The title may come as a surprise.  Perhaps it should.  Let me convince you that I’m not growing soft on 50% of BCS’s identity.  I still love and appreciate the classical tradition.

In some circles, it’s common to speak of “necessary but insufficient” conditions.  Classical is one of those.  We like the word… and what it stands for. But it isn’t enough.  It's insufficient.  

Classical Isn’t Enough

Why bring this up?  To be crass… the type of education we’re offering – the kind that exalts the Triune God in education – is expensive.  It’s costly.  It requires sacrifice.  For many – even most - of you, saying “yes” to BCS requires saying “no” to something else.  I’m deeply appreciative of that and, yet part of me wants to ask you, “What else is so beneficial to your children or important to the LORD?”

What else requires sacrifice?  Anything worth having.  Biblical knowledge and understanding?  Musical proficiency?  Mathematical skill?  Becoming a surgeon or professional athlete?  Becoming a faithful spouse or mother or father?  All of it requires sacrifice… but it is SO worth it.

I read recently of a school begun by parents in coordination with Hillsdale College and their Barney Charter School Initiative (BCSI). By all appearances, it is a “good” school.  Maybe even a great one, as people accord things.  Latin, Moral Philosophy, Mathematics, French, and Natural and Physical Sciences are all taught by intellectually alive men and women committed to a humane education.

The Head of School is a talented writer and long-time educator.  He offered the following rationale for “Why I lead a classical school”:

“I lead a classical school because there are truths that must be known, truths that shape not just the intellect, but the soul.”

Amen.  This is a great idea.  Homer will shape the soul.  So will a serious study of Math and Science.  Latin, too.  A robust training in the arts will prove formative, as well.  These are good things.  

But man’s soul is the highest thing and the most important thing.  So, we must know more than that someone wants to shape our soul; we must know into what object he wants to shape it.

Conformed to Christ Jesus

The liberal arts tradition which “synthesized” classical thought with the theology of the church (and then matured into the specific articulation we find in early modern world) demands that the study of theology – the Queen of the Sciences – must have pride of place in soul-shaping.  Being conformed and presented mature in Christ is the only way to shape the soul.  

All other attempts to form the soul are incomplete and ultimately destructive without Jesus Christ.

Harvard’s motto in 1650 was “Veritas pro Christo et Ecclesia” (“Truth for Christ and the Church”).  Two hundred years later, under the leadership of a secular, but famous President Eliot, it was eventually reduced to merely “Veritas.”   Why was the motto reduced? Because God was.

When asked if CCA was religious, the website says:

"No. As a public community school, CLASSICAL is not affiliated with any religion. As a classical school, Cincinnati Classical Academy values the transcendent elements of human life and thus has deep regard for religious experience and tradition, but as a public school it is non-sectarian and non-religious in nature."

What are these transcendent elements?  Likely Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.  Do these things exist apart from Christ?

What if these “transcendent elements” only find their ultimate and best expression in the revelation of the Logos, the second person of the Godhead.
Remember Colossians 1:

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶ For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. ¹⁷ And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent."

All Education is Religious

May I suggest that every school is religious, just like every person is.  What I mean by this is that every school, whether it believes so or not, affirms certain and specific truths about the world around it which “bind” those in that community (religare’s meaning in Latin is “to bind”).  We all have basic and binding beliefs, conscious or unconscious, which we hold.  We’re all religious.

Classical Greece

Ancient Greece, for example, was not neutral towards religion.  A deeply polytheistic worldview rooted in fact and myth gave rise to one of the great (and idolatrous) societies of the ancient world.  Greece maintained strong ritual practices (sacrifice) and what the virtuous life should look like, along with a belief in the afterlife.  

Classical Rome

Rome was no different, although it shifted the religious center to the state. Emperor worship was a central feature of the Empire. Households maintained reverential attitudes towards Roman gods and “worshipped” in their homes.  They, too, believed in an afterlife (Hades, Elysium).

Christendom

As the Gospel swept across the world, new thought forms, cultural practices and institutions began to take shape.  Taking whatever good could be harvested from the Near East/Semitic traditions and the Greco-Roman world, a new world – largely what we think of as Europe – was created, subjugating the barbarism that characterized the ancient world at that time and bringing with it “civilization” that we have come to love and know as Western Civilization - warts and all. There are some real mistakes, for sure.

Question: Isn’t it ironic, then, that a “classical” school would or could take a pass on religion? To think that having “classical” would be enough?

The human heart is too hungry for meaning and purpose to leave it at “classical.”  It’s important for Christians to remember that it was the Roman imperium that attempted to crush the nascent movement within Judaism that we call Christianity.  It was classical culture, you see, that opposed Christianity, believing it was inimical to the values of Rome.  

Simply put, the Kingdom of God advances through death.  Through suffering.  Through weakness.  And that’s not very Hellenistic, or Roman, or Modern.

This is why “Classical Is Not Enough.”  Because Of Jesus.  This “man of sorrows” who died on a cross (Roman tool of torture), who was “stricken, smitten, and afflicted” is the key to any education that purports to trade and train in “ultimate” things.  We’re not even supposed to eat/drink, let alone educate children, without glorifying God. (1 Cor. 10:31)

How could you glorify God, as his men, women, and children, by remaining silent about Him?

Thought experiment: What would change at BCS if we were a charter school – and charged you NO TUITION?

1. Teachers would stop gathering to pray and sing in the morning.  We’d welcome teachers to do this privately, of course, but we’d not permit public prayers.  
2. Students would stop gathering to hear God’s Word read and explained in the morning.  Last year, this meant that every student in grades 7-12 heard every Psalm read and commented on. They’d not begin the day together in prayer/praise but be encouraged to privately pursue these things.
3. Mrs. McRoberts, Mrs. Bell, Mrs. Cernucan, or Dr. Little could not reference “God’s providential hand” in their classes, nor stand back in wonder at the goodness of God in coordinating the language of Mathematics and man’s mind so that we could have dominion as the LORD God instructed in the Scriptures.  All of Mrs. Ihrie’s Bible classes – gone.  Senior Thesis would not contain required substantial interaction with God’s revelation.  Your students would come home full of poetry and facts, but no Scripture (like Ephesians 1:3-14)!
4. Teachers would not be encouraged to view students as image-bearers, thereby robbing them of the dignity they have as such; neither would they view them as sinners in need of corrective discipline from wiser men and women in the faith.
5. Our athletic program would give lip service to “character formation” as all programs do but be animated with a singular goal of winning.  Coaches would not have any recourse to the Gospel in a formal way.
6. When the Board hires a Head of School or that Head of School hires teachers and staff, their spiritual maturity in Christ would NOT be a factor in the decision.
7. We’d take the banner flying above our front doors which says, “Everything worth having we have in Jesus Christ.” That would be reduced to privately held opinion.

The Greek, Roman, and Modern American/Enlightenment gods will fail your children.  The piety of Aeneas, which was substantial, will not save.  Souls will be formed, but in a direction that will leave them bereft of Christ’s benefits and the truth, beauty and goodness laid upon the only reliable foundation. 

The only formation worth having is that informed by the best that’s been thought and taught, shot through with the truth of Scripture and founded on the person and work of Jesus Christ. 

Amen.