How Classical-ness Affects Your Christian-ness
About where the path leads.
Concerning the question of how a classical approach affects Christian experience, you might initially think: "It doesn't." Or even, "It shouldn't." But, since education is essentially connected to Christianity (i.e. the Great Commission: "teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."), our educational approach is definitely going to affect what students (and staff, for that matter) think about Christianity. We're naive if we don't acknowledge that this is true. And we're foolish if we recognize it and don't factor it into our decisions.
So, since I am writing all about Classical Christian Education, I am going to explore how the Classical-ness of education affects the Christian-ness of education. Or, to put it another way: How does the Classical approach to Christian education affect the Christian facets of education. I’m not going to be super practical (like, how it affects discipleship or worship or evangelism, etc.), but I’ll, rather, be more philosophical so as to drive at a precise end.
I also want to get an important caveat out of the way at the outset: It must be remembered that Classical Christian education isn't the only biblically faithful approach to Christian education. I may happen to think that it's probably the best out there, but it would be a dire stretch to think it to be the exclusively faithful educational practice for Christians. Some families may not be inclined to want the kind of Christian-ness that non-Classical education yields, and so also some may not really want the kind that Classical education brings. And that's okay.
4 Ways In Which Classical Education Affects Christian Experience
There is no exact science to the curation of this list of things. They aren’t in any particular order. They’re merely my own observations of how a Classical approach to child education helpfully impacts Christian experience.
1. Helps Us Apprehend the Interconnected Richness of Scripture
Whether it’s realized or not, your take on biblical hermeneutics determines how you think about God’s Word. And in case this is a word you aren’t familiar with, hermeneutics is the science of interpreting written communication — whether we’re talking about interpreting the Constitution, or Shakespeare, or the Bible. I won’t go into the flavors of biblical hermeneutics, but one of the things which Christians (should) agree upon is that the Bible as a whole book is a coherent and harmonious document, since it was Authored by the Spirit through human instruments across millennia. And I believe that a Classical approach to education aids a student in reading their Bibles in such a coherent and harmonious way.
The reason for this is because the Classical approach to education seeks to lead students through all academic content in a harmonious and coherent manner. Students are taught to see connections between all academic disciplines. What’s being learned in math is not to be separated from history or science or literature or theology. An upper elementary class that is studying the 17th century in History will be studying the Bach and Handel in Music, will be studying the microscope and cells in Science, will be studying Bunyan and Shakespeare in Literature, and will be studying the doctrines which prompted Christians to plant churches in the Massachusetts colony instead of in London. Seeing all knowledge as thusly interconnected leads a student to think of all Scripture as being similarly interconnected, as he rightly should.
Tracing doctrinal themes throughout the whole Bible, seeing how the NT authors cited the OT, and noting the unity and distinctions of the Covenants are but a few of the elements of interconnectivity that God’s Word evidences. A student who is trained to see connections in nature, literature and history will be equipped to discern the connections that Scripture makes to itself in abundance. The Bible is not just any form of communication; it is written-down literature. This is how God chose to reveal himself to us, and an education that enables students to richly digest human compositions will only deepen their ability to understand and meditate on the Divine composition.
2. Gives Us Deeper Appreciation for Church History
One of the benefits of Classical history instruction is that it drives the student to understand his place in the context of time. God has so determined that you should exist now, and that you should be reading this now, and that you will go do something with what you’ve read now (or not). It’s important for a students to recognize that they exist in this time and place, and not in that other time and place. But they also must realize that the former times and places impact how we think and act in our current setting. A central aim of Classical Education (whether Christian or secular) is to make this impression upon students.
And as it concerns Church history, a Christian student should all the more know his place.
Anyone who has an ounce of appreciation for our country (and we should have lots of gratitude for it), will know that it’s important to recognize that our nation stands on the shoulders of great men and women who did great and noble things to secure our current freedoms. Yet how many Christians in American know the contributions of the men and women of Church history who have fought the doctrinal battles which secured the orthodoxy that we may enjoy today? Do we even know what the great historical battles for orthodoxy were?
I’d argue that one of the reasons why so many Christians in our day do not appreciate the history of the Church is because they have been steeped in an educational environment which does not cherish the history of anything. This is true concerning formal education at school (public schools do “social studies” in lieu of history), and it’s even true of education at church. Many church movements today have deliberately moved away from historical denominations (I’m not criticizing non-denominationalism; I’m know there can be good reasons for it), and I’ve even seen some claim to belong to a post-denominational movement. But one of the side effects of this shift away from historical denominations1 is an unnoticed de-emphasizing of the history of the Church.
But the Classical approach to education seeks to cultivate a respect for history that prompts students to seek to learn from it and know their place in it. And for a school that aims to be both Christian and Classical, there should be every reason to think that its students would be taught to cherish not only their political and cultural history, but also their Church history, too.
3. Grows Us to Wrestle with Mature Teaching
In 1 Corinthians and in Hebrews we find milk being used as a metaphor for the kind of teaching that young, immature Christians require. It’s not that milk is bad, but you’re meant to grow off of being dependent on it. We are to become able to apprehend more and more solid and deep things from Scripture as we progress as Christians.
And one of the ways in which Christians can remain in the milk phase long into their lives is if they have never learned to think about and wrestle with hard and complex intellectual ideas. This isn’t to say that uneducated persons can’t become mature Christians (frankly, some of the most thoughtful Christians I’ve ever met did not receive more than a high school education), but it’s rather to make the point that keeping students at a surface level of academics will train them to not have to wrestle with knowledge, and possibly create an aversion to wrestling with the hard truths of Scripture.
Many educational approaches today do not force students to think harder than they would like to think. Modern “student-centered learning” comes standard with a dose of Self-Determination Theory, which puts the natural human inclination to avoid hard stuff squarely in the driver’s seat of educational practice. If students are taught to focus on their inclinations (which typically involves an aversion to the hard), then why would they not also have a tendency to avoid the hard things of Christianity?
Jesus made “hard” statements. John records in the 6th chapter of his Gospel that our Lord told the multitudes that they must “eat his flesh and drink his blood,” and that many of them no longer followed him because of this. The Savior said that he came to bring a sword, and to divide families against each other (Matthew 10:34ff). And he told Nicodemus in John 3 that unless something impossible happen to him (be born again) he could never enter the Kingdom.
None of these are things for the weak-minded to try to wrestle with. So we need to produce students who are equipped to rightly digest the meatier elements of their Faith. And a Classical approach can help do so, because Classical education presumes that students require it be dictated to them what they must know and must be able to do. This is hard for some and harder for the rest. But it makes the student strong in mind, able to interact with mature thoughts.
Whether, then, it’s a rich theological book or a long expositional sermon, students who have been trained to interact with hard and complex ideas are able to swim in the deep end, as it were.
4. Strengthens Our Protestant Roots
Classical Secular education was birthed out of the minds of Plato and Aristotle and their disciples. It was nourished by Rome, it was enhanced by the medieval church, and it came to full flower in 18th century Western education in America. But Classical Christian education was first explicated by Moses, it was overhauled by the Apostles in the last half of the 1st century, and then it was rescued by the Reformers in the 16th and 17th centuries. Interestingly, the Reformation tradition in the West played a crucial role in making all education (even secular education) in the 18th century into what it was, and so in that sense even Classical Secular education goes back to a Classical Christian root.
R.L. Dabney, at the end of the 19th century, wrote about secular education in his Discussions. Therein he made the compelling argument that all education is inherently religious. Whether public or parochial or private, a school presumes something to be true about God and morality and worship (even if the something is, to them, nothing). And the foundational religious principles surrounding New World education before the 20th century were undeniably Reformational in nature, because it was Reformational Protestantism that fueled the formation of early America. Classical Education unapologetically intends to brings students back to the kind of educational model which made those iconic generations what they were.
The dawn of the 20th century brought modernism into the warp and woof of American society; even the great bastions of Reformed Protestant thought (such as Princeton Seminary) fell into its progressivistic trap. In light of this, it’s not hard to see why Christianity in America became more and more modernistic. And, to be clear, the modernization of a thing in the philosophical sense is its shift towards being skeptical of dogmatism and critical to claims of truth. So, the philosophical modernization of American churches throughout the 20th century left them moving further and further away from the dogmatic Protestant confessions of the Reformation. The dogmatism that made Protestantism a force that could birth a great nation eroded. Loyalty to precise, logical, time-tested, richly-worded confessions became a thing of the past. Nowadays even the few churches that claim to hold to a Reformed confession2 usually could’t tell you what their confession says.
It’s this particular modern context that I believe will most benefit from the blessings of Classical Christian education. I believe that Classical Christian can raise a generation of students who have been trained to see the primacy of written literature, to be a friend to the study of history, and to have dexterity with difficult subject-matter. And I believe that these skills, when applied to their Christian experience, will allow them to see the richness of Scripture, appreciate Church history, and apprehend mature ideas. In other words, Classical Christian education aims at making students good Protestants. Which is what it aimed to do before it became old enough to be called classical.
Conclusion
We have to recognize that propositional, written truth lay at the root of all matters pertaining to our Christian experience.
“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17)
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16)
“You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” (1 Peter 1:23)
Therefore, any educational system which trains a student to interact with truth will necessarily affect the student’s Christian experience (for good or ill). In light of this, one of the benefits of the Classical Christian approach is that we can be up front and explicit with respect to 1) what we deem truth to be, and, 2) how our approach affects the Christian formation of a student.
This is not to say that denominational shift is inherently a bad thing. Blossoming errors within a church or movement, for example, should promote moves away from it. I’m just saying that folks often move from a historic denomination into a new something that lacks historical connection.
The confessions which can rightly be called “Reformed” are vast and diverse, and they come from a span of 300 years. They simply share in common a rejection of Papal authority, an adherence to Sola Scriptura, and a commitment to justification by grace alone through faith alone for the glory of God alone. How these and other points are defined and explicated will differ, but what I’ve just listed are generally the unifying elements of what it is to be Protestant — whether Anglican or Arminian or Presbyterian or Lutheran or Anabaptist or Reformed, or Methodist or a host of variations of this mix (even for Protestants who don’t claim to be part of these groups today).