The Faith and Ambition of Biblical Education

#Introduction

It is surprising, given how much the Bible has to say about education, that Christians are not more unified in pursuance of it.

This may be because the disconnect between the world context in which the Scriptures were penned is starkly different to that in which we raise our children. The very idea of a “school,” for example, is only reasonable to consider if you have a wealth of time and money at your disposal. Am I justified in supposing that an average Israelite of Old Testament times, after sweating it out in the field all day, his thirteen-year-old son in tow, collapses into bed that evening, without so much as a thought of teaching his son the basics of grammar, logic, and rhetoric? Life under the subsistence grind would not have tended to produce “schools.” The requisite time and energy simply was not available.

Yet this is no reason to call a “school” per se unbiblical. Moses, you see, didn’t have a Camelbak on his way up the mountain—and yet we raise no objection against modern-day Sinai-goers doing so. The absence of something in the Bible, see, is no proof of its being unbiblical. One may reason his way to it biblically and thus establish his case—or, of course, he might not.

Answering the many questions surrounding education, therefore, is not so simple as proof-texting like a Unitarian.

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord”(Ephesians 6:4 LSB).

This is authoritative Scripture; it means what it says; we ought to obey it. Yet it is also not all that Scripture says on the subject, and an unhealthy hyper-fixation on this verse to the exclusion of all else could conceivably result in a world where fathers alone take part in the education of their children, excluding mothers or any other educative inputs. Remember that Proverbs insists that you “do not abandon your mother’s instruction” (Prov. 1v8), and recounts “the words of King Lemuel, the oracle unto which his mother disciplined him” (Prov. 31v1).

In this article, I do not hope to answer every question about education, but I do hope to raise some of the juiciest ones, some of the most pertinent. Are educative institutions biblical? Who should run them? Who should attend? Is this different for boys and girls? In short, what does the Bible say education should look like in our day and age?

#Where Scripture is Clear

There is an abundance of clear teaching in Scripture, especially the Pentateuch, on what education should do at a high level—what its telos is. The text surrounding the Shema Yisrael comes to mind:

“O Israel, you shall listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel! Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:3–4 LSB).

The entire chapter is relevant to this discussion, though I will not reproduce the entirety of it here. The emphasis is clear, however: education starts with the parents—they must listen and do (v6) so they have something to give their children (v7). The goal is to gain the blessing of Yahweh: living and multiplying amidst a plethora of earthly gifts.

“…great and good cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you will eat and be satisfied” (Deuteronomy 6:11 LSB).

(Those who claim such blessings applied in the Old Covenant but not in the New have their work ahead of them to demonstrate how a better covenant would not include at least these blessings. See Ephesians 6:1ff.)

Educate yourself and your children in godliness, therefore, and God will grant these blessings—not individually, but corporately. If, on the other hand, we start to worship other gods—for example, by conducting smoking ceremonies from indigenous religions in public school assemblies and saying “hail Mary” to their elders past, present and future—we should expect the curses of v15 to come upon us.

Crucially, I would also argue that “godliness,” as I used it above, is not limited to the contents of Moses’s law. No doubt this is primarily what Deuteronomy 6 is about; I am merely applying the principle of Deuteronomy 6 to all of life—since Christ rules over everything. In Old Testament times, with little leisure time, the scope of learning outside of Moses’s law was possibly very limited. Children, both then and now, are always learning, whether they are taught or not. Yet a child raised in subsistence living under the Law of Moses would often have exhausted his time learning and keeping these basics. Now that children have hours of leisure and access to everything from Shakespeare to pornography, it is essential that parents—fathers particularly—“teach them diligently” in every area of life they may run into.

#Plundering Egypt

A common theme throughout Scripture is summarised by this verse in Ecclesiastes:

“For to a man who is good before Him, He has given wisdom and knowledge and gladness, while to the sinner He has given the endeavor of gathering and collecting so that he may give to one who is good before God. This too is vanity and striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:26 LSB).

The verse is crucial to understanding how and why God often allows the wicked to prosper—they are gathering and collecting so they can give to the righteous. Israel took some of Egypt’s wealth into the wilderness to create the tabernacle; this is why God promised them houses and cities they did not build (Deut. 6:11); it is why I have no problem taking full advantage of the wealth of Scriptural knowledge I gained as a Christadelphian child—and using it to denounce the folly of Christadelphian doctrine and practice.

It is also why reading a bit of Plato might be a good idea. Did Paul not plunder the wisdom of Pagan philosophers to make his points? In Acts 17:28, he quotes an ancient writing about Zeus and applies it to God Himself. In Titus 1, I believe he does something similar.

It is also why skilled musical education—that most noble of pursuits (book your free trial lesson now at www.huntermusicacademy.com.au)—seems to have originated in the line of Cain, the same family who invented the not-so-noble pursuit of polygamy (see Gen. 4:19–21). Why was it Cain’s line who built the cities, farmed animals, played the lyre and pipes, and forged metal? What was Seth’s progeny doing with itself for all this time?

“And to Seth, to him also, a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of Yahweh” (Genesis 4:26 LSB).

While Seth was worshipping the Lord, apparently, Cain was building things. Now, I hasten to add that I’m sure both lines of humanity did both things to varying degrees. But we may presume that Scripture emphasises the things each side did in proportion to how important it was to them. Cain pursued prowess, and Seth pursued the Lord. And the reason Cain’s line made so many good things is so that God could one day give them to His own people and say: “I have given you houses you did not build, instruments you did not invent, and farming techniques you did not even begin to imagine.”

I can only conclude, therefore, that the primary duty of Christians is to worship the Lord, and to teach their children to do the same in everything they do. (Worship, see, is not just raising your arms in the doxology, but working with your arms dutifully during the week “as to the Lord,” among a host of other things.) Through this process of loving the Lord and teaching their children to do the same, Christians usually build things quite slowly but surely; yet they walk into other blessings created by the wicked without having lifted a finger for it.

There is an argument to be made—indeed, I have heard theologian James B. Jordan make it—that one of the motifs raised at the conclusion of Revelation is that the metaphorical wealth of Great Babylon—which sounds eerily similar to the gifts of Cain’s line (Rev. 18:22-23)—is handed over to the saints for the construction of New Jerusalem:

“Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who have ships at sea became rich by her wealth, for in one hour she has been laid waste! Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.”
(Revelation 18:20 LSB, emphasis added).

Then of the “holy city, Jerusalem,” we are told:

“And they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it” (Revelation 21:26 LSB).

Since this is a theme traceable throughout all of Scripture, it has enough importance to warrant our attention. Plato may have been as far from God as any other unrepentant sinner but this is not sufficient reason to dismiss his works out of hand. God may have been using his life’s work as a means of storing up wealth for the righteous. I speak, mind you, as someone who has read very little Plato.

To be continued.