The Purpose of Education

Education is one of the intrinsic goods of human existence. At the very core of our being is a desire to know, not just a few things, but all things. Evidence of this desire can be seen in the expressions of knowledge from the sciences to the arts--to enter into debate with this precept is to already prove its presence. This quest for truth engages all dimensions of the person: mental, physical, and spiritual. Therefore, education must be oriented towards the holistic formation of the person. Who we are and who we become is affected by what we know.

As a young man St. Augustine seems to have identified a certain benefit of philosophy, at this time he admits that he did not read and learn merely to sharpen his style but to receive substance and content. He viewed this new perspective on the purpose of education as a turning point in his spiritual life by which this emphasis changed his feelings, prayer, values, priorities, and reset his gaze toward the “immortality of wisdom.” Augustine learned to enjoy truth for its own sake rather than for some pragmatic and utilitarian end. Education should primarily be about seeking this “immortality of wisdom.”

Education always instructs the individual how to view the world. This usually occurs informally within the household and more formally within an institution of learning. The type of importance that society places on education has obvious affects on children. People spend countless hours creating methods and styles to teach. A certain seriousness and urgency for education has become a humanitarian cause, but often the fundamental question as to the aim of this instruction is neglected.

The educational task should not be a mere transferring of information, but should directly and indirectly teach individuals in the art of living a good life. Virtues like self control, discipline, seeking the common good, and most important of all, humility, are inherent to the educational process. If they are not in some form present, even in most secular institution, then education is impossible. Every student must stand in a relationship of receiving from without the self from another or they cannot learn. Every instructor must be open to understand who their student is or they cannot effectively teach. Education is much more about interaction within a community, dialogue, and reciprocity than gaining intellectual means to succeed. However, the latter goal is usually overemphasized in modern society. These virtues have roots in the Socratic education which involved knowing the truth about fair, just, and good things in order to help order the society towards the common good and ideal state. The implication is that a person will be rich with happiness because he has a good and prudent life and will be able to impart this knowledge through leadership and example. This, in turn, will help structure society by preventing turmoil and encouraging peace.

The Enlightenment movement of the rise of rationalism has created a problem in the academy whereby people are taught a compendium of knowledge so that they know a little bit of everything, but they should be educated in such a way that they can educate themselves in whatever they will need to function in society. Education has become too enamored with a philosophy of doing rather than a philosophy of being. Curriculum should not exalt technical knowledge over other forms of knowledge. The arts and humanities are possibly more important the sciences. While sciences may help us in understanding physical aspects of the world in which we live and even physical aspects of the self, the arts and humanities help us tap into the mysteries of human nature.

Education must place balanced values on both practical and speculative experiences so that the individual may be well integrated and able to communicate their knowledge. One of the growing difficulties with education today is that we have more fields of knowledge that individuals must develop. To confuse things more, society tends to value only those individuals who can advance in these fields and produce more technical methods than others produce. Those that are incapable of competing in these technological driven fields fall through the cracks all the time. The worth of a person should not be determined by function, yet this theory of utility permeates throughout educational institutions. The end of education is not knowledge of how things work but to enable the person to achieve wisdom about what they should do.

While being wealthy and famous is not inherently wrong, there is a problem when social approval becomes the dictum of the good life and we institutionally stress the importance of education only as useful in procuring wealth and fame. Education should not be primarily viewed as a means of wealth, social superiority, and power over others. Too long education has been used to divide. Education viewed properly can unite by helping build community in as much as it fosters a student’s ability to think, create, and communicate within a spirit of humility. A burden of responsibility always accompanies truth. The truth we know requires us to respond accordingly and education is a gift that better enables us to serve others.

A little Augustine on Pantheism, Evil, and Platonism

Before Augustine became a Christian he had to overcome some serious intellectual problems. One of Augustine’s problems was his material conception of God. Even though Augustine did not conceive of God in the shape of human body he imagined him as something pervading all physical space of the world and continuing infinitely outside the world. Peter Kreeft calls this the ‘blob god’ because it envisions God as some sort of cosmic blob that encompasses everything. Augustine’s understanding of the real was limited to the external world of space and time, materialism, by which anything beyond lacked real existence. This hypothesis created a pantheism by which the more matter something contained, the more God it contained. Thus an elephant contained more God than the sparrow.

Since Augustine envisioned God surrounding and permeating all real and imagined bodies yet infinite in all directions, Augustine struggled to understand how evil originated. The second problem Augustine faced, the existence of evil, challenged him to question the corruptibility of God and/or creation. Influenced by Manichaeism, Augustine fought the idea that evil substances exist parallel to the existence good substances, and our souls suffer evil by becoming enslaved in flesh. This dualism made “it more acceptable to say your substance suffers evil than that their own substance actively does evil.” (Confessions).

Augustine dealt with the problem of evil and his sponge theory of God by reexamining the nature of God and creation. Based off the premise that God is the highest good and the incorruptible is better than the corruptible, Augustine concludes that God is incorruptible, immaterial, immutable, and evil cannot originate in God. God as the supreme Good makes all creation good, but created beings are lesser goods in comparison to God. Furthermore, neither evil nor matter could pre-exist God because this would make him less omnipotent by his reliance on something co-eternal to himself. God would no longer be the supreme Good.

Influenced by platonic philosophy and through a process of inspection, Augustine turned inward to his own mind. He went from external bodies to inward perceptions next ascending to his power of reasoning. In his reason he saw the power of judging values and discerned the immutable light, God, which transcended his mind and made his knowledge possible. In the hierarchy of being Augustine imagined God as the supreme good, man as a lesser good which could have immaterial ideas, and the rest of material creation as a lesser good but without immaterial ideas. God did not make all things equal, but he did make them all good. God is not infinite in the physical sense, but he holds all creation in existence by his power. Nor does He suffer the evil that creation does.

Evil is not a substance in itself but a corruption of something created good. Augustine links evil to a perversion of the will. All created things are good by the nature of their existence. Wickedness is “a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance, …God, towards inferior things” (Confessions). Evil is choosing lower goods over the greatest good, God, by which the will orients itself towards nothingness.

The intellectual conversion of Augustine came when he started to focus inward rather than towards the external and temporal world of space and time. Platonic books and philosophy helped him make this transition. In fact, platonic philosophy gave him a perspective and context by which he could understand God’s transcendence; of course Augustine would not inherit the pagan beliefs of the Greeks. With other Church Fathers, like Irenaeus, Augustine was willing to accept truth wherever it was to be found, even in pagan texts, but not to the exclusion of true belief in Christianity and God. In a way, Christianity gave Augustine the content of his thought and platonic philosophy gave him a way to think about it. But philosophy itself cannot provide the fundamental truths about God nor provide the grace and humility that one needs to understand these truths.

Thanksgiving: "It is right to give Him thanks and praise."

The Angelus (1857-1859), Jean-François Millet

Next week, I’ll conclude my three-part post, “God Desires Our Human Love and Its Perfection.”

On this Thanksgiving Day, I must first give thanks to God for the Parousians – for the community we have been blessed with, for our friendships, for our intellects and talents, for the gift of our education, for the intercession of our patrons, for Holy Mother Church, for our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, for all the priests who have made the Sacraments available to us, and most of all, for our salvation, for Christ's presence in the Eucharist, and for God’s grace and His good work in us that He has promised to bring to completion (Philippians 1:6).

God has blessed us abundantly, indeed. As we affirm each time we attend Mass, "it is right to give Him thanks and praise." Absolute gratitude, offered in humility, is the only appropriate response to the perfect love we see on the Cross and in the Blessed Sacrament.

I’ll leave you with these quotes about gratitude from some of our favorite saints and writers. In all humility, let us thank God with them for His many blessings.

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” – G. K. Chesterton

“In all created things discern the providence and wisdom of God, and in all things give Him thanks.” – St. Teresa of Avila

"I sing praise to You, my Lord, for all You have made, especially for Brother Sun, who brings the day and through whom You give us light." – St. Francis of Assisi (Canticle of the Sun)

“As part of the spiritual worship acceptable to God (Romans 12:1), the Gospel of Life is to be celebrated above all in daily living, which should be filled with self-giving love for others. In this way, our lives will become a genuine and responsible acceptance of the gift of life and a heartfelt song of praise and gratitude to God who has given us this gift.” – Pope John Paul II (Evangelium Vitae)

“God has been wonderful to all of us. He has given us so many beautiful opportunities to put our love for God in living action. So let us show our gratitude by loving one another, as Christ loved each one of us.” – Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

“Gratitude is characteristic only of the humble. The egotistic are so impressed by their own importance that they take everything given them as if it were their due. They have no room in their hearts for recollection of the undeserved favors they received.” – Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

"O my God, let me remember with gratitude and confess to thee thy mercies toward me. Let my bones be bathed in thy love, and let them say: 'Lord, who is like unto thee?’ (Psalm 35:10). Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder, I will offer unto thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving (Psalm 116:16-17). And how thou didst break them I will declare, and all who worship thee shall say, when they hear these things: 'Blessed be the Lord in heaven and earth, great and wonderful is his name’ (Psalm 8:1)." – St. Augustine (Confessions)

“I give thanks to You, Holy Lord, Father almighty, everlasting God. Not through any merit of my own, but only through the goodness of Your mercy, You have considered me – a useless servant – worthy to be nourished with the precious Body and Blood of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.” – St. Thomas Aquinas

“We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is ‘good,’ because is it good, if ‘bad,’ because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world, and the hope of our eternal country.” – C. S. Lewis

“For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come. Through Him, then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.” – St. Paul (Hebrews 13:14-15)

God Desires Our Human Love and Its Perfection, Part Two

Last week, I looked at a couple of passages from Thomas Merton's Dialogues with Silence and began to explore the seeming paradox that God desires our imperfect human love but also desires its perfection. To recap: God desires us even in our sinfulness; as St. Paul points out, Christ died for us "while we were still sinners" (Romans 5:8). He wants us to love Him humanly - to love Him however we are able, and we are only able to love Him imperfectly - so that He can show us His great mercy. God desires our human love, yet at the same time, He calls us out of our sinfulness to sainthood, to perfect holiness. We are sinful human beings, yet as Christians we are to be perfect "as our heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

Misconceptions abound among different Christian denominations about the possibility of this perfection in love and holiness, and I want to examine a few of them - but first, let's try to make more sense of this "seeming paradox" and turn to Chapter 15 of the Gospel of John.

"I am the true vine... Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:1, 4-5)

It sounds simple enough - we share in Christ's life, and consequently we bear the fruit of love, which manifests itself in holiness and good works. If we cannot humbly acknowledge that we need God's grace, if we lack the humility to see that we can do nothing without His help, we cannot bear fruit.

We glorify God by bearing the fruit of love (holiness and good works); and in a sense, when we bear fruit, we prove our discipleship. "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples" (v. 8). We cannot divorce discipleship - our identity as followers of Christ and people who belong to Him - from the necessity of living a holy life, rooted in love and good works, that "bears much fruit."

Christ goes on to tell us: "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love" (v. 9-10). Christ has loved us - He has put His love into us - so that in turn He can command us to love as He loves, which He does in verse 12: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." Christ commands us to love one another as He loves us, that is, to love perfectly. Of course, we know that we cannot even think of loving perfectly without God's grace, so Christ reminds us that He has first called us to love and gifted us with grace:

"You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another." (John 15:16-17)

In other words, Christ chose us first, and He gives us everything so that, in our nothingness, we can bear the fruit of perfect love and holiness and aspire to be saints. He has set before us an ideal, but not an impossible one - if He gave impossible commands, He would not be loving or just, and we know He is the perfection of both.

Next week, I'll examine two timeless heresies about the possibility of saintly perfection: one deems it impossible, even with God's grace; the other says it's naturally possible for everyone (humans can achieve it on our own). Until then, let us pray with St. Augustine:




There can be no hope for me except in Your great mercy.
Give me the grace to do as You command,
and command me to do what You will...
O Love, ever burning, never quenched!
O Charity, my God, set me on fire with Your love! ...
Give me the grace to do as You command,
and command me to do what You will.


(Confessions, Book X: xxix)