HCA Commentary Archive

The Tao of Narnia 5.14.2008

This is a post by Chuck Colson about the newest film in the Narnia series: Prince Caspian

Many of us can hardly wait for the release of the second film in the Chronicles of Narnia series. Prince Caspian will arrive in theaters this Friday.

If you have read the book, or if you listened to Mark Earley yesterday on “BreakPoint,” you know the storyline: the return of the four Pevensie children to a Narnia under the rule of the evil King Miraz. But how many of us realize the tale is undergirded by natural law lessons?

As Tim Mosteller writes in a book titled The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy, “There is a Tao of Narnia.” Tao is the term that C. S. Lewis uses to describe “the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false.”

In other words, the Tao of Narnia is what theologians call natural law—the belief that moral truths are present in the natural world that can be known by all, which, in Narnia, includes dwarves, fauns, centaurs, and mice.

As Mosteller notes, Lewis does not argue for the Tao in his Narnia books; he illustrates it. Accepting the Tao involves three things: “(1) A commitment to an objective moral order that is independent of what I or anyone else thinks; (2) an openness to moral development only within the Tao, and (3) a willingness to follow the Tao in all situations.”

The characters in Prince Caspian illustrate various responses to the Tao. For example, the valiant mouse Reepicheep wholeheartedly accepts the Tao and strives to live by it—even at the loss of his tail.

By contrast, King Miraz denies that loyalty to his nephew Caspian, the true king of Narnia, is a valid moral demand. Yet, he demands unswerving loyalty from his own men. In other words, Miraz tries to pick and choose which elements of the Tao he wants to live by. But as Mosteller notes, this is impossible because “all parts of the Law rest on the same self-evident moral axioms; any moral values the picker-and-chooser may appeal to have no authority outside the Tao as a whole.”

We also have the dwarf Nikabrik, who wants to conjure up the White Witch for help in overturning Miraz. Nikabrik is the ultimate pragmatist: To him, moral truth is whatever works. As Mosteller observes, Nikabrik fails to realize that the Tao is not just one morality among many: “It is the only morality-Aslan’s Owner’s Manual for true success and fulfillment, for Humans and Talking Beasts alike.”

These days-as in Lewis’s time-schools routinely teach that there is no objective moral truth: Morality is subjective, a matter of just personal preferences. And then they wonder why kids lie, cheat, and steal. As Lewis himself observed, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue . . . We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

Stories like Prince Caspian reveal, in the most exciting and dramatic way, that there is an objective moral law known to, and binding upon, us all.

Shariah in England? 2.12.2008

We heard recently that Archbishop Rowan Williams of the worldwide Anglican Communion has recently recommended that the British tolerate a modified form of Shariah law in England to accommodate their Muslim contingents. This is astounding. Williams, who is also a practicing Druid, has successfully balked on the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as Lord over all things. Islam is a false religion; it is idolatrous. If Williams understood or believed the historic, Christian faith once delivered to the saints, he would be about seeking the conversion of Muslims to the Christian faith, not accommodating their delusion. This is outstanding coming from such a visible leader in one of the world’s largest branches of the Christian faith. We pray that Williams’ eyes would be opened before Islam conveniently takes over England and Williams executed as an infidel and a threat to Islam. It could happen with this sort of truncated, relativist version of the Christian faith. Spong should be proud.

The Providence of God 11.22.2007

Well, I am reminded today of the shooting of JFK and the death of CS Lewis. Two tragic events with their own set of circumstances. The point is that these events were not random meaningless blurbs of atomic gas in a blind, unfeeling universe. Equally so, Heritage Classical Academy did not get started this year, not because of electrons spinning of course, but because of the Providence of God.

We are still associated with ACCS and we still desire an excellent, classical approach to education through the use of the Trivium, as a proven means of learning for students of all ages and learning styles. In light of that, the door is still open for interested parties to put both feet forward and dare to dream this lofty dream.

This little piece is about the Providence of God because, while HCA did not get started, I became the new pastor of our host church, Rock Presbyterian church. It turned out too that the building inspection would have been a nightmare due to current school building codes. The pastorate has been a wonderful experience so far and the church is growing—what a blessing!

We are still committed to our vision of Christendom—the cultural manifestation of the Christian worldview in all areas of life. It is hard to live in a country where Christianity once flourished. We are locked in a struggle with non-theistic, hostile enemies of the church; we are locked in a battle of intepretations of human origins, the first ammendment, American history, Southern history, the propriety of public religious expression, etc. Our Kulterkampf (power struggle for the dominant expression of culture and civilization) is ideological now, but unless Christians awake from the dream land of pietistic individualism, we are on our way to the secularizing of all things American. “In <?>, We Trust."

Slow Starts: Patience is Virtuous 8.18.2007
While we did not get off to the grand beginning that we had planned, it is good to know that the interest in classical learning is far from dead. Local homeschool groups continue to thrive as God blesses excellence in the education of our children. The local community and the national community is beginning to see the value and expansion of classical education.
While the relationship between Christianity and education continues to be debated, Western civ classes continue to wane in favor of multiculturalism and educational standards continue to drop with a trial and error approach popular in education journals, we are losing generations of children who are illiterate in history, reading and writing ability, self-expression and logical and sequential thinking. Moreover, as our own American history is revised and edited of its uniquely Christian character by self-conscious anti-theists, even our Christian children are being trained in many state institutions to be “functional athiests.” All of this is happening as the conservative Christian community sleeps in the dimming light of Christian accomplishments of the past, lulled by the comforts of individualism.
All is well for now . . .
Colson is On to It 7.20.2007

Chuck Colson is a good writer and I agree with him a lot. It is one of those evidences that lead me to believe that Huxley was right in Brave New World. Western culture is killing itself with pleasure. We have lost the culture war in education, religion, art, music, etc. except in small pockets of families and covenant communitities. Here is Colson:

Are Americans gradually becoming illiterate? It’s not because we never learned to read, but because we’re relying more and more on images instead of words.

A debate about this recently broke out on The Point—BreakPoint’s blog site. One of the BreakPoint staff wrote about the frustrations of test-driving a new car: “There were many buttons and knobs with pictures on them instead of words,” she wrote. “What did they do? One of them had a picture with a big “X” painted over it, as if someone had made a mistake and crossed it out.”

Response from our blog readers was fierce.

“You’ve hit on one of my biggest pet peeves,” one blogger wrote. “I experienced the exact same thing with a rental [car] recently with the most perplexing image. [It] looked like a tire on fire. Why would anyone want to push that button?”

Another blogger noted that 300 years ago, “Businesses created signs [with] an image that would tell people what their business was, such as a shoe,” because most people were illiterate. Today, he says, “because we are relying more and more on images, we are becoming illiterate.”

It’s the same story with cell phones and TV remotes—which is probably who so many of us have difficulty using them. If you order furniture from Ikea, the assembly instructions include no words at all: Just a series of pictures of how to put furniture together. It’s like trying to read hieroglyphs. At McDonalds restaurants, illiteracy is assumed: the cash registers contain little pictures of burgers and fries. The reason, in part, is that more and more immigrants do not speak English.

This increasing reliance on images over words can lead, not only to colossal frustration, but to spiritual illiteracy. As the late Neil Postman wrote in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, the medium of communication actually helps shape the way people think. The printed word requires sustained attention, logical analysis, and an active imagination. But television and video games, with their fast-moving images, encourage a short attention span, disjointed thinking, and purely emotional responses.

Postman says he first discovered this connection when reading the Ten Commandments. He was struck by the words: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” He realized that the idea of a universal deity cannot be expressed in images but only in words. As Postman writes, “The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking.”

Christians are meant to have an ongoing conversation with God. We address Him in the language of prayer, and He addresses us in the language of Scripture.

Today, missionaries in non-literate societies reduce the native language to writing and teach people to read by reading the Bible. But here in the West we are in danger of coming full circle: The visual media, and our increasing reliance on images in everyday life, may ultimately undermine literacy, transforming us back into an image-based culture.

If that happens, will biblical faith still flourish?

It’s something to think about when we’re attempted to gorge on television or video games—and a reason to fight back against our culture’s insistence that virtually everything can be reduced to an image. Give your family a good lesson: read a book together.
Clarifications 7.15.2007

In his book Classical Education, Gene Veith of Patrick Henry College says the following:

“Classical schools inculcate wisdom and virtue. Childern yearn to become adults and a classical education prepares them for adult responsibilities: for working and earning a living, raising a family, the priveleges and duties of citizenship and friendship, and for courgage in the face of solitude, illness and death. Career counseling and technical training will count for little if our schools are unable to order the moral character of their students. Ironically, the desire for a well-paying job—which many parents and children consider education’s only purpose—has failed to motivate many students to study hard and learn well.
Classical schools educate for citizenship. Citizens give way to alienation, apathy, and intemperance without an education in wisdom and virtue and this leads to family disintegration, crime and political corruption. Modernism and Postmodernism can scarcely speak to such concerns with a straight face.”
How Great is the Gatsby? 7.1.2007
As the modern era came to a close, we see the decadence of man in the West became more and more open. The late 20th century was a time of transition to what is acknowledged to be a post-christian era.
In the book The Great Gatsby, arguably the best novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we see an indictment of post WWI aristocracy. The frustration, deceit, pretension come from the pen of someone caught in the mindless drivel of modern aristocratic indifferent hedonism. The ironic hypocrisy and self-righteousness of Tom being concerend about family values, in the middle of his affair. The equally guilty Daisy, romantically celebrated for true love along with Gatsby, touting their true love in spite of Daisy’s marriage. Gatsby the mytserious romantic spinster, co-murderers along with Daisy (remember Genesis 3?), with the ironic twist of Myrtle as victim—who herself is no innocent victim.
Firzgerald plays out the shallowness of modernity; filled with unrestrained pleasure and capable of all manner of evil. How weak Christianity is portrayed as having no influence nor aid to poor Wilson’s failed marriage, nor his inability to stop his revenge under the gaze of “god on the billboard.” His friend asks him repeatedly and to no avail, “Let’s call the church. You do go to church, right? I’ll get the phonebook and we’ll look up some churches” (my paraphrase).
The Great Gatsby is a brilliant display of the problem of sin and the failure of man (or woman) to be responsible for their own actions—even like our first parents, they seek to cover it up, as Wilson takes his gun to Gatsby and then himself. Wilson tells his wife about her affair with Tom and let’s her know that he knows what is right and what is wrong. Post-modern man now denies that their is an evil to cover up; it denies a right or wrong moral code. What is right is there is no right; what is wrong is telling someone they are wrong. Perhaps if Fitzgerald were alive today, he would have wrote about Gatsby the Gadfly.
The Pre-Modern Christian Mind 5.30.2007
In the new issue of Classis, David Steele, PhD writes in “Why Classical ‘Christian’ Education?,” that in the classical model of education, we seek to recover the pre-modern mode and mind of the Christian worldveiw. Why is that significant and why should it matter? There has been a paradigm shift from the objective world to the subjective world of the mind that occurred in the Enlightenment. This has altered the way Christians understand their faith in monumental proportions. I have quoted a large chunk of the article here to illustrate:
Today, we have “modern” and “post-modern” Christians. But we have too few Christians who think in premodern categories. Recovering these categories is the educational burden of Christ-centered, classical schools. Our goal is to equip apprentices of Jesus with a pre-modern mind capable of engaging our post-modern world.
Intellectually and spiritually, Western society has crossed a Great Divide. C.S. Lewis places this divide sometime immediately following Jane Austen and Walter Scott. When we watch Emma Thompson in the film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibilites, we realize that we have stepped into another world with a very different ethos. He writes, “Whereas all history was for our anscestors divided into two periods, the pre-Christian and the Christian, and two only, for us it falls into three, the pre-Christian, the Christian and what may reasonably be called the post-Christian.”
Lewis then makes the most astonishing claim. Pay close attention, for it establishes the rationale for our educational approach. “Christians and pagans had much more in common with each other than with a a post-Christian. The gap between those who worship different gods is not so wide as that between those who worship and those who do not . . . a post-Christian man is not a pagan; you might as well think that a married woman recovers her virginity by divorce. The post-Christian is cut off from the Christian past and therefore doubly from the pagan past.”
He continues to say that the classical approach reconnects us with a Biblical framework that allows us to know the questions and the answers. The Greek mind had questions, but no answers. The modern mind has no questions, only answers; the post-modern mind has no questions or answers.
The Necessity of Classical Learning 5.25.2007
We are proud to be part of a renaissance in education that is unfortunately misunderstood by many people, Christian and non-Christian alike. As a member of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, we believe that current educational methods and trends leave students with no critical thinking ability and no sense of personal, Christian identity.
Why is this? Because the current method of teaching is student-centered (“constructivism") and the reigning worldview is post-modernism. The later ilk in short is the belief that there is no absolute truth in anything—all opinions are equal. The former related teaching method trains students to discover truth for themselves (what is “true” for them). We live in a post-modern and post-Christian culture and plenty of intelligent Christian people believe that ideas are unimportant; what is important is an experience of God. The battle of the Christian faith is not about experience but precisely about ideas (cf. 2 Cor. 10; Col. 2.8)—ideas that are either true or false. God’s existence cannot be true for someone and false for someone else anymore than 2+2 for one person may be 4, but for another may be 37.
Classical education is more than a theory; it is an ethos or paideia—a way of understanding the world and culture through studying ideas that have shaped the Western Christian mind and culture. It is more than adding Latin or Logic to a broke educational system. On this note, we recommend Doug Wilson’s book Repairing the Ruins in which he and others discuss the current, failing educational system used in both Christian and state schools. Particularly for Christians, classical education provides a sense of Christian identity that is rooted in the historic Western Christian tradition and emphasizes covenant faithfulness in learning.
More than ever, the rotting corpse of post-Christian America needs a return to what works; a recovery of the lost tools of learning.
Curricular Antithesis 5.18.2007

A Biblical philosophy of revelation drives curricular decisions for the Christian school in a two-fold direction.

The first is obvious for educators who are Christians: with the lens of Holy Scripture, Christian historians, scientists, educators, physicians, architects, poets, et al, find God to be everywhere involved in all things precisely because He has revealed Himself to them (cf. John 5.21). In curricular decisions, a Christian educator may find God’s truth in the observations of a pagan philosopher such as Socrates or even a physicist like Einstein or he may prefer a textbook specifically written by Christians. The point at stake is that the worldview in which the information is presented must have Biblical presuppositions or the approach is by default humanist (assuming man’s reason or empirical judgments to be epistemologically self-authenticating and authoritative, hence supplanting God and His Word).
The second is that curricular decisions made by non-Christians, though stating truth (2+2), or empirical evidence (D=R/T, photosynthesis, law of entropy, a=a, et al), if not presented from the framework of the Christian worldview cannot be presenting the truth in an ultimate sense, but actually leading students to assume that God is irrelevant to Algebra or the like.
Inordinate Inwardness 4.8.2007

In his article “Pietism” in Fit Bodies, Fat Minds (1994), Os Guinness raises questions regarding the effects of pietism on the current evangelical church. He notes that pietism as a movement of emotionalism always raises an ugly head in times of great spiritual dryness.

Guinness observes that pietism, as it contributes toward anti-intellectualism, paved the way for the broad acceptance of Hitler by German Christians. People often wonder why German Christians did not raise a voice of protest. Guinness notes that pietism causes an inordinate “inwardness,” a focus on the “spiritual,” rather than the material world with its duties, obligations and responsibilities. The effects of pietism in America have been many. Guinness says,

. . . the core themes of the Puritan mind shifted or disappeared from the objective to the subjective, from the covenantal and communal to the individual, from election to voluntarism, from Calvinism to Arminianism, from the liturgical to the informal, and from a stress on theology to a stress on experience.

Guinness observes that pietism took root in America in a time of dry, barren orthodoxy. Theological shifts serve as correctives, but the balance should be the norm. However, in the wake of the Second Great Awakening, America has not recovered from her lust for experience as it has become her drug of choice to lull her into imbecility. Guinness concludes by affirming the need for balance. A “theology-less” church is a non-reflective church that cannot cope with nor challenge the ills and ilks of our present darkness. Our churches have become therapeutic centers of self help with a powerless Gospel that only serves to be a bandage on a hell-bound package. This culture needs to be confronted with a full-orbed Christianity that applies to all areas of life, not just the chambers of the heart.

Anything Goes 4.3.2007

I was reminded recently of an article that appeared in the local Index Journal by Walter Williams in the Fall of 2006. It was called “College Stupidity is Taking Over.”

In the article, Williams blames the nonsense that passes off for education at major universities on the trustees and boards. Williams observes that historical illiteracy is down and not one of America’s top 50 colleges require American history! The Department of Education published in 2003 that 31% of college graduates were proficient in prose, 25% in reading and 31% in math.

What nonsense was Williams speaking of?

  • A course offered at Occidental College called “The unbearable whiteness of Barbie,” a course about scientific racism.
  • A course at Johns Hopkins University called “Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ancient Egypt”
  • At Harvard, students could take a course called “Marxist Concepts of Racism” and explore the ways that capitalism is creating racial inequality.

This author blames the church. Why is that? For tolerating unbelief and its ugly manifestations. The Christian religion is right; it is “revealed” religion. We need to press the antithesis between truth and lie in all areas of life and do as Van Til said and expose the hypocrisy of unbelief—the emperor has no clothes.

Education that is Christian 4.1.2007

Lois LeBar observes, “A chief reason for the lack of life and power and reality in our evangelical teaching is that we have been content to borrow human-made systems of education instead discovering God’s system.” She specifically mentions the philosophical presuppositions of Herbart, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Dewey. These have largely centered on the learning process of the learner, that is, the experience of the student as primary— Dewey insisted upon it in his atheistic construction. Lebar has said that while theology has advanced along with preaching in the church, education has floundered.

In an attempt to be relevant, the typical Christian school has compromised its biblical presuppositions with those of the popular trends as mentioned above. Van Til states, “The task of Christian education is, accordingly, that of offering the self-attesting Christ of Scripture as the one in terms of whom alone learning by experience is possible.”

In contrast to State education that is clearly antithetical to the Christian faith, “The Christian school must, thus, teach every subject from a God-centered perspective, or else it will be teaching humanism” (Rushdoony). “Why should we not derive from God’s revelation our own philosophy, God’s own ways of working that are inherent in the very structures of the universe” (Lois LeBar).

Mathematics rests not in a universe of chance and probability, but in a universe that is set and determined by an all-sovereign God. History is not simply the subjective recording of factual events, but it is the story of the unfolding of God’s providential activity in the world that He has created and ordained. The sciences, like math must be grounded in the revelation of God and His world that He created to give Him glory. His design, plan and purpose give order to the universe that does not work in a world-view of chance. Literature must be given a face-lift. We must critique and analyze all attempts to create and narrate stories, both “factual” and fictional that deny God’s sovereignty in all matters including science, truth, morality and values.

While We Were Sleeping 3.31.2007

Christian parents often wonder what happened to the schools that they grew up in. I guess, with eyes wide-shut, we have had better things to do than be involved in the education of our children. The following is a quote from John Dunphy in The Humanist (1983) magazine. This is the humanist vision for the education of American children:

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the education level—preschool, day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of ‘love thy neighbor’ will be finally achieved .” (quoted from Gary DeMar’s America’s Christian History, 2000, 42).

There is no mystery here, no pluralism, no multicultural perspective. Dunphy’s vision is openly hostile to the Christian religion, as much as Nietzsche’s complaint that Christianity is dwarfing humanity and keeping human beings from evolving to the next stage of evolution.

We are the Hollow Men . . . 3.27.2007

“Hollow Men” is the title of one of T.S. Eliot’s poems. Eliot was a Christian poet and one of the greatest of the last century. This piece is a mockery of man “come of age.” Our best is the worst. He mocks modern confidence is man’s institutions. There is nothing to modern man. Much like C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man, in which he charges that modern education has produced “men without chests,” Eliot’s man is the same: “Shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion.” There is no substance to a world without God. Left to himself—or shall I say, one’s self ?!?—all modern man is talk—empty words with no meaning. Why no meaning? Because we are hollow with no substance. What matters most—essence—has been driven from us. What we are is mere existence; highly evolved sludge. Lewis mocks the idea of the atheist who gets mad at a God he does not believe in. But, in an atheist’s worldview, what gives cause for anger if all ideas are equally valid? As hollow men, even our words against God are meaningless tautologies.

Eliot’s piece is a sobering reminder of what Solomon observed centuries before—meaningless, all is meaningless under the sun.

Classical and Christian? 3.26.2007

In my glance through the history of American education, it was interesting for me to discover that there is a correlation between the Harvard curriculum, as it was called by some, and the Christian religion. No matter what one’s opinions about the relationship between our country’s origins and the Christian religion, there is a definite stamp of a relationship on some level. Why Latin? Why Greek? Why studies in philosophy, logic, rhetoric? These were all important in the American curriculum for the purpose of understanding the Bible and classics better for the average American.

It is interesting that as America became more multicultural, Unitarians such as Horace Mann or atheists such as John Dewey, began proposing adjusting the curriculum along a needs or skills base, that is, the goal of education is to produce an effective worker. Whereas, the goal of the traditional American education was at one time to have what Susan Wise-Bauer called a “Well-trained Mind,” that is, a student who could think critically for himself and learn “anything” not just one job skill.

My interest therefore became more and more traditional or classical. I admit, I was drawn to the traditional approach because of its clear “intermingling” with the Christian religion; I am a Christian and a member of a Presbyterian church — no apologies there. It is ironic that the more multicultural and pluralist our society has become, a traditional approach to learning has become a pariah. As G.K. Chesterton observed, when the standards disappear, anything goes. As American education dropped the perennial, classical model, we have been tossed in a sea of educational relativism—anything goes. This pragmatic approach to education is embarrassing.

Joseph Johnson, Provost