The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of Classical Education

For this interview Credo editor Matt Pitts reached out to Kyle Hughes of Christ the King Anglican Church to ask him questions about his life and work. Kyle Hughes is the author of Teaching for Spiritual Formation: A Patristic Approach to Christian Education in a Convulsed Age, Scripting the Son: Scriptural Exegesis and the Making of Early Christology, and the forthcoming Teaching for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Join us as we ask about his educational journey, his involvement in the classical education movement, the role of virtue in education, and his latest book.

How did you come to know Christ?

This is a really interesting question insofar as I think I would have given different answers at earlier times in my life. But as I now see things, if baptism is the sacramental means by which we are united to Christ (Rom 6:1-8), then that moment as an infant when I was baptized in my grandfather’s Lutheran church was actually the beginning of my life with God. The entirety of my life since then has been a process of learning to live into that baptismal identity. There have been high points and low points, of course, but I am grateful for this sense of never being able to recall a day when I haven’t known Christ. 

What was your educational journey like?

Unorthodox, let’s say. Coming out of high school, the world was my oyster, and I chose to go to the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in hopes of becoming some kind of Washington mover and shaker. But when God really got a hold of my life during my college years, I made a pretty radical course change by attending Dallas Theological Seminary after graduation. I like to joke that I should have at least been an international investment banker for a few years first, but alas. I went into DTS thinking that my future was in foreign missions, but here I again changed course to pursue an academic vocation, which eventually led to me completing a PhD in New Testament and Early Christianity at Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands). And to think that at the end of this whole journey, my primary work would be within the field of K-12 classical Christian education! 

How did you come to be involved in the classical education movement?

In a lot of ways, my interest in the classical education movement tracked with my post-seminary journey into Anglicanism. I had taken a job teaching high school history at a Christian college prep school to provide for my family while I finished my doctorate, but had become increasingly dissatisfied with the school’s indebtedness to modern educational trends (especially its embrace of digital technology in the classroom). At the same time, my theological studies had left me hungering for a deeper, more historically rooted approach to Christianity than the contemporary evangelical scene that had been my home until that point. And so in both Anglicanism and classical education, I found ways of maintaining ties with the past and preserving the best of our common heritage, a point that I think is genuinely necessary if we truly believe in “the communion of saints.” After all, we are connected, in Christ, to believers across time and space, who have passed down to us their collective wisdom in the form of beliefs and practices that have stood the test of time. We need to listen to them!

What do you think is attracting so many people to classical Christian education today?

There are a number of factors. A lot of parents sought out classical Christian schools during the pandemic simply to get their kids out of public schools. Many come to us intrigued by our very limited use of technology. Other parents look at our national education crisis and wonder if returning to some of the traditional ways of educating (like instruction in phonics and Latin) might still have value. At the deepest level, though, I think classical education’s emphasis on virtue formation rather than college or career readiness really resonates with a lot of parents. As was the case from classical antiquity all the way up until the reforms of progressives like John Dewey, the goal of education was understood to be training the soul to desire what is true, good, and beautiful—that is, to form a person with rightly ordered loves who would be able to know truth, live virtuously, and ultimately ascend to God. Especially in an era of rapid technological change, social upheaval, and disinformation, it is precisely this kind of classically educated person who will possess the wisdom and virtue needed to flourish as a human being.Especially in an era of rapid technological change, social upheaval, and disinformation, it is precisely this kind of classically educated person who will possess the wisdom and virtue needed to flourish as a human being. Share on X

Who has influenced your thinking on classical education the most?

As in many things, it was the Church Fathers themselves who had the most profound influence on me. When I was first reading John Chrysostom and Basil of Caesarea on education, I was immediately struck by how they were laser-focused on the primacy of cultivating faith and virtue in children. As I just mentioned, we tend to think of education as being about college prep or career readiness, but the Fathers, as was the case with the Greco-Roman tradition more generally, simply did not place the same weight that we do on these utilitarian considerations. This reframing of the purpose of education as formation in faith and virtue was the basis for all Western education until very recent times, and is now a central pillar of the revival of classical education today.

You have a new book coming out called Teaching for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. What makes those three terms – truth, goodness, and beauty – so important for education?

For the ancient Greeks, this process of educating children for faith and virtue (roughly captured by the Greek word paideia) was driven by the belief that the soul’s appetites or loves must be cultivated in accordance with what is true, good, and beautiful. This, in turn, followed from the notion that there is meaning and purpose in the universe; things like truth, goodness, and beauty, often described as timeless, universal “transcendentals,” exist outside of oneself and one’s preferences. Accordingly, as students contemplate the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, their souls are awakened to “real reality” and the way of life that flows from it. In a Christian context, we can see how these transcendentals all cohere in Christ, but we can also draw on things like natural revelation, art, and music to lead our students to the divine. As students contemplate the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, their souls are awakened to “real reality” and the way of life that flows from it. Share on X 

How would you describe the role the virtues play in education?

Like the transcendentals, the virtues play a central role in classical education; we seek to go beyond cultivating intellectual virtue to foster moral virtue as well. In the classical tradition, virtues were understood to be habits of right actions, and therefore they could be formed or inculcated by acting rightly. It is critical to note how this goes beyond simply teaching a Christian worldview. Rather, the work of virtue formation goes beyond the cognitive to include the affective and behavioral aspects of the child as well. Again, early and medieval Christians took an important part of the classical world and synthesized it with Christian revelation; the cardinal virtues of classical antiquity were reappropriated within a Christian framework alongside the new theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. As educators, we cannot predict what the future holds for our students, but we can trust that young men and women of virtue will be well-equipped for whatever God has for them.

In the introduction to your new book you mention the beatific vision (which might surprise some people). How is the beatific vision connected to a Christian education?  

If baptism is the sacramental means by which we are united to Christ (Rom 6:1-8), then that moment as an infant when I was baptized was actually the beginning of my life with God. Share on XThe beatific vision, which is the idea that our final destiny is to at last see God “face to face” in an eternity of contemplative union, provides an anchoring point as the final destination of the Christian life. This reminds us that our focus on forming students in faith and virtue is not an end in itself but is a means of leading our souls in ascent to God. The beatific vision thus motivates us both to know God and to love him. In other words, the universal human quest for truth, goodness, and beauty finds its end in God himself, calling forth our whole selves, our souls and bodies, to be “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1). Thus our classical Christian emphasis on virtue formation is not rooted in a rigid legalism but rather is located within this broader theological framework.

How are your previous book, Teaching for Spiritual Formation, and your new book related?

Teaching for Spiritual Formation was my first project connecting my scholarly expertise in historical theology with the practical work of Christian education. In that book, I focused on how the Church Fathers (fourth through sixth centuries) could help us think differently about the vocation of teachers, the nature of students, and choices about curriculum and pedagogy. Teaching for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty shifts the focus of study to the medieval period (eighth through twelfth centuries) and focuses more narrowly on applications for classical Christian education. Both books are guided by the presupposition that the present and future of Christian teaching and learning can be enriched by considering the wealth of insights from those faithful Christians who have gone before us and whose ideas have stood the test of time. I think readers will find that the books complement one another well, even though they have somewhat distinct points of emphasis. We are connected, in Christ, to believers across time and space, who have passed down to us their collective wisdom in the form of beliefs and practices that have stood the test of time. We need to listen to them! Share on X

How did you decide which Christians from the past you would draw on for your latest book?

I came into the book with a plan for which writers I wanted to analyze, but as I kept researching, I turned up unexpected sources that practically demanded to be included, even at the expense of my initial ideas. More than any other book I’ve written, I feel like this book “wrote itself,” and I was just along for the ride. The trick was to not limit myself to only those Christian writings explicitly addressing the topic of education; a medieval treatise on art, for example, can have profound things to say about spiritual formation and thereby speak into this conversation about training the affections and cultivating the virtues. 

One thing that I was particularly excited about in this volume was the opportunity to include female voices. While the patristic period has only minimal extant literature from women, for this book, I was able to include an analysis of Dhuoda, a ninth-century Frankish noblewoman, and Hildegard of Bingen, the twelfth-century polymath and Doctor of the Church. I hope that, if nothing else, readers of my books come away with a greater appreciation of our Christian heritage and are inspired to read further in the Great Tradition. 

Photo credit: byronv2