“Christian classical education is the transmission of the culture of the Church through a faculty of friends who love the truth by cultivating virtue in the students in body, heart, and mind, and nurturing their love for wisdom and faithful service of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education
This definition for classical Christian education from authors Kevin Clark, Ravi Jain naturally prompts some questions:
a. How do we transmit the culture of the Church?
b. How do we cultivate virtue in our students in body, heart, and mind?
c. How do we nurture their love for wisdom and faithful service of the Lord?
These are big questions, but, unsurprisingly, scripture gives us a good foundation for answering them. Look at the model of teaching found in Psalm 78:1-8:
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things that we have heard and known,
that our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children,
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.
He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;
and that they should not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
whose spirit was not faithful to God.
The model the Psalmist gives us for transmitting the culture of God’s people is to tell the stories important to God’s people: “I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and know that our fathers have told us.” “Dark sayings” sounds ominous, but other translations use “riddles,” “secrets,” “mysteries,” and “hidden things.” The Psalmist is talking about the transmission of things that are not entirely clear or straightforward, but that are important and full of depth in a mysterious way. Those things are stories! “The glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.”
And telling those stories cultivates virtue. The Psalmist says that God “commanded our fathers to teach their children, that the next generation might know [these stories], the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God but keep his commandments
Our theme this year is “Stories Nourish the Soul.” Since our training sessions over the summer, Granite faculty and staff have been thinking about, exploring, and talking about the way Story helps us teach, specifically with the goals of transmitting the culture of the Church, cultivating virtue in our students in body, mind, and soul, and nourishing our students’ love for wisdom and faithful service of the Lord.
To add substance to this idea, True Ends contributors are going to be blogging about how a number of Christian scholars have articulated a Christian theory of Story as well as how we are seeing Story nourish our students’ souls this year. Stay tuned for more in the weeks and months ahead!
