It’s at this time of year that we cultivate a sense of the incarnation with the buildup to the Christmas holiday. We see lots of decorations. There are school performances and church pageants. Our routines change to accommodate a plethora of Christmas parties. Despite the celebrating and decorating, there’s a deep concern about the commercialization of Christmas that questions whether we truly understand the importance of the holiday. We often hear this phrase, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” This article gets at that impulse and questions what exactly we are celebrating. What is it we are doing when we have this big moment in the year that the entire culture celebrates? Furthermore, how does Jesus’ incarnation inform us about the task of teaching. In this article, I argue that we as teachers are performing an incarnational ministry in the lives of our students.

The Incarnate Word

When we celebrate Christmas, we are really celebrating the incarnation of Jesus Christ. It is his bodily incarnation that stands right at the center of God’s salvation plan. The second person of the Trinity took on human flesh and dwelt among us. As Paul writes to the Philippians, Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” (Phil 2:6-7). The word “form” here must be carefully explicated. It is not as though he “seemed” like God and “seemed” like a servant only by some outward appearance. John Calvin gets at the heart of Christ’s pre-existent form when he writes:

“The form of God means here his majesty. For as man is known by the appearance of his form, so the majesty which shines forth in God is His figure.”

John Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians, Calvin’s Commentaries, trans. T. H. L. Parker (Eerdmans, 1965), 247.

In other words, God’s invisible majesty was the quality or the existence that characterized Jesus before the incarnation. After the incarnation, the quality or the existence that characterized him was that of a servant.

Another word that is worthy of comment is the term “likeness.” This echoes the creation of human beings in Genesis 1:26 where God makes man “according to our image and likeness.” There is something about the creation of human beings that makes the incarnation possible. The “divine spark” that resides in all human beings means there is a unique quality that from the beginning of creation pointed to the connection between God and man.

Another passage that speaks to the divinity of Christ and the essential nature of his incarnation in the accomplishment of our salvation is Hebrews 1:3-4.

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

Hebrews 1:3-4 ESV

We see in this passage the extent to which Jesus was the creative force behind all of creation, both to make it and to sustain it. The author of Hebrews will go on later to reiterate how the creation of the universe by “the word of God” is an essential tenet of faith. We shall explore this concept in just a moment. For now it is important to establish how the eternal Word, the creative force of the universe, the eternal second person of the Trinity was incarnate not as an afterthought or “plan B,” but as the central driving force behind the work of God for our salvation from before the foundations of the world.

I am struck by the poetry of the hymn “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence,” rendered in English by Gerard Moultrie based on the Liturgy of St. James. One stunning phrase from verse 1 reads, “Christ our God to earth descended.” Here is a rich statement packed with the meaning we have explored so far. In verse 2, the liturgy goes on to express the theology of the incarnation, capturing the two natures of Christ and the work of salvation accomplished by his bodily sacrifice.

“King of kings, yet born of Mary,

As of old on earth He stood,

Lord of lords, in human vesture,

In the body and the blood,

He will give to all the faithful

His own self for heav’nly food.”

The Word Made Flesh

Elsewhere I have written about the educational heart of God. This concept has to do with God as a communicator speaking in comprehensible ways. It is both that he reveals himself to all of creation, but also that he has made us to be receptive to that revelation. Obviously, there remains a significant amount of who and what God is that is incomprehensible. Yet, he reveals enough that we may know him as he truly is and may know his plan of salvation.

When God created, he did so by speaking words. We first learn of God’s speech acts in Genesis 1. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,” and there was light.” (Gen 1:3). Each day of creation begins with God creating through his divine speech. Throughout the creation accounts, we can observe how much our God is a speaking God. In Genesis 2 he gives commands, speaks to Adam and expects that Adam will comprehend and obey his commands. Later in Genesis 3 we learn that Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in the garden (Gen. 3:8), and then God speaks to them after they have sinned, providing both the curse and the promise of the seed of salvation. These first three chapters in Genesis establish a framework for expecting that God speaks, we can understand when he speaks, and his speech will reveal to us the way of salvation.

Psalm 33 gives us further insight into the role of the “word” referenced in Hebrews 1. In Psalm 33:6, the psalmist expresses how “by the word of the Lord the heavens were made.” This phrasing sets a trajectory that enables us to understand how the persons of the trinity were involved in creation. The second person, referred to as the Word, was the agent of creation, and accomplished creation through speech.

Creation is not the only way we can understand God’s revealing nature. We can think about this in terms of God revealing words to us in Scripture, his written revelation. Consider how Paul advises Timothy to continue to immerse himself in the scriptures, which are “breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” (1 Tim. 3:16). This adds to the dynamic we are describing here. God makes known his thoughts to us in scripture and has created us so that we can understand these truths.

And then his ultimate communication to us came in what John calls the Word, the logos, that became incarnate. God not only revealed his mind through creation and scripture, but he sent himself in the second person of the trinity, his only Son. The opening of John 1 is packed with insights into this essential moment in the history of salvation.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

John 1:1-5 ESV

Here we have the divine nature of Jesus expressed in no uncertain term. He is the Word that was with God and was God. He is also the light that comes into the darkness, into the world that he has made.

The gospel goes on to say, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14). This is the human nature of Jesus. This is the miracle that stands at the center of our salvation. God’s Word takes on human flesh. It is necessary for Jesus to be both fully human and fully divine in order to be offered as a perfect sacrifice for us.

The incarnation, therefore, is a central tenet of our faith. It is one of the two miracles upon which God accomplishes the work of salvation. Incarnation and resurrection together rest upon the divine and human natures of Christ Jesus. He must share the perfect holiness of God to be a worthy sacrifice. He must share our bodily nature in order to fully represent us in that sacrifice.

Incarnational Teaching

It is my firm conviction that the incarnation serves as a model for the Christian life in general and the presence of the teacher in the classroom specifically. I was recently reading a passage in the book Living in Union with Christ, written by Grant Macaskill (who happens to be one of my PhD supervisors). He writes:

“There is … a correspondence between what happened in the incarnation and what happens in us as our corrupt patterns of thought are transformed by the Spirit, our appetites are realigned, and our decisions are sanctified. In both cases, weak flesh is brought into proper communion with God through the work of the Spirit of the Son. That’s where the hope of Christian optimism lies: ‘If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Sprit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11).

Grant Macaskill, Living in Union with Christ: Paul’s Gospel and Christian Moral Identity (Baker, 2019), 103.

The Christian life, therefore, has an element of the divine nature of the Son coming into human flesh and dwelling among us through our bodies. In this way, I believe we can view ourselves as teachers in a fundamental way as bringing Christ Jesus into the classroom with us simply because, if we are truly in Christ, his presence dwells within. To put it another way, we become his hands and feet within the classroom.

Apart from simply being Christians in the classroom, I think that as teachers we have a special way we can have an incarnational ministry in the classroom. As teachers, we are enabling our students to learn how to comprehend the truth. Whether it is opening the Bible, a great book, moments in history, mathematical formulas or grammatical terms, there are many truths that we handle in the classroom on a regular basis. We get to stand within a dynamic where we recognize how the Author of truth has made himself known through what he has revealed in the universe and in the scriptures. It is also the case that we have in our midst these young minds, specially made by God to be receptive to the revelation he his provided.

Obviously there is a role that the Spirit plays in the lives of our students. We cannot assume that by applying a method our students will become heartfelt believers singularly devoted to the Lord. However, in this incarnational role we have, I do believe that by being the hands and feet of Christ, the way we live out our faith bears much weight in the eyes of our students.

So, this Christmas as we celebrate the baby Jesus with lights, the decoration, the presents, the festivities, let us meditate on the importance of the incarnation. This miracle is central to God’s salvation plan. It also happens that we ourselves as teacher can follow in the footsteps of Jesus, the great teacher, to enable our students to follow Jesus more closely.

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It is likely that Jefferson borrowed the three rights from John Locke. Almost a century prior to the American declaration, the English philosopher had written in Two Treatises on Government that government existed to protect a person’s “life, liberty and estate.” By estate, Locke surely meant property or “the possession of outward things,” as expressed in A Letter Concerning Toleration. We can find, however, in Jefferson’s revision of Locke’s three rights, a synthesis of Lockean philosophy, particularly drawing upon Locke’s phrase the “pursuit of true and solid happiness” in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Jefferson’s synthesis of Lockean philosophy marked a turn away from previous expressions of rights in the Americas, particularly in the “Virginia Declaration of Rights” adopted in his home state a month prior to the ratification of the U.S. Declaration.

What all this means in terms of political philosophy is for greater minds than mine to figure out. The idea of happiness and the pursuit of it ought to capture our attention. What is “true and solid happiness?” To answer this, we need to address the matter of what we mean by “the good life.” I like how Jonathan Pennington puts it in Jesus the Great Philosopher:

“The Good Life is not referring to the lives of the rich and famous as revealed in the tabloid or expose show. The Good Life refers to the habits of practiced wisdom that produce in the human soul deep and lasting flourishing.”

Jonathan Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher, 29.

The good life requires an amount of practice in the habits of virtue. Only when well-practiced in the way of wisdom can a person experience “true and solid happiness.”

What is Happiness?

So what exactly is happiness? This is a question that goes all the way back to the ancient philosophers. Plato, for instance, understands happiness as the highest aim or goal of life. There is a moral aspect to this happiness encompassed in the word eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία). It could be the stronger feeling of unhappiness occurs when one falls short of this goal or target. Sin or hamartia (ἁμαρτία) in this understanding is a falling short of the highest aims of life or missing the mark, to draw upon the imagery of archery. This is the essence of tragedy, according to ancient writers. The individual who is not heroic enough to live up to the highest aim of life and yet is not truly a villain, falls short of the eudaimonic standard. Misfortune befalls that person though the simple circumstances of life, and that individual falls prey to their own frailty, thereby experiencing unhappiness not because they are the worst of villains, but rather because of not living up to the high ideal of the good life.

Plato spells out different forms of happiness in the allegory “The Charioteer” that is instructive. In the Phaedrus, he shares the story of a charioteer driving two winged horses each having an opposite character. The first is wild with passion and impulsivity. It is easily distracted by fleeting desires and would easily be led off course. This horse is most interested in instant pleasures. These characteristics make it such that the charioteer must ever be watchful over this horse and can never have a moment of ease, because he cannot trust the horse to guide itself toward the proper path ahead.

The second horse is a noble creature. It loves what is honorable, modest and temperate. Guided by a simple direction, this horse pursues a pathway to that end despite the many distractions that might meet it on the highway. The charioteer has instilled many good habits, training the noble horse such that the charioteer has implicit trust in the animal, safe in the knowledge that nothing could cause this horse to stray from the proper path ahead.

I think this allegory speaks to something within all of us. We are simultaneously the wild and the well-trained horse, contain both base passions and noble bearing. And yet, we can differ from one another in how much we entrust to which horse to guide us in life. It is this very idea that has caused confusion as to the meaning of Jefferson’s phrasing, “the pursuit of happiness.” In the guise of the first horse, this is the pursuit of fleeting desires, it is the distracted life of instant pleasures. These are simply not the hallmarks of the highest aim of life. Rarely would we say that a life spent in fleeting desires and instant pleasures is a life well lived. After many years inundated by advertisements that equate these desires and pleasures with the good life, we are often tempted to consider these as the status symbols of nobility. But I think this is hardly the Jeffersonian vision. It is certainly not envisioned in the ancient philosophical tradition. And hardly the biblical vision of the good life.

Our definition of happiness seems more associated with the second horse. The horse of noble bearing charts a course towards the true end of the journey, recognizing fleeting desires and instant pleasures as distractions from the deeply satisfying bliss of accomplishing life’s highest aim. Now it might be argued that we cannot arrive at that highest aim, so wouldn’t it just be good enough to simply enjoy the fleeting desires and instant pleasures life affords. But what one notices about the second horse is that the deeply satisfying bliss comes not in the conclusion of the journey, but on the entirety of the pathway towards that end. Whether we arrive at our highest aim or not, it is the pursuit of that deeply satisfying bliss that is itself deeply satisfying. This, then, must be our definition of happiness.

The Dopamine Problem

I alluded a moment ago to the fact that both horses reside within. It would be too simple to equate our dopaminergic system with the wild horse, even though dopamine generally gets a bad rap. Our motivational system utilizes an array of neurotransmitters to reward us, giving us that feeling of pleasure in response to stimuli our body wants more of. It would be all too easy to equate happiness with hormones in our brains. And yet, this whole system is entirely relevant.

Suffice it to say that the dopaminergic system is rather blind to the type of stimulus it receives. One can experience a dopamine release from reading a good book or taking a bite of cotton candy. You and I know there’s a significant difference in time invested as well as the relative the health benefits of these two activities. But our neurology cares not. There is a release of dopamine for either activity. To put it another way, both horses get fed even though one is a wild horse liable to go astray in pursuit of fleeting pleasures while the other is a noble and faithful creature.

A recent study was able to find, though, a dopaminergic answer to the question of instant versus delayed gratification. Yes, we get a dopamine hit regardless. However, a 2021 study investigated the dopaminergic (DAergic) release differential during delayed gratification in comparison to instant gratification. They write:

“We found remarkable and sustained DAergic activation when mice managed to wait longer and further demonstrated a causal link between DAergic activation and the increase in transient waiting probability. Furthermore, we found DAergic activity ramps up in a consistent manner during waiting, mimicking the value of waiting along with a series of states in our Continuous Deliberation RL model, both of which presumably contributed to pursuing a more valuable future goal and resisting the distraction of the less-optimal immediate options in our task.”

Gao, Zilong et al. “The neural basis of delayed gratification.” Science Advances vol. 7,49 (2021).

In exchange for an allegory of horses, we now have the mythology of mice in rather modern garb. Let’s break down what this study finds. For mice that waited, or experienced delayed gratification, the dopamine release was stronger, and there was more of it experienced over time. Not only that, but there was another impact in that the anticipation of a future goal caused an amount of dopamine to be released. In simple terms, the dopamine experienced with fleeting desires and instant pleases does not stack up against the dopamine experienced with deeply satisfying bliss. Or to put it yet another way. Although both horses get fed, one gets a basic meal while the other receives a more balanced diet.

So what keeps us from the pursuit of this better quality dopamine reward? Why is it that today we tend not to feed our better horse with a healthy diet and are quite happy to go on feeding a fattened wild horse? The answer to this is effort.

The pursuit of true happiness is effortful work. The pathway to deeply satisfying bliss is often not much fun and is associated with highly demanding practices. If we take seriously, however, the thesis of Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, it is the effortful work that is both rare and valuable in our world of distraction. What emerges is an economy of higher and lower values. I could scroll Facebook, and my dopaminergic system really likes that in the moment. In fact, it will tell me to keep on scrolling to squeeze out just a little bit more dopamine. But when I wake up from the rather shallow world of Facebook scrolling, I end up feeling empty and hollow. I get the symptoms of effortful work, but nothing to show for it. I feel like I did something, but in the end it amounts to nothing.

Compare this to, say, writing a 3000-word article on happiness (or reading a 3000-word article on happiness as you are now doing). It takes genuine effort to piece together a stream of thoughts. One must be careful to write clearly and accurately. There is intellectual work to be done both in the writing and in the reading of such a work. And when one is done with such a work, the feeling of tiredness occurs because effort was spent. It is demanding work. Attention must remain focused. There are moments when it is not quite fun. But in the end, not only does one feel like something was done, there is something of quality to show for one’s effort. Obviously, the reader will have to evaluate the relative quality of the writing and the thinking. But let’s say the writing is of rather middling quality. It still stands as something accomplished. Sure, one could go on to improve upon the ideas and the clarity of expression. The deep satisfaction comes at the thought that good effort has been spent, even if one has not arrived at the highest ideal.

Practicing Happiness

Practicing happiness has been a bit of a catch phrase in positive psychology. It is a method of proactively cultivating positive emotions to improve our wellbeing. When we cultivate gratitude, kindness, and optimism, there are positive effects that can be seen in our physical and mental health. In light of the discussion above, I want to add to this line of reasoning that effortful work put into our moral formation seems to be exactly the kind of endeavor that aligns with this concept of practicing happiness.

Many turn to positive psychology in an effort to alleviate stress. So it might seem strange to engage in effortful work. Here I think the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on “flow” gives us a framework for understanding how effortful work can actually be a stress management tool. A very basic understanding of flow is the experience a person has when they are fully immersed in what they are doing. I often imagine my son immersed in building with Legos when he was younger. He could sit for hours building without any real sense of an outside world. He was fully absorbed in what he was doing.

In his work on “flow” Csikszentmihalyi considers two realities that are present. The first reality we might call detachment. The immersive state causes an individual to “forget all the unpleasant aspects of life.” (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Happiness) Thus, a deep engagement in effortful work can be a practice of detachment from anxiety and stress. We frequently engage in stress relieving activities such as watching YouTube videos or playing video games to create a type of detachment. But these activities are rarely ones that get us into the flow state that Csikszentmihalyi describes. So, the next time you are beset with anxiety or stress, consider some kind of more effortful practice that could get you into a state of flow. It could be as simple as piecing together a puzzle, tending a garden plot or reading a book.

The second reality we might call experiential happiness. Csikszentmihalyi shares how the flow state is associated less with hedonic pleasure and more with eudemonic happiness. This sounds rather familiar! By choosing experiences that immerse us into effortful work, we build up a reservoir of happiness that deepens as we acquire greater skill, see progress in our work, and have something to show for our work. Consider the happiness that is gained as a puzzle is completed, a garden bed blooms in season after season, or our bookshelf showcases a number of beloved favorites. For me the practice of running has been a place of flow. For years I have tracked my mileage and feel a deep satisfaction in the places I’ve run, the people I’ve run with, and the insights I’ve gained out on the trails.

This kind of deep work, of entering into flow, is an investment in yourself and you reap the reward of better mental and physical health. Now what I would like to add to my basic thesis here is that effortful work on our moral formation can’t help but contribute to a betterment of our mental and physical health. This takes me back to the ancient philosophers. Happiness or eudaimonia occurred as a result of virtues or arete (ἀρετή). Both Plato and Aristotle see virtues as excellences that we practice.

Newport, for his part, seems to have a profound understanding of this philosophical tradition when he describes the “sacredness inherent in traditional craftsmanship.” (Newport, Deep Work). Virtues are practices just like a wheelwright or blacksmith practices their craft. We grow in the skill of courage or faithfulness. We don’t acquire courage and then consider that done. In other words, there is always more to learn as we exercise the moral part of ourselves.

This leads to a consideration of how all of life is the pursuit of virtue. I really like how Alasdair MacIntyre captures the interplay of the virtues and the good life in his book After Virtue. He writes:

“The virtues are precisely those qualities the possession of which will enable an individual to achieve eudaimonia and the lack of which will frustrate his movement toward that telos. But although it would not be incorrect to describe the exercise of virtues as a means to the end of achieving the good for man, that description is ambiguous.”

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 148.

From this we gather that one cannot pursue happiness without the possession of virtues. This speaks to how important it is to set our young ones on a path of virtue from an early age. To do otherwise is to set them on a course of frustration throughout life. This does not mean that virtue cannot be acquired when older. But how much easier is it when a course is set properly from the beginning. MacIntyre goes on, though, to elaborate how the good life entails the continual practicing of virtues.

“But the exercise of the virtues is not in this sense a means to the end of the good for man. For what constitutes the good for man is a complete human life lived at its best, and the exercise of the virtues is a necessary and central part of such a life, not a mere preparatory exercise to secure such a life.”

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 149.

This sounds like a call for daily exercise, not of the physical sort, but of the moral sort. The virtues are to be practiced like a basketball free throw is practiced. One considers good moral exemplars, and then tries to “follow through” like they do. Each new day brings a new opportunity to practice patience or moderation or humility or any other virtue. Many of us will have daily practices such as a time of prayer, a run, or a family dinner. These are highly commendable and worth maintaining. To these I would recommend a daily virtue practice. It might look like the virtue journal kept by Benjamin Franklin. Or it might simply be a daily contemplation of a virtue you will practice. The idea here is to treat virtue as something to be continually exercised in the pursuit of true happiness.

A Biblical Exposition on Happiness

Far from being a coda or a proforma addition to what has largely been a philosophical article up to this point, I find it striking how the biblical testimony has always had an undercurrent of moral direction connected to personal happiness in communion with God. I recollect coming across this in my research on 1 Peter where Peter quotes Psalm 34. Despite his reputation as an “uneducated, common” man (Acts 4:13), Peter’s epistle stands alongside the great philosophers for its depth of thought and expression.

Psalm 34 as he quotes it reads:

“Whoever desires to love life and see good days,

Let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit;

Let him turn away from evil and do good;

Let him seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

And his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Surrounding this quotation, Peter calls his readers to live a blessed life through the practice of virtues. He list several in 1 Peter 3:8—unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, a humble mind. In this life, we won’t be able to follow the path of happiness unhindered. This he writes, “But even if you should suffer for righteousess’ sake, you will be blessed” (1 Peter 3:14).

What we can take from this is that the Christian life is a well-practiced life. I am quick to point out how much we are reliant on the work of Christ to make us righteous and to provide the energies of our sanctification. But let us be clear that in following in the footsteps of Christ (1 Peter 2:21), we are indeed a fellowship of virtue practicers. Our course in following Christ is set on seeing good days and desiring to love life.

I am mindful as I conclude that I haven’t mentioned one word about education. And that is fine. As this is the summertime, this article is meant first and foremost to feed the souls of educators rather than to provide a teaching methodology. Yet, I think one can discern in and through much that is written here how central these ideas are to a sound philosophy of education. What is the highest calling for us as educators, but to show our students the pathway to happiness in life. And that will come as we ourselves enter into this pursuit of happiness.

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“Child,” said Aslan, in a gentler voice than he had yet used, “perhaps you do not see quite as well as you think. But the first step is to remember. Repeat to me, in order, the four signs.”

Teaching a Bible lesson can be a teacher’s most intimidating class of the day. On the one hand, the biblical text is probably quite familiar, leading to great confidence. But on the other hand, the weight of the responsibility–teaching truths from the Word of God to children–can be overwhelming. 

One cannot help but think of Jesus’ caution in the Gospel of Matthew: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). Or, consider the warning from James’ letter: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1).

The Bible is clear that teaching is a high office, and that teaching children is especially weighty. When it comes to teaching the Bible itself, teachers ought to take special care that their lessons are reverent, edifying, and biblically supportive. One way they can do so is through the teaching tool of narration.

In this article, I will offer four types of emphasis a teacher can make when designing a Bible lesson and then walk through how a teacher can use narration to cultivate reverence for holy scripture in students and unlock opportunities for students to encounter biblical truth for themselves.

Four Emphases of a Bible Lesson

In my experience, there are four general types of emphasis a teacher can take when designing a Bible lesson. These four are: Biblical Studies, Theological Studies, Spiritual Formation, and Discipleship. It is worth pointing out that these emphases are not mutually exclusive, and there is overlap between the categories. But as a teacher plans a Bible lesson, my encouragement is to choose one or two of the emphases rather than try to cover all four every time.

Here are brief descriptions of each:

Biblical Studies

The purpose of a lesson focused on biblical studies is to help a student grow in his or her understanding of how to uncover the original meaning of a text, what biblical scholars call exegesis. The tools at hands are word studies, historical-cultural backgrounds, literary elements, and more. These lessons will elevate a student’s biblical literacy and enable them to approach the biblical text with care for what the author was originally trying to communicate.

Theological Studies

A theology-focused Bible lesson moves at a quicker pace through the exegetical work of biblical studies in order to lead students to reflect theologically on the passage. What does the text teach or imply about our understanding of God, creation, and humanity? These lessons may underscore classical doctrines like God’s triune nature and the hypostatic union of Christ. Or they may broaden a student’s canonical understanding of scripture: how all the books of the Bible fit within a single narrative of God’s providential action throughout history. 

Spiritual Formation

A lesson with spiritual formation aims is interested in helping shape a student’s spiritual life and relationship with God. As God granted young King Solomon with a discerning mind (literally a “hearing heart”), this approach to scripture develops in students a a sensitivity to the inner workings of the Holy Spirit. Through discussions on the character of God and prayerful readings of scripture (e.g. lectio divina), teachers can help foster an intimacy with their Heavenly Father. We want students to know God personally, not simply know about Him propositionally.

Discipleship

Finally, a Bible lesson with a discipleship emphasis focuses on the practical application of being a follower of Jesus. To be a disciple is to be a student, sitting under the instruction of a teacher. For Christians, our teacher is Jesus himself and we are called to submit our lives to His instruction and authority. Christian discipleship is, therefore, the goal of putting all of life’s challenges, doubts, decisions, and relationships under the lordship of Christ. 

How do you know which emphasis or emphases to use when teaching a Bible lesson? It primarily depends on the biblical passage the class is studying. Some passages require more biblical studies setup in order for students to understand the original meaning of the text. Others lend themselves more toward the practical application aims of discipleship. 

Secondarily, it depends on the sort of balance you aim to strike as a teacher. As you create your pacing chart for the year and map out units of lesson plans, analyze the frequency of the four emphases. If you notice that you tend to focus on the practical, balance out your plans with a word study or theological discussion. If you can feel that your lessons have been overly academic, create a lesson in which students reflect in a prayerful reflection exercise. 

Elements of a Narration-Based Bible Lesson

With these four emphases of a Bible lesson in mind, let us now examine how we might teach a Bible lesson using narration. As Jason here at Educational Renaissance puts it in A Classical Guide to Narration (Circe Institute, 2020), narration, simply put, is “a teaching practice in which students are asked to communicate back the substance of content they have learned” (11). It has two core components: the exposure of students to content and the students’ narration of that content.

When a teacher commits to teaching the Bible using narration, she ought to include some core elements. These elements can be found in Charlotte Mason’s writings, especially in Part 5 of Home Education, as well as in other places. In what follows, I will distill the core elements of using narration when teaching Bible based on Charlotte Mason’s writings and my experience using the tool myself in the classroom.

Text in the Center

The first element of a narration-based Bible lesson is to keep the text in the center. So often in education today, lessons are child-centered (what does the child want to learn?) or teacher-centered (what do I want to teach?). But a narration-based lesson is ultimately about the text. What does the text say and how can I help my students walk away with a greater understanding of what it means? Additionally, how can my students walk away with an affinity toward the text in a way they previously did not? In order for narration to be used, both teacher and student most approach the text with an attitude of reverence and willingness to hear.

A Strategic Setup

As one plans a text-centered, narration-based Bible lesson, the next key element to consider is how to prepare students to narrate the text as fluently as possibly. This will vary greatly depending on the biblical passage being studied. As I prepare to teach a Bible lesson, I often ask myself, “What road blocks do I anticipate might get in the way of a student narrating smoothly?” Here the emphasis on biblical studies described above can be helpful. As biblical scholars will tell you, there is distance between the Bible, as a collection of ancient documents, and our 21st century vantage point. In order to bridge the gap, consider these questions as you plan your pre-narration setup:

• What words or phrases can I define that are essential to the passage’s meaning?
• What assumptions does the biblical author make about what the reader may know or believe?
• Would a map be useful to put a concrete picture before students of geographical locations referenced in the passage?
• What characters need introducing? What other literary techniques are being deployed that could help a student latch on to the text better?

It is also important to note that one need not limit their setup to an emphasis on biblical studies. There are other setup questions one can ask that prepare students for an enthusiastic encounter with the text so that students are “animated by expectation,” as Charlotte Mason puts it. For example:

• What theological ideas do you plan to draw out later on in the class discussion?
• What current events or topics that students are dealing with will be directly addressed by the passage?
• How can I set a tone for the reading that will prepare students for a spiritual encounter with God through the reading of the text?

A Dramatic Reading

A third key element for a narration-based Bible lesson is a dramatic, or intentional, reading of the text. By ‘intentional’ I mean a deliberate attempt to read the text in a way that will capture the attention of students while faithfully convening the meaning of the passage. I use the word ‘intentional’ rather than ‘enthusiastic’ because not all biblical passages ought to be read with high energy or cadence. But they should all be read with intentionality in order to match their voice to the drama of the text. When a passage is read well, students tend to be much more engaged and then go on to narrate with heightened lucidity. It is worth noting here the rich history of public readings of scripture, especially in pre-literate cultures. When students read the Bible aloud with reverence and drama, they are participating in a perennial traditional of the church.

A High Expectation of Telling

A fourth key element for the lesson is a high expectation for the narration itself. What I have found fascinating over the years is the relationship between quality narrations and classroom culture. When teachers have no or low expectations for what their students can actually narrate, the lesson can fall flat on its face. To set up a passage strategically and then read it with flair, only to see students tell back very little, is deflating. In order to avoid this problem, communicate clearly your expectations for the narration: details, author’s vocabulary, accurate order of events, etc. Then, when engaged in the narration exercise, do not settle for less than your students’ best. “What else?”, I can often be overheard asking when teaching using narration. Why? Because I know my students are capable and believe there is more that they know and remember if simply given the opportunity to stretch.

A Discussion and Response

Finally, in a narration-based Bible lesson, the narration is the climax of the lesson, but it is not the ending. Students narrate the text in order to assimilate the knowledge, to make it a part of themselves, if you will. But once the knowledge is assimilated, the question becomes “How should we respond?”. One idea is to draw out a moral or spiritual principle from the text for class discussion. This allows students to really chew on the knowledge and make connections. Another is to take the opportunity for students to transcribe a particularly beautiful passage in their journals. I have also seen teachers lead students to create intricate illustrations from a biblical scene of say, Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, or produce a hand-drawn map of Abram’s journey from Ur to Canaan. The opportunities for students to interact with the text are practically endless and allow them to connect the knowledge they narrated with other facets of their education.

Conclusion

I began this article with a quotation from the Narnian Chronicles. In The Silver Chair, Aslan, the Great Lion, calls Jill Pole out of our world in order to complete an important task to save Narnia. Aslan gives Jill four signs that she is to follow in order to successfully complete her assigned task. Jill’s initial response to the information is one of hubris: “Thank you very much. I see.” Aslan, in his wisdom, however, perceives the actual limits of Jill’s understanding and proceeds to use a form of narration to teach her.

The point is this: So often in Bible classes, teachers put together great lessons and share wise insights with their students, but in doing so, they fail to give students the opportunity to see for themselves. Through the teaching tool of narration, teachers can empower students to encounter biblical truth for themselves through assimilating the knowledge of God’s Word and then engaging with it through deep interaction, all under the wise tutelage of the teacher.

As the church continues to navigate passing on the faith to the next generation in a growingly post-Christian world, narration can be a valuable tool for engendering reverence, intimacy, and the prospect of “true sight” in our students.

If you were inspired by this article, you can go deeper by registering for Kolby Atchison’s upcoming live webinar, Teaching a Narration-Based Bible Lesson, on Monday, April 24 at 4:00 PM (Central) live on Zoom.

Gain practical skills to help your students flourish in their study of God’s Word. You will have the opportunity to ask questions as you aim to implement narration in your own Bible lessons.

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When we compare these bite-sized pieces of “analysis” and “comprehension” to the artistry of grammar and rhetoric, for instance, we can see that Bloom’s Taxonomy has dwarfed the beauty and complexity of the educational enterprise in an effort to make it scientific and measurable. Through our exploration of Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of artistry or craftsmanship (techne in Greek), we’ve rediscovered the traditional nature of the arts and their situatedness in human culture and civilization. Treating this educational goal like a machine part that can be installed the same way in any number of factories around the world doesn’t quite do it justice. 

There is, however, a general method for training an apprentice in an art, but for competent training to occur, all the specifics of the art itself must be in view, and the teacher must be a competent craftsman himself to apprentice a student. We should not be surprised at the minimal attainments in intellectual complexity, speaking and writing ability, or piercing scientific inquiry of our students, when our teachers’ colleges are not aimed at developing paragons of intellectual virtue. After all, the student will become like his teacher. 

Of course, not everything is about intellectual attainment as it is conventionally understood. As we have seen, within the Aristotelian understanding of artistry are included athletics and sports, common and domestic arts, the professions and trades, fine and performing arts, as well the traditional liberal arts of language and number. All of these traditions have been developed in different ways over the centuries and it is the skills and sub-skills of these traditions of expertise that we are training students in, whether through deliberate or purposeful practice.

Apprenticeship in artistry ties together the heart, head and body in a unique way that will take us some way to restoring a truly Christian and classical vision for the goals of education. But artistry is not enough. In fact, what we are aiming for must necessarily take us further up and further in. As the tradition expressed in various ways, even the liberal arts themselves are preparatory. They are not the final end, but in themselves transcend toward something higher. Although as an intellectual virtue artistry involves the heart and head, it is best symbolized by the training of the hand. In the classical hierarchy of value, the heart must direct the skills of the hand as merely a part of the life well lived. 

The Intellectual Virtue of the Heart: Prudence

We must now move upward and enter the realm of the heart. Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of phronesis is often translated as practical wisdom or prudence. He defines it as “a reasoned and true state of capacity to act with regard to human goods” (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, ch. 5; rev. Oxford trans., 1801). If the intellectual virtue of artistry is concerned with our human ability to make things in the world, prudence refers to our ability to act, and to choose how we will act. In this connection we can return to Mortimer Adler’s helpful explanation of Aristotle in Aristotle for Everybody. He breaks down Aristotle’s conceptions of human beings into three categories: Man the Maker, Man the Doer and Man the Knower (16-17). Adler clarifies that these are more like dimensions than rigidly separated parts of the human being. Just as “a dimension is a direction in which I can move,” (16) human beings can make, act, and know. It is important to clarify that each of these dimensions is intellectual; as Adler explains,

Aristotle was very much concerned with the differences that distinguish these three kinds of thinking. He used the term ‘productive thinking’ to describe the kind of thinking that man engages in as a maker; ‘practical thinking’ to describe the kind that he engages in as a doer; and ‘speculative’ or ‘theoretical thinking’ to describe the kind he engages in as a knower. (17-18)

Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues fall neatly into these three dimensions of thinking. Artistry falls under our creative ability to make things in and of the world; prudence under our ability to deliberate about how we shall act, make choices and intentionally act to attain some good in the world; intuition, scientific knowledge and philosophic wisdom under our ability to know. In laying this out so neatly, Aristotle is attentive to the overlapping and interpenetrating character of these dimensions of our thinking. In regaining his terminology, we rediscover forgotten goals of education that we have been unable to correctly name for generations.

Prudence is one such forgotten gem. Adler goes on to describe the dimension of Man as Doer: 

In the second of these dimensions, doing, we have man the moral and social being—someone who can do right or wrong, someone who, by what he or she does or does not do, either achieves happiness or fails to achieve it, someone who finds it necessary to associate with other human beings in order to do what, as a human being, he or she feels impelled to do. (17)

If, as we contested (in Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education), the ultimate purpose of Christian education is the eternal happiness of human beings through the manifestation of all the moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues to the glory of God in salvation, then prudence too cannot be left out of our educational paradigm. 

Foundations of a Christian Prudence

As an intellectual virtue, prudence sits at the center of a human being, tying a person’s enacted choices in the body to their mind. It represents the seat of a person’s will or ability to choose, and the locus of their affections and desires. The heart is the wellspring of life. As Jesus makes clear, it is not the beautiful things a person makes that show the character and ultimate destiny of an individual, but how the person lives; it is not what he knows, but what he does that shows the nature of a man. False prophets, those who presumptuously claim special knowledge from on high, will be recognized by their fruits:

Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. (Matt 7:16b-20 ESV)

That Jesus is not referring to people’s acts of production by the analogy of fruit is clear enough from the context. He goes on (7:21-23) to envision how even the most spiritual products of artistry—prophecy and exorcism and “mighty works”—are not reliable signs of a person’s genuineness, but only their actions: whether or not they are “workers of lawlessness” (7:23). 

Even if the New Testament does not retain Aristotle’s exact lexical distinction between practical wisdom and philosophic wisdom (phronesis and sophia), we can discern its prioritization of a practical wisdom for life that joins hands and head in a pure heart. For instance, consider how James challenges the believer who boasts in the wisdom of the mind:

Who is wise [Greek: sophos] and understanding [epistemon, scientifically knowledgeable?] among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom [sophia] that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual [Greek: soulish], demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom [sophia] from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. (James 3:13-17)

What sort of wisdom should the Christian be primarily concerned with? Not the soulish wisdom of the world, typical even of the wisest pagans like Aristotle. It is a relational wisdom, characterized by humility and good conduct, rather than self-aggrandizement. While James uses the term sophia, he undoubtedly has something akin to practical wisdom in view. Notice how every instance of it has to do with actions in the world and relationships with others, not the comprehension and demonstration of universals in the highest subjects, as Aristotle had defined sophia.

We might pause here to note that even in Aristotle’s day, his proposed distinctions between these intellectual virtues were not followed well or strictly. He notes in Book VI, ch. 7 that in his day sophia was used of the “most finished exponents [of the arts], e.g. to Phidias as a sculptor and to Polyclitus as a maker of statues, and here we mean nothing by wisdom except excellence in art” (1801). In no age or culture can we trust the words and categories that are commonly used as the best or wisest way to map reality. This again is why Bloom’s Taxonomy was doomed from the start to simply reaffirm the modernist assumptions of its own day. Taking teachers’ own terms for their goals as the starting point for a taxonomy of educational objectives is an anti-philosophical move, savoring of pragmatism. It assumes the average Joe or Mary has the truth without inquiry or instruction. Aristotle, on the other hand, is a leading proponent of beginning with the common language conceptions, but then challenging them and attempting to explain them from within a broader philosophical frame of reference.

But returning to our foundations for a Christian prudence, we could go on to enumerate a host of passages which demonstrate the Bible’s emphasis on this lost virtue. St Paul’s claim that “knowledge puffs up but love builds up” (1 Cor 8:1) points the way to a Gospel-shaped prudence that sacrifices for others, rather than holding up my own individual happiness as the final end. It is this agape way of choosing and acting in the world that transcends Aristotle’s earthly goods with a spiritual frame of reference and an imperishable wreath (1 Cor 9:25). In case this seems too far-fetched an endorsement of Christian prudence, we could cite our Lord’s direct command to his disciples, “Behold I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; be therefore wise [phronemoi, prudent] as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16), which likewise baptizes a worldly prudence with a spiritual purity.

“Every scriptural text,” according to Paul, “is God-breathed and profitable for instruction, for rebuke, for correction, for an education [paideia, discipline or enculturation process] that is in righteousness, that the person devoted to God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17). The Bible itself aims at the moral and intellectual instruction in prudence that will enable the believer to live well. I can’t think of any higher endorsement of a prudence-focused form of education than that.

The major concern of the biblical book of Proverbs is manifestly analogous to Aristotle’s prudence, concerning more how a man lives than what he knows abstractly. While there are occasional glimmers of how the Hebrew term hokhma (wisdom) includes knowledge of the natural world and its innerworkings (see e.g. 8:22-31 and compare Solomon’s wisdom in 1 Kings 4:29-34), the predominant focus of a Proverbs education is the practical wisdom to live a flourishing life in submission to God’s moral instruction. That after all is the tenor of the whole book, it is an education in prudence that the proverbs themselves aim at. (This has far-reaching implications for a pedagogy of prudence, by the way, which we will explore in a subsequent article.) The book of Ecclesiastes, likewise, pushes the boundaries of prudence “under the sun,” in order to establish a God-centered, immanent frame of reference for a life well lived: 

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (12:13-14)

Both the awareness of future judgment and the love of God displayed on the cross must color the Christian educational vision of prudence. But they do not eliminate it. 

We have already had occasion to cite the author of Hebrews, who calls for Christian maturity: “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (5:14). The term ‘discernment’ helps bring out the critical relationship between prudence and the ability to deliberate correctly in Aristotle. Similarly to how we must discern between good and evil in biblical terminology, deliberation is different from inquiry into truth, for Aristotle, but instead names when a person thinks correctly about human goods and the courses of action that he might choose. 

The Moral Virtues and Prudence

We already discussed this passage from Hebrews while exploring the analogy between artistry and morality. We noted that “constant practice” is involved as the foundation of a developed discernment. Moral habits and virtues enable the flowering of prudence as a youth’s reason develops. The heart of prudence must have a bodily foundation in the nerves even as it transcends into the rational nature of a human being. As C.S. Lewis put it in The Abolition of Man, with which we critiqued Bloom’s Taxonomy near the start of this series,

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism… about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man rust rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’. The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. (24-25)

While the moral virtues are strictly speaking outside the purview of our study on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues, they are intricately tied to the acquisition of prudence. In fact, for Aristotle, each one is impossible without the other. As he puts it, “the function of man is achieved only in accordance with practical wisdom as well as with moral excellence; for excellence makes the aim right, and practical wisdom the things leading to it” (VI.12; 1807). 

A man in battle who is cowardly aims incorrectly at his own preservation, since his nerves and emotions are not trained to endure the possibility of his own death. The proper habit training and implantation of ideas (“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,”; “How sweet and honorable it is to die for one’s country,” from Horace’s Odes, III.2.13; see Lewis, Abolition of Man, 21-22) would have provided him with the right aim: what we would call his moral duty. Practical wisdom would guide him in thinking rationally about the choices he must make on the way to the set of aims his gut and chest have attuned him to. Only those who have been trained by “constant practice” can discern or deliberate correctly regarding what is good and right. 

Perhaps the best way to understand this as moderns is through the idea of conscience. It is not quite right for Jiminy Cricket to say, “Always let your conscience be your guide.” In actual fact, the conscience itself is precisely what must be trained and renewed, if we are to discern correctly. As Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2). The mind or conscience—Paul uses the term nous (“intution”), but it seems to have the nuance here of a person’s frame of reference for moral decision-making specifically—must be transformed. In addition, continual testing or deliberating is required if a person is to discern God’s will. The conscience is key, but not as an infallible guide.

Charlotte Mason, the late 19th and early 20th century British Christian educator, understood this well. In her fourth volume entitled Ourselves, Mason discusses a series of what she calls “Instructors of Conscience”: Poetry, Novels, Essays, History, Philosophy, Theology, Nature, Science, Art, Sociology and Self-Knowledge (Book II, pp. 71-104). This list puts the lie to the supposition that we can do nothing as educators to influence the moral formation of our students. If we only consider for a moment why many Great Works on these subjects were written in the first place, we can quel the nagging modern fallacy that education should have nothing to do with a child’s “personal” moral values. 

The subjects of study named by Charlotte Mason are all worthy of fuller consideration when we explore how in fact we can educate our children for prudence: the great answer being that we are to open our students’ minds and hearts to the counsels of the wise, as the name for this mini-series suggests. But for now we can note the dangers of the uninstructed conscience in Mason’s words:

There is no end to the vagaries of the uninstructed conscience. It is continually straining out the gnat and swallowing the camel. The most hardened criminal has his conscience; and he justifies that which he does by specious reasons. ‘Society is against’ him, he says; he ‘has never had a fair chance.’ Why should he ‘go about ragged and hungry when another man rides in his carriage and eats and drinks his fill?’ ‘If that man has so much, let him keep it if he can; if cleverer wits than his contrive to ease him of a little, that is only fair play.’ Thus do reason and inclination support one another in the mind of the Ishmael whose hand is against every man; and, if every man’s hand is against him, that is all the more reason, he urges, that he should get what he can take out of life. (vol. 4 p. 60)

Moral reasoning is natural to all human beings. But the uninstructed conscience cannot be trusted to deliberate or reason correctly regarding what is good for itself or for human beings generally. All the humanities at least, are aimed to one extent or another at passing down some of humanity’s hard-won wisdom about how best to act and live as a human being. 

One of the most damning sins of Bloom’s taxonomy in this regard is that it directs a teacher’s focus away from the beating heart of the subjects she is teaching. Instead of drawing moral wisdom from the heart of a novel or history book, we drain the life out of it through a host of analytical exercises and comprehension questions, thus literally trivializing the counsels of the wise. (I have discussed this problem before in The Flow of Thought, Part 8: Restoring the School of Philosophers.) In this mini-series on educating for prudence through the counsels of the wise, I hope to lay out a rationale and method for instructing the consciences of our students through the subjects that we teach. In addition to training our students’ hands, we must educate their hearts.

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In the previous article in this two-part review of Jonathan Pennington’s book Jesus the Great Philosopher, I spelled out the first two sections of his book dealing with the ancient philosophers (chapters 1 and 2) and then the Old and New Testaments (chapters 3 and 4). Here I will dive into the final three sections on emotions, relationships and the flourishing life. In each of these sections, Pennington provides insights that help us understand better the nature of our roles as teachers to educate formationally the students given into our care.

The thesis that emerges through my review is a sense that we are apprenticing students in the craft of living flourishing lives. There are so many points of connection between what Pennington has written and our educational renewal movement. Even though he didn’t write this book solely with our context in mind, it resonates so much that I highly recommend this as one of your must reads in the coming year.

Training the Emotions

It is difficult to get a handle on our emotional lives. Think about how true this is in your own life as a teacher. The vicissitudes of the school day and the school year impact us at an emotional level constantly. If this is true in our own lives, how much more do our students feel a range of different emotions? And yet we rarely consider how much emotional training is part of our job as educators. Pennington does a great job laying out a sophisticated view of emotions from a Christian philosophical perspective.

To begin with, the philosophical discussion surrounding emotions goes all the way back to the ancient philosophers. Plato and Aristotle had significantly different views on our emotions. Plato “saw emotions (or passions) as impulses that come upon us as an uncontrollable force.” (86) His noncognitive understanding of emotions weaves its way through history down to our modern era of chemical and neurological research. Pennington writes, “Even if one doesn’t take an entirely chemical approach to emotions, today emotions are largely viewed as negative and the enemy of sound thinking.” (88) Aristotle saw things very differently, taking an “integrated, cognitive approach.” (89) Our whole being works together. “We feel emotion in our bodies and souls through cognition, through using our minds in dialogue with our bodies.” (89) Now obviously the chemical and neurological insights gained by modern research has contributed to our understanding of numerous factors contributing to both emotions and cognition. But Pennington correctly draws forward and understanding of emotions as something that can be educated. There is a certain amount of control we have over our emotions. Our emotions can be trained.

To what end, though, are we training our emotions? Is it to gain complete detachment from emotional response as modern Stoic philosophy would have it? Emotions or feelings are actually necessary for navigating life successfully, so the kind of training envisioned is not to root out emotions but to feel with understanding. Pennington writes:

“Philosophical reflection and psychological research have also shown that emotions are central to aspects of our lives that we may not immediately recognize – specifically, our ethics and morality. . . . To state it most clearly: Emotions are central to our morality (1) in enabling us to determine what is right and wrong, and (2) as indicators of our moral character. Therefore, paying attention to and educating our emotions is crucial to the Good Life.”

Jonathan T. Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher, 95

Our development as integrated beings means bringing together our feeling self, our thinking self and our acting self (emotions, reason and behavior). Pennington posits that Christianity takes a cognitive approach to emotions similar to the Aristotelian tradition. Emotions are fundamentally good in part because they reflect the nature of God who has emotions and is entirely good. (105) As Christians we are called to control our emotions, not simply detach from them. “While promoting the good of emotions, Christianity also recommends a measured and intentional detachment from the world and its circumstances for the sake of living a tranquil life.” (114)

So how does one go about educating the emotions? One of the keys highlighted by Pennington is “the habit of intentional reflection.” (123) He demonstrates through readings in Deuteronomy, the Psalms and Matthew that “This habit of intentional reflection has a shaping effect on the belief, faithfulness, obedience, and thereby emotional health of the Israelites.” (124) Christian virtue, then, relies on training in specific habits to shape our emotional response to God leading toward true happiness.

Training New Citizens

The philosophy of the Good Life involves not only a coherence of one’s own integrated self, but a coherence of relationships with others. The next section in Pennington’s book delves into relationships and once again synthesizes ancient wisdom with the teachings of the Bible. Relationships are a central teaching in the philosophical tradition. (135) Philosphers like Plutarch, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero all see how marriage and families are the bedrock of a good society. Thus for the society as a whole to be well ordered, “the household was to be ordered well.” (139) So as we consider the philosophical tradition as it teaches about relationships, we can see that relationships span the most intimate and the most global arrangements.

Aristotle once again takes center stage. Pennington writes, “Aristotle argues that the end goal of enabling virtuous citizens to flourish must be the evaluative tool for determining which form of government is best.” (143) From this we can gather that the individual and the many live in a dynamic relationship that ought to aim at a singular goal: “the flourishing of virtuous individuals.” This is a challenging proposition in a society that desires individual autonomy while it remains confused about moral virtue. I think this is where classical Christian education can best serve society by training new citizens to understand what it means to live virtuously as individuals and to engage in public discourse about how to promote the wellbeing of all in light of what it means to be a good person.

The Bible provides a nuanced perspective, however, on what it means to be a citizen. “Jesus’s life and teaching can fairly be described as a re-forming and renewing of all kinds of relationships – between God and humanity and between humans of every language, ethnicity, gender, and class.” (156) The revelation of God’s divine Word breaks down our understanding of such things as family, friendship and society, and build them up into a new kind of structure centered on Christ Jesus. I think Pennington is most helpful in laying out the fact that the Bible is thoroughly political. What he means by this is that it expresses several nuanced points about a philosophy of politics. For instance, “Christians must understand that they are now citizens of two reams, or two cities, as Augustine would famously describe it – the city of humanity and the city of God.” (166) Our first loyalty is to our citizenship above. We pray fervently that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Yet, these two realms exist in conflict. As citizens of an earthly realm, we prioritize our heavenly citizenship while also participating in the betterment of our earthly society. “Therefore, the Christian’s relationship to the state is one of respectful participation and honor where honor is due (1 Pet. 2:17), praying for even ungodly leaders (1 Tim. 2:1-4).” (166) Our civic duty is real and earnest because we are emissaries of our Lord Jesus Christ and carry the diplomatic message of the good news of the gospel.

Training up new citizens is a difficult task. Even though our present state of cultural discourse feels overwhelming and dysfunctional, I am certain that this feeling is not unique to our day. As educators, our task is not to teach a number of talking points from whatever political party our constituents agree with. Instead, we are to help our students understand their dual citizenship, learning to walk as Christ walked and working toward the transformation of society in light of the gospel. Pennington puts it well:

“Jesus and the New Testament regularly paint a picture of what the true politeia modeled on God’s kingdom should be. Christian teaching is a vision that resocializes people’s values and habits, that creates a new community of people, a new covenant people who will live together in love and serve as a model for the world of God himself. This is a sophisticated philosophy of relationships.”

Jonathan T. Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher, 171

Training in Happiness

One of the claims I persistently make that differentiates our educational renewal movement from conventional education is that we train up students to live lives of meaning and purpose. The factory model of education focuses on technology and techniques that provide for better jobs with the assumption that a highly trained workforce is the chief end of society. But as classical Christian educators, we have a higher vision that transcends career. We believe that educating the whole person entails addressing life’s biggest questions and launching our students into a pursuit of true happiness.

Pennington closes his book with two chapters that align with what makes our movement unique. He demonstrates that “happiness and meaningfulness entail each other” (189) by reviewing ancient and modern philosophers. Our modern world with its largely scientific worldview struggles to provide the kind of comprehensive view of life that produces meaning and purpose. This is why we benefit so much from going back to the great philosophers of the ancient world. They “all pondered the great questions of happiness and offered practical, real-life wisdom on how to live well.” (191) The antidote to our modern malaise comes through intentional reflection on the big questions of life. He writes in summary of the ancient wisdom:

“So they disagreed on lots of habits and beliefs, but they all shared this central idea: We long for flourishing, and the only way to find it is through living intentionally and thoughtfully in particular ways. Neither virtue nor its eventual fruit, happiness, come to us accidentally.”

Jonathan T. Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher, 193

The ancient wisdom stands in stark relief with what we might call the self-help industry. We have modern YouTube gurus offering tips and tricks to live better lives. In certain cases, really thoughtful programs synthesize philosophical sophistication with modern science, attempting a nonreligious, “whole-life philosophy of happiness.” (200) But “the gurus that people look to today offer only a limited kind of happiness.” (200) It seems to me that our society reflects the educational norms of conventional education: technology and techniques have soft pedaled a less-than-satisfying philosophy of life.

Pennington’s final chapter masterfully explores Christianity as a superior life philosophy full of meaning that promotes flourishing. He writes, “Jesus in the actual Logos – the organizing principle of the world, the agent of creation, the being that holds the whole universe together – this means that his philosophy alone is whole, complete, and truly true.” (201) Two key words stand out in Pennington’s exposition of Christian philosophy: grace and hope. Despite the fall and despite the limitations we face as human beings, God’s grace is poured out on humanity in the form of wisdom. We are recipients of divine wisdom: not only what we might call special revelation, but the wisdom that permeates all creation. “Any wisdom in the world is from God who created all.” (203) Together God’s creation and God’s Word provide answers to life’s greatest questions. This is grace.

Hope is perhaps the single greatest factor when comparing the self-help philosophy of today with the whole-life philosophy of the Bible. Pennington writes:

“The Christian hope is that God is going to return to restore the world to right, to bring light into darkness, to create a new creation of shalom and peace, to be present fact-to-face with his creatures. It is this hope alone that can bridge the eudaimonia gap between our experience now and our deepest longings.” (216)

To understand what he means here, it is helpful to consider the eudaimonia gap. All humans desire to experience happiness or eudaimonia. However, we face a world of suffering, whether it be physical, mental, relational or otherwise. The gap we experience between the happiness we want to achieve and the reality of the obstacles that interfere with us experiencing that happiness is what we might call the eudaimonia gap. Christianity offers a satisfying solution by presenting us with a future hope. “Christian philosophy emphasizes precisely this – an honest assessment of the brokenness of life that is always oriented toward a sure hope for God’s restoration of true flourishing to the world.” (218) Christian hope is not a detachment from the problems in our world nor does it trivialize suffering. Instead, Christian hope finds profound meaning in this life through the recognition that suffering and pain are where God meets us as he leads us toward eudaimonia.

This review of Pennington’s book Jesus the Great Philosopher has hopefully stimulated your thoughts on what it means to be a classical Christian educator. A book like this helps contextualize daily classroom life with the long view of living the Good Life. In the liberal arts tradition, discrete subjects (if that is even the correct word) cohere around philosophy. So when we are teaching mathematics, literature or science, we should have in view that the subject matter is not limited to one domain of knowledge. Education is a science of relations, as Charlotte Mason has so famously put it. Pennington’s book serves as a convenient and accessible manual for bringing into conversation the liberal arts and a biblical worldview. I highly recommend you reading this for yourself to be inspired as a classical Christian educator.

Beyond this, I could see this book being adopted in a theology or humanities class at your school. The way he brings the many streams of wisdom together will benefit students who have had many years of tutelage under the writings of Aristotle, Augustine, Lewis and many others. Even if you don’t bring this into your curriculum, I could see this being a great read in a book club, contributing to lively discussion and thoughtful interaction.

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In today’s blog, I will make a different argument in support of classical education. Rather than arguing for its practical benefits, I will make the case for something even more important: it is an education in truth. Why send your children to a classical school? Because they will be taught to seek and contemplate what is objectively true. They will gain knowledge of the real world, whether it is practical or not, because one of the surest antidotes to the cacophony of confusion today is to realign ourselves with something as old as the universe itself: the Truth.

A Culture of Dissent

Our dissenting culture is surprised, at best, and angered, at worst, by this talk of objective truth. Skeptics retort, “Given everything we know about all the different religions and cultures in the world, how can you be so arrogant to believe that any one religion or morality is true and not merely useful, culturally constructed fiction?”.¹ As Christian educators, it is our responsibility to respond to this question, not with timid capitulation, but with confident assurance.

If the project of modernism was overly optimistic about human reason’s ability to access truth, postmodernism has fallen off the other side of the horse. Objective truth, we are told, if it exists at all, is out of reach and, frankly not worth the hassle. Enough blood has been shed and wars fought over misplaced forms of righteousness crusading for “the truth.”

Amidst this milieu, students growing up in western countries today need to be reassured that truth exists and the pursuit is worth it. Christ himself declared to be the the way, truth, and the life. Our students need an injection of confidence that our Creator God wove into the very fabric of the universe a sense of order and proper function. The pursuit of wisdom, which is ultimately a journey toward truth, can be understood as an education in how the universe works.

[Read more about the craft of teaching and orienting students toward truth by downloading my free eBook.]

Convenience Over Truth

Unfortunately, research is showing that even amongst Christians, we often choose convenience over truth if given the option. In a recent blog post, author Trevin Wax explores this idea as he interacts with current sociological research on Christian parenting. The research, conducted by Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk, suggests that many parents raise their children to be religious, not because it is true, but because it is useful. Their primary objective in religious instruction, whether they would admit it or not, is to help their children thrive socially and morally. The upshot is that parents and children inadvertently conceptualize of religion as yet an additional way to practice self-expression rather than a devout exercise in aligning oneself with what is true.

Trevin Wax offers a helpful insight for the problem of this way of thinking:

Not surprisingly, once religion is no longer connected to transcendent truths about the world and is judged primarily by its helpfulness, other priorities easily eclipse religious devotion. Sports, homework, preserving family peace and unity—these activities often take precedent when they come into conflict with religious adherence, even for religious parents in stricter traditions (28). Religion is a useful tool in the life you design for yourself. It can be discarded or relegated to a lower priority once it no longer fulfills or actually detracts from that purpose.

This is a disturbingly accurate observation of common life, especially in suburbia. When we exchange the truth of religion for its usefulness, it becomes yet another item on the menu for us to select or decline based on our present appetite. In order for our students to view their Christian faith and their education, in general, as something other than a menu item, they need to be taught the importance of truth. Their religion, their politics, their interactions with others, their hobbies–all of it stands in relation with truth.

The farther removed from truth we become, the more susceptible we become to falsehoods. As historian Felip Fernandez-Armesto puts it,

Once truth has been devoured, people swallow falsehoods whole. Without confidence in the concept of truth, listeners are disarmed against lies.

Our students need mentoring and training in order to resist the temptation to view the pursuit of knowledge as a mere exercise in utility. They must learn to the love truth and treasure it for all it is worth.

A Statue in the Name of Pluralism

While our contemporary culture may be unique in its dissent for objective truth, it is not the first culture to contest biblical truth. In a recent blog, I observed that in the Book of Daniel, Daniel and his friends received what we might call a Babylonian classical education. They were fed a rich diet of Babylonian literature, the very best mythological potluck the ancient world could offer at the time. The purpose was to enculturate and indoctrinate the young Jewish nobles into the Babylonian way of thinking and living.² 

After resisting the lure to break with their Jewish dietary customs, a few chapters later, the young Jewish men were put to the test again. The king erected a statue in the city for all inhabitants to worship. Interestingly, the biblical text does not give the name or description of the statue. While in the ancient world, it very well could have been a depiction of the king or of a god, the text does not specify. In fact, it does not have to. The point the author seeks to make for his Jewish audience is that the Babylonian statue stands in opposition to everything monotheistic Jews stood for: the sovereignty of Yahweh, the exclusivity of God’s people, and the truth of Torah. It was a statue in honor of the supremacy of the transnational and transreligious Babylonian empire over and against the kingdoms, cultures, and religions it had conquered.

For the purposes of this blog article, we can say that the statue becomes a test in truth. The edict did not require Daniel and his friends to abandon their faith wholesale or to recant a core doctrine. Rather, the edict was an exercise in pluralism. They were permitted to keep “their truth” so long as they yielded to the truth of Babylon. 2,500 years before the religious pluralism we experience today, we can see that God’s people were already being tested to stand up for the truth.

Three Types of Theories About Truth

With all this talk of truth and its importance, it is paramount to take time to consider what we mean by the term. While I will ultimately endorse what is known as the classical correspondence theory of truth, considering alternative theories will strengthen our own understanding.

Philosophers typically differentiate between three types of theories about truth.³ The first type of theory is metaphysical. These theories hold that truth is a property of a proposition. Propositions are rendered true or false depending on their relationship with facts about the world. Truth, in this sense, is the relationship between a proposition and the way the world works, that is, whether it corresponds with reality. On this account, the proposition “the tree is a maple” is true if and only if the tree is, in fact, a maple. 

There are also epistemic theories about truth. Like metaphysical theories, these theories conceive of truth as a property of a proposition, but the focus differs. Instead of focusing on a proposition’s relationship with reality, epistemic theories focus on a proposition’s warranted assertability. That is, a proposition is true on the basis of one’s reasons, or justification, for believing it to be true. On this account, the proposition “it will rain tomorrow” is true if only true if one has it on good evidence that it will rain tomorrow.

Finally, there are deflationary theories about truth. These theories deny that truth is a property of propositions at all. Instead, these theories hold that assertions about truth are either redundant or mere affirmations of a proposition’s usefulness. Thus, truth is determined by what we want to achieve with the proposition. On this account, the proposition “gravity is an invisible force that pulls objects toward each other” is true insofar as it is useful in say, predicting the behavior of the motion of objects with mass.

Correspondence Theory vs. Relativism

While the length of this blog article prevents me from a full philosophical evaluation of the three theories, I will put forward what I believe to be the theory that is most compatible with a Christian worldview: the correspondence theory of truth. This theory is of the metaphysical type, that is, it offers a definition of truth as a property of a proposition. It holds that a proposition bears the property of truth insofar as it corresponds to reality. To put it differently, a proposition is true if, what it asserts to be the case, is the case.

In contrast to the correspondence theory, a common way to think about truth today is that it is relative. That is, a proposition’s truth value is not assigned by its correspondence with reality, but by whether it is believed for the right reasons. In contemporary culture, “the right reasons” most typically promote the free expression of the individual self. This way of thinking about truth is what allows people to make claims like “my truth,” “your truth,” and “what is true for you may not be true for me.”

Needless to say, a Christian worldview leaves no room for a relative view about truth. Either God created the world or He didn’t. Either Christ is Lord or He isn’t. And less significantly, either I am correct that it is Friday evening or I am not. The litmus test for determining the truth value of a proposition is not how sincerely I believe it, but whether my belief corresponds with the reality God created.

A Compass Pointing Truthward

This past week I led an extended discussion with high school students on the question “Why do bad things happen to good people?”. We contemplated the question for almost two hours, debating various points and embarking on too many tangents we foolishly believed would aid the discussion in some miraculous way.

At one point in the discussion, students began to debate whether the eventual answer would only be a matter of perspective. If secularists believe one thing, and Christians another, can we really say that one perspective is right and the other is wrong? While older generations may grimace at this question, I must report that these are the questions Gen Z young men and women are really dealing with. They are bombarded with messages from popular culture that seek to deconstruct the idea that there is objective truth. They are encouraged to embrace the idea of differing and equally valid perspectives.

While respecting varying perspectives is important for charitable dialogue, we must remember that truth does exist. There is a right answer and presumably many wrong ones. We need to encourage students that truth is out there and that it is knowable. My humble conclusion: students need guidance in thinking about truth and I hope this blog article can serve a first step for educators to begin this important work.

Endnotes

1. Garrett J. DeWeese and J.P. Moreland. Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big Questions. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2005. 9.
2. Tremper Longman III and Raymond B. Dillard. “Daniel” in An Introduction to the Old Testament. 2nd Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006.
3. DeWeese and Moreland. Pp. 58-62.

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If you attended the Society for Classical Learning conference this past summer in Charleston, South Carolina, you may have attended the plenary session with Jonathan T. Pennington. He presented on “Jesus the Classical Educator.” The presentation was drawn from his new book Jesus the Great Philosopher. I think this is a really important book that classical educators need to read and grapple with. In this and the following post I will review the book and lay out several of the ideas that we well worth your attention.

But first, a disclaimer. I am not an unbiased reader. Jonathan is a good friend. We both attended Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and later University of St Andrews. At both places he preceded me by a few years. At each stage he played a key mentoring role, helping me to consider studying overseas in Scotland and then introducing me to his and my doctoral supervisor, Richard Bauckham. There’s a real kinship Bauckham’s advisees share, striving for excellence in biblical scholarship while desiring to produce work that will prove valuable for the church. Prof. Pennington has been one of the leading lights among Bauckham’s students, so it’s exciting to see him produce a work that now speaks into the kind of project we are doing in our educational renewal movement.

Pennington is associate professor of New Testament Interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. has previously written extensively on the New Testament, publishing Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew, the research he had done during his PhD studies. He has written and contributed to several other books, including Reading the Gospels Wisely (Baker, 2012), The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing (Baker, 2017) and Reading the New Testament as Christian Scripture with Con Campbell (Baker, 2020). With the publication of Jesus the Great Philosopher (Brazos, 2020), Pennington has shifted slightly away from writing exclusively academic biblical studies volumes and presenting ideas that have a more popular-level appeal. In this latest book you’ll find that Pennington is able to adeptly bring his scholarly prowess into connection with contemporary issues and cultural motifs.

Here in part 1 of this review, I’ll explore the foundational work he present on ancient and biblical wisdom. Later in part 2, we’ll see how he builds on this foundation to address matters such as the self-help industry, our current political discourse, perspectives on justice and the role of emotions in our lives.

The Renewal of the Ancient Philosophical Tradition

Pennington diagnoses a major problem in modern Christianity as a result of not viewing Jesus Christ as a philosopher. His major claim is that “there are four significant things that have happened to the church as a result of this loss of ‘philosophy’ language.” (Jesus the Great Philosopher 10) What are those four things. First, Christians experience disconnected lives. “Our Christian faith is often disconnected from other aspects of our human lives.” The Christian life today is compartmentalized such that we haven’t connected all aspects of our lives to an overarching philosophy of human flourishing centered on Christ Jesus. Second, Christians are prone to search for answers to life’s biggest questions from popular culture. “We naturally look to other sources – alternative gurus – to give us the wisdom needed to live flourishing lives, to find the Good Life.” It is all too easy to swipe open an iPhone to watch a YouTube video of a TED Talk than it is to pore over the text of the Bible. Third, Christians are untrained to answer the difficult questions of life. “We have stopped asking a set of big questions that Holy Scripture is seeking to answer.” I will delve into this third point in greater length in a moment. And fourth, Christians are not able to share the gospel in its fullness. “We have limited our witness to the world.” When we short circuit the philosophical power of the gospel, we actually miss out on the way redemption in Christ helps people makes sense of all of life.

Now, this matter of asking profound questions of the Bible is worthy of further deliberation. Pennington writes, “So, with our high view of Scripture in hand, we go to the Bible and ask important questions – religious, vertical questions – and that is good. But because of habits and training, we have stopped asking another set of questions – the human, horizontal, philosophical ones.” (15) To be clear, as Christians we have tended to approach our Bibles with a view to learn about God and then apply it to daily life. But our metaphysical musings have largely tended to not include a major set of philosophical questions. These questions include, “What is the nature of reality? How do we know this? What does it mean to be human? How do we order our relationships and emotions? How do we find true happiness?” (15) Notice how these questions are different than questions pertaining to doctrines of the Trinity, the sacraments or church order. Furthermore, we often skip from those heady theological insights to highly practical practices like daily Bible reading and listening to Christian music. The important questions that Pennington highlights enable the Christian to masterfully build lives of meaning and purpose in all domains of life.

The second chapter of Jesus the Great Philosopher traces the ancient philosophical tradition, identifying how philosophy wasn’t some esoteric, exclusive club. Instead, philosophy sought to guide people toward “true happiness; it was the vision for life itself.” (18) Pennington looks at the role of virtues in developing human flourishing. He explains what he calls the “four main compass points” of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. (28) The renewal of the ancient philosophical tradition has been a key component of our own educational renewal movement. This chapter sets the stage for what comes next, an examination of the Bible in light of the major philosophical questions Pennington points to.

The Bible as an Ancient Philosophical Text

The Bible itself is shown to be a thoroughly philosophical text. Pennington spans both the Old and New Testaments demonstrating how the four compass-point questions are extensively present throughout the Bible. From creation to new creation, the Bible provides a grand view of the universe. Pennington writes, “This world that we experience is actually created and upheld by the incarnated and now-risen Jesus, in unity with God the Father. This is a radical metaphysical claim not only for Jews but also for Greeks and Romans, who also had a highly developed metaphysic of both the cosmos and humanity’s place in it.” (70) Biblical metaphysics also points to how all reality is moving toward an end or telos. History is “heading toward a restoration of what was lost, a restoration that will even supersede the goodness of the original creation.” (71)

How we know what we know is the domain of epistemology. Pennington shows how the Bible puts forward a consistent yet nuanced understanding of knowledge. In the ancient philosophical tradition, knowledge is experienced, practical and lived out (43). The garden shows how knowledge of God is experienced by walking with God. Yet sin through the fall obfuscates our ability to know God. The Old Testament establishes a pattern of “forgetting God and coming to know God again.” (44) The New Testament builds on this pattern by providing a pathway in Christ Jesus to truly know God. Our minds, clouded by the fall, are transformed through regeneration. “The knowledge of God the Father revealed in God the Son is only accessible through God the Spirit.” (73) This trinitarian formulation of biblical epistemology addresses how the all-encompassing nature of God – who is beyond our comprehension – can be knowns and experienced personally.

Epistemology leads to ethics, or an understanding of right and wrong. The heartbeat of ethical thinking in both the ancient philosophical tradition of the Greeks and Romans as well as the Bible is virtue. We’ve written at length about virtues and habits here at Educational Renaissance. And Pennington confirms the high congruence between ancient and biblical wisdom. “An ethics of virtue, which is shared by ancient philosophy and the Bible, focuses on the development of our sensibilities, values, and habits.” (47) Ethics is not about adherence to a set of rules or mere obedience to a command. Instead, the virtue ethic of the Bible is characterized by imitation and agency. “Virtue ethics focuses not just on the external issues of right and wrong but on our interior person and our development to be a certain kind of people. In the Bible, this means becoming more like God himself.” (75) It is clear, then, that ethical reasoning is highly dependent on one’s epistemology. True knowledge of God provides both insight into what it means to be good and direction about how to live out the good in our lives.

The fourth big idea considered from a biblical perspective is politics. Even though this word is perceived negatively in modern culture, there is a rich philosophical tradition standing behind the political structures of Western society. If we want human flourishing to occur in a stable and sustainable way, we need to consider the societal structures and institutions that are consistent with ancient and biblical wisdom. One of the principles Pennington brings out is that “humans need friends.” Even if we our metaphysics, epistemology and ethics worked out, if we are alone, we simply cannot experience the kind of good life we might otherwise experience in fellowship with others. Pennington writes, “This older, constructive aspect of ‘politics’ was a natural and crucial aspect of the ancient philosophical perspective because the philosophers understood that (1) flourishing is not possible apart from societal stability and structures that promoted beauty, goodness, and virtue; and (2) humans need each other to flourish.” (48)

Such ideas as the rule of law, justice and limited government stem from Hebrew political philosophy. In the ancient Near East as well as Greek and Roman societies, kings and emperors founded imperials cults, insisting on being worshipped as gods. But “the Hebrews’ ultimate allegiance was to God himself, not to the human king.” (49-50) In the New Testament, this idea gets expanded into what might be called “dual citizenship.” (166) We will expand on this in part 2 of this review. But for now we can point to a distinctively Christian political philosophy that promotes involvement in our earthly society, yet our allegiance lies with our heavenly kingdom. As worshipers of the one true God, we have a philosophy of “a politeia rooted in the just and good way.” (50) But the Bible does not promote some sort of separatist alternative society, it seeks the just and the good for all nations. Pennington writes, “This divinely revealed political philosophy was not just for the sake of the Hebrew people but was also a model for all the nations. It is a picture of how the true God has structured the cosmos and the means by which humans may experience flourishing or shalom.” (50)

A Synthesis of Ancient and Biblical Wisdom

Thus far we have covered almost half of Pennington’s book. In part 2 we will look at how will expands this basis of ancient and biblical wisdom bringing it into conversation with some of the big issues we face in our modern era. And as we think about what has been covered so far, a few considerations can already be formulated.

First, as a classical Christian educational movement, we have the obligation to bring together ancient wisdom and biblical wisdom. What Pennington highlights are the areas of congruence between ancient near Eastern, Greek and Roman philosophy and the Old and New Testaments. Now, we must be aware that not all we find in non-biblical and non-Christian sources will agree with biblical convictions. However, there is a synthesis we can achieve when we examine sources of knowledge with courage and humility, looking for truth wherever it may be found. The catchphrase, “All truth is God’s truth” is relevant here. Students trained with this impulse to search for truth wherever it may be found will have the tools to think biblically when encountering not only the great works of the Western tradition, but even interact with non-Western writings.

Second, the approach Pennington takes in arriving at his synthesis points to the whole-life relevance of ancient and biblical wisdom. The liability of placing such powerful texts in the hands of teachers and students alike is that the level of analysis remains abstract and theoretical. I know this is something I needed to overcome in my professional role in biblical studies. Analyzing the text with more and more sophisticated models of interpretation can stimulate the mind but can also leave the heart cold. The motto on my school’s crest reads veritas pro vita, “truth for life.” This is not merely truth for truth’s sake, but truth for the sake of living lives of meaning, purpose and direction. As we arrive at a synthesis of ancient and biblical wisdom, there ought to be practical wisdom that shows us how to live out the gospel day to day.

Finally, we cannot live out lives of meaning, purpose and direction apart from the one who calls himself the way, the truth and the life. Pennington’s formulation of Jesus as the great philosopher places our Lord and savior at the center of this grand synthesis of ancient and biblical wisdom. God has made his revealed wisdom personal through the incarnation of The Word. The personal nature of divine wisdom then is received in us through our encounter with Christ Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

So, I clearly haven’t finished my review yet, but already you can sense how highly I recommend this book. If you are an educator who wants to contemplate how to bring together spiritual formation and classical curriculum, I think this book is well worth your time and attention.

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Telling better stories requires a mastery of language, one of the keystone benefits of a liberal arts education. Language is perhaps the most under-appreciated gift that God has given His creatures. We often do not grasp language’s necessity until we are in need of it: when we are stranded in a foreign country or trying to communicate with a one-year old. Language is important because it unites us like no other medium. It serves as the vehicle for communicating how we feel, what we think, and why we are acting the way we are. Additionally, language has the rare ability of integrating the disparate strands of life, indeed of lives, into a unified whole. Language is the precondition for story, and story-telling is the foundation of culture.

In this blog, I will make the case that the liberal arts, especially the mastery of language, are crucial for preserving and transmitting a culture. Without language, formative stories are lost, and cultures fall into decline. Of course, not all cultures are worth preserving. For example, it is a good thing that the culture of the late Roman Empire passed out of existence. The hunger for world domination, degradation of human life, and lust for pleasure became propagations of Rome that made our world worse, not better. On the contrary, our mission as Christian, classical schools is to cultivate future culture makers, moored in biblical values, and heralds of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Training in the liberal arts will equip our students to tell better stories, and in turn, cultivate more attractive cultures, superior to the ones contemporary secular society can possibly offer.

Studying Latin: An Act of Resistance 

Let me begin with the study of Latin, a well-known curricular emphasis in classical liberal arts education. One of the most frequent questions I receive as an administrator at a classical, Christian school is “Why Latin?” After all, our modern world has been highly successful in passing on the metaphor that Latin is a “dead language.” Moreover, using a modern rubric of utility and innovation, it is difficult to discern any clear benefit of studying a language that is no longer spoken in the public square.

Amongst classical schools, it has become fashionable of late to please the modern demand for utility by citing the correlation between Latin and high SAT scores or to remind prospective parents that derivatives of Latin are present in 60% of English words. The usefulness of Latin relieves us moderns temporarily from the fear that all the time invested in an ancient language may not pay off in the real world. 

Of course, this perspective assumes a particular definition of “the real world,” namely, the world of professional advancement, wealth accumulation, and personal success, all measured against the performance metrics of the 21st century. But what if “the real world” encompasses more than our present century? What if the surest way to educate students who will shape future cultures is to ensure they have an acute grasp of the histories and ideas of the past? What if the key to a treasure-trove of wisdom accumulated over millennia is available only through the long-lost language of Latin?

If the answer to these questions is in the affirmative, then the study of Latin should be recovered as an act of resistance. At the risk of overstating my point, this can be illustrated in the stunning image (and example) of Tank Man. Tank Man, the moniker for the courageous unnamed citizen who protested the totalitarian regime in communist China, boldly stood his ground the day after the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators on June 5, 1989.

While studying Latin may not threaten one’s life (some students may disagree), it remains an act of sacrificial resistance in its own way. With the growing skepticism regarding the value of reading old books, coupled with the excellent English translations that are easily accessible today, doubt remains whether the study of Latin is worth it.

What we must remember is that Latin is a portal to “the real world” properly conceived. Contra popular opinion, the universe did not simply pop into existence one hundred years ago. Human civilizations across the globe have existed for millenia. Latin is one entry point into one prominent civilization that has served as the seed ground for the modern conception of human rights, modern science, and the development of the western church.

By studying Latin, students receive a rare gift: the ability to directly access the geniuses of this tradition: Virgil, Cicero, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, and John Calvin, to name a few. We read these authors as faithful trustees of the Great Conversation, listening carefully to these voices that we might preserve the insights of what is good and true for future generations, while also correcting them in places where they were wrong or misguided. This process of preservation and correction is crucial for the project of creating future cultures.

The Privilege of Studying the Arts

Lately, I have been reading and writing on the life of John Adams, a Founding Father of the United States. Adams kept up a faithful correspondence with his wife Abigail, despite years of living overseas in Europe. In one particular letter to Abigail, Adams shares his multi-generational vision for education and the development of culture. He looked forward to the day when his children and grandchildren would not be preoccupied with war, but instead, would have the freedom to build a culture of goodness, beauty, and order.

Adams writes,

“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”

Here we gain a rare glimpse of how one cultural architect envisions building and transmitting a culture. Adams adopted a long-term mindset with regards to his role in the development of American society. He understood the pathway to freedom and order in society and that it runs through war and governance. Once a free and orderly society is established, the next phase of study, composed of STEM subjects like navigation and agriculture, is used to build on the foundation. Finally, it becomes the responsibility of those trained in the arts to create a beautiful and good culture, leading to a better world.

Unfortunately, many schools today have lost sight of this long-term vision by focusing exclusively on the urgent: career-readiness. We forget that careers only exist in the first place in a free, orderly, and cultivated society. The best way to prepare students for their future career, is ironically, to help them gain mastery in more rare and valuable skills: the liberal arts.

A Babylonian, Classical Education

Oddly enough, the ancients seemed to grasp the power of the liberal arts for culture building better than us moderns. In the book of Daniel, we see that the powerful Babylonian Empire followed a process for their territorial expansion: invade, capture and assimilate. 

After laying siege and destroying Jerusalem in 586 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar captured members of the Jewish elite to assimilate them into Babylonian culture. These members of Jewish nobility were “…youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace…” (Daniel 1:4). The chief servant of the king was instructed to train these men in the language and literature of the Chaldeans. They were to be educated for three years, eating the food of the city and, more importantly, imbibing the Babylonian culture. 

Why were the Babylonians so set on educating a group of captive youth? They understood that the key to transmitting a culture was forming the mind through the liberal arts. By introducing Daniel and his friends to the gods, stories, myths, and values of Babylon, they would assimilate these young Jewish men into the culture. In fact, these young Jewish men were even given new names, with theological significance, branding them as citizens of the Babylonian Empire.

As we know, however, Daniel and his friends refused to be assimilated. They continued to use their original Jewish names and refused to eat the king’s food. Instead, they ate only vegetables, being careful to live within the dietary restrictions of the Mosaic Law. In return, God blessed them both intellectually and physically. God granted them “learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams…. And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom” (Dan 1:20). 

The story of Daniel is a sober reminder, both of the perceived power of the liberal arts and the blessing of obedience to God’s Word. While the Babylonians sought to promote their mighty culture through the liberal arts, only God’s plan for this world would endure.

Telling the Greatest Story

Ultimately, for Christians, the most powerful, culture-shaping story we pass on to future generations is not about western civilization, the founding of a particular nation, or Babylonian mythology (I would surely hope not!). The most transformative story is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that our loving Creator sent his Son to offer forgiveness of sin and life through the Spirit, and ultimately to usher in the kingdom of God. The culture we seek to build and transmit must be rooted in this great story.

Our learning communities, whether at school or at home, need to gather each day and remind one another of the story of the gospel. We can do this in a few ways.

First, we can begin each day in worship, singing songs that promote an understanding of the glory of God, the fallenness of humanity, and the need for a savior.

Second, when we teach classes on the Bible, we can lead students into deep dives in biblical studies, while also helping students see the grand narrative of the gospel that unites all of scripture. We can also leverage insights from other domains, for example, reading the Bible as literature, in order to engage the imaginations and hearts of students.

Finally, we can integrate the gospel in our approach to student discipline. The gospel is not a self-help manual to equip students to fix their problems on their own. Nor is it a legalistic tome, denoting each and every expectation God has for human behavior. Rather, it is the grand story of God’s grace in our lives and His restorative plan for creation. The gospel allows us to guide students in moments of discipline to utter the words, “I cannot do this on my own. Lord, please help me,” and restore them into the classroom.

Conclusion

The stories we tell are powerful for transmitting a culture, and the surest way to tell stories infused with meaning and persuasion is through training in the liberal arts. In the post-Christian western world in which we live, our society needs to hear the good news of Christ anew. By training our students in mastery of language and the arts, we are equipping students to not only have careers, but to be leaders of the future cultures of society. May God grant us much wisdom as we continue in this important work.

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As Christian educators, it is important for us to reflect on these difficult questions from a theological and biblical perspective. In this case, what we think about humans will dictate to a large extent how we educate them. One of the advantages of the Christian intellectual tradition is that it offers a portrait of what it means to be human that is amenable with many of the insights of various perspectives. In fact, rightly understood, Christianity functions as the foundational framework in which these insights make the most sense when they are true. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” In this case, Christianity equips us to view humans as Homo sapiens, spiritual beings, individual selves, and members of society seeking justice, even if they are not reducible to just one of these definitions.

In this blog, I want to share some ideas for how teachers can educate their students with a Christian worldview in a secular age. Part of what it means to live in a secular age is that our students our growing up within a marketplace of competing worldviews, rather than on a service line with a single product. If our students are going to think Christianly, then, they must not only be taught Christian ideas. They must learn how to carefully scrutinize ideas from differing worldviews with the aim to discern the truth. The starting point for this task, I want to suggest in this blog, is possessing a robust doctrine of revelation.

Grounded in God’s Self-Revelation

The foundation for all of theology is the doctrine of revelation. This is the idea that our knowledge of God is possible only because God first revealed himself to us. Without revelation, there is no theology. In the modern era, people tried to relocate the source of theology from God’s self-revelation to other places. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), for example, grounded theology in morality. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) pointed to an inner sense of absolute dependence. These approaches, as well as other attempts in history and psychology, led only to anthropocentric substitutes for a robust God-centered approach. For theology to avoid being reduced to anthropology, the discipline must be grounded in God’s self-revelation.

Theologians typically divide revelation into two types: general and special. The source of general revelation is the natural world and the source of special revelation is holy scripture. In the case of general revelation, as humans reflect on the sheer majesty and order of creation, they cannot help themselves but intuit there is a numinous force behind it all. John Calvin (1509-1564) famously called this intuition the sensus divinitatis, that is, the “sense of the divine.” He writes,

There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the pretense of ignorance, God himself has planted in all men a certain understanding of divine majesty.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), ed. John McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Book I, Chapter 3, Section 1

Calvin believed that God hard-wired into human beings an awareness of the supernatural, a reality beyond what lies immanently before us. Admittedly, those of us living in the 21st century might question Calvin’s assumption that all humans possess this awareness of God. After all, with self-professed atheists alive among us, it seems that the modern era has undergone some form of immanentization, “the process by which meaning, significance, and fullness are sought within an enclosed, self-sufficient, naturalistic universe without any reference to transcendence” (James K.A. Smith, How (Not) to be Secular (Eerdmans, 2014), p. 141). In other words, it seems that an enclosure has been erected, making it possible for some people to lack, or minimally suppress, any natural awareness of God’s existence.

Whether our world today is fully buffered from an awareness of transcendence or not, as Christian parents and educators, there are practical ways we can proactively cultivate the sensus divinitatis in our students. We can shape their religious imaginations through telling them Bible stories and have them respond with narration. We can integrate their minds, hearts, and souls with beauty through worshipping in song together in community. And we can teach them to pray with reverence and sincerity by setting a strong example of habitual prayer in the home and at school.

The Grace Common to All

In the reformed tradition, general revelation about God connects to an even broader concept: common grace. This is the idea that although humanity is fallen, God did not abandon us completely. If he did, the goodness we see around us would not even be possible. Instead, in response to the Fall, God bestowed upon the world a grace that would prevent it from going off the tracks completely and immediately. This grace is common to all peoples, cultures, and civilizations. It is the reason goodness, justice, truth, or beauty is possible in a post-Eden world in the first place. 

It is precisely the doctrine of common grace which permits Christian, classical educators to mine non-Christian sources for objective truth. According to this doctrine, it is possible for people groups outside of God’s chosen people to encounter real knowledge, that is, truth, about the world. Rather than shun this understanding, Christians should view it as a gracious gift of God.

In On Christian Teaching, Augustine of Hippo (354-430) uses the analogy of Israel plundering the gold of the Egyptians during their exodus to illustrate how Christians can plunder the truth discovered by non-Christian thinkers. Augustine writes,

Similarly all the branches of pagan learning contain not only false and superstitious fantasies…but also studies for liberated minds which are more appropriate to the service of the truth, and some very useful moral instruction, as well as the various truths about monotheism to be found in their writers.

On Christian Teaching (Oxford, 1999), trans. R.P.H. Green, Book II, Ch. 40

Here Augustine reassures us that we are not “secularizing” the faith when we grow in understanding through non-Christian sources. This insight is particularly applicable today with the vast array of emerging disciplines, ranging from positive psychology to neuroscience, but also with more traditional disciplines like biology or history. Rather than viewing these sources with suspicion, we should train our students to analyze them with a biblical worldview, mining for truth that comports to God’s Word.

As our students navigate the complexities of the modern world, complete with its array of religious and secular options, we need to provide them with the skills they need to carefully “plunder the gold and silver.” The most promising way to do so is through training in the liberal arts, the tools of learning. It is not enough to teach them the factual information they need for an upcoming test. Nor is it enough to replace intellectual skills with practical ones. Don’t get me wrong–students need to learn how to make a personal budget and conduct their lives with financial prudence. But if our students are going to be Christians in a secular world, what they truly need is to be equipped intellectually to navigate an age of contested belief.

Belief Leading to Understanding

There is much more that could be said on this topic, but let me close with this. It is common in the academy today to assume that a naturalistic starting point is a neutral one. That is, scholars should assume in their studies that the natural world is all there is and they should therefore conduct their research in light of this guiding principle. But what I want to suggest is that if Christianity is true, then religious belief cannot so easily be set aside. The doctrine of revelation, coupled with the concept of common grace, does not permit us this option. Rather, when men and women come to believe in God’s existence and the gospel of Jesus Christ, their intellectual framework itself goes through a conversion. A naturalistic premise is as dogmatic as a religious one is in our secular age. As parents and educators, then, we must unapologetically raise our students in the spirit of Augustine: “I believe in order to understand.” May our students believe, and through this belief, truly understand the world around them.

Note: For those interested in a deeper dive into religious epistemology and the idea that religious belief can be justified apart from evidential inference, I would direct you to Knowledge and Christian Belief (Eerdmans, 2015) by Alvin Plantinga.

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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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