The Protestant Reformers and Classical Education

“Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it” (Jer. 6:16; ESV). Proponents of classical education—whether secular and so unwittingly, or Christian and so wittingly—apply the divine mandate to “ask for the ancient paths” to the task of education. They turn to previous centuries and millennia to discover not only the great thinkers and great ideas that have shaped Western civilization, but also time-tested, reliable methods of transmitting truth and wisdom (i.e., the “good way”) from one generation to the next. In a modern context of rapidly evolving educational approaches driven by utilitarian pressure to produce cogs in the machinery of American consumerism, advocates of classical education aim, like teachers of ages past, to equip students to live well. An end achieved, to their thinking, by giving students a traditional “liberal arts” education; an education, that is, that properly frees (“liberal” coming from the Latin liberare, “to free”) students from their natural bondage to ignorance and animalistic instinct, so permitting them to flourish both individually and socially.

The revival of classical education in America—a revival still gaining momentum—is often traced to the work of John Erskine, Mortimer Adler, and Robert Hutchins in the 1920s and 30s. These scholars developed “great books” university courses (i.e., courses comprised of Socratic discussion on the most influential writings in Western civilization) and helped codify the Great Books of the Western World series first published by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1952.[1] Their labors ultimately spawned “honors” programs in various universities as well as new academic institutions whose entire curricula were rooted in the “great books.” Works on education by two British luminaries, Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Lewis, in the 1940s further contributed to a push toward recovering classical education, especially in primary and secondary schools.[2]

But the modern revival of classical education has, of course, deeper roots. Pivotal voices in the perennial task of educating students were looking “for the ancient paths” long before the early twentieth century. The Protestant Reformers—Martin Luther, John Calvin, et al.—were some of the earliest proponents of classical education in a form not too distant from its modern expression. The role the Reformers played in relation to present-day classical education is easy to overlook, with their status as religious reformers tending to eclipse their status as educational reformers. But that role should, arguably, be noted as a task that requires: 1) observing the enthusiastic reception of classical learning by the Reformers; 2) observing the theological rationale that informed the Reformers’ enthusiastic reception of classical learning; and 3) observing the role that the Reformers played in promoting and establishing Protestant schools—primary, secondary, and tertiary—that embodied their enthusiasm for classical learning.

The Protestant Reformers’ Reception of Classical Learning

The Reformers encountered classical learning in and through a historical phenomenon that today we call “Renaissance Humanism.” Renaissance Humanism was an intellectual movement that, as its name would suggest, piggy-backed upon the broader, late-medieval “rebirth” of culture (art, architecture, etc.) that swept through Europe from the 14th century onward. Just as Renaissance artists (think Michelangelo, Raphael, or Da Vinci) looked to ancient architecture, painting, and sculpture for inspiration, humanist scholars looked to ancient authors and ideas for inspiration.

Of course, this required access to those ancient authors and ideas. At the heart of the humanist movement, therefore, was a recovery of texts that had been lost to Western civilization for many years and renewed interest in the languages necessary—especially Greek, Hebrew, and Latin—to access those texts. The Italian scholar Petrarch (d. 1374), often referred to as the “father of humanism,” famously stumbled upon various Latin manuscripts—for example, numerous works by Cicero—that were accumulating dust in medieval monasteries, overlooked by monastic copyists in favor of Sacred Scripture or medieval writings. Numerous Greek manuscripts that had been lost to the Latin West following the dissolution of the Roman Empire found their way into Western Europe as Greek scholars fled the medieval expansion of Islam. With these recovered Latin and Greek texts in hand and the study of ancient languages requisite to read them, the humanist cry “ad fontes!”—back to the sources—took form.

Humanists turned to ancient writings not to champion—at least as a movement—any specific ancient philosophy (Platonism, Stoicism, etc.) or particular branch of knowledge (theology, medicine, law, etc.) but to champion ancient ideas per se as well as the rhetorical skills that ancient writers employed to advance those ideas. The movement—known to its proponents not as “humanism” but as studia humanitatis (“studies of humanity”)—grew and reached its zenith in the early sixteenth-century work of Desiderius Erasmus (d. 1536). As it grew, of course, it profoundly shaped the curricula and pedagogy of Europe’s universities. And thereby, it profoundly shaped the academic experience and thought of the Protestant Reformers.

When Luther arrived at the University of Erfurt in 1501, humanism was in its proverbial heyday. Ancient Greek and Latin poetry was all the rage, and the university boasted of publishing the first book in Greek typeset (a Greek grammar) in all of Germany.[3] Luther’s first degree in liberal arts was richly informed by humanism, but his later training in theology—following his famous decision to join the Augustinian monastic order—followed a more traditional scholastic route. Luther compensated for that fact in his private theological study and eventual work as a Reformer by making good use of humanist literature (e.g., Erasmus’s Latin-Greek parallel Bible of 1516, a thoroughly humanist publication that revolutionized early modern biblical studies) and surrounding himself with scholars with stronger humanist credentials (most notably, Philip Melanchthon).

Those Reformers who contributed to a version of Protestantism distinct from Luther’s brand—namely, “Reformed Protestantism”—drank more deeply from the humanist well, both in their private study and their academic training. Ulrich Zwingli received a humanist training at the universities of Vienna and Basel; Johannes Oecolampadius at the universities of Bologna, Heidelberg, and Tübingen; and, of course, John Calvin, a second-generation Reformer, at the University of Paris.

The classical learning the Reformers received through their humanist training colored every aspect of their thought and writing. The classical learning the Reformers received through their humanist training colored every aspect of their thought and writing. Click To Tweet One need merely pick up their works for evidence of this; the writings and letters of these men are peppered with references to ancient authors, allusions to classical mythology, and linguistic considerations relative to Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. Calvin, in fact, aspired to a career as a humanist scholar prior to his conversion, a fact that bore fruit in his first publication in 1532, a commentary on the Roman philosopher Seneca’s De Clementia.[4] God, of course, had different plans for Calvin, but Calvin’s appreciation for classical learning and the tools (e.g., the ancient languages) necessary to access classical learning remained unabated after he somewhat grudgingly turned his efforts to pastoral work in Geneva. One evidence of this is the dedication of his commentary on 1 Thessalonians (1551) to Mathurin Cordier, Calvin’s Latin teacher from his earliest days at the University of Paris. Calvin’s deep appreciation for Cordier was rooted in the fact that Cordier, in teaching him Latin, had equipped him to access the best of ancient pagan authors in addition to theological writings and commentaries of church fathers and medieval theologians.

The Protestant Reformers’ Theological Rationale for Classical Learning

It would, however, be a mistake to think that the Reformer’s enthusiasm for classical learning was merely a product of their milieu. It was principally a product, rather, of theological convictions they shared regarding general revelation, humankind’s creation in God’s image, the intellectual aptitude that belongs to human beings by virtue of that creation, and the precise impact of sin upon human thought. Calvin, true to form, articulated those convictions better than anyone in his Institutes of the Christian Religion and, in that process, reconciled the inherent optimism regarding humankind that characterized Renaissance Humanism with the inherent pessimism regarding humankind that characterized the Reformers’ shared inheritance of Augustine’s anthropology and hamartiology.

In dealing with the effects of the Fall on human intelligence and understanding in the second book of his Institutes, Calvin makes a critical distinction: “There is one kind of understanding of earthly things; another of heavenly.”[5] As he goes on to explain, an understanding of “heavenly things” comprises a proper understanding of God (including his Triune Being), as well as the way of salvation. These are, according to Calvin, matters that can only be known by divine revelation (as opposed to unaided human reasoning). They are, equally, matters that unregenerate human beings will necessarily convolute and oppose in their thinking. This point in Calvin is, of course, standard Augustinian fare.

But Calvin continues by insisting that (unregenerate) human beings demonstrate incredible ingenuity and clarity of thought about “earthly things,” a category that comprises, in his words, “government, household management, all mechanical skills, and the liberal arts.”[6] He proceeds by providing examples of human ingenuity in each of these subsets, showing how “secular writers” (think the Great Books of the Western World series) have proven apt at, for example, theorizing about effective forms of government or formulating laws for nations. After surveying the accomplishments of pagans in these various subsets, Calvin concludes with a warning to believers: “If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth”—by which, in this context, Calvin means not truth revealed in Scripture, but truth discovered through human intelligence and learning—“we shall neither reject [that] truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall be appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God.”[7]

To the trained theological eye, of course, these comments merely demonstrate that Calvin was no biblicist. In other words, he didn’t believe that Scripture is the sole repository of truth relative to, say, political science, economics, chemistry, or aviation mechanics. Indeed, to all appearances, he didn’t seem to think Scripture has much to say at all about “government, household management, all mechanical skills, and the liberal arts.” He believed, rather, that God has gifted human beings with the intellectual gifts necessary to collectively arrive at genuine “truth” in such non-theological fields of study and that we have a moral responsibility not only to celebrate those intellectual gifts but also to harness them for the common good.

For the purposes of this essay, however, we should observe that Calvin, with his distinction between “earthly” and “heavenly things,” essentially provided a (theological) rationale for classical studies. He provided, that is, a rationale for teachers, throughout the centuries, to invite their students into the “great conversation,” exploring the ideas of Western civilization’s great thinkers on a wide range of topics—political science, economics, biology, literature, etc.—toward the ultimate end of human flourishing both individually and socially. The doctrinal considerations informing Calvin’s rationale for classical studies were common to the Reformers more broadly and, as such, explain their enthusiasm for the classical learning mediated to them through the humanist movement.

The Protestant Reformers Impact on Post-Reformation Education

That enthusiasm for classical learning was ultimately embodied in the schools—primary, secondary, and tertiary—the Protestant Reformers promoted as part of the post-reformation phenomenon that historians refer to as “confessionalization.” Confessionalization names the efforts of Protestant Reformers (in conjunction with civil magistrates) to wean the people of a given state off medieval Romanism/superstition, and to inculcate within them evangelical (i.e., Protestant) convictions, and to invite them to reflect those convictions in their homes, churches, places of work, etc. To cite a common truism touted by historians of confessionalization, it’s one thing to make a nation Protestant (by, say, legal process), it’s another thing to make a Protestant nation (i.e., to convert the masses and align a nation’s practices with Protestant convictions). The Reformers recognized early on that schooling plays a critical part in the process of forming Protestant nations.

Thus Luther, in 1524, wrote his Address to the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Schools, a work which one nineteenth-century scholar called “the most important educational treatise ever written.”[8] Luther, true to form, had opinions on nearly every aspect of education. He advocated, in the form of state-sponsored schools patterned after ancient Greek and Roman academic models, universal education for German boys and—rather progressively for his time—girls, an education comprising languages, biblical studies, and the liberal arts. He specifically pushed for more history in the curriculum of his proposed schools, noting that the German people’s lack of morality—that is, their reputation as “beasts who know only how to war, gorge, and guzzle”—was rooted in a lack of national identity, which identity could only be fostered by teaching the German people their story (i.e., their history).[9] And, finally, he advocated—much in the vein of Dorothy Sayers in the 20^th century—pedagogical practices tailored to the age and aptitude of students; he specifically insisted that teachers should harness, for pedagogical purposes, the inclination of young children to “leap and jump,” thus promoting what classical educators today would call “embodied learning.”[10]

Germany’s civic leaders listened to Luther on this score. Hundreds of schools were established in 16^th century German Protestant territories, modeled in large part, at least, upon Luther’s advice. Those schools embodied the enthusiasm for classical learning that lay at the heart of Luther’s educational proposal, combining training in the “liberal arts” with the study of ancient languages and Scripture. As various northern European nations embraced Protestantism over the course of the next several decades, they, in turn, followed Germany’s lead in establishing schools that promoted Protestant doctrine and introduced classical learning, the prerogative of a select few in late medieval Europe, to an ever-growing percentage of the population.

Many of those academic institutions—not only primary and secondary schools but places of higher learning—remain with us today. Calvin’s Genevan Academy, founded by the Reformer in 1559 as a center for theological training, eventually became the University of Geneva. The expansion in the 17th century of the Genevan Academy’s degree programs beyond theology was not, as often depicted, a capitulation to enlightenment thought at odds with the Reformer’s original intention. It was, rather, a very natural development of the Reformer’s enthusiasm for humankind’s divinely-gifted intellectual capacity to explore “earthly things” as noted above. It was, in other words, a natural development of Calvin’s enthusiasm for classical learning.

In conclusion, the Reformers were connoisseurs of classical learning, which they encountered in and through their humanist training. The Reformers were connoisseurs of classical learning, which they encountered in and through their humanist training. Click To Tweet They provided, in their writings, a theological rationale for their enthusiasm for classical learning. And they transmitted their enthusiasm for classical learning to their Protestant heirs in the form of primary, secondary, and tertiary schools that embodied that enthusiasm. In light of this, I would argue that the Reformers, in addition to whatever other monikers they wear, deserve recognition as pioneers of classical (Christian) education in its present-day form.

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Notes:

[1] Great Books of the Western World, 60 vols., 2^nd edition, ed. by Mortimer Adler et al. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990).

[2] See especially Dorothy Sayers, The Lost Tools of Learning (Crossreach Publications, 2016), and C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (HarperOne, 2015).

[3] See Julius Köstlin, The Life of Martin Luther, trans. by John Morris (Lutheran Publication Society, 1883), 49-58.

[4] For a fuller and more nuanced account of Calvin’s humanism, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Christian Humanism of John Calvin,” in Jens Zimmerman, ed., Re-envisioning Christian Humanism: Education and the Restoration of Humanity (Oxford University Press, 2016).

[5] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. by John T. McNeill (Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 2.2.13

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., 2.2.15.

[8] F.V.N. Painter, Luther on Education, including a Historical Introduction and a Translation of the Reformer’s Two Most Important Educational Treatises (Lutheran Publication Society, 1889), iii.

[9] Idem, 208.

[10] Idem, 198.

Photo Credit: Eric Hunt