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by Dr. John Mark N. Reynolds
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by Louis Markos
@ MEMORIA PRESS
BORO!
A THE EDITOR
WHAT HATH ATHENS TO
DO WITH JERUSALEM?
by Martin Cothran
Itwas handed down,
at does reason
have to do with
faith? What does
the intellectual have to do
with the spiritual? What
does philosophy have to do
with Christianity? These are
questions that Tertullian,
one of the early fathers of the
Church, summed up when he
asked, "What hath Athens to
do with Jerusalem?”
Tertullian’s question seems
to pit the culture of these
two ancient cities against one
another, as if they are somehow
inconsistent. And, indeed, there
are important differences,
There have been many
answers given to Tertullian's
generation by generation and
became the foundation of the
Christian culture of Europe
and America.
Classical education was
what the Puritans brought
with them and institutionalized
in schools such as Harvard
and Princeton, and it was
the system of learning on
which the founding fathers
were nourished,
The response of the historic
Church to Tertullian’s question
was not Tertullian's answer. It
was Augustine's answer,
What Augustine knew was
that what some call "human
reason” was not really human
question over the last 2,000
years. Some agree with him
that there is something irreconcilable about the two
cultures—one based on the reason of man, and the
other on the revelation of God
Christians were the inheritors of the classical
culture that came from the Romans and the Greeks.
As Rome fell, it left the scattered remains of the
learning of antiquity among the other ruins of its
culture, It-was left to the Church to collect and.
preserve the things that remained.
‘Thomas Cahill, in his book How the Irish Saved
Civilization, tells the story of how Irish monks copied
and recopied the ancient texts throughout the Dark
Ages to preserve them for posterity.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries these
‘manuscripts containing the learning of the ancients
were rediscovered by the Christian scholars of the
West, who compared them with what they knew
from the Scriptures, and placed them in th
of their faith,
The learning of the Greeks and Romans,
transformed by the Christians of the Middle Ages,
became what we now know as “classical education.
Letter from the Editor
at all. The “reason” that we
call "human is really our
own ability to perceive, by virtue of the image of
God in us, the truths we find in the created world.
Augustine, acknowledged by many as the greatest
thinker of the first thousand years of the Church—and
himself thoroughly classically educated—argued in
his great work, On Christian Doctrine, that the learning
of the ancients was "Egyptian gold”
‘As the Hebrews left Egypt, the Egyptians,
chastened by the plagues sent from God, showered
the Hebrews with gold, which the Hebrews took
with them into the wilderness (Exodus 12:35). With
it they foolishly made a golden calf—but they also
used it to fashion, at God's command, the vessels of
the Tabernacle.
The truths of classical learning were
discovered by pagans, but they were
still gold. They were "taken," said Me.
Augustine, from the mines of
God's providence" so that we
might do with them, not as
the pagans had done, but as
God would have us do,
MemoriaPress.comTHE CLASSICAL TEACHER
Meee!
a
Later from the Editor tain Catesn
‘School Spotight: Bishop Ryan Catholic Schoo!
Why Cacia? by Soni Garam as
‘Seephen Hwking's Many Universe by Man Catan
Athens & Jerusalem byt sete Maen Feats
Humanism Is Nor the Problem by Mats Gotan
‘Brangelium Etemam by Chay! Swope
‘Wardrobes Are for Grown-Ups Too by Joon Paco
‘So What If Bethowen Was Deaf by Cul Reais
“The Myth Made Fact by Laue Mais
R&ELSSSREaY
LASSICAL
4 Carriculum Packages & Supplements
Neen
Preschool - Grade 10
5 Read-Aloud Programs UK Grade 6
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PAI
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44 Reading & Phonics Ages St
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AG New Ametican Cursive Grades tA
47 Copybooks & Journals Grades 6
Minaune ern md RENTS
27 Classical Composition, IEW, Grades 1-12
& English Grammar
56 Literaure Grades 1-12
58 Pocuy Grades Ke12
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selrench
25. Grammar School Grck 8 Supplements Grades
26 Pine Form Ges Grates 74
ee ey eee ace) te
30. Teadonal Logic 8 Supplements Grades 12
31 Classical Rhetoric & Supplements Grades 912
31. Aristotle's Macerial Logic Grades 912
RI
2 Arc Doner, Ar Card, Crating A. Grades K+
“Music Appreciation, Exploring Americ’ Musical Heritage
Endy Scred Masi, & Diconsing Muse
elenend
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CULTIVATING A PASSION FOR THE IDEALS
OF A CLASSICAL LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION
by Fr. Jadyn Nelson
Bishop Ryan Catholic School in Minot, North Dakota, tas
founded in 1958 and currently has over 430 students in PreK-12th
{grades. Fr. Jadyn Nelson, the president of BRCS, is lending the
innplementation of Memoria Press’ curriculum atthe school
‘Asa Catholic priest, I received an education that opened
my eyes to the perennial importance of classical authors,
as well as the tremendous importance that culture has in
‘our ability, both individually and socially to be happy and
remain faithful to God. In my role as president at BRCS,
iy dissatisfaction with the banal and religiously sanitized
‘materials produced by the major educational publishing,
‘houses in the areas of language arts, literature, and history
led me to seek an alternative. So I directed my prineipals to
try and find a classical curriculum, which I knew would be
‘our best chance to find something that would work for us,
A simple internet search led us to Memoria Press.
My hope is that this curriculum will bea catalyst for our
students and teachers to discover an
approach to learning and teaching
that is aligned with the nobility of
the human person created in God's
image. We live in a world that is
largely influenced by utilitarianism
and pragmatism, While education
certainly ought to assist students
in their ability to participate in
The Cla
WHY JOIN
ical Latin
School Association?
our actions. That kind of education is simply not happening
inthe context of public private, or even many religious
schools that donot take on the problem of secular and
progressive curricular materials.
Tam naturally cautious about declaring something
tobea success untilit has proven itself overtime. It will
take more time to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the
curriculum, Nevertholess what we have seen so far is
nothing short of astounding. Our elementary teachers,
‘many of whom are veteran teachers are totally and
completely won over by the curriculum in only seven
‘months of use. The amount of growth that they have seen in
their students at this points beyond what they thought was
reasonable to expect. Even more exciting is the confidence
and enthusiasm that our parents are exhibiting about the
new curriculum. In short, couldrit be happier with what
\we are experiencing as a result of moving to Memoria Press.
‘Atti point, we are making
preparations to extend our use of
Memoria Press materials into the
idle school and high school.
believe that Latin, logic, and
“Memoria Press literature selections
are the most obvious elements to
begin with at those levels, Beyond
adopting new curriculum, though,
society and the economy, itis most
certainly not reducible to those
ends, Above all, agree with the
Italian educator Fr. Luigi Giussani
that education is an "introduction to
is the means by which we are made
capable of living intelligently and
freely because we grasp the truth of
things and have been taught how to
relate to these "things" virtuously by
CLSA School Spottight
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Eo as era tem bettas
Reeser
Re mect cM tet tem ict
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CLASSICALLATIN.ORG
remains the important work of
cultivating passion for the ideals
of classical liberal arts education
amongst our faculty and providing
‘opportunities for them to experience
for themselves the fruits of the
kind of education we are trying to
provide for our students,
1 Luigi Gussani, The Risk of Eaton
Discorering Our Ultinate Destiny, New York
(Crossroas Publishing Co, 201, p. 0
MemoriaPress.com18
WHY
ON Se ORCL CL
is reading Julius Caesar's account of his
conquest of Gaul the next logical step for
a student who has completed a study of
grammar forms and basic syntax? There are sound
reasons that Caesar's Commentarti De Bello Gallico
(Commentaries on the Gallic War) has traditionally been the
preferred choice for the first immersion in reading Latin.
CAESAR'S STYLE OF WRITING
Caesar's cor
e, lucid prose and elegant style
are challenging but not overwhelming, The great
orator Cicero himself praised Caesar's prose
as "unadorned, straightforward, and graceful.”
Literary scholar J. W. Mackail wrote of Caesar:
He used the Latin language with a purity and
distinction that no one else could equal.” It is widely
acknowledged that Caesar adhered to the rules of
the Latin language more closely than any other
Roman author.
The reader of Caesar is able to systematically
apply the rules of Latin syntax. He is not forced to
Bonnie Graham is currently writing a Memoria Press study
guide for Henle Second Year Latin. A homeschooling mother
for 13 years and a Latin tutor, she is fascinated by Caesar's De
Bello Gallico, the writings of Caesar scholar T. Rice Holmes,
and the Latin language.
CAESAR
contend with the oddities of poetic license before he
is ready to do so. Poets had license to bend, break,
and ignore rules, When faced with an irregularity in
Caesar's prose, the student is able to logically work
out the reason, to see Caesar's intended effect, and to
advance his understanding of Latin.
Reading Caesar prepares the student to progress
to Cicero's more intricate style and to Virgil’s poetry.
This is the logical way to master a subject: first learn to
apply the rules and later deal with more complicated
applications and exceptions.
THE LESSONS OF THE GALLIC WAR
In Caesar we learn about ancient concepts of
honor and glory. More importantly, we are steeped
in matters that transcend timelines and cultures. De
Bello Gallico provides a profound study of loyalty to
comrades, decision-making and bravery under duress,
man's burning desire for freedom, and valorous
defense of family and homeland.
The great classical historian Theodor Mommsen
commented, "The noble work deserves all the
labour that can be spent upon it. The enormous
difference between these Commmentarii and
everything else that is called Roman history cannot
be adequately realized.CAESAR'S PLACE IN HISTORY
A study of De Bello Gallico also provides a wealth
of knowledge about European geography and an.
important period of Roman history and politics.
'T. Rice Holmes, often cited in the Henle text, called
Caesar “the greatest man of action who has ever
lived.” He was the first Roman to lead an army across
the Rhine into Germany and the first Roman general
to cross the English Channel to Britain. He wrote the
first eyewitness account of Britain and the Britons.
He also wrote the first authentic accounts of Gauls/
Celts and Germans.
So high was interest in De Bello Gallico in the
Middle Ages that in 1469 it was one of the first books
to be printed on the newly invented printing
press, Such was Caesar's influence that
his name has lived on in the titles of
some of history's most powerful
rulers: the Caesars of Rome
following Julius himself, the
Kaisers (German), and the Czars
(Russian). This is not to claim
that Caesar was necessarily a
‘model for emulation, but he was
anexemplary military leader and
a gifted politician and statesman,
‘As Mackail noted, "the
combination of literary power of the
very first order with his unparalleled
military and political genius is perhaps
unique in history.”
‘And Caesar was not just a brilliant general and
important writer. Military historian Theodore Dodge
described him as "the patron of learning who founded
libraries in all the great towns, and filled Rome with
men of science, culture, and letters, as the legislator
who drafted laws that still control the jurisdiction of
the world, as the profound scholar who dictated the
correction of the calendar...”
For two millennia, people have acknowledged
that he was remarkable in what he undertook and,
accomplished. Dante, Petrarch, and Longfellow
featured him in their works. Shakespeare, no less,
devoted a play to him, and Handel, an opera.
AP LATIN EXAM
Caesar still endures as a fascinating topic of study
and speculation. Furthermore, a very pragmatic
reason for studying Caesar was provided by the
redesign of the AP Exam in Latin, effective in 2013,
to expand its scope from the poetry of The Aeneid to
include the prose of De Bello Galtico.
1-877-862-1097
Caesar's concise,
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CONCRETE AND EXTENDED MEANINGS
Another benefit of reading Caesar is the opportunity
to learn the many words he uses with a concrete
‘meaning, This makes it easy to recognize derived
figurative meanings in other writers. For example,
Caesar's concrete obsido, or "siege" in battle, becomes the
figurative obsiio of Cicero, the "pressing danger’ to the
Republic. The soldier's heavy sarcina ("pack, bundle’)
filled with grain and personal belongings later becomes
the more figurative "burden, weight, or sorrow.
To look at one small example in more detail: The
student of Caesar learns that angustiae is a narrow place,
like the pass in Gaul through which 368,000 Helvetians,
could pass only in a long, narrow train, The student
learns that it connotes danger and is related
to the adjective angustus, which means
“narrow,” or “tight” He easily sees that
this word may have related concrete
meanings as in a narrow strait,
bridge, gate, or harbor.
When the student meets the
word in other writers, he will
extrapolate from its concrete
‘meanings to understand its
abstract meanings ofa tight
spot.” “difficulties,” “distress
“tribulations,” and even "troubled
times” When he sees a reference to
the Mass by Haydn, Missa in Angustiis,
‘composed when Napoleon was turning
Europe upside down, the student will at once
comprehend the title. He will understand the English
word ‘anguish’ and its German cousin angst. Countless
rich rewards are gleaned from reading Caesar.
A CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY FOR
THE STUDENT
All readers of De Bello Gallico have the chance
to delve more deeply into the genius of the Latin
language. But many treasures lurk within the pages
of Caesar's work, and they may be different for
different readers. Some siudents are fascinated by
Caesar, the great commander and politician. Some
‘may find themselves rooting for the Celts struggling
to defend their homeland. Some are fascinated by the
‘might and discipline of the Roman military. Some are
intrigued to see which characters Caesar singles out
for special mention, and why. Some have an interest
in travel and European geography and will someday
visit the countries in which the Gallic War was
fought. What will you find for yourself in the pages
of De Bello Gallico?
Why Caesar? 1928
STEPHEN
HAWKING'S
MANY
tephen Hawking once pronounced that he
Sm Ita wos ie neta ope
and that, because of this, he was unafraid to
die: "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop
working when its components fail. There is no heaven
ot afterlife for broken down computers; that isa fairy
story for people afraid of the dark”
Hawking, a famous physicist who died in March,
demonstrated by remarks like these the irrational
lengths to which some are willing to go in order
to deny that God exists and that He is the ultimate
explanation of the world.
Not long before Hawking made these remarks, he
made another pronouncement:
M-Theory predicts that a great many universes were
created out of nothing, Their creation does not require the
intervention of some supernatural being or God. Rather
these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law
DOES MULTIVERSE THEORY
MAKE GOD UNNECESSARY?
Hawking angued that if we assume there are multiple
other universes than our own, then an explanation of
how the universe got here without God is possible. And
if there isa possible explanation of how the universe got
here without God, then we need not bother about God.
Martin Corn she itor of The Classical Teacher and author of
“Traditional Logic Books I Il, Material Logic, nd Clasical Rhetoric.
‘Stephen Hawking’s Many Univer
What Hawking never explained was why the
theory that there are multiple universes is any more
rational an explanation than that God created the
universe, Nor did he explain why one possibility
necessarily excludes the other.
Let's grant him for the sake of argument that,
multiverse theory is a possible explanation. Why is it a
better explanation than the God hypothesis, ifthe God
hypothesis is also a possible explanation? Why choose
the former over the latter?
‘The Oxford mathematician and philosopher John
Lennox comments on the natural law out of which
Hawking says these multiverses arise:
[Hawking] asks us to choose between God and the laws
of physics, as if they were necessarily in mutual conflict
But . laws themselves do not create anything, they
are merely a description of what happens under
certain conditions.
‘What Hawking appears to have dane isto confuse law
‘with agency. His cll onus to choose between God and
physics is a bit like someone demanding that we choose
between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle [who
invented the turbojet engine] and the laws of physics to
explain the jet engine.
Hawking’s position betrays a reductionist view of
reality, something C.S. Lewis called ‘nothing buttery’—
the idea that something must only be this, or only that,
when, in fact, reality does not work that way.
MemoriaPress.comWHY IS MULTIVERSE THEORY
ANY LESS FANTASTIC THAN THE
GOD HYPOTHESIS?
‘The second problem is that there area lot of questions
about whether multiverse theory is any less fantastic
than the God theory. Scientists are constantly invoking
the principle of "Occam's Razor": the idea that the
simplest theory is the best one. But if you want to
make the argument that multiverse theory is simpler
than the God hypothesis, then you're going to have
to explain why the God hypothesis, which is simple
enough to be readily understood by the common
person, is superior to the multiverse theory, which
is 50 complicated that only highly trained physicists
seem to really understand it.
Another physicist, Paul Davies, points
‘out that cosmologists envisage
sweeping "meta-laws" that
pervade the multiverse and
spawn specific bylaws on a
tuniverse-by-universe basis,
The meta-laws themselves
remain unexplained—eternal,
immutable transcendent entities
that just happen to exist and
‘must simply be accepted as
given. In that respect the meta
laws have a similar status to an
unexplained transcendent god.
IS MULTIVERSE THEORY
SCIENTIFIC AT ALL?
The third problem is the status of multiverse
theory as science. In fact, all of the things we are told
ice should do—be observable, be testable, and
have predictive power—are absent to a large degree
from multiverse theory. In other words, there is not
‘only a question as to whether this scientific theory can
explain God away, but there is a debate about whether
the theory is scientific at all.
‘And once all the purported advantages of being
scientific are no longer possessed by a theory, then
why are we to prefer that theory of the origin of t
to the religious theory of the origin of things?
“The core problem,” says astrophysicist and
scientific journalist Adam Frank, of newer theories
like multiverse theory,
is that, as of this writing, there is no experimental
evidence that hidden dimensions or alternate universes
exist. There might, indeed, be a multiverse and Tike
alternative universes as much as the next science
fiction groupie. ... Still how much effort do we put into
explorations based on the potentially unobservable while
shifting away from the tradition of exploring only the actual?
1-877-862-1097
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God created
GTR
In fact, it is precisely because such theories are
inadequate as scientific theories that they have to be
tific assumptions to make
This has happened in string theory, another
unverifiable scientific hypothesis. Frank points out
that string theory is one of the theories employed
to explain quantum gravity. But, as it turns out,
string theory cannot do this in a world of only four
dimensions. So what do its proponents do? They posit
six other equally unverifiable dimensions in order to
salvage their theory, giving us ten in all
Presto! Instant scientific plausibility.
It could be argued that the Oldest Theory of
How the Universe Got Here (that God
created it) involves far fewer intellectual
contortions than this.
CAN NATURAL LAWS
REPLACE GOD?
But even the scientists who
acknowledge the problems with
multiverse theory still have
trouble explaining God away.
Physicist Sean Carroll tries to
salvage the atheist project by
saying that you don't have to posit
other universes in order to dispense
with the necessity of God:
‘You could imagine an understanding of the universe—
why it came into existence—without ever leaving the
laws of nature—without ever invoking some divine,
some supernatural being. The universe could just obey its
own laws. It could be a natural, physical, real universe,
obeying the laws of physics, and that can be a complete
explanation of everything,
But natural laws must themselves be explained, a
point that has apparently never occurred to Carroll. In
fact, he goes further than Hawking seems himself to
go: "The question ‘Why is there something rather than
nothing?” Carroll says, “has been answered”
Ithas? How exactly do you answer the question of
why there is something rather than nothing by simply
pointing to something (which is what he and other
physicists do by positing an ostensibly empty space
that is filled with fields and forces)? Lewis once asked
how someone could say anything about anything
outside nature "by simply studying nature?”
In fact, the question "Why is there something rather
than nothing?” is simply not a scientific question; itis
a philosophical question.
It’s bad mistake to confuse the two, since science
and philosophy are two entirely different universes,
Stephen Hawking's Many Universes 2932
Gods providence, Chistnity was born
stint an tana ug
dominated the ante! world and infseneed
eryone and evrything including the Jews and
Jada Christendom, te clture sf Chistian
after Josus' life, death, and resurrection, was the
product of Christians making sense of both Greck
and Jewish heritages,
Christianity in the East and the West formed
cultures that had roots both in the classical world of
Greece and Rome and in the faith of Jerusalem. This
is true in the Christian West, where Greek and Jewish
thought together shaped aesthetic and civic ideals
that produced both the cathedrals of Paris and the
parliamentary government of Great Britain.
Iis also true in the Christian East. Eastern
Christendom formed a new empire that shielded
Western Europe from invasion and destruction, For one
thousand years the great capital city, Constantinople,
John Mark N. Reynolds (Ph.D., University of Rochester) is
president of The Saint Constantine School in Houston, Texas.
This article was excerpted rom his book When Athens Met
Jerusalem (2009: Interoarsity Pres).
‘Athens & Jerusalem
maintained unbroken study of both ancient biblical and
pagan texts, It honored both the “inner wisdom’ of the
faith and the “outer wisdom’ of the Greeks and Romans.
‘Constantinople evangelized an entire commonwealth of
states that stretched from the Balkans to Russia.
This fusion of Athens and Jerusalem can be seen in
the buildings and the books of cities in Britain, Ethiopia,
Romania, and the United States. tis no accident that the
United States Supreme Court is housed in a building
with biblical references carved onto it—a structure built
in the classical style of Rome and Greece,
So then, how did the church deal with the
massive intellectual and cultural heritage of this
classical civilization? Generally speaking, there
were three reactions.
The first was to reject "secular learning” in order to
keep the church *pure’—the idea being that theology
had nothing to learn from philosophy. But Judaism
itself had been influenced by Greek learning, There
‘was no "pure" stream of knowledge that did not run
through Athens. The very Greek language that the
early Christians used to communicate their message
was soaked in centuries of classical thought. Trying
MemoriaPress.comto pry Athens and Jerusalem apart usually led to
inconsistency and heresy.
Iwas the Greeks who set down the rules for
proper reasoning, Any attempt to understand the
Bible requires the application of these rules. Christians
often go on for years after their conversion with a fully
functioning mind but without the proper guidance on.
how to use it, Faith needs reason.
The second reaction was to go to the other extreme
and worship Athens Persecution made this rare,
but it was still a problem. Origen, one of the greatest
Christian thinkers of the early church, often pinned
his understanding of Scripture more on his Neo-
Platonic philosophy than on the biblical text. This
‘extreme devotion to Plato caused Origen to develop a
defective view of Christ and his nature.
But there was a third reaction: Mainstream
Christians, such as Augustine in the West and Basil
in the East, found a middle way. Jerusalem gave the
basic, rational, religious truth on which to build an
understanding of the world. It was the starting place
of wisdom. Athens gave the technical language and
categories to help define and extend this truth. Out
of this complementary coexistence came the classical
Christian civilizations that shaped most of the world
in which we live.
For centuries these two cities, Athens and Jerusalem,
were the driving forces of intellectual and cultural
growth. Tensions between the rationalism of Athens.
and the faith of Jerusalem have always existed, but it
was in the harmonious resolution of these tensions that
the new Christian kingdom was established.
The kind of culture that produced John
Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, or C. 8. Lewis no
longer exists. For some Christians, the rationalism of
Athens dictates the nature of reality. Other Christians
have condemned Athens and left it to burn.
Christians must recapture the middle way of
Augustine and Chrysostom. Athens and Jerusalem
are not two cities, but two districts in one city: the
city of God. Christian schools and a few colleges
have seized on the classical model. When allowed to
coexist in creative harmony, Athens and Jerusalem
caused a cultural explosion. They have done so
in the past and will do so again, if an attempt at
revival is made soon.
rusalem
33Humanism
Is Not the Problem
by Marti
hat precisely is Western culture? In a nutshell, it
\ y ] is the civilization that derives from the cultures of
Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, that was conquered.
and transformed by Christianity, and which has been handed
down through the centuries by an education system which in
more recent times has been referred to as “classical education.”
These three civilizations—what we might call the
“Three Cultures’—each contributed something unique to
European culture, the culture which was the foundation for
our American culture. And the most important thing they
contributed was the idea of what a human being is.
The Humanism ¢
the Greeks
‘The Greeks represented philosophical and artistic man. Alfred
North Whitehead once said that “all philosophy is a footnote to
Plato” Plato was Socrates student, and Aristotle was Plato’. Dante
said of Aristotle that he was the "master of those who know.” And
it wasn't only philosophy in which the Greeks excelled. With the
possible exception of Shakespeare, there are few poets to equal
Homer, and perhaps no playwrights comparable to Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides. In many ways the Greeks can be said
to have invented philosophy and art as we know it—and to have
raised it to a level rarely rivaled since.
‘The Greeks were humanists, a term we Christians often
view with undue severity, partly because of the prevalence of,
the term "secular humanism.” But secular humanism is not the
only kind of humanism
Twas recently in a panel discussion on classical education and
‘one of the other panelists, when asked what was wrong with
modern education, said, "Humanism." Humanism is exactly what is
not wrong, either with the modern world or with modem education
Inhis book The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton speaks of
the sophistry that drives much of modern secular thought, a
sophistry that works "first to soften the sharp transition from
animals to men, and then to soften the sharp transition from
‘Martin Cotivan is the editor of The Classical Teacher and author of Traditional Logic
Books 1 Ell, Material Logi, and Classical Rhetoric
40 Humanism Is Not the Problemheathens to Christians." In other words, there are
two distinctions essential to the Christian view of
the world: that between man and beast, and that
between God and man. Its these distinctions that
modern thought obfuscates,
‘What we need to understand about Greek
thoughtis that it atleast, unlike the paganism
that preceded and stil surrounded it, got the first
part ofthis right: The Greeks knew the difference
between man and beast. While other pagans were
worshiping man-beasts fashioned out of stone—an
idol with the body of aman and the head of a bird,
or with the head of a man and the body of a lion—
the Greeks alone among the pagans idealized the
human form. "Wonderful are the world’s wonders,”
said Sophocles, “but none more wonderful than
man." Try to find in Greek statuary any such
mongrel deities as those of the Egyptians or
Babylonians, and you will look in vain. (Among the
few exceptions are the centaur and the satyr, which
largely served the symbolic purpose of representing
thenature of man at his wildest and most bestial)
‘And while the Greeks did not understand the
relation between the human and the divine—as
evidenced by their own gods, who were merely
men writ large—much of their philosophy and
art roflected the sulbcreative imagination of
boings made (hough they did not
. know it) in the image of God.
The humanism of the
Greeks was remarkable
for its belief in areté.
This word has
many shades of
‘meaning, butit
generally has
the sense of
some kind,
of human
or moral
*
excellence. To have areté was to live life according to
one’s essence or nature: Itwas the art of being human.
Of course this assumed some kind of human ideal to
which men were expected to approximate. The closer
they approximated this ideal, the more they were
thought to have areté
To the Greeks, human perfection involved two
things primarily: strength and intelligence. These
traits were on prominent display in the two works
the Greeks looked to as the primary articulation of,
their ideals: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. It was the
strength of Achilles and Ajax—and even the Trojan,
Hector—that they admired, along with the craft and
intelligence of "Odysseus of many wiles.”
The Humanism of the Romans
‘The Romans knew the Greeks to be their cultural
superiors. They conquered the Greeks militarily, but
intellectually and culturally the conquered were the
conquerers, Wellto-do Romans sent their children to
boarding schools in Greece to be educated, or employed
well-educated Greek slaves to tutor them. And, like
Russians in the nineteenth century who bowed to
superior French culture and often spoke French in.
their homes, Greek was often spoken in Roman homes.
Consequently, the Romans imbibed much of Greek
culture and made it their own.
‘The Romans, oo, believed in a human ideal, although
its makeup was slightly different from that of the Greeks.
The Romans like the Greeks, were humanists. The
Romans called this human ideal humanitas (literally,
“humanity’). The old Romans were people of civil order,
and filial and sacred obligation. Unlike the Greeks, who
speculated about the idea of the Good, the Romans
‘were people of practical virtue. They brought Greek
philosophy down to earth. Theirs was an ethical, more
than an intellectual culture, with Aeneas as their model
He was known to schoolboy’ as "Pious Aeneas” up until
the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a Trojan
prince who, in Virgils epic Aeneid, flees the burning city of
‘Troy, his father on his back and his family in tow, and who
founds the “new” Troy on the banks of the Tiber River.
Although the Romans bowed to the superiority of
the Greeks in philosophy and art, they excelled them in|
administration and efficiency. The study of the Romans
isa study in political and ethical man. The Romans,
said Russell Kirk, “were a people of strong classical
endowments, grand engineers, tireless political
administrators, organizers of military success; most of|
all they were men of law and strong social institutions,
who gave the world the pax romana, the Roman peace.”
If speculation was the watchword of the
Greeks, it was order, both civil and moral, that
characterized the Romans.
Humanism Is Not the Problem 4442
The Religion of the Hebrews
But to this recipe for Western civilization, we
must add the ingredient of the Hebrews. If the
Greeks exemplified speculative man and the Romans
practical, the Hebrew's exemplified spiritual man.
We look to the Hebrews to see how God deals with
individuals and with nations. The Greeks speculated
‘on the nature of wisdom and virtue; the Romans
attempted to practice these ideals; the Hebrews alone
among men knew their Author.
The Greeks and Romans were the stepchildren
of truth; the Hebrews were its natural offspring.
Christianity came organically
‘out of Judaism. But when the
classical, pagan cultures of Greece
and Rome were subsumed into
Christianity, the fathers of the
‘Church did not reject the best ideals
of these cultures, The cardinal
virtues—justice, temperance,
‘courage, and prudence—were fully
accepted by Christian thinkers,
but at the same time they saw
the insufficiency of these. To the
cardinal virtues of the ancients
they added the theological virtues:
faith, hope, and charity.
Rather than rejecting the
concept of an ideal man, the
Christians informed the concept
with new life. While this haman
ideal for the Greeks and Romans
‘was embodied in characters in stories written by men,
the Christians could appeal to a character in astory
written by God—a character who was not only real,
‘but God in human flesh, the second Adam.
While Achilles was born of a mortal father and an
immortal mother, Christ was born of a mortal mother
and an Immortal Father; while fictional Achilles was
half-god, half-man, the historical Christ was “fully
God and fully man.’
Christian Humanism
The problem with classical humanism was not
primarily that it was wrong—though it was in some
‘cases—but rather that it was incomplete. This is
something that we forget at our peril. tis not wrong,
to say that man is the highest and noblest of earthly
creatures. He is, in fact, made in the image and likeness
‘of God, and therefore he is all this—and more.
The Greeks understood the proper metaphysical
location of man—above the beast and below the
divine. He was, as religious historian Mircea Eliade
pointed out, the one animal who walks erect—a sign
Humanism Is Not the Problem
While Christianity
renounced the vices
of the classical
cultures, it did not
reject their virtues.
Modern thought
rejects their virtues
and has sought to
revive their vices.
of his higher possibilities. The gods of the Greeks
‘were ill-conceived: products of their imaginations
and projections of themselves. They worshiped
deities made in their own image because they had
ro access to the revelation of the God in whose
image they themselves were made. They had no
revelation other than natural revelation, which
could only take them so far.
This understanding of man was an essential
aspect of the classical worldview that was shared
by Christian thinkers from Augustine and
Thomas Aquinas to Richard Hooker, John Henry
Newman, C. §. Lewis, and
J.R.R. Tolkien. It is why these
thinkers are often called
"Christian humanists.”
When Chesterton said
that Christianity was the
“fulfillment of paganism," this
is what he meant: Not that
Christianity was merely a
further development of ancient
paganism, but that Greek
and Roman thought was the
stunted form of a Truth that
could be perceived but not
truly known or understood
until it was revealed in the full
revelation of Christ.
‘This is what Lewis meant too
‘when he said that in relation to
Christianity, paganism was as a
virgin, and modern secularism like a divorceé. While the
Greeks and Romans accepted truths they had no way
of truly knowing, modern secularism rejects the truth
thas no excuse for not knowing.
Modern thought, being fundamentally
Darwinian, rejects any real distinction between
man and animal, asserting that man is merely an
animal, and rejects any distinction between man
and God, contending that God does not exist at all.
And it cannot accept the concept of an ideal man
because it does not believe in man (the ideal), but
only in men. In fact, it rejects all transcendent truth.
Humanism is not the problem with modern
education and culture; itis antihhumanism—not
believing in a human ideal.
While Christianity renounced the vices of the
classical cultures, it did not reject their virtues.
Modern thought rejects their virtues and has sought
to revive their vices.
This is why classical Christian education is needed
today: to bring a fuller, Christian humanism to a
generation which has abandoned it altogether.
MemoriaPress.comy any stretch of the imagination, and by any
criteria, the Chronicles of Narnia are among the
most popular books ever written. Several major
surveys of the bestselling books of all time place The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the Top Ten, a few
places below Tie Lord of the Rings by C. S. Lewis friend,
JR. R, Tolkien! Although exact global sales figures are
hard to verify, itis estimated that 3.5 million copies of
The Lion, the Witch and the Wantrobe are sold annually
around the world, in editions published in thirty-three
languages, and these figures don't include the millions
of copies of the other six titles in the series Clearly itis
no exaggeration to speak of a C. S. Lewis phenomenon
ora C.S. Lewis industry.
Such phenomenal success will do nothing to
assuage the contempt with which the books are held
by those who allow their judgment to be clouded
[eso Pearce the serie elitr ofthe Ignatius Critical Eton the Ttken
‘a Lewis Churn Literary Stes t Poly Apostles Calege and Sersnary,
tnd te author of secera bigraphic: of mor Christian ie
drobes Are for Grown-Ups Tc
by the arrogance of ignorance. The response of such
people was epitomized by the manner in which the
triumph of The Lord of the Rings was greeted after
it was voted “the greatest book of the century" in a
nationwide poll in the UK in 1997, "Tolkien—that's
for children, isn't it?” scoffed the writer Howard
Jacobson. "It just shows the folly of these polls, the
folly of teaching people to read. Close all the libraries.
Use the money for something else. It's another black
day for British culture." Griff Rhys Jones on the BBC’s
Bookworm program was equally dismissive, stating
that Tolkien's epic went no deeper than the "comforts
and rituals of childhood,” a judgment he would no
doubt extend to the Chronicles of Narnia
And yet, for all their superciliousness, and all their
pride and prejudice, don't the critics have a point, at
least where Narnia is concerned? Even if we concede
that The Lord of the Rings is for grown-ups, surely
the same can't be said of the Narnia books? Unlike
The Lord ofthe Rings, the seven books that comprise
MemoriaPress.comthe Chronicles of Narnia were written specifically for
children, Surely they are just for kids.
Not so, says anyone who sees the true value of fairy
stories, Take G. K, Chesterton, for instance, Although he
never had the pleasure of entering Narnia, having died
before Narnia was born, we can be sure that he would
have been one of its greatest champions. “[Flairy-tales
are as normal as milk or bread," Chesterton wrote.
Civilisation changes: but fairy-
tales never change. Some of the
details of the fairy-tale may seem
odd to us; but its spirit is the
spirit of folk-lore; and folklore is,
in strict translation, the German
for common sense... The fairy-
tale means extraordinary things
as seen by ordinary people. The
fairy-tale is full of mental health
For all this fairy-tale business
is simply the ancient and enduring
system of human education. A
seven-headed dragon is, perhaps,
a very terrifying monster. But a
child who has never heard about
him is a much more terrifying
monster than he is?
Yes indeed! One thinks of that terrifying monster
Eustace Clarence Scrubb at the beginning of The
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, who is much more terrible
as a child than he is when he is transformed into a
dragon later in the story.
A few years later, Chesterton returned to the
theme of fairy tales in the wonderful chapter, "The
Ethics of Elfland,” in his book Orthodoxy, a chapter
that would greatly influence both Tolkien and Lewis.
“Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of
common sense,” he wrote. “It is not earth that judges
heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least
it was not earth that criticized elfland, but elfland
that criticized the earth.” Chesterton is not saying,
of course, that heaven and the things of heaven are
mere fairy stories. (Heaven forbid!) He is saying that
heaven and the things of heaven, specifically the
God of heaven, preceded the things of earth. The
heavenly things came first. Indeed the heavenly Being
‘made the earthly beings. Since the supernatural
precedes the natural, and the natural proceeds from
the supernatural, it is obvious that the supernatural
supersedes the natural. This is why heaven judges
earth and why earth does not judge heaven. The value
of fairy stories is, therefore, discovered in the way that
they reflect this heavenly reality. They serve as a lens
by which the heavenly can be seen on the earth, a lens
by which the deepest and most important realities
are grasped. They allow us to judge evil from the
perspective of the good, and the imperfect from the
1-877-862-1097
Fairy stories give us the
moral framework necessary
Poon aS Ea
ae een
Der
perspective of perfection. This is why Tolkien insisted
that fairy stories are “plainly not primarily concerned
‘with possibility, but with desirability.” They show us
what is from the perspective of what should be.
“Ideal here," Chesterton wrote, "with what ethic
and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales
If Lwere describing them in detail I could note many.
noble and healthy principles that arise from them.
There is the chivalrous lesson of
“Jack the Giant Killer’; that giants
should be killed because they aze
gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against
pride as such. ... There is the lesson
of “Cinderella,” which is the same
as that of the Magniticat—evaltavit
Jumiles ("he exalted the humble"
There is the great lesson of "Beauty
and the Beast”; that a thing must be
loved before it is loveable. There is
the terrible allegory of the “Sleeping,
Beauty,” which tells how the human
creature was blessed with birthday
gifts, yet cursed with death; and how
Geath also may perhaps be softened to
asleep. But Lam not concerned with
any of the separate statutes of elfland,
but with the whole spirit ofits law, which [learnt before
I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. Lam
concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which
was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been
meekly ratified by the mere facts
In other words, and to reiterate, fairy stories give
us the moral framework necessary to see the world
as tis, in all its glorious heights and goriest depths,
from the perspective of the way it should be. We learn
to value the underdog and spurn the tyrant; we learn
that small things need to be defended from the power
of the mighty. We learn to love the poor and rejoice in
the exaltation of the humble; we learn that the ugly,
the disfigured, and the disabled should be loved and
not rejected; we learn that even the power of death
can be defeated. Such lessons are not merely valuable
and desirable, they are priceless and necessary. We are
more than merely impoverished if we don't receive
such gifts—we are dehumanized. We become less
than we should be, less than we are meant to be. We
become dragons who devour the innocent and lay
waste to the world around us.
1. Christine Hall and Martin Coles, Children’s Reuling Choices,
London: Routledge, 1999 pp. 45-6
2 Michael Ward, Planet Nant, New York: Oxford University
Dress, 2008, p- 224
3 Sindy Time, Jariaey 25,1997.
4 Bookworm BBCI, July 27,1997.
5 GK Chesterton, “Educition by Fairy Tales” Iustrated London
Nexis November 18 1905; reprinted in The Chesterton Review,
Vol Vill nos. 1 2 February/May 2002),
GK Chesterton, Orthodaxy, San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1385, 54,
7 ERR Tolkien, “On Faisy-Stories” in LR. Tolkien, Te ond
fiend Unwin apne, kk ps
8 Gi&sterton Ontos P58 e
Wardrobes Are for Grown-Ups Too60
eople often tell me they are teaching classical
music through "Composer Studies,” choosing one
composer at a time, listening to his music, and
reading about his life. But are biographies necessary or
even a good tool for teaching the arts? Let me offer an
example to explain why I am likely to s
Almost any child who knows Beethoven's name
knows one specific fact: Beethoven was deaf. Kids are
fascinated by this information and quickly develop
an image of a man holding an ineffectual, trumpet-
shaped hearing device to his ear, desperately trying to
hear the music he is writing,
But this is wrong,
First, a disclaimer: Few things are more fascinating
for an adult to read than a thoroughly researched,
Dr. Carol Reynolds is a speaker, an educator, and the widely
author of Discovering Music and other books on musi
ture. Ske regularly leads arts tou
the Mediterranea: for onan Institute.
art, and archi
Europe and
throughout
well-written artist biography. Much understanding,
can be gained from such a book, not only of the
subject, but of an entire era
Elementary and middle school students, however,
do not yet read this kind of biography. Biographies
for their ages are necessarily highly selective and
simplified. Consequently, the “facts” that are presented
can be problematic, distracting, or even distorting.
Beethoven's deafness was real. But like many facts
that children latch on to, it can be learned without
context. Thus, wrong conclusions can be deduced.
Similar cases might include memorizing facts about
Van Gogh's self-mutilation of his ear or Bach's oft
described identity as the father of twenty children,
In the case of Beethoven, children too easily
conclude that he was great because he wrote music
while deaf. They see overcoming this obstacle as his,
singular, miraculous achievement.
Here's the truth about Beethoven's deafness:
His loss of hearing began in young adulthood andprogressed to the point of total deafness in his older
years, It was a source of annoyance, frustration, and
fear, as would be any medical handicap .... but not
because he couldn't hear to compose musi
Beethoven from childhood had internalized the
tones of string, wind, and percussion instruments. He
Knew the sounds and capacities of instruments like
the organ and piano, And he understood how to wield
vocal ranges and choral textures.
But more importantly,
Beethoven (like virtually any
composer) wrote music inside his
head. If you stop and are quiet,
you can replicate this experience,
since most people can "hear" a
familiar piece of music in their
minds, whetheritbea song, adance,
ora theme from a favorite movie.
‘Yes, composerssometimesdouse
thestimulus ofplayinga keyboard
(or other instrument) to reinforce
their creative choices and test out
sounds they are considering. But
the physical sound waves from these instruments are
rarely the source of a composer's ideas. Furthermore,
composers usually draft their compositions on paper
(or today in a computer-generated score). They wrestle
internally with problems of form and content the same
way writers do: try it, cross it out, try itagain.
Therefore, long after Beethoven was deaf, he could
compose. He could sit ata piano and play through his
works, hearing at least a version of them inside his
head. He could still write a string quartet guided by
his internal genius for compiling rhythm, harmony,
‘melody, and form in extraordinary ways. Some
scholars argue he could do it even better in his later
“deat” years, because he was not distracted by physical
realities of the sounds, or more importantly, limitations
of the instruments of his day.
What he could not do, once fully deaf, was
something flight attendants call a “cross-check.” He
could not double- and triple-check to make sure that
the notes he had written would work well in an actual
performance. He could not be sure that his coupling
of an oboe and clarinet sounded as effective as he
had intended in a given passage. He could not tell if
a copyist had recorded a wrong note that his horn
players were blithely reproducing.
He also could not walk to the back of a hall during,
a rehearsal and assess the acoustical vagaries of the
space where his music was to be performed. He had to
rely on others for this information
Not surprisingly, his deafness made him grumpy,
as such a limitation would make anyone. It made him
1-877-862-1097
b Ta cary
CC oar
ran cena ee
TET MC orm eTCon mn
to, it can be learned
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defensive and anti-social in the very years when
he most needed his friends and patrons. He could
not partake in social chit-chat or avail himself of
opportunities such as crossing a drawing room to
greet "Countess So-and-So” after overhearing a rumor
that she was seeking a composer to write a festive
overture, Such things had to be communicated in
writing, or not communicated at all.
‘The good news is that
we moderns have inherited
thousands of pages bearing one
side of people's conversations
with Beethoven, scribbled on
miscellaneous sheets of paper and
in little notebooks today called
Konversationshefte (Conversation
Books). Itis a unique legacy.
‘Does a child need to know all
of this? Well, actually, I think so,
or at least part of it, Otherwise I
would discourage presenting the
"Beethoven was deaf” badge as
a starting point in introducing
a student to his music. Like most biographical facts,
concerning any creative artist, it offers at best a very
limited window of understanding, So much more
could be learned from comparing Beethoven's music to,
Mozart's or Haydn's, or from discussing the enormous
upheavals of Beethoven's time (which corresponded
closely to the lifespan of Napoleon).
None of this supersedes the power of the art itself
to communicate. Children are very good at hearing, or
seeing, that power—honing in exactly on what we might
call the intrinsic value of an artistic creation.
Ive been amazed how many times I've witnessed
‘young children identify shifts from major to minor
keys, long before they have the vocabulary to do
so, They respond instinctively to changes in tempo
and orchestration. And they develop preferences
very early about what is called texture in music: the
stacking of musical voices from a “thin’ or single
melody line to a full palate of choral or orchestral
lines woven together.
Not only do children respond! to the joyful, bombastic
qualities of music, but they also embrace its poignancy.
They gravitate towards what they like, yet they are
‘marvelously open to the full gamut of artistic expression.
So, yes, Beethoven went deaf. And yes, he was a
musical genius, the like of which the world rarely
sees. But the two facts are not connected in a cause-
and-effect relationship! If this example alone causes
us to think more carefully about how we present an
artist's biography, I'm willing to bet that Beethoven
himself would smile.
‘So What If Beethoven Was Deaf? 61I [tL
wih A160
P= l= i= -elt)
hough most readers are aware
atheist before becoming a Ch
his conversion occurred in two
BY
MARKOS
that C. S. Lewis spent many years as an
ristian at the age of 32, fewer know that
distinct stages. Before embracing Christ
as the only-begotten Son of God, Lewis spent over a year as a theist, believing
in the existence of God but still rejecting the doctrines of the Trinity and the
Incarnation, Among the events and influences that led Lewis to make the leap
from theism to Christianity, the most important was a long evening talk he had
with a close friend, a devout Roman Catholic named J. R. R. Tolkien.
As Lewis and Tolkien walked along the grounds
of Magdalen College, Oxford, Lewis confided in
Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings,
that his knowledge of mythology prevented him
from accepting the gospel narrative as true. After
all, the mythologies of the world were filled with
stories of gods who came to earth, took on human.
form, died violent deaths, and returned again to
life: Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz, Mithras, Balder, etc.
Was not Christianity just another such myth, albeit
a more sophisticated one? In response, Tolkien
acknowledged the prevalence of god-men in pagan
myths and legends, but then went on to suggest a
different way of interpreting this phenomenon. What
if, Tolkien challenged his skeptical friend, the reason
the story of Christ sounded so similar to the pagan
tales of dying and rising gods was because Jesus was
the myth that came true?
Tolkien's challenge revolutionized Lewis way of
viewing mythology and not many days would pass
before he would surrender his life to Christ, the
historical God-Man. No longer a stumbling block, the
ancient Greek, Roman, and Norse tales that Lewis
so loved would become for him one of the mainstays
and bulwarks of his new faith. Rather than dismiss
the miraculous elements of Christmas and Easter as
Louis Markos (LouMarkos.com), Professor in English & Scholar in
having no more historical validity than the scapegoat
tales of Oedipus or Prometheus—as many moderns
do—or reject the myths themselves as either irrelevant
to faith or lies of the devil meant to deceive—as many
Christians do—Lewis came to view the myths as
glimpses, road signs, pointers to a greater truth that
was someday to be revealed literally and historically
in a specific time and place.
For Lewis, it is just as vital that we proclaim and
accept the full historicity of the Christian gospel as
it is that we celebrate and experience its full mythic
power. Yes, Lewis asserts, Christ is more than
Balder, or Hercules or Dionysus, in the sense that
His death and resurrection occurred in real time
and had real consequences. But we must not allow
His status as the historical Dying God to rob Him,
of His mythic splendor. Christ should speak not
only to our rational, logical side, but to our sense of
wonder and awe as well
If Christianity is true, then it means that the
God who created both us and the universe chose
to reveal Himself through a sacred story that
resembles more the imaginative works of the e
poets and tragedians than the rational meditations
of the philosophers and theologians. The historical
enactment of the Passion did not render the old
Residence at Houston Baptist Universi
holds the Robert H. Ray
(Chair in Humanities. His 18 books include On the Shoulders of Hobbits, Atheism on Trial, and two children’s novels, The Dreaming
Stone amd In the Shadow of Troy, in which his kids become part of Greek mythology and the liad and Odyssey. This essay
from the conclusion of his From Achilles to Christ: Why Christi
1-877-862-1097
idapted
ians Should Read the Pagan Classics, available from Memoria Press
The Myth Made Fact 65pagan tales unclean; on the contrary, it had the
reverse effect of baptizing and purifying them
The relationship between Mary and the baby
Jesus has made potentially sacred the relationship
between every mother and child, both B.C. and A.D;
ina like manner, the gospel story spreads out its light
both forward and backward to uplift and ennoble
all stories that speak of sacrifice and reconciliation,
of messianic promise and eschatological hope. Tt
was through the poetry of the Psalms and the
Prophets, as well as through the more “epic”
tales of the Old Testament—Abraham’s
long, circuitous journey, Joseph
and his brothers, the Passover and
Exodus—that Yahweh prepared the
hearts and minds of His people for
the Incarnation of the Christ. Does
it seem so unbelievable that He
should have used the greatest poets,
storytellers, and “prophets” of antiquity
to prepare the hearts of the pagans?
Indeed, as these pagans were without
the Law and cut off from the direct (special)
revelation given to the biblical writers,
how else could God have reached them?
Yes, God certainly spoke to them through
the natural world (general revelation), but
how was He to reach them at the deeper
levels of their being? As Lewis argues in
Book II, Chapter 3 of Mere Christianity,
before the full revelation of Christ,
God communicated with men in three
basic ways: through their consciences,
through His historical struggles with
a single, chosen race of people (the
Jews), and through what Lewis calls "good
dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered
all through the heathen religions about a god
who dies and comes to life again and, by his
death, has somehow given new life to men.”
Perhaps the most famous example of a pagan
writer catching a glimpse of the myth that would
become fact is to be found in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue
(¢.40BC), which celebrates the coming of a divine
child who will bring peace and order to earth.
‘Throughout the Middle Ages, Virgil's pre-Christian,
Isaiah-like poem was interpreted as a pagan
prophecy of Christ.
In the twenty-second canto of the Purgatorio,
Dante introduces us to Statius, a first-century pagan
poet whom he portrays as having converted to
Christianity late in life. Statius ascribes both his
early yearnings for Christ and his final conversion,
The Myth Made Fact,
not to the Christian martyrs and theologians, but to
Virgil. In an ecstatic, magic moment in which pagan
myth reaches out to Christian fact and the two
embrace, Statius exclaims:
“You [Virgil] were the lamp that led me from that night.
You led me forth to drink Parnassian waters;
then on the road to Gad you shed your light
When you declared fin the Fourth Ecogue), A new bieth
as been given
Justice etums, and the frst age of man.
‘And anew progeny descends from Heaven'—
were as one who leads through the dark track
you olding the ight Behind=useless o you,
precious to those who followed at your back
‘Through you I flowered to song and fo belie
Statius goes on to add that when he first
heard the gospel preached, he hearkened
to it immediately, for it agreed so well
with what he had read in Virgil.
In this lovely testimony of
Statius, Virgil emerges as almost a
Christ figure, as one who sacrifices
himself for others, who devotes his
life to uncovering truths that, though
useless to him, will provide light and
guidance for those who come after. He
is a bearer of good news, not of the full
_gospel of Christ, but of a lesser gospel
that yet points to the greater: a candle
that directs our eye to the moon; a
moon that directs our soul to the sun.
‘And what of today? Do we who
live on this side of Calvary still need
such mythic candles? I would say we
do, that we need them even more,
for the secular, rationalistic, post-
Enlightenment world in which we
live has dissected, demythologized, and
denied many of our most cherished myths.
‘To make matters worse, Christians are often.
the first to distance themselves from that which.
is mythic, not, as they try to convince themselves,
because they are believers, but because they have
absorbed, usually unconsciously, the modern
world's suspicion of fairy stories.
Yet the hunger remains. Despite 250 years of
Enlightenment rationalism, people still yearn for
myth, and, if they yearn, then they can be wooed
back: perhaps not directly to Christ, but at least to a
pre-Christian mindset that will open the door for a
later embrace of the historical God-Man. Childhood
precedes adulthood as the seed the tree: just so, the
pagan mind, whether BC. or A.D, cannot perceive
God face to face until it has first peered darkly into
the crazy glass of myth
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