Towards a theology of education

For some time now, and particularly since the beginning of my tenure at Christ the Sower, it has become clear that we need a strongly-rooted approach towards the education and raising of young children that fits within a framework that answers not simply the “how” question, but also the “why” and “for what ultimate purpose” questions.

I regularly find myself overwhelmed with a sense of God’s purpose in and through our school and have often referred to that within this blog. I have been wrestling with it (and with its possible meanings) for a while, ever since I was slowly liberated from the very conservative (theologically conservative, not necessarily in praxis) version of evangelical Christianity that I was discipled into. People like Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Richard Foster, Tony Campolo and especially Dallas Willard have all helped me along the way, but to find a solid theological foundation for what I have been growing into has been harder – Willard has made some strong philosophical forays there, with his insistence that Jesus live and dwell as Lord in every area of human endeavour, as did Wendell Berry, especially his work in defining the soul as being the unity of God’s spirit within our bodies, which undermines the old gnostic body/soul dualism which has often lain at the heart of evangelical Christianity (and which thus allowed “Christians” to subdue creation in a destructive way). Jim Wallis, in his recent book about the common good (restoring a “republican” rather than a “liberal” view of how Christians might affect and respond to public policy) is also a serious pointer forward.

And then, this summer, after having read plenty of his material already, I have begun to find some light, as others have done, in the thinking of Tom Wright. Since 2009 I have slowly been working my way through his series that started with Simply Christian and Simply Jesus – followed by Surprised by Hope (the book that really brought home the importance of McLaren’s Kingdom of God thinking but put it into a proper theological framework), then the wonderful Virtue Reborn, which argues for the purpose of sanctification within the context of God’s purposes in Christ’s resurrection, and then the trickier (and at times downright confusingly written) How God became King, whose theological arguments are still strong but more weakly tendered. This summer I have read Wright’s confrontation with gnosticism – Creation, Power and Truth: the gospel in a world of cultural confusion.

Although this short book was written in some ways earlier than many of the others, and began life as a lecture series in 2006 (some of the cultural references do date back to that time), it has helped me to think hard about what we do and how we function as Christian educators and leaders of adults who want to find a purpose in their educational role. Essentially, Wright exposes the fallacy of gnostic thinking and all the “secret knowledge” that came with it, by hacking hard at its inability to make sense of the world we live in, and restoring to view a good God, who made a good creation, that he will one day come back and judge in justice and truth, putting right what has gone wrong. It follows necessarily on the strong argument for the importance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that is a feature of what makes all of his books so robust. He cuts away at the dualism of a “fallen flesh and a pure spirit”, and shows how that has not only infected a liberal view of Christianity, but lies at the source of the “we’re just passing through, heaven is our home” mentality of much evangelical thought. In tackling both the modern and post-modern views of culture, he also shows how gnostic thought also lies at the heart of the political/religious divide, where those in the power of empire are happy enough to rule the earth whilst the Christians have a pietistic, apolitical view of their faith, concerned simply with going to heaven when you die. All of this is hammered relentlessly in the three chapters, set out in a trinitarian framework, restoring God as a good creator of a good and redeemable creation; Jesus as the lord and king of the earth (Jesus is Lord and therefore Caesar isn’t), using John 18 as an illustration of how Jesus spoke truth to power; and the spirit who restores truth and the expectation of restorative judgement at the end of the age. The book is a helpful exposition of these strands within the Gospel of John, and has opened up for me at least a way to think about the purpose of education more effectively than any other theological approach or aspect of Christian thinking. It might just be that I am now, as a grizzled 50-something,  just a bit more open to thinking this way, rather than this being anything blindingly new. But still, a well-rounded theology of education is hard to find.

The trouble with a lot of work written on Christian views of public education is that it tends to fall into one of three traps:

• Trap number one is the hole into which accelerated Christian education (ACE) has fallen. It takes a creationist worldview and pretends that you can simply teach the usual curricular demands from this worldview. At its worst it tends towards the cultic and folk have been damaged as a result. It has an attraction to conservative Christians because of its rejection of an evolutionary and psychotherapeutic view of human development in favour of one in which God is clearly creator and director of human existence. I don’t disagree with this last view, but the purpose of education is to liberate, not to close minds, and so I find the way the theology is used in this approach to be a burden rather than a delight.
• Trap number two is to think that all Christian education happens within the church or “Christian schools”. This is why a good deal of the material written on the subject to date sounds a bit like advice for Sunday School teachers, rather than guidance on how you could lead children forwards into a wholesome view of God’s love, creation and salvation that is invitational rather than instructional. It is this view that Dallas Willard so brilliantly undermines in The Divine Conspiracy, demonstrating that Jesus has a deep interest in every area of human development – and that he is therefore the world’s foremost mathematician, economist, astrophysicist and geographer – as well as being God!
• Trap number three (similar to trap number 1) is to think that the liberal-intellectual world of education is a demonic and destructive world and that the best we can hope for as Christian teachers is to pray for our children and (when it is unavoidable) evangelize our fellow staff. And certainly, there are times for many teachers when this strategy is all that is available to them.

So, informed by Miroslav Volf’s view of human flourishing, as well as Wright’s determination not to worship a gnostic view of God, along with lots of experience gained over the last 10 years of headship and all that I have absorbed from the work of Wendell Berry and Dallas Willard over the last three years, I would like to propose the following necessary criteria for an effective and usable theology of education:

1. Education is part of God’s intent for mankind through creation, and must have a “creational” component in that we must teach a God who overflows with love for his beautiful creation, and a creation that is good, to be used well, and to be cared for by all humans.
2. If this is so, then our education must reflect in all things the createdness of the earth and of mankind. Educators in this theological framework will therefore have the confidence of knowing that they are humble participants in God’s reign on earth. Schooling for thankfulness, for joy and for contentment must be at the heart of what we do, because these are things for which humans were created.
3. Any education must be invitational to all participants with an offer of the grace and mercy of God, through his overwhelming love shown in Jesus Christ.We are not evangelists, but we show forth the mercy of God and make that available to all who are interested or attracted by who we are. Those who are in schools that own the name of Jesus (and there are lots of us in the UK) have no excuse for not doing this.
4. Because we were created to be in community, education must be in community, so that all might be educated in effective and restorative ways of repairing relationships when they break down, and so demonstrate what life in the Kingdom of God could be like were we to see it in its fulfilment. Education that flows from this theological presupposition would be cooperative rather than competitive, directed towards a healthy community rather than individualistic, whilst honouring the individuality and diversity of those cooperating.
5. Education must take place within a framework which allows for Jesus’ teaching to be implemented in a way that can be proven and tested within human experience. It must therefore always allow for the questioning and debunking of a worldview that places the individual and his/her material prosperity, or even national prosperity (and its attendant industrialization of education) at the centre of its thinking. In fact, following the work of Trevor Cooling, we must make a habit of undermining the prevailing modernist (or post-modernist) worldview that does no favours to actual humans through its approach to education.
6. Education must be for hope – the hope of the resurrection and the restoration of God’s life on earth. It must therefore be an education that makes for peace rather than for striving, for contentment rather than acquisition, for others and their flourishing rather than the “best we can be” for our own sake, for family, community and place rather than for upward mobility and a professional, specialised study divorced from the community it serves.
7. Creativity in education will flow from the created order rather than from the obsession with originality. We take what God has given us and manipulate it and design within it, rather than exploit it. Thus technical education reflects the deep imagination of God within human beings, but respects the createdness of all that it uses, which it would not then pollute or destroy.

Well, that’s a start, but it is by no means complete. It should be clear to anyone who reads this that I am not saying that our purpose as educators is to evangelise. It is not. Our job is to create the conditions for human flourishing within a framework that acknowledges that the Kingdom of God is a real, extend-able entity, with a set of moral and practical precepts that are not laws but descriptions of what works best and creates greatest harmony amongst God’s beloved creation, both human and otherwise. It is, if you like, a call to disciple people into the way of Christ invitationally, led by the highest standards of our own lives and a submission to the rule of Christ in those engaged in it that makes his way both plain and deeply attractive. It will of necessity be incomplete, but because of the power and authority revealed through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and because of his call to sacrificial love on the earth, it must be undertaken. To quote Wright’s words at the end of the final chapter:

Love is a harder, higher and ultimately redemptive calling, the fresh voice of the God who speaks to lead us out of our aimless cultural wanderings. It is genuine Christ-shaped love, therefore, embodied in our various ministries and callings, and spoken as a fresh word into our culture, that provides the ultimate answer to the follies and false trails of our day. The Christian gospel, because it is all about embodied love, is easily robust and many-sided enough to take on tomorrow’s world and make it a place where good news goes out and flourishes, good news for the poor and the hungry, the homeless and the drug addicts, the rich and the lonely, the religious and the sceptical. My hope and prayer is…that this…will stir up the vocations of many to engage with God’s world, and with our confusing culture, to live the gospel as well as to preach it, to make it happen on earth as in heaven.

I would seriously like some critical feedback on these ideas. They are only roughly expressed, as if (to use Barbara Kingsolver’s analogy) a dog was trying to put on pyjamas. I feel that this is an important field of study, in which more work has still to be done, and I would like wiser heads than mine to shoot some ideas down so they can be refined.