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"The
First Subject in a Christian Curriculum" It is a great pleasure for me to prepare, year after year, an address appropriate to the beginning of the school year at Covenant High School. I find it, I hope you find it, intellectually stimulating to think about education, its purposes and its methods. Last year I considered "culture's" place in a Christian high school education. This evening I want to reflect on the supreme place that language ought to have in a Christian curriculum and the cultivation of language and its various "arts" as the first task of education. I mean language in the fullest sense. We speak of the three "r"s: reading, writing, and arithmetic. The first two of those "r"s are language -- the reading and writing of words. If we added oratory or rhetoric or speech, we would have all three dimensions of language. Spelling, grammar, even logic itself, are all sub-disciplines, constitutive parts of the study and the mastery of language. Foreign language instruction broadens the study of language still further while deepening and enriching all the previous study of one's mother-tongue. I read the passage from 1 Cor. 14 so that we might hear Paul himself place a premium on intelligent communication through language, to hear the Bible say in plain words that feelings and experiences do not matter as much as words fitly spoken and rightly understood. In our day "feelings" and "emotional states" are considered the highest and most important elements of human experience and the feelings of the heart to be most crucial to human happiness and fulfillment. Paul did not agree. He was himself a man of deep emotion and he preached a gospel that was to produce deep feeling in those who embraced and experienced it. But much more important to him than even an ecstatic experience -- such as tongues speaking -- was intelligent communication through words.
Paul placed a premium on communication through words. No wonder. He was himself a master of language and his written words have changed the whole world as before his spoken words changed the world in which he lived and through which he traveled. What is more, his life had been transformed by words spoken to him on the Damascus road. It was not the brilliant light, it was the words spoken by the exalted Christ that made a new man out of Paul. It is no wonder that, in the Bible, the secret, inner transformation of the heart, what we call regeneration or the new birth, is often in the Bible referred to as God's "calling." The image is that of a summons, which is, after all, something that requires the speaking and understanding of language. I want you to think with me this evening about the place of words, of language, of speaking and reading and writing in human life and Christian life. These things are so much a part of our lives that we take them far too much for granted. Think with me, for a moment, about what it means to be a human being. What is it, after all, that most profoundly distinguishes us from the rest of the animals? Let me propose that the greatest difference of all, the greatest power of human beings, the cornerstone of the image of God in man, is just this power to communicate with words. Human beings think much more powerfully than other animals do. Animals have a rudimentary power of thought but nothing like what humans are capable of. But human thinking would be of little use and would never produce human culture, human life as we know it, if the thoughts of the mind and heart could not be communicated in language. Indeed, human thought, the kind of thinking we are capable of, requires language as its vehicle, its method. Thinking is itself, in a way, in actual practice at least, the arrangement and manipulation of words in the mind. Do you see the importance of this? Here is what makes a human being. You can have thoughts in your mind -- sometimes petty and unworthy thoughts, but, also beautiful, ennobling, inspiring, helpful thoughts --; you can form those thoughts into words -- words that either you speak or you write -- and, through those words, the same thoughts or their effects can enter the mind and the heart of another human being. Whether it is love or quadratic equations, the thoughts of one mind can be passed to another, the life of one mind can arise in another mind, and one human being can connect with and influence another human being at the deepest level of human life and meaning. We take this so much for granted that we forget what an astonishing power this really is and how profoundly it defines what it means to be a human being. What is it that we grieve the loss of most when it is lost -- to brain damage, or to senility, or to deafness and dumbness -- the power to communicate thought and feeling in meaningful words to other human beings. When what is most essentially the glory of our humanity has been lost. This is the power that has enabled human beings to create culture and science, that is to build one discovery and one advancement upon another -- for each can be communicated and so learned by others. Language makes it possible for one man to stand on the shoulders of another, for one person to build on the accomplishments of others, for one human being to make many others better. This does not happen in the animal kingdom. The animals have no culture, no science, no learning at all in the true sense of the word. As an aside, this is another one of those immense problems with the theory of evolution that people hardly ever consider because they have accepted evolution not because of the evidence for it but because of a metaphysical and religious commitment to it. The fact is, any sort of ability in language such as human beings have in the highest degree, immeasurably improves the ability of a species to survive. But there is a vastness of almost unimaginable size between the language of human beings and that of the next creature to them in the natural order. No one else in all creation really "speaks" in the sense in which we ordinarily use the term. Not dolphins and not chimpanzees. Plenty of evolutionary linguists are willing to admit this. Indeed, Noam Chomsky, the founder of modern linguistics, has gotten into trouble with the Darwinian community for denying that natural selection has the power to produce the capacity for language that human beings have. He has pointed out that human beings have "hard-wired" into their brain a complex language program that has no real analogy in the animal world and which no plausible story of step-by-step evolutionary development can account for. Evolutionists really hate people who say things like that! Even if such people are themselves, as Chomsky, basically committed to evolution themselves. [Phillip Johnson, Objections Sustained, 60] On any theory of evolution, there ought to be any number of species between dolphins, chimpanzees on the one hand and man on the other that have survived and reproduced because of the tremendous powers that the ability to communicate thought in language imparted to them. On no Darwinist theory can we get from the grunts of chimps and the whistles of Dolphins to the Gettysburg address in one leap or, indeed, a thousand leaps. But where are the "speakers" in between whose powers and abilities so far exceed those of other creatures because they can speak, even if their powers are not so advanced as ours? That, as I said, is an aside. Read again the opening chapters of Genesis. Here is the great difference. God speaks, but only man, only the creature made in God's image speaks back in language that answers to God's own. Only with man can God have a conversation. Only with man can God have a relationship suitable to God's own personhood. The first of the divine acts that is recorded in Holy Writ is this "God said, 'let their be light.'" But only one who can himself or herself hear and read and understand words can appreciate that. Only someone who can also speak can know and have fellowship with a God who speaks the words that are formed in his mind and heart. It is language that makes it possible for us to know God, it is language that makes it possible for us to have a relationship with other human beings -- at least a relationship worthy of our personhood. God and man, husbands and wives, parents and children, rulers and subjects, teachers and students, friends with friends -- all of this happens by words, all of this is made possible by language. It is no surprise then that in establishing his relationship with us God gave us a book full of language and promised to draw near to us by speaking to us in the words of that Book. But the Bible is itself a grand illustration of the complexity of language and of the importance of an education in it. It is first of all, of course, a book to read, which requires that one knows how to read for it to bear its full fruit in a Christian life. In ancient days, when books and so copies of the Bible were rare, it had in many cases to be read and memorized from oral repetition. But still, the language had to be learned in the one way or another. I daresay, in the history of the world, more separate peoples have learned to read their own language in order that they might read the Bible than for any other reason. In how many times and places missionaries have done the twin works of literacy and Bible-translation precisely so that a people might have access to the Bible for themselves. But, since the gospel was published to the entire world, it is the divine will that languages be mastered to the extent that they can be translated from one to another -- the languages in which the Bible was written in the first place (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) and the languages into which the Bible has been translated -- thousands of them, if one counts the various periods of a language's development. We know that this is God's will because the NT repeatedly cites the OT from the LXX, the inspired Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, that was done 200 years before Christ. The validity of translations of God's Word into the language of the people is enshrined in the Bible itself. But the Bible also requires a great many particular applications of the art of language. How many different uses of language we find in the Bible, how much discrimination is required. There is historical writing and poetry and apocalyptic prophecies full of strange symbolism; there are letters and legal documents, love poems and hymns. And all of these different forms of language that make the Bible so useful in so many different ways have their laws and rules and principles that must be learned. The Bible makes arguments and the language of argument and the rules of argument need to be understood if those arguments are to be understood. To read the Bible with full understanding requires a real education in language -- whether that education is informally or formally received. No one can look at the Bible and think it unimportant to learn as much as one can about how to understand and how to use language with sophistication. For God wrote his book in very sophisticated language. And through the ages it has required a great deal of study of language -- of words, of grammar, of syntax, of genre -- on the part of those who have longed to understand it most completely. And, then, almost all that the Bible requires of us, the exercise of our faith in this world, requires that we learn to speak effectively or, in some cases, write effectively. In the church we are to speak the truth in love and speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. In marriage we are to love our husbands or wives, and, in the Bible that is done first and foremost -- as with all love -- with words fitly spoken. The Song of Songs is the Bible's great example of words carrying romantic love. Parents are to teach their children, we read in Deut. 6, or, as we read there, to talk about the faith all the time. All Christians are to be God's witness to the world, which is done by teaching, telling, explaining, that is, which is done with language. And the better one knows how to communicate, the better all of these wonderful duties may be fulfilled. The Bible, as I said, is its own school of language. But it points to many other sources of this art of using words to holy effect. Paul quotes pagan poets and philosophers; the wisdom literature of the Bible draws widely on the common wisdom writings literature of the ancient world; the love poetry of the Bible takes its imagery from the love poetry of the ancient Near East, and so on. In other words, the Bible itself bears witness to the fact that education in the language that Christians should use can be got in many other places than in the Bible itself. And so a good education seeks the best teaching in language that can be found, the best examples that exist of language rightly used. Christian literature of all kinds teaches the art of gracious speech; a Shakespeare love sonnet teaches a man what to say to a woman he loves; John Donne, John Bunyan, and John Owen will teach you better what to say to God in your prayer and how to say it. Abraham Lincoln will instruct you in political speech, Plato in the language of philosophy, Jane Austen in the language of human experience and relationship, and so on. Now, let me turn to the high school students themselves. Your natural bent, as sinners, as my natural bent, is to turn away from those things most essential to your true life as human beings, to what God has made you for, to the true and holy exercises of the powers he has given you. Husbands do not speak to their wives the words they should; parents do not speak to their children as they ought, politicians do not speak to the citizenry as they should, friends do not speak the truth in love, even committed Christians do not open their mouths to give a reason for the hope that is within them. And, far too often, when human beings do make some attempt to do these things -- they speak weakly, poorly, ineffectively. God has given them this tremendous power, this unbelievable ability, this divine endowment, and out of their mouths comes: "uh, well..., uh, like, I mean, uh, well, you know..." You may resent how much you will be asked to read, to write. You may resent the fact that what you are asked to read is not so easy as a comic book and requires more concentration than a video. Reading of this kind can actually be hard work! You will be pressed to learn how to speak and write well: clearly, beautifully, persuasively. You will be asked to study the writing and speaking of others to learn from them how to do it yourself. You will be required to examine texts, to critique content, argument, and style. You will be given opportunity to try your wings at writing and public speaking of various kinds and, still worse, teachers will have the audacity to criticize your efforts, to tell you what was good and what was not. Here is my point, young people. In all of this, they are not simply putting you through the paces of a high school education. They are teaching you what it means to be a human being and a being made in the image of God and teaching you how to give glory to your Creator and, especially, your Father in heaven, by making the fullest and the best use of the life he has given you -- a life that is defined in the first place by the power of speech. In every role, in every calling that you will undertake in your life -- and, especially in the most sacred roles of life -- you will be as effective as your words are effective. Your teachers of every aspect of language and its use are not simply your task-masters -- they are giving you your life, they are making it more and more possible for you, you, each one of you, to come into your full rights as a human being and as a Christian, and to make the most of the greatest power that God has given you. How effective will they be with you? It depends very much on how effective you want them to be! A few weeks ago, Mrs. Rayburn and I were enjoying a few wonderful days on the Greek Island of Paros. We were walking later one evening -- the restaurants do not fill up in Greece until 9:00 p.m. -- through the seaside village of Piso Livadi, where we were staying. Out of nowhere a seventeen/eighteen year old young woman ran up, positioned herself in front of us, and laughing gaily, asked if we remembered who she was. We had met her at church in Athens a few days before. She and her sister had been having a waffle at one of the restaurants we had walked passed, they had recognized us and ran to catch up with us. And so we talked. She is such an attractive Christian young woman -- vivacious, spiritually interested, sweet-spirited. It was delightful. But, of course, it all happened because she could speak English. She spoke it reasonably well; enough so that we could talk about the spiritual condition of Greece and of the Islands, of friends they had been witnessing to every summer for some years as her family would come to Piso Livadi for their summer vacation, of her sister's plans to come to Cleveland, Ohio with her new husband, and so on. What wonderful things are possible through the power of language! What a wonderful window on the Christian life were those few minutes standing with her and talking on the breakwater in Piso Livadi. Shared interests, the bond of the Holy Spirit, the pleasure of seeing grace in a young believer's life. And all of it made possible by the fact that she spoke our language. We did not speak hers! One of the great regrets and embarrassments of my life is that I never learned to speak another language besides my own. It can so easily be done. Average, even poor students all over the world speak more than one language! We spoke English with a German college-aged fellow on the Athens metro, with a couple from Munich in a Rome restaurant, with a Finnish gal and a host of Greek and Italian men who served us in restaurants, with ticket agents at ferry docks, with bus drivers, with shop-keepers. But I do not mean to turn this into a plea for foreign language study. I mean rather to have you think about the study of Spanish at Covenant High School in the same terms in which you think of every other part of your study of language and the use of language. This is not simply a course in the curriculum, a line on your transcript, a grade you must get, credits you must earn. It is your life as God gave you life, it is your great power to exercise for God and for other human beings, it is that capacity, that ability that will have the most to do with what you accomplish in your life. And what a privilege that you begin and end with English, that incomparably mighty and beautiful language, with its noble past --. The Bible has numbers in it too, of course, and art, and music. All of that is very important in its way. But it all stands on something else, it all depends on something else, it all draws its meaning from something else, and that something else is your power to communicate with words. This is the thing that most makes you a human being, it is the foremost ingredient in the image of God, it is the great power you have to do something valuable and important for God and man with your lives. If you love God, because he has loved you, you cannot be indifferent to your study of language -- for language is the means by which, in almost all cases, you will love him and serve him. While in Europe we would often read the International Herald Tribune, the paper of record for Americans living in Europe. And in each country there is an insert, also in English, dealing with the news of that particular country, in our case Greece and then Italy. One day we read an article bemoaning the state of the education of Italian high schoolers. In this article that sounded very much like articles you might read here about American high schoolers, we read that 90% of Italian high schoolers had never read a book for pleasure. They read what they had to, but they had no desire to read for themselves. That is very sad. Not because reading books will necessarily make you a better person. Bad books can make you worse. And it isn't sad chiefly for the reason that was mentioned in the article, that it will leave Italian young people less prepared to be effective workers in the economy, though that is no doubt true. It is sad, primarily for a much deeper reason: because the kind of indifference to literature and language which is illustrated by that statistic, by their lack of interest in reading, is fundamentally dehumanizing. It makes a person less a human being and more like the animals who have no powers of speech or language either. Listen to this from one of the most thoughtful educational philosophers of our time, Neil Postman [Technopoly, 171-172]:
At Covenant High School we believe the purpose of education is to equip young people made in God's image and redeemed by the precious blood of Christ more completely to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And that being so, language and all that goes in to understanding it, speaking it, and writing it beautifully, clearly, effectively, and persuasively is first and foremost in the curriculum and those means are chosen that most seriously and effectively cultivate this marvelous power and gift and capacity that God has given us by which to know and serve him and one another. |
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