The Relativization of Classical Education

In July 2019 I had the privilege of attending the CiRCE National Conference. The topic that year was “A Contemplation of Form,” and the event was nothing less than a celebration of absolutes in a world of relativism. The conference opened with a panel discussion designed to “set the tone for the conference,”^[1] and set the tone it did. The topic was a poem by Edmund Spenser entitled “An Hymn of Heavenly Beauty,” and I remember best the comments spoken by panelist David Hicks.

Mr. Hicks drew our attention to a line towards the end of the poem where Spenser writes, “All other sights but feigned shadows be.” He explained that this line was evoking the cave of Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher who gave us the forms. The world our senses perceive, he theorizes, is just a shadow projected on the wall of cave. The poet urges his readers to leave the cave and enter the sunlight, that they “may lift themselves up higher, And learn to love, with zealous humble duty, Th’ eternal fountain of that heavenly beauty.” In short, that they may look beyond the unsteady and unstable earthly realm to gaze instead upon the absolute and unchanging heavenly realm of the forms.

That introduction began three days of reveling in the absolute. Presenters spoke of forms in philosophy, in literature, and in music. They spoke of an age before the reductionism of science and the irreverence of criticism. And the unspoken assumption through the conference, so it seemed, was that classical education too is a form. Unlike progressive education, which has no anchor and continually reinvents itself, classical education is fixed and sure, as unyielding and unchangeable as the past itself.

It is natural to think of classical education as a form. After all, early Christians embraced its tenets not out of some kind of filial respect for their pagan ancestors, but because they believed that its tenets were true. Indeed, Fr. Thomas Hopko of St Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary explains that while “the Orthodox have been accused of being Hellenistic,” in actual fact “they firmly deny [this accusation] while affirming that their church fathers …  spoke the language, used the categories, and engaged the issues of their day.”^[2] The concern for the church fathers was not respect for pagan tradition but respect for truth.^[3]

That being said, when the church fathers did find truth in the pagan tradition, they did not hesitate to adopt it. And one notable example is the alleged truth about the seven paths to knowledge. Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1096–1141) explains:

Out of all the sciences above named, however, the ancients, in their studies, especially selected seven to be mastered by those who were to be educated. These seven they considered so to excel all the rest in usefulness that anyone who had been thoroughly schooled in them might afterward come to a knowledge of the others by his own inquiry and effort rather than by listening to a teacher. For these, one might say, constitute the best instruments, the best rudiments, by which the way is prepared for the mind’s complete knowledge of philosophic truth. Therefore they are called by the name trivium and quadrivium, because by them, as by certain ways (viae), a quick mind enters into the secret places of wisdom.^[4]

Throughout most of church history, these seven ways, or arts, were no mere matter of opinion. They were understood to be embedded in the nature of reality. They were, to put it simply, forms.

An early example of this regard for the trivium and quadrivium as absolute and eternal truth is found in the writings of Cassiodorus (c. 485–585). Karla Pollmann observes that “for Cassiodorus … the liberal arts have an autonomous status:”

… They are neither increased by expansion nor diminished by contraction nor modified by any changes, but they abide in their proper nature and observe their own rules with indisputable constancy. [Cassiodorus Institutiones 2.3.33]^[5]

Cassiodorus appealed to Scripture as evidence for the fixed nature of the seven liberal arts:

Let us understand plainly that whensoever the Holy Scriptures mean to set forth anything as entire and complete, as they frequently do, it is comprehended under that number [seven], even as David says, “Seven times in the day I have spoken praises unto thee,” and Solomon, “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.”^[6]

Andrew Fleming West comments on his argument:

Here is a new reinforcement coming from Scripture itself. … Cassiodorus uses [the fact they were seven] as though it were a new one in connection with the arts, and however slight it may seem to us, it became forcible enough to the mystical-number worshippers of medieval times. The arts are seven and only seven. But this is the scriptural number for what is complete and perfect, and therefore the Christian must hold them in due honor.^[7]

This Scriptural argument was not unique to Cassiodorus. When Charlemagne wished to promote education in his realm, he chose the monk Alcuin of York (c. 730–804) to be his primary advisor.^[8] “Thanks to the influence of Alcuin,” writes Carl. R. Trueman, “the seven liberal arts became the foundation of Western higher education.”^[9] But Alcuin’s selection of the seven liberal arts was no arbitrary or pragmatic decision. Rather, “Alcuin … saw the arts as the seven pillars of wisdom”^[10] described in Proverbs 9:1.

In the next century, Remigius of Auxerre (c. 841–908) reiterated the conviction that the trivium and quadrivium enjoyed a fixed and unchanging ontological status. “The seven liberal arts … will never perish in any way,” he wrote, “for even if knowledge should fail, the knowable will always exist.”^[11] Even though knowledge itself may be contingent, that which is knowable is not. For Remigius of Auxerre, the seven liberal arts transcend knowledge itself.

In the twelfth century, Hugh of St. Victor testified to his faith in the fixed nature of the seven arts. Although he did not appeal to Scripture, he nevertheless asserted that all seven arts, and only these arts, were essential for learning. In his Didascalicon he explained:

It is in the seven liberal arts, however, that the foundation of all learning is to be found. Before all others these ought to be had at hand, because without them the philosophical discipline does not and cannot explain and define anything. These, indeed, so hang together and so depend upon one another in their ideas that if only one of the arts be lacking, all the rest cannot make a man into a philosopher. Therefore, those persons seem to me to be in error who, not appreciating the coherence among the arts, select certain of them for study, and, leaving the rest untouched, think they can become perfect in these alone.^[12]

According to Hugh of St. Victor, one cannot simply approach the menu of arts and make a private selection on the basis of utility or taste. The trivium and quadrivium had a special internal coherence which gave them an objectively unique status.

This robust tradition surrounding the seven arts drove later Christian thinkers to anchor the status of the trivium and quadrivium in the absolutes of Christian theology and revelation. A notable example is Martin Fotherby (c. 1560–1620), who was the Anglican bishop of Salisbury from 1618 until his death. His book Atheomastix was published posthumously in 1622, and contained the fascinating argument that the Trivium has three arts because God is three persons:

There is Logos, Verbum: and that is Grammar. There is Logos, Ratio, and that is Logic. And there is Logos, Oratio: and that is Rhetoric. … So that as in the Trinity it may truly be said; That the Father, is God; the Son, is God; and the Holy Ghost, is God: So may it be said, in the Trinity of those arts; That Grammar, is Logos, Logic, is Logos, and Rhetoric, is Logos, … For, as in the Trinity, the Father doth beget the Son, and they two produce the Holy Ghost: so, in this other Trinity, Logos, Ratio, doth beget Logos, Verbum; and they two produce out of them, another third Logos, which is Oratio.^[13]

According to Fotherby’s reasoning, the trivium is as fixed as the Godhead Himself; one could no more add or remove an art from the trivium than one could add or remove a person from the Holy Trinity.

Fotherby goes on to anchor the quadrivium in the works of God and in the Holy Scriptures:

Now, under the name of Mathematics are comprehended four Arts: Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music, Which Mathematical Arts and sciences … were practiced by God, in his creation of the world. He used Arithmetic, in knitting all the innumerable parts of the world, in one body together: Geometry, in giving unto every one, his proper form and figure: And Music, in joining them, in so concent-full an harmony, each of them with another. Unto which Mathematical conceit, doth … that place in the Book of Wisdom directly to allude: That God hath made all things, in Number, Weight, and Measure: referring Number, to Arithmetic; Weight, unto Music; and Measure, to Geometry.^[14]

Note Fotherby’s reference to Wisdom 11:20 in the King James Bible: “thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight.” David Parry of the University of Exeter explains the bishop’s logic:

Fotherby’s apologetic, which reasons from the world of human learning to God as well as from the external natural world to God, presupposes a fundamental correlation between the organisation of knowledge in the traditional liberal arts curriculum and the divinely ordered organisation of reality.^[15]

If Fotherby had been at the CiRCE conference he would surely have insisted that the set of seven arts is a form — for all people of all times and all places, there are no other foundational arts but these.

Belief in a metaphysically privileged status for the trivium has persisted to modern times. A recent example is Stratford Caldecott’s highly regarded 2012 volume entitled Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education. Caldecott finds the trivium to be a natural expression of the transcendental properties of being. In writing of “unity, truth, and goodness,”^[16] he notes:

These three transcendentals correspond with the three phases or elements of the Trivium: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. For as we have seen, at the most profound level these involve an awakening to unity in being, known as truth, and communicated in goodness.^[17]

Caldecott identifies the final transcendental, beauty, with the trivium and quadrivium together:

What, then, of beauty? Beauty pertains to the liberal arts as a whole, and in its highest form may even be identified with the glory of God and with that Wisdom which is the ‘Mother’ of the seven arts of freedom.^[18]

It is important to understand that Caldecott is not simply claiming that grammar, logic, and rhetoric are representative dimensions of wisdom. Rather, he is saying that they are the constituent elements of a finite set of seven. One could no sooner add a fourth art to the trivium than one could add a novel quality to the transcendentals of being. In the foreword by Anthony Esolen, the count of three is further established by the nature of God Himself:

How decisive for the Christian educator, or for any educator of good will, is the revelation that man is made in the image and likeness of the three-Personed God? … It is no accident that Caldecott has structured his plan for a true education upon the three ways of the Trivium, which themselves reflect the three primary axes of being, revealed by God: of knowing, that is to say giving; of being known, that is to say receiving; and of the loving gift.^[19]

Caldecott explains the link between the trivium and the quadrivium in his earlier book Beauty for Truth’s Sake:

The “purpose” of the quadrivium was to prepare us to contemplate God in an ordered fashion, to take delight in the source of all truth, beauty, and goodness, while the purpose of the trivium was to prepare us for the quadrivium. The “purpose” of the Liberal Arts is therefore to purify the soul, to discipline the attention so that it becomes capable of devotion to God; that is, prayer.^[20]

It would appear that the author considers this self-referencing architecture of arts to be immutable. If the trivium were altered, how could it adequately support the quadrivium? And if the quadrivium were altered, how could it properly lead the soul to God?

This brief survey shows how from ancient times to the present day, many thinkers have assigned an autonomous status to the seven liberal arts. However, it must be acknowledged that the trivium and quadrivium originated in ancient Greece, and so only those cultures which have had some contact with Greek heritage and literature have been able to discover this set of arts. Some, however, have found a providential explanation for this fact.

For example, David Hicks’s celebrated 1981 Norms and Nobility traces the unfolding of the liberal arts tradition in classical Graeco-Roman civilization. After seven chapters of reverent exposition, Hicks closes Part I with a final chapter entitled “The Promise of Christian Paideia.” Here he explains the providential transmission of the arts from pagan Greece to Christian West. He writes that “Christianity injected a hopeful note and rewarded the classical tradition’s strivings for a link between right thinking and right acting.”^[21] The strong implication is that God chose the Greeks to discover and steward the trivium and quadrivium until they could be passed on to Christian thinkers who would find their fulfilment through unification with Christian theology.

This would explain Brent Pinkall’s observation about the modern Christian classical education movement:

Contemporary resources on classical Christian education almost unanimously suggest that the classical Christian tradition is by definition a Western tradition rooted in the Greco-Roman world. “Classical educators take responsibility for the Western tradition.”^[22] “The classical method was born in ancient Greece and Rome.”^[23] “It is a long tradition of education that has emphasized … the study of the liberal arts and great books.”^[24] “The Classical education movement advocates a form of education based in the traditions of Western culture.”^[25] The curriculum consists of philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, poets like Homer and Virgil, historians like Herodotus and Livy, and theologians like Augustine and Calvin. It encourages the study of Latin and English. The seven liberal arts are at its core.^[26]

Of course the seven liberal arts are at its core! For centuries they were understood to be necessarily derived from reality, from the way things really are. Indeed, even the Charlotte Mason community has traditionally understood classical education in this light. Karen Glass writes:

The very word “classical” hearkens back to the ancient world of Plato—of Greece and later Rome. We speak of “classical art,” “classical architecture,” and even “classical languages” because they have their origins in the historical period we call classical. The classical tradition of education has its roots in Greece and Rome as well.^[27]

If the trivium of grammar, logic (or dialectic), and rhetoric is an intersection of three roads, those roads intersect around language—words. The four roads of the quadrivium intersect around numbers or mathematics, which are a language of their own. This gives us a glimmer of the synthetic nature of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. They are not altogether discrete studies. “All roads lead to Rome” in this case means that all the “ways” of the trivium progress toward that greater synthetic understanding of the world, which leads to wisdom.^[28]

With all this in mind, I was expecting no surprises when I took to my seat in the auditorium for the CiRCE National Conference in July 2019. In alignment with the conference headline, “A Contemplation of Form,” I was fully expecting to witness the unfolding of a timeless and unchanging form, a form called classical education.

Classical Education Redefined

The big surprise for me came on the last day of the conference. The mid-morning plenary session was a “Q&A Panel” featuring Andrew Kern, Adam Andrews, Jennifer Dow, Heidi White, and Christopher Perrin. In the discussion in response to one of the questions, I was intrigued and surprised to hear Adam Andrews say that classical is not the same as Christian. Then he made the extraordinary statement that Chinese Christians would not be doing classical education. I was stunned. If classical educators believe that the trivium and quadrivium are rooted in the very nature of reality, and even in God Himself, why would they not be utilized by Chinese Christians?

Andrews’s puzzling remark foreshadowed a book that has seismic implications for the theory of classical education. Imagine a reputable classical education publisher producing a book that overturns everything that Cassiodorus, Alcuin of York, Remigius of Auxerre, Hugh of St. Victor, Martin Fotherby, Stratford Caldecott, and others have asserted about the autonomous status of the seven liberal arts. Imagine that this book instead asserts that the trivium and quadrivium are intended only for members of a specific cultural tradition. That they should be employed for the honor of one’s ancestors rather than for any inherent link to truth. That the arts are not forms. In short, that they are relative. And then imagine that this book is warmly explicated and endorsed in a glowing foreword by leading classical education theorist Dr. Christopher Perrin.

This is what happened in 2022 with the publication of Redeeming the Six Arts, by Brent Pinkall, published by Roman Roads Press. With this book, Pinkall and Perrin have once and for all relativized classical education. It is henceforth no longer a form.

The groundwork for this relativization was laid by Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain in their 2013 book The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education. To be fair, much of the book attempts to make a case for the autonomous status of the liberal arts. For example, it attempts to equate the quadrivium arts of arithmetic and astronomy with the modern concepts of the discrete and the continuous in mathematics. Furthermore, the authors assert the absolute necessity of at least one of the liberal arts for any seeker of truth:

Therefore, the study of the original languages, historically understood as within the liberal art of grammar, remains an essential tool through which to access reality.^[29]

Nevertheless, in the final chapter of their book, Clark and Jain introduce a new rationale for classical education:

Moreover, from Genesis through the New Testament, injunctions to honor one’s parents pervade the Bible. The recovery of tradition is really just a simple way of preserving the stories, habits, and culture of our parents and their parents before them. It is a recovery of the fifth commandment… Our schools must be Christian first. The classical focus then arises out of a school’s Christian commitment, not as a colorful adjunct to it. Obedience to the fifth commandment involves being pious to one’s heritage and thus for the citizens of the West that means respecting medieval and classical culture.^[30]

Unlike their predecessors, who promoted the trivium and quadrivium because they were thought to align with the fundamental nature of reality, Clark and Jain here promote classical education as a way to honor our ancestors. In their novel exegesis of the fifth commandment, they find in the words “Honor your father and your mother”^[31] a sweeping injunction to be “pious” to one’s entire cultural heritage. We are told to embrace the trivium and quadrivium in our education not because they are essential or true, but because they were utilized by our ancestors. At least those of us who are “citizens of the West.”

This shift in rationale for classical education is breathtaking. The seven liberal arts are no longer essential for all people at all times. They are merely a devotional tool by which “citizens of the West” may express a holy piety for their ancestors. Our relationship to the liberal arts is relative to our relationship to the West. Classical education has been relativized.

This new definition of classical education raises two profound questions:

1. What if our ancestors were wrong? What if the trivium and quadrivium are not, in fact, the best way to teach and learn? Must we use this framework simply out of piety and devotion to the fifth commandment?
2. What if we are not citizens of the West? How then should we educate?

In Redeeming the Six Arts, Pinkall and Perrin take Clark and Jain’s relativized definition of classical education to its logical extreme. In the introduction, Pinkall closely echoes Clark and Jain:

Classical Christian education per se is not a curriculum of specific texts, languages, or subjects. It is an approach that seeks wisdom by inquiring of one’s own fathers. It is obedience to the Fifth Commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother.” For Christians in the West, this amounts to teaching the arts and literature emphasized by our European ancestors.^[32]

Pinkall immediately follows this definition, however, with a prescription for those who are not “citizens of the West”:

Christians in China, however, come from a different bloodline. Their Christian fathers are the same as ours, but their cultural fathers are different. Their curriculum, therefore, must also be different.^[33]

Pinkall proposes not only a different curriculum but a different foundation. He proposes that Chinese Christians organize their education around the traditional Chinese arts of rites, music, script, calculation, archery, and charioteering.^[34] These six arts, of course, bear no resemblance to the seven arts of standard classical education. Nevertheless, in light of the mandate of the fifth commandment, they are the way to truth … for some Christians.

Pinkall justifies this stance by saying that “Jesus did not come to make the world Western. He came to make it Christian.”^[35] But the same could of course be said of Cassiodorus, Alcuin of York, Remigius of Auxerre, Hugh of St. Victor, Martin Fotherby, and Stratford Caldecott. They did not promote the trivium and quadrivium because they wanted to make the world Western. They promoted the seven liberal arts because they believed that by these arts, and by these arts alone, could reality be apprehended and education conducted.

In the foreword, Christopher Perrin underwrites the relativization of Clark, Jain, and Pinkall. “The six arts,” he writes, “like the seven liberal arts, are doorways leading to truth.”^[36] Using the precise language of relativism, we are told that all roads ultimately lead to the same destination. Six arts or seven arts, archery or arithmetic, you’ll get to the truth. If, that is, you honor the right ancestors.

Choosing which ancestors to honor may be tricky. Perrin implies that the term “classical education” no longer stands alone but must be coupled with a cultural modifier. Hence he writes, “both Chinese and American classical education will be renewing and embodying the same ideas—truth, goodness, beauty.”^[37] If Chinese classical education follows the six traditional Chinese arts, what does “American classical education” follow? Why should Americans follow the seven liberal arts that came from Greece and Rome? Why should Americans look to Rome any more than to China? Pinkall makes a strong case that Chinese Christians do not need to study the Greek and Latin classics in order to live out their faith. Why then would American Christians?

Pinkall categorically insists that “Chinese Christians simply do not need a thorough knowledge of Western classical literature in order to understand Christianity or the writings of the church fathers.”^[38] If this assertion is granted, then why is Western classical literature needed for anyone to understand Christianity? Pinkall recounts the ambivalence of 19^th-century missionaries to this very literature:

When protestant missionaries convened at the second General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China in 1890, one of the main topics they discussed was Chinese Christian education.
…
Most of these men had received a classical Western education, and yet none of them believed that Chinese Christians needed to study the Western classics in order to receive a thorough Christian education. In fact, they believed that in many regards the Chinese classics were superior to the Western classics…^[39]

If the Chinese classics were superior to the Western classics, why withhold them from American students? According to Pinkall it is a fallacy to demand that our children read what the Church Fathers read. He summarizes this argument and then rejects it:

The church fathers encouraged studying Cicero, so Chinese Christians should study Cicero. The church fathers encouraged studying Latin, so Chinese Christians should study Latin. The church fathers embraced the schema of the seven liberal arts, so Chinese Christians should embrace the seven liberal arts. If the Chinese church wants to raise up its own Augustine, Boethius, Calvin, and Lewis, shouldn’t it provide the same education in Western civilization that these men received? This sentiment is understandable, but I believe it is mistaken.^[40]

“Chinese Christian schools must not think that being faithful to the classical Christian tradition means teaching the same knowledge our Christian fathers taught,” he concludes.^[41]

Pinkall similarly rejects instruction in Latin as an inherent component of classical education. He explains that “Christians in the Middle Ages … taught Latin because it was one of the most common languages at the time.”^[42] There is no special quality to Latin that commends it to Chinese students. He reasons as follows:

Quintilian promoted the study of Latin because Latin was the mother tongue of the Romans. It was the primary language people used in everyday life. Applying this same principle, we can safely assume that if Quintilian lived in China, he would emphasize the study of Mandarin, for Mandarin is the mother tongue of the Chinese people.^[43]

If Pinkall’s reasoning is accepted, then one must ask what language Quintilian would emphasize if he lived in 21^st century North America. Given that English is “the primary language people used in everyday life,” then we have our answer.

Pinkall anticipates and responds to another argument that could be used to justify having American students learn Latin:

Some may argue that Chinese Christian children should study Latin because of its Christian roots. Many of the greatest Christian classics were written in Latin. But Chinese children do not need to know Latin in order to read them. Most of these classics are already translated into English, many even into Chinese. Even students in America who study Latin generally prefer reading the classics in English.^[44]

Pinkall reasons that “if we want our students to master the art of language, we should not teach them many different languages superficially but one or two languages thoroughly.”^[45] Applying this reasoning to the American context would suggest that classical schools should teach English, Spanish, and perhaps French. Better to learn these languages thoroughly than to learn Latin superficially.

Once classical education is redefined in relativistic terms, what was once taken for granted is now open to question. Why Latin? Why Western literature? But as we shall see, these implications are only the beginning.

The Implications of Relativizing Classical Education

To his credit, Perrin begins to acknowledge the implications of a relativized classical education in his foreword to Redeeming the Six Arts. If the seven liberal arts are not transcendental absolutes, then perhaps they can be improved upon by consulting other traditions. So whereas Cassiodorus equated the seven arts to the seven pillars of wisdom, Perrin contemplates expanding the architecture. Noting that calligraphy was left out of the seven arts of the West, he writes:

… the world (not only China) will be blessed as these jewels are reclaimed and recovered… Calligraphy (part of shu, one of the six arts of China) has had a remarkable impact on an American technological company.^[46]

If shu could bless an American tech company, perhaps it could bless American classical schools as well. But why stop there? Once classical education is relativized, the possibilities are endless. Perrin writes:

The prospect of the Chinese renewal of classical Christian education will, I believe, bless the world… Would not such a blossoming bless China and the world and bring glory to God? And what might the meeting of the seven arts and the six arts mean? What might such a confluence of rivers produce? To extend our garden metaphor, what lovely tree might we see when a branch from the West and a branch from the East are grafted into the same tree? What fruit will the world then enjoy?^[47]

Whatever tree the world we might see, it would not have been recognizable to Cassiodorus.

Why is Perrin so quick to amend the seven arts, the deposit of the classical tradition? Perhaps because he is influenced by Pinkall’s enthusiastic claims about the six arts of China. These claims include a categoric statement about the overall superiority of the Chinese model:

I believe that the six arts schema is better suited as a general framework for education than the seven arts because it is more comprehensive. The seven liberal arts in themselves are too narrow for an education that seeks to cultivate the entire man.^[48]

Pinkall’s critique of the seven arts as overly narrow is by no means novel. In 1882, Professor Daniel P. Kidder of Drew Theological Seminary wrote of “that long and dismal period in which the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy) were the chief topics of study and instruction.” He lamented that “the ignorance consequent upon such a condition of things continued for the long period of five centuries without material variation.”^[49] Nevertheless, the trivium and the quadrivium are the forms that classical education has received.

In addition to alleging that the seven liberal arts are too narrow a basis for education, Pinkall further asserts that even the basic premise of the quadrivium is flawed. He says that the Western church essentially outgrew the quadrivium:

The medieval church developed a robust view of music that is much better understood in the context of “rites and music” than in the context of the Quadrivium.^[50]

According to Pinkall, this move away from the quadrivium is justified by revelation, since “Even Scripture itself speaks of music in terms of li rather than math.”^[51]

What I find fascinating about this critique of the seven arts in general, and the quadrivium in particular, is that it is presented in absolute terms. The concerns Pinkall raises apply to all human beings, not only to people of Chinese heritage. But if the purpose of classical education is to honor our ancestors, should we not simply accept what we have been given? Or are we accountable to a principle higher than the fifth commandment when we select a curriculum?

Apparently we are, because Pinkall also prescribes improvements to the six arts of the Chinese tradition. In fact, he suggests that all three elements of the trivium be added to Chinese classical education. First, grammar:

Most modern Chinese schools do systematically teach English grammar, but they do not provide similar instruction when teaching Chinese. I believe modern Chinese educators can learn from their Western counterparts here. The Western tradition proves that teaching children the grammar of their mother tongue improves their ability to communicate effectively.^[52]

Then logic:

Western educators, on the other hand, made logic a pillar of the classical curriculum, elevating it to one of the three arts of the Trivium. I believe Chinese classical Christian schools should recover the lost work of the Mohists and Logicians and restore logic to the language curriculum. Anyone who doubts the value of studying formal logic need only examine the abundant fruit it has born in the West.^[53]

And finally rhetoric:

I think Chinese Christians would do well to imitate the Western church by expanding their long tradition of written rhetoric to include oratory. We want our students not only to write well but to speak well.^[54]

The rationale for this hybridization of East and West appears to be neither the fifth commandment nor the nature of reality, but rather a form of pragmatism. Logic made a difference in the West so everyone should study it. But pragmatism is a hallmark of progressive education, not classical education.

The hybridization also raises the question of how classical education can be so formless that it can so easily be abridged and amended. It raises the possibility that the six arts have always been formless and vague. In fact, Pinkall admits as much:

Even though the Chinese have produced many books on each of the six arts, I can find no book, ancient or modern, that systematically addresses the six arts as a whole, or that uses the six arts as an organizational framework for understanding the history and development of Chinese classical education.^[55]

Pinkall makes a strikingly similar remark about the Western arts:

When the church in the West first inherited the seven liberal arts from the Greeks and Romans, the arts were still in disarray. Many even disagreed about how many liberal arts there actually were.^[56]

In a revealing passage, Pinkall admits that at least some recent systemizations of classical education are simply modern innovations:

Subjects other than the seven liberal arts were taught in Western classical Christian schools. However, the Western classical tradition contains no comprehensive schema by which to organize this curriculum. The acronym “PGMAPT” is not a formulation of the ancients but a formulation of Clark and Jain.^[57]

This observation is no doubt true, but its significance is magnified by the fact that it is made by a classical education insider. Dr. John Thorley, former principal of the Charlotte Mason College, identified the underlying problem in 2014 when he wrote, “The problem then becomes that the Classical Tradition … does not amount to much of a guide as a distinctive educational philosophy.”^[58] Since there is no robust guide, Pinkall, as Clark and Jain before him, is forced to fit a square peg into a round hole.

For example, one of the six arts is archery. While archery certainly has some relevance in modern society, it seems that few families or schools would want to make it a hallmark of their educational program. Hence Pinkall appeals to technicalities to make it fit the requirements of the modern context:

Children who are not yet old enough to study archery may focus on strength and endurance exercises, as these are still technically part of archery education.^[59]

A more challenging element of the six arts is charioteering. Pinkall acknowledges that in the classical era, “Charioteering … appears to have been studied more for its practical benefits both in war and hunting.”^[60] Presumably, few modern parents in China or anywhere else are interested in teaching their children to fight and hunt with chariots. So Pinkall suggests that “a modern-day ‘driver’s education’ course is at least partially in keeping with the traditional charioteering curriculum.”^[61] This painful stretch illustrates Thorley’s point that the classical tradition is not a reliable guide for 21^st-century educators.

In a revealing passage, Pinkall exposes the challenge that all classical education theorists face when trying to make an ancient curriculum appear meaningful to modern educators:

Of the six arts, charioteering is the most difficult to contextualize to modern-day China. I have provided a few principles and suggestions above, but I confess that my contributions here are limited. I leave the task of further developing and contextualizing this art to the ingenuity of Chinese classical educators.^[62]

If ingenuity is required to contextualize the classical curriculum, then perhaps the whole project should be reconsidered. Why not respect the past by leaving the six arts as historical artifacts that applied to a specific place and time? And why not redeploy ingenuity to addressing more immediate and relevant educational challenges?

The root problem is that neither the seven liberal arts nor the six arts accurately reflect reality. Fotherby thought that the trivium aligned with the “divinely ordered organisation of reality.” At one time, Chinese educators thought that charioteering and archery were essential elements of education and life. But we now know that the full range of human knowledge cannot be neatly organized into these ancient systems. If it could be, we would not need to rely on technicalities, ingenuity, and clever acronyms to apply these systems today.

Evaluation of Relativized CCE

When classical education, either Western or Chinese, is ingeniously brought forward to the modern era, what is the result? Pinkall himself, while advocating this classical model, nevertheless offers a sober warning:

Time and again, when the Jews mix with Gentiles, they begin worshiping their idols. This same danger exists in classical Christian schools, for classical education promotes the study of pagan culture. The more we immerse ourselves in pagan culture the greater danger we face of drifting away from God toward idols. Our students may enter our schools as Christians, but if we are not careful, they may graduate as pagans.
…
Classical education is rewarding but dangerous.^[63]

Pinkall offers guidelines to handle this danger, which apply to Western and Chinese classical models:

Many in the classical Christian movement quote Augustine’s admonition to “plunder the Egyptians” as a justification for studying pagan culture, but they often fail to quote his warning that immediately follows… The great danger of plundering the silver and gold of the Egyptians is that we accidentally take their idols, too. Sometimes they can be just as shiny… The glory of Christ must shine so brightly in our schools that when our students see the twinkle of an Egyptian idol in their textbooks, it is to them like the flicker of a candle next to a pillar of fire.^[64]

It is not clear to me why we should take this risk with our children. Why play with fire, even the fire of a candle? Pinkall admits that the danger is not merely hypothetical. Speaking of the slow growth of Christianity in China, he writes:

One reason many believe the church did not significantly grow before the Cultural Revolution is because missionaries were too tolerant of the idolatry that pervaded China at the time.^[65]

Pinkall is also quite liberal in pointing out the damage that has been caused by Western classical educators immersing themselves in the pagan culture of classical Greece and Rome. He writes:

Although philosophy can be a great help to Christians, it also poses a great danger. When we study philosophy, we are tempted to live only in the realm of “ideas” and to forget that we are also material beings. Historically, the Christian church has often fallen into this error. Platonism has greatly influenced our attitudes about the human body and the material world.^[66]

Plato, for example, believed that the material world was simply a shadow or illusion and that the “real” world existed in the immaterial realm of the “forms.” The goal of education for him, therefore, was to escape from the shackles of this material world and to enter the world of the forms. Many religions adopt a similar view, calling man to escape from the corruption of the material world.^[67]

If we want to cultivate the entire man, we cannot neglect the body. Unfortunately, Christians often do. As we’ve already discussed previously, the church has been greatly influenced by Platonic philosophy. Not a few Christians view the human body with indifference, if not disdain. Like Plato, they emphasize the importance of the immaterial soul and deemphasize the importance of the material body. For them, the body is not a garden to cultivate but a prison to escape from.^[68]

The only remedy Pinkall offers is the Christian creed which rests on the Hebrew Scriptures:

Each time we run a lap or lift a barbell, we are confessing to the world, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.”^[69]

This affirmation cannot be supported by the classical Greek tradition. Warren Woolsey explains:

Some Greek philosophers taught an immortality of the soul, and some of the contemporary “mystery religions” aimed to provide hope of life beyond death for their followers, but it was all rather vague and little understood by the general population. None of the Greeks believed in bodily resurrection.^[70]

As concerning as this Platonic dualism should be to Christians, Pinkall alerts us to much more problematic material in the writings of Plato and the Greek philosophers:

Those Christians who object on moral grounds to teaching the Chinese classics in Christian schools must object even more strongly to teaching the Western classics. For example, Plato is often held up as one of the bright lights of Western civilization… And yet, in his most famous work, the Republic, Plato advocates for destroying the family. He says that children should belong to the state and should not know who their real parents are. The institution of marriage should be destroyed. Men and women past their prime should be forbidden from having children, and children with disabilities should be killed.^[71]

If we compare other classics from the Western tradition, such as Homer or Ovid, with those of the Chinese tradition, the moral contrast is even more striking.^[72]

Of course, Pinkall is not pointing out these problems to steer us against classical education. Rather, he is saying that if it is acceptable for Western classical educators to embrace Plato, then it should also be fine for Chinese Christians to embrace Confucius. This despite the fact that according to Pinkall himself, Confucius is a stumbling block for many Christians:

But when many Chinese Christians hear the name “Confucius” or the words “ancient culture,” they do not think of wisdom but of idolatry. They think of ancestor worship… They think of countless souls being shackled by the bonds of moralism.^[73]

Pinkall freely admits that the six arts are rooted in paganism. “When [the art of rite] is performed, the gods are served and blessing comes,”^[74] he writes. The art of archery similarly has a pagan foundation:

The bow and arrow were not mere instruments of warfare in ancient China. They were mysterious and sacred objects—even magical.^[75]

Even the art of calculation is linked to divination.^[76] Nevertheless, Pinkall urges Christians to accept this model:

Chinese Christians must not despise their own classical, pagan tradition. For God gave wisdom to their ancestors just as He did to the ancient Greeks.^[77]

His logic is clear: if Christian classical educators embrace the models of pagan Greeks, then why shouldn’t Chinese educators embrace models of pagan Chinese?

But in my view, this logic is more powerful in reverse. If the ideas of pagan Greeks have been damaging to the church in the West, then shouldn’t this be a warning for the church in the East? Indeed, the risk is not hypothetical. Professor G. Walter Hansen in 1994 wrote about his experiences teaching in Singapore:

My Chinese colleagues at Trinity Theological College in Singapore have recently been expressing their concern that some Chinese churches are sounding more Confucian than Christian. Their point is that Chinese Christians are in danger of turning their faith into a version of Confucianism, which was what they followed before their conversion to Christ. In their Confucian background they maintained high moral standards. But they were not able to enter into a personal relationship with God by their moral achievements. In fact, they experienced unresolved guilt for not being able to live up to their own standards. When they first met Christ, they focused on their newfound personal relationship with God the Father, which they enjoyed through faith in Christ by the presence of his Spirit in their lives. But slowly their center of attention changed. They put more and more emphasis on the high moral standards of their Christian faith. They began to lose sight of what God had done for them in Christ and began to concentrate on what they must do to inherit “the good life.” They were especially drawn to the Old Testament’s legal codes. Then they formulated those moral laws in the familiar terms of their own Chinese cultural background. So my colleagues shake their heads with concern when they say of some fellow believers, “I’m afraid they sound more Confucian than Christian.”^[78]

The Confucian element can be seen in Pinkall’s summary of the purpose of education in his Chinese classical model. As in the West, where virtue is the goal of classical education, in the East the goal is personal transformation. Pinkall writes:

Teaching is not a matter of transmitting knowledge but of transforming people. “The Dao of Great Learning lies in making bright virtue brilliant, in making the people new; in coming to rest at the highest good.”^[79]

In Pinkall’s Christian model, a faith layer is added, but the focus on self and human effort remains at the foundation:

In Christ, the Confucian program of education finds completion… we may summarize the goal of the Christian six arts curriculum as “self-cultivation through pursuit of the Dao (Christ).”^[80]

Rather than prioritize the knowledge of God, and the love and worship of the Creator, Pinkall offers an alternate vision not merely of classical education, but of all Christian education:

… the purpose of Christian education is to “reorder” our loves—to come to love and hate the right things in the appropriate degree.^[81]

This model of self-cultivation and personal transformation is founded not on Scripture but on pagan traditions. Why should Christian educators adopt such a model? Pinkall’s answer aligns with the new, relativized definition of classical education. Christian educations should not pursue the seven arts or the six arts because they are true. Rather they should pursue whichever set of arts was pursued by their ancestors:

Throughout church history, we see Christians referring to their pagan “fathers” in both senses—sometimes as their biological ancestors and sometimes as their esteemed teachers, but in both cases they felt obligated to honor them.^[82]

The church fathers believed the seven liberal arts to be the curriculum best suited for young Christians … because their pagan fathers said so, and they believed that these men were wise.^[83]

This idea of installing pagan ancestors as honored teachers rests uneasily against the proclamation of St. Peter in his first letter:

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.^[84]

According to Peter, we have been redeemed from the “empty way of life” of our pagan ancestors. Nowhere does he imply that we have a moral obligation to remain in this emptiness. But Pinkall insists that we do. Echoing the novel exegetical leap of Clark and Jain, Pinkall also claims that the apparently straightforward commandment to honor our immediate mother and father actually means that we must imitate the customs of our pagan ancestors:

Similarly, God’s command to Chinese Christians to honor their pagan ancestors raises many difficult questions: Which teachings and customs of their fathers should they teach and imitate? Which should they avoid? How do they praise their ancestors while avoiding unhealthy forms of tribalism and nationalism? How do they honor them without promoting their sin? The Fifth Commandment raises many difficult questions, but this does not mean they can opt out of obeying it.^[85]

Again, this novel interpretation of the fifth commandment raises obvious questions: What if my mother and father reject the pagan “teachings and customs” of their forefathers? Am I obligated to honor my parents or my ancestors? What if my ancestors were atheists or racists? Does the fifth commandment obligate me to trace my entire family tree to discern what “teachings and customs” I am to “teach and imitate”? But Pinkall suggests that such considerations even compromise our commitment to Christ:

Christians who refuse to honor their cultural heritage under the pretense of honoring their Christian heritage are like a Christian wife who refuses to honor her unbelieving husband because her “true” husband is Christ.^[86]

His analogy seems to be the precise opposite of that of St. Paul in his letter to the Colossians:

See to it that no-one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.^[87]

Now I am not saying that Paul would say to reject the literature and language of one’s nation and culture. Pinkall notes that 18^th-century missionaries to China recognized the importance of traditional Chinese literature. He quotes A. P. Parker writing in 1890:

No one can read or write a book in the Chinese language without having studied the classics. Nor can any one carry on a correspondence, commercial or diplomatic, without a knowledge of the classics.^[88]

I would agree with Parker’s assessment. I have no objection to reading some Western classical literature in my own homeschool, such as Plutarch’s Lives. My concern is not so much with studying a literature as with importing a philosophy of education. St. Paul cautions us against a philosophy which depends on human tradition. And Charlotte Mason rightly observes that one’s philosophy of education is inextricably linked to one’s faith:

Education is part and parcel of religion and every enthusiastic teacher knows that he is obeying the precept,—‘feed my lambs’—feed with all those things which are good and wholesome for the spirit of a man; and, before all and including all, with the knowledge of God.^[89]

The Christian parent should soberly and carefully consider whether rites, music, script, calculation, archery, and charioteering are indeed the divinely-appointed means by which he or she is meant to obey Christ’s precept to feed His lambs.

The Rescue from Relativism

We have seen that while classical education was once seen as an expression of absolute forms and principles, it has now become a parochial means to honor our ancestors, whoever they may be. And in fact, we may borrow an art or two (such as script) from another body of ancestors if it suits our purpose as educators. In short, classical education is a subjective and pious way to observe a novel interpretation of the fifth commandment.

But when classical education is a filial expression of a cultural heritage, how do we know if it really represents the best education for our children? How do we know if the six or seven arts we have inherited, or stitched together from the inheritance of others, form an adequate basis for a 21^st-century education? What basis or standard do we have for judging? Ironically, the new classical education brings us face-to-face with a seminal concern raised by David Hicks himself:

Relativism flourishes in a setting where appearances become tantamount to reality and where there is no longer any transcendent basis for judging one appearance as better than another. In an age of appearances, the ideal becomes relative to changes in fashion, opinion, and taste…^[90]

When the classical education cafeteria offers script for some, ritual for others, and grammar for the rest, then relativism does indeed flourish. What matters is not the form of the arts but the method of how we choose them: what honors our ancestors, or what meets the needs of our current context. Again, in a shocking irony, Hicks has predicted exactly what has come to fruition:

When a methodology thus becomes a dogma, what happens? We can find an answer in the past. Ironically, the modern era, so proud of its enlightenment, has chosen in this regard to base its education on a method producing a vast multiplicity of parochial concerns.^[91]

The answer to relativism is not found in a methodology such as honoring ancestors. It is not found in a parochial concern such as the arts selected by China or Greece. It must be based on some absolute which is binding on all cultures, languages, and peoples. Again as Hicks warns:

All men and women, no longer just a small elite, must be taught as if they were the single torchbearers of paideia, as if their souls’ salvation and civilization’s rested upon their stewardship. To the extent that any society fails to provide a rigorous, normative education for all, it creates a social, cultural, and political need for elites.^[92]

That rigorous, normative education for all cannot be the seven liberal arts. It has been tried and found wanting even by the most successful classical education publishers of our day, given that they continue to seek after new arts to add to the mix. Can we find any basis for education that is truly absolute and not subject to the shifting sands of cultural relativism?

We begin to find our way by considering the words of the Apostle Paul:

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.^[93]

Classical education points us to the patterns of the pre-Christian world. Paul tells us not to recover this pattern but to break free from it. Yes the ancients had some spiritual insights. But a few spiritual insights do not constitute a pattern worthy for Christians to implement. As Charlotte Mason points out:

There are, no doubt, ‘few, faint, and feeble’ rays of revelation in books held sacred by various eastern nations; and this we should expect, because God is the God of all flesh, and does not leave Himself without a witness anywhere; but feeble rays in an immense void of darkness are not accepted even by the people who possess them as affording a knowledge of God. They do not aim at or conceive of such a knowledge. They sit in darkness as they have sat from the beginning, and must needs sit until they receive the light of revelation.^[94]

We have the light of revelation. Let us turn to the Scriptures then, and not to the pagan ancients, to find our standard, our rescue from relativism.

Pinkall tells a remarkable story about what he observed as the state of contemporary Chinese culture:

It was a giant photo of five pencil-thin Chinese firefighters dressed in shimmering-blue silk suits with pop-star hair and faces covered in make-up. They stared seductively into the camera, one holding a fire hose and another a fire extinguisher. A fire truck sat in the background. The moment I saw it I whispered to myself, “Rites and music are in ruins.” Few jobs embody masculinity more than firefighting… These men, however, looked like they would be afraid to step outside the fire station for fear that the wind would mess up their hair.^[95]

I sympathize with Pinkall’s dismay. But I do not sympathize with his diagnosis. The problem is not a lack of “rites and music” but a lack of access to and faith in the Word of God. “Rites and music” failed to protect Chinese culture in the first place. Why does he think “rites and music” will now be able to rescue it? Similarly, classical philosophy failed to protect Western civilization from relativism. Why would classical philosophy be able to rescue it? The challenges we face are absolute. The broken reed of tradition cannot stand against it. We need the absolute foundation of revealed truth.

The claims of Western classical education are so tenuous that Pinkall could not bring himself even to commend it to Christian educators in China. What chance does it stand then against the secular forces of modern America? We need a philosophy of education that is so robust that we can commend it to all the nations of the world.

Let us be honest in our exegesis of Scripture. The Bible does not hint at anything like the seven liberal arts of the West or the six arts of China. The pillars in Proverbs 9:1 cannot possibly be the trivium and the quadrivium. The fifth commandment does not mandate that we follow the philosophy of our pagan ancestors; it does not mandate that we violate St. Paul’s words and turn “back to those weak and miserable principles.”^[96]

What the Bible does provide is “a code of education in the Gospels, expressly laid down by Christ.”^[97] With Bible in hand Charlotte Mason developed a philosophy of education that can be confidently recommended to all Christians and all peoples of the earth. And as Joyce van Straubenzee, Principal of the Charlotte Mason College, wrote, “[Charlotte Mason] still stands alone in her philosophy of education centred in the Christian Faith and if ever she could be followed what a revolution in education would take place in the country!”^[98]

In one of her greatest claims, Mason pronounced in 1912:

We of the P.N.E.U., if we be minded to advance in our thousands with one heart and one purpose, are strong enough to bring about a Twentieth Century Renascence, more glorious and permanent than that of the Middle Age, because its ultimate source shall be a profound Christianity, in lieu of the poisoned springs of Paganism. We have the one thing to offer which the whole world wants, an absolutely effective system of education covering the whole nature of a child, the whole life of man.^[99]

The poisoned springs of paganism yield philosophies of education that cannot withstand the tides of relativism. But Charlotte Mason offers a philosophy of education that is “absolutely effective.” Not because it is based on the wisdom of the ancestors or the traditions of the ancients, but because it is based on the infallible, unchanging, unyielding Word of God.

Endnotes

^[1] A Contemplation of Form (2019), printed by CiRCE Institute, p. 25.

^[2] Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality (2002), edited by S T Kimbrough, published by SVS Press, p. 8.

^[3] Cf. Brent Pinkall: “the reason the church fathers studied Plato was because they respected the tradition of their ancestors.” From Redeeming the Six Arts (2022), published by Roman Roads Press, p. 107.

^[4] The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor (1961), translated by Jerome Taylor, published by Columbia University Press, pp. 86–87.

^[5] The Baptized Muse: Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority (2017), by Karla Pollmann, published by Oxford University Press, p. 87.

^[6] Institutiones, by Cassiodorus, 2 Praefatio 1, quoted on p. 24 of Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools (1892), by Andrew Fleming West, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.

^[7] Ibid., pp. 24–25.

^[8] 2000 Years of Christ’s Power: The Middle Ages (2016), by Nick Needham, published by Christian Focus, pp. 58, 60.

^[9] “Boethius The Philosopher Theologian,” by Carl R. Trueman, in Tabletalk Magazine (August 2006), published by Ligonier Ministries, p. 16.

^[10] The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages (1989), by Dermot Moran, published by Cambridge University Press, p. 128.

^[11] Commentary on De Consolatione Philosophiae, by Remigius of Auxerre, 1 Praefatio 1, in “A Commentary of Remigius Autissiodorensis on the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius,” by H. F. Stewart, in JTS, XVII (1916), p. 26, quoted on p. 195 of The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor (1961), translated by Jerome Taylor.

^[12] The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor (1961), translated by Jerome Taylor, p. 89.

^[13] Atheomastix (1622), by Martin Fotherby, published by Nicholas Okes, p. 352. Here is the original spelling: “There is λόγοσ, Verbum: and that is Grammer. There is λόγοσ, Ratio, and that is Logick. And there is λόγοσ, Oratio: and that is Rhetorick. … So that as in the Trinitie it may truely be sayd; That the Father, is God; the Sonne is God; and the Holy Ghost, is God: So may it be sayd, in the Trinitie of those arts; That Grammer, is λόγοσ, Logick, is λόγοσ, & Rhetorick, is λόγοσ, … For, as in the Trinitie, the Father doth beget the Sonne, and they two produce the Holy Ghost: so, in this other Trinitie, λόγοσ, Ratio, doth beget λόγοσ, Verbum; and they two produce out of them, an other third λόγοσ, which is Oratio.”

^[14] Ibid, p. 295. Here is the original spelling: “Now, vnder the name of Mathematicks are comprehended foure Arts: Geometrie, Arithmetick, Astronomie, and Musick, Which Mathematicall Arts and sciences … were practised by God, in his creation of the world. He vsed Arithmetick, in knitting all the innumerable parts of the world, in one body together: Geometry, in giuing vnto euery one, his proper forme and figure: And Musick, in ioyning them, in so concent-full an harmonie, each of them with another. Vnto which Mathematicall conceit, doth … that place in the Booke of Wisedome directly to allude: That God hath made all things, in Number, Weight, and Measure: referring Number, to Arithmetick; Weight, vnto Musick; and Measure, to Geometrie.”

^[15] “The Trivium, the Trinity and the Theory of Everything: Education, Rhetoric and Religion in the Works of Jan Amos Comenius and Martin Fotherby” (2011), by David Parry, p. 4.

^[16] Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education (2012), by Stratford Caldecott, published by Angelico Press, p. 154.

^[17] Ibid., p. 155.

^[18] Ibid.

^[19] Ibid., pp. 4–5.

^[20] Beauty for Truth’s Sake (2009), by Stratford Caldecott, published by Brazos Press, p. 90.

^[21] Norms and Nobility (1981/1999), by David Hicks, published by University Press of America, p. 96.

^[22] Footnote 6 in the original: “What is Classical Education?” The CiRCE Institute, accessed May 2, 2017.

^[23] Footnote 7 in the original: “Understanding the Classical and Christian Difference: A Parent’s primer,” The Ambrose School, accessed May 2, 2017.

^[24] Footnote 8 in the original: “What is Classical Education?” Classical Academic Press, accessed May 2, 2017.

^[25] Footnote 9 in the original: “Classical Education Movement,” Wikipedia, last modified February 28, 2017, accessed May 2, 2017.

^[26] Redeeming the Six Arts (2022), by Brent Pinkall, published by Roman Roads Press, p. 90.

^[27] Consider This (2014), by Karen Glass, p. 2.

^[28] Ibid., pp. 84–85.

^[29] The Liberal Arts Tradition (2013), by Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain, published by Classical Academic Press, p. 50.

^[30] Ibid., pp. 143–144.

^[31] Exodus 20:12 (NKJV).

^[32] Pinkall, p. xxii.

^[33] Ibid.

^[34] Ibid., pp. 4, 217.

^[35] Ibid., p. xxiii.

^[36] Ibid., p. xvii.

^[37] Ibid., p. xiii.

^[38] Ibid., p. 193.

^[39] Ibid., pp. 190–191.

^[40] Ibid., pp. 90–91.

^[41] Ibid., p. 171.

^[42] Ibid., p. 173.

^[43] Ibid., p. 172.

^[44] Ibid., p. 174.

^[45] Ibid., p. 176.

^[46] Ibid., pp. xvii–xviii.

^[47] Ibid., p. xviii.

^[48] Ibid., p. 220.

^[49] “Logic,” In Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (1882), by D. P. Kidder, published by Harper & Brothers, vol. 5, p. 489.

^[50] Pinkall, p. 221.

^[51] Ibid.

^[52] Ibid., p. 179.

^[53] Ibid., pp. 182–183.

^[54] Ibid., p. 182.

^[55] Ibid., p. 218.

^[56] Ibid., p. 219.

^[57] Ibid., p. 221.

^[58] “A Book Review by Dr. John Thorley”

^[59] Pinkall, p. 212.

^[60] Ibid., p. 9.

^[61] Ibid., p. 215.

^[62] Ibid.

^[63] Ibid., p. 236.

^[64] Ibid.

^[65] Ibid., p. 237.

^[66] Ibid., p. 158.

^[67] Ibid., p. 157.

^[68] Ibid., p. 203.

^[69] Ibid., p. 205.

^[70] 1 & 2 Thessalonians: A Bible Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (1997), by Warren Woolsey, published by Wesleyan Publishing House, p. 77.

^[71] Pinkall, p. 191.

^[72] Ibid., p. 192.

^[73] Ibid., p. 223.

^[74] Ibid., p. 7.

^[75] Ibid., p. 5.

^[76] Ibid., p. 11.

^[77] Ibid., p. 117.

^[78] Galatians (1994), by G. Walter Hansen, published by InterVarsity Press, pp. 128–129.

^[79] Pinkall, p. 17.

^[80] Ibid., p. 127.

^[81] Ibid., p. 146.

^[82] Ibid., p. 92.

^[83] Ibid., p. 94.

^[84] 1 Peter 1:18–19, The Holy Bible: New International Version—Anglicised, published by Hodder & Stoughton (1984).

^[85] Pinkall, p. 103.

^[86] Ibid.

^[87] Colossians 2:8, The Holy Bible: New International Version—Anglicised.

^[88] “The Place of the Chinese Classics in Christian Schools and Colleges” (1890), by A. P. Parker, quoted by Pinkall, pp. 184–185.

^[89] An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education (1925), by Charlotte Mason, p. 246.

^[90] Hicks, p. 48.

^[91] Ibid., p. 71.

^[92] Ibid., p. 89.

^[93] Romans 12:2, The Holy Bible: New International Version—Anglicised, published by Hodder & Stoughton (1984).

^[94] Ourselves, Book II (1905), by Charlotte Mason, p. 81.

^[95] Pinkall, p. 209.

^[96] Galatians 4:9, The Holy Bible: New International Version—Anglicised.

^[97] Home Education (1905), by Charlotte Mason, p. 12.

^[98] Charlotte Mason Reviewed (1981/2000), by Jenny King, published by Child Light Ltd., p. 6.

^[99] “Three Educational Idylls,” by Charlotte Mason, The Parents’ Review, vol. 23, p. 811.

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