The Spokes of the Logos Wheel?

It is summer and my thoughts are running wherever they want to go.  This summer I have returned often to the theme I wrote about here last month: Jesus as the Logos.  I want to tease out this idea a little further in my thinking, so here I sit writing again.  Perhaps a little more history on the concept will get us back into the concept and thinking deeply about it again.  The conception of there being a logos or one idea/thought that runs through all the Cosmos, giving it meaning and unity, goes back in the Western tradition to at least Heraclitus.  But the same sort of oneness, unity, or harmony certainly is present in Indian, Egyptian, and Persian thought, as well as the Hebrew theology out of which comes Christianity, the religion that has used the concept the most.  At the heart of Christian teaching on Jesus and His incarnation is the concept that Jesus was active in Creation, Salvation, and the moment-by-moment continuation of the Cosmos.  Creation is of Him, and by Him, and through Him.  In Him, we live and move and have our being.

The analogy of my title is weak, but the best I can muster at the moment.  Given that Jesus holds this role in the Cosmos, that which brings unity, meaning, harmony to all of it, then it should follow that this is central to any study of that cosmos, and thus key to understanding education.  Learning cannot be successful if it is random.  Purpose, order, direction, “the point” is necessary for there to be any pursuit of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful that we might be wise and virtuous.  So the picture I wish to make is something like this:

With Christ in the center as the Logos, what does a school’s curriculum look like?  I would add Theology into the center, place the various “subjects” or areas of study as the spokes, and have wisdom and virtue as where the rubber hits the road.  This leads all things studied in school toward its ultimate telos – Christ.  We don’t study Math to become mathematicians, though many of us can become such.  We study Math, or anything, that we might better understand and become disciples of the Lord Jesus.  The practical outworking of this study is not a great job or more prestige, or even a diploma.  It is wisdom and virtue, both of which are the direct result of being those who love The True, Good, and Beautiful (in a word, Jesus).

It Is Getting Better All the Time, Right?

The Beatles believed such was so.  Progress.  That grand idea of recent centuries has had a profound effect upon current educational theory.  Man learns from his mistakes so as to not make them again.  Man is becoming better at being man.  Someday, some would say, there will only be one man left upon the earth, the Last Man, as all others will have evolved beyond man to whatever is above that species.  The German Ubermensch has become a fascination for movie goers with yet another Superman movie coming out very soon.  As I read and think about this idea, the following seem to be a starting list of ways in which the progressive idea of “Progress” has changed or affected education in our day:

• What was true for the past has little or no bearing on the present.  Thus Social Studies (studies of what is true now) is more appropriate than History.
• With constant progress comes constant change.  Nothing stays the same; all things are getting better, so our methods, ideas, plans, goals, purposes, etc. should all be constantly updated.
• New is good; old is bad.  In everything this holds true: values, definitions, subjects, courses/curriculum, etc. all bow to the newest, the latest.
• Progress is built upon rational thought and scientific process.  Science will show us each successive progressive step.
• Much of progress is seen in letting go of the past – superstition, religion, tradition, myth, etc. are all a part of what must be overcome if we are to become better.
• Progression begets temporary notions.  Planning for much beyond our own moment is ludicrous because of this dogma of progress – we don’t know where we are going, so simply doing “the best” (ie. the newest idea) is what is important.
• Progress is measured in terms of overcoming nature.  The more we can figure ways around nature and how to manipulate nature to our ends, the more progressive we become.

I believe this could go on at length, but the last point is my jumping off point.  The first real point of comparison between the Road and the Wheel is this point of how the two relate to the natural.  Road educators tend to be nominalists.  They deny real nature for anything, and instead believe the nature of something is what we as men say it is.  So the world we live is ours to be reformed for our purposes.  The Wheel educator seeks rather to teach students how to live responsibly and well within a reality that for the most part man cannot change.

The differences here are huge.  For the Christian, this is no less true.  I find Christians on both sides of this debate.  There are certainly Christian educators who teach purposefully that the earth is ours to be used for the Glory of God, but then define such in a way that belies their belief that man must overcome nature.  The other Christian, the one thinking more as a wheel, seeks atonement with nature.  God is not in the process of bringing out of this world, but in redeeming this world with us in it.  This leads such an educator to seek to show students how to live within the world, as a part of it, and a rather fragile part of it at that.  It includes an education in what has come before, what is now, and what shall be after we die.  It does not see man as a species getting better or worse, but rather living within the world God has placed him in.

This is the difference between conquest and atonement.

Overview of Specifics from “Road and Wheel”

Having stated earlier Berry’s main point with the “Road and Wheel” metaphor, I want to lay out what will be several up coming meditations on the specifics from his essay, “Discipline and Hope.”

Here is his own chart showing the contrasts between these two ways:

Linear	Cyclic
Progress. The conquest of nature.	Atonement with the creation.
The Promised Land motif in the Westward Movement.	Black Elk’s sacred hoop, the community of creation.
Heavenly aspiration without earthly reconciliation or stewardship. The creation as commodity.	Reconciliation of heaven and earth in aspiration toward responsible life. The creation as source and end.
Training, programming.	Education. Cultural process.
Possession.	Usufruct, relinquishment.
Quantity.	Quality.
Newness. The unique and “original.”	Renewal. The recurring.
Life.	Life and death.

fr. Wendell Berry, Discipline and Hope, p. 137

I will develop each of these in turn by relating them to our views of education in upcoming blogs.