All non-Biblical education assumes man can become learned without God. Biblical Education makes knowledge the foundation of learning.

The Greeks divided God’s creation into topics (the subject divisions such as literature, history, and language). When you divide life into topics you can separate the topic from the Creator. There is no such thing as a dichotomy between the spiritual and the material aspects of life, as in Classical Greek approach. The Bible does not make a vast distinction between "spiritual" and "secular" knowledge, for all knowledge is from God and is designed for the human good.

In Western culture, the lens through which we view the world has been colored by nearly three thousand years of Greek thought. You know the names. Homer. Thales. Socrates. Plato. Aristotle. What they thought and taught has had a profound impact on how we think.

John D. Beckett reveals the Greek influence on America in his book Loving Monday:

From these Greek thinkers came much that is good, including mathematics, the scientific method, the beautiful language of the New Testament... But our inheritance from the Greeks also came with some serious baggage. The Greek thinkers, shunning the God of the Hebrews, came up with man-centered and mystical notions to define the world around them.

Some have been largely discarded, like Homer's gods of fire and thunder, living on mountain peaks. Four hundred years after Homer, and four hundred years before Christ, Aristotle departed from mythology to describe "God" as an infinite but impersonal "energizing form," a self-developing energy source—the very root of modern New Age philosophy.

Without the God of the Bible, human beings are left with only themselves. Protagoras, in the fifth century B.C., put it crisply when he offered his famous maxim, "Man is the measure of all things."

Such ideas, even when wrong, don't die easily. Much of what we see in society extols Greek thought—whether it's the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games, news periodicals, radio and TV programs, movies, business seminars or educational curricula at our colleges and public high schools. Adoration for the Greek system is everywhere. (A Greek Legacy by John Beckett).

Ancient Greek Curriculum

At the age of seven, boys were gathered in barracks, where emphasis was placed upon physical development through games, exercises, and the pentathlon (running, jumping, throwing the discus, casting the javelin, and wrestling) and upon memorizing the laws of Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, and selections from Homer. The whole process was designed to develop endurance, resourcefulness, and discipline. At eighteen, definite training in the use of arms and warfare began; from twenty to thirty, service in the army and guarding the borders of the state were required; and even after thirty, men were required to live in barracks and assist in the training of the boys. Physical training was also emphasized in the education of girls and women so that they might bear sturdy children. The whole purpose of education was to subordinate the individual to the needs of the state.

The Greeks were history's first humanists, believing that man was the measure of all things. The Greek aim was to prepare intellectually well-rounded young people to take leading roles in the activities of the state and of society. Greek concepts served as the basis for the liberal arts, the teaching of the various branches of philosophy, the cultivation of the aesthetic ideal, and the promotion of gymnastic training. In the minds of believing Christians, there is a definite problem with an education system based on the pagan philosophies of ancient nonbelievers!

The seven liberal arts (the trivium plus the quadrivium) were known and invented by the Greeks, and idealized as a normative educational program by the middle ages.

The curriculum was divided into two major levels, the Trivum and the Quadrivium. The Trivium was so named because you worked your way through three levels; Grammar, Dialectic (Logic) and Rhetoric. These were meant to help students communicate effectively, and included a study of literature and language. The Quadrivium had four areas; Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy. In the Middle Ages, the Quadrivum prepared one for the "Queen" of sciences, Theology. Even in Ancient Greece, the ultimate goal was knowledge of God in order to know Man. The Greeks, of course, didn't want to know the God of the Bible. And their Queen, what their endgoal was, was Philosophy--is there a God? These seven subjects later became known as the Liberal Arts because they "liberated" one from dependence on another for learning. With these as tools, you could go on to learn and research and discover, etc. whatever you want. They survive in one form or another in many universities today. Anatomy, Biology, and Botany were also valid fields of study.

Christendom

After the acceptance of the church in the reign of Constantine, Christianity began to make converts within the educated classes. More than ever before, the church was brought into direct confrontation with the dilemma offered by the ideas of pagan education and the ideal of perfect man. To a large extent the confrontation, took place over classical literature. A majority of citizens were of the literary/rhetorical tradition. At issue was the entire classical worldview. Was the church to discard all pagan culture, or was it to attempt a synthesis between Christian and classical thought? After long trial and debate, was finally settled upon has affected our intellectual culture to this day. By the time the church confronted the issue of education on an institutional level, Biblical-wisdom tradition was discarded in exchange for Greek-philosophy education.

Biblical Education is Directed to the Heart

Every Biblical goal is a character goal. Even when intellectual skill is emphases is is never separate from the whole person.

Progress in Christian education is marked by the heart, moving towards wisdom's goals —right relationship with God and man. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. Luke 2:52

A Christian's roots are in Judaism not in the Greek's Hellenistic paganism. We need to look at the history of our patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the faithful followers of God, to find out how they taught their children the enduring, deep rooted faith.

The aim of education in Biblical times was ethical and religious. The education of youth was an obligation of the parents, and was intimately associated with the performance of ritual observances and with learning the Mosaic law. In the educative process, both father and mother were equally concerned, and both were to be equally honored (the Fifth Commandment). The method of instruction in the home was for a long time oral, and learning by practice, and these methods were continued outside the home in gatherings and assemblies held for both worship and instruction. (Colliers Encyclopedia).

The primary purpose of education should be to train the whole person for lifelong, obedient service in the knowledge just as it was in Bible times (home was the center for education then). God never changes. He still has the same desire for us to know Him.

© Copyright by HeartofWisdom.com

For the best results in viewing this website use Internet Explorer. Some things appear differently in Netscape.