Antithesis and Christian Education

We live in a compromising world. The once-popular notion of black and white distinctions between things is very out of place in our society. The idea that something can be objectively right or wrong, good or bad is laughed at in the media and by our authorities. Objectivity has been replaced by subjectivity in our culture. The final point of authority has been placed within the individual subjective knower rather than the omnipresent objective knower because this culture has denied that there can be an omnipresent objective knower.
This change is recent in the overall course of history. It came about in the middle of the 19^th century. It was the grandchild of Enlightenment thinking and especially that of the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant had answered the competing theories of skepticism and those of the existence of innate ideas with a dualism between the world we can know and that which we cannot. He called one the world of the noumenal. It is realm which exists in our mind. It is divided into categories of thought that capture raw sense impressions from the outside world and translate them into intelligible ideas. The other world, the one outside of us is the world of the phenomenal. It is the world of the thing-in-itself and can never be known with certainty by the mind. Its existence is unverifiable because we only know it through the intelligible ideas that our mind reconstructs through the categories in our mind. So Kant divided our world into a subjective realm of knowledge and an objective realm which can only be understood through the use of our subjective mental faculties. Our only contact with what really exists is an utterly chaotic world of brute facts that our mind must bring together into coherence.
We have never really moved beyond Kant. James Jordan has written, “The modern view is … that the universe is really ultimately chaotic. Whatever order and meaning there is in the world has been imposed by human beings, and by no one else.” This is in radical opposition to the Biblical view which states bluntly that God is the source of knowledge and understanding and that He has revealed this directly to man (Prov. 2:6). Psalm 119 asks “give me understanding, that I may know Your testimonies” (Ps. 119:125). Job 32:8 remarks that there “is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding.” Where does knowledge come from? The Scriptures are clear. Knowledge comes from God and it can be certain.
This presupposition that knowledge can be known certainly and that it comes from a objective source stands totally at odds with the modern culture. This is the antithesis of Christianity and it has very real consequences for Christian education.
For one thing, if we understand the antithesis we will recognize immediately that there is no neutral ground between the believer and the unbeliever. Every fact, every process, every piece of data is either Christian or Pagan. Our basic presuppositions cause us to view things either through a biblical worldview or a pagan unbiblical worldview. There really is no other alternative. This affects the way we read history books. It affects the way we view art. It affects the way we listen to music. It also affects the way we teach.
Teaching is an activity of passing information from one knower to another. With the biblical antithesis in place we can understand that objective knowledge exists and can be passed from one knower to another. Without that antithesis we have no certainty of true knowledge. This means that a teacher could instruct her students that 2+2=4 and a student could legitimately say “Not today.” We understand that 2+2 always equals 4 because God created the universe that way. How could a teacher grade a test if 2+2 sometimes equaled four and sometimes didn’t? How could a parent punish for disobedience if sometimes it wasn’t wrong to behave that way? A clear understanding of the biblical antithesis gives us stability and consistency in our worldview that allows for teaching to occur at all levels.
The funny thing is that the unbelieving world has no consistent reason to expect teaching to work. Education is a religious activity because its source and material is the creation of a divine being. The laws of logic, the natural laws of science, and the physical world are all created of God and known truly by Him. It is through a consistently Christian worldview that we may know the works of God (Prov. 1:7).
This is the reason we seek to integrate the Christian worldview into our educational process so much. We understand that it is impossible to seek to educate children neutrally. We will either educate them in the “knowledge of God” (Prov. 2:5) or we will educate them in the vanity of unbelief. It is our prayer that you understand this as well and stand with us in the desire to educate children to love God and His ways to bring “every though captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

The Unintended Results of Religious Revival

“I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches. How then is it possible that Methodism, that is, a religion of the heart, though it flourishes now as a green bay tree, should continue in this state? For the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently they increase in goods. Hence they proportionately increase in pride and anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away. Is there no way to prevent this—this continual decay of pure religion? We ought not to prevent people from being diligent and frugal; we must exhort all Christians to gain all they can, and to save all they can; that is, in effect, to grow rich.”

These words were written by the founder of Methodism, John Wesley in the eighteenth century. They have been applied by the German Sociologist Max Weber to help explain the rise of modern capitalism in Western Europe. However, as I read these words, something much deeper caught my attention. While Wesley’s main point is precisely what Weber pointed out, the deeper meaning that can be drawn from the application of Wesley’s thesis bothered me because we have seen it before and I fear, we may see it again.

According to Wesley, religious revivals have unexpected results. In Wesley’s case, the unexpected results were riches and worldliness. We may well take his point and make application to our own situation as Christian families and educators. Religious revival brought about a tremendous increase in diligence and frugality in the men and women who experienced the revival in their lives. This was exactly what Wesley wanted to see and he was quite please with these results. However, this degree of diligence and frugality had also produced a situation of those men and women becoming extremely wealthy. This great increase in wealth was producing a rise in worldliness, which was not something Wesley was happy about. His concern was how to cultivate the diligence and frugality without bringing about the worldliness. It seems we may have the same problem.

We are in the process of attempting a revival of education according to classical methods. This will, if we are successful, bring about an increased diligence in our students and an increase in knowledge. Are there any unexpected results we might expect from this process? It should be obvious to us that an increase in knowledge could just as easily bring about a very different, but equally dangerous, worldliness than Wesley experienced. The last thing we desire and intend by our increase in knowledge is another Enlightenment of the sort that happened in the eighteenth century. That Enlightenment, though characterized by many godly men, took on a character of worldliness and secularism that we do not desire. Is there any way to prevent this? Must we travel the same path that Wesley traveled? Has his fear been borne out in history?

First, Wesley’s fear has most definitely been borne out by the forces of history. Christians today are among the most affluent people in the world, and also among the worldliest. We prance about in materialism and superficialism and care naught for the increase of the Gospel. I do not think that we are doomed to Wesley’s pessimism. The task and the tools are education. As we are diligent about our finances (which may lead us into temptation) we must be ever more diligent about our education (which may lead us both to and away from temptation). Our education is for an increase in knowledge, but it is of a particular kind. We educate for an increase in the knowledge of God. We must be ever on guard against worldliness of any kind. Knowledge may puff up, so we must ever be humble to accept correction. If we are not, we may soon face Wesley’s situation and find that the work was destroyed from underneath.

Still more wisdom from Chesterton

Fairy-tales do not give a child his first idea of bogy. What fairy-tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogy. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy-tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
Exactly what the fairy-tale does is this: it accustoms him by a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors have a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies, that these infinite enemies of man have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear. When I was a child I have stared at the darkness until the whole black bulk of it turned into one negro giant taller than heaven. If there was one star in the sky it only made him a Cyclops. But fairy-tales restored my mental health. For next day I read an authentic account of how a negro giant with one eye, of quite equal dimensions, had been baffled by a little boy like myself (of similar inexperience and even lower social status) by means of a sword, some bad riddles, and a brave heart.
Tremendous Trifles

Wells' Time Machine

I just finished re-reading H.G. Wells' The Time Machine for my modernity class. I love that little book. Many of my students will tell you I have a thing for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stuff anyway. But my appreciation of Wells' work goes past that. Wells had a talent for packing a lot into such a small little novella.
In case you haven't read it before, here's a short summary. The Time Traveler (Wells gives very few names in this book, mainly titles) is having dinner with several guests and discusses the possibilities of time travel with them. He presents it as though it is simply a matter of fact that we can manipulate the time dimension as easily as we do the other three. No one agrees with him so he brings out his little model time machine and sends it into the future in front of their eyes. Some discussion on the physics of this take place and everyone leaves. Next week they return, with some new faces, and find that the Time Traveler is not around. They begin eating anyway (per instructions, lest we think them rude) and are interrupted by his appearance. He looks very ragged and one guest notices that he has no shoes on. After a few glasses of wine he disappears to get dressed and promises to return and tell them the story. When he returns he begins to tell them that he has been time traveling for eight days and that he left just that morning. He tells them of his initial trip to 802,701 AD and the people he found there. He initially meets some toga-wearing childlike people who have very few cares and even less attention to anything but eating and games. His initial observations lead him to the conclusion that humanity has at last developed a Utopian existence through evolution and the principles of communism. Through a series of adventures and discoveries he learns that this is the exact opposite of the situation. Rather, ages ago, the Eloi (the childlike people) banished the working class underground. There they evolved into the hideous Morlocks. At this stage of existence, the Eloi (who have become ignorant of how their own existence is maintained) are food for the underground Morlocks. These Morlocks also steal the Time Machine, which the Time Traveler has to get back. He eventually does and travels even further, nearly 30 million years, into the future. Here is where the really interesting part of the book takes place. Over a few short burst of time travel, he witnesses the end of the world. When he first arrives, the Earth has ceased to rotate and the Sun has grown larger and is a deep red. Few living things appear on the shore of this future beach (set where once London stood). But what is there is strikingly non-human. He describes huge crab-like creatures that plod along slowly and speaks of great vegetative life. At his final stop even the crab creatures have departed and nothing is left but a green lichen growing on the rocks and some odd soccer ball shaped creature with tentacles in the water. He returns home and the story comes full circle. At the very end, he has gone traveling again and been missing for three years with no word from him.
This story is great! I think it is great because Wells was an unashamed evolutionist and modernist. He accepted the theory of evolution as put forward by Darwin. He was also as consistent with this position as you could hope for. He argues in this little work that we are deluded if we believe the human race to be the final stage of evolution. Darwin, and his supporters, spoke of :Survival of the fittest." In The Time Machine, Wells essentially says that humanity is the least fit to finally survive to the end of history. Rather than intellectual creatures, we see crab-like monstrosities and green slime on rocks.
Wells also exposes several social issues as well. Several times people speak of an ideal communist society in the book. Wells argues that this is a fallacy and can never happen. When we first see the Eloi we get the impression that they have managed to create an ideal existence. Later we see this is only the case until we look under the surface (literally). Wells is telling us that no society can demonstrate pure communism because humanity is inherently greedy. The only way the Eloi could do it was to banish the Morlocks from their sight. The way the Morlocks maintain their system is to consume the Eloi.
There is much to discuss in this book. Dover has an excellent copy or get a better one. It is a quick read and full of these fun issues. It is a great way to teach an introduction to the ideologies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Home: the Heart of the Odyssey

Home and Hearth are the capital themes of the Odyssey. They are the primary motives for Odysseus from beginning to end. He desires to return to his home and to the peace and respite from war that it affords. According to Greek myth, Odysseus did not desire to go to Troy in the first place, but feigned madness to avoid being called upon to sail in his black ships.

The establishment of the ideal life as a home life, rather than a warrior’s life for Odysseus makes a stark contrast with the picture in the Iliad. In this way the two epics form a complete picture of life, depicting a middle way rather than the extremes of war and peace. The object of war is peace, which makes Hektor the real hero of the Iliad. For Odysseus, the war was an invasion into his life, not the pinnacle of it. Therefore, after the war, Odysseus desires nothing so much as to get home and be the kind of husband and father that he wants to be.

This theme also indicates that for Homer, the greatness of civilization depended not only on the warrior but also on the household. A warrior carves a kingdom out. A household makes that kingdom permanent.

Geoffrey of Monmouth Introduction

The following is the introduction essay I gave my students who read Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain last year in the Christendom year.

We have read a lot of history so far this year. By now you may even be sick and tired of history. You may be thinking, “Where is the fun reading?” You may be thinking, “If everything were like Beowulf was, I’d have a lot more fun.” That may be true, but life is not always about having fun. Most people will tell you that school is not supposed to be fun. I disagree with that statement and think that as you grow into a more mature student and believer, you will learn to have fun and enjoy the labor of schoolwork because it stretches you and gives you perspective on the world you inhabit. That being said, you are not going to like everything you do in school and you are often going to ask why you have to learn something you will have no use for in the future. The answer is simple; education is about 20% content. The rest is process or method. You are not learning about medieval history so that you will all be medieval scholars. You are learning about medieval history so that you will be able to think like a medieval. Thinking in this way will help you understand some of the choices they made and how it has affected our world in the twenty-first century. Remember the number one goal here is to bring “every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a pure medievalist. He recognized his place in the medieval world and that included understanding the heritage the ancient world had passed on to him and his generation. We’ll speak more about this later. We only have a range of possibilities for Geoffrey’s life. We are pretty sure he spent several years at Oxford around 1130 – 1150 ad. That gives us a twelfth century location for him historically. He wrote in Latin and claims he translated the History of the Kings of Britain from a very old text the archdeacon of Oxford gave him.

The text we are reading is rarely treated as real history anymore. Modern historians are even more suspect of this text than they are of more ancient historians like Herodotus. You will remember that our friend Herodotus believed in flying snakes and all sorts of odd things. Well, Geoffrey takes the cake by believing in magic of all things. His stories of Merlin and Arthur form some of the backbone to the fantastic canon of Arthurian lore that exists in the world today. A lot of British in more rural areas of the country still believe deep down that Arthur will return as he promised. As well as believing in Merlin and sorcery, Geoffrey clearly states that the British are descended from Trojans. This belief that most nations can be traced to a select group of people, whether they be Greeks or Hebrews, stands opposite the modern belief in a plenitude of independent and culturally relevant ethnic groups. The idea that all mankind came from one family is as heretical to modern historians and sociologists as the denial of the Trinity is to orthodox believers.

If modern historians accepted this idea it might make them have to at least accept that some of the biblical stories about the world (like the Table of Nations in Gen. 11) could be true. They don’t want to do that. Modern historians stand in direct antithesis to the biblical narratives of the founding of the world. It only makes sense that they would stand in the same position to Geoffrey, even though he does not try to spiritualize the founding of Britain. In Geoffrey’s case, it is just too simple. Modern historians, especially since the Enlightenment, have tended to view a simple explanation as an unlikely explanation. There are always too many reasons why something happens to account for them all or to fully understand an event. While this can be true (or partially true) sometimes, it is not always the case. For instance, the Bible tells that the children of Israel lost a major battle to the inhabitants of the city of Ai simply because one man got greedy (cf. Josh 7). We are told that all of David’s troubles in the later part of his rule stemmed form the sin he committed with Bathsheba (cf. 2 Sam 12:10-12). We are told that the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 ad because of their lack of faith in Christ and rejection of Him as the Messiah (cf. Matt 23:37 – 24:44). Our world is full of simple explanations. Sometimes there can be a lot more to an explanation than there appears. Of course Absalom was a devious man who wanted his father’s throne and the power that came with it. Of course the Jews rebelled against the Romans and brought the destruction of their entire kingdom upon themselves. One must make a careful distinction between causes and explanations.

A cause of something is one of the hundreds of things that took place prior to any event that gave it momentum. An explanation is the summary of why something happened when and where it did. If someone is playing with a brick and it flies out of their hands and breaks a window we could give multiple causes for that event; and all of them might be true. However, to explain the event we would merely say that the person had been acting foolishly.

What then is the cause and explanation for the British people? Geoffrey of Monmouth is here to explain this to us. He will do so with a grand display of stories. He will tell us about the fall of Troy and the travels of Brutus. He will tell us about the reigns of Julius and Claudius Caesar. He will tell us of King Cole, or merry-old-soul fame as well as King Lear, of Shakespeare fame. He will tell us of Merlin, of Arthur, of Utherpendragon, and of Mordred and the undoing of Britain. If we let him, he will tell us such a fantastical story that we will hardly be able to believe the story of Britain could be so simple; which is, of course, why the book is not read much anymore.

Why will Geoffrey tell us all of this? What is his purpose in writing? He tells us himself that his agenda is different from Bede. Bede wrote about church history. Geoffrey purposes to write about the kings of Britain. He does this because he felt compelled to explain who the British are. Why would anyone care who the British are? From our vantage point in the twenty-first century we have a pretty good reason to care who the British are. If they didn’t exist how different would our world be? For the most obvious example, our country is the product of British colonialism. Were there no Britain, there would be no United States of America. That is pretty significant. Let’s answer a better question. Why did Geoffrey care who the British were? In his mind, they were all but gone. He finishes his history at the lowest ebb of British history (roughly 7^th century ad). It is at this point that the Saxons begin to take over the island. The British are reduced to small clans living in Wales. His interest in the British is therefore one of nostalgia. He sees a time far gone as the golden age of the island and wants others to view it this way as well.

This is similar to the way Charlemagne and Otto used the Pax Romana to conjure images of the glory and prosperity of Rome. It is also similar to the way many modern evangelicals look to the 1950’s as a kind of golden age in America before the turbulence of the 1960’s took away all the good, clean family values in the world. Is this a misguided approach? Is this foolishness? Not necessarily. There is great worth in viewing the past with nostalgia, so long as we do not neglect the service of the present. The past will go nowhere, the present moves on. Our understanding of the past can help us monitor and move within the present. However, to dwell on the past blindly without acting in the present is also foolishness. The past is to be learned from (Rom 15:4) not just looked at with awe and a desire to see the present return to the former glory of a bygone era. Herodotus understood this. At the close of the Histories Herodotus tries to make a very specific application of his tale to his own Athenian nation. He closes the narrative with an episode from the life of Cyrus, king of Persia (with whom he opened his tale) and makes the point that a wise ruler known when he has enough land. The application to the Athenians at the close of the Fifth century bc is that they should be cautious in their expansion. Herodotus saw clearly that Athenian expansion could lead to problems with other Greek states. Athens ignored Herodotus’ warning and by 431 bc they were engaged in war with Sparta that would destroy Athens as a world power in the Mediterranean Sea forever. J.R.R. Tolkien understood this as well. A major theme of the Lord of the Rings is the industrialism that made World War I (which Tolkien fought in) and World War II the most destructive events in the Twentieth century. Tolkien saw how dangerous this could be and tried to warn us that we were destroying something more with our machines and warfare than just cities. Our ability to see and understand this is a major part of the process of teaching and learning history. To put it bluntly, it is what we learn history for.

Thus we read Geoffrey of Monmouth.

A Patrick Henry education

Patrick Henry (1736-1799)

Henry was a famous American politician and lawyer during the years of the American War for Independence. Perhaps his most famous speech, given before the Virginia House of Burgesses, declared that submission to the tyranny of George III was tantamount to slavery and at complete odds to the principles of liberty found in the English Constitution. He refused to live under slavery and declared that he would prefer “liberty or death.” After the war he became known as an anti-federalist for his opposition to the United States Constitution. He predicted several developments from adopting the constitution that have since become a reality, such as an income tax and government controlled education.

Henry is a perfect model for classical education. His father, who had been raised on atypical classical education, tutored him in math as well as ancient and modern history. According to biographer David Vaughan, “by the time Henry was fifteen, he could read Virgil and Livy in the original.” Henry also had an astonishing command of the English language as well as some French learning. Henry’s education was augmented by his natural and artistic studies as well. His love of nature led him to spend great amounts of time outdoors. His biographers report that he spent long hours in meditation in his youth. He was also an accomplished violinist. Vaughan reports that while recuperating from a broken collarbone at the age of twelve, he mastered the flute.

Patrick Henry’s education was not exceptional for the time in which he lived, it was quite normal. We would be well-served to have children educated like Henry today. If we did, we might have leaders like Henry tomorrow.

Cunning Wit in the Odyssey

Crafty Odysseus is the fitting epithet given to Odysseus in the Iliad. In the Odyssey, he owns the title more often than in the Iliad. While it was Odysseus’ idea to go snooping around the enemy lines and the famous Trojan Horse was his plot as well, Odysseus does some very sneaky things in the Odyssey. The amount of fighting in the Odyssey versus the Iliad is significant. The only real fighting takes place near the end of the epic, when Odysseus slaughters the suitors. Until that time, Odysseus manages to work his way out of troubles with wit and subtle maneuvers. Disguises and tricks are more Odysseus’ modus operandi than swords and shields.

Homer wants us to understand that fighting is not the only way out of any and all situations. It may be necessary to resort to fighting in the end, as Odysseus must to get rid of the suitors or to make his way out of Polyphemus’ cave, but there are innumerable ways to avoid fighting as well.

Character History

History is fun. It goes through stages. Right now I'm not talking about "real" history, the actual events and people that make up history, but rather the process of history writing. The way people write history goes through stages. After taking a historiography course at Graduate school a couple of years ago, this really came home to me. One of things we did was read through various kinds of history books from different ages and look at how these folks actually wrote about history. We read everything from Herodotus and Eusebius to Thomas Carlyle and Simon Schama. It was fun. But that's the geek in me talking. What was really fun was to see how the writing of history went through stages and evolved. It was also interesting to see why we don't write the really good history books that guys like Herodotus or Carlyle wrote any more.
We have, in our deeply scientific modernity, forgotten that character drives history. Who a person is, how they act, why the act, is all part of the historical process. We moderns turn up our noses at this because we have been deceived by the egalitarian notion of "Dead White Men." During the Enlightenment, history writing began to shift away from the actions of those who lived in history and began to focus more on economic and social causal factors for wars and such. That is not all bad, as a good reading of Thucydides will tell you. However, by the nineteenth century history writing had become scientific and (since character is not scientifically objective) this trend became the gospel according to Ranke.
Character is one of the most important things to history. You can learn all day long that things happened and all the cultural, economic, and social causes about them. But until you get inside the head of the man standing at the top of the hill ordering the bayonet charge and know what he believes is true, good, and beautiful, you will not really know the history of that moment. This came home to me again while reading Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels with my Modernity class. Shaara does an excellent job of reminding us just how important character is to history. His book, about the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) tells its story through the men who fought in the battle. He focuses on a select few (Joshua Chamberlain, James Longstreet, and Robert E. Lee) to really tell the story, but he does it in such a masterful way that it truly serves as a reminder about how important character is to history. Funny that a novelist reminded us of this.
I think that some historians are waking up to this notion. Donald Kagan's excellent work on the Peloponnesian War (which is a reworking of his five-volume scholarly work on the same subject) pays a great amount of attention to the character of Alcibiades and Cimon and Pericles. I think Thucydides would be proud of Kagan's work. I know I appreciate it.

A Lament for the Unborn

This is the anniversary of death. On January 22, 1973 the United States Supreme court handed down the famous (or infamous) Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in this country. Since that time it is estimated that over 48,000,000 children have been slaughtered in the womb. This holocaust cannot go unnoticed by a holy God. We in America are surely just biding our time until the judgment of God falls on us with swiftness and severity.
Pray that we can elect leaders with the moral fiber to undo this evil among us. Pray that we can stop the mindless slaughter before we are all lost in the cataclysm that must surely fall.