Fine Ats

Originally presented at Grove City College, this paper explores the frames of reference that constitute historically Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; we then examine the eclipse of these cosmic values in our secular age and the adverse effects such an eclipse has wrought on the church’s witness to transcendent values; and then look at how the renaissance of classical Christian education represents nothing less than an effectual recovery of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in our own time.

James K.A. Smith’s book, Desiring the Kingdom, is an important contribution to the growing body of literature that locates social practices as the primary site of worldview formation in higher education. Smith’s analysis of practices embedded in Christian worship, however, to a large extent betrays his practice theory and perpetuates the very intellectualist paradigm his project seeks to overturn. The following is a critical appraisal of his work which offers a more consistent practice oriented analysis of Christian ritual in the hope of furthering his most worthy project.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 8, 1741, the Northampton pastor Jonathan Edwards began to preach a sermon at the second meetinghouse in the town of Enfield entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Following George Whitefield’s visit earlier that year, the neighboring town of Suffield was experiencing a significant revival, with ninety-five communicants added the previous Sunday (Medlicott 218). Such enthusiasm, however, had not reached Enfield. In response to this spiritual lethargy, a number of clergy had banded together to stoke the fires of revival by instituting a series of weekday services, traveling back and forth between pious Suffield and impious Enfield (Marsden 219-20). Those weekday services included a visit from Northampton’s pastor. What greeted the Enfield congregation was a sermon of unparalleled logic and vivacious imagery delivered by an orator known not for theatrics, but for a pulpit voice characterized by “a powerful sense of restraint, authority, and discipline” (Buckingham 139)....

In his book, The Lost Tools of Learning, Douglas Wilson surmised that the fundamental reason for the struggle and frustration of public schools in America is that education has been isolated from its religious context. Wilson wrote, “Education is a completely religious endeavor. It is impossible to impart knowledge to students without building on religious presuppositions… This is because all the fundamental questions of education require religious answers. Learning to read and write is simply the process of acquiring tools to enable us to ask and answer such questions” (1991, p. 59). Entailed within this assessment is the consequence ...

The notion of symbolic and social boundaries in biblical and early Christian studies, so prominent in the late 1970s, opened up for analysis the conceptual importance of relationality for the formation, maintenance, and development of Christian identity.  Relationality understands ‘identity’ as the product of fundamental intersubjective processes and the meanings constructed by social interaction among populations.  And yet, though the variegated nature of these processes engendered analyses of several substantive areas in biblical studies, such as exploring conceptions of power, beliefs, gender, ethnicity, ethics, and ...

In his masterful essay, ‘The Ethics of Elfland’, G. K. Chesterton treats us to an extended meditation on a body of literature that was to be one of the most significant factors in his Christian conversion: the fairy tale. Because fairy tales awaken within us a remembrance of the wonder and awe that once filled our hearts when we first encountered the world around us, Chesterton concluded that fairy tales were revelatory of the fact that it is part of our nature as humans to be astonished and astounded. ...

The emergence of classical Christian education over the last few decades has thrown into relief the question of the relationship between public education and Christian witness. With ninety-percent of children in the U.S. attending public schools, the modern pulpit appears generally indifferent on the issue of private vs. public education for its parishioners; indeed, one might say pastors are generally supportive of public education. Perhaps the most common rationale for such support is that Christian students have the opportunity – indeed, the obligation – to be ‘salt and light’, to be ‘in but not of’ the world. However, I believe that this affirming orientation is indicative of a much larger problem facing the church today. In what follows, I want to explore the nature of faithful Christian witness in public life in order to determine the extent to which that witness has been compromised in our modern context.

1 Cor 1:10-17 is a text that has perplexed scholars from two vantage points. On the one hand, there is the question of what is the relationship between baptism and the social divisions evident in the Corinthian ekklesia; on the other hand, there is the question of how to reconcile Paul’s apparent devaluation of baptism in 1:17 with Paul’s other baptismal references in 1 Corinthians and his wider corpus. This study seeks to explain both questions in terms of the relationship between ritual and social order. The ritual of baptism functions in 1 Cor 1:10-17 as a mean by which Paul can contrast two incompatible social orders in terms of two antithetical baptisms. Baptism ‘in the name of Christ’ obligates the Corinthians to live out a shared social order defined by the ethos of the cross. However, conflicts centering on status and patronage evidence a perpetuation of Graeco-Roman values among the Corinthians, which Paul sees as in effect compromising their baptisms as performed ‘in the name of Paul’, that is, performed for the patronage and benefaction of mere men. Given the relationship between ritual and social order, it is in light of these two contrasting baptisms – baptism ‘in the name of Christ’ (1:13c) and baptism ‘in the name of Paul’ (1:15) – that the baptism-gospel contrast in 1:17a is to be read. Paul is not contrasting baptism and the gospel per se; rather, he is contrasting baptism with and baptism without the gospel, the former representing the identifying characteristic of Christian ritual and social life.

Reimagining Christian paideia as an extension of public theology provides an important corrective to the privatized tendencies of the modern church that imperil the maintenance of its moral and veridical identity, all the while providing a rich tapestry of practices and resources that can awaken us to a distinctively Christian vision of redeemed society, within which the ardent desires of teacher and student alike are reoriented toward the restoration of Paradise in Christ.