“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
Ephesians 6:4
A hallmark of classical Christian education is the concept of paideia. Paideia is the Greek word translated as “discipline” in the passage referenced above, but there is much more meaning packed into this word. To the Greeks, paideia meant enculturation. It meant assimilation of the younger generations into their culture. This paideia or enculturation reached far beyond the bounds of the classroom. Paideia certainly involved intellectual instruction and learning, but it also encompassed the desires and affections of the student.
In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Chapter 3, he said:
For moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it is on account of the pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; for this is the right education
C.S. Lewis sums up this thought well in his book The Abolition of Man where he said:
Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.
They did not approach education as simply training the mind, but formation of the whole person. This is what is packed into the word paideia.
With all of this in mind, we are in a better position to see clearly what the Apostle Paul is instructing fathers to do in Ephesians chapter 6. He is instructing us to raise our children in the Christian paideia—the true paideia, the paideia of God. This is Christian discipleship seeping into every aspect of the student’s education and life. He is talking about the assimilation of Christian kids into a Christian culture.
In his commentary on Ephesians 6, Charles Hodge writes:
Paideia is a comprehensive word; it means the training or education of a child, including the whole process of instruction and discipline…They are to be instructed, disciplined, and admonished, so that they be brought to knowledge, self-control, and obedience.
This whole process of education is to be religious, and not only religious, but Christian. It is the nurture and admonition of the Lord, which is the appointed and the only effectual means of attaining the end of education. Where this means is neglected or any other substituted in its place, the result must be disastrous failure.
Religion therefore is as necessary to the development of the mind as knowledge. And as Christianity is the only true religion, and God in Christ the only true God, the only possible means of profitable education is the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That is, the whole process of instruction and discipline must be that which he prescribes, and which he administers, so that his authority should be brought into constant and immediate contact, with the mind, heart and conscience of the child.
This is why the concept of paideia is so central to classical Christian education. As Christian schools operate in loco parentis, meaning in the place of parents as their delegates and servants, we are here to help fathers obey this command. We did not start Upstate Classical so that we could simply have scholars for children. We started UCCA so that they would receive an excellent and Christ-centered education that is founded on the solid rock of God’s Word. So that we could raise and educate them to be wise and faithful worshippers of God, for that is what He made them to be.
There is an excellent lecture on the Paideia of God by Dr. Joe Rigney that I recommend to all who read this, and that I will link here. In closing I’d like to summarize some of his points below.
- Paideia is about passing down the culture, values, and beliefs of the Christian faith to the next generation. This is seen clearly in:
- Deuteronomy 4:9-10, “Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your sons and your grandsons. Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when the LORD said to me, ‘Assemble the people to Me, that I may let them hear My words so they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.’”
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- Deuteronomy 6:20-25, “When your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments mean which the LORD our God commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the LORD brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand. Moreover, the LORD showed great and distressing signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh and all his household; He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land which He had sworn to our fathers.’ So the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God for our good always and for our survival, as it is today. It will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the LORD our God, just as He commanded us.”
- Deuteronomy 4:9-10, “Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your sons and your grandsons. Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when the LORD said to me, ‘Assemble the people to Me, that I may let them hear My words so they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.’”
- Paideia is about instructing the mind and shaping the heart. It is our job to show them what to think and how to feel according to God’s special revelation. We are to train them to love what God loves and to hate what God hates. It is our duty to teach them to love and appreciate the true, the good, and the beautiful. This is rubber-meats-the-road Christian discipleship. An example Dr. Rigney gives is that when the Lord Jesus called His disciples to follow him, they did not step into a classroom, but they walked through life with Him and learned from Him.
- Paideia is immersive. If paideia means enculturation, then it is immersive by necessity. Our children will either be raised in the paideia of the Lord, or they will be raised in the paideia of the world. It is not whether but which. If we, as parents, teachers, coaches, etc., are to faithfully carry out the duty of enculturation in the Christian faith then we must proclaim the glory and excellencies of Christ and His gospel in every realm of our children’s lives; Whether it be in the classroom, the hallway, the cafeteria, the locker room, the football field, the kitchen, or the living room, our kids must be immersed in the gospel. God’s word must be brought to bear in every scenario. Again, Moses is quite helpful here:
- Deuteronomy 6:6-9, “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
In my view, the end of this work of paideia, is for the student to recognize the authority of God over every single aspect of life, and to live a life of worship in response. Often times a Christian school is viewed as retreat into a “bubble” of sorts to get away from the “real world”. What we are striving to accomplish through the work of paideia is to show our students that the “real world” is the world that God made, and He made us as image-bearers to live in this world for His glory. It is our hope and prayer that you will help us in this work.