Posted on 05/05/2020 1:27:02 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
The power of the word classic cannot be underestimated, communicating as it does the idea of excellence, truth, order, discipline, and beauty.
The word “classic” brings to mind something that has withstood the test of time, and by virtue of this fact, participates in some way in the timeless and the eternal. And what is the only thing we know of with these attributes but God and His Eternal Word? When looked at this way, every Christian should want a classical education for their children: It has everything we instinctively want.
But when we examine this word “classic,” we find that there is one, and only one, civilization in all of human history that we call classic—the classical civilization of Greece and Rome, the world that Christ was born into, which was not Christian, but pagan. And there are two, and only two, languages that we call classical: Latin and ancient Greek. And furthermore, the original classics, the real classics you might say, were the works written in these languages by Homer, Plato, Vergil, and Cicero—non-Christians all; and this is what we mean by pagan literature.
So now we have a conundrum. Why do we have to read these pagan classics? After all, they did not know the true God. Their works are full of references to their own false gods. Hasn’t all of the ancient wisdom been surpassed anyway? Isn’t it all out of date? Why can’t we just read modern classics like The Great Gatsby or Huckleberry Finn? Why not read the Bible and good books written by Christians—modern classics?
Looking for justification, then, we have latched onto the Biblical metaphor, “spoiling the Egyptians,” given to us by no less a personage than St. Augustine himself. Like the Israelites who grabbed some Egyptian gold on their flight from Egypt, we Christians too can grab some useful tidbits from those pagans. They got some things right, and since all truth is God’s truth, it belongs to us Christians anyway—or so the argument goes.
This version hardly does justice to the riches of classical wisdom and, what is worse, many classical Christian educators use the pagan classics mostly to emphasize their errors, rather than mine them for their gold. All of this leads the thoughtful Christian educator to ask again why we are reading these classics in the first place. We can find plenty of bad examples in the modern world.
Obviously this approach to the pagan classics is weak and wholely inadequate to sustain, much less advance, the classical Christian education movement. We need to give our parents and teachers a robust rationale for why we study the pagan writers, and we need to give them, in addition, the knowledge and tools they need to understand and recognize their significance.
What I hope to show is that the pagan classics provide the foundation for all human knowledge and that, without them, we have no hope of making sense of history or our modern world. The pagan classics are the indispensible foundation of a classical education and, what is more, they provide the key to unlocking the errors of modernism. For the Greeks did more than get some things right; they asked all of the important questions and either gave us the right answers or laid the foundation upon which answers could be found. It is not too much to say that the providence of God prepared two sources of light—one human and one divine—and both are needed to defend and preserve our civilization and our faith.
Lewis: <>I am reminded of Chesterton’s definition of insanity: “The clean, well-lit room of one idea.” Our modern room is well lit by the bare bulb of science. But of what lies beyond, we see nothing.<>
There’s an excellent book called “Wicca’s Charm”, written by a very brilliant friend of mine. She received a very generous fellowship grant, and took a full year to travel and meet with pagans, wiccans, etc.
The book is an amazing look at why people choose these spiritualities.
Available on Amazon for only $6!
Kindle edition $4.99.
A fascinating read!
This is an excellent book and you can get it on Audible too. I actually listened to it doing my morning 5-10 k walk. Very well narrated (one of those rich English voices, very intelligible). I loved the book because not only was it a sort of overview of the Psalms, but it told you a lot about what reading the Psalms meant to the author. The last chapter - or maybe it’s an afterword - is very touching and impressive. It deals with the psalms in his life and the death of his father.
I even repeated my walk (which is my solitary time) so I could finish it out in one hearing. Lots of kilometers that morning!
Psalms book....
Thanks very much.
Father Kino’s name was really Chino, but because in Spanish that means “Chinese” (and the “ch” is pronounced differently than in Italian), he used the Kino spelling in the Spanish-speaking world. “Quino” would have worked too, I suppose.
I did not know, he was “Chino”. Makes sense for an Italian and to change it to endear himself with the people.
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CondoleezzaProtege's been posting the chapters of this series by Cheryl Lowe from Memoria Press: I haven't added these to the GGG catalog, but am pinging both regular and digest lists, as these may be of interest to all.
Appreciate the ping SunkenCiv. Thanks!
My pleasure. I've been waiting for the series to conclude so it would work best. :^)
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