Dateline: June 7, in the year of our Lord 2022
Both the Miseducation of America and Battle for the American Mind have popularized the term “Paideia”. Paideia is the centerpiece of classical Christian education. Ephesians 6-- "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord"-- is speaking of Paideia. Now, your Bible may say "education" or "instruction" or "training", but the older translations are better on this word. They took into account the true meaning of the word Paideia to those who heard it in the 1st century. That's why this is a twin command-- Don't provoke to anger, but do raise them in fear… "Anger", "Fear", "Admonishment"… is this a little too harsh or negative?
When was the last time you heard a sermon on "fear the Lord"? You probably can't recall, but if you had, the sermon probably had phrasing like: "Now, 'fear' here means something like respect" or "'fearing the Lord is old testament language." or "fear can also be translated…" The one thing you almost certainly won't hear is "Our God is a God of Wrath. Jesus didn't come to save us from Satan, He saves us from God's own anger. While we can call God "abba father", we should do so with fear. Our father is Holy and demands the same from us." Jonathan Edwards famously preached this way (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God), but we've moved on from that old, dusty gospel. An historical view helps us understand education and this lost vision.
In the first century, the culture spawned philosophers like today's culture spawns tattoos and protestors. Every culture transmits an answer to one important question: How do we know what's true? Today, we have a high trust of science and tend to embrace personal autonomy as a source of truth. In the first century, adherence to one of several truth systems was the order of the day-- especially for educating children. You have to appreciate a culture that valued truth so much, it was the centerpiece of childrearing! Each of these systems provided a context for how one viewed the world. Greeks had long been lovers of various philosophical thought-lines-- epicureans, gnostics, stoics-- and those who never seemed to land their ideas-- the sophists. Of course, Ephesus was a Hellenistic city. But, even for the Hebrews, this Hellenistic philosophy was the water in which they swam, with stoicism as a favored form. And, of course, Hebrews had their own forms with theological differences between Hebrew sects like the Pharisees, Sadducees, or Essenes.
In the 1999 film, The Matrix, a red-pill/blue-pill choice gained so much cultural identification that it has become a meme for the sudden change in perspective, or in how we know what's true. In the film, one pill let you view the world as you had assumed it to be, and the other pill showed you an unknown truth-- that you were living in an illusion. In the first century, the two pills were an Aristotelian pill, which viewed the physical world as the ultimate reality, and the Plato-pill, which saw our physical world as a ghostly illusion. The similarities invoked by Hollywood are probably not accidental. Variations of these pills were in the thought-systems listed in the previous paragraph. Paideia, then, was the "pill" you gave your child through education to align with the prescribed school of thought. It taught children a particular way to discern truth.
To perpetuate these truth systems in their children, fathers often hired Paidagogos-- translated as teachers. These teachers were often slaves, or occasionally among wealthier aristocrats, they were scholars. Their job was to apply strict discipline to young children, assuring that they would practice and think in the tradition of the family (the father) and advance in society. This often involved harsh correction with the rod. Children were expected to think a certain way, and if they didn't, they were provoked-- both through harsh argument and a rod of correction. So, through a fear of their Father (or his designee-teacher), children were taught to accept a truth system.
From this context, Paul changes the game. Rather than make the object of fear the Paidagogos and by extension, the flawed, earthly father, Paul says to raise children with a different kind of paideia-- where the subject of fear is the Lord, and the object of Instruction is the Kingdom of God. As the verse goes on, we can see Paul return to instruction-- as "putting on the full armor of God", reflecting the elements of education: He casts our struggle not against flesh, but against the spiritual evil (you won't get this view in the public school), he begins with truth, continues with goodness (righteousness), and with faith, and, of course, salvation and the word of God. He groups all of these into "The mystery of the gospel" ( v. 19). Education, then, is the enculturation of our children to a "full" understanding of the gospel-- applying it not just to salvation, but to the truth about everything, the essence of goodness, the strengthening of faith, and the study of the word of God, preparing children to fight in a battle of spiritual dimensions, not fleshly ones.
What a prescription! Especially for this cultural moment. How shall we respond to the crazy evil of our day? We should teach our children how to "pollute the shadows" of our times, by rediscovering paideia-- the Christian way to educate.