The message of the cross - "foolishness to the Gentiles"?
Christianity is a religion of education. From the very beginning, the reference to education connected Christianity with its environment, but also distinguished it from it. For the Christian faith was centred on the cross - "an offence to the Jews, foolishness to the Gentiles" (1 Cor 1:23). And yet the new faith developed rapidly into a sui generis philosophy. Whether one had to believe in (a) God, what one could know about him and how the relationship between faith and knowledge should be conceptualised was the subject of intense debate. Christianity entered a world that was eager for knowledge, hungry for education and keen to think. The question is therefore not whether, but in what way early Christianity can be described as an educational religion.
But what is "education" in this context? The modern concept of education is orientated towards the individual; it is based on the biblical idea of man being created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). However, this is - and already was in antiquity - compatible with philosophical categories. Plato postulated an "assimilation to God (homoiōsis theō)", which presupposed an ascetic life in order to become "just and pious with understanding" (Theaetetus 176ab). The maxim at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi "Know thyself" was understood in the imperial period as a call to self-knowledge in relation to the divine and as relational knowledge (Plutarch, De E apud Delphos 21), which implied a historical, religiously reflected self. However, education in antiquity was always integrated into social practices. It served to familiarise oneself with a spectrum of roles, the availability of which was determined by origin, class, gender and financial power. Education thus led to a complex interweaving of social and individual moments of personal identity.
A look at the terminology makes this clear. The Greek term paideia refers to different things:
- (directive and affirmative) education;
- in the Septuagint and in the New Testament also "chastisement";
- In addition, literary education, through which one became a pepaideumenos, a person capable of skilful speech;
- well-rounded education" (enkyklios paideia) as the epitome of knowledge relevant to social action.
This also had anthropological significance: according to Cicero, the educational process ultimately led to true humanity (humanitas). Such education was the privilege of the small elite, who were able to provide their children with education; the mass of the population was uneducated.
The New Testament only rarely speaks of paideia and only once - critically (Col 2:8) - of philosophia. Theoretical concepts of education were less the focus here than processes of teaching and learning: the most common term for Jesus is "teacher", the term for his companions is "disciple"; these were to "enable all nations to become disciples themselves", baptise them and then teach them again (Mt 28:19f). It was therefore not a question of imposing the Christian message, but of communicating it in a winning way to people who were to recognise it as true on the basis of authority and reason and be baptised, philosophically speaking: to make an informed decision (prohairesis).
However, this undermined the function of education as a marker of social distinction. All people were expected to recognise the truth of the faith, decide to be baptised and put the Christian ethos into practice. Education was therefore not defined by traditional social structures, but by God - because "divine folly is wiser than men, and divine weakness is stronger than men... God has chosen what is foolish in the sight of the world to confound the wise, and what is weak in the sight of the world God has chosen to confound the strong" (1 Cor 1:25-27). Such biblical passages attracted criticism. The Platonist Celsus (around 177 A.D.) criticised Christians for leaving their wits in the cloakroom:
"The following is demanded of them: 'Let no educated person approach, no wise person, no person of understanding. For such qualities are an evil in our eyes. But if anyone is ignorant, if anyone is unreasonable, if anyone is uneducated, if anyone is simple-minded, let him come quietly'" (Celsus in Origen, Contra Celsum 3,44; transl. C. Barthold).
And some Christian theologians also understood Paul as if the word of the cross were a huge paradox. The North African Tertullian († after 215) explained:
"The Son of God was crucified - I am not ashamed of it, precisely because one should be ashamed of it. The Son of God also died - this is credible, precisely because it is unseemly. He was also buried and then rose again - this is certain, precisely because it is impossible" (De carne Christi 5,4 ; transl. V. Lukas).
How can such educational scepticism be reconciled with the claim that Christianity was a religion of education from the very beginning? I will explain this in the following.
How to find your way in a world full of education
The first followers of Christ did not simply see themselves as part of their world. They were "not of the world" (John 17:16) and felt like "sojourners and strangers" (Ephesians 2:19; Hebrews 11:13). Was Christianity an "unworldly faith"? Rather, it was a hybrid existence:
"(The Christians) live in their own fatherland, but like foreigners. They take part in everything as citizens, and endure everything as strangers. Every stranger is their fatherland and every fatherland a stranger" (Epistula ad Diogetum. 5,5; transl. H. Lona).
This was not due to everyday behaviour: Christians lived and worked next door to non-Christians in the cities of the Imperium Romanum. The problem was the feast days: they did not take part in the cults for the gods and for the emperor's patron god, who was regarded as the mediator of divine peace, the soter ("saviour"). Competition with the God of the Bible was pre-programmed here! Wherever this abstinence from worship was conspicuous, it became dangerous for the Christians. Accordingly, they endeavoured to avert persecution by presenting their religion as politically reliable, morally upstanding and philosophically satisfying. The project of the intellectual defence of Christianity ("apologetics") was not least intended to show that the Christian faith was on a par with Platonism or Stoicism.
Interestingly, one of the most impressive testimonies of early apologetics is the dialogue between a Christian and a Jew. In his dialogue with the Jew Tryphon, the Christian Justin gave a brief outline of his educational background. He had studied Stoics, Peripatetics, Pythagoreans and Platonists, whereby the latter in particular had brought him closer to the goal of "seeing God directly" (Dialogus 2:6). But Platonism was not the goal of the journey either: An old man referred him to prophets who were older than the philosophers and had proven the truth of their teachings not through arguments, but through the fulfilment of their prophecies. Their teacher was none other than Jesus Christ. Justin was electrified:
"My soul began to burn, and I was seized with love for the prophets and those men who are friends of Christ. I spoke to myself about his [sc. the old man's] teachings and found them alone to be a reliable and useful philosophy" (Dialogus 8:1; transl. Ph. Haeuser).
The seeker has reached his goal, where he is gripped not only by the intellectual plausibility of a doctrine, but also by the authenticity of its proponents. Only now has Justin become what he always wanted to be - a philosopher. The fact that Tryphon, a Hellenistically educated Jew, ridiculed him for joining the Christians and their strange saviour did not bother him: Justin hoped that Tryphon would also recognise "that on the designated path it would be possible for every man to live well" (Dialogus 142.3).
For Justin, philosophical knowledge was therefore the means of choice to show that Christianity had its place in the ancient world. Christians believed and lived rationally, acted accordingly and were aware of this. In other words: the religious self relates reflexively to its present state (under temporal conditions), to God (as the origin of its supratemporal destiny) and to the connection between predetermination and determination, its biography. Such reflexivity is the result of educational processes.
But you had to get there first, as the aforementioned Tertullian stated: "We are from among you - one is not born a Christian, one becomes a Christian" (Apologeticum 18:4). No wonder: the young religion still consisted mainly of converts! The Christian self is not simply given, it has Jewish, Hellenistic, Roman roots; those who have travelled this path can clarify this for themselves and others. Tertullian plagiarised the philosopher Seneca here: "No one is born a wise man, but becomes one" (De ira 2,10,6). This does not primarily have to do with school education, but with paideia as the moulding of the whole of human existence, as a guide to the love of wisdom, to philosophia - and thus, as with Justin, to true and original education.
But then Christianity could become nothing other than an educational religion. The high point was marked by Origen, who taught in Alexandria and later in Caesarea in Palestine († 253). Origen believed that the "saints" - i.e. believers - resided in paradise after death "as a place of education and a lecture theatre, a school of souls" (De principiis 2,11,6). So not even death meant that the educational process was interrupted! According to his pupil Gregory Thaumaturgus, the aim of instruction was the "knowledge of the ultimate reason for everything", whereby the teacher acted as the "herald of the teachings of the Logos to men", to whom the Logos had entrusted the messages of God, as he had once entrusted them to the prophets of the Old Covenant (Panegyricus in Origen 13,150; 15,181; transl. P. Guyot). However, such God-inspired education includes the curriculum of dialectics, physics and ethics in order to recognise the world rationally and to penetrate to "rationally determined amazement". According to Origen, every human being had the disposition to live rationally as an image of the divine Logos. However, rational thinking and pious living had to be learnt, not by imitating the teacher or accepting knowledge that had been picked up: Origen severely criticised any belief in authority!
Education made an important contribution to the formation of the religious self and to the community of believers in Christ. Christians attempted to locate themselves in their world and at the same time distinguish themselves from it, and drew on the same sources of education as their contemporaries; this approach therefore had to be legitimised or - by its critics such as Celsus - delegitimised. Whether and to what extent Christians should or had to be scholastically and philosophically educated remained a question of life and death in the following centuries - and also led to internal controversies about the benefits and disadvantages of such education.
Dangerous knowledge and saving faith?
It was not easy with philosophy, neither in the apologetic nor in the internal Christian discourse. The aforementioned Tertullian vividly illustrates the problem:
"What do Athens and Jerusalem have in common, what do the Academy and the Church, what do heretics and Christians have in common? Our instruction comes from the 'Hall of Solomon' (John 10:23), who taught in his own person that one must seek the Lord 'in simplicity of heart' (Sap 1:1). Let those who have produced a Stoic, a Platonic, a 'dialectical' Christianity watch for themselves!" (De praescriptione haereticorum 7,9-11; transl. D. Schleyer).
Tertullian thus constructed a strong antithesis to "Jerusalem", the biblical place of God's dwelling with his people, and to the Church as the place where the message of Jesus Christ was handed down by the apostles and preserved by the bishops - and only there! Taking this educational scepticism seriously would have meant saying goodbye to philosophical discourse and public school lessons. And this is exactly what Tertullian demanded, as he considered being a teacher to be extremely dangerous for Christians:
"Undoubtedly the teachers are connected with many kinds of idolatry: they must proclaim the pagan gods, name their names and ancestry, explain their myths and attributes of honour, and finally they must observe their festivals and holidays, on which they receive their reward" (De Idololatria 10,1; transl. K. Vössing).
The diagnosis is clear: the school texts are not religiously harmless because they talk about gods on every page, and the wrong ones at that! However, a teacher cannot constantly distance himself from what he has to teach - that makes neither pedagogical nor theological sense. However, the parents of Christian pupils in Carthage disagreed with Tertullian:
"If the servants of God are not permitted to teach reading and writing, neither are they permitted to learn them; and how could anyone be guided to human understanding or to any knowledge or activity without this, since reading and writing are an important aid to the whole of life? How can we reject worldly studies without which religious ones cannot exist?" (De Idololatria 10,4).
Education was indispensable in everyday life: without these skills and knowledge, one would have entered a self-imposed ghettoisation - no one could make a career in the administration or military who did not seem to speak like Cicero or Demosthenes, and no one was allowed to count themselves among the top ten thousand of a city who could not decipher quotations from the Iliad or Odyssey. Grammar and rhetoric teachers did not think they were teaching anything religious: They ensured competent performance, no matter who paid homage to which gods. Tertullian's position, on the other hand, seems almost like "denominational religious education". Although children could be allowed to learn for his sake, anyone teaching "pagan" texts "undoubtedly recommends the interspersed praise of the gods... and now examine at length whether those who teach about idols are practising idolatry!" (De Idololatria 10,6).
Despite such admonitions, however, there were many Christians among pupils and teachers in late antiquity. The discourse critical of education did not reflect social reality, or only partially. If practically all the theologians who wrote tracts, sermons and interpretations of the Bible had not acquired a classical education, Christianity would hardly have been able to operate successfully in the public sphere after the persecutions had ended in the early 4th century! Nevertheless, the educational scepticism should not be dismissed as the mirror-image fencing of a few intellectuals. In all seriousness, it was about how and to what extent one wanted to belong, how one was involved in the world and where there was potential to mark distinctions.
The concept of "right use" (usus iustus) was developed in order to domesticate dangerous education and still profit from it. This suggested a distancing from that which was chosen for use, but also its courageous utilisation. Augustine explained this with reference to the gold and silver that the Israelites took with them when they left Egypt - to put it bluntly: stole! - (Exodus 3:21f.; 12:35f.):
"If those who are called philosophers happen to have said something true and pertinent to our faith, as especially the Platonists, then this must not only not be feared, but must even be claimed for our use by them as by wrongful possessors. For in the same way the Egyptians had not only idols and heavy burdens, which the people of Israel abhorred and fled, but also vessels and precious things of gold and silver, as well as garments, which that people secretly claimed for themselves, as it were for a better use, when they came out of Egypt, not by their own authority, but according to the command of God, while the Egyptians themselves in their ignorance left to them what they themselves did not use well" (De doctrina christiana 2,40,60; transl. K. Pollmann).
The use of education was explicitly legitimised here by a command from God - this shows how indispensable non-Christian knowledge was for an educational religion in statu nascendi. Maintaining a critical distance from this was de facto a great feat of reflection. The shock was all the greater when Emperor Julian, the last "pagan" as sole ruler of the Imperium Romanum, banned Christian teachers from public schools in 362 because they did not worship the gods appearing in the school texts - "then let them go to the churches of the Galileans to interpret Matthew and Luke!" (Epistula 61c; transl. B.K. Weis). This is exactly what the Christians did not want! Julian, who took up Tertullian's thesis of the incompatibility of the Christian faith with "pagan" literature in a quasi mirror image, was sharply criticised by Christian theologians (although his early death had rendered the edict null and void anyway). The Cappadocian theologian Gregory of Nazianzus († ca. 390) expressed this succinctly: "Although literature is common to all rational beings, Julian begrudged it to Christians as if it were his personal property. He, who imagined himself to be the most reasonable, thought most unreasonably about literature" (Oratio 4.4; transl. M. Fiedrowicz).
On the way to a "Christian" education
So it was not only external critics who denied Christianity the status of an educational religion - there were also enough sceptical voices internally. Do we ultimately have to say that Christianity was not an educational religion at the time of the Church Fathers? Not at all: Beyond the scepticism, various forms of educational activity were cultivated. From the very beginning, there were institutions of religious education to prepare people for baptism and then to guide them towards Christian life. Three forms of Christianity as a practical educational religion are outlined below: the catechumenate, preaching and monasticism.
The catechumenate
The fact that early Christianity should already be referred to as "education" is expressed in the fact that every person, regardless of age, gender or social status, was challenged to make an individual confession at baptism. They had to answer the baptismal questions three times: "I believe!" And what you believed should have been understood. You didn't need to be a theologian to be baptised, but you had to have understood the seriousness of the situation. There was exactly one chance to receive baptism, for which you had to purify yourself spiritually and practically. "Think of learning so as not to think of sinning", Cyril of Jerusalem († 387) admonished the candidates for baptism (Procatechesis 16). Becoming a Christian meant having experiences, i.e. first learning cognitively (the profession of faith), then receiving something (baptism and the Eucharist). The aim was to "become worthy of the mysteries as far as possible" in faith and action, as Theodore of Mopsuestia († 428) put it (Catecheses 16,31; transl. P. Bruns). The demand for individual co-operation in living the faith was expressed crystal clear by Cyril quoted above:
"Think of catechetical instruction as a building! If we have not dug deep and laid a foundation, if we have not erected a well-constructed building according to plan, so that no cracks appear and the building does not suffer damage, then even the initial effort is worthless... There are many teachings that are presented according to plan... If you do not put the teachings together into a whole and keep the earlier ones in mind at the same time as the later ones, then your building will show cracks despite the work of the master builder" (Procatechesis 11; transl. Ph. Haeuser).
The budding Christians therefore did not have to work alone, but were accompanied - by the bishop or catechists, but also by God himself: For alongside the "dogmatic" faith, which was taught in a crash course during the pre-Easter Lent period, faith was received as a "gift of grace" (Catecheses 5:10f.). The learning of faith is perfected through a spiritual gift; in this respect, God himself is the master builder of this faith. For Cyril, religion was therefore partly teachable - and partly God-given.
The basic structure of Jesus' missionary command remained decisive for catechesis: baptism was framed by instruction. This applied to adult baptism at a time when pagans were being converted "with the rapidity of a rolling wheel", according to Bishop Gaudentius of Brescia (Sermo 8:25). In the 5th century, infant baptism gradually became established; religious education first became a matter for the family (which it had always been in antiquity). The problem of catechetical follow-up work became all the more urgent when mass baptisms of "barbarians" took place in Gaul and other regions - the Christianisation of Christians became a new challenge for church education.
The sermon
Catechesis was embedded in Sunday and festival services, in which sermons were preached regularly. The appeal of Christianity for educated city dwellers lay precisely in such sermons. Augustine confessed that he first appreciated Bishop Ambrose in Milan for his gift of speech and only then as a "teacher of truth" (Confessiones 5,23). When he himself became a Christian and even a bishop, Augustine changed his mind: "It is better that we disgrace ourselves before the linguists than that the faithful do not understand us" (Enarrationes in Psalmos 138,20). His own sermons are an example of how Augustine actually tried to speak to the faithful in (comparatively) simple language. This posed a particular challenge for preachers in socially mixed congregations. Bishop Peter of Ravenna, known in the tradition as "Chrysologus" ("golden word"), expressly wanted to speak to all members of the congregation, including the ignorant and uneducated - and the educated were expected to comply:
"Speak to the people in the vernacular; address the congregation in the common language; say what is necessary to all in the manner of all; to the natural-minded in appreciative language with simple, to the learned with endearing [words]: For he who speaks teaches all something useful. So let the eloquent grant him today the unpolished language" (Sermo 43,1).
The order of the day was not to impress through oratory, but to use it carefully so that the sermon could have an effect. However, the preachers were not the only and certainly not the most important teachers in the congregation; rather, as Augustine explained, they were at the service of a higher one: "It is Christ who teaches. He has his cathedra in heaven... His school is on earth, and his school is his body. The head teaches his members" (De disciplina christiana 15). This relativised the role of the bishop as a teacher, who found himself in relation to Christ as a pupil and thus on an equal footing with the members of the congregation, whom he taught, as it were, only by proxy: "Although we are teachers from this place, we are pupils together with you under that teacher in this school" (Enarrationes in Psalmos 126.3). Augustine's reflections show that the co-operation of the faithful was also required beyond catechesis. In the church as schola christiana, the Christian faith was learnt lifelong and collectively. This integrated educational concept was a unique feature of Christianity in the world of late antiquity and an essential component of the Christian faith.
of this new religious foundation.
Monasticism
Finally, let's take a look at a group of categorical deniers of education: monasticism. Abstinence from education as an ascetic practice can already be found in the biography of the Egyptian Antony († 356), which was written by Athanasius of Alexandria († 373):
"As Antony grew up, became a boy and advanced in age, he refused to acquire education (grammata mathein) because he wanted to keep away from contact with other children. His whole desire was directed, as it is written, 'to dwell in his house uneducated' (Gen 25:27 LXX)" (Vita Antonii 1:2f.).
However, Antonius does attend a school, namely the church service:
"For he was so careful to read the Scriptures that nothing of what was written fell from him to the ground (1 Sam 3:19), but rather everything was preserved for him (Lk 8:15); and so memory became to him a substitute for books" (Vita Antonii 3:7).
Antony was regarded as a "theodidact", as someone taught directly by God, as Paul (1 Thess 4:9) had announced to the Christians (Vita Antonii 66:2), and thus as a successor to the apostles Peter and John, who had caused a sensation as "uneducated and uncultured" through their convincing speech (Acts 4:13). The Apophthegmata Patrum, the "Sayings of the Desert Fathers", and other monastic texts vary the motif of turning away from "worldly" education in favour of a closeness to God that was fed directly and exclusively from the Bible. While ecclesiastical Christianity had held debates about education, but rarely drew any conclusions from them, monasticism took the renunciation of idolatry seriously - or so it seems.
Of course, you have to take a closer look here too: Monastic texts contain learning techniques that originate from the ancient school; otherwise, memorising large parts of the Holy Scriptures would hardly have been possible. In addition, a concept of education emerged in monasticism that was aware of the similarities with school, but nevertheless claimed its own character. John Cassian († ca. 435) formulated this paradigmatically:
"There is no knowledge that does not have its own curriculum and its own method by which those who wish to master it can acquire it. Therefore, if the 'liberal arts', if one wants to make progress in them, are organised by certain and individual goals, how much more is the teaching of our religion and its explanation based on a certain order and method!" (Collationes patrum 14,1 ; transl. G. Ziegler).
A genuinely monastic form of education that should be characterised by methodical rigour: This was the approach of a truly Christian education. Monasticism even demanded that all monks and nuns had to be able to read in order to meditate on the Holy Scriptures. In Pachomian and Benedictine monasteries, the standard remained moderate, but Cassiodorus developed the concept of a comprehensive spiritual and secular education for the southern Italian monastery of Vivarium. For him, the often criticised eloquence was the strength of the great theologians of earlier times, whose spiritual interpretation of scripture "like twinkling stars let the ecclesiastical sky shine" (Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum 1.17). In the centuries that followed, this led to the monastery as an educational institution. But that is a story for another time.
The potential of religious education - beyond late antique Christianity
So what is the relationship between faith, knowledge and thought in early Christianity? It is clear that simple answers are not to be expected: In a religiously pluralistic world filled with education, Christianity found different ways to shape its identity. In this sense, Christianity is not only an educational religion, but also has a history of education - in which we still find ourselves today, after many further twists and turns.
Three final thoughts. Firstly: Christian faith is essentially thinking faith. Augustine formulated this in a fundamental way with a word from Isaiah:
"Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand so that you may believe, but believe so that you may understand; for "unless you believe, you will not understand (Isa 7:9b)" (In Ioannis evangelii tractatus 29:6).
Credo ut intelligam becomes the core idea of Western theology: it is not my thinking about God that stands at the beginning of rereligious education, but the received, unavailable faith.
Secondly, self-distancing from educational ideals and the utilisation of educational goods went hand in hand. This is shown by the topos of the "fisherman's sermon" (sermo piscatorius):
"Christ did not choose kings or senators, philosophers or orators; in fact, he chose common people, the poor, the unlearned and fishermen... Unless the fisherman leads in faith, the orator cannot humbly follow" (Augustine, Sermo 197,2).
This distancing should be taken seriously, but understood metaphorically: It was skilful rhetors who invented, quoted and developed this image. According to Jerome (Epistula 57,12,4), Christianity owed its success in the ancient world not to the ideal of "holy simplicity" (sancta simplicitas), but to its ability to deal creatively with its goods and gifts and to make something new, unique and enduring out of them.
After all, educational affinity and scepticism form a fruitful field of tension that is itself an expression of education. This is because education enables us to take a critical view of ourselves, God and the world. It is education that makes people human and even distinguishes them from animals - even "pagan" writers and Christian bishops sometimes agreed on this. We may put it less pathetically today. But the legacy of Christianity as a religion of education still characterises us.
