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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On his return to Lystra during his second missionary tour, Paul had his eye on a potential companion to work alongside him. Previously, Paul had worked closely with Barnabas, but had parted ways at the outset of his second journey. Even though he had brought Silas along with him, a vacancy remained. So when he arrived at Lystra, he identified a young man full of faith to join in this gospel ministry. Timothy represents in many ways the central point of the book of Acts. The Jerusalem council had just met to delineate exactly how to blend new gentile believers into the church comprised mostly of Jewish believers (Acts 15). Timothy was of mixed parentage. His father was Greek. His mother was a Jewish believer (Acts 16:1). Raised in the faith of his mother and grandmother, Timothy would have already been familiar with the scriptures of the Old Testament. As one of the disciples from Paul’s previous visit to Lystra, what Paul found upon his return was a young man of profound faith. We cannot know for certain his age, but it seems likely that Timothy was still only a boy, around sixteen or seventeen years old.

Timothy joined Paul and Silas on their journeys, traveling throughout Macedonia and Greece. At times, Paul entrusted Timothy with the care of local churches, such as at Berea or Thessalonica. We can picture, though, that Paul valued Timothy as a close companion, referring to him as his “true child in the faith” (1 Tim. 1:2). At various points, Paul commends Timothy to various churches, such as when Timothy was sent to minister at Corinth (1 Cor. 4:17 and later 16:10), or when he was sent to minister at Philippi (Phil 2:18-23). Timothy was included as a co-author of several of Paul’s letters, including 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, and Philemon. From all of this we gather that Timothy was a gifted and capable companion, even during his earliest days traveling with Paul.

What Timothy exemplifies is a young person exhibiting spiritual gifting in a powerful way. Later in his life, even after many years accompanying Paul, he was still a young man when Paul advised him to “let no one despise you for your youth” (1 Tim. 4:12). The point I am making here is that spiritual gifting can be evident and powerfully expressed by young people. Therefore, I believe that we can begin exploring gifting during the high school years, enabling students to begin a process of discernment and practice that will put feet to their faith in powerful ways.

Learning about Spiritual Gifts

In this year’s Bible class taught to freshmen, we walked through 1 Corinthians 12-14. Here we get one of several lists of gifts in the New Testament. Compare, for instance, the list in 1 Cor. 12:7-11 with that in 12:28-30 as well as with those in Romans 12:4-8, Ephesians 4:11 and 1 Peter 4:9-11. Each list contains different gifts. This means that no single list is comprehensive or exhaustive. So the first lesson to learn about gifts is that they can be tricky to pin down and define with exactitude. This points to the need for discernment and dependence. By discernment, I mean the process of continually asking the Lord for clarity as to how he desires to work through someone to edify the people of God. And by dependence, I mean that the gift itself is not actually the most consequential part of what we are learning. Instead, using a God-given gift is really the training ground for prayerfully and faithfully connecting ourselves to his work in and through us. 1 Corinthians 13 shows us that the gift itself will pass away (13:8-10). It is the love that is expressed through the gift that will endure forever.

Walking through the three chapters of 1 Corinthians 12-14, we are presented with three major ideas. First, we learn the nature of spiritual gifts in chapter 12. Here we get a couple listings of the gifts, but also ideas such as the unity of the body of Christ and the empowering of the Holy Spirit. In chapter 13, we learn about spiritual gifts as the “homework” we receive to practice loving one another. Paul anticipates that we will one day see our Lord face to face, so our current practice should be a training ground for learning how to live a serving and sacrificial love towards our brothers and sisters in Christ. Then in chapter 14, Paul teaches about how gifts ought to be exercised in an orderly and considerate way. Here we get the principle that gifts are meant to build the church up (14:12).

There are challenging points of discussion that accompany these passages. It can be difficult to walk through these chapters without tackling one or two of the controversies contained in them. For instance, we encounter topics such as the availability of all gifts today (some Christian traditions view the miraculous gifts such as tongues and prophecy as no longer available). There are topics pertaining to authority in the church, which can erupt into differences in church polities in a multi-denominational setting. Perhaps the most difficult controversy to tackle is the roles of women in the church. A teacher resource I found to be extremely helpful is D.A. Carson’s Showing the Spirit. He carefully lays out different theological positions and proposes reasonable solutions to thorny issues.

Learning to Own One’s Faith

One of the chief goals in learning about spiritual gifts is to help students make the connection between their emerging biblical faith and the practical outworking of that faith in their lives. To accomplish this, it is imperative to lay a strong biblical foundation. One must know what one believes. Some students will have a very detailed and robust knowledge of the Bible and theology, while others will have less knowledge. So, I advise a program whereby students come away with a good grasp of the storyline of the Bible and the essentials of the faith. As high schoolers, students can be entrusted to read on their own and begin practicing disciplines such as daily prayer, regular Bible reading, and so forth. Learning about spiritual gifts, then, gives them further ownership of their faith and new avenues to put feet to their faith.

Having students take a few spiritual gifts tests is the next step in their learning. After laying a strong foundation in the biblical text, we then have them explore by way of tests some potential giftings the Lord may have bestowed upon them. Here are two tests I found online. The website Spiritual Gifts Test is run by the ministry of Jeff Carver. I like this site because it has a test geared towards youth. To take this test and receive results, students must create an account. I found that this site has really solid definitions of the gifts for students to learn about their personal gifting and connect that to solid biblical teachings. Another site is giftstest.com, a free online tool produced by the Rock Church in San Diego. There are other tests available out there, but these are two good examples of questionnaires aimed at elucidating an individual’s possible gifting. I want to emphasize the word “possible,” because no single test can definitively tell a person what the Holy Spirit is accomplishing within a believer.

This is why we need to spend time reflecting. Once students have taken a couple tests, they have some results to read and digest. They now begin a process of writing up what they think their gifting is by listing the top results and using scripture to clearly define their gifting as best as they can discern. For students who may not have had much opportunity to serve in any ministry context, it is important to consider moments when they have experienced genuine joy, or times when others have commented on their potential gifting. I also spend time working one-on-one with them in order to hear their thoughts and provide my own insights.

I also have students write up plans they can make now that they have discern one, two or three possible giftings. These plans might be along the lines of learning more about spiritual gifts, or speaking with a youth pastor about spiritual gifts. They might consider opportunities to use spiritual gifts in a ministry at church, or to join a missions trip. In other words, having considered what the Lord is doing through them, they should now follow Paul’s teaching that these gifts are for the edification of the church.

Learning about Life’s Mission

Having spent the better part of a decade providing college guidance, the major framework I use with students is to consider their life’s mission. I can think of no better way to think about college than to view those years than within a context a long-range vision of why God has placed this person on the planet. It can be difficult for students to have a clear vision of this life mission, so it takes time and good counsel to draw this out of them. Here’s where I think learning about spiritual gifts can be a moment of clarity for students. By gaining an insight into their relationship with God, and a sense of where God wants them to serve, they begin to understand that their life has a mission, and that whatever kind of schooling they do, it should be intimately tied to that mission. It is imperative that counselors use effective questions to draw out of students their own values and sense of their life mission. We must restrain ourselves from inserting our own vision or coaxing them into a preconceived notion of what they ought to want in their lives. Only when they have come to their own conclusions can they genuinely be satisfied with this vision of their mission in life. Some of the questions I ask have to do with what kinds of values to they hold, what kind of person do they want to be when they are 20, 30 or 40, and what kind of parent would they want to be.

This does not mean that one’s spiritual gift is somehow tied to a college major or career. That being said, it could be that discerning a spiritual gift could lead some students to pursue training in ministry. For many or even most students, they can start to map out a mission where their interests, talents, and giftings come together into a clearer life plan. The aspiring architect can now see how their talent in physics intersects with their interest in design as well as their spiritual gifting of mercy. How these come together is very personal and unique to that person.

Whether a unit on spiritual gifts is explicitly connected to college guidance or not, teaching students about spiritual gifts can be a key moment in their growth as young Christians. During the high school years, most of these students will learn how to drive and work their first job. Shouldn’t we also hand them the keys to a deeper walk with Christ that gives them a start in how to practically live out their faith. Just like Timothy was entrusted with responsibility at a young age, we can likewise guide our students toward a mature faith.

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I then went on to offer two general ways a Christian school can engage in the discipleship of its students. The first way is what I deemed holistic discipleship. Holistic discipleship is the integration of faith into the thoughts and activities of everyday life: habits, meals, learning, and leisure, for example. Holistic discipleship in a Christian school can include Bible studies and prayer meetings, but more often, it occurs organically. One teacher may choose to end her literature class in prayer after an intense debate. Another teacher might catch a student after class to keep the conversation going about the relationship between science and faith. And so on. 

The second way I suggested a Christian school can engage in discipleship is through training students to think through a Christian grid, or worldview. We all approach knowledge and questions with particular assumptions and presuppositions about how the world works. Our students are no different. Likely formed through popular culture and social media, students have grown up within the milieu of a secular society and naturally see the world through this lens. Teachers can disciple their students to think Christianly about the world by drawing attention to secular worldview assumptions that often go unchallenged and going on to lay out a compelling biblical alternative. 

But are these two approaches to discipleship sufficient? Are there additional ways? What about the idea of spiritual formation and the impact it could have on the Christian school’s approach to discipleship? In this article, I will explore the use of spiritual disciplines in the context of discipleship and take a special look at the spiritual discipline of study.

Transformation Through the Disciplines

In his classic book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster argues that spiritual disciplines are the gateway to spiritual transformation. Interestingly, in my first article on discipleship, I mentioned nothing of being transformed spiritually. And yet, is this not central to the aim of discipleship? If growing as a disciple is being conformed to the image of Christ, it will be nothing less than the utter transformation of a person into someone new.

Foster believes spiritual transformation happens first and foremost through receiving the free gift of righteousness. But he goes on to caution that this grace is received, not through passive antinomianism, but through active “sowing to the spirit” (Gal. 6:8). He writes, “Once we clearly understand that God’s grace is unearned and unearnable, and if we expect to grow, we must take up a consciously chosen course of action involving both individual and group life. That is the purpose of the spiritual disciplines” (7).

In a similar way, Dallas Willard begins his book Spirit of the Disciplines with the statement that modern Christianity has failed to take human transformation seriously. Therefore, the church must clarify and exemplify realistic methods of human transformation, thereby showing “how ordinary individuals…can become, through the grace of Christ, a love-filled, effective, and powerful community” (ix). Willard goes on to contend that the church today largely misunderstands how experiences and actions enable us to receive the grace of God. His solution: pursue a life of spiritual disciplines.

It seems to me that Foster and Willard are on to something. If the goal of discipleship is to help someone follow Jesus and grow in conformity to his image, we need to equip disciples with practical ways they can do that will lead to the transformation we desire. Just as a soccer coach has a collection of drills and exercises to strengthen the skill of his players and overtime to develop them into better soccer players, it seems that the would-be disciple-maker would possess a similar collection. And yet so often today, students growing up in Christian homes proceed through their young adult years without this training.

Types of Disciplines

So what are the disciplines that lead to spiritual transformation and which ones can be promoted in a Christian school context? Richard Foster divides the disciplines into three groups: inward disciplines, outward disciplines, and corporate disciplines. 

Inward disciplines focus on cultivating one’s inward life through prayerful contemplation and reflection. These practices include meditation, prayer, fasting, and study. Outward disciplines, on the contrary, are oriented toward one’s interaction with the external, often physical world. These practices include simplicity, solitude, submission, and service. Finally, the corporate disciplines underscore the practices that occur in community with others: confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. 

Interestingly, Dallas Willard groups the spiritual disciplines into only two categories: disciplines of abstinence and disciplines of engagement. Disciplines of abstinence are the practices we employ to gain control over “…the satisfaction of what we generally regard as normal and legitimate desires” (159). He is careful to point out that these desires are not necessarily sinful in and of themselves. But in our sinful human condition, it is these desires that often run “…a rebellious and harmful course.” The goal is to bring these desires back into coordination of a life aligned with Christ. Willard’s list of the disciplines of abstinence include solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, and sacrifice. 

Conversely, the disciplines of engagement are those that realign our desires and practices with proper engagement with God. While disciplines of abstinence counteract tendencies of commission (the things we ought not do), disciplines of engagement counteract tendencies of omission (the things we ought to do). Willard’s list here includes study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, and submission (158).

Whether you prefer Foster’s groupings or Willard’s, the upshot is that there is an arsenal of disciplines at the disciple’s disposal for growing in Christ. While these disciplines take effort and intentionality, when pursued in and through the power of the Holy Spirit, they contain the elements for real spiritual transformation. For those new to the topic, let me clarify that Foster and Willard do not necessarily recommend implementing a spiritual regimen of all these disciplines at once. Rather, they are providing a menu of strategies that encompass a fully-orbed view of a person, and how every facet of what it means to be human can be placed under the transformative lordship of Christ.

The Discipline of Study

It is worth exploring the different ways a Christian school can implement these disciplines for the spiritual growth of their students, but I do not want to be misinterpreted to suggest that all these disciplines should be implemented. Again, we need to draw distinctions between the discipleship approaches of the church and school, and the home as well.

But I do want to suggest that schools are uniquely able to facilitate the spiritual discipline of study. In education today, the act of study is associated with the preparation for an upcoming examination, usually with high-stakes consequences. Thus, study is a word infused with connotations of labor, stress, and deadlines.

But Foster encourages us to step back and think of study as a broader approach to engaging the objective world and, in doing so, to be transformed. It is a discipline that facilitates a state of rest and peacefulness as one contemplates truths that are unchanging, good, and often beautiful. This is quite the opposite of our modern view of study!

Foster frames his chapter on study with Paul’s words to the Philippian church: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). In the Book of Romans, we see Paul’s vision for this discipline, namely, that believers will be “transformed by the renewal of their minds” (Rom. 12:2).

How does this happen? The idea is that as we focus on truth, we align our beliefs and belief processes to the objective structures of knowledge. The things we focus on conform our habits and thinking to the order of the thing studied. The more we fill our minds with God’s goodness, truth, and beauty, the more oriented toward him we become in our intellectual and cognitive disposition. Conversely, the more we saturate ourselves with the opposite, the more oriented we will be toward the cares of the world.

This is one reason why gaining control over one’s consumption of shows and social media is so important. It is temping to think that we can watch whatever we want to and it will have no effect on us. Or that endless scrolling of social media is a harmless activity. But the reality is that these behaviors can and will change us, literally rewiring our brains, as the science has shown, and changing us over time.

What to Study

So what should we study in order to experience spiritual formation for ourselves and for our students? Here are five suggestions:

The Bible: I am sure you saw this coming. The study of God’s Word should be the primary source we engage in this discipline. We want to teach students to study scriptural passages, not merely as a scholarly pursuit, but as an endeavor to connect personally with God. On this note, Willard writes, “Our prayer as we study meditatively is always that God would meet with us and speak specifically to us, for ultimately the Word of God is God speaking (177).

Experiential Classics: In our individualistic culture, we often assume that growing spiritually is a solo journey. We view spiritual growth as a single path that a traveler journeys down alone. But the better metaphor is not a path, but a pilgrimage. Pilgrims travel together. The reality is that there is a nearly endless list of Christ followers who have been transformed spiritually and have written about their experience. From Augustine’s Confessions to Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ to Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God, we can select texts to add to the curriculum that form our students spiritually as they study these works.

Nature: The intentional study of God’s creation is one of the most life-giving and peaceful experiences I have come across. In a world that champions the conquering of nature for pragmatic ends, we can help students reconnect the natural world with the spiritual through slowing down and observing the beauty and order of nature. The addition of Nature Study as a scheduled part of the school week is a strategic way to help students grow spiritually as they respond with wonder and worship.

Relationships: While the first three suggestions for study are rather conventional, Foster suggests we can grow spiritually by learning to study the relational interactions around us. How do we speak to one another? How do we use our words and interactions? Are we participating in healthy friendships or discouraging ones? By training students to study and reflect on their relationships, they can grow in their understanding of how these relationships are influencing their spiritual walks.

Culture: While it is true that the heart of the spiritual discipline of study is to align our beliefs and belief processes with objective reality, it is important to be reflective about one’s surrounding culture. We often inhabit our world like fish who are fully submersed in water, yet, if asked, haven’t the slightest clue what H20 is. As with worldview thinking, we can facilitate moments for our students to study the culture they live in and thereby grow in discernment of various cultural elements, from moral values to entertainment.

To conclude this article, Christian schools can contribute to the growth of their students as disciples of Christ by encouraging and, in some occasions, facilitating spiritual disciplines. A central component of being a disciple of Christ is being spiritually formed over time. But this sort of transformation does not happen by accident, even if it ultimately a gracious gift of God. As Paul writes, “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:8). May we help our students reap eternal life through providing daily opportunities for them to practice the sort of disciplines that are the pathways to real and lasting spiritual transformation.

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Like most good questions, we must begin by defining our terms. What is discipleship?

According to Mark Dever, a pastor in the Washington D.C. area, we can define discipleship simply as helping someone follow Jesus. As an expanded definition, he writes that discipleship is “…deliberately doing spiritual good to someone so that he or she will be more like Christ” (Discipling, p. 13). Greg Ogden, a pastor who served for many years in the Chicago suburbs, defines discipleship as “walking alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ” (Discipleship Essentials, p. 17). Taking these two definitions together, the heart of discipleship is encouraging others in their pursuit of Christ. Disciple-makers possess an others-focused mentality and a Christ-centered end goal.

It seems fairly intuitive to me that discipleship, as defined above, happens in Christian schools. Christian teachers who care about young people growing in wisdom and virtue will naturally care about them growing in their faith as well. And yet, it must be stated that the school is not the church. There is an important distinction between these two institutions, which will impact, and potentially limit, the forms discipleship can take in these contexts.

So I move on to the second half of my question: how does discipleship happen in a Christian school?

A Holistic Approach

To begin, I want to differentiate between what I call focused discipleship and holistic discipleship. Focused discipleship is what we most likely think of when we picture discipleship taking place. Two men drinking coffee in Starbucks, having a Bible study and challenging one another to submit their whole lives to Christ. Women getting together to pray and exhort one another with scriptural truths. In these situations, the meetings are intentional, focused, and usually for a particular duration of time. There may be a set agenda for these meetings or there might not be, but the time has been intentionally set apart by the participants to grow toward maturity in Christ.

The alternative to focused discipleship is holistic discipleship. This approach can be less easy to nail down. In holistic discipleship, believers are doing life together as they integrate faith, habits, meals, learning, and leisure into everyday life. Holistic discipleship includes elements of focused discipleship–prayer meetings, Bible studies, 1-on-1 conversations–but it encompasses these gatherings within a broader context of extended relationship.

It seems to me that there is great potential for holistic discipleship at Christian schools. With the amount of time teachers and students spend together each day, the opportunities for faith integration into daily life are practically limitless. With intentionality, teachers can inspire and lead their students to integrate their walk with Christ into speech, habits, routines, interactions, school work, class discussions, assignments, conversations, recess, and meals on a daily basis.

Incorporating Worldview Thinking

So one way discipleship can happen in Christian schools is through this holistic approach. Another potentially more tangible way is through the intentional formation of a Christian worldview.

In Wisdom and Eloquence (Crossway, 2006), Robert LittleJohn and Chuck Evans explore in their chapter entitled “Worldview and the Liberal Arts” what it looks like for a school to teach and learn Christianly. They begin by defining the term “worldview.” Typically, when we think of worldview, we envision holding the correct or biblical positions on key issues of the day. For example, we want to help students develop a biblical worldview on the topic of abortion, forming the conviction that life in the womb is sacred and worthy of protection.

However, the authors argue, worldview is not reducible to positions or even values. It runs much deeper than what propositions we believe or why we believe them. Worldview is a fundamental aspect of our sense of being that orients us toward a particular vision of the good life (44). It is essentially an inner honing device formed over time by our culture and upbringing. As a result, parents and teachers cannot simply teach a Christian worldview through didactic instruction as useful as this can be. Rather, it is passed on, or “caught,” through enculturating and embodied practices. These can include specific routines like attending worship services and prayer meetings as well as more mundane practices like singing, eating, discussing, gardening, and playing. In this way, harnessing the enculturating power of wordview formation is another avenue for schools to disciple students in a holistic manner.

Holistic Discipleship in the Classroom

In the classroom, holistic discipleship begins when teachers integrate their Christian faith into all subjects, not restricting their faith to explicitly religious moments, such as chapel or Bible class. Teachers welcome their students into a life of discipleship when they lead classes and promote classroom cultures in which there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular. In this way, studying literature, science, math, and history becomes an avenue for exploring God’s created world. Empowering students to use their creative capacities to cultivate beauty is a way of living out their identity as image-bearers of God. When teachers make these connections between faith and learning explicit, students are led forward in their journey of following Christ with their whole lives, beginning with their minds.

While each Christian tradition has their own framework and vocabulary for expressing the heart of discipleship, the end goal is the same: helping believers be conformed to the image of Christ. When teachers approach their subjects through the lens of faith, invite their students to think and interact with an idea from a biblical perspective, pointing to the truths of the gospel, and at times including prayer or scripture in their lessons, they are playing a key role in the disciple-making process.

A Paradigm for Thinking Christianly

So how does a teacher ensure she is not only thinking Christianly, but passing it on to her students? LittleJohn and Evans suggest that all people, regardless of faith, interpret life through a particular grid or framework. While there are a myriad of ways to succinctly articular a biblical “grid” through which life is interpreted, as we think about educating students, we will be most successful if the grid we use is clear, coherent, and concrete. For this reason, I recommend the Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation paradigm:

Creation: God created the world good and perfect in order to bring glory to himself. He designated human beings with the specific vocation of bearing his image as the steward and caretakers of his good creation.

Fall: Human beings, endowed with free will, chose to pursue their own desires over God, thereby introducing sin and destruction into the world. This fall impacted not only the soul of humanity, but all of creation and even social institutions. There is not a single aspect of reality–relationships, nature, government, churches, schools, relationships–that is left untainted by sin.

Redemption: God commissioned Jesus, the eternal son of God, to become human and bear the punishment of sin that humans deserve. Through trusting in the sufficiency of Christ’s death on the cross, humans can find forgiveness for their sin, eternal life, and membership in the everlasting family of God. As God’s kingdom breaks in, Christians can serve as agents of reconciliation, sharing the good news and living out their identity as the people of God.

Consummation: While Christ has come and redemption is possible now, believers await with the hope the day when Christ returns and makes everything right. God’s kingdom will be consummated, evil will vanquished, and the people of God will flourishing on a restored earth for eternity. 

This grid is likely familiar to you and for good reason. While imperfect, this fourfold approach to the story of scripture simply yet powerfully explains the message of the gospel. Additionally, it is broad enough to provide the scope for all of life’s experiences and, relevant to schools–academic subjects, to be understood through this grid. As one example, when studying the history of colonialism in the British Empire, students observe the patriotism and duty exhibited amongst the British as they establish colonies across the globe. Using the gospel grid above, a teacher can lead a discussion in which the benefits of a widespread Empire are properly assessed while also underscoring that no human institution can provide the sort of lasting peace and security we all desire. Only when Christ returns will all be made right.

Discipling Students in a Secular Worldview

While the grid above may be familiar, there is another grid you may not have heard of that could be even more familiar nonetheless. It is the grid for secular thinking. If teachers are going to helping their students follow Jesus through the formation of a biblical worldview, they need to be aware of the counter worldview that is ubiquitous in our world today. This is the secular worldview and here are its tenets:

Existence: There is no transcendent purpose or story behind reality that is beyond reality itself. People, animals, plants, and objects exist as a brute fact. It is up to humans themselves to weave together their own tapestry of meaning. 

Individualism: Each human exists as an individual, endowed with the autonomy to think and live however they please. While humans often flourish in communities, the individual self can come and go as it pleases in order to live out its authentic identity.

Identity: Humans are not only individuals physically-speaking. Each human possesses a sacred inner identity that is unique to the person. This identity is fundamentally good and must be respected by fellow humans. External forces, such as religions, moral philosophies, social systems, and governments, are not to encroach upon this identity. 

Happiness: If there is an objective purpose for human existence, it is to be happy. Happiness is not necessarily related to any particular moral or religious vision. Given the brevity of life and the simplicity of biology, happiness is fundamentally about pleasure and well-being. The moral imperative, if there is one, is to do what makes you happy, and pursue the very best life possible, be it through wealth, status, professional achievement, or experiences. 

The reality is that most of our students have been formed by culture to think according to this grid. Therefore, a central way Christian schools can support the discipleship of their students is through bringing this grid to their attention and regularly referring back to the Christian alternative.

Conclusion

In this article, I have been thinking through how discipleship happens in a Christian school. The school is not the church, and we should not, therefore, expect these discipleship approaches to look identical. And yet, discipleship is not a complicated concept. It is the task of helping others follow Jesus. In Christian schools, teachers can take advantage of the life-on-life opportunities they have as they spend multiple hours with their students each day. This opens the door for what I have been calling holistic discipleship, the sort of encouragement to follow Jesus in all facets of life, be it in the classroom, during mealtime, or at recess. In addition, teachers can disciple their students specifically in their thinking through approaching the curriculum through a biblical lens. As schools train students to “submit every thought captive to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5), they will prepare them to not only grow in wisdom and virtue, but Lord-willing, maturity in Christ.

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We must aim at graduating practically wise young men and women, if we are to restore the moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues as the proper ends or goals of education. Instead of limiting education to Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive domain objectives, we should embrace a baptized prudence.

Aristotle’s prudence has its limits, however, as well as its transcendence. Like artistry, prudence itself is not enough for the Christian educator, but it can participate in or integrate with the other goals of education. In this article we will attempt to map out those limits of prudence and also address the possibilities of prudence for transcending into higher realities. To continue our metaphor of the head, heart and hands from earlier in this series, we have noted that the artistry of the hands is not enough, but we must enter into the deeper realms of the heart (i.e. prudence); in a similar fashion, the heart itself will, on its own, come up short. After all, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick,” according to Jeremiah (17:6 ESV). 

The Limits of Perfect Prudence and Self-Interest

This Christian view of the heart’s deceitfulness is not simply a commentary on how hard it is for a person to develop genuine prudence, the equivalent of an Aristotelian claim for its rarity, “A man of practical wisdom, who can find?” Instead, it speaks to the thoroughgoing corruption of human prudence itself. Let me explain what I mean. Given Aristotle’s analysis, prudence consists of fear and hope undergirded by natural self-love. Definitionally prudence aims at my own personal human happiness. Since that requires good friends in a polis or city-state involving specialization to provide the good things of life, as well as the public justice of reciprocity and law-abiding citizens, then my own interest coincides with the manifestation of the moral virtues. 

However, Aristotle does not sufficiently address the question posed by the biblical book of Job, why good conduct should remain prudent if it no longer leads to personal eudaimonia. The Satanic claim in the book of Job is that a prudent form of righteousness devolves ultimately into mere self-interest, and when tested it amounts to no more than punishable wickedness. In fact, dependent as it is on an accurate assessment of the particular realities of human life, Aristotelian prudence operates within an immanent frame of reference, rather than a transcendent one, to use the terms of Charles Taylor (see A Secular Age). 

While Aristotle maintains an under-the-sun perspective on the correspondence between righteousness and earthly reward, the book of Job unveils a transcendent perspective held roughly in common with Plato, Aristotle’s predecessor, who likely struggled with the injustice of Socrates’ execution in a way that Aristotle did not. While the issue addressed by Plato’s Republic was first and foremost justice rather than practical wisdom, the character of Socrates at least took up the extreme objection of the ring of Gyges. Injustice becomes more prudent than justice if a man has the capability of getting away with it, pictured well by a ring of invisibility. Absolute power, and with it absolute prudence, corrupts absolutely. And on the other hand, when given the appearance of injustice, “the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, [362a] the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified, and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire” (361e-362a). 

Christians have seen in this passage of Plato a proto-evangelion to the Greeks; in addition to the verbal and situational similarity to the passion of the Christ, even more impressive might be its intended effect: to chasten the limits of a worldly Greek wisdom. As the apostle to the Gentiles would put it about four centuries later, “So then Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach a crucified Messiah, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles” (1 Cor 1:22-23, orig. trans.). Why is such a proclamation foolish? Because who would follow a leader so lacking in practical and political wisdom, that he would end up a public failure, executed as a lowly criminal! Plato’s mysterious and extended discourse in the Republic is intended to provide a mystical as well as rational answer to the dilemma of righteousness and self-interest. The answer ultimately becomes dependent on mythical tales of the afterlife and revelatory accounts of the soul like the myth of Er. In this way, Plato’s wisdom embraces a transcendence similar to Christianity but which is lacking in Aristotle. 

Aristotle’s definitional argument against this involves the claim that it is mere cleverness, and not practical wisdom which can manipulate ends in a morally neutral or corrupt manner. Prudence itself caps all the virtues and makes them true or genuine: “Therefore, as in the part of us which forms opinions there are two types, cleverness and practical wisdom, so too in the moral part there are two types, natural virtue and virtue in the strict sense, and of these the latter involves practical wisdom” (VI.13). Not even natural virtues, or mere propensities towards the right way of living or doing something qualify, but only the wholeness of the moral excellences governed by reasoned practical wisdom: “It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue.”

In one sense, we could rightly criticize Aristotle for cooking the books here. If the definition of the correct mark for any of the moral virtues amounts to what the prudent man would choose, how do we actually know the difference between cleverness and practical wisdom, since the clever man might suppose himself to be practicing all the virtues? And we, lacking in full prudence, have little basis on which to judge the clever man for his Machiavellian prudence and political artistry. Aristotle does not give us hope of a transcendent frame of reference from which to call into question the machinations of our prudential self-interest. We have entered a circularity of reasoning; he may in fact describe the truth of the matter, but that does not enable a corrupt human person to actually enter into the loop of perfect virtue, governed by practical wisdom.

The Limitations of Human Calculation and Control

Aristotle would likely object to this challenge by stating that we are looking for the wrong sort of precision in his ethics, when we aim at a circular perfection of virtues (see Nic. Ethics I.3). The point is to give us enough of a sense to be getting on with as we take aim at various human goods. Life isn’t perfect, choices are complex, and chance or luck must be given its due in human affairs. In this way, Aristotle would prefer to emphasize a different limit of prudence, not the dilemma of self-interest, but the limitations of human calculation and control in a complex universe.

According to Herodotus, the wise man Solon famously questioned King Croessus’ claim on happiness, given that the gods are temperamental and a man’s fortune’s can quickly turn from better to worse or vice versa. In book I ch. 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle acknowledges the role of chance in contributing to happiness. While he ultimately disagrees with the conclusion of Solon, that we should only pronounce happiness upon an individual when we’ve seen the end of their life, nevertheless he acknowledges the limits of control available to the prudent individual:

Now many events happen by chance, and events different in importance; small pieces of good fortune or of its opposite clearly do not weigh down the scales of life one way or the other, but a multitude of great events if they turn out well will make life more blessed (for not only are they themselves such as to add beauty to life, but the way a man deals with them may be noble and good), while if they turn out ill they crush and maim blessedness; for they both bring pain with them and hinder many activities. Yet even in these nobility shines through, when a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility to pain but through nobility and greatness of soul. (Rev. Oxford Trans., 1739)

Aristotle’s ultimate conclusion is still that moral and intellectual excellences, as activities, have a staying power in human life that mostly overcomes the changes and chances of fortune. Excellent activities “are more durable because those who are blessed spend their life most readily and most continuously in these,” and therefore the happy man “will be happy throughout his life,” for “he will bear the chances of life most nobly and altogether decorously” (1739). 

We can note that Aristotle’s philosophy does leave room for the fact that even the most perfect prudence does not have all resources available to turn all events to its own good. In fact, we might even say that there is nothing to prevent prudence itself from leading to catastrophic failure. You could make the absolute best decisions with the knowledge available to you and still be undone by circumstances. Aristotle had a proper appreciation for the nature of tragedy; sometimes in this world the great-souled individual can meet with extreme hardship. In such cases, we would do better to appreciate the limits of practical wisdom to bring about human blessings, rather than throw up our hands at the value of prudence at all. In a way, Aristotle anticipates a Stoic “resignation” in the passage quoted above. Epictetus famously taught his disciples that, when kissing their child goodnight, they should call to mind the fact that the one they love is mortal and could die tomorrow. Far from the coldness that Stoics are criticized for, such reflections as “memento mori” (“Remember that you will die”) should increase gratitude and an emotional tenderness, alongside the nobility and decorousness that Aristotle has named. 

Christian Suffering and Purified Prudence

Christians, likewise, endorse a submission to providence that chastens and humbles those proud of their own prudential reasoning. Job’s response to his third grand misfortune stands as a model for Christian suffering: “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’” (Job 1:20-21 ESV). The audience understands from the transcendent visions of the heavenly court that Job’s suffering comes because of a cosmic test posed by the adversary, but Job himself is left none the wiser for why his wise and righteous life has fallen short of its natural reward. Nevertheless, his worshipful submission to a hard providence is genuine and complete, even if he ends up answering the accusations of his “friends” by challenging the justice of God. Job is never given an answer, and so the implicit conclusion of the book is that the faithful must embrace righteous suffering regardless of prudential reward.

We have already had occasion to reference Jesus’ endorsement of a baptized prudence, “Be wise [phronemoi] as serpents but innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16b). But the context is instructive for the current topic. Christian prudence must uniquely transcend self-interest in a world that is in violent opposition to the gospel. The chapter begins with the twelve apostles’ particular mission to cast out demons, heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God, but the nature of Jesus’ instructions in the chapter seems intended to characterize the Christian mission throughout the church age. Jesus endorses a unique sort of anti-prudence in terms of the disciples’ preparation for the journey: “Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics or sandals or a staff, for the laborer deserves his food” (Matt 10:9-10). 

The disciples are sent out “as sheep in the midst of wolves” (10:16a), innocent victims intentionally led forth to be falsely accused, flogged, dragged before authorities, hated by all and delivered over to death. Jesus is going to put the dilemma of Plato’s Republic and Job on display on a grand scale with the Christian apostles and martyrs. As the apostle Paul explains, “For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as men sentenced to death, for we have become a spectacle to the cosmos, both to angels and men” (1 Cor 4:9). Christian prudence is transformed by faith and hope to be “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor 6:10). Christian students become like the teacher Jesus, who is hated and persecuted by the world (Matt 10:24-25). In so doing they deliberately choose to accept less than earthly happiness for the sake of transcendent happiness. They are commanded, “Deliberate about [phroneite] the things above, not earthly things. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:2; orig. trans.). They fear the God who controls eternal destinies over human authorities and worldly rewards (see Matt 10:26-33). This wisdom is the substance of faith itself, which sees the unseen, and it effects a remarkable transformation on the nature of prudence.

Christian prudence is, at the end of the day, so remarkable that it hardly looks like prudence at all, when gazed on from this angle. And yet there is a sort of rational calculation to it. The introduction of eternal judgment, and therefore the heightened stakes of an eternal weight of glory or misery, radically upends the rational calculation of human goods. This enlightened prudence dictates not only the outcome of Pascal’s wager (Belief in God is the only rationally self-interested course of action, given the possibilities of heaven and hell.), but also a life of radical self-sacrifice. The pearl of great price of eternal happiness claims from us any cost, any sacrifice in earthly goods. As Jim Elliott, the martyred Christian missionary to Quechua Indians of Ecuador, famously wrote in his journal on Oct 28, 1949: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” 

Christianity thus resolved the corruption of self-interested prudence through the call to take up our individual cross and follow Christ, through personal suffering to infinite joy beyond. In this context the golden rule to do unto others as we would have them do unto us can actually find fulfillment, because a dove-like hope has quieted the serpent of self-interest. Prudence is transcended but it remains even while swallowed up in faith, hope, and love. After all, the “unblushing promises of reward” in the New Testament (to quote Lewis’ “Weight of Glory”) prevent us from claiming unselfishness as a virtue in itself. The fear and hope inbred through natural self-love are not abandoned but grow up into full manhood, as it were. Christians do not throw out prudence entirely, but embrace a baptized and purified prudence of faith, hope and love.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10), but in the transformation of wisdom into perfect love, fear becomes faith and only prudential love remains (see 1 John 4:17-18). As St. Paul concludes,

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor. 13:8-12)

The Christian, then, cannot agree with Aristotle that the philosophic wisdom or sophia characterized by knowledge and comprehension is the highest intellectual virtue. For him, the Unmoved Mover sits in pure deistic contemplation and therefore non-acting philosophic wisdom is crowned king of the intellectual virtues. The Christian worships a God whose steadfast love endures forever, who in His very being is love, who is Eternal Act. And so, not only is our partial knowledge dwarfed by his perfect perception of all things, knowledge itself passes away in prudential love, as we come face to face with the living, acting God. 

Prudence and the Other Intellectual Virtues

Of course, such theological reflections do not negate the way in which intuition, scientific knowledge and philosophic wisdom properly transcend practical wisdom. We are simply acknowledging that the theological virtues of faith, hope and love uniquely draw up the life of prudence into themselves, and in this way lead prudence beyond and above the intellectual virtues of the head. The heart transcends the head in the realm of the spirit. But it is not less true to remark on the ways that the head stands above the heart. The classical educational endeavor itself requires this. Have I not before remarked on the joy of learning for its own sake? 

The utilitarian and practical perspective on schooling and learning tends toward a reductionism that views knowledge simply as power. Prudential learning looks to advantage and endeavors to provide for earthly needs by a course of schooling that will lead to a good job with a good salary. But in the actual course of learning, new loves and affections are found. The beauty of education is that often a study begun for some advantage becomes an end in itself. There is a higher nobility found in the disinterested enjoyment of knowledge for its own sake, and, whatever our theological comments may have seemed to indicate before, this too is a form of love. The love of learning and the love of reality for itself and not merely as a means is part and parcel of full intellectual virtue. This limit and transcendence of practical wisdom occurs naturally and is not a rare mystery beyond our normal experience. Observation and calculation, with a view to the self, almost of its own accord will move a person towards a real encounter with the other as an end in itself. 

Such an experience of prudence transcending into disinterested intuition, knowledge and wisdom is almost proverbial. From thinking of ourselves we become lost in contemplation of curious mysteries. The boy who has gone to collect firewood stops to look at a piece of wood and is mesmerized by the moss growing on it, then the insects crawling about, and his practical task forgotten, he freely spends precious minutes indulging his curiosity. This too is part of a full life engaged in the good things of the created order God has made. And so, we must progress still further up and further in, to account for the full beauty and flowering of human intellectuality. The life of the mind has its own rewards. To these we must turn next in our series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues.

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

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

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

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

The Paganism of Secularism

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

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

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

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

The Disruption of Protestantism

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

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

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

Educating Protestant Pagans

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

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

I want to make five suggestions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Jesus taught his disciples:

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

Matthew 5:14-16 (ESV)

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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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In a similar way, the young church leader Timothy benefited from the counsel of the apostle Paul. The Book of 1 Timothy is essentially a letter of mentorship that Paul writes to Timothy to support the young leader as he seeks to shepherd the Ephesian church. Contextually, pernicious false teaching had infected the community, located in a wealthy, coastal city of the Roman Empire. Paul knew that if Timothy was going to successfully lead the Ephesian Christians through such troublesome times, he was going to need guidance.

In this article, I will explore the guidance Paul provides Timothy with the aim of drawing out general principles of mentorship. By doing so, I hope to introduce a biblical approach to mentorship that moves from theory to practice in the context of local church life. 

Right Doctrine

To begin, it is worth noting that Paul addresses his letter “To Timothy, my true child in the faith” (1:2). From the offset, Paul makes his relationship and love for Timothy clear. Though he will soon proceed through a list of mandates, the security of the relationship is never in question. Thus, Paul begins his mentorship letter with a key move: establishing trust.

Following the introduction, Paul transitions quickly to the root issue in the Ephesian church: false teaching. As biblical scholar Frank Thielman notes, “Letters like this were commonly sent in antiquity by a government official to a subordinate upon the subordinate’s resumption of some new public responsibility”.¹  In this way, the letter serves as both a reminder of duties and as a public commission.

False teaching had plagued the church in Ephesus, spreading as such. The only way to end the plague is to remove it from the organism. In this case, Paul’s counsel for Timothy is to charge the church to teach only what is true and in full alignment with the gospel of Jesus Christ (1:11). 

The key takeaway for mentorship is that ideas matter. They serve as the rutter of the ship. Mentors should be careful to not move too quickly to behaviors and practices when these are simply visible manifestations of some animating idea. In the case of the Ephesian church, the congregation was moving toward disorder as a result of the inception of heretical doctrine. Likewise, a person’s life trajectory can shift radically by the ideas they embrace and live by. Thus, the very first mentoring conversation should often focus on ideas and what the student views as her basic life principles.

Godly Conduct

Effective mentors cannot stay in the ideological realm for long, however. Following true doctrine, Paul impresses upon Timothy to promote conduct, or behavior, and godliness in the church. From worship approaches to style of dress, Christians are to live peaceful and quiet lives, “godly and dignified in every way” (2:2).

This godly approach to living must first and foremost be modeled by bishops and deacons. Notice that Paul does not leave it to Timothy’s imagination to determine the specifics of the godly conduct Paul envisions. Rather, he specifically elaborates on key character traits, familial relationships, and self-control over potential vices such as drunkenness and greed.

With these qualifications of church leaders in view, we can easily make a connection to the classical idea of virtue, that is, human excellence directed toward human flourishing. If the church in Ephesus is going to emerge from the disorder generated by false doctrine, its leaders must be freed from the slavery of the appetites, and become servants of Christ alone.

Likewise, effective mentors should discuss with their students what portrait of their future selves the Lord is calling them to become. Encourage them to be as specific as possible. What will they do for fun? What skills will they have mastered? How will they treat other people? How will they navigate complex topics like social media or peer pressure? They can then begin an honest conversation of whether their current conduct matches this desired trajectory. 

The Will to Train

Right doctrine and godly conduct will establish the path for Timothy, but to go the distance, an additional step is required: the will to train. Train for what? Godliness according to the words of the faith (4:6). He compares the reward of bodily training to training for godliness in that the latter reward is experienced both in the present life and the life to come (4:8). 

The idea of training appears often in our work at Educational Renaissance, particularly as it relates to the modern notions of possessing a growth mindset and engaging in deliberate practice. Research in elite performance has shown that the key to mastery in any skill or discipline is to practice with the right attitude and in the proper way. 

In the Christian faith, we are to train as well, though we must be careful to train for the right objective. The Bible is clear that we do not train to earn our salvation, but to live out our salvation. Salvation is a free gift for a person to accept. It is the result of the gracious work of God, the exact opposite of any sort of result through human training. And yet, when we did receive salvation through conversion, the training regiment sets in.

The topic of training for godliness is a fascinating one to bring up in a mentoring conversation. The metaphor has a way of underscoring intensity and dedication of growing in Christlikeness in a manner that the idea of sanctification does not. By mentors taking their conversations to the deeper level of spiritual growth, they fuse together true doctrine with godly conduct in a way that will cause the student to truly think differently about how to steward their lives most wisely.

Conclusion

This exploration of 1 Timothy regarding principles of mentorship is merely an introduction into what is truly an expansive topic. There is much more to cover in Paul’s school of mentorship found in 1 Timothy, including such topics as devotion to scripture, exhibiting compassion, and practicing true contentment. As mentors plan out their meeting with students, these are all worthy topics to discuss. Following Paul, mentors taking a multi-dimensional approach will help students grow in not just one area of their lives, but holistically, instead, in a way that allows these dimensions to complement one another.

1. Thielman, Frank. Theology of the New Testament (Zondervan, 2005). 413.

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

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

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

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

The Need for Integration

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Theology of Divine and Human Wisdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Applying a Theology of Wisdom to the Problem of Technicism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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