In chapter 3, we laid out the basic framework for the project of integrating faith and reason; in chapter 4, we explored some of the more complicated implications of that basic framework. What is necessary now is to show how that basic framework and its implications give rise to the further implication of the proper framework for a theistic education. It might strike some of our readers as odd to turn to education at this point, but if the two most important human activities are the truth-generating activities of knowing and believing, and if it is necessary for man to integrate these two activities, then education is clearly the next step. In this chapter we will lay out the plan of theistic education, or the ordered sequence of what is to be studied in an educational program; in the next chapter, we will talk about the subjective experience of people as they become theistically educated. Stated differently, the present chapter will explain how the curriculum of theistic education—and especially Christian education—should be organized; the next will discuss the experiences of those who subject themselves to such a curriculum.
A. The First Two Steps
Probably the most famous educational text ever written is book 7 of Plato’s Republic. There Plato’s principal spokesman, Socrates, begins by likening men to prisoners in a cave. These prisoners are chained so that they cannot see themselves or others but only a wall directly in front of them. Behind the prisoners there is a fire and, unbeknownst to the prisoners, people carrying various statues back and forth in front of the fire, thus casting shadows upon the wall at which the prisoners stare. Of course, the prisoners think that the projections on the wall are reality. Socrates explains that almost all men are like the prisoners. They are uneducated and ignorant of truth. In their lack of education, they confuse a faint reflection of the real with truth, and as a result they are easily manipulated.
Socrates then introduces another person into the cave, someone who is able to turn his soul around—that is, to escape from the chains that control his sight. First, this person turns around and recognizes the fire and the statues that are paraded back and forth before it, but then he climbs up beyond them and traverses a steep path that eventually takes him completely out of the cave into the sunlight. This educational experience almost blinds him at first, but eventually his eyes adjust, and he comes to recognize the real world. This escaped prisoner is liberated through this educational experience by coming to know “what is”.
This “image” or analogy for the educational experience is the original vision of what came to be called liberal education or “liberal arts education”; we like to refer to it as “liberating education”, because it frees man from ignorance and the prison that ignorance really is. According to the image, the possibility of our becoming free—becoming happy—consists entirely in our ability to turn our souls around and clamber up out of the cave. We need to make a turn followed by an ascent, and our entire well-being depends upon it. It would seem that we should sacrifice everything in order to get started on this educational journey.
In the Republic, Socrates goes on to explain that the path out of the cave is comprised of a set of studies. This set of studies is rooted in what we would call “mathematics”. The first study is arithmetic, and arithmetic functions can be described by means of a line of one dimension. The second study is geometry—the two-dimensional kind of geometry, or plane geometry. Third in succession is three-dimensional geometry, which Socrates refers to as “the science of the cubes”. The next study places the three-dimensional object in motion; it introduces time, a fourth dimension, into the picture. The examples of these four-dimensional studies that Socrates uses are astronomy (which has its basis in sight but transcends sight) and music (which has its basis in sound but transcends sound).
The point of this mathematical education is to enable the student to escape from the cave of ignorance by coming to recognize that the images presented to us by sensation are not the whole of reality. Mathematics liberates the mind from its overattachment to sensation and enables it to rise to the level of the grasp of principles. Mathematics, therefore, in the view of liberating education, is not simply or even primarily a tool permitting man to exploit the world of matter, but a course of inquiry that frees the soul, pushing it to turn around and ascend.
Before and after discussing the role played by mathematics in his educational plan, Socrates discusses another aspect of education, this one involving music and poetry. From the time we are little children, Socrates says, we are educated in music and poetry. Our education thus begins with the songs and stories told to us long before we are able to encounter mathematics. This music and poetry form our young souls so that they begin to love what is fine and beautiful even before we can conceptualize what nobility and beauty are; and, conversely, they begin to teach us to hate what is bad and ugly even before we know what ignobility and ugliness really are. This sort of musical education shapes and guides the primordial passions of the soul so that, when a person acquires reason, he can follow reason rather than untutored passion.
But in the Republic, Socrates also discusses the sort of poetic education that will be needed after the introduction of the mathematical education. This education for the more mature soul will have to fuse the initial love of beauty that poetry and music instill in the child with the turn toward truth inspired by mathematics. Apparently Plato thinks that mathematics is necessary but not sufficient for the liberally educated person. The knowledge of “what is” has to be accompanied by a desire or eroticism for “what is”, and so a new kind of poetry is necessary for synthesizing desire and knowledge.
This first explication of liberating education in Plato’s Republic, consisting especially of mathematics surrounded by poetry and music, established the direction for further reflection upon the topic. All three of the theistic religions subsequently came to reflect on what Plato had begun and made various attempts to bring liberating education into the context of religion. Within Christianity, Plato’s insights into education eventually came to be expressed in the form of a list of subjects belonging to a curriculum of studies. By the Middle Ages, the liberating curriculum included four subjects that were understood as being rooted in mathematics: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The last item in this list might strike us as a little odd, but we remember that music was also on Plato’s list, and what he intended by placing it there was the study of the mathematical relationships between musical tones and intervals. The medieval curriculum of the Christians also included three subjects that correspond, although less directly, to Plato’s description of poetic education: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. The four mathematical subjects were termed the quadrivium, and the three “poetic” subjects, which might better be termed “literary studies” today, were called the trivium. Liberal arts students pursued the trivium first, and then the quadrivium. The medievals appreciated very much that together these two parts of the curriculum formed seven subjects, for seven was a biblical number representing perfection.
B. The Third Step
But this account of the liberating education is not yet complete, for Socrates also says in the Republic that the mathematical arts and the literary arts are really only the “prelude” to the highest part of the curriculum, which he describes as “the song itself”. After the prisoner escapes the cave and comes out into the world, at first the prisoner’s eyes are overwhelmed by the light of the sun. Eventually, though, the prisoner’s eyes adjust and can make out the many different things that exist in the world outside the cave. In other words, the mathematical and literary studies comprise the difficult path that gets the soul started in its ascent, but it is toward philosophy (the song itself) that one is ascending. If we may use an analogy of our own, perhaps it would be helpful to think of the mathematical and literary studies as being pillars and to think of these pillars as holding up the educational capstone of philosophy:
Now, if philosophy is the capstone, then it behooves us to ask, “What is philosophy?” We have already said in chapter ι that philosophy is the perfection of reason, but that description is not very precise. In the ancient world, a number of descriptions of philosophy and its divisions and various inquiries were offered; we find the one offered by the Stoics to be the most helpful for an initial explanation of liberating education. This explanation divided philosophy into three basic parts, corresponding to three basic questions. First, philosophy discusses the question of “What is truth?” or “How do we know truth?” This can be called logic (logos is a Greek word), or “rational philosophy” (ratio is the Latin word that corresponds to logos). The second part of philosophy is the study of nature, including the various “natures” that make up nature. This is called “natural philosophy” (natura is a Latin word), or physics (physis is the Greek word that corresponds to natura). Today, physics refers only to the study of matter and energy; originally, it referred to the study of all natural things. It included nonliving natures, so the study of minerals and material elements would belong here. It included the study of living things (biology), including plants (botany) and animals (zoology). It also included the study of human beings (anthropology) and even the divine nature (theology, or what we earlier called “natural theology” or “philosophical theology”). After logic and physics, or rational and natural philosophy, comes ethics (ethikë is a Greek word), or moral philosophy (moralis is the corresponding Latin word). This part of philosophy considers the question “What is happiness?” or “How can human beings be happy?” or “What is the best way to live?”
Given this tripartite division of philosophy, the diagram of our pillars and capstone should be amplified to appear more like this:
C. Step Four
Thus, we see that the purpose of liberating education is to free the human soul through an educational process that results ultimately in the perfection of the human mind’s ability to know truth. It involves the perfection of the human reasoning powers through a structured set of inquiries—a curriculum. It might seem that our account of education is finished and that it is time to conclude this chapter. The title of our book is Two Wings, however, and we remember that in John Paul’s quotation, it is not only reason or philosophy that the human soul ascends upon but also faith.
Plato, of course, did not himself encounter revealed religion. Christianity and Islam arose several centuries after the death of Plato, and even though Plato lived during the postexilic age of Israel’s history, there is no reason to think that Plato knew anything about Judaism. Nevertheless, Plato’s “students” did encounter revealed theism in all three of its principal forms. Within the Jewish world, perhaps the most brilliant encounter with Platonic philosophy occurs in the work of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, who is often called by Christians “Moses Maimonides”. Within the world of Islam, the philosopher Alfarabi wrote a book on the philosophy of Plato and another on the philosophy of Plato’s “student”, Aristotle. In the Arabic-speaking world, he was known for centuries as “the second master” after Aristotle.
Within Christianity, a brilliant engagement with Platonic philosophy occurred in the work of Saint Augustine. As Augustine explains in his Confessions, as a young man he studied the “arts called liberal” with great diligence. He was brighter than the other students and soon came to be a famous teacher of one of the liberal arts, rhetoric. After reading about Plato’s philosophy, Augustine realized that certain intellectual difficulties that troubled him had already been solved by Plato and Plato’s followers, and he even says that Plato’s philosophy paved the way for him to be baptized as a Christian. Indeed, Augustine soon developed, and began to execute, a plan for writing extensively about all the liberal arts. He had the idea that study of the liberal arts could not simply eventually lead one out of the cave of ignorance into the light of knowledge, but he also associated this light with the God of Christian theism.
Augustine later abandoned his project of “baptizing” Plato’s liberating education, however, because he thought it inadequate. The problem, he had come to see, was that Plato’s plan for education, while true as far as it went, did not address the life of faith sufficiently, and, without faith, the life of reason was incomplete. After all, he himself had been talented at the liberal arts, but studying them had not helped his soul become free at all. Rather, he had only become a greater sinner because liberal learning had made him proud in the possession of the gift of intelligence. “What did it profit me”, he asks, “to have a gift and not be able to use it well?” Faith, he realized, was what had later enabled him to use his gifts well, or at least better. Augustine realized that a further study was necessary in addition to the Platonic studies. This further study was the study of revelation, and especially the study of Sacred Scripture and the life of Christian faith. He first began to explain this further study, or Christian study, in a work called On Christian Teaching. The study that Augustine initiates in that work is the study that Thomas Aquinas later called sacra doctrina, or “sacred teaching”, and which we have called in chapter 3 of this book “revealed theology”, or “sacred theology”.
If we return to our diagram, then, it seems that, at least in the Christian view, we need a further “roof” over our building, and thus the completed Christian curriculum would actually look something like this:
Notice that the diagram preserves the distinction between revealed and philosophical theology introduced in chapter 3. Philosophical theology is placed in the diagram as a branch of “physics”, or “natural philosophy”; hence, the appropriateness of calling it also “natural theology”. Revealed theology, having its roots in revelation, is the part of the curriculum transcending the part corresponding to reason alone. The curriculum of Christian theism, then, began with the pre-Christian work of Plato; it was then changed especially at the hands of Augustine so that it received a completion through the study of revealed theology. The first part of the curriculum was based on reason; the second had its origins in faith or revelation.
D. Where We Have Arrived
Perhaps we should not be surprised at where we have arrived in this chapter. After all, we had said previously that reason and faith both claimed to be “truth-generating activities” and that as such they were the highest activities for man. If we want to discuss man and his education, then, it is not surprising that reason and faith will form the studies for that education.
On the other hand, it would not be surprising if our readers in fact are surprised at where we have arrived in our explanation of theistic education. In the United States today, education often means something quite different. Often education is described in terms of preparing for a job or career. One goes to college or university to gain the skills that one will need in order to gain or “get” a job. Alternatively, today we might also think of the purpose of education as “research” or “scholarship”. According to this view, one goes to college or university in order to discover “new knowledge” and, especially, to advance existing technological knowledge. A third end to which education in our time is often turned is a political agenda of one sort or another. Education in this plan becomes “consciousness raising” that will supposedly inspire students to seek the political outcome important to the teacher rather than the indeterminate end of intellectual liberation envisioned by Plato.
These alternative educational goals are not necessarily bad in themselves, and the first one at least is certainly a necessary if not an especially liberating or noble goal. But hopefully this chapter has demonstrated that such ends are hardly what liberal education, and especially theistic liberating education, is all about. Theistic liberating education has to be about forming the soul by developing the human activities of reason and faith. As we have explained, this theistic educational plan arose in one way or another in all three of the theistic religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Within the Christian world, it was advanced especially by Augustine and his followers; from there it spread into the monastic schools and then into the medieval universities. Indeed, the Christian theistic curriculum became the curriculum of the medieval university. This curriculum also spread at the time of the Renaissance especially into the colleges founded by the Jesuits. To be sure, the Jesuits emphasized certain elements of the Christian curriculum more than others—they were famous for their work in the literary studies, for example—but the whole of the Christian curriculum can easily be seen within the ratio studiorum, or “plan of studies”, of the Renaissance Jesuit colleges and universities.
It is not hard to see that the Christian theistic liberating curriculum, or what came to be the “Catholic liberal arts curriculum”, has been very much eclipsed in American universities in recent times. Indeed, it is even fast disappearing from colleges that call themselves “Catholic”, as such institutions model themselves more and more on the “job training”, “research”, and “political enculturation” models mentioned above. Indeed, those of our readers enrolled in colleges or universities or even holding degrees from such institutions have probably never heard of the Christian liberating curriculum and the grand history of it that we have barely outlined here. This fact is one of the main reasons why we have written this book. Since college and university students are not likely to encounter the Christian liberal arts curriculum today, it is important for them to see, at least in outline, what this curriculum was and is and, especially, to grasp how it was based on the two wings of reason and faith.