It seems that the notion of “Hellenization” in various ways is catching people’s imagination more and more. A few years ago I was listening to a radio program where a Dominican priest named Fr. Gabriel Gillen said, “Before we can have a New Evangelization, we need to have a new Hellenization.” I thought this was a fantastic statement. Historically speaking, Hellenization refers to the spread of Greek language and customs after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Culturally speaking, Hellenization is the spread of Greek philosophy, mainly the thought of Plato and Aristotle, throughout Europe and the Middle East.
So why do we need a new Hellenization before we can have a New Evangelization? Fr. Gillen was basically trying to say that we have lost the tools for rational discourse that Plato and Aristotle gave us. Concepts like Plato’s notion of the forms and transcendence and Aristotle’s structure of matter and form are basic intellectual tools. These tools were applied to revelation and helped us understand the Faith. In fact, many scholars agree that the “marriage between Athens and Jerusalem” was providential and essential for the development of Christian theology. Without these tools it is extremely difficult to reach people with the truths of the Faith, even when they are familiar with Christianity.
More recently, Michael Hanby, a professor at the John Paul II Institute in DC, wrote a piece in First Things on the “De-Hellenization of Christianity.”1 He describes it like this: “The essence of de-Hellenization is a loss of ‘the superiority of the immutable over the changeable,’ a superiority, paradoxically, that ensures that the mundane things of this world . . . are invested with inherent meaning and intelligibility as symbol and image of the immutable.” In other words, we have lost the understanding and desire for the transcendent. Hanby continues by saying, “In theological terms, this means the inevitable loss of the transcendent otherness and holiness of God, whose subjective correlate is ‘the fear of the Lord.’” For the average church-goer, this means we have lost the ability to see mystery and meaning in the symbols and rituals of our Faith like the Mass.
Hanby’s thinking was echoed by a young priest from Milwaukee, who wrote about his experience working in a parish. Fr. Jacob Strand writes, “Teaching the elementary school students and ministering the sacraments were two of my principal responsibilities. They also were experiences that disclosed a regrettable truth. Neither education nor the sacramental liturgy captured parishioners’ minds and hearts: more often than not, both these experiences bored them.”2 Fr. Strand’s spiritual and intellectual search to answer the disconnect between his parishioners and the riches of the Faith led him to the British thinker and author Stratford Caldecott.
Stratford Caldecott devoted two books to the revival of classical education and the recovery of the transcendent through the cultivation of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Thus, for Caldecott, one of the strongest answers to the de-Hellenizaton that Hanby laments is the revival of classical education. Caldecott’s first book on classical education is titled Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education. In this book, Caldecott offers a reflection on the Trivium, a traditional three-fold approach to education of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In Caldcott’s second book, titled Beauty for Thruth’s Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education, he reflects on the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music), which has been traditionally combined with the three phases of the Trivium to comprise the seven liberal arts.
On one level, throughout both books, Caldecott endeavors to counter the Cartesian inward turn to the self that basically inspires all modern approaches to education. He relies heavily on St. John Paul II and quotes Fides et Ratio here: “Wherever men and women discover a call to the absolute and transcendent, the metaphysical dimension of reality opens up before them: in truth, in beauty, in moral values, in other persons, in being itself, in God.”3 Discovery begins in looking outside of oneself.
On a deeper level, Caldecott emphasizes education must be both personal and metaphysical, for the ultimate object of education is the Second Person of the Trinity, Who is both Christ and the Word. Caldecott writes, “We must be able to perceive the inner, connecting principles, the intrinsic relations, the logoi, of creation. For this the eye of the poet, or of the mystic, is needed. Education should lead to contemplation.”4
So this is the challenge for the classical education movement. It is true that the immersion of young students in the people and places of the classical world will give them the rational tools to better understand their Faith. However, this is not enough. Classical education has to be much more. In order for classical education to be the answer to de-Hellenization, it must be both personal and metaphysical. Classical schools will only achieve this through a commitment to Divine Liturgy as a central part of their educational mission.
- Michael Hanby, “A False Paradigm: Against the de-Hellenization of Christianity,” First Things, November 2018, firstthings.com/article/2018/11/a-false-paradigm. ↩
- Rev. Jacob A. Strand, “An Education for Meaning: Stratford Caldecott’s Metaphysical Perspective,” Second Spring, Oct. 2, 2018, secondspring.co.uk/2018/10/02/education-for-meaning/. ↩
- John Paul II, Fides et Ratio 83. Available at w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html. ↩
- Stratford Caldecott, “Towards a distinctively Catholic school,” Communio 19 (Summer 1992): 274. Available at communio-icr.com/files/caldecott19-2.pdf. ↩
About Mo Woltering
There seems to be a disconnect in Mr. Woltering’s essay. In the beginning of his article there is the testimony of the young priest speaking of education and sacramental liturgy “…these experiences bore them.” Yet the author concludes, “… commitment to Divine Liturgy as a central part of their educational mission.” This fails the test of logic. Moreover, maybe it is time to update the seven liberal arts (and this from a liberal arts teacher , including Latin). Where is the the study of pure sciences, physics, medicine, biology? What about engineering, computer sciences, and psychology? This thesis seems more an attack on the author’s notion of Modernism than a call to revert to ancient times. Better to find inspiration from Vatican II’s “The Church in the Modern World”.
Dear Mr Ramirez, The study of the sciences are part of the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy or, in modern parlance, math and science. One of the brilliant things about a classical medieval education is that students were taught logic and rhetoric (trivium), so they could then put their scientific learning (quadrivium) in perspective. Essentially, medieval students were taught knowledge, by which I mean facts together with their significance. These days, too many students are taught information, by which I mean facts without meaning.
If we can educate our students so they have a hunger and an appreciation for meaning, then they might also appreciate the most meaningful things of all, their Faith and Liturgy. As things now stand, students find meaning boring because we have taught them to prize information over knowledge.