Each cultural time period generates new challenges for this objective, and ours is no exception. While classical Christian education emerged in Christendom, an era of western history in which the Christian faith was the cultural paradigm, this is no longer the case today. The “Age of Faith” may continue to cast its shadow over western society, but Christianity has lost its cultural cachet.

What does it look like, then, for Christian schools to prepare students for this new era? We cannot simply look back to the last century, or the century before that, or even the millennium before that. The last one thousand years all share a quality that the two thousand twenty-sixth year of the Common Era (i.e. 2025) does not: they occurred in a time when the intellectual, political, and cultural powers of the day viewed Christianity as the authority. If Christian educators want to glean wisdom from the past that is relevant for today, they must go all the way back to the days before Christendom, a time when Christians lived as strangers in a pagan society. This would take them to the 2nd and 3rd centuries when the young Christian movement was finding its way under the persecuting yoke of the Roman Empire. 

This article will explore how the early church engaged its pagan world intellectually and culturally in order to offer insights for modern Christian educators. The reality is that the world we inhabit today is, in many ways, more similar to the 3rd century than it is to the 20th century. A new form of paganism has emerged–an odd amalgamation of modern science, romanticism, and modern politics. In order for Christian educators to prepare their students to engage a pagan world, they need to understand it, and consider how their Christian brothers and sisters engaged it before them.

A Modern Pagan Society

Do we really live in a pagan society? Surely this is an exaggeration. Paganism connotes the widespread practices of superstition, animal sacrifice, and the occult. Even if practices like reading horoscopes are on the rise, they are certainly not mainstream.

In Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World Like the Early Church (Eerdmans 2024), Stephen O. Presley suggests that the secular direction our culture has trod is a new form of paganism. Referencing Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s renown work A Secular Age, Presley observes that Christianity has become intellectually suspect and morally bankrupt. In its place lies “expressive individualism,” a form of epistemological and moral relativism that prioritizes internal feelings over external norms. Not unlike the 2nd century, in which the Roman Empire permitted a plurality of religious options so long as one bowed the kneed to Caesar as Lord, so our culture celebrates a religious pluralism for each to worship as he or she pleases.

Interestingly, contemporary culture has somehow made peace between the materialism of modern science with the romanticist qualities of the expressive individualism mentioned above. Truth, we are told, can be found through the deliverances of the scientific method and the inner revelations of ”who one is inside.” In this way, our culture prizes the objective truth of modern science and the subjective truths of the psychological “self,” yet not in an internally coherent manner. A dizzying schizophrenic oscillation of the objective and subjective is the result, in which both are valued but not simultaneously. You can have Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde, but not together. 

Christianity, on the other hand, is paradoxically where the objective and subjective meet. “In the Beginning was the Word,” the Gospel of John tells us, and “…and the Word became flesh.” Simon Kennedy, a research fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia, makes this point in Against Worldview: Reimagining Christian Formation as Growth in Wisdom (Lexham Press 2024). In this book, Kennedy argues for a new way of thinking about Christian worldview, underscoring that only God possesses the authoritative Christian worldview. Humans can develop a Christian worldview, subjectively speaking, but only through seeking a true apprehension of objective reality “that is obtained through the process of learning about God, the self, and the world (15). 

Even while the objective and subjective remain unreconciled in contemporary culture, there is a third ingredient we must consider: modern politics. One quality of a secular society, again, according to Charles Taylor, is the “buffered self,” the idea that cosmic and spiritual forces do not impact everyday life. If this is the case, there is an authority and power vacuum, one that is quickly being filled by modern politics. We could see this phenomonon in the most recent election: the desperation, angst, and fear-mongering that occurred throughout the process. Both sides of the aisle used rhetoric in a way to indicate that democracy was on the line and that only their ballot nomination could save us. Many people today longing for good news about peace and security look not to their churches, but to their political leaders. The new hope is in public policy, elected officials, and the preservation of democracy as we know it.

The effect of the amalgamation of expressive individualism (truth is found inside), scientific materialism (the physical world is all there is), and modern politics (only effective government can save us) is the new paganism. This paganism rejects a transcendent creator over and above all things, and replaces him with a worldview of immanence. This immanence takes normally good things in this world–the individual self, scientific method, and democratic government–and deifies them. In order to equip students to engage our neo-pagan world, let us now examine how the early church did so long ago. 

To Sanctify a Culture

In his book cited above, Stephen Presley argues that the early church’s model for engaging the pagan culture of the day was not isolation or confrontation, but sanctification. The earliest Christians were living in a world in which Caesar was king, and the empire promised peace through strength. Perpetual violence, sexual license, unbridled leisure, and oppression of the weak were core elements of this ancient culture. Christians were required to think prudently and biblically about how they would navigate such a world while being faithful to Christ.

Presley proposes that the posture these early Christians adopted was one of cultural sanctification. He writes, “Cultural sanctification recognizes that Christians are necessarily embedded within their culture and must seek sanctification (both personal and corporate) in a way that draws upon the forms and features of their environment to transform them by pursuing virtue” (12). In other words, Christians should continue to live in their local communities, engaging in normal cultural practices (so long as they are not sinful), even as they determine when to abstain, holding fast to their identity as pilgrims destined for an eternal home.

Presley then goes on to offer five ways the early church engaged in this “slow and steady process of living faithfully and seeking sanctification both personally and corporately in ways that transform the culture” (20). 

First, the early church crafted a distinct Christian identity. Through catechesis and worship, believers grew to understand who they were individually and communally as followers of Christ in a Roman world. They understood that even though they lived in a largely pagan society, Caesar did not lay claim to their ultimate identity.

Second, early Christians lived out a political theology in which they submitted to civil authorities and worked to be active citizens. They took seriously the teaching of Jesus to “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” even as they faithfullly worshiped God as the supreme authority over all things. Moreover, they understood that their ultimate citizenship is in heaven.

Third, the early church navigated the intellectual climate of its day with wisdom and eloquence. The church developed its own public intellectuals, equipped to evaluate the dominant ideas of the day and provide a defense for the Christian faith. These Christian intellectuals, such as Irenaeus and Origen, did not cave to the attacks on their faith, but instead provided persuasive arguments and responses.

Fourth, these believers engaged in public life with humility, compassion, and courage. They did not abstain from contributing to society in normal ways–having jobs, partaking in innocent leisure, having families, or even serving in the military. Rather, they participated in these societal functions with wisdom and virtue. In addition, they displayed exceptional compassion, caring for the poor and marginalized of society.

Finally, the early church was resolute in its hope in the coming kingdom of God. While their neighbors trusted in the glory of the Roman Empire, early Christians rooted their faith in the salvation they received through Christ and put their hope in the future resurrection. This hope served as a north star for them, guiding them through the complexities of living in a pagan society with a clear vision for the future.

Through these five avenues, early Christians avoided isolation, such as “the Benedict Option,” and confrontation, attempting to seize the empire for themselves. Instead, they learned to live under the authority of the Roman Empire and engage a contemporary pagan culture, while not abandoning their faith in Christ and commitment to Christian virtue. 

Seek the Welfare

In our modern pagan society, the church has a new opportunity to live out its identity in this way. The idea of cultural sanctification allows believers to approach culture, not as a world to flee or fight, but to help flourish. This approach is reminiscent of the Lord’s instruction to the Jewish exiles in Babylon back in the 6th century:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Jeremiah 29: 4-7 (ESV)

Here God commands his people to seek the welfare of the city, to contribute to its flourishing and success. Rather than waiting idly by for the eventual return to Israel, he instructs them to lead responsible lives, to engage in the culture, and to be productive members of the city. Moreover, he encourages them to pray for the city, remaining faithful to their Jewish identity even while they seek the city’s welfare.

In today’s pagan society, opportunities abound for Christians to embed themselves in culture while seeking to sanctify it. Christians simply committing to living virtuously will offer a stabilizing force for society and will set the church apart as a unique community. Engaging as active citizens and finding ways to serve in their neighborhoods is an additional way Christians can live out their calling to an unbelieving culture as God’s people. Finally, remaining conscious of prevailing ideologies of the day that run counter to Christianity, especially expressive individualism and what Carl Trueman calls the triumph of the modern self, will prove essential for preserving biblical doctrine.

These practices are all elements of an ancient Christian way of engaging a pagan culture, cultural sanctification, which “…sees Christians embedded within their culture but seeking sanctification so as to promote virtue and reject vice in their personal lives, in the church and in the activities and institutions of the surrounding world” (164). 

Insights for Christian Educators Today

What does it look like for Christian educators today to pursue this vision of cultural sanctification for their graduates?

Let me offer three suggestions.

First, Christian educators should reclaim the classical vision of education, which is the pursuit of wisdom and cultivation of virtue. The most important work teachers can do today, in partnership with parents, is to train students to be wise and discerning, both regarding intellectual ideas and practical day-to-day decisions. Presley’s observation regarding the virtuous lives of early Christians is profound, and yet, we must remember that virtue does not happen by accident. A virtuous persons is formed through the intentional cultivation of moral habits over the long-term. While grades, college acceptances, and accolades have their place, the cultivation of virtue must remain at the center of what Christian schools aim to do.

Second, Christian educators should equip graduates to grapple intellectually with the cultural ideas of the day. The way this occurred in the classical tradition is through training students in the liberal arts, the tools of learning. Modern education today is preoccupied with the pragmatic. Popular-level literature, worksheets, and 1:1 tablets is the strategy today for moving students from grade to grade. But for students to truly understand and evaluate competing ideologies, they need more than to study the “right answers.” They need to think through the ideas themselves, learn to define their terms, apply basic principles of logic, and debate opposing views.

Finally, Christian educators must infuse graduates with a theology of life that is grounded in scripture and tethered to a local church. It is no accident that Presley’s list regarding how the early church engaged culture begins with identity. If students are going to engage in cultural sanctification, they need to have clarity regarding their own life purpose. A robust theology of life provides students with the fundamentals of who they are in Christ, the different phases and stations of life they can expect to navigate, and a focus on the importance of staying connected to a local church.

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Keller had a gift for making complex things simple for ordinary people to understand. This made him a great teacher. It did not matter whether he was distilling the philosophical theology of Jonathan Edwards or the secularization analysis of Charles Taylor. He communicated these ideas with fairness and clarity, all in a conversational, winsome tone. 

This, of course, was all part of his strategy. Keller spent the bulk of his life ministering in New York City, arguably the hub of secularism in the United States. He knew he was dealing with an educated, achievement-oriented audience that was, at the same time, critical toward Christianity. To minister to them effectively, he would need to disrupt their assumptions about faith in the modern world. This meant not only knowing Scripture, but knowing New Yorkers. He would need to live where they live, see what they see, and hear what they hear. Then he would need to translate the message of the gospel accordingly, a process called “contextualization,” for which Keller would become a master in a class of his own.

As a classical educator, I cannot help but see parallels to my own work. I am trying to pass on the hallmark contributions of a tradition to the next generation. This includes intellectual skills, such as the liberal arts, yes, but even deeper, the affections of the heart and longings of the soul. I am trying to form students to be wise, virtuous, and eloquent followers of Christ. To do such work requires an element of disruption–disruption against modern assumptions about education, secular assumptions about knowledge, and cultural assumptions about identity. To share this vision requires seeking to understand parents and students in my community and translating the value of a classical liberal arts education for those who have ears to hear. 

In this article, I will highlight parallels between the late Dr. Timothy Keller’s ministry and the values of classical education. Having recently finished reading Collin Hansen’s newly published Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation (Zondervan, 2023), I have observed aspects of Keller’s approach that are deeply relevant for classical educators today. While I have no knowledge that Keller himself was a proponent of classical education, I can imagine he would appreciate the values we share.

A Love for Reading  

I begin with the fact that Tim Keller was a bibliophile. He simply loved to read. By the age of three, Keller was reading on his own. Growing up, he delighted in reading entry after entry in the encyclopedia, enjoying history and non-fiction as well. His family had a collection of Rudyard Kipling’s works that he would read along with seminal works from the Bronte sisters. 

Keller studied religion at Bucknell, a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, and began doing parachurch ministry with InterVarsity. Here he developed a heart for evangelism and helping non-believers see the truth and veracity of the Christian faith. During this time, Keller experienced the teaching of a professor who would become a lifelong mentor to him: Ed Clowney, the first president of Westminster Theological Seminary. 

As part of an InterVarsity outreach, Clowney once gave a series of evangelistic talks, interacting with the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus (Hansen 23). In this way, Clowney illustrated what Tim Keller would later add to his own skillset: interacting with the leading intellectual ideas of the day through a biblical, gospel-shaped lens. Around this same time, InterVarsity Press published Colin Brown’s Philosophy and the Christian Faith, along with similiar types of books, covering the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Georg W. F. Hegel, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Barth, and Francis Schaeffer. As Hansen puts it, “For a precocious student such as Keller, the high-level philosophical engagement of these InterVarsity authors showed him you could be intellectually serious and also a Christian” (25).

This first parallel I observe between Keller and classical education is about a love for the written word, supplied through both Christian and secular authors. All truth is God’s truth, and humanity across cultures receives a common grace from the Lord to discover this truth and inscribe it into books. Keller’s love for reading books, along with newspaper articles, journals, magazines, plays, and short stories, enabled him to speak so knowledgeably and connect so naturally with a wide audience.

The Power of Imagination

It is hard to write an article on Tim Keller without mentioning the Inklings, a group of Oxford literary enthusiasts who would meet to discuss and share their work with one another. Keller read the Inklings, especially C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, along with their forerunners G.K. Chesterton and George MacDonald. 

Through the works of the Inklings, especially The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Keller encountered the power of story and imagination for shaping one’s faith. Lewis famously described the Christian story as the “true myth” in that it is the underlying story behind all stories and myths. The only difference is that it is actually true. The biblical storyline of creation-fall-redemption-restoration is present across cultural literary traditions, and the fulfillment of these stories is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this way, all stories worth their salt borrow in some way from the story. 

Similarly, Tolkien’s idea of a “eucatastrophe” points to the gospel notion of an unexpected turn of events for the better. This, of course, is what makes fairy tales so great. Just when things look like they can only get darker, the hero comes in to save the day. Just when it appears all is lost, the beast is transformed, the ugly duckling becomes a swan, and the princess awakes. In the gospel, this is precisely what happens through the person and work of Christ. Hansen writes, “Lewis gave Keller a model for wide reading and clear thinking. Lewis challenged Keller to deploy vivid illustrations for public apologetics in defense of Christian claims to truth and beauty…Tolkien gave him ways to talk about work, to talk about hope, to talk about the stories we all hope will come true someday” (53).

I have yet very few classical educators who have not read (and loved) the Inklings. My explanation for this is that classicists love stories. Stories touch our hearts and seize our imaginations in a way that didactic instruction simply fails to do. They embody perennial ideas and unchanging values in characters and plots that we cannot forget. Stories point us to truths about reality that are more certain than empirical facts and more tested than results from the lab.

As Keller found ministering to New Yorkers who needed to be re-enchanted with the gospel, telling stories and using vivid illustrations utilize the imagination to grasp the greatest story of them all. He himself said, “The gospel story is the story of wonder from which all other fairy tales and stories of wonder take their cues” (57). This is the power of Christian imagination.

Learning in Community

Through the Inklings, Keller came to appreciate the role of imagination for the Christian. But going back to his days of evangelism and apologetics in college, leading people to faith in Christ, especially through overcoming doubt, was a lifelong passion. To support this process, Keller discovered the importance of learning in community, a third parallel I see with classical educators.

While Tim never visited L’Abri, the famous retreat center for intellectual pilgrims nestled in the Swiss Alps, he did spend time with R.C. Sproul at the Ligonier Valley Study Center in Pennsylvania. The vision for Sproul’s center, modeled after Francis Schaeffer’s L’Abri, was to provide an affordable and hospitable space for college students to think, pray, study, and work with their hands. The goals was the cultivated integration of faith and reason. Emerging during the 1960’s and 70’s, these centers were safe havens for counter-culture seekers and doubters. Students could come to study under the guidance of Christian pastors and professors, and encounter a case for faith that resonated with them through an appeal to modern art, literature, and philosophy. 

The idea of seeking wisdom in the context of doing life together resonates for many classical educators. While classical schools range in size, make-up, and resources, there is an underlying value for pursuing deep relationships. There is this sense, when teaching in a classical classroom, that we are pursuing truth together. Yes, the teacher may come to the table with some expertise to share, but really, teacher and student mutually submit themselves to the authority and transcendence of objective truth, goodness, and beauty. In this communal pursuit, fellow pilgrims on the journey learn as much about one another as they do about what they are studying. When done properly, the tension of faith and doubt is honored, not eliminated, and tough questions about life, faith, suffering, and purpose come to the surface. Hansen writes, “Tim sought to replicate this kind of community inside the church–hospitable and evangelistic, intellectual and earthy (64).

Faith in a Secular Age

A final parallel between Tim Keller and classical educators is the desire to be orthodox yet modern. Both Keller and classicists embrace the resources of church history as assets, not impediments, for leading lives of faith in the 21st century. This includes particular creeds, doctrines, and traditions. At the same time, both Keller and classicists seek to be modern, believing whole-heartedly that God is at work in the church and culture today. The calling of a Christian is neither to flee from culture nor to succumb to it, but rather, to care for it.

The phrase “orthodox yet modern” itself comes from Herman Bavinck, a Dutch neo-Calvinist who greatly influenced Keller. As a Presbyterian and reformed theologian, Keller subscribed to the reformed tradition of theology, reading the likes of John Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, and Abraham Kuyper. Central to the neo-Calvinist view is the idea that faith extends across culture. As Hansen puts it, “Believers cannot withdraw from the modern world but must engage every aspect, from art to business to politics to family to education, with a distinct worldview built on a historic Christian faith” (66).

Abraham Kuyper, the pioneer of neo-Calvinism, famously declared, “No single piece of our mental world is to be sealed off from the rest and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” In this quotation, we see parallels to our own classical, Christian approach to the liberal arts. If Christ is indeed sovereign over all creation, then he is sovereign over all disciplines. Whether one is studying the humane or natural sciences, knowledge discovered by way of grace common to the believer and unbeliever alike, is ultimately knowledge whose source is Christ.

This idea of common grace, paradigmatically observed in Romans 1, means that all people possess some seed of knowledge of God in their hearts. Those that deny the existence of God simply suppress this knowledge. Thus, the job of the apologist is not to offer proofs for the existence of God, but rather to demonstrate how Christianity explains what unbelievers “know with their hearts but deny with their lips” (91). This occurs through identifying inconsistencies in the worldview of an unbeliever, an approach called presuppositional apologetics.

How the Trivium Can Help

For classical educators, we are preparing students through the Trivium to study the truth (grammar), reason about the truth (dialectic), and speak the truth (rhetoric). But in a secular society that no longer takes its cues from the Enlightenment, appeals to objective truth are no longer effective. Our postmodern culture has freed itself from modernistic appeals to universal rationality and empirical evidence. People believe all sorts of things that cannot be proved by modern science–human rights, convictions about justice, personal identity, and longings for meaning–to name a few. We therefore ned to help people see, through the arts of the Trivium, that their intuitions about these metaphysical realities require a foundation that is also metaphysical. This is the need for transcendence.

What Tim Keller has shed especially clear pastoral light on is that the empty promises of secular modernity are equally empty in secular postmodernity. Truth is indeed not knowable by human reason alone. But it becomes available when received as a gracious gift from God. To be known and loved– not by how much one knows or how well one loves, but by a creator who ultimately knows and loves– this is the message our world needs to hear today. The task of the classical educator, then, is to wield the liberal arts to reveal this reality and go on to proclaim “the true myth,” the ultimate story, and invite others into the new community, marked not by good people or bad people, but by what Keller calls, “new people.” 

Conclusion

In this article, I have sough to demonstrate parallels between the ministry of Tim Keller and the work of classical educators today. So many of the tactics Tim Keller used in his ministry align with our own work of helping students encounter the living God through a faith integrated with all domains of knowledge and fueled through the power of imagination. May the legacy of Keller continue as we seek to raise up disciples of Christ who love God with their minds, and proclaim the gospel in a secular time in which people are so desperately looking for good, perhaps surprising, news.

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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 Christianity is projected to increase globally, but decrease in the West, in what parts of the world is the religion on the rise? In short, practically everywhere in the majority world! Africa, Asia, South America–in each of these continents, Christianity is experiencing record-breaking growth. So much so that sociologists predict that sub-Saharan Africa will be the new global home of Christianity. By 2060, 40% of all Christians will live in this region of the world, making it the locale of the majority of Christians globally.[3]

Despite this bright future for Christianity in the global south, western Christians must wrestle with the fact that the faith may continue to decline in their own cities and neighborhoods. Parents must think prudently about how they will raise their children with confident faith in an age of religious uncertainty. More than anything, the present situation should lead parents to pray for their children…and remember that saving faith is ultimately in the hands of God alone.

Alongside prayer, however, there are some practical steps parents can take to help cultivate confident faith in their children in this socio-cultural moment. These steps begin in the home and will expand into school, church, and society. In this blog, I will offer some thoughts for how schools can support the efforts of parents by organizing their curricular approaches in a way that will nurture confident faith.

Arguments Can Wait

Apologetics is the academic field focused on defending the reasonableness and truth of the Christian faith. For many years now, I have enjoyed reading apologetics literature and have come to appreciate the numerous persuasive arguments for skeptical challenges pertaining to, for example, the existence of God, the reliability of scripture, the historicity of Christ’s resurrection, and the goodness of God.

However, over time, I have come to realize that apologetics is limited in its ability to sufficiently nurture confident faith…and that’s okay. Apologetics seeks to influence the rational part of a person, in particular, her belief-forming faculties. This is a worthy aim, but there are two problems with leaning too heavily on apologetics, especially in the early years.

The first problem is rather obvious. The rational capacity of a child is not yet fully developed. Consequently, a grammar school child isn’t typically asking the intellectual questions that apologetics is seeking to address. If the teacher isn’t careful, the mind of a child can be overwhelmed by the tedium. It’s not yet the right time to implement a curriculum focused on abstract ideas and argumentation.

But second, and more crucially, human beings, regardless of age, are simply not reducible to their rationality. As much as modernism, and the Enlightenment project that grew out of it, emphasizes the rational capabilities of humans, we are not simply brains on a popsicle stick, as James K.A. Smith likes to put it. Smith writes:

What if, instead of starting from the assumption that human beings are thinking things, we started from the conviction that human beings are first and foremost lovers? What if you are defined not by what you know but by what you desire? What if the center and seat of the human person is found not in the heady regions of the intellect but in the gut-level regions of the heart? How would that change our approach to discipleship and Christian formation?

You Are What You Love (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2016) by James K.A. Smith

Smith is right. We are driven, more than anything else, by the engine of our affections. This is not to say we are irrational, impulse-driven beasts. Humans have minds, and within these minds, moral compasses. But modernism has led us to overestimate how much our minds guide our decision-making, and as a corollary, belief formation. The reality is we often make decisions and form beliefs based on intuition, rather than evidence, and affection, rather than argument.

So while apologetics may be useful for targeting the rational part of a person, it cannot effectively influence the hopes, dreams, inclinations, and deep-seated affections of a person. To reach this subterranean level, we need the power of story.

The Power of Story

Our hearts are captured, more than anything, by story. Stories enrapture us. They draw us into a different world: a world of intrigue, imagination, and curiosity. The experience Lucy felt as she stepped through a dusty English wardrobe into a cold, snow-covered wood is a metaphor for our own experience each time we cautiously wade into the counterfactual world of a good story.

What’s more, stories (at least the good ones) tend to leave us wanting more. There is a certain hunger or longing one feels upon the conclusion of a good book. It’s often the feeling of “I’m so glad it ended that way, but I wish it could have continued.” There is a reason why the Pevensy children, of which Lucy was the youngest, kept returning (well, except for Susan). The more they experienced the land of Narnia and all the joy it brought them, the more they wanted to stay. Though they didn’t realize it, their hearts were being rewired for something else–something beyond the immanent frame of the material world–and this process took place through the stories they inhabited.

As we think about nurturing confident faith in our youngest children, we must not begin with lofty arguments, but instead, the very best stories. These stories will shape the moral imaginations of students, filling their souls with a rich feast of ideas, characters, stories, poems, and fables. They will introduce for perhaps the very first time the seedling ideas integral to Christianity: friendship, courage, forgiveness, sacrifice, grace, faith, hope, and love. Most importantly, these stories will develop a subterranean desire within a child for something else.

An Intellectual Training Ground

Having said all this, it is essential for the development of confident faith to train the mind for the religious contestation that will inevitably come. Man cannot live on story alone. Students will need tools–or perhaps weapons is a more fitting metaphor–to prepare for the intellectual battle for their faith in an age of religious uncertainty. But what kind of weapons?

It may be tempting at this point to transition to an apologetics curriculum. Students could be led to perform worldview analysis and memorize arguments for the Christian faith. I certainly see the merits of such a curriculum having taught versions of it myself, but I suggest this tactic puts the cart before the horse. Before students can effectively do apologetics, they must develop the intellectual weaponry they will need to enter the arena in the first place. These weapons have a name: the classical liberal arts. Gaining proficiency in these arts will function as the intellectual training ground for the student with confident faith.

The classical liberal arts are a set of complex skills that enable students to truly think and, therefore, know. Too often educators today equate memorization with learning and factual recall with knowing. But really, factual recall only scratches the surface of what it means to have a vibrant intellectual life. Real learning leads to thinking that is dynamic, agile, and creative. It equips students to develop reasoned opinions for themselves and be able to trace the path they took to arrive at a certain conclusion. True learning requires training in thinking.

Historically, the number of the liberal arts was seven: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. The first three arts focused on language while the last four focused on number. Together, the Trivium and Quadrivium made up the seven arts, or skills, for fashioning knowledge. 

Case Study: The Problem of Evil

Why should training in these arts come before the formal study of apologetics? Simple: Every apologetics argument is crafted using the liberal arts. Training in these arts can begin in various forms throughout grade levels and when the time is right (usually 8th grade or high school), they can be applied to the field of apologetics.

Let’s take the problem of evil, for example. It has long been doubted–yes, even before the dawn of the Enlightenment–that God could be good in light of the sheer amount of evil and suffering in the world. Surely a good God would put an end to such evil immediately. If he was able. Or knew the extent of it. So the problem of evil, as it is usually presented, raises a series of questions about God’s attitude toward it, his power to defeat it, and to some extent, his awareness of it. 

Now, in theory, one could simply pick up the latest apologetics book and commit to memory some of the ways Christian thinkers respond to this objection. (As an aside, I recently read Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019) by Rebecca McLaughlin, and found it superb. She addresses the problem of evil in Chapter 12 in a way that is nuanced and thought-provoking.) This would solve the quandary, at least temporarily.

But I submit it would not provide long-term satisfaction. Soon enough, another variation of the problem of evil would surface, thereby generating a need for a nuanced response. Or perhaps the same version of the problem would return, leaving the Christian straining to recall what she once knew. This is the problem with mere memorization. It eventually leaves the mind of a person entirely “…unless fixed by almost endless repetitions” as educator John Milton Gregory put it (The Seven Laws of Teaching, 103). But the prescribed repetition would take an unreasonable amount of time as well as constant effort.

In order to maintain a robust apologetic to the problem of evil, Christians need more than arguments. They need the tools to construct arguments of their own. The liberal art of grammar, for instance, enables a student to read and interpret a text with robust comprehension. The liberal art of dialectic prepares a student to dissect an argument in terms of presuppositions and logical relationships. And the liberal art of rhetoric equips a student to present the truth in an eloquent and persuasive manner.

The Arts in Action

The result is a student who is not dependent on one single defense, but instead has the intellectual training to “duck and weave,” to use an old boxing metaphor, and when necessary, strike. Regarding the problem of evil specifically, a response fueled by the liberal arts would consider all the available resources for thinking through the problem. An initial step might be to research ancient understandings of the gods, including what has been thought about the nature of good and evil. Then one might consider potential biblical theodicies (responses to the problem of evil) found in the Old and New Testaments. Additionally, one could examine the writings of the church fathers, who were first-rate apologists themselves. 

After this preliminary study, which leans on the art of grammar, one could begin to use dialectic to analyze the question further and construct potential responses. One could try out different ways of viewing the question, being sure to think through every presupposition or implication of the problem as it is stated. This step would also include cross-referencing these perspectives with what philosophers of religion are writing about on the topic. I suggest philosophers and not apologists because philosophers would be considered the experts on material related to the problem of evil. They are the knowledge workers, down in the mines, doing the heavy intellectual lifting on the metaphysical questions pertaining to ethical theory, good and evil, and God himself. Professional philosophical insights and ruminations, though more complex than the average popular apologetics work, will offer more fodder for dialectic.

Finally, after researching a reasonable amount of the relevant material, and then interacting with various arguments and logical formulations, one can move into the crafting of a response, which takes us to the art of rhetoric. This response would begin by thinking through all material one could include in a coherent defense. Cicero called this the rhetorical canon of invention. Then one would go about arranging this material and stating it in a way that is coherent and persuasive. These are the canons of arrangement and style. With the content of the response now complete, one could test one’s memory of the response and practice presenting it. Through this rigorous process of self-formulating and present one’s case for the goodness of God despite the amount of evil and suffering in the world, a confident faith can begin to germinate.

Humble Confidence

Although I am convinced that a liberal arts approach to teaching apologetics is the way to go, please don’t misunderstand: I greatly value the field of apologetics and all that have apologists have contributed over the years to provide answers to the questions skeptics ask. But to truly teach apologetics, from an educational standpoint, reading apologetics literature and memorizing arguments is not enough. One must begin with the power of story and then move into deliberate training of the liberal arts.

Let me close with two final thoughts on the topic of apologetics and educating for confident faith. 

The first is a warning. In my experience, there is a real hubris that can develop anytime one teaches apologetics to young people or new Christians. The legitimate study of defending the Christian faith can quickly deteriorate into mocking unbelievers or their doubts about Christian belief. The reality is that religious belief is far more complex than we might think. Despite one’s efforts, one cannot simply coerce oneself to belief. That’s not how belief formation works. Usually it takes time, experience, and exposure to new horizons.

Therefore we need to teach humility alongside confidence as we prepare young people, or new Christians, to engage the outside world. Let us remember the words of the Apostle Paul. Referring to the bondage of sin that enslaves all people, including Christians, Paul writes, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11, ESV; italics added).  As we remember who we were before Christ, we can have compassion on those who have not encountered him personally.

Second, as confident as Christians should be in the hope that they have, we must remember that there remains much we do not know. While there are compelling arguments for the goodness of God, the problem of evil can easily return in its old monstrous form at any moment. Therefore, we should embrace the truth that ultimately our faith is not in a certain subset of knowledge, but in a person: Jesus Christ. We must cling to him, especially during times of doubt, and trust that despite our lack of confident faith, his grace is sufficient. On that long-awaited day, when our Lord returns, all will be made right and we shall fix our eyes upon the object of our faith for the first time. What we once saw in a mirror dimly, we shall see face to face.

[1] https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/

[2] https://www.pewforum.org/2018/05/29/being-christian-in-western-europe/

[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/19/sub-saharan-africa-will-be-home-to-growing-shares-of-the-worlds-christians-and-muslims/

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