explain why you chose this theme or concept, and elaborate on how you might utilize the theme or concept in your teaching. Iden

Chapter 8

EUROPEAN ORIGINS OF

MODERN CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

THE ENuGHrENMENT IS DESIGNATED AS 1HE period between the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the French Revolution in 1789. This era was characterized by a continuation of Reformation humanism, whereby man was put at the center of the universe and allowed to be the supreme artisan of his destiny. It is marked by an emphasis upon the concepts of reason, science, progress, personal happiness, scientific inquiry, and the endowed rights of all mankind. Whereas the philoso- phies intrinsic to the Middle Ages were predicated upon the works of Aristotle and Aquinas's integration of theology and philosophy (faith and reason), the Enlightenment brought about a separation of these entities.

The worldview of the Middle Ages, the Medieval synthesis, rested on a dualistic conception of reality in which the natural order was viewed as somewhat inferior to the supernatural. The Reformation saw a reawakening of human interest in the awe of the supernatural order. The Enlightenment era saw theorists looking to nature to find clues on how life should be lived. Education was important in that, in the minds of the Enlightenment philosophes (philosophers), it prepared people to live according to the principles of nature. 1

1. Gerald L. Gutek, Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education: A Bio- graphical Introduction (Upper Saddle River, NJ.: Merrill Prentice-Hall, 2001), 110.

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The theme of the Reformation was developing a new paradigm for think- ing about God's relationship with His creation. No longer limited by the dysfunctional theology of unregenerate clergy, constricted by multiple layers of bureaucratic ecclesiastical hierarchy, or confined by the bonds of tradi- tion, the reformed church was free to enjoy a relationship with God typified by renewed vigor and vitality. The Enlightenment took this freedom one step further; it encouraged man to explore the world apart from God.

For many of the thinkers of the Enlightenment … it was important that human beings stopped gazing upward to heaven and begin look- ing at the natural world about them. They should observe and study natural phenomena and from their observations extract the prin- ciples needed to operate in the "real world." The principles of the natural universe could be discovered, the Enlightenment theorists believed, by means of science and use of the scientific method. 2

Newfound freedoms to think and act according to one's personal beliefs, as opposed to the prescribed expectations of the church, created an environ- ment ripe for new discoveries about the universe. Man was free to ask ques- tions that a few years earlier would have been used against him in a court of inquisition. All across Europe, men were testing new hypotheses about how things worked, how to make society better, and whether the church played a necessary role in the shaping of government and culture.

EUROPEAN CULTURAL CONTEXT OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Disillusioned by a thousand years of religious intolerance and man-cen- tered ecclesiastical institutionalism, society was left with two choices: reform the church with a focus on returning to the efficacy of the New Testament model (the intent of the Reformation theologians), or reject God altogether and establish a new worldview totally devoid of God ( the intent of the Enlightenment philosophes). Indicative of this attitude, the Enlightenment philosophe Voltaire stated in Candide, "Let's eat some Jesuit." Although to state that all Enlightenment philosophes were atheists would be incorrect, their perspective would be more accurately described as agnostic. They be- lieved in a higher power or universal force of some kind, but, they viewed

2. Ibid.

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this force as unknowable and impersonal. To them, whoever (or whatever) created the universe got the whole thing started and then simply left it to its own devices.

Enlightenment thinkers preferred the world of facts. Facts were drawn from observable behavior that could be tested and measured in controlled environments. The scientific method that we take for granted in our schools and laboratories today had its beginnings in this period. "In their investiga- tions of the natural world, the philosophes were vitally preoccupied in col- lecting scientific information about the world. Their enthusiasm for scientific research led them to develop such natural sciences as geology, chemistry, botany, zoology, and physics."3

The Enlightenment had profound sociological implications for countries all across the European continent. It threatened the monarchial reigns of national governments with its emphasis on free thinking. "Voltaire and Hume saw an intimate relation between politics, commerce, and religion. Freedom of trade and freedom of opinion, they said, were inextricably linked with civil freedom, and religious tolerance appeared to be linked to commercial prosperity." 4 These new ways of thinking influenced not only the European continent but also many of the Founding Fathers of the American Revolu- tion. We will return to this theme in chapter 10, our discussion of "Christian Education in Colonial America."

The Enlightenment offered a serious challenge to the theologians and Christian educators of its day as well. The Enlightenment philosophes were highly critical of the established church. By proposing that knowledge came from the senses, experience, reason, and feelings rather than from history, tradition, or a universal authority, the Enlightenment thinkers tended to un- dermine the theological and philosophical presuppositions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Christians. The response of many of those believers was to become overly defensive and argumentative. The Roman Catholic Church became particularly embroiled in debate with these philosophes and issued numerous declarations and condemnations of Enlightenment writ- ings. Eventually, however, the smoke cleared, and the church was able to look for the kernel of truth in their criticisms. In time, Christian scholars and church educators accepted some of the educational theories and practices of the Enlightenment thinkers. The most renowned of these pre-Enlightenment

3. Ibid., 151. 4. Peter Gay, Age of Enlightenment (New York: Time, 1966), 103.

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and Enlightenment thinkers included the French philosophes Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau; the English scholars Newton, Locke, and Hobbes; the German philosophers Kant and Lessing; the Scottish philosopher David Hume; and, in the United States, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.5

Time and space will not allow a detailed examination of each of these indi- viduals, but a brief overview of the most predominant philosophers will provide the reader a general feeling of what the Enlightenment period was all about. We will consider them in chronological order (as opposed to geographic proximity) to illustrate how the thoughts and impressions of one influenced those who came later.

5. John L. Elias, A History of Christian Education: Protestant, Catholic, and Or- thodox Perspectives (Malabar, Fla.: Krieger, 2002), 127-28.

6. These terms have been defined in countless philosophy texts. Some of these specific definitions have been extrapolated from a variety of sources. Included among them are the following: James M. Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1957); Nicholas Horvath, Essentials of Philosophy (Woodbury: Barron's Educational Series, 1974); Jack Terry, Edu- cational Philosophy (Dallas: Maple Springs, 1982); and Warren Young, A Chris- tian Approach to Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954).

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7. The concept of realism has undergone conceptual changes over the centuries. For example, Platonic or conceptual realism is actually closer to modern ideal- ism than to modern realism. It assumes that the "real" is the permanent or unchanging. See Harold H. Titus, Living Issues in Philosophy (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970), 243.

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EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHERS

In England, the transition from respect for religion to skepticism began with a group of Cambridge Platonists. In response to the contentious bicker- ing of various denominational sects that had developed (e.g., Waldensians, Hussites, Lollards, Albigensians, Puritans, and Anabaptists), they proposed to reduce the essential teachings of Christianity to its basic fundamentals. According to these rationalists, Christianity was essentially the practice of reason, the demonstration of virtue, and mystical contemplation. Reason and faith were not seen as contradictory but rather complementary. Reason was viewed as the road to faith; faith enhanced reason. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, this rationalist theology was continued by a larger community known as Latitudinarians. Some of the most prominent British clergymen of that time were associated with this movement. Latitudinarians denounced the use of unbridled emotion, which was being advocated by revivalist preachers. Instead, they espoused and defended the use of reason. They stressed the ethical conduct of man, which would be demonstrated by good deeds, moral behavior, and civic contributions. 8

Chief among these British Latitudinarians was a philosopher named John Locke (1632-1704). Although he is known more for his contributions to the field of educational psychology, Locke was considered one of the Enlightenment's major predecessors. As a seventeenth-century philosopher born in Somersetshire, England, he experienced the embryonic start of the Enlightenment soon after the Glorious Revolution, in which the Catholic monarch James II was unseated from the throne, thereby allowing a Protes- tant succession. Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity encouraged a more tolerant attitude toward the many religious sects that had emerged from the Reformation, except for atheists and Roman Catholics. According to Locke, miracles were simply natural occurrences that only seemed to be supernatu- ral because they lay outside the bounds of human understanding. Although he did not deny that Christianity was a viable religion, he did argue that Christianity could be reduced to one essential tenet: Jesus Christ was the Messiah. Everything else was, in the words of Locke, "fiction, merely the invention of superstitious or power-hungry priests." 9 His philosophical per-

8. Gay, Age of Enlightenment, 32. 9. Ibid.

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spectives set the tone for the theological beliefs of the Church of England throughout the eighteenth century. 10

As applied to education, Locke's ideology espoused a philosophical em- piricism that held to the supremacy of reason over religious faith, revelation, and tradition. His basic assumption was that human nature was not innate at birth but was the result of environmental influences that came about through- out one's life. Virtue was not endowed but communicated through various experiences along life's path. At birth, a child possessed what Locke called tabula rasa, or blank slate. Impressions were put on this slate as a result of one's interaction with the environment. Although Locke has been credited with popularizing the concept of tabula rasa, it was first used by Plato in a

10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 37.

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metaphorical sense as a waxed tablet. Aristotle used the metaphor of a piece of writing paper to express the relation of potential to actual reason. Descartes used the phrase but only in passing and not with the same meaning that Locke later espoused. Interestingly, Locke himself did not use the phrase, although he speaks of the mind as being a white sheet of paper upon which "imprinting" sensations on the mind were made. 12

Locke began by rejecting the idea of innate ideas. He thought that all knowledge came from experience. By experience, Locke meant two things: sensations, which come from man's interaction with the material world around him/her; and reflections, which result from the mind's operations upon the sensations. To Locke, nothing entered the intellect that did not first come through the senses. Sensation and reflection are the sources of all ideas from which subsequent human thought originates. From his suggestion that thought was merely the putting together of ideas came the Association-Connectionist school, which became a dominant force in psychology for many years. 13

Much of the intellectual life of the Enlightenment grew out of investiga- tions and discoveries made in the natural sciences. Sir Isaac Newton (1642- 1727) probably typified this perspective more than anyone else of his day. He published Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687, build- ing upon the monumental advances made by the sciences during the Refor- mation. In it, he postulated the "laws of nature," which became the scientific gospel until the late nineteenth century. Among these "laws" were the law of gravitation and the law of cause and effect. As a result, the universe became known as an orderly system immune from supernatural intervention. To Newton, the world was, for all intents and purposes, a well-oiled machine running on autopilot and immune from divine intervention. This view later evolved into philosophical materialism, which stated that nothing existed apart from atoms, which operated according to mechanical and mathemati- cal natural laws. The opposite viewpoint, held by such idealists as Bishop George Berkeley of the Church of England, held that the world was purely spiritual and mental. As such, material substances were merely a figment of our imagination and changed their qualities as our ability to understand

12. James M. Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology ( Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1957), 660.

13. Warren Young, A Christian Approach to Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954), 108-9.

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them changed. 14 What was needed during this time of public scientific de- bate was someone who could bring together these two opposing sides in one coherent dialogue. The man who would do this was a French philoso- pher named Franyois Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778).

Voltaire held to a deist worldview, which taught that God was the Su- preme Creator of the universe, but once He set the universe in motion, He stepped back and remained aloof from the daily operations of His creation. It wasn't that He was incapable of intervening but that He chose not to do so. To intercede in the affairs of the world would be to conclude that God had made a mistake and needed somehow to improve or correct His error. Deism held no room for miracles, prophecy, the deity of Christ, or the Bible as God's revelation to man. Although Voltaire broke from the viewpoint of traditional Christianity and embraced Newtonian science, he did not wander as far as materialism. 15 For this reason, he was viewed as a moderating voice between Newtonian science and materialism.

In France, Voltaire was concerned about the injustices he had observed among the masses. He rejected forms of government led by perverted kings and priests and believed that education was the key to releasing man from the bondage of his intellectual ignorance. He championed the cause of the destitute and worked tirelessly to advance the cause of social justice and equality of rights. He was known for his wit and took advantage of opportu- nities to share it with those around him. A sample of such would include the following quotes: 16

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens and giving it to the other.

Marriage is the only adventure open to a coward.

I have never made but one prayer to God: "O Lord, make my en- emies ridiculous." And God granted it.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

14. R. Freeman Butts, A Cultural History of Education: Reassessing our Educa- tional Traditions (New York: McGraw Hill, 1947), 319.

15. Ibid. 16. Gay, Age of Enlightenment, 59.

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All the reasoning of men is not worth one sentiment of women.

Men use thought only to justify their wrong doing, and employ their speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Voltaire had strong personal opinions about the need for educational and political reform. Because education would free the masses to enjoy their pitiful existence, he wanted education to be more accessible to them. Voltaire would not have advocated a Christian education per se because he was a deist and did not believe in a personal deity but rather one marked by scien- tific methods of inquiry and characterized by justice and equality for all of its participants. His personal philosophy had a profound impact on the Found- ing Fathers of the American Revolution across the Atlantic.

In England, David Hume (1711-76) carried the banner of deism although he was viewed as being more temperate than Voltaire. Born into a Scottish family living in Edinburgh, Hume published numerous articles on the sub- jects of philosophy, ethics, economics, and politics in a three-volume work titled Treatise (1739 and 1740). Although that work "fell dead-born from the presses," as Hume lamented, it became a popular text soon after his death. Expanding on the views expressed in Treatise, he subsequently wrote An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding (1748), An Enquiry Con- cerning the Principles of Morals (1752), and Dissertations on the Passions (1757). Although Hume never won much acclaim for his writings in the field of philosophy, much to his personal disillusionment, he did win a great deal of respect and admiration for his writings in the field of history. His History of England (1754) allowed him to enjoy a good deal of financial gain. With his newfound wealth, he traveled to France where he acquainted himself with the French philosophes. After a season of interaction with Voltaire, Diderot, and Helvetius, Hume returned to Edinburgh, where he busied him- self writing the controversial Dialogues Concerning Natural Religions. He completed that work but chose not to have it published until after his death in 1776. Hume arranged in his will for its publication, and his nephew pub- lished it in 1779.17

Hume is viewed as one of the most influential philosophers of modern times. He rejected the world-machine concept of Newton and the theologi-

17. Sterling P. Lamprecht, Our Philosophical Traditions (New York: Appleton- Century-Crofts, 1955), 325-26.

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cal explanations of biblical creation. He was an open-minded inquirer into the world around him and uncommitted to any particular viewpoint. He was even known to argue against his own conclusions in part because he did not want to offend his reader and because he himself was somewhat uncertain about them. In the three volumes that he published between 1748 and 1751, he openly criticized his earlier material found in Treatise. He was open to criticism and was even willing to take the lead in discrediting his own think- ing. "Hume's unorthodox views in religion and politics gained him great notoriety, so that by the time he retired he was generally known as 'the gentle sceptic' and the 'great infidel."' 18

Perhaps no other individual so personifies the philosophes of the Enlight- enment as does Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78). He was born in Geneva to a watchmaker, Isaac Rousseau. His mother died when he was just nine days old. His father preferred to educate his son outside the bounds of traditional schooling and chose rather to guide him through the reading of numerous classical books such as Ovid's Metamorphoses, Plutarch's Lives of Famous Men, and Plato's Republic. As a result of an altercation with the law, his father abandoned him, and he spent the rest of his childhood years being shuffled between foster homes. Perhaps that was why he chose an orphan boy as the principal character in his novel Emile. In his early adolescent years, he sought employment under the tutelage of the town clerk, to whom he was apprenticed as a notary. After being fired for lack of attention to the finer details of the job, he began an apprenticeship as an engraver. Rousseau claims he was mistreated at the hands of his supervisor so at the age of sixteen, he ventured off to begin life on his own.

He wandered through Europe trying to determine how best to spend his life. After a brief pilgrimage in Italy, he ventured to Savoy, where he became the beneficiary of a wealthy widow named Madame de Warens, who con- verted him to Roman Catholicism. For a brief time he seriously considered becoming a priest. Soon after venturing to France, he tested the waters in the fine arts. Skilled in music, which he had learned while living with his benefactress, he wrote several operas and ballets and began a career as a music teacher. He never seemed to find personal fulfillment in this vocation, however, so he accepted a position as secretary to the French ambassador in Venice. He was dismissed from that job as a result of quarreling with his

18. Richard H. Popkin and Avrum Stroll, Philosophy Made Simple (New York: Made Simple Books, 1956).

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superiors. With no place to go, he returned to Paris and lived a life of reck- less abandon, leaving behind several illegitimate children. In addition to those children, he fathered five children through a mistress named Therese Levasseur, an illiterate servant girl. Each child was subsequently deposited in a local orphanage.

During this period of his life, he became friends with several prominent French philosophes, chief among them being Diderot. In 1750, the Academy of Dijon awarded Rousseau a prize for his essay on the question of whether the development of the sciences and the arts had contributed to the im- provement of morals. Rousseau's position on the subject was that man, in fact, deteriorates as civilization advances. He believed that the soul of man actually became more corrupt as a result of the advances of science and the arts. He advocated a return to more primitive methods of social order and civil development.

In this climate of self-criticism Jean Jacques Rousseau worked out his ideas for a better society-ideas that were widely misunderstood in his own time and continue to be so today. Partly this was Rousseau's own fault. Morbid and suspicious, he turned against all his friends and turned his friends against him. Also it was partly the fault of his prose, which is lively and epigrammatic in style, and invites quota- tion out of context. Thus he got the reputation for being a utopian dreamer who wanted to do away with organized society and go "back to nature" and the state of the "noble savage."19

Although Rousseau wrote a number of significant works covering a wide range of topics, most noteworthy for our emphasis on educational philoso- phy was a novel titled Emile. Some people have viewed this work as a dis- course on child development, whereas others dismiss it as an unrealistic attempt to espouse a utopian model for restructuring society. Emile was a young orphan who grew under the care of a tutor. Removed from the poten- tially damaging effects of society, the child was exposed to nature, where his natural inclination toward moral behavior could be cultivated. The book begins by revealing its philosophical intentions: "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of Things; everything degenerates in the

19. Gay, Age of Enlightenment, 62.

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