Education, Tradition, Community, and the Reformation's Protest

What is education for? A recent post at the Ethics Center gives the following options: 

1. Instrumentality: education is a means, an instrument, to self-improvement. The logic is that: 
1. Education enhances your employability, 
2. Which in improves your potential to generate wealth, 
3. And that wealth maximises your independence and autonomy
4. Which serves the ultimate goal of maximising your ability to choose your preferred lifestyle, to create your private heaven on earth.
2. Democracy: education forms good citizens who are able to engage in the kind of reasoned debate which forms wholesome societies. The logic here is: 
1. Societies are formed by individual people, and by sub-communities like families, ethnic groups, religious groups, and social clubs, 
2. Where those individuals and sub-communities have their own perspectives and values, 
3. Which usually conflict to some degree but are not entirely irreconcilable, 
4. But who need to take the time and energy required to reason with each other to discover the best way to live together - how to make the most of their commonalities and best avoid conflict, 
5. And through this cooperation, together build the happiest, most harmonious society possible - the closest possible approximation of heaven on earth. 

I think the main difference between those two ideal-types is the way they prioritise the individual or the community. 

1. The instrumental purpose of education assumes that 
1. The individual logically precedes the community, 
2. Therefore the individual can and should choose how to fulfil themselves, including what communities - tribes - they choose to belong to, 
3. And education should facilitate that individuated, autonomous choice. 
2. The democratic purpose assumes that 
1. The community logically precedes the individual, 
2. Because individuals don't merely find fulfilment in communities of their own choice; they come from communities - families, ethnicities, etc. - and inherit elements of their self - their bodies, their literal DNA, and their values and prejudices, their social DNA, from those communities, 
3. But this communal disposition is truest to its own communal nature when it 
1. Does not harden boundaries and retreat into itself, into its own 'tribe,' 
2. But instead seeks to expand community through extending hospitality to other communities, 
3. Where this hospitality does not compromise a community's own character - which does not 'homogenise.' 

You probably won't be surprised to know that I tend towards the second view - democratic communality - which is the view favoured by the Ethics Center article (hence my interest in it). This democratic communality helps me in my role as the Presbyterian Church's representative on the NSW government's Faith Affairs Council. As I said in my report to the Presbyterian Church, I have so far been "impressed with the competence and goodwill" of everyone involved in that council. "Everyone seems to genuinely want to build on the values that we do hold in common to work together for the common good." 

But astute readers would have noticed that both of the ideal-types which I presented above are in practice atheist. They are both products of enlightenment modernity. They both assume that we humans can construct heaven on earth. The only issue is the degree to which we need each other for that heaven on earth. Are other people instrumental for that earthbound heavenliness? Or essential for it? 

No-one will be surprised that as a Protestant Christian, I reject this assumption. We cannot build heaven on earth. It is a gift from almighty God, given to those who have renounced their ability to perform anything meritorious before his holy self - who have renounced their 'works' - and have embraced Christ, who offers forgiveness as a free gift, an act of 'grace'. Ephesians 2:8-9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith -and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." 

Both the individual and communal visions of education can be reinterpreted from a Protestant Christian perspective. In fact, I suspect that the atheist, modernist versions are actually declensions from those Protestant Christian versions.  

The individual version of education has connections with at least the following distinctly Protestant doctrines: 

First, Justification by faith alone. We cannot delegate our relationship with God to anyone beyond ourselves - not our parents, not our ethnicity, not the 'church.' From our earthly, human perspective, our relationship with God depends on wholeheartedly embracing Christ - 'having faith' in him. It depends on our response to the question he asked his disciples: "who do you say I am?" (Mark 8:29) 

From a Christian perspective, education encompasses much more than Christ or even 'religion.' But it has to include informing, 'educating' people about Jesus Christ - who he is and what he has achieved "for us and for our salvation" (Nicene Creed) - or else it's not Christian education.  

One of the corollary doctrines of justification by faith alone is the freedom and responsibility of the individual's conscience before God. God, as God, carries final authority. He is over all other authorities - over the individual, parents, families, the government, even over the church and its office-bearers (like me!). 

Protestant Christians certainly seek to respect earthly authorities. "Honour your father and mother" is one of the Ten Commandments (Ex 20:12; Deut 5:16). The Apostle Paul repeats it in the New Testament (Eph 6:1-3). And he famously commands everyone to "be subject to the governing authorities" (Rom 13:1-7). 

But because God is final authority over all these authorities, Protestants can protest. We can do so politely - we don't have to be aggressive and rebellious. But we can challenge anyone and everyone, in the name of almighty God, that they are disobeying none other than the one who possesses all authority in heaven and earth - the risen Lord Jesus Christ. 

Christian education should form in people - especially young people - that sense that ultimate liberty and responsibility is found not in people but before God. That kind of simultaneous freedom and obligation motivated the Apostles to "obey God rather than human beings," and is enshrined in chapter 20 of the Westminster Confession. 

The most secular-adjacent doctrine I can think of is the Protestant doctrine of individuated (not individualistic!) vocation. The word comes from the Latin vocare, which means 'calling.' Medieval Roman Catholicism divided the world into the secular and the spiritual. Those who were part of the church - priests and nuns and all the other church 'orders' - had a 'higher' calling than those who were ordinary earthly labourers - parents, farmers, weavers, metalworkers, even kings and princes. 

The Protestants protested that God called everyone first of all to be saved - see above re justification by faith alone - and then gave everyone skills and abilities, and called them to use those abilities for the common good. Education helps us develop and refine these abilities so we can love our neighbour as ourselves (Matt 27:37-39; Mark 12:30-31; Luke 10:27). 

But I think the Ethics Center post demonstrates how the democratic-communal view of education is closer to Protestantism than the individualistic-instrumental view. 

Yes, you read that right. Protestantism is not individualistic. Christianity cannot be reduced to "me and my God" or "me and my Jesus" or even "me and my Bible." Such beliefs are more driven by Enlightenment modernism than the Bible itself or the history of Protestantism. 

The Ethics Center article says that "education should teach students to think critically about their own traditions." This assumes at least the following: 

1. Traditions exist (which in turn implies that communities exist, and that those communities exist long enough to create traditions which reflexively reinforce the longevity of those communities); 
2. Those traditions carry something worth inheriting - in this context, to "criticise" traditions does not mean to reject them wholesale, but to evaluate them, with a view to discerning what's worth keeping, what needs updating, and what, if anything, needs to be rejected; 
3. Trans-cultural, trans-temporal norms exist, against which those traditions can be evaluated; and 
4. People - especially, in this context, young people - are able to sufficiently learn those location-transcendent values to perform that critique. 

The above is basically the origin story of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformers did not 'discover' the Bible as if it were a foreign object, alien to their ordinary experiences of life. They were members of the medieval Catholic Church. They inherited from the medieval church the belief that the Bible is the God-directed written deposit of the prophets and apostles - the 'canon,' the final rule, of the faith. 

What the Protestants did discover, as they read that Bible, was that the institutional church had declined so far from the Bible that its traditions did not advance the Apostolic gospel but obscured it. On the authority of that divinely-inspired therefore authoritative scripture, they criticised the (institutional) church. They called the church to reform, to reject what was ungodly and anti-gospel, and retain what was Godly and gospel-advancing - what was 'evangelical' - therefore useful. 

In this, the Protestants were the first evangelicals. Evangelicalism is not first of all a political allegiance. It is a theological allegiance - an allegiance to God in Christ according to his gospel as recorded in his inspired scriptures. 

And by being the true evangelicals, the Protestants are the true catholics. The Protestants are the apostolic church - the church founded upon the apostolic gospel according to the holy scriptures. And by being apostolic, we are the one, true, holy, catholic church - the church kata holos, according to the whole. Despite all our differences, Anglicans, Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Reformed, Independent, and all the other Protestant denominations share the characteristically Biblical, evangelical, Protestant faith. In fact, our differences stem from that characteristically Protestant finality of the Bible, and the importance of conscientious obedience to the Bible, as reviewed above. 

By continuing to hold sub-Biblical doctrines - e.g. the primacy of the Pope; the intercession of Mary and the 'saints'; the need for personal reformation, 'penance,' for justification - the Roman church to this day continues to obscure, not advance, the gospel. It is not part of the church catholic. I invite anyone who wants to belong to the one true church to abandon the Romans and join a Bible-believing Protestant church. 

By permitting the Bible to educate them, the Reformers discovered how belief in the apostolic gospel - true 'evangelicalism' - harmonised both the individual and corporate aspects of being human. We are individually responsible before God, but not merely self-interested individuals. Our faith in the Christ who gave himself for us propels us outside ourselves, to care for others. That hospitality, that caring for others builds community. But that community does not absolve us of personal responsibility. It is not sufficient to be born, not even into a religious family - not even into a faithful Protestant family (as I was). You must be born again. 

And this Biblical, evangelical, catholic education gave the Protestant reformers the vigor to change society. It gave them a prophetic unction, a sense of divine mission - precisely because it gave them a sense of continuing the mission of the church catholic. Catholicity is both in and through time. The Protestant reformers, and their descendants in the faith - like me - have the confidence to "stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them" (Mark 13:9, see also Matt 10:18). The Protestant faith motivates us to change society. But not merely to change it for our own good, but for the good of everyone, where that goodness is defined not merely by humans but by God. 

And that evangelical catholic Protestantism also predisposes us to be highly democratic. The Presbyterian Church of Australia's declaratory statement rightly "disclaims... intolerant or persecuting principles." Protestants are against theocracy precisely because, as Protestants, we believe that God alone is Lord of the conscience. As I said elsewhere, Christians don't need "special protection or privilege." "[S]ecular," "communal, inter-religious peace" "is good [enough] for gospel proclamation," which seeks to persuade without compulsion. 

I can believe all this, and act in this democratic, socially beneficial manner because, as a Protestant, I believe in the existence and knowability of final truth. That truth is known completely and exhaustively only by God. He reveals himself in and as Christ, God incarnate - John 14:6, Acts 4:12, Php 2:9-11 cf. Isaiah 45:22-23, etc. To know the one true God, and be in a right relationship with him - to be 'saved' - it is not enough to be 'religious.' You need to know and trust Jesus. And not just any Jesus, but the real, historical Jesus as recorded in scripture - John 30:30-31, Eph 3:2-11, etc. 

But - and this is key to Protestant Christianity's democratic, non-theocratic disposition - God also reveals other, more general truths to all people. Those truths are not specifically about Jesus. Many of them are not even 'religious.' They are the general realities about our selves, our communities, and the universe, which God gave us, as his image bearers, the ability to discover. Many of them have been discovered informally through trial and error and have been codified into family and ethnic traditions. The scientific and industrial revolutions gave us the ability to both discover much more, in more detail. It thereby gave us the ability to correct and develop these traditional understandings - to make 'progress.' 

This is the traditional Christian doctrine of general revelation. Reformed theology supplements it with its characteristic doctrine of common grace - see these summaries from The Gospel Coalition and Ligonier Ministries, and this extract from Louise Berkof. Basically, anyone, Christian or not, religious or not, can know themselves, each other, and this world, well enough to live well. That good life in this world is not 'salvific,' because, as mentioned above, heaven is not of this world, it is a gift from God. But it's still good - it's something worth seeking. 

As argued above, the instrumental view of education assumes that individuals should be empowered to construct their individualised heavens on earth according to their own desires. This assumes other people are at best instruments for individualistic self-gratification. If they're not useful for self-fulfillment, they're irrelevant, or even an obstacle to it. So, people are to be used, or thrown away. Or used until they're not useful anymore, then thrown away. 

The democratic view has a much nobler view of fellow humans. Because we are inherently relational, communal people, cooperation to seek the common good is itself part of that common good. Even if we cannot build heaven on earth, we may be able to build a genuinely good, wholesome society, where we live well. One effect of that social goodness would be that our children could learn how to live even better in the future - how to make 'progress.' 

So, what is education for? I agree with the Ethics Center article's sentiment. Education cannot merely empower people to seek their individualised private good. It should equip people with the values, attitudes, and skills to seek the common good together. These are the values, attitudes, and skills which underpin our western tradition of democracy. 

But I can express that agreement precisely because I am deeply and self-consciously 'religious.' My Bible-based, Protestant, evangelical, catholic theological convictions provide the trans-cultural, trans-temporal basis for my critical democratic conservatism. 

• I receive traditions - religious, ethnic, cultural, educational - with gratitude, because I am predisposed to believe that established community traditions carry true knowledge about those communities, and through them, about the world in general. 
• But those traditions are not final. I receive them critically - I interrogate them to discern what information, values, and attitudes they inculcate, and what lifestyles they encourage. I can evaluate them against all kinds of standards - science, other cultures, other religions. And of course the final authority of Biblical, Christian theology. 
• As someone who believes in the final authority of God in Christ according to the Bible, I conduct that critical conservatism theocentrically - as an act of worship to God. But that theocentricity, for all the reasons surveyed above, compels me to conduct it democratically. I do not conduct it for my private good, and not even only for the good of the Christian church. I conduct it for the good of God's world - for the common good. 

One of the consistent themes of this essay has been the need for an adequate universal authority with which to critique and reform tradition. Where can non-religious, 'secular' education find this universal authority? Are any human-sourced authorities - universal statements of human rights etc. - adequate for the task?  

Or might the tradition of democratic education itself be yet another fading echo of a previous, more self-consciously religious era - not just of Christian tradition, but of a distinctly Protestant educational tradition...?