Over the summer, Americans rediscovered an appreciation for ancient epics, with Nolan’s blockbuster sending copies of The Odyssey flying off bookstore shelves. Aficionados of ancient epics should consider adding another book to their newly minted classical libraries: Virgil’s Aeneid, which also begins with the fall of Troy.
A rather famous scene in The Aeneid shows Aeneas careening out of Troy, carrying his father, Anchises, on his back while gripping his young son’s hand, Ascanius. This image tells us something important about the nature of conserving civilization, and consequently, education.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, where wildfires raged over the summer. One lesson we’ve learned is that what someone carries out of his house during a fire is a tell-tale sign of what he holds dear. This is true of Anchises, who, rather than gathering loot from his vault, chose to grab his household gods. Though pagan, the Trojans evince a piety rare in our modern world.
While balancing his father with one arm, Aeneas holds tightly to his son. Even as he looks forward to Italy, he carries with him his heritage and his religion, with an eye ever toward the next generation.
Classical Christian education is built on the same premise: We ought not forget the faith of our fathers and, in so doing, neglect our sons.
I learned this lesson in the spring of 2024, during my senior year of high school.
Over Christmas break, a fissure formed between families in our homeschool co-op. Several students took issue with class conversations on Biblical gender roles. The school administration interfered, compelling my mother – who was teaching the senior class – to step down. After she left, dozens of other families followed suit, including those from a community north of us.
In a matter of weeks, over 100 students and their families were educationally homeless. No other classical homeschool communities existed in the area — so we founded Classicus, a classical Christian curriculum structured to put theology first.
A year-long pilot test crystallized three distinctives that drive the curriculum’s mission.
The first was a dedication to recenter education on its theological foundation. The medievals taught that theology is the queen of the sciences and philosophy her handmaiden. Secular education makes philosophy the queen and theology her arch-nemesis. This breach of alliance between faith and reason only weakens both. Modernity has traded the Godhead for making the head god, and, ironically, ended up with duller intellects as well.
Aside from the obviously abysmal results of this experiment, a materialist education cannot answer the questions most fundamental to the human soul: Why are we here? Who is God? And what does He require of us? No wonder there are spiraling rates of purposelessness and depression.
A Psychology Today article from spring of last year admitted the problem, but proposed this antidote: “Purpose isn’t found, it’s built.” This is the sort of Nietzschean claptrap we are accustomed to hearing from mainstream outlets, but its ubiquity doesn’t make it sensible. Either God created us for a purpose, or we must embrace nihilism. These are the options.
Compare the Psychology Today sentiment with the founding principles of Harvard according to a 1643 account:
Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him Prov. 2, 3.
The theological foundation of education was the heritage we carried with us when founding Classicus. Instead of theology as an ancillary topic of discussion, Classicus students study theology every year alongside the other fields of study.
This is our way of clutching the hearth gods as we flee from the smoldering heap of our educational system.
The second drive behind Classicus was a desire to teach students how to think rather than simply what to think. Complaints about “indoctrination” are perhaps overwrought (after all, good doctrine is better than no doctrine), but the ignorance of logic is a growing problem in the West. Overreliance on technology hasn’t helped.
This problem is compounded by the fact that republicanism relies on a self-governing populace. Classical education teaches logic by theory and practice: Theory in the form of book-learning, and practice in the form of debate. Debate was the Apostle Paul’s first evangelical outlet upon his return to Jerusalem from Damascus. (Acts 9:29)
Rhetoric stems from, and is closely connected to, logic. Rhetoric has been a defining feature of classical education dating back to Ancient Greece. Aristotle called rhetoric the counterpart of dialectic.
Just as man’s rational capacity is central to his being, so too is his rhetorical ability. The first chapter of Genesis repeats the phrase, “And God said…” Being made in the Imago Dei means having the ability to speak, something the Greeks knew well, even if they lacked the terminology to describe it.
It does little to champion the need for Christian leaders if we do not provide the theological, logical, and rhetorical foundation necessary to lead well. A classical education is the best way to hold onto the hand of the next generation and steer them from the flames of public education.
Restoring Western civilization means first restoring theology to her throne as queen of the sciences, with logic and rhetoric enlisted in her defense.
