Seeking Virtue:
Why an Orthodox Approach to Virtue is Critical to Educating Our Children Today
Mark Tarpley, Ph.D.
Saint Kosmas Conference
California
November 2018
© 2018 Forgotten Lighthouse. All rights reserved.
An Introduction
We have three goals.
To understand an Orthodox approach to virtue.
To understand the relationship between schooling and Orthodox education in the context of virtue.
To consider some implications for the schooling process as it relates to virtue.
The talk will be in two parts.
The first section of the talk will consider the question “How should virtue be understood?” We will begin by reflecting on virtue in its variety of forms of understanding today. We will then consider specifically an Orthodox approach to virtue. In this approach, we will focus on the relationship between the nous, the rational faculty, and virtue.
The second section will first look at the role of schooling within the broader context of education as it relates to virtue. Then, we will consider implications for seeking virtue within the context of schooling and education.
Before we begin Part I, a few words regarding terminology and its challenges. The talk centers on a discussion of schooling and education, the nous and the rational faculty, and the understanding of virtue. All of these terms present complications in the English language. When I say education, many people think schooling. When I say intellect, you most likely think of reason. When I say virtue, you may think of habits of behavior or the training of the intellect or even ethics. So, I would like to start out by stating how I will be using these terms throughout the talk, and I ask that you adopt these definitions for the purposes of this talk so that we have a common basis of communication.
Let’s start with schooling and education. Schooling is understood as the formal process by which we teach our children through the use of instructional methods, curriculum choices, assessments, and so on. The schooling process can take place within the context of any number of models such as homeschooling, a blended model, a five-day a week model, etc.
Education can be best thought of as the formation of the whole child within the sacramental, which the church also refers to as the mysteries of the Church, and the ascetical life of the Church. The aim of Orthodox education is to produce a saint. Thus, schooling exists within the context of education but schooling does not exhaust the possibilities or aim of education.
Next, let’s consider the terms nous and rational faculty. I will be using the term rational faculty to refer to the activity of reason within man. The rational faculty is where man encounters and interacts with his environment and gives expression to the experiences of the nous. The rational faculty works with abstract concepts and uses deductive reasoning to arrive at conclusions. The human nous is the highest faculty of man, the eye of the soul, if you will, and is the place where we encounter and commune with God. The nous in our natural state governs the entire human person including the rational faculty.
Regarding virtue, I will hold off at this point in defining virtue as this question is the center of the talk for today.
Part I: How Should Virtue be Understood?
Reflecting on “What is Virtue?”
In discussing how Orthodox Christians approach the question of virtue, I thought a good place to start is with each of us reflecting on the question, “What is virtue?” So, I want you to take a minute and personally reflect and ask yourself, “How do I understand virtue? What words come to mind when I think of virtue? What definitions or historical figures come to mind? How does schooling—whether that be homeschooling or formal schooling—and virtue connect?” Please take a minute and write down your thoughts on the notes space provided to you. Writing down your thoughts is an important part in this exercise. Also, you will not be asked to share your responses publicly.
Basic definitions: Doing that which is right. Doing what God wants you to do. Right action. The mean between two extremes. When man does that which is good.
Key Terms: You may have listed out various virtues, utilitarianism, goals, duties, principles, morality, conscience, natural law, and so on.
Key Figures: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, the Cappadocian Fathers, St. Gregory Palamas
Schooling and Virtue: Training of the habits of the intellect. Cultivating virtue through literature. Doing God’s will.
I do this exercise to get us each personally reflecting on our assumptions related to virtue as we now transition into looking at an Orthodox approach to virtue.
An Orthodox Approach to Virtue
Orthodox Quotes on Virtue and Ethics
In considering the question of an Orthodox approach to virtue, I would like to begin by reading three quotes, two by Elder Sophrony of Essex, the disciple of St. Silouan the Athonite and one by Father John Romanides. I believe these three quotes will assist in centering us on the heart of the matter when it comes to an Orthodox approach to virtue.
Elder Sophrony writes,
Holiness is not an ethical but an ontological concept. A man is not holy because his morals or conduct are good, or even because he leads a righteous life in the sense of devoting himself to spiritual endeavor and prayer – indeed, the Pharisees kept the fasts and made ‘long’ prayers. But that man is holy who bears within himself the Holy Spirit.
And again, Elder Sophrony states,
The commandment of Christ is, as I have said before, not an ethical standard but in itself eternal divine life. Natural man does not possess this life in his own created being and so cannot by his own efforts do God’s will and live according to God’s commandment … .
Now, let us turn to Fr. John Romanides. He writes,
What fruit will Christians of different Confessions have in common? The only fruit they will have in common is ethics. But this ethical order will not only be shared by two Christians. A Muslim and a Christian may also share it. Because there are Muslims who are very good and honest people.
There are situations in which you can trust certain Muslims more than you can trust certain Orthodox, from the point of view of their ethical level. You can have a Muslim friend who always tells you the truth, and an Orthodox friend who continually tells you lies, Which of the two is morally better? The one who tells lies or the one who tells the truth?
There are atheists who in their ethical life surpass many Christians. On the other hand, there are Christians, who cannot be compared with that atheist. There are a large number of atheist idealists, just as there are Christian idealists.
If ethics is the criteria for the ethical life, and we separate dogma from ethics, we end up saying that these people will go to Hell because they are not Orthodox in dogma. But look how ethical they are! As they are ethical, why should they not go to Paradise as well? Is it only the ethical Orthodox who will go to Paradise? Do ethical heretics, people of other religions and atheists not go too, as they are ethical? If ethics is the criteria, this creates a problem concerning who will go to Paradise and who will not go to Paradise.
It is not only ethics that is needed, but something more than ethics. Repentance is also necessary. And repentance does not simply mean going to the confessor to tell him what I have done, which sins I have committed. It is not just that. Repentance means going through repentance, to progress from purification to illumination. If I do not arrive at illumination, I am not ready to see the glory of God.
Nowadays they identify the experience of theology with ethics. Yes, but theology is not ethics. The experience of theology is noetic prayer and theosis [deification], not ethics. Orthodox theology does not have ethics, it has asceticism. Orthodox ethics does not exist. There is pagan ethics, which is not virtue and is not part of Orthodoxy, but belongs to the whole world. The experience of theology is not virtue, ethics, because ethics also belongs to the philosophers.
These quotes are helpful in considering the paradigm shift that must be made from a Western conception of virtue and ethics to an Orthodox understanding of virtue. Virtue is born within a sacramental and ascetical context, not an ethical context as conceived within Western civilization. Let’s take a closer look at the Orthodox approach.
Virtue in Soteriological Context
The context for all of the writings of the Church Fathers rests within a soteriological (meaning salvation) ethos, which is to say, within the context of the pursuit of theosis, for this is man’s purpose. As a result, it should come as no surprise that virtue is situated for the Fathers within the context of man’s pursuit of purification, illumination, and theosis - simply stated, the Christian life.
If you will look at the handout that looks like this, we will walk through each part of the diagram. I have labeled the diagram with letters, and we will spend a little time discussing each of the parts of the diagram with a general description of man’s circumstance followed by a more specific consideration of man in relationship to virtue, the nous, and the rational faculty.
Defining Our Terms
So, before getting into the diagram, let’s return again to the terms nous and rational faculty since these terms are complicated enough when dealing with the Greek; however, once these words are translated into English, the challenge becomes even greater.
Stated simply, the nous according to St. John of Damascus is “the souls purest part and not in any wise alien to the soul; for as the eye is to the body, so is the nous to the soul.” We can say the nous is the faculty of the soul that receives revelation from God and where man comes into communion with God. Further, the nous is the highest faculty of man. When the nous is healthy, the whole man is healthy. When the nous is sick, the whole man is sick.
In contrast, the rational faculty interacts and relates to the sensible world. The rational faculty reasons, works in abstract concepts, makes deductions, analyzes, takes in data through the senses, and so on. The rational faculty puts into words the experience of revelation received through the nous.
Thus, we can see that the nous is how man communes with God and the rational faculty is how man relates to the world. The nous is a higher faculty than the rational faculty.
Let us consider the words of Elder Sophrony on this important distinction between the nous and rational faculty. He writes,
Just as every rationalistic system has its logical sequence, its dialectics, so the spiritual world has – if we are to apply the conventional terms – its structure, its dialectics. But the argument of spiritual experience is peculiar to itself and does not follow the ordinary process of reasoning.
Another helpful example to illustrate the distinction between these two faculties is presented in the spiritual classic The Way of a Pilgrim. One particular instance in the story is when the pilgrim seeks to understand how a person can fulfill St. Paul’s exhortation to pray without ceasing. In the story, we read, “With great joy I remembered the previous evening, which illustrated this reading, and I realized that the mind and the nous are not the same.”
Here, we see a clear distinction made between the nous and the rational faculty. Let us turn to part A of our diagram, which looks at the creation of Adam and man’s natural state.
Man’s Natural State
When Adam was in paradise, Adam was illumined. He was cloaked in the grace of God and lived a life of virtue. Adam’s soul drew its life from God, and Adam’s body drew its life from the soul. As St. John Chrysostom writes, “Surely it’s obvious that before his [Adam’s] disobedience he had a share in prophetic grace and saw everything through the eyes of the Spirit.” With respect specifically to the nous and the rational faculty, the proper order was in place. The nous communed with God, and the rational faculty articulated the experience of the nous. Adam was properly oriented towards God and sought to keep God’s commandments.
St. Dorotheus of Gaza captures this life of virtue of Adam well when he writes,
In the beginning when God created Man He put him in Paradise and, as the Holy Scripture says (Gen. 2:25), having adorned him with every virtue commended him not to eat from the tree in the middle of Paradise (Gen. 2: 16-17). He was the luxury of Paradise, in prayer, in the vision of God, in all glory and honour, having sound perception and being in his natural state just as he was created. For God created him after His own image (Gen. 1:27), that is to say, immortal, with free-will and adorned with every virtue. However, when he disobeyed God and ate from the tree which God had forbidden him to eat from, he was then expelled from Paradise, he fell from his natural state into a state contrary to nature, that is to say into sin, into ambition and the love of the pleasures of this life and all the other passions and was dominated by them, and became subject to them because of his transgression.
Here, St. Dorotheus provides a beautiful summary of the virtuous life of Adam in Paradise, his natural state, and Adam’s subsequent fall into sin, his unnatural state, in which Adam is dominated by the passions which results from the spiritual sickness of man. Let us consider further the unnatural state of man after the fall.
Man’s Unnatural state
Let us now turn our attention to Part B. in the diagram. With the fall, Adam became mortal, ceasing to feed on the life of immortality in the Spirit, but instead on corruptible food that leads to death. As St. Tikhon of Zadonsk writes,
The human soul is a spirit created by God, and only in God, who has created it in His own image and likeness, can it find contentment and rest, peace, consolation and joy. Once separated from Him, it seeks satisfaction among created things, and feeds itself on passions, on husks, food for pigs; but finding not its true repose, nor its true satisfaction, it dies at length of hunger. For spiritual food is a necessity to the soul.
The Church Fathers teach that with the fall of Adam and the breaking of the commandment and the resulting communion with God, the death of the soul resulted and with it, the dysfunction of the soul. The soul became disordered. The nous, which previously was turned towards God according to its natural order was now darkened and overcome by the passions, turning towards the created order. As Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos explains, “After man’s fall, the nous (noetic faculty) was darkened and came to be identified with the rational faculty, so man was unable to have contact with God. The noetic faculty becomes inactive and acquires a sort of rigidity, with the result that it is not aware of God.” With greater specificity, Fr. John Romanides writes, “In its ailing state, noetic energy does not turn like an axle cyclically, but while being rooted in the heart, it [the nous] unfolds and cleaves to the brain and creates a short-circuit between the brain and the heart. So, the concepts of the brain that are all from the environment become concepts of noetic energy always rooted in the heart. So, the sufferer becomes a slave of his environment … .”
This collapsing of the nous with the rational faculty represents a key challenge for us today related to the pursuit of virtue. Virtue, as we shall see shortly, is not a function of the rational faculty, that is, reason. Virtue is not acquired through the proper training of the rational faculty. Virtue is theanthropic, that is to say, a synergistic cooperation between God and man in which man meets God in the purified nous, not the rational faculty. Elder Sophrony is acutely aware of this challenge in Western civilization. I would like to quote him now extensively with brief comments interspersed. I will indicate where I am adding comments and when I am quoting Elder Sophrony.
The spiritual struggle is a manifold struggle but the struggle against pride strikes deepest and is most grievous. Pride is the supreme antagonist of Divine law, deforming the Divine order of being and everywhere bringing ruin and death in its train. Pride manifests itself partly on the physical plane but more essentially on the plane of thought and spirit. It arrogates priority for itself, battling for complete mastery, and its principal weapon is the reasoning mind.
[The deforming of the Divine order of being refers to the disorder of the whole man and in particular the ordering of the nous and rational faculty. The rational faculty, prides principal weapon, becomes the dominant faculty within man in pursuit of “complete mastery” of man and the creation.]
The reasoning mind, for example, will reject the commandment ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged’ as nonsensical, urging the faculty of being able to judge is a distinctive quality in man, which makes him superior to the whole world and affords him the power to dominate.
[With the elevation of the rational faculty, man seeks to dominate his neighbor and the material creation and fails to heed the words of St. Paul who writes, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (I Cor. 3: 19).]
In order to assert its superiority, the reasoning mind points to its achievements, to its creativeness, producing many convincing proofs purporting to show that in the age-old-experience of history the establishment or affirmation of truth falls entirely within its province.
[Here, we see Elder Sophrony pointing to man’s justification of the power of the rational faculty in terms of all of its accomplishments – the establishment of powerful empires, great architectural feats, astonishing scientific and technological advancements – all to show man’s possession of the truth independent of God.]
The reason, functioning impersonally, is by nature only one of the manifestations of life in the human personality, one of the energies of the personality. Where it is allotted priority in the spiritual being of man, it begins to fight against its source – that is, its personal origin.
[Yet, when the rational faculty is given priority in man as autonomous and independent from God, the result is a revolt against man, himself.]
Rising, as he thinks, to the furthest heights; descending, as he believes, to the lowest depths, man aspires to contact the frontiers of being, in order, as is his way, to define it, and when he cannot achieve his purpose he succumbs and decides that ‘God does not exist.’
[The ultimate consequence of man seeking ultimate truth through his rational faculty is atheism for God cannot be discovered through the rational faculty.]
Then, continuing the struggle for predominance, boldly and at the same time miserably, he says to himself ‘If there is a God, how can I accept that I am not that God?’
Not having reached the frontiers of being and having attributed to himself this infinity, he stands up arrogantly and declares, ‘I have explored everything and nowhere found anything greater than myself, so – I am God.’
And it is a fact that when man’s spiritual being is concentrated on and in the mind, reason takes over and he becomes blind to anything that surpasses him and ends by seeing himself as the divine principle.
[And if God does not exist, according to Elder Sophrony, then man appoints himself God.]
The intellectual imagination here reaches its utmost limits and, at the same time, its fall into the darkest night.
[And in man making the declaration that man is god, while man may make unbelievable “progress” in his control of the creation including himself, he plummets into the abyss of sorrow, suffering, and emptiness since, living in a way contrary to nature, that is, independent of God. Here, Elder Sophrony gives a profound word for our own time that demonstrates the consequences of the fall from God through the darkening of the nous and the dominance of the rational faculty in man.]
Having considered man’s state contrary to nature, let us now turn to the healing of man and part C in the diagram and the Incarnation.
Man’s healing
If the fallen state of man breaking his communion with God is the darkening of the nous and the dominance of the rational faculty, then the healing of man is the reclaiming of the proper ordering of the nous and the rational faculty through a return to communion with God and the illumination of the nous. This return to God results in the health of the nous, which results in the health of the whole man, in contrast to a sick nous, which results in the whole man being sick. The sacraments and asceticism establish the context in which man makes his return to God in light of the work of Christ.
The Incarnation
Man’s ability to begin his return to God, of course, begins with God as the first mover. And the fulfillment of God’s pursuit of man after the fall of Adam is realized in the Incarnation of the eternal Son and Word of God. Two essential barriers stood between man and God after the fall – sin, death, and the devil (the consequences of man’s fall) and nature (man is created and God is uncreated). The Incarnation not only results in the healing of man’s relationship with God through the redemption of man in the binding of Satan and the conquering of sin and death. The Incarnation accomplishes a second and loftier work of uniting man with God. This union of God and man in Christ, bridging the gulf between the created nature of man and God’s uncreated nature opens the door to theosis.
Man’s Return to God
We will now focus on Part D in the diagram in which man begins his return to God through the sacraments of baptism, chrismation, and the eucharist.
St. Gregory Palamas writes, “We start this imitation of Christ with holy baptism, which symbolizes the Lord’s burial and resurrection. Virtuous living and conduct in accord with the gospel are its intermediate stage, and its perfection is victory through spiritual struggles against the passions, which procures painless, indestructible, heavenly life.”
There are several striking aspects to this passage. First, the intermediate stage or mean is virtuous living positioned between baptism and theosis. Such a use of the term ‘mean’ as the man’s virtuous living in contrast to Aristotle’s notion of virtue being the mean between two extremes shows the distance between Aristotle and St. Gregory Palamas’ approach to virtue. Unfortunately today, Aristotelian and other classical approaches to virtue are confused with the Patristic teaching on virtue. So, in looking at our diagram, we can identify the mean according to St. Gregory Palamas as the period of time between baptism and theosis.
Man’s first step towards seeking virtue is to enter into the mystery of Christ through baptism, chrismation, and the eucharist. We can see that virtue possesses a fundamentally sacramental character. That is, virtue cannot be separated from the sacramental life of the Church. We cannot abstract virtue to some kind of moral behavior, and virtue cannot be reduced to man’s ability to properly govern himself independent from God as Elder Sophrony has already shown us the disastrous results of such an approach to life. One might ask, “Why must virtue be connected with the sacraments of the Church?”
In the mysteries of baptism, chrismation, and the eucharist, man enters into the newness of life, a new creation, in which the old man is put off and the new man is put on and man becomes a Son of God. As St. Nicholas Cabasilas observes,
He who seeks to be united to Him [Christ] must therefore share with Him in His flesh, partake of theosis, and share in His death and resurrection. So we are baptized in order that we may die that death and rise again in that resurrection. We are chrismated in order that we may become partakers of the royal anointing of His theosis. By feeding on the most sacred bread and drinking the most divine cup we share in the very Flesh and Blood which the Saviour assumed. In this way we are joined to Him who for our sake was incarnate and who deified our nature, who died and rose again.
Through the three mysteries, man is a new creation set on an ascetical journey of the purification of the passions and the acquisition of virtue with theosis as the final aim.
In looking at our diagram, D. is man’s initiation into the Christian life through the three-fold mysteries of the Church. E. is the purification of the passions and the acquisition of virtue – man’s ascetical labors, and F. is theosis, which is the pure gift of God.
[Note: The purpose of this talk is to focus on virtue, so the stage of illumination is not discussed in this talk due to time constraints and theosis is included in the chart to demonstrate the culmination of the ascent to God.]
Let’s focus on E. in the diagram, man’s ascetical journey of the purification of the passions and the acquisition of virtue.
As we have already discussed, in the garden Adam was in communion with God through his nous, and the nous properly governed all the human faculties including the rational faculty. However, due to man’s sickness and the darkening of the nous, man is now disconnected from God. God, in His mercy, has given man a conscience and revealed to him the written law to point man in the right direction; however, the Incarnation reveals and makes possible the fullness of man’s purpose, and through the mysteries of baptism, chrismation and the eucharist, man is set back on the path of return. What follows for man is a period of asceticism of the purification of the passions and the acquisition of virtue, which represent the two dimensions of the ascetical life.
This asceticism of purification and acquisition of the virtues is re-presented to us at the beginning of the Great Fast each year at Forgiveness Vespers. Each Great Fast represents a new opportunity to renew and deepen our return to Christ and to behold His glorious resurrection at Pascha. Listen to the hymn chanted at Forgiveness Vespers.
Let us set out with joy upon the season of the Fast, and prepare ourselves for spiritual combat. Let us purify our soul and cleanse our flesh; and as we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion. Rejoicing in the virtues of the Spirit may we persevere with love, and so be counted worthy to see the solemn Passion of Christ our God, and with great spiritual gladness to behold His Holy Passover.
This hymn encapsulates part E. of the diagram, the ascetic struggle for purification and virtue, the two dimensions of man’s movement toward illumination. The hymn speaks about the purification of the soul by the abstaining from passion and the resulting virtues that have their source in the Spirit. Passions here can be understood as the condition man finds himself in that is contrary to nature. Virtue, in contrast, is when man is in his natural state.
What then, is virtue? If we will recall earlier, Adam was “adorned with every virtue” in Paradise, and his nous properly governed his life through its communion with God. Virtue, we can say then, is man’s co-operation with God’s grace. Grace is God’s gift to man, and virtue is the synergistic working of man and grace. Thus, the starting point for virtue is repentance. Man’s turning from the world and to Christ, which is an ascetical effort, not a moral effort. Virtue is defined not by man’s action, but by his distance from God. When man becomes a partaker of divine life, virtue is found. As Dr. Herman Tristram Engelhardt who recently reposed, may his memory be eternal, would always say, “God did not come preaching philosophy or morality, but repentance and an invitation to no longer love oneself.”
Virtue then, does not originate in man’s rational faculty or results from man’s intellectual effort. No human action, intention, goal, or desire has true value independent of God’s grace. Moral philosophy assumes it can tell us what God wants us to do. Yet, such an approach to virtue establishes a mediator between God and man. Virtue is no longer the joint working of God and man centered in man’s nous, but the rational faculty determining man’s proper behavior apart from God. The source of virtue is God, and when man purifies his nous and aligns himself with God, the fruit is virtue.
In our modern context, we will often hear people talking about imitating Christ or His character. “What would Jesus do?” with the belief that in properly imitating Christ, we arrive at virtue. This approach does not represent the teaching of the Church Fathers. For Orthodox Christians, there is no book of virtues that can be set on every American’s coffee table, picked up, and then lived out independent of the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church. That is to say, the imitation of Christ cannot be abstracted from the sacramental life of the Church. The ethical life is not merely about proper moral behavior and abstract philosophical ideal types. The pursuit of virtue for the Church Fathers assumes a sacramental, ascetical, and even anthropological character that is concrete and specific in nature. Man is transfigured through the life of Christ, seeking the vision of Christ given to the Apostles on Mt. Tabor. When man acquires virtue, the grace of God dwells in man through the nous, illuminating man and penetrating his whole being. We can see holy relics as a testimony to the sanctification of the entire person, and the truth that the saints are not transformed morally but as a whole person by God’s grace. As such, the notion of virtue is radically recast from the classical world’s approach in terms of virtues’ definition, purpose, and context.
Simply stated, the ethical life is ascetical in which man’s acquisition of virtue begins with repentance within the sacramental life of the church.
A good anchor in this conversation is that the source of virtue is God, and the faculty by which man connects with God is the nous, not the rational faculty, so the rational faculty can never be the seat of virtue in man’s life. There is no virtue apart from God.
Virtue then, assumes the nous’ reconnection with God. The nous must be rediscovered through the purification of the passions in repentance in which the natural distinction between the nous and rational faculty is established. Then, man begins to live according to nature and not contrary to nature, which is to say, not subject to the passions. Man’s soul begins to be properly ordered towards God instead of disordered. It is through the sacramental and ascetic life that man begins to draw his life more fully from God, and this newness of life in Christ gives birth to the virtues. This growth in virtue, for virtue is a dynamic state, continues as man moves towards his ultimate aim which is theosis.
Part F. is man’s culmination of the acquisition of virtue following the stage of illumination, which is the arrival of theosis, which is the pure gift of God, the acquiring of the Holy Spirit. In the interest of time and since our focus in this talk is on virtue, I will not speak further on the topic of theosis.
Part II: Virtue and Orthodox Education
Schooling in the Context of Orthodox Education
A Review of Definitions
Let’s begin by briefly reviewing the definitions of schooling and education for the purpose of this talk.
Schooling is understood as the formal process by which we teach our children through the use of instructional methods, curriculum choices, assessments, and so on. The schooling process can take place within the context of any number of models including homeschooling, a blended model, a five-day a week model, etc.
Education can be best thought of as the formation of the whole child within the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church that aims at the restoration of the whole man with its culmination in theosis.
Two Basic Assumptions
Next, I would like to consider two basic assumptions that are important as we look at the relationship between schooling and education.
1. First, the fundamental problem for man is found within himself and not outside of man. So, no amount of schooling will ultimately solve man’s most basic problem.
2. Orthodox Christians do not measure progress by exterior achievements outside of the healing of man in Christ and his pursuit of theosis. Human progress begins with repentance.
Education
Let’s now look specifically at the purpose of education. St. Justin Popovich writes,
What other purpose does education have than to enlighten man, to illuminate all the abysses and the precipices in him, and to expel all darkness from him. If, however, man is without Christ, without God, namely, without this unique inextinguishable light, how will he disperse the gloom of the universe which from all sides attacks him and how will he expel the darkness from within him? With all his lights, but without God, man is nothing other than a firefly in the infinite darkness of the universe. His science and his philosophy, his education and culture, his art and civilization, these are but small candles which he lights in the darkness of earthly and worldly events. What can all of these candles do in the endless night of the deep darkness of individual, social, national, and international problems and events?
Regarding who is an educator, St. Justin explains,
Education and training is nothing other than the extension of holiness, the radiance of holiness. The saint sends forth light, and on account of this he enlightens and educates. Education presupposes with all its being holiness. True education is in fact the saint. Without the saints there are not true teachers and educators. Nor is there true education without holiness. Without illumination there is no enlightenment. Holiness is holiness through divine light. True education and enlightenment is nothing other than the radiance of holiness; only the saints are truly illuminated. Holiness lives and breathes by light simultaneously shining and teaching.
Truly, then, education signifies illumination—illumination through sanctification in the Holy Spirit who is the vehicle and the creator of holiness and of the light of knowledge. The saints, because they are sanctified and illuminated by the Holy Spirit, are also true teachers and educators.
The Role of the Parents
Concerning parents, Orthodox Christians affirm that the family is the basic unit to which the education of the child is entrusted by God within the life of the Church. I will repeat “within the life of the Church,” not as a biological fact independent of the Church. The mystery of marriage is born within the Church and the family draws its life from the Body of Christ, the Church. At the churching of the child, the mother hands the child to the priest, and the priest offers the child’s life to God. God, through the action of the priest, in turn, entrusts the child’s education, that is formation as an Orthodox Christian, to the parents.
You may have heard the saying frequently repeated in schooling circles today that the parents are the primary educators. For Orthodox, we take this claim very seriously.
Schooling’s Relationship to Education
Given this broader understanding of education given by St. Justin Popovich and the centrality of the parents as the primary educators in the formation of the child, where does the schooling of the child fit into the picture?
Schooling is part of education but not the sum of education. Often times, we think we are educating the whole child, but in reality, we are schooling the whole child. We believe the cultivation of the rational faculty can arrive at not only doing our math facts, but also achieving virtue. The methodology of training the mind for understanding the physical world around us and mastering abstract concepts and philosophical ideas to act virtuously is not consistent with Orthodox teaching.
For example, studying Aristotole’s Nicomachean Ethics and being able to describe Aristotle’s understanding of virtue and even describe how the virtuous man ought to live, resulting in behavior and habits is equated with education. We could even extend this type of schooling to studying the Church Fathers on proper behavior of Christians and then having students understand the teaching of the Fathers and how to implement it in their lives. An Orthodox approach to education and virtue would reject this notion when it is isolated from the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church. This type of schooling is only preparatory for the acquisition of virtue. It does not arrive at virtue in and of itself.
Unfortunately, today, America has elevated the status of schooling to a special class of citizenship in a child’s life as if schooling is a magic pill to happiness, success, and the lack of schooling as the source of societal ills. A popular slogan today is “Education is the solution” or if we could only get kids a better education or if kids today could just understand better (fill-in-the-blank with something related to a social problem such as environmental concerns, inequality, homelessness, and so on), then we could solve this societal problem. Increased funding of schooling is too often seen as a solution to improving our “quality of life.” Even more, schooling is equated with the possibility of the formation of the whole child. All of these ideas are fundamentally misguided.
Think of the relationship between schooling and education in terms of two circles. The larger circle is education, and within the larger circle of education is a smaller circle called schooling.
In the schooling process, students engage in the study of disciplines or subjects, ideas, literature, the physical world, and so on. The instructor, whether it be a parent or a teacher and face-to-face or through a video, dispenses knowledge and information. The child is taught to read, master his math facts, and understand the physical world around him. The mind is challenged to think deeply about human problems and solutions, to analyze, evaluate, critically think, make inferences, make deductions, and create. The child, hopefully, seeks to understand what is the true, good, and beautiful and how to pursue it. Further, the schooling process assumes the homeschool or formal school must choose a curriculum and provide some level of assessment whether it be formal or informal as to the child’s progress in their learning, and work toward a goal of demonstration of excellence.
And, of course, along the way, the broader circle of education is involved in the formation of the child because our lives are one, they cannot be compartmentalized, and we cannot create artificial boundaries within the lives of our children. During the schooling process, the child will be challenged to deny oneself when he does not want to complete his lessons. The child, God willing, will commend his studies to God and ask for the grace of God to guide and bless his studies. The child will be challenged to show determination, grit, and exemplify a proper behavior towards other students, teachers, administrators, or family members. The child will hopefully build a desire to respond to the good, true, and beautiful. The child will develop friendships and relationships that are meaningful and urge him forward in his formation as a Christian within the school. For this reason, we cannot separate schooling from the larger circle of education.
Similarly, the rational faculty is honed and developed outside the formal schooling process. When a child is in the Divine Liturgy reading a prayer book or riding down the road in a car reading a road sign or sitting at the dinner table talking to his family about his day, the child is building important reading and speaking skills and possibly knowledge of all sorts of disciplines such as history or English aligned with the formal schooling process.
Thus, schooling is part of your education, but not its entirety. Further, the school is not the Church, and the school is not the parent. And at the same time, the schooling process has an important part to play in the education of the child.
Implications for Educating Our Children in Seeking Virtue
What Value Does Schooling Have in the Seeking of Virtue?
As we have stated many times, virtue is ascetical, not ethical nor is its genesis in the rational faculty. The rational faculty supports the human person in man’s return to God, but the rational faculty is not the center of man and the place where man must focus to make his return. In fact, the rising of the rational faculty over man’s nous is the root problem within man. Man’s nous is where he comes to return to his natural state through repentance and humility. And when the nous of man is illumined, man’s rational faculty can take its proper place in man’s reorientation and pursuit of theosis.
Virtue is ascetical. Virtue is the joint co-operation of God and man, which takes place in the nous of man, not his rational faculty. There are no intellectual preconditions for the Fathers in order to be virtuous. It is simply not the case that the “smarter” you are, the more ethical you can be. Apart from God, there is no virtue, and increased intelligence or understanding does not result in a closer relationship to God in itself. In fact, it can become a hindrance. Again, the starting point is repentance and the purification of the passions within the sacramental life of the Church, which, in turn, results in the enlivening of the virtues within man’s nous. This is the starting point of our children’s education.
Turning again to Elder Sophrony, he explains that when cogitation and not prayer is the basis of action, there is a lack of awareness of man’s unconquered passions, man believes he has attained union with God, but in reality, has been deceived and led astray. Here, the focus continues to be on the unconquered passions and their proper orientation back to the natural state of man.
Consequently, schooling and the formation of the rational faculty do not produce virtue in and of themselves. Character training through schooling is a well-intended but misguided notion when it is believed to be the basis of virtue. The idea that teaching our children virtue such that it results in particular behaviors is misguided.
At the same time, asking students to reflect on what they ought to do in a given situation is not inherently problematic. We want students in their schooling to be able to ask good questions and to reflect deeply on the world around them. What we do not want to do is lead the child to believe that the rational faculty possesses the ability to make us virtuous, that our rational faculty’s guidance in proper moral behavior is virtue. It is not.
For many in classical schooling, the schooling is focused on normative questions and seeks to align and integrate with the pursuit of virtue. As a preparatory step for the child, this is good. We want our children’s minds to dwell on those things, which are good, true, and beautiful. For example, an important question in the schooling of our children should be what “ought” a person to do. Such an approach is preparatory to support the child in a movement toward seeking virtue. In this sense, we are equipping our children to seek virtue. The attainment of virtue, however, begins with repentance and is achieved through the grace of God within the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church.
As a close friend commented to me recently, the emphasis on schooling as a cure-all mirrors the fall of man; the nous is darkened and scattered through the rational faculty, which dominates the nous and then seeks to dominate the world. Without the purification of the nous, schooling actually perpetuates the process of the fall of man, which can only foster despair, the prevailing passion of our age.
The schooling process, then, as preparatory for virtue can only find its fulfillment when the broader education of the child is properly cultivated. Let me repeat that statement, “The schooling process then, as preparatory for virtue can only find its fulfillment when the broader education of the child is properly cultivated.”
How Do We Support Our Children in Seeking Virtue?
The solution is not to stop schooling our children, God forbid. The point is that the entire circle of education must be nurtured in our children, and the schooling process must maintain its proper role within the broader education process with the parents as the proper educators. If you study the writings of the Church Fathers across the centuries, the center of the discussion on raising children is not concerned with models of schooling, curriculum choices, and career paths. What you do find, though, are three common themes on raising children, namely, prayer for your children, the example set by the parents, and engaging the child in the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church.
The talk today is not about how to raise children. We are focused on the question of seeking virtue in education. However, my hope is that you can see the complexity of the conversation in how Orthodox approach the question vs. the common discussion in America today. How Orthodox understand the relationship of the nous and rational faculty as distinct from the surrounding culture which desires to make the rational faculty “king” has deep implications for the schooling and education of our children with respect to seeking virtue.
That is why I believe it is imperative for Orthodox families to understand that in order to properly situate the schooling of a child towards virtue, the parents must first ensure that the focus in the raising of the child is nurturing the larger circle of Orthodox education. Only then will the child have the opportunity to acquire virtue in their daily living and thus, schooling will achieve its proper end.
So, the first step towards the education of our children in virtue is the life of the parents as the primary educators. Do the parents engage in the sacramental and ascetical life of the church? Do they express humility and love for one another? Do they speak lovingly and kindly towards one another in front of their children? When they falter, which we all do, are they quick to ask forgiveness? Do they attend the services of the church faithfully and give confession and seek guidance from their spiritual father and listen to him? Do they keep a healthy spiritual rhythm within the home? Do they pray for their children? This approach is the Orthodox way and lays the foundation for our children to seek virtue.
If we will recall the definition of an educator given to us by St. Justin Popovich, “Education and training is nothing other than the extension of holiness, the radiance of holiness. The saint sends forth light, and on account of this he enlightens and educates.” Thus, the aim of the parents should be to become saints who bear the grace of God within them and can become bearers of grace to their children. In doing so, they become true educators of their children and truly “instruct” their children in virtue by setting before them, not ideas and deductions, but the grace of God.
Regarding the child and additional ways we can support our children in cultivating virtue, here are a few more additional considerations.
One important step we can take is in assisting our children in cultivating watchfulness, particularly with respect to images and thoughts. The rational faculty is the guardian of the heart through the senses. The child needs to learn to be careful with his thoughts and understand their power - that evil thoughts can easily slip into the heart.
The importance of watchfulness becomes even more important in an ever- increasingly complex space of technology. Modern technology puts images before the children in the blink of an eye. Even more, we now know that modern technologies such as the smartphone rewire the child’s brain and create distractions, isolation, addictions, etc. Consequences such as these train the rational faculty to oppose the nous, alienating the child from God and the acquisition of virtue.
In the same vein, the types of thoughts children should have should center on that which is true, good, and beautiful. Prayer on the lips benefits the rational faculty to be calm and raise the mind on high towards God. Further, what we put in front of our children to consume and engage matters. Here, the question of curriculum becomes important. Are the books our children read edifying to the soul? Do their studies build good habits of thinking, strong reasoning power, and the ability to analyze and express ideas? All of these properly belong to the rational faculty and are important in the schooling and education of our children. Equally important, if our children are confronted with inappropriate images or literature, are we praying for them and talking with them about the implications of such an experience? If approached appropriately, suffering and temptation can be redirected towards God for the profit of the child’s soul.
Another important area of attention in the schooling of the child is obedience. Obedience curbs the rational faculty’s desire to dominate and humbles the rational faculty. Of course, we have to be careful with obedience so that it is not oppressive to the child’s soul. Manifestations of the exaggerated use of the rational faculty can be displayed not only through disobedience because the child thinks they are right, and such a belief can emerge because of the parents’ excessive praise of the child’s intelligence. Christ-like humility is the remedy.
If we return to the metaphor of the two circles for schooling and education. We must make sure the circle of education is rich and full in our lives and our children’s. Only then can the schooling of our children fulfill its purpose in the pursuit of theosis.
By Way of Conclusion
We hear the priest pray regularly, “let us commend ourselves and each other and our whole life unto Christ our God.” In the liturgy, as the priest elevates the holy gifts, he prays, “thine own of thine own, we offer unto Thee on behalf of all and for all.” St. Paul exhorts us to be living sacrifices. As Orthodox Christians, we seek to offer our entire being to God, and in return, God comes and dwells in us, sanctifying the whole man and with him, all of creation.
Yet, to initiate this process of return, man must enter into the new life in Christ through baptism, chrismation, and the eucharist. Man then begins the journey of purification of the passions and the acquisition of virtue, which centers in man’s nous, not his rational faculty. And through the illumination and healing of the nous, the whole man becomes healed. Let me restate that. The whole man becomes healed, and the whole man begins to exhibit all of his gifts including his rational faculty in their proper order and orientation towards God.
The church sets before us great luminaries such as St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom. Certainly, the strength of their rational faculty and its service to God can stand up against the greatest minds in history. Their rhetorical skills, mastery of philosophy, and expression of ideas represent intellectual feats that are admired by man. We have the examples of the Holy Elders of Optina who embarked on the study of and translation of the Church Fathers which required long hours of concentration and a serious exercising of the rational faculty. The power of the rational faculty and the role it plays in the life of man in his service to God is important, and the Church affirms this truth. Yet, their hope as men of God did not rest in the power of their minds, and the Church does not exalt them as examples first and foremost because of the use of their rational faculty.
They are exalted because they humbled themselves. They lived lives of repentance, purifying their nous and ascending through virtue to theosis.
There is a great temptation in our own times to exalt the rational faculty with a belief that it can lead us to virtue on its own independent of the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church. The study of books and the strengthening of the rational faculty are not sufficient in and of themselves. Intellectual knowledge is not a precondition for virtue but it can be preparatory if approached within the broader context of education.
Virtue begins in the inner recesses of the repentant and humble man where God meets man in the eye of his soul, cleansing him, and illuminating his nous, bring health to the whole man. May God grant us all the strength to live virtuous lives and behold His glorious resurrection.
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