Christian Classical Liberal Arts

The Christian classical liberal arts immerse our students in the great books and ideas that comprise the pageant of Western civilization. The study of these sets a proper course for a lifetime pursuit of wisdom by teaching the student to think, to love learning, and to passionately pursue truth, beauty, and virtue. This philosophy of education, rooted in ancient Greek pedagogy, and embraced by western Christians for the past two millennia, has been instrumental in bringing about the great flowering of Western civilization, producing many of the best theologians, thinkers, authors, and statesmen, from the apostle Paul to the American founding fathers. The culture resulting from this classical tradition ushered in a society that achieved individual freedoms that, though imperfect and far from universal, were unprecedented in the history of the world. Without the classical liberal arts tradition of the West, there could have been no Magna Charta, no Mayflower Compact, and no Constitution of the United States.

Christian Classical Liberal Arts

The gospel of Jesus Christ is central. Education that is distinctly Christian begins with the conviction that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Pr 9:10). Doctrinally, we subscribe to the historic creeds and confessions of Christendom, and especially those of the Reformed confessional tradition. We affirm that “our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”[1] This knowledge must then be applied to its proper end: “to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.”[2] Our aim is fitting students—mind, soul, and heart—for their place in the Kingdom, which in turn will fit them to lead and shape their culture and communities.

[1] Calvin, John. The Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 47.
[2] John Milton, Tractate On Education, ed. Oscar Browning (Cambridge: University Press, 1905),  3-4.

Christian Classical Liberal Arts

The classical model of education is rooted in the pedagogy of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Paideia, the Greek word that we translate education, may be better translated enculturation: “instilling core values, enunciating standards, and setting moral precepts.”[1] Its goal was to train the affections so that the student “praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, [and] . . . justly blame[s] and hate[s] the bad.”[2] Though the foundations of classical education were laid in ancient Greece, on this side of the Resurrection, it becomes obvious that the Greek philosophers and poets were merely “sharing in God’s thoughts,”[3] however unwittingly, as they searched for the truly happy life by means of logos (reason), asking the questions that could only be answered in the Logos of John 1, the Author of both life and reason. Given the relative geographical proximity, perhaps it is possible that the Greek philosophers and poets, who were searching for the divine Logos, had intellectual commerce with the Hebrews, who possessed His very logoi in their Scriptures. Whether by this means, or simply because God has “set eternity in [man’s] heart,” (Ec 3:11) there is an undeniable correspondence between the Greek pursuit of virtue as the basis for education and the fear of the Lord as the basis for wisdom. Later, when Rome rose to power and politically mastered Greece, “captive Greece took captive her fierce conqueror, and introduced her arts into rude Latium.”[4] Thus, the Greek ideal of paideia moved westward, laying a firm foundation for the civilization into which Christendom would providentially find herself situated.

[1] Tracy Lee Simmons, Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2002), 40.
[2] Plato. Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), 88.
[3] Carola Baumgardt, Johannes Kepler: Life and Letters (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), 50.
[4] Horace, “Epistles, Volume II” in Works, trans. C. Smart, 1836, rev. Theodore Buckley (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1863), 284.

Christian Classical Liberal Arts

In practice, Greek paideia was education suited for the freeborn; the Romans thus termed such an education liberalis—worthy of the freeborn—in contrast that given to slaves, who “were given only a vocational training, taught not to think for themselves but only to serve the economy.”[1] Ultimately, Christendom would “plunder the Egyptians”[2] and claim classical education as her own, beginning with the classical training of the apostle Paul that is evidenced throughout his epistles, and articulated by church fathers from Augustine to  Jerome. During the medieval period these artes liberalis were developed, divided, and classified as the trivium (three ways) and the quadrivium (four ways). The word-focused trivium arts teach the proper understanding and use of language. Grammar is “the art of being at home in language,”[3] focusing on its vocabulary, structure, rules, and conventions. Logic is primarily concerned with learning to think and reason by means of language. Rhetoric is the virtuous and winsome use of language for the purpose of persuasion. These interwoven arts of the trivium are also more than just subject areas, they are “by their nature . . . a preparation for learning.”[4] The numbers-focused quadrivium includes the disciplines of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Together, the trivium and the quadrivium provide students with the tools for reading and thinking well in every discipline.

[1] Gene Edward Veith, “Monarchists at Heart,” World Magazine (blog), September 19, 1998, https://world.wng.org/1998/09/monarchists_at_heart.
[2] Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine, trans. Professor J. F. Shaw (New York: Dover Publications, 2009), 75.
[3] Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition (Camp Hill: Classical Academic Press, 2019), 53.
[4] Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning,” Paper read at a Vacation Course in Education, Oxford 1947 (London: Methuen & Co., 1948), https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/sayers-lost/sayers-lost-00-h.html. The rediscovery of Sayers’s essay was an animating factor in the classical education revival at the close of the twentieth century, providing the classical education movement with much of its structure and syllabus. Classical education today remains in her debt; however, much more has been recovered since, adding to and enlarging the vision. Though her ideas are seminal, Sayers herself would probably caution against an overly rigid application of her self-admitted “neither orthodox nor enlightened” musings on the correspondence of the three parts of the trivium to the ages and stages of childhood and young adulthood.

The Great Conversation

The trivium and quadrivium arts are uniquely “designed particularly for cultivating intellectual virtue. Since human beings are more than just intellects, however, the curriculum must develop more than just intellectual virtue.”[1] Thus, the liberal arts form the foundation, but not the totality, of classical education. These foundational  arts, coupled with a robust study of theology, enable students to competently and virtuously engage the disciplines of philosophy: both moral philosophy (history, economics, politics, etc.) and natural philosophy (biology, chemistry, physics, etc.); in other words, all the things that make up culture, past and present. Ultimately, the highest and best fruits of the Christian classical tradition are found in the Great Conversation spanning the ages of Western Civilization as the best minds in each age respond and refer to the thoughts of the great minds of previous ages, transcending the boundaries of time and place, inspiring C. S. Lewis to dub it “Old Western Culture.”[2] As we also sit at the feet of these remarkable men and women, listen to them, ask questions of them, and perhaps even answer them back, we become participants in this enduring exchange. This conversation includes philosophers, poets, and playwrights from both the City of God (Christian believers) and the City of Man (pagans). Thus, the classical curriculum requires the study of both, following the example left by the Apostle Paul, Augustine, Calvin, Lewis, and scores of other Christian theologians and philosophers through the ages. Each of these men was thoroughly conversant with Greek philosophy and literature, which shaped their thinking and permeates their writings, but always in submission to the full authority of the Scriptures. In the same way, we may confidently engage Homer, Plato, Virgil, and all the rest. In fact, we must do so, if we would see God’s providential and sovereign preparation for His Christ. Through the study of pagan writings, both ancient and modern, we are confronted with the eternal competing aims and claims of the City of God and the City of Man. The ancient Greek and Roman world was the setting for God’s redemptive drama. Our understanding of the Scriptures is impoverished if we do not see how even the very rocks – and poets and philosophers and playwrights – cry out for Christ.

[1] Clark and Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition (2019), 2-3.
[2] C. S. Lewis, “De Descriptione Temporum,” Inaugural Lecture from the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, 1954. https://archive.org/details/DeDescriptioneTemporum