Reformed Education: How do you teach Jesus in Calculus?
"Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."
This is the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism and I want to address the first portion of the answer in regards to education, something near and dear to my heart. Hopefully nothing radical will be seen here, but I think we need to re-envision our understanding of Christianity in the West in order to bring Christ back to his central place in our lives. So this is a first step in imaging what this might look like in practise.
Before the pragmatics we need to get a overall goal of education. In the Reformed tradition this can be nothing other than to bring glory to God.
"On the Reformed basis man from the beginning knew the goal of his life. God made all the facts that surrounded him. God made man in his own image. There was thus no fact within or outside of man which was not fully revelational of God. The nature or essence of every created fact lies in its function in the process of the divine self-revelation to man."
"The Reformed Faith frankly begins with the presupposition of the absolute truth of the Christian position. It is this that the teacher tells the pupil. As he has learned that the goal of human life can be known only from the authoritative revelation of God, so he knows that the criterion by which man must live can be found only in this revelation too."
- from Cornelius Van Til, Reformed View of Education
The goal of education, as in all else, is to reveal God to man and to bring glory to God by allowing man to recognize and acknowledge him. This means that there is absolutely no point in learning something which does not bring glory to God. Now defining what brings glory to God is obviously contentious and tricky, since it is to the glory of God to revel in man's abilities - so long as this reveling is given thanks to God for his creation. The ultimate point that needs to be kept in mind is the lack of neutrality in the world - nothing is neutral in God's kingdom, either it is serving him or not. It has been, in my view, thus a severe shortcoming of the standard educational theory which tries to keep God out of the classroom in one way or another. This leads to a generation of students who feel no need whatsoever for God, or only feel the need for him in certain "spiritual" areas of life. This must run counter to Christian teaching that God is sovereign over all life and there is nothing in creation that does not relate semi-directly back to him.
At this point the issue of public vs. private schools needs to be addressed. Living in the West where we value freedom of mind and conscience, it is an absolute no-starter to try and impliment any return of a Christian perspective within public schools. This is unfortunate, but if we are to avoid a total Christian state which forces all to believe (no matter how much we assert that it is for the best - which it is!) then the answer to education in the Christian perspective must be the private schools. I wish this were not so, but we do live in a world where many do not believe and we are not called to force others, but rather persuade them by the inherent wonder and truthfulness and everything else of the Christian message and life-system. Thus the private schools serve a evangelistic function as well, but from here on out it is important to notice that my comments must be restricted to private schools. (Being a Christian teacher in a public school is an entirely different issue, one which I find terribly difficult)
So our schools (private) are made to bring glory to God in all learning. This means that at some level every single subject must lead and reveal God's total rulership over this world. This is true in math as much as it is in biology, psychology, and english. Each will have a different way of playing out this mission, but the goal is the same: bring glory to the Triune God who rules and works in this world. I really think this is a key point: learning is absolutely useless unless it brings glory to God; unless the motivation for teaching something is to bring about a "revelation of God" there is no real reason for doing it.
But this does not mean all we teach is religion nor does it mean that everything taught (including exponential mathematical functions) is "directly" related back to God (say by a reference to Ephesians or something). This is to appreciate the difference between Scripture and the revelation of God. Although Scripture is the sure and true revelation of our Lord and Redeemer, he makes himself known in so many diverse ways - thus the doctrine of common grace in the Reformed tradition. Even the Scripture must have a goal in mind. There is no point to the question "What does this text mean?" unless you have in mind what the overall aim of interpreting Scripture (and life) is: to know God and our place within his universe. The text can mean any sort of thing but this is absolutely useless unless we all agree that we are trying to interpret the text for the purpose of knowing God better through this form of revelation. The same is true for his other works, say in science and mathematics and the humanities. We need education to stress the means element towards tne ends given us in creation: to know and glorify God. This does not mean that the "means" are unimportant and can be discarded; we would never say that about Scripture, why then about mathematics or any other subject? But the goal must never be lost in the means, as I feel it has in educational theory.
On a secular level this has been stressed by the fact that education is not just about learning facts but developing a person. Education is personal and therefore the idea of Matrix-like learnign via plug is repugnant because we all agree that education is about personal formation and growth as much as it is (or more) than about learning a specific subject. But as Christians we can go a step further and talk about the reason for this formation or the goal of it: to know ourselves and thus to know God, and in knowing God to then know ourselves and the world we live in (John Calvin, Institutes I.i.1). Formation is for the whole person to relate to God and thus better to his or her neighbour; we fulfill God's commandments by learning more about our world.
This is to say that we do not stop teaching calculus or modern physics or any other subject in particular, but that we aim that teaching explicitly at the larger goal of personal formation into the kingdom of God. In fact, if we do not make this aim of learning explicit in our classes, we are selling a lie to the students because we know that God is the author and sustainer of all sciences and subjects, and that the whole world is designed to bring glory to him and his Son, through the illumination of our minds among other things by the Holy Spirit. On the ground then I still teach integration by parts in calculus class, but I do so to explain the wonders of (1) creation in mathematical formulation, (2) the wonders of the human mind in reasonability and intellecutal assent, and (3) the wonder of God's thoughts through the mathematical principles. We are called to "think God's thoughts after him (Herman Bavinck)" and this is not done by arrogant humans but by people who believe in a God who reveals himself to us through diverse means and wishes for us to know him and thus ourselves and our world. It goes without saying that the final say on our view of him is governed by his Scriptural revelation, but we all know that is not a science book and so other education comes in to work within the Scriptural framework to seek God out where he is to be found. The principle of common grace comes in again for in seeking him we believe that we will find him, not because he is hiding, but because he is revealing himself to those who look with the eyes of faith, or as Calvin was found of saying, "the spectacles of Scripture."
The principle of education than is the seeking of a revealing God in all of creation, with the result of finding him, no matter how tentatively we frame that finding, bringing praise and glory to him in his revelation. We can "grieve the Spirit" in many different ways, and not revealing God is the main sin of education which a Christian understanding seeks to correct. Soli Deo Gloria!
posted by Hans-Georg Gadamer @ 4:17 am
8 comments
8 Comments:
I stumbled onto your blog while doing a Goodle search on Paul Helm. I read this blog article and enjoyed it and agree with you completely.
Coram Deo,
Kenith
Coram Deo, soli deo gloria, e pluribus unum, absit invidia, amen. And they'll know we are Christians by our latin.
I like this post - I think it's very good, as it outlines an excellent basis for inspired teaching and learning. I think the idea of realizing that God's revealed part of himself through math is great, or that through Science we can come closer to knowing God.
I'm still just not seeing enough practical application to understand what this would look like. Sure, you could start the class telling your kids the reason you teach Math is because it's beautiful, and because you feel it brings you closer to God, but does it get much beyond that? HOW does it teach you about God? What sort of revelation occurs?
As you've already outlined, I believe that any form of education imparts an implicit knowledge of God, but also that this is entirely personal, and can't be defined our summarized into finite parts. You can't teach complex fractions knowing before hand it's going to help someone see in it complexity that leads to an appreciation of God's infinity - it just happens, and it either happens or it doesn't, and there's no easy point for a professor to stop and point out the divine implications of things like this.
The possibilities for absurdity, however, are huge: trying to draw conclusions about God (or life or anything really) through abstract analogy has a long and unfortunate tradition in human history. Just as relativity has nothing to say about moral relativism, quantum electro-dyanmics has nothing to say about justification by faith, though some of our more imaginative bretheren would certainly see similarities. The danger is when these coincidences are made part of the curriculum, and real theology is lost in the inane observations of an over imaginative Christian instructed to teach Christ in all things.
I maintain that the practical implications of teaching Christ in many subjects, science and math foremost among them, are extremely few. The best a teacher can do is to explain in purely personal terms why they love the subject, and to attempt to relate bits and pieces of how they've seen God's glory revealed through it in little more than abstract statements of wonder. I see these only beneficial in helping students to develop and appreciation for knowledge, and the sort of thing that could be conveyed rather easily through cutting out the religious side of the discussion and simply teaching with an obvious and infectuous passion for the subject. This can take place in any school environment, public or private.
I feel that "glorifying God", as man's cheif end, is such a broad topic that it's nearly impossible to talk about practical specifics in reference to things like education. As you've already said, there are many ways to glorify God simply by taking what you do seriously and doing it well. I don't believe a reformed view of man requires that we constantly mention Jesus and try to weave theology into every aspect of life. I know it's not what you're advoating, but I really don't see other "practical" implications of your "reformed education."
listen up, enlightenment thinkers everywhere: what we DON'T need here is another long winded article based on some argument from first principals about the purpose of mankind or humanity's role on earth. The bottom line is, how do you teach kids Jesus and Math at once? I submit that you overtly can't, and you've submitted that we can't definitely define what human is, which is good and all, but practically worthless, and irresponsibly copied from a website with weird line break characters anyway.
An excellent post! I think that your emphasizing the implications of the often neglected doctrine of common grace in Reformed doctrine is crucial. Likewise, knowing that our goal is to glorify God in all things and to dismiss the idea of a secular/sacred divide helps us to see as VT says that all the facts are God-created and God revealing facts.
As you point out in regard to educational theories, this does not mean that all we teach is religion or that we must find some kind of "proof-text" for mathematics or chemistry etc. Rather, because we view the created order itself (including ourselves and our intellects) as revelational of God, we in a sense see the created order sacramentally--i.e., as finding its sensus plenissimus in God.
Thanks for this most excellent post!
Cynthia
p.s. I am adding you to my blogroll.
Everyone, thanks for the comments.
Cynthia, your blog is quite impressive on my first brief glance. I will of course return the favour.
JFB - didn't quite get your point to be honest. Something about humans as ultimate choicemakers. Fine.
Redness - Stop bashing my new friends! In more seriousness, I think you are absolutely right about Jesus in math class, to a point. I don't think that we can go from exponential functions to the death and resurrection of Christ (really?), but I think we can (and should) teach Christ or more specifically God's divine wisdom in math class. This is more about overarching principles and the underlying philosophy I agree, but I think it is important to focus on the forest as well as the trees in educational formation.
So Jesus isn't the solution to every second order differential equation, but the reason we can even comprehend (or have) differential eqautions in the first place is because of the inherent rationality of the world, and its revealing of a divine wisdom in mathematical beauty. Of course you can't prove God from the Pythagorean Theorem, but it is certainly true that as Christians (or Theists, I suppose) we have a better understanding of mathematics. This is the classic debate of whether mathematics is either a helpful construct on a otherwise meaningless reality (a la Hawking) or whether mathematics is in a sense a different realm or shadow of mind (a la Penrose). Or to put it even better we can use Eugene Wigner's question "Why is mathematics so unreasonably effective?" From a non-theist perspective it is just a construct, but I think certain thinkers show this to be a poor and particularly reductionist account of mathematics (let Godel do his dance on reductionistic mathematics!) which yeilds a weaker understanding of the underlying reality. So if we go with a form of "Mathematical Platonism" we are already into God language and the Christian notion of the divine mind in general revelation (and common grace) illuminates this quite well.
Is this a proof of Jesus or something? No way, it is merely a questioning of the facts and an attempt to understand reality better with the tools given us in revelation.
So where the rubber meets the road in the classroom is to remind students that mathematics (as the test case here) is not just some helpful construct but that actually it is a way into the mind of God, in a cautious way of course, but a real union (sacramental?) in some sense. You can do mathematics without God no doubt, but it should be obvious that if you want to understand why we do mathematics or what it is the theistic perspective is necessary. So this isn't classic proof texting but merely a submitting all knowledge and understanding to the God who has created and reveals himself to us. Surely if he does reveal himself he has something to say about mathematics in a positive sense?
Sorry for the bashing.
I don't know if he does have anything to say about Mathematics. I certainly think that he has something to say about himself through mathematics, so I agree with you there - I just don't really see how this can be conveyed in an appropriate context in the classroom. If someone were to ask me, "why do you enjoy math?" or "why is math worthwhile?", I could see an easy in for Jesus. But if someone says, "how do I perform the following surd?" I can't easily make it happen. I know you're not saying I should, but I think my zealous love of math itself should be apparent and is in itself the only appropriate way of conveying the religious experience inherent in surds.
Scott:
Thought you might be interested in this article:
http://memoriapress.com/blog/156/akern/classical-math/
Sorry about the previous link. Let me do it this way:
See if this works.
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