To know God and to make Him known
CHRISTIAN CLASSICAL EDUCATION
How do you teach your child to experience and examine God’s creation? By learning alongside them in a community with a common goal. Classical Conversations empowers you to guide your child’s educational development at every age (and teaches you, too!). Our Christ-centered curriculum is rooted in the classical model and is in tune with the way children naturally learn.
We provide a platform that parents can use to envision the future and holistically develop their children, allowing them to truly thrive.
MORE ABOUT CHRISTIAN CLASSICAL EDUCATION
Can an education be both classical and Christian? Parents often associate a classical education with “non-Christian” content such as Greek mythology or philosophy. Naturally, they then wonder how these studies can be Christian.
First, because God has dominion over all, Christians can find profit in studying Greek literature and philosophy.
Second, this study is most useful when it prepares the heart for the acceptance of Christ, and then leads an individual to develop a rational, defensible faith; a faith that is also unlikely to be susceptible to false teaching.
Third, Christians must approach all reading carefully, pulling out that which is true and profitable and rejecting that which is untrue.
This conversation among the Church Fathers about classical, Christian education shaped the medieval schools in which the trivium—grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric—was formalized.
Our mission is to know God and to make Him known, therefore we aspire to develop minds and souls.
WHAT EARLY CHURCH LEADERS SAID
Alexandria, Egypt, served as a centre of learning in the fourth century BC. Alexandria’s famous library attracted many scholars, so it was a natural location for the best schools. Philo, a Greek Jew living in Alexandria, had already written many works demonstrating the unity of Greek philosophy and Judaism (The Great Tradition, 154). The Church Fathers then pursued similar arguments to link Greek philosophy and Christianity. Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150–215) continued the conversation by demonstrating that the study of Greek philosophy was profitable for Christians. He described philosophy as a “preparatory science for Christianity” that would lead a person to contemplate wisdom and prepare the heart for the coming of Christ (169). Clement also concluded that philosophy prepared the mind to be precise in reasoning out issues of faith, and thus would help prevent the Christian from being deceived by false teachings.
Origen (c. AD 185–254), educated in both the Scriptures and Greek literature, compared classical, Christian education to the Israelites plundering Egypt before the Exodus. In his analogy, Origen pointed out that the gold and silver of the pagan Egyptians were used to make the holiest vessels used in the Jewish Tabernacle (178). Drawing out the lesson from the comparison, he urged students to use the treasures of the Greek philosophers and poets to build up the sacred faith of Christianity.
Basil the Great (c. AD 329–379), the Bishop of Caesarea, considered the study of the ancient writers, poets, and orators to be preparatory exercises for the in-depth study of Scriptures. He likened thinking to an athlete’s exercises. Basil asserted that culling through the wisdom of the ages—reviewing philosophies and arguments, accepting the true and rejecting the untrue—prepared a Christian to be a firm defender of the faith. In other words, if Christians are to impact the world around them, they must prepare thoroughly for that task.
Saint Jerome (c. AD 347–420), the translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible, was famous for struggling with his love of secular literature. He demonstrated that Paul quoted lines from the Greek poets in order to convince the Greeks of the truth of Christ. With this act, Paul illustrated that “he had learned from the true David to wrench the sword of the enemy out of his hand and with his own blade to cut off the head of the arrogant Goliath” (209). Again and again, these Church Fathers demonstrated how secular learning can appropriately be used in the service of Christ. Jerome’s contemporary, Augustine of Hippo (c. AD 354–430), also received a thorough classical education before converting to Christianity and serving in the Church. In his famous work, Confessions, Augustine claimed that his readings of Cicero turned his heart toward the wisdom of God (220).
How does this affect us today?
The prevalent philosophy of modern education since John Dewey has been to centre a child’s education solely on the material world. This should give us serious pause as Christians. Scripture tells us that we are mind, body, and an eternal soul. Our education should be filled with conversations about humanity and divinity, body and soul, life in this world, and life in the world to come. In a medieval education, the use of tools like dialectic, logic, and philosophy led students through the discovery of these big ideas that have eternal significance. In the twentieth century, Dorothy Sayers called for a return to classical, Christian education in her 1947 speech at Oxford University “The Lost Tools of Learning.” She described how the Trivium studies in medieval schools produced the best thinkers for centuries. She proposed that we cast off modern methods of education and return to these former methods. As we employ these “lost tools of learning,” we hope to strengthen our children in the Christian faith, preparing them to recognize and articulate the Gospel in all areas of life.
Prepare to discover God in all subjects, not just those typically associated with theology.
CLASSICAL CONVERSATIONS APPLICATION
In Classical Conversations, young students prepare for these big conversations by learning the facts of history, maths, Latin, geography, science, and English grammar. These academic subjects in and of themselves are not Christian subjects. However, the simple act of discussing how these facts point to a Creator can lay the foundation for a biblical worldview. With young children, this can be as simple as reminding them that 13 x 2 always equals 26 precisely because God created an orderly universe that is governed by certain rules. Seeing tiny Israel on a map can lead us into a conversation about God’s amazing plans for mankind. When children study the human digestive system, they can discuss how they are fearfully and wonderfully made.
As students mature, their thoughts and conversations also mature and grow deeper. As children enter the dialectic stage in Challenges A and B, they begin to have theological discussions each week in which they study beginning apologetics and practice the defence of their faith. In Challenges I–IV, training in theology becomes more rigorous as students refine their biblical worldview by comparing Scripture to philosophy. Logic trains students to think clearly about contemporary issues and to form persuasive arguments about virtuous, biblical choices and actions. In a medieval school, teachers and students regarded theology as the mistress science that governed all of the branches of knowledge.
In Classical Conversations, we seek to recover that understanding of theology as we train students to seek God in all areas of study, from chemistry, history, literature, and philosophy to the fine arts. Older students will study logic to form careful arguments grounded in a biblical worldview, and they will practice rhetoric regularly in order to deliver those arguments persuasively. The result of all these labours will be a deeper understanding of God’s attributes. As students comprehend God more deeply and develop a deeper relationship with Him, they will want to praise Him continually. Not only can an education be both classical and Christian, but this form of education has the potential to make manifest a rich earthly process of sanctification: human existence lived out as doxology.