say I live in Chicago is good enough. It is an approximate reality, because Chicago is the nearest major city to where I live. But in fact, I don’t live within the city limits of Chicago. My proposition doesn’t correspond to the world as it actually is. So have I actually told a falsehood?

The power of this little fact of where I live is fairly minuscule. Thus we might call it a little, white lie. It’s fairly inconsequential in most circumstances. It’s also not the kind of truth we’re talking about when we consider what it means to speak truth to power. One of the limitations of a formal definition of truth is the inability to handle subjective values, such as goodness, beauty, justice and so forth. But it is exactly these kinds of values that we mean when we speak about truth in the context of enacting meaningful change in society.

Aristotle is once again helpful, this time drawing upon The Art of Rhetoric. In his opening chapter, he begins a definition of rhetoric through comparison with dialectic. In both dialectic and rhetoric, one poses two or more points to be examined and debated, with the view of arriving at the truth through a process of logical evaluation. Aristotle writes:

“Rhetoric is useful, because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible; our proofs and arguments must rest on generally accepted principles, as we said in the Topics, when speaking of converse with the multitude.”

Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.1.12

What Aristotle is saying here is that truth and justice, although obviously better than falsehood and injustice, are not always decided upon by those who advocate for certain policies in society. Moreover, even if we were able to produce scientific facts, we would need to instruct the “other side” as though we were educating them. However, we often don’t have that kind of time, so the art of persuasion must be used to convince the “other side” of the truth and justice of one’s perspective. Aristotle continues:

“Further, the orator should be able to prove opposites, as in logical arguments; not that we should do both (for one ought not to persuade people to do what is wrong), but that the real state of the case may not escape us, and that we ourselves may be able to counteract false arguments, if another makes an unfair use of them.”

Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.1.12

Here Aristotle suggests that the one speaking truth to power should be able to take on board the opposite viewpoint, in order to point out and counteract falsehood. This begins to get at the heart of our nature as human beings. In our search for truth and justice, we are prone to error and corruption. Therefore we need such arts as dialectic and rhetoric to challenge our thinking as individuals and as a society so that truth might emerge despite our limitations.

Truth in a Free Society

Perhaps the most cherished freedom in our society is the freedom of speech. Given what has just been stated about our human nature, the freedom of speech is actually the freedom to be wrong. It would be impossible to make people pass a truth test before they could speak freely. For one, who could pass such a test, knowing the limits of our knowledge and the complex motives that stand behind our utterances? More concerning would be the question of who gets to make the test that would grant freedom of speech to others. That kind of power would mean that certain people could set a standard based on their own limited understanding of what they think is true. This would be unjust and tyrannical. Therefore a free society must allow all people to speak freely, which means most free speech will be wrong to some degree.

So where is hope to be found, if everyone is basically wrong to some degree? The implication of freedom of speech is that our society would be a place of discourse where ideas are put forward equitably such that the best ideas – those that are true, good and just – would prevail. Certain ideas rise to the top, with a majority persuaded of its virtues. However, these ideas must simultaneously be challenged by those who hold the minority position. It is interesting to examine how the framers of the U.S. Constitution sought to protect the minority viewpoint through mechanisms like the separation of powers, checks and balances, a bicameral legislature, and term limits, to name a few.

Western democracies have established discourse and debate as a means to providing the greatest possible common good by validating the role of the individual’s right to speak freely, even if what is spoken is incorrect or offensive. In keeping with Aristotle’s rhetorical theory, it is best to have people speak out what they actually think, so that we can fully examine the truth or lack thereof. We can trust that if a person speaks falsely or offensively, people will let them know. This is the hope of Western society; that truth can be spoken even by those not in power.

Social Media, Ideological Possession and Echo Chambers

One of the tragedies of our society has been the erosion of genuine debate and discourse. We get the false impression that we are engaged in debate and discourse through social media. But what we most often find on Facebook feeds or in the comments sections of websites is something more like a drive-by shooting. Facts and opinions are fired from the protected silo our devices provide. We rarely have to look a person in the eye, but instead type up charged communiques with a sense of our own anonymity. Social media exacerbates the lack of serious engagement of issues due to its ever-present and instantaneous nature. We are lured into thinking we are engaging in civil discourse, but in actuality it is anything but civil.

Into this environment we can place the concept of ideological possession. I have written a bit about Jordan Peterson in the past. In an interview with Helen Lewis, Peterson described what it looks like when a person is beholden to a particular ideology:

“So, you’re not … integrating the specifics of your personal experience with what you’ve been taught, to synthesize something that’s genuine and surprising, and engaging in a narrative sense as a consequence. And that’s the pathology of ideological possession. It’s not good. And it’s not good that I know where you stand on things once I know a few things. It’s like … why have a conversation? I already know where you stand on things.”

Interview of Jordan Peterson by Helen Lewis for British GQ

This is the kind of person who has taken a position on a particular set of issues, yet most of the thought has not been original. They have downloaded a set of ideas from a prominent voice on the right or on the left. The prepackaging of the ideas from favored media outlets makes it convenient for individual to not actually think but react. This is different from the person who has carefully worked out a theory or philosophy on their own. They posses their ideas rather than ideas possessing them. The effort to work out a theory or philosophy means they are skilled at considering new information and either synthesizing it or countering it in a thoughtful way.

An echo tells back what we have spoken. One of the liabilities of politically aligned news outlets is that people can live within echo chambers that reinforce their ideological possession. lt feels like thoughtful interaction with the news of our day. But without listening to ideas and viewpoints that challenge us, we are liable to reinforce a conception of truth with no assistance to root out the error of our thinking. Being loud and proud about things we think we know (but is probably only just what we heard on YouTube) is very different than speaking with a prophetic voice.

Training the Prophetic Voice

Let’s return to the two images of Martin Luther King, Jr. One image is of the man preparing. The other is of the man exercising his prophetic voice. For me this models our educational program. The second image is of a person at the right place, at the right time, with the best opportunity to deliver a compelling message challenging injustice and calling for reform. This is quite rare and not to be expected by all rhetoricians or by every would-be prophet.

It is the first image, the man in solitude gathering the thoughts of many centuries. Rev. King assimilated into himself the wisdom of his biblical faith and the wisdom of his Western heritage. The ideas of Western civilization were the means by which he perceived a way to correct the corruption of that very same Western civilization.

This is what we are doing now in our classrooms. We are giving our students the tools they need to assess and evaluate the cultural heritage we are imparting to them. I mentioned in our teacher training recently that in educating our young ones, we are passing the cultural baton to the next generation. That’s why it is so important to teach the Greeks and the Romans, the Italian Renaissance, Shakespeare, the U.S. and French revolutions, the World Wars, the Civil Rights movement and so one. We are providing them with the best authors and the best ideas our society has produced. But we do so knowing that for as good as that tradition is, it is also a corrupt tradition. We remain the kind of society that would enslave or murder if given the chance. But we are equally the kind of society that would emancipate and protect the vulnerable if given the opportunity. We pass on our cultural heritage saying, “We tried our best to root out some of the corruption, but there’s still some there. Now you try the best you can.”

Training students to have a prophetic voice means that we are validating and supporting the personhood of each individual student. We are calling them to seek for truth wherever it can be found. And when they find it, they will utilize the resources and skills they’ve acquired to promote and defend the truth in a society that needs their contribution to the great discourse.

Other articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 1: The Educational Heart of God

Part 3: The Schools of the Prophets

Part 4: Jesus as Prophetic Trainer

Part 5: Internalizing the Prophetic Message

Part 6: Classical Rhetoric for the Modern World

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An infectious disease causes a pandemic that decimates the major urban centers in northern Italy. Doctors are recognized by their masks. The economy is disrupted through the loss of a workforce. The social order is overturned. Many turn to religion as a response to the pandemic, yet dogmatic norms are questioned. The pope issues indulgences for both those who must practice social distancing as well as for those who are deceased. 

The parallels are stunning. It’s truly hard to tell if we’re talking about the 14th century or the 21st century. The parallels, though, enable us to comprehend our own situation by analyzing a previous situation. In doing so, we can start to plan for an uncertain future by considering new possibilities that are likely to emerge in a post-COVID-19 society. After taking stock of the outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1348 and its impact on European society thereafter, we can then consider some of the similarities and differences between then and now. The goal is to identify how we can anticipate changes in education that are likely to emerge after COVID-19. Last week Kolby wrote an excellent article that looks at our present situation, giving guidance for how we can best approach education while we are social distancing. This article looks to the past to help us consider a possible future.

The End of an Era

It’s important to recognize that the people of the middle ages didn’t think of themselves as the people of the middle ages. It is a label we’ve placed on a rather long era from the fall of Rome (476) to the fall of Constantinople (1453). There was no headline, though, in 476 that stated “The Middle Ages has Begun.” It is difficult to argue that the middle ages is indeed a coherent label for the 1000 year span. So much developed during that time frame that the label becomes meaningless. Yet when we think of three major eras: the ancient world, the middle ages, and the modern world, we can see how the middle ages functions as a bridge from the ancient world to today. The bubonic plague is one of the major events that demarcates a change in era. Europe in 1347 looked and operated very differently than Europe after 1453. We could say, then, that the bubonic plague began the end of an era.

What was the bubonic plague? The strain of bacterium called Yersinia pestis was carried by fleas and rats transported from the East to the West on trade ships. It is not surprising that Genoa and Venice were the epicenters of the European pandemic, as they were the most eminent trade ports in the 14th century. Marco Polo, for instance, was a Venetian who opened up new trade with the East. Venice dominated trade and became a center of massive wealth. The communication between the far East and the West directly led to new ideas and innovations pouring into Europe. But it also opened Europe up to a new infectious disease, and Europe was not well positioned to meet the challenges of Yersinia pestis. Something like 20,000,000 people (or roughly 30% of the population) in Europe died of the bubonic plague during the 1350s. One can only imagine the fear that spread throughout Europe as everyone was either directly or indirectly impacted by the plague.

The structure of society shifted drastically, eventually leading to massive economic, political, religious and social changes. The feudal system of lords and serfs eroded as the decrease of property value diminished the power of the lords and as labor shortages encouraged serfs to leave manors in search of higher wages. Confrontation with death and mortality caused many to become cynical and many others to become religious. The hegemony of the Roman Catholic church in European society slowly broke up. Many priests who were called upon to give last rites themselves contracted the disease. New priests were rapidly ordained with less training, leading to an erosion of theology and an increase in corruption within the church. Simultaneously, major centers of learning began producing new thought leaders questioning the authority of the church.

The Protestant Reformation can be seen as a consequence of the shifts in society caused by the Black Plague. Education turned away from the authority of the church and toward human reason and the autonomous individual, namely humanism. (Too often humanism is viewed as an anti-religious philosophy; however, I see no evidence that humanists were anti-religious. Instead, humanists examined religion critically as they did every element of society. When we look at the art of the humanists, they were as inclined to treat religious themes as any other.) The end of Christendom meant the emergence of new political configurations, approximating something like the nations we now know in Europe. In other words, many of the trends that demarcate post-medieval Europe from the middle ages can be traced directly or indirectly to the outbreak of the bubonic plague in the 1350s. The 1350s may not have been the end of an era, but it was at least the beginning of the end of the era.

An Educational Renaissance

The impact of the bubonic plague on education was significant. Almost immediately after the outbreak of the plague, students vacated centers of education, such as the new universities that had popped up in northern Italy, Paris and Oxford. The loss of enrollment and qualified educators led to the decline in the quality of education between 1350 and 1380 (See William J. Courtenay. “The Effect of the Black Death on English Higher Education.” Speculum 55 (1980): 696-714.) However, given the massive decline in the general population due to the plague, it’s all the more surprising to find that enrollment at places such as Oxford increased already by 1375, so much so that Oxford established New College in 1379. It is interesting to note that four colleges at Cambridge were established during the heart of the bubonic pandemic – Pembroke (1347), Gonville and Caius (1348), Trinity Hall (1350), and Corpus Christi (1352) – perhaps indicating that a flourishing of education was already underway concurrently with the plague.

The long-term increase in enrollment against the backdrop of a decrease in population is a curious matter. All the more curious is the increased enrollment in theological programs at Oxford. Courtenay (“Effect,” 713) looks at several economic reasons why enrollment in theology flourished after the pandemic of the 1350s. A significant factor was the increased mobility and improved conditions of the European peasantry, especially in places like Italy and England. Families who would have never imagined a university-bound son were now able to place their child in the path of learning. This began in the local feeder or prep schools, where children learned basic writing, English and Latin grammar, as well as hymns and songs to support the weekly mass. Parish children would have learned in monastic schools. Boys as young as 13 could expect to sit entrance exams for the universities.

Obviously society didn’t experience a complete upheaval, and the peasantry of the 1300s didn’t become like the middle class of today. But enough people were able to take advantage of the economic circumstances of the post-plague situation to enroll in theological studies. Apart from economic circumstances, I would venture to guess that the plague inspired theological reflection in light of the confrontation with death and mortality. A yearning for theological insight seems to be a natural response to a global pandemic.

The implications of this new rise in enrollment at local schools and universities led to an educational renaissance and in time to the historical Renaissance. We can see how the devastating impact of the bubonic plague cleared the ground for new people and new ideas to emerge. Concern for society and the role of the individual led to Humanistic ideas. I’ve written previously about how in the unsettling events of the 14th and 15th centuries people looked to the past for guidance in making a new future. The classics were read once more, with profound political and religious movements emerging, most notably the Protestant Reformation.

Our Plague and Our Educational Renaissance

More and more figures are speaking out that there will be no return to normal after COVID-19. When we look back on the bubonic plague in the 1350s, there was no return to normal. There are many significant differences between then and now. They were dealing with a bacterium, and we are dealing with a virus. They had terrible standards of hygiene. We have a superior medical system. But there are some lessons we can learn that may help prepare us for what is to come after our plague.

First, we should be prepared for an overturned society. My family is fortunate that we can all work from home. My children can do online learning at home. My wife and I can work remotely. But what about those who can’t work remotely. I think about those people who have to work at the factory to make the face masks, the hand sanitizer, the toilet paper, and the respirators that we need. Will there be economic trends that enable the poorer segments of our society to be more upwardly mobile? I hope so. Will we classical Christian schools be prepared to receive new enrollment? We should have already been marketing our educational model to communities who assume their kids don’t belong at our schools. But if we haven’t been, now is the time to make ourselves known in under-served segments of our society.

Second, we should expect new interest in theological and spiritual reflection. Whenever we are confronted by death and our own mortality, a window of opportunity opens for gospel proclamation. The dance macabre image at the top of this article is a portion of a larger painting by Bernt Notke from St. Nicholas Church in Estonia. The church in the 1300s was able to conceptualize the seriousness of the pandemic, while also playfully addressing our human nature. Yes, we are frail, but we are not left without hope. The cross and the resurrection are ours to proclaim. We can expect greater cynicism about God and faith. The more people question biblical Christianity, the more we need to be prepared to teach. I would anticipate that a post-COVID-19 world will see people dissatisfied by secular mass schooling. Small schools teaching biblical Christianity will become more attractive in the wake of our plague.

Third, we should anticipate a turn to the past to chart the future of our global society. A global pandemic is likely to disrupt our trust in modern society. Schools like ours that have taught the classics, Western history, and the great books will be well positioned to meet the needs of society in ways that other schools aren’t. So many modern schools have abandoned the past and will not be able to easily retool themselves to glean the insight our society needs to feed our collective imaginations and address our deepest concerns.

Our plague will lead to our educational renaissance. This is a time when we should highlight our unique features as classical Christian schools. Most of our schools have shown we can handle the rapid transition to online learning environments. So many children are starved for learning with meaningless assignments, while our students are doing meaningful work. As we provide meaningful, purposeful and valuable education, we position ourselves well to gain the trust of those who will be looking for more substance in a post-COVID-19 world.

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So what do we mean by Western civilization? Today we equate the “West” with Europe (predominantly Western Europe), and its offspring in the New World (especially the United States). However, Western civilization goes all the way back to the ancient world, grounded in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Greece and Rome. At the foundation of Western civilization, the Americas were unknown and our current understanding of global politics and economics was incomprehensible. Yet all the seeds of the distinctive culture of the west were present in the ancient context.

Important to our understanding of Western civilization are three key pillars that make it distinctive in the world: the Judeo-Christian tradition, democracy and rationality. I’m using these three concepts to carry a lot of freight, so I will spend the better part of this essay developing what I mean by these. Along the way we can evaluate why learning Western civilization is so important to our educational goals today, while also addressing some misconceptions that have undermined the perceived value of an education based on Western civilization.

Judeo-Christian Tradition

The religious traditions flowing from the Old and New Testaments represent the monotheistic base from which Western civilization has operated. This monotheistic base won out over its polytheistic context largely because of its correlation to the logical singularity of truth itself, which we will explore further when we contemplate rationality below. This singularity of truth corresponding with divine singularity is most prominently expressed through divine revelation. The divine logos functions as an expression of truth through God’s self-disclosure to the world. (Many will be able to hear echoes of Jordan Peterson’s work, which I reviewed previously) From outside our terrestrial systems, the voice of the creator and sustainer of the universe brings a perspective unachievable from our limited and finite vantage point. The Judeo-Christian matrix of beliefs promotes certain understandings of human existence and experience that are unique to Western civilization.

In Genesis 1-3, we learn that humanity has divine attributes, yet is fallen in nature. All people are created in the image of God. This makes us unique creatures in the universe, because we are steeped in divine qualities within our being. Yet the story of the fall of Adam and Eve explains how chaos and corruption taints and twists that divine spark. Worse than the devil outside of us is the devil inside us all. Sin causes enmity between people and God, between individuals, between people and creation. This aspect of our nature is often reflected in literature through narrative conflict. The idea of the fall explains why life is a path of suffering. At the core of both Jewish and Christian faith is sacrifice. To atone for sin, sacrifice is necessary. In the Old Testament, the rhythm of regular sacrifice upon the altar framed the narrative of individual and corporate sin. Sacrifice eradicated evil, and thereby the people aligned themselves with a holy God. “Be holy for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44). The emblem of the cross is paradigmatic for Christianity because it represents a solution to the problem of sin in the form of God entering into our humanity to accomplish the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf. Salvation is accomplished not through our own effort, but through someone coming from outside our closed system to do what we could not do. The infinite takes on finitude to save the finite. Both Judaism and Christianity promote essential moral values based on the holiness of God. The moral law is bestowed on the world by a moral law giver who alone is holy and capable to proclaim what is just and right.

The contours of the Judeo-Christian tradition have shaped the west such that our legal traditions, our moral sensibilities and our understanding of individual rights can be tied to this heritage. It should be noted that the west is not the only locale where Christianity took root. We can trace from the earliest centuries historic churches in Ethiopia or India, for example, which maintain a living tradition today. Christianity has never been equivalent with Europe or fair-skinned culture. But for some reason Christianity took hold in the west in such a way that it fairly comprehensively became enmeshed within the narrative of the west in ways it didn’t in Asia or Africa. As we witness something like the fall of Western culture, it should not be surprising, then, that biblical Christianity has grown in both Asia and Africa.

Democracy

Since the time of ancient Athens, the ideal of governance by members of the populace has been one of several political experiments in Western civilization, and has ultimately gained broad consensus as a hallmark of the west. The fundamental idea has been to involve as many people as possible in self-government, with the assumption that individual liberties are best protected when individuals have a voice in policy making.

The Enlightenment sought to ground human experience in natural laws, leading to an articulation of fundamental human rights. This promoted a shift in thinking about government. The divine right of kings was questioned in light of authoritarian or incompetent monarchies under which human rights were disregarded. One need not listen to the vox populi when one is God’s sovereignly appointed authority on earth. The wars of religion (less of the people and more the monarch’s religion) left a distaste for state mandated religion. If individuals were not able to speak their mind to enact reasonable changes in policy, if they were not allowed to worship based on conscience, if they were not permitted to enjoy their basic rights as human beings, then government must change. The revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries challenged the established monarchical model of government in favor of a more democratic form, with human rights as the driving force.

In the American experiment of democracy, the founders quickly realized that one could exchange one form of tyranny (the authoritarian monarch) for another form in the many tyrants of unstructured democracy. Republicanism, or representational government, struck the middle ground between authoritarianism and anarchy. The enduring quality of the US Constitution reflects the depth of thought that went into the founding of the US republic. James Madison, the primary author of the constitution, relied heavily on classical texts and ideas as well as the thoughts of Bacon, Descartes and Locke. In the same years as the ratification of the Constitution, France experienced its own revolution, swinging radically from the authoritarian control of government by Louis XVI to the Reign of Terror by revolutionary republicans. Napoleon was able to step into the leadership vacuum left by these upheavals, with France only able to establish a lasting republic after years of aimless warfare. The American and French fights for democratic governments are emblematic of a centuries-long consideration of self-governance by a knowledgeable populace. Self-government was initially limited to landowning males with expansions of suffrage emerging during and after the industrial revolution. The ideal of popular sovereignty was that government would derive from the authority of the governed who participate in government primarily through voting for representatives based on their knowledgeable participation in public policy debates. People would have to hold in tension their own personal liberties and the common good to enact laws that both protected individual liberties and promoted the welfare of all. There are many forms that democracy has taken, and they have largely cohered in a mutual identity over against authoritarian and communist forms of government during and after the Cold War.

Education has been at the heart of this distinctively Western understanding of government. If people are to participate in self-government, they should be well educated in order to understand the rule of law, to engage in public policy debate and to contemplate the ethical values that bear upon individual and corporate well being. The transformation of education in the aftermath of the industrial revolution to focus predominantly on technical knowledge and job skills has gone a long way toward undermining what has been the chief aims of education in enabling the citizenry to participate in self-government with knowledge and insight. The loss is felt throughout society, as the voting base is often duped by logical fallacies and emotionally charged sound bites. If the fall of the west has drawn nigh, it has occurred due to the erosion of its democratic ideals. And the erosion of democracy occurred through educational reform that gutted it of its value as an instrument to provide a well-educated populace, able to participate meaningfully in self-government.

Rationality

At the very foundation of Western culture is a philosophical commitment to ground belief and truth claims in rational thought. Quite simply, rationalism is the view that human intellect is utilized to acquire and test knowledge. From the time of Aristotle, methods have been developed to hone intellect so that we can arrive at truth by way of deduction. (Jason has written extensively on Aristotle, which you can see here and here.) The syllogistic logic developed by Aristotle enabled thinkers to examine statements and draw conclusions deductively. The scholastics of the middle ages expounded Christian theology by using dialectic to extent philosophical and theological by way of inference based upon the authorities of scripture and the church fathers. The rebirth of classical thought during the Renaissance contradicted the scholastics’ dependence on Aristotelian logic, favoring rhetorical categories of argumentation over abstract syllogistic reasoning. However, dialectic remained the fundamental vehicle for Renaissance and Reformational thought despite humanists’ aversion to scholasticism’s dependence on Aristotle.

During the Enlightenment, Descartes challenged the empiricism of the scientific method by applying a method of doubt, or skepticism. Our senses can be inaccurate, therefore, the acquisition of knowledge must be attained through pure thought; by the application of deduction. Doubt can even be applied to our own existence. We may perceive that we doubt our own existence, but, as Descartes reasoned, something must be having the thought that we perceive as doubt. The thinker that is doing the doubting must exists, therefore I must exist. Cogito ergo sum. This methodological skepticism, then, utilizes doubt to tear away irrational thought in order to acquire foundational or a priori knowledge.

The idea of first principles can be applied to all fields of study: mathematics, ethics, politics metaphysics, etc. Rationalism was essential to the founding of the United States, as the revolutionaries based their call for independence on basic, self-evident truths that are natural laws giving human beings certain rights. As an example, take freedom of speech. Spinoza argued that human beings have the innate ability and the natural right to think their own thoughts and to express them verbally. A government that protects free speech for everyone does not undermine its own authority. If it were to attempt to limit expression the government would actually promote rebellion, since human thought cannot be controlled externally without violating a natural law. Therefore, government ought to protect and promote freedom of speech with the one caveat that speech not lead to harmful action, since the government has authority to maintain law and order. (see Spinoza, A Theological-Political Treatise, Part IV, 20.70-76)

A tension exists, though, between the pillars of Christianity and rationality in Western culture. Rationality, by only accepting human intellect as a source of knowledge, rejects divine revelation and spiritual insight as sources of knowledge. The skepticism of Enlightenment thinkers runs counter to belief as the basis of Christian doctrine and experience. Nevertheless, Judaism and Christianity have historically lived within the tension of faith and reason. The Old Testament has frequent appeals to human intellect. The rational application of the ten commandments to all aspects of life is at the heart of OT law. The wisdom tradition champions the acquisition of knowledge: “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge” (Prov. 18:15). The prophet Isaiah proclaims the divine message, “Come let us reason together, says the Lord” (Isa. 1:18). In the New Testament Jesus often utilizes reason, with examples of scriptural interpretation from the Sermon on the Mount coming to mind. Numerous times in Acts, Paul uses reason and persuasion in his preaching (see for example Acts 17:1-4). In 1 Peter, the apostle calls his readers to have a defense prepared for anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that resides within (1 Pet. 3:15).

This tension between faith and reason saw the Christian church at various times draw upon the thought of Plato or Aristotle. Augustine in his Confessions reflects at length on the harmonization of faith and reason, yet recognizes the limits of pure reason:

Since we are too weak by unaided reason to find out truth, and since, because of this, we need the authority of the holy writings, I had now begun to believe that thou wouldst not, under any circumstances, have given such eminent authority to those Scriptures throughout all lands if it had not been that through them thy will may be believed in and that thou might be sought. For, as to those passages in the Scripture which had heretofore appeared incongruous and offensive to me, now that I had heard several of them expounded reasonably, I could see that they were to be resolved by the mysteries of spiritual interpretation. The authority of Scripture seemed to me all the more revered and worthy of devout belief because, although it was visible for all to read, it reserved the full majesty of its secret wisdom within its spiritual profundity.

Augustine, Confessions 6.5

If reason is limited apart from faith in divine, authoritative revelation, faith is likewise enhanced by reason. Anselm’s famous motto, “faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum) articulates the view that faith can be grounded in first principles and is ultimately consistent with rational thought.

A Rationale for Western Civilization

Having explored to some extent the unique qualities of Western civilization, we may now be in a position to understand why it is so important to place it so prominently within our school curriculum. Students need to learn their story. The Western story is a complex story, unique and meaningful. It is not a superior civilization nor is it without its flaws. One only need consider the crusades or the slave trade to see that Western civilization has taken its wrong turns along the way. But there is genuine value in learning the deep structures of Western culture despite being flawed, and because it is flawed. Churchill’s loose quotation of Santayana would seem to fit here, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” However I take a more positive view. There is something precious to be learned that if lost does harm not only to individuals but also the whole society. The deep structures of Western civilization are ideally suited to train the hearts, souls and minds of students who will lead our churches and cultural institutions.

When it comes to the organizing principles of Western civilization, all who have been raised in the West will find their own perspective reflected in its history. Those with a Christian perspective will want to analyze the history of Western interaction with Judeo-Christian ideas: the lineage of theological thought centered around monotheism, divine revelation and the covenantal relationship between God and man. Those who are committed to democracy and human rights as fundamental values will want to engage Western civilization to understand its development and the tensions that exist between individual rights and the good of society. Those who are committed to the flowering of rationality, including modern invention, science, humanities and the creative arts will want to mine its riches and understand it deeply. Let this be an invitation to mine the Western tradition for all it is worth.

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