Category: Biblical worldview

Teaching a Narration-Based Bible Lesson

“Child,” said Aslan, in a gentler voice than he had yet used, “perhaps you do not see quite as well as you think. But the first step is to remember. Repeat to me, in order, the four signs.” The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis Teaching a Bible lesson can be a teacher’s most intimidating class of the day. On the one hand, the biblical text is probably quite familiar, leading to great confidence. But on the other hand, the weight of the responsibility–teaching truths from the Word of God to children–can be overwhelming.  One cannot help but think of Jesus’

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Love the Lord Your God With All Your Mind

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”  And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”  Luke 10:25-28 ESV What does it mean to love God? How are we to

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The Life of the Mind, Part 1: From Proverbs to Einstein

It seems to me that we have lost sight of the significance of the human mind. Here I mean more than one’s brain, but not less than it. Humans cannot be reduced to physical neurology, but neither can they be understood apart from it. We are mind-body unities, created as embodied souls, or ensouled bodies, infused with a rich, albeit mysterious, integration of physical and spiritual realities.  Nevertheless, when I say we have lost sight of the significance of the human mind, I am not referring to the significance we ascribe to our brains. We require young children to wear

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The Counsels of the Wise, Part 1: Foundations of Christian Prudence

We began this series with a proposal to replace Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives with Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues. While Bloom and his fellow university examiners aimed to create clarity in teaching goals through a common language, their taxonomy of cognitive domain objectives may have done more harm than good. In rejecting the traditional paradigm of the liberal arts and sciences, they privileged the bare intellect and isolated acts of the mind as if they were the whole of education.  When we compare these bite-sized pieces of “analysis” and “comprehension” to the artistry of grammar and rhetoric, for instance, we

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Embrace the Cross: An Easter Vigil Homily

The beautiful and the grotesque, when considered together are the essence not only of our human existence, but of all created reality. In some ways, aesthetics is in the eye of the beholder. What one considers beautiful differs from what another would hold up as an example of beauty. We share with each other both the beautiful and the grotesque. “Come here and see the beautiful sunset,” one might say to a spouse. “Smell this, has it gone bad?” is yet another phrase shared between husband and wife. The Beautiful and the Grotesque How do we value beauty? What does

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The Advent of Christ as an Act of Teaching

The advent season is upon us and this blog post will explore how advent expresses God’s educational heart for humanity. You are likely familiar with the following stanza: O come! O come! Emmanuel! And ransom captive Israel; That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear. This hymn speaks both to the longing we all have to be reached by God and to the manner in which he reaches us: through his Son, Jesus Christ. So the first point to establish is more than just a theological dogma, but a profound existential reality. We are limited people

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Educating in Desire for the Kingdom

In the Christian, classical renewal movement we often draw the distinction between an education focused on information and an education focused on formation. Education in information focuses on the dissemination of facts, critical thinking skills, and beefing up the intellect, while education for formation prioritizes the process of developing a certain type of person. Both information and formation are important, of course, so which is right?  Well, that depends on what humans essentially are. If humans are, at core, cognitive creatures, then it makes sense to focus exclusively on the intellect. This was the predominant view of modernism. Influenced by

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Educating for Truth

I recently gave a short talk at my school’s curriculum night on the practical value of a classical education. In many ways, it was a recapitulation of the blog article I wrote a few weeks ago. I identified two popular ways of thinking about education today–both geared toward practical aims–and then argued that classical education is actually more practical than both of them.  In today’s blog, I will make a different argument in support of classical education. Rather than arguing for its practical benefits, I will make the case for something even more important: it is an education in truth.

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Aristotle close-up as famously portrayed by Raphael with arm stretched forward indicating his engagement in the human world of moral excellence, virtue and habits

Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education

Up till now in this series I have evaluated Bloom’s taxonomy and mostly used Aristotle’s intellectual virtues as a foil in my critique. And so while I have, to a certain extent, defined and described Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues, alongside offering an outline snapshot of a classical Christian educational paradigm based on them, my explanations have been mostly ad hoc, more to tantalize than to contextualize and fully explain.  This has been a deliberate rhetorical and pedagogical move: an attempt to begin with what is near at hand and understood by modern educators, before exposing its weaknesses and proposing a

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What has Ambleside to do with Jerusalem?: A Consideration of Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education as a Model for Teaching Biblical Studies

In this week’s blog post I am going back into the vault to share with you a paper I presented at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Atlanta on November 20, 2010. This was a pivotal moment in my career, having earned my PhD and taught for a few years at colleges and seminaries in the US and UK. I joined the faculty of Clapham School in 2009 and there first encountered Charlotte Mason. My introduction to Miss Mason’s philosophy of education completely revolutionized my teaching, and this was something I wanted to share with my biblical studies

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