While the idea of the antithesis makes a Christian education possible, it is really the fact of the cross that makes a classical education meaningful. The content of a classical education is not a Christian phenomenon. It is something that has existed in some form since the 5th century BC. The Greeks had classical educations in terms of the content that they studied. The Romans and Egyptians had classical educations in the same sense. What makes the content of a classical education meaningful in our lives is the cross.
One of the most important and interesting issues hit dead on by our approach to history and literature is the extent to which we show the complete and total folly of pagan antiquity. We call it a total and complete folly because the civilizations of pagan antiquity like Egypt, Greece, and to some extent Rome, were the only civilizations where it is possible to see a developed worldview completely void of God’s revelation. Peter Leithart says, “Reading Greek and Roman literature … highlights the difference between a world formed by polytheism and a world that worships the One Living God” (Leithart, 20). The best that the world can come up with without Christ and without God is presented for our amusement and instruction in these ancient civilizations. What do we find?
Ultimately we find chaos. Hesiod, the Greek poet of the seventh century before Christ describes the creation of the world in his work, Theogeny, by beginning with the principle of chaos. “Chaos was first of all” sings Hesiod (Hes. Theog.,116). Out of chaos came all the attempts at rationalization that the Greeks could muster. The Sumerians had a similar experience. When we look at the parallel flood narrative of The Epic of Gilgamesh we find that rather than an appeal to justice for sin committed by man, the reason for destroying the world by flood among the Sumerian gods is that “the uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel” (108). We find that everything that comes after is ultimately to be understood in terms of chaos. When the storm blows up on the sea and washes the boats of men away, it must be the result of Poseidon who was angry with someone for something. When the lightning crashes in the night, Zeus must be angry with someone for something. One of the legends preceding the Troy narratives tells that when encamped at Aulis, Agamemnon and his fleet were not allowed to leave. The goddess Artemis desired revenge on Agamemnon because he had hunted in a forest sacred to her and killed a sacred deer. The penalty was the death of his first-born daughter, Iphigenia. How and where Artemis had made the restriction of hunting clear is not expressed and one looks in vain for that kind of revelation in ancient literature. No one really knows what the gods expected or how to gain their favor. They have not revealed their will to anyone.
Beyond this is the character and actions of the gods and goddesses in ancient literature. The gods are not gods in the sense that we think of them. They are not all-powerful beings who can do whatever they want. They are bound in certain areas. For instance, even Zeus cannot transgress the decree of Fate when the wall of the Achaians is penetrated by the Trojans (cf. Hom. Il. xiv.52 – 4). Nor is Zeus free to change the fate of Patroclus in the Iliad (cf. Hom. Il., xvi.250-52). The gods bicker and fight among each other (cf. Hom. Il. xx.54-5), they deceive each other (cf. Hom. Il. xiv.159 – 360), they are petty and arbitrary. There is no sense of justice among them. One day they may say one thing, and the next it is forgotten. Achilles puts the pagan worldview most bluntly when he declares:
Such is the way the gods spun life for unfortunate mortals,
that we live in unhappiness, but the gods themselves have no sorrows.
There are two urns that stand on the door-sill of Zeus. They are unlike
for the gifts they bestow: an urn of evils, an urn of blessings.
If Zeus who delights in thunder mingles these and bestows them
on man, he shifts, and moves now in evil, again in good fortune.
But when Zeus bestows from the urn of sorrows, he makes a failure
of man, and the evil hunger drives him over the shining
earth, and he wanders respected neither of gods nor mortals.
Il. xxiv.525-33
There is never goodness alone from the pagan worldview, only evil or, at best, evil mixed with blessings. This is the worldview of the ancient world. This shows us just a little of what Christ came to change on the cross.
The cross is a marker in history. From that point forward, in time and space, the pagan cultures were no longer held in bondage to Satan and paganism. John expresses this function of the cross in the book of Revelation when he speaks of Satan being bound “so that he should deceive the nations no more” (Rev. 20:3). The cross makes it so that the God of Scripture can no longer be ignored by human history. When Paul is speaking before the philosophers in Athens he tells them that they have been living in “times of ignorance” that God has “overlooked” but “now commands all men everywhere to repent” because of the cross (Acts. 17:30).
Ignorance and superstition must give way to worship of the true God. This is also Paul’s point in Athens. It is as he sees the Greek monuments of worship that he is compelled to address them concerning their paganism and ignorance. He does not deny their religiosity or sincerity in what they conceive to be objects of worship, he merely tells them they are seriously mistaken about the nature of the universe and their place in it. He redirects their pagan conceptions of god and begins to set them aright. “God, who made the world and everything in it … does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is he worshipped with men’s hands…. And he has made from one blood every nation of men … so that they should seek the Lord” (Acts.
The cross points us to God just as the Law points us to Christ. The cross invades our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of the world around us. It forces us to confront our most treasured presuppositions and demands that we justify them by the cross. The cross makes possible classical education because it demands that all history, all facts, all knowledge be seen through the giver and maker of all things. In the ancient world, education was a method of getting ahead, learning a skill that would provide work. In the shadow of the cross education, classical education, is instruction in the proper worship of the living God of creation.
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