Peter Leithart believes that baptism is the ground for Christian education. I agree with him. But when it comes to whose baptism, I think it can be demonstrated that he departs from the biblical pattern.

TRANSCENDENCE

In Baptized Education, he writes:

The Christian school has to function as a fruit of the Christian church. That does not mean it has to be administratively connected to a church.

So far so good. A state education is no longer semi-Christian or non-Christian. It is decidedly anti-Christian, to the point where anything except Christian doctrine can be taught to our children. At least in the USA, Christian education is something valued more by Christians from Reformed Churches than Baptistic ones, as this guest post from Sarah Culbertson describes. The failure to raise our children in the nurture of the Lord has resulted largely from a misplaced trust in the state.

HIERARCHY

But to be Christian it has to take the church’s ministry as its given starting point. Specifically, I have in mind the sacrament, rite, or ordinance of baptism. What does baptism have to do with education?

Certainly, but what is the Church’s ministry? Is it witness to the nations, or out-breeding them? Right at the point when we ought to be discussing whether or not to invite and include children from non-Christians families into our Christian schools, Leithart wants to sacralise Christian education and build a fence around it.

I do understand his reasons. American Baptist culture has lost a generation or two to secularism, and the two main reasons were a failure of Christian fatherhood and a lack of Christian education. The emphasis on fatherhood and education is the strength of the Federal Vision. But the foundations for Christian fatherhood and Christian education are not to be found in the significance of the value of “Covenant children,” but in the value of all children and indeed all people, and the transforming power of the Gospel of Christ which must be heard to be believed.

ETHICS 1 – PRIESTHOOD

So, what does baptism have to do with education?

We might think very little. Kids from Christian schools are subjects of Christian nurture simply by virtue of their birth. But that is not a sound premise. They are members of the people of God not by virtue of birth but by virtue of baptism.

This paragraph contains the linchpin of Federal Vision thinking. If it can be pulled out, the entire construct falls apart. What disturbs me, and should disturb my FV friends, is how easily it can be pulled out.

I maintain that baptism cannot become familial, tribal or civic without losing its power to transcend those barriers. Paedobaptists avoid the obvious by claiming that even though the very reason certain persons “qualify” for baptism is indeed familial, tribal or civic, the rite of baptism negates, or even slays, those human ties, by rendering this person a “Christian.” It should be obvious to anyone that all this practice does, by attaching itself to these human ties, is sacralise them. Suddenly, they become divine! The foolishness of this is only apparent to those on the outside of the particular family, tribe, city or culture, to whom it is plain as day that this rite is a means of exclusion rather than inclusion. Instead of transcending all those ties and putting them under the authority of Christ, it exalts them into the heavens. This is exactly how Judaism, and indeed Christendom, were turned into Babels. The Gospel of Christ is first and foremost ethical, with social outcomes, not the other way around.

ETHICS 2 – KINGDOM

They are to be nurtured in Christian faith not because they are human but because God has claimed them.

Paedobaptists maintain that this rite includes their children in the Covenant. I maintain that all children, all humans, are already in the Covenant. All were claimed by Christ at His ascension, which mean that what paedobaptism actually does (if it really did anything at all) is put everyone else outside the Covenant, just as Gentiles were not included in the Jewish social identity or its Covenantal promises and obligations. So the supposed “claim” on these children is an Old Covenant one, the Law of Moses.

Raising our children in the nurture of the Lord is simply a Christian obligation, part of our ministry of faithful witness. Our children need the Gospel just like all children do. There is nothing special about them. They are not part of any fleshly Messianic line or heredity “Covenant succession.”

ETHICS 3 – PROPHECY

This has several direct implications for how teachers carry out their work. Whenever and however administered, baptism is a renunciation of the world. It is a liturgical initiation into a people that rejects and resists the liturgies of the world.

Instead of focussing on the faithfulness of Christian teachers, and baptism as a sign of the New Covenant Oath, the public profession of the name of Jesus Christ, Leithart is stuck on the children, those affected by the Sanctions of the Oath. Has the teacher renounced the world? Does the teacher faithfully instruct the students in the ways (and thus the liturgies) of God? This is the weakness of the Federal Vision. Instead of transformation it offers legislation. Instead of representation it offers demarcation. Covenant obligations were always the concern of those in authority, whether familial, tribal or civic. They were the ones accountable to God, and they were to image Him to those in their care. This is how it was in Eden, how it was in Israel, and it is how it is now for baptised (invested) Christians among all nations.

OATH/SANCTIONS

A teacher can appeal to the students’ baptisms as grounds for moral exhortation and formation. “You have been bought with a price,” a teacher says, “you belong to Jesus. Therefore, don’t give your soul and your loves to David Tennant or Benedict Cumberbatch or the latest rock star. Your life is in Christ, therefore does not consist of possessions…

What if there are students from non-Christian families in the school? Are they exempt from moral exhortation and formation because they have not been baptised? Has the entire world not been bought with a price? Does not every soul already belong to the King of Kings? Is that not the grounds for preaching the Gospel to every creature? Appealing to somebody’s baptism (particularly a paedobaptism) is the soteriological equivalent of the Bootstrap Paradox. And there are young people who, although baptised and thus supposedly “in Christ” come to resent these supernatural obligations inherited via their natural identity.

SUCCESSION

…Your people are the people of God, and so your loyalties are first of all there. You are baptized, therefore you are not the kind of person to despise the wisdom of the aged. You are baptized, therefore you live and study in patient faith.”

Finally, we come to the carnal terminal of all human demarcations, including familial baptism: human seed with claims to divinity. Even within the Old Covenant line, the carnal succession jumped tracks quite a number of times and included scandalous people to remind us that this succession was not a work of the flesh.

And now, with the genealogical promises complete, and all the records incinerated at Jesus’ hand in AD70, the Spirit is free not only to jump from person to person, family to family, tribe to tribe, but also from nation to nation. God simply will not allow us to glory in the flesh, and baptism is evidence of that. It does not sacralise human ties as paedobaptism does. It transcends them entirely. There is no boundary on the work of Christ, and baptism should not be contorted into one. Paedobaptism glories in the flesh, a carnal succession.

Conclusion

There is no need for a baptismal fence to keep people in. Baptism is not a mining claim. Christ owns the entire world. Baptism is for the gold, silver and precious stones mined out of it, purified through repentance and faith, then baptised and put to work in the house of God and in battle out in the field. Baptism is investiture, not initiation. In educational terms, it is the graduation gown, not the beginning of schooling.

People do not “enter” the Church via baptism as ancients entered Israel via circumcision. Circumcision transformed no one. But baptism is for the transformed, and that transformation comes only from beholding Christ. The Church which focusses on maintaining its own glory always becomes Babel, and the Spirit departs. However, when people are pointed to Christ, the Church gathers of its own accord — around Him.

Any system which must continually point people back to their baptism instead of pointing them to Christ is not only far from the focus of the New Testament, but far from recognising what an actual Christian is, and how somebody becomes a saint. Given this sort of power by unwitting sacramentalists and Covenantalists, the sacraments replace the Gospel in the minds of children. And as it was for the Jews, as the generations pass we end up exalting and rejoicing in bread and wine while Jesus Himself is left outside the door. Let me ask you, do you have a relationship with Jesus because you were baptised, or were you baptised because you have a relationship with Jesus? The difference here is crucial.

The world does not need baptism first. The world needs Christ first. And the same goes for our children. Baptism is for parents and teachers, legal witnesses, message bearers. Baptism sets these speakers apart as living sacrifices, but there is no fence around the audience. All are called to repent and believe.

If you are a regular reader, you will have some idea of how I feel about the practice of paedobaptism. But that is only half the story. I have just as much distaste for “baptist” Christianity without a spine. I myself need a Church with a spine, a Church full of grace and light because vows are not only made by baptizands but also understood.

I believe baptists get the “vow” part right, but neglect solid accountability to that vow. Paedobaptists, on the other hand, get the accountability right, but allow the priestly vow to be taken by proxy. This is why I have used the analogy of knighthood to describe New Covenant baptism. Although paedobaptism truncates the New Covenant “boundary,” I’m in agreement with my Federal Vision friends on just about everything else.

So, with that understanding, here is a guest post by a reader, Sarah Culbertson, who, like me, has learned a great deal from the Douglas Wilson camp, where the “front end” of the Christian vow is skewed but the “back end” is right on target.

How Does Baptism Affect Christian Education?

by Sarah Culbertson

There is a Christian comedian who jokes that the non-denominational mega-church is actually just a Baptist church with a coffee shop. And, as a member of such a church, I have to laugh at his accuracy.

There is much to chuckle about in the mega-church, such as the remarkable ability of pastors to present their sermons in five points all beginning with the same letter, or the fact that the I.T. guy (my husband) had to explain that the new electronic finger check-in system was not actually the mark of the beast.

The most peculiar thing about my ten years in this church, though, is how I have at the same time grown to love the people and become frustrated with the way we “do church.” I blame Douglas Wilson for that. It was through his writings that I learned about reformed theology (I thought all Protestants were reformed), classical Christian education, and a happy world ending. It was he who inspired us to start a school in an effort to train our children in the paidea of the Lord and transform the culture with the gospel.

The problem is that 90 percent of the families at our church choose anti-Christian education for their children. My husband and I, along with a handful of like-minded families have spent countless hours over the past three years in information meetings, dinner parties, and individual conversations trying to convince our friends of the necessity of Christian education for every person, in every subject, for all of life. However, try as we might, very few seem to be getting it.

I think this is because they don’t have a deep and reverent understanding of their baptism. Just what does baptism have to do with enrolling kids in a classical Christian school?

Baptism requires the action of a professing person (even when infants are baptized). The problems come when that professing person does not really know that there are responsibilities that go along with baptism. Baptists need more explanation of the implications of baptism than, “Jesus said to do it.” From my observations in the Baptist church and comparisons with the reformed, here are areas that I think would help my brothers and sisters come to a better understanding of baptism and thus a better understanding of their duties as people of God.

And wouldn’t you know, there are five points all beginning with C.

• Covenant. This, sadly, is a foreign word in the Baptist world. If anyone does know it, the other word that they typically associate with it is “unconditional.” The idea of stipulations at all, let alone stipulations that apply to themselves, is not understood. There is a large mental gap for the Baptist between the Old and New Covenants. Consequently, the requirements and promises given to Abraham, Moses, and David are not extended to include Gentile believers today. For Christian school enrollment, parents must see the application of Deuteronomy 6 to their own lives. Another mental disconnection is that the sinful mind believes salvation is ultimately a matter of one’s own personal will power to “make a decision for Christ” and does not acknowledge the calling of God on their lives that began before the world was made and continues until the last day. I believe this self-righteous understanding of God’s salvation reaches out into other areas of Christian thought as well, such as, “My child can feel when the teacher says something that is not right,” and “My child is already saved so she doesn’t need a Christian school.”
• Corporate worship. The call to corporate worship is given each week, but the actions of the congregation speak more of individualism. The lights are dark, so no one can see you. The music is artificially loud to drown out the tone-deaf man behind you. You can raise your arms, or not; sit or stand. You can pick from an early or late service with either contemporary or traditional music. You can dress up or dress down. Basically, you can have it your way. They need to know that as members of one body, what an individual does affects everyone. For example, enrolling their child in welfare school affects their brother. There is one baptism. So let’s demonstrate that in our worship, both on Sunday and the rest of the week.
• Citizenship. Baptist believers know full well that as Christians their citizenship is in heaven. What is not properly grasped is that heaven is coming to earth. The idea of Christian world dominion was completely new to me before Wilson’s “Heaven Misplaced.” There is talk in the church about victorious Christian living and every knee bowing, but for the gospel to have the power to transform nations? No. Everything is going to burn, they say, so we just need to maintain the status quo and hang around until we get sucked off planet earth. Thus, the Christian school is thought of as a bomb shelter rather than a training base for cultural transformation. As for the ruler of the kingdom, Jesus is King, they say, but Satan is the de facto ruler. With this perspective, baptism is reduced to merely a “spiritual” phenomenon and is not a political declaration of allegiance. Why is it that Muslims hate Christian baptism more than western secularists? It is because they live in a one-kingdom world where Allah is king. Their government, culture, and education reflect this. For them, to baptize into Christ is to reject everything they hold dear. Western Christians live in a two-kingdom culture where baptism only has meaning in “Christ’s kingdom.” The cultural result is Christian impotency in the public sphere and Christian students educated by atheists.
• Catechism. From my limited understanding, pre-baptized individuals were once referred to as a catechumen as they were taught the doctrines of the faith in preparation for baptism. (Does Jesus command the opposite order in the Great Commission, to baptize and then catechize?) By catechism I don’t mean simply the historic question and answer recitations, although those are certainly included. Broader than that is the ability to have a Christian (biblical) answer for any question. Baptists need a bigger view of biblical worldview thinking and living. For a lot of people I know, if you are solid in your Bible stories and don’t believe in evolution then you possess a biblical worldview. Sadly, that is typically the extent of Christian education that students, young or old, receive. What about a biblical view of math? A biblical view of American history? A biblical view of table manners or riding in the backseat of a mini-van? If they can take the Creation, Fall, Redemption framework and look through it rather than at it the world might just become clearer to them.
• Confidence. I once had a college professor tell me in front of the whole class that I was a wimp. She was probably right. As a child, I was baptized three times due to a lack of assurance of salvation. As a secularized adult Christian, I felt powerless and incompetent. I have noticed a greater sense of confidence in my reformed friends and in their children (their kids don’t even remember when they were baptized and that is good enough for them). Interestingly, my reformed friends use a different vocabulary than my baptist friends. The reformed speak frequently of blessings, faithfulness, joy, glory, and victory, while my baptist friends speak more of trials, brokenness, prayer, forgiveness, and evangelism. The baptist vocabulary reveals an introspective focus on life, preoccupied with a present state of mind. Even evangelism is about sharing “my story.” Conversely, the reformed are typically future-oriented with a vivid memory of God’s provision in the past. The confidence I see in them is rooted, I think, in their understanding of the sovereignty of God and is encouraged by their masculine music and study of faithful saints throughout history.

These are merely observations I have made from my vantage point of the two different camps and how the differences have affected the way children are taught. I look forward to the day of true unity in the church and for all children to be taught by the LORD (Isaiah 54:13).

Sarah is wife to Jed Culbertson and mother of four kids ages 6, 4, 3, and 1 with one more baby on the way. The Culbertsons live in Minnesota and helped found Agape Christi Academy, a classical Christian school in the Twin Cities. They are members of Grace Church where Jed works as the IT and Creative Director.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, (Transcendence)

the Son can do nothing of his own accord, (Hierarchy)

but only what he sees the Father doing. (Ethics)

For whatever the Father does, (Oath/Sanctions)

that the Son does likewise.” (Succession)

(John 5:19)

The premise that the entire text of the Bible has a common structure, one which operates at multiple levels, has many implications. Besides the fact that this is clearly a miracle, there is the question of why such a limitation would be placed upon the Words of God.

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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Alastair Roberts has some wise things to say about rational public debate on important issues being hampered by the new culture of “tolerance.” Of special interest to me are his observations concerning the nature of the recent spat involving Doug Wilson, Jared Wilson and Rachel Held Evans. I have had similar experiences in online discussions. I’m relying on and presenting facts and somehow the other side is irate that facts are being presented. And the fact-free, vitriolic, ad hominem comebacks would make my hair curl if I had any.

A perfect illustration of this is the fact that the best argument those lobbying for same sex marriage had against the ACL’s and Sydney Archibishop’s statements this week concerning the health risks of certain behaviours boiled down to, “Those statistics are offensive.” Illogical as that statement is to me, there is a weird “shark-hat” internal logic at work after all. Here’s a (rather lengthy) excerpt from Alastair, which not only reveals the problem but also explains to me the complete lack of a sense of humour (or playfulness) in our opposition.

Contrasting Forms of Discourse

In observing the interaction between Pastor Wilson and his critics in the recent debate, I believe that we were witnessing a collision of two radically contrasting modes of discourse. The first mode of discourse, represented by Pastor Wilson’s critics, was one in which sensitivity, inclusivity, and inoffensiveness are key values, and in which persons and positions are ordinarily closely related. The second mode of discourse, displayed by Pastor Wilson and his daughters, is one characterized and enabled by personal detachment from the issues under discussion, involving highly disputational and oppositional forms of rhetoric, scathing satire, and ideological combativeness.

When these two forms of discourse collide they are frequently unable to understand each other and tend to bring out the worst in each other. The first form of discourse seems lacking in rationality and ideological challenge to the second; the second can appear cruel and devoid of sensitivity to the first. To those accustomed to the second mode of discourse, the cries of protest at supposedly offensive statements may appear to be little more than a dirty and underhand ploy intentionally adopted to derail the discussion by those whose ideological position can’t sustain critical challenge. However, these protests are probably less a ploy than the normal functioning of the particular mode of discourse characteristic of that community, often the only mode of discourse that those involved are proficient in.

To those accustomed to the first mode of discourse, the scathing satire and sharp criticism of the second appears to be a vicious and personal attack, driven by a hateful animus, when those who adopt such modes of discourse are typically neither personally hurt nor aiming to cause such hurt. Rather, as this second form of discourse demands personal detachment from issues under discussion, ridicule does not aim to cause hurt, but to up the ante of the debate, exposing the weakness of the response to challenge, pushing opponents to come back with more substantial arguments or betray their lack of convincing support for their position. Within the first form of discourse, if you take offence, you can close down the discourse in your favour; in the second form of discourse, if all you can do is to take offence, you have conceded the argument to your opponent, as offence is not meaningful currency within such discourse.

I also don’t think that sufficient attention is given to the manner in which differing forms of education prepare persons for participation in these different modes of discourse. There is a form of education – increasingly popular over the last few decades – which most values cooperation, collaboration, quietness, sedentariness, empathy, equality, non-competitiveness, conformity, a communal focus, inclusivity, affirmation, inoffensiveness, sensitivity, non-confrontation, a downplaying of physicality, and an orientation to the standard measures of grades, tests, and a closely defined curriculum (one could, with the appropriate qualifications, speak of this as a ‘feminization’ of education). Such a form of education encourages a form of public discourse within which there is a shared commitment and conformity to the social and ideological dogmas and values of liberal society, where everyone feels secure and accepted and conflict is avoided, but at the expense of independence of thought, exposure to challenge, the airing of deep differences, and truth-driven discourse.

Faced with an opposing position that will not compromise in the face of its calls for sensitivity and its cries of offence, such a mode of discourse lacks the strength of argument to parry challenges. Nor does it have any means by which to negotiate or accommodate such intractable differences within its mode of conversation. Consequently, it will typically resort to the most fiercely antagonistic, demonizing, and personal attacks upon the opposition. While firm differences can be comfortably negotiated within the contrasting form of discourse, a mode of discourse governed by sensitivities and ‘tolerance’ cannot tolerate uncompromising difference. Without a bounded and rule-governed realm for negotiating differences, antagonism becomes absolute and opposition total. Supporters of this ‘sensitive’ mode of discourse will typically try, not to answer opponents with better arguments, but to silence them completely as ‘hateful’, ‘intolerant’, ‘bigoted’, ‘misogynistic’, ‘homophobic’, etc.

A completely contrasting mode of education, one more typical of traditional – and male-oriented – educational systems, values internalized confidence, originality, agonism, independence of thought, creativity, assertiveness, the mastery of one’s feelings, a thick skin and high tolerance for your own and others’ discomfort, disputational ability, competitiveness, nerve, initiative, imagination, and force of will, values that come to the fore in confrontational oral debate. Such an education will produce a mode of discourse that is naturally highly oppositional and challenging, while generally denying participants the right to take things personally. Deep divergences of opinion can be far more comfortably accommodated within the same conversation by those accustomed to such discourse. While the first form of education risks viewing persons as passive receptacles of knowledge to be rewarded for their conformity to set expectations, which are frequently measured, this form of education prioritizes the formation of independent thinking agents.

This form of discourse typically involves a degree of ‘heterotopy’, occurring in a ‘space’ distinct from that of personal interactions. This heterotopic space is characterized by a sort of playfulness, ritual combativeness, and histrionics. This ‘space’ is akin to that of the playing field, upon which opposing teams give their rivals no quarter, but which is held distinct to some degree from relations between the parties that exist off the field. The handshake between competitors as they leave the field is a typical sign of this demarcation.  It is this separation of the space of rhetorical ritual combat from regular space that enables debaters, politicians, or lawyers to have fiery disagreements in the debating chamber, the parliamentary meeting, or the courtroom and then happily enjoy a drink together afterwards.

This ‘heterotopic discourse’ makes possible far more spirited challenges to opposing positions, hyperbolic and histrionic rhetoric designed to provoke response and test the mettle of one’s own and the opposing position, assertive presentations of one’s beliefs that are less concerned to present a full-orbed picture than to advocate firmly for a particular perspective and to invite and spark discussion from other perspectives.

The truth is not located in the single voice, but emerges from the conversation as a whole. Within this form of heterotopic discourse, one can play devil’s advocate, have one’s tongue in one’s cheek, purposefully overstate one’s case, or attack positions that one agrees with. The point of the discourse is to expose the strengths and weaknesses of various positions through rigorous challenge, not to provide a balanced position in a single monologue. Those familiar with such discourse will be accustomed to hyperbolic and unbalanced expressions. They will appreciate that such expressions are seldom intended as the sole and final word on the matter by those who utter them, but as a forceful presentation of one particular dimension of or perspective upon the truth, always presuming the existence of counterbalancing perspectives that have no less merit and veracity.

In contrast, a sensitivity-driven discourse lacks the playfulness of heterotopic discourse, taking every expression of difference very seriously. Rhetorical assertiveness and impishness, the calculated provocations of ritual verbal combat, linguistic playfulness, and calculated exaggeration are inexplicable to it as it lacks the detachment, levity, and humour within which these things make sense. On the other hand, those accustomed to combative discourse may fail to appreciate when they are hurting those incapable of responding to it.

Lacking a high tolerance for difference and disagreement, sensitivity-driven discourses will typically manifest a herding effect. Dissenting voices can be scapegoated or excluded and opponents will be sharply attacked. Unable to sustain true conversation, stale monologues will take its place. Constantly pressed towards conformity, indoctrination can take the place of open intellectual inquiry. Fracturing into hostile dogmatic cliques takes the place of vigorous and illuminating dialogue between contrasting perspectives. Lacking the capacity for open dialogue, such groups will exert their influence on wider society primarily by means of political agitation.

The fear of conflict and the inability to deal with disagreement lies at the heart of sensitivity-driven discourses. However, ideological conflict is the crucible of the sharpest thought. Ideological conflict forces our arguments to undergo a rigorous and ruthless process through which bad arguments are broken down, good arguments are honed and developed, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of different positions emerge. The best thinking emerges from contexts where interlocutors mercilessly probe and attack our arguments’ weaknesses and our own weaknesses as their defenders. They expose the blindspots in our vision, the cracks in our theories, the inconsistencies in our logic, the inaptness of our framing, the problems in our rhetoric. We are constantly forced to return to the drawing board, to produce better arguments.

Granted immunity from this process, sensitivity-driven and conflict-averse contexts seldom produce strong thought, but rather tend to become echo chambers. Even the good ideas that they produce tend to be blunt and very weak in places. Even with highly intelligent people within them, conflict-averse groups are poor at thinking. Bad arguments go unchecked and good insights go unhoned and underdeveloped. This would not be such a problem were it not for the fact that these groups frequently expect us to fly in a society formed according to their ideas, ideas that never received any rigorous stress testing.

As I will argue in more detail as I proceed, the problem does not lie with sensitivity-driven discourses per se – there is a genuine need for such discourses – but rather with their immodest demands upon public life and interaction and academic discussion. The expectation that all public and intellectual life must be ordered in terms of the sensitivities of the members of such groups or reformed in terms of the ideas of such groups cripples society, preventing it from engaging adequately in the searching and difficult task of intellectual inquiry. Both confrontational and sensitive discourses are essential in their own place, but both can endanger the other and, by extension, the healthy functioning of society when they have ambitions beyond that place.

I believe that, within the recent debate, such a distinction between modes of discourse and the training appropriate to each could be seen. A deeper appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches is important here. When the sides in a debate are operating using entirely incompatible modes of discourse communication between the two is quite unlikely. What we need are means of communication and translation between the two, and an appreciation of the strengths, weaknesses, and place of each. The common expectation that challenging conversations must yield to the demand of ‘sensitivity’ is unreasonable, but we should seek to provide some degree of protection for those emotionally incapable of participating in such challenging discourse from its combat.

Full article here.

Blogger Kiersten writes:

Good books wound the reader. Great books leave scars that the reader will carry and revisit throughout life, and that is precisely why we have chosen to allow our children to begin to bear these wounds while they are relatively young.

…it is important to us that we help the children learn how to process the griefs, pain, sin, brokenness, injustices, and immoral behavior of the human race. We want them to ask the questions: “How can we let this happen?” “Why does it have to be this way?” “Where is the justice in this?” “What kind of people do/allow/turn a blind eye to this?” “How do we function in this kind of society?”

More importantly, we want to teach the children to cultivate hope. That seems a little contradictory to the questions above, but they are crucially linked. Yesterday, Pat and I discussed the gamut of reactions that people have to the sort of injustice and plain wrongness he/she encountered in the book [Of Mice and Men], and that is a true reflection of some aspects of society. We talked about the pain he/she was experiencing and contemplated multiplying that pain over and over as a person experiences more and more painful injustices in their life. We talked about the ways people have chosen to deal with that pain, including drugs, fatalism, destructive relationships, and isolation.

The pain is a result of our deep desire for the world to be fair and just. We want the weak to be taken care of and for the strong to be merciful and gentle. We want crimes avenged, and we want injured parties to be restored. We want law applied, and we also want law flexible enough to take into account all the circumstances that provoked a criminal’s action.  Reality is that injustice is everywhere and it cannot be escaped, and that hurts.

When I talk about cultivating hope in the children, I mean that I want them to have their eyes open to the reality of sin in the world, and I want their longings for justice to be directed to the judge of all the earth, who will do right. I want them to be agents of justice and mercy as they are able, but I want them to know and operate in faith that some injustices, some hurts, will only be healed when the King finally puts all things to rights.

I want them to be inoculated with hope as they encounter the world.  This is why I have been and will continue to be an advocate of literature as a core tool in the raising of strong and capable Christian men and women. In books, the children get a glimpse of the realities of the outside world while still in a nurturing and safe environment. They learn to process what they see and become more and more equipped to engage the world with knowledge and hope.

If there is a God, and there is, then atheism did not free our thinking. Atheism has a closed mind concerning anything beyond its own nose. Thus, rather than furthering the cause of science, it is more likely that it has a stranglehold on it.

The gifted minds of the new atheists were gifts from Christianity. As the Spirit of God vacates Western Culture, so does the “Word.” Our children become confused, illiterate, and incapable of logical thought. According to Bojidar Marinov, we are already seeing atheism’s effects in the field of mathematics.

In Math Education: Toward a Trinitarian Model, Marinov writes:

James Nickel’s book, Mathematics: Is God Silent?, is the only non-fiction book that I have read three times from cover to cover… it talks about mathematics from the perspective of the Trinity, the very foundation of the Biblical worldview. The two make an exciting combination, as far as I am concerned.

Nickel’s main point in his book is this: Mathematics is not neutral. Our view of mathematics depends on our general worldview; and therefore our understanding and development of mathematics depend on our worldview.

Different cultures do not have the same view of mathematics, neither do they have the same mathematics or math education. The partial successes of civilizations in history in the development of mathematics were due to the partial consistency of their religious worldviews with the Biblical worldview. But when those pagan worldviews grew epistemologically self-conscious and reached the point of final antithesis with the Christian worldview, mathematics reached a dead end.

The rationalistic Greeks and the pragmatic Romans are among the many examples. Other examples abound in the Muslim world, India, China, and other civilizations. It is only when Christendom consistently developed and applied the Trinitarian model to the fields of knowledge, science, and education, the world saw its first revolution in scientific advance and educational development.

Consequently, with the loss of the Biblical worldview in the West, mathematical thought and education gradually lost the momentum they had inherited from the Christian centuries. The old models of learning and education – rationalist and pragmatic, “Greek” and “Roman” – crept back in, and mathematics once again reached a dead end, and children come out of school ignorant about mathematics.

The ultimate question of any worldview and any philosophy is this: Is the world essentially “one,” or is it essentially “many”? Is unity or plurality ultimate? Is there an underlying reality that transcends all individuality and diversity, or is diversity reigning supreme, with no existing or recognizable patterns or principles that govern reality? The answer to this question will give us the answer to the foundation of our philosophy of math education.

Ed Harris then made some optimistic, if slightly wild, comments, but I think he’s right. Any “inspired” advance Man has made has been a gift of the Spirit of God. If we are faithful, Jesus will give us the keys. Here’s a few grabs.

Atheism is the closing of the mind. And yet atheism (I believe) has had a stranglehold on deeper understandings of the universe.

I believe that astounding breakthroughs await us in science. I have a hunch that our vision of the universe is limited by our theology…

Put bluntly, scientists cannot even talk like there is a real God in the equation without being threatened (read about Intelligent Design some time – or watch “Intelligence Not Allowed”).

Despite the incredible “J curve” of advances over the past century, and even the past five years (especially when it comes to pacemakers!), if it isn’t already, atheism and its trappings will very soon be holding us back.

Filmmaker Darren Doane (“Collision” www.collisionmovie.com) reviews Mike Bull’s Bible Matrix: An Introduction to the DNA of the Scriptures, and then lets a 12 year old Veritas Hall student explain the basics for the grownups.

“We have been using your Bible Matrix book during our time of staff training and it has proven to be a huge blessing and is reshaping the way we think as both a staff and school. Thank you.”
Dennis Deutsch
Veritas Hall
bmxreview

Many atheists think it is their void-given right to make disrespectful, insulting or condescending remarks about religion. One I have heard a number of times is a common atheist response to “Your atheism is a religion”: If religion were a hair colour, then I am bald.

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Veritas Hall westlake – Christian Education from Darren Doane on Vimeo.