CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: PATRON SAINT OF CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION? ° KEITH R. ANDERSON ° Campus Pastor Bethel College Let us all sing To Christ, our King Songs of sweet innocence, Hymns of bring purity, Hallowed gratefulness For teachings of life; Let us praise gladsomely So mighty a Child. Clement of Alexandria1 Clement is the name of an important early Church leader whose ministry took place in Alexandria in Africa. One of his writings is entitled "Christ the Educator" and offers a powerful model for the ministry of education. Written perhaps as early as 190 C.E., Christ the Educator offers the modern educator an insightful look at early Christian pedagogy by a leading scholar of the day from Alexandria, a city legendary as a center of literary achievement and intellectual discourse. As such it provides an early Christian educator thinking about teaching. Clement's brief treatise forcibly focuses attention on lively, gritty, and essential foundations for the unique and special vocation of Christian higher education in general and campus ministry in particular. Trained in neo-Platonism as we has, Clement believed that the way to control the passions is through reason. Pivotal to his thinking is his idea that faith is aided by intellectual understanding in an almost symbiotic relationship. He writes: An indestructible cornerstone of knowledge, holy temple of the great God, has been hewn out especially for us as a foundation for the truth. This cornerstone is noble persuasion, or the desire for eternal life aroused by an intelligent response to it, laid in the ground of our minds. (Christ the Educator, I:1, p. 3; and subsequent references that follow) In the world of educational thought we live in a kingdom with two competing monarchs, one of reason and one of faith. The reign of reason is demanded today by an academic system that is held tightly in the grips of rationalism, objective and technical thinking, and what Parker Palmer describes as seeing with "the eye of the heart."2 We are faced constantly with these familiar dichotomies: faith and reason, belief and intellect, trusting and thinking, heart and mind. Clement's treatise takes a harmonizing turn for he would have us walk freely between these competing polarities. For him, faith is aided by intellectual understanding. There is no dualism of reason versus faith, belief versus intellect, or heart versus mind. He understands that students walk freely and interactively between their roles as academics and their lives as people of faith. Clement affirms a dialectical relationship between faith and reason because he says that habits, deeds, and passions are but one. His holistic understanding of the person calls us from the seduction of the multi-versity to a uni-versity. Such a noble vocare or calling is indeed indicated in the world of academe today. In too many places, academic life is a bastion of competitive 2 individualism. In the secular university and in the Christian college alike, the task of higher education seems to focus on dissecting the world of the student into discrete and disparate pieces. We are good at this task. We are less effective when it comes to an integration or "re-membering" of these now separated parts. It is a common experience for students to sit in my office to discuss the issues raised in the vacuum of the classroom. These students seem to know intuitively that there is an ecological connection between the material in the classroom and their lives of faith, but are not sure that their professor has noticed the connections. Clement's vision is that faith and intellectual reasoning are inter-connected; he argues for a creative relationship between faith and reason. Clement makes an important contribution to our pedagogy as educators in the distinction he draws between teaching and education. Teaching in Clement's view, has to do with concrete instruction; education has to do with wisdom. . . . his aim is to improve the soul, not just to instruct; to guide to a life of virtue, not merely to one of knowledge . . . . As Teacher, he explains and reveals through instruction, but as Educator he is practical. (I:2, p. 4) Clement says that Christ is the educator who teaches and the teacher who educates. Health and knowledge are an example of this thinking. If a person is sick we may give instructions in order to cure that one. That we might call teaching. But if we want a person to learn wisdom, we do not merely "teach," we educate. " . . . Our soul needs the 3 Educator to cure its ills. Only then does it need the Teacher to guide it and develop its capacity to know . . . ." (I:3, p. 5) Do we teach then or do we educate? For Clement that is the wrong question. Instead he would say, as teachers we educate and as educators we teach. We weave instruction of a specific discipline together with our educare for practical wisdom, as those who understand our role in shaping and forming people for lived faith. He himself freely engaged the world of Greek philosophy and fearlessly pondered it in relationship to Christian faith. "Christ the Educator" offers a spirituality of education where soul, life, knowledge, mind and reason are all in dynamic interaction. At the heart of this enterprise is the life of faith. He understands, correctly I believe, that the circle of faith needs an engaged mind and the world of careful and critical thinking. Nurturing the life of the soul includes attention to habits, deeds, and passions. Improving the life of the soul includes instruction, guidance, and knowledge. As we read Clement we notice that his language is not religious, but spiritual. He does not invite people solely into the life of the cultus or organized church, but into the life of spirit and community with God. Faith is not trapped in denominations, liturgies, doctrines, or dogmas, but is a unifying core for all of life, a relationship with faith in Christ the Educator. The education that God gives is the imparting of the truth that will guide us correctly to the contemplation of God, and a description of holy deeds that endure forever . . . . (I:54, p. 50) 4 For this spirituality of education, Clement offers a methodology that is practical. His praxis of education is twofold: advice and example. He offers specific instruction, but offers it within a "holding environment" which is a community of history. " . . . He encourages them to fulfill their duties by laying down clear-cut counsels and by holding up, for us to follow, examples of those who have erred in the past." (I:2, p. 4) This frail and errant "cloud of witnesses" serves to empower present praxis. While the example he cites serves as a negative model, the principle of mentorship is there, nonetheless. The mentor speaks words of advice, persuasively reasoned with content that is rooted in careful thought. The mentor also speaks words of experience, persuasively illustrating with life that is rooted in human experience. The intellectual and sapiential are woven together in a dynamic pedagogy. Clement further offers a metaphor of the learner as child and of learning as walking in a relation with God-as-father. Such an anthropology of the learner does not expect the learner to be naive, mindless, or immature. On the contrary, the learner brings her own bag of life into the process of education and into the new relationship with God. She is a child with a capacity to reason, a will to reject a life of sin, and a wisdom to recognize the transience of life (I:16, p. 17). As such she is to be valued, honored, and affirmed. In an insightful image, Clement says that Christ Our Educator seeks to create learners who are "self-sufficient of life" and says further 5 that "each one of us is to be his own storehouse" (I:98, p. 87). That reminds us that no person comes to education as an empty container devoid of the "database of life" and experience. The task of education is to help students appropriate that data as grist for wisdom. (The metaphor of father might need to be re-visited for the contemporary era in which "father" is often more readily known as the agent of abuse or of absent neglect, but the metaphor serves well as a guide for understanding the student as a valued and honored participant in education.) In light of its early date, it is striking to find a strong note of inclusiveness in Clement's plan for education: Let us recognize, too, that both men and women practice the same sort of virtue. Surely, if there is but one God for both, then there is but one Educator for both. One Church, one virtue, one modesty, a common food, wedlock in common, breath, sight, hearing, knowledge, hope, obedience, love all are alike (in man and woman). They who possess life in common, grace in common, and salvation in common have also virtue in common and, therefore, education too. (I:11, pp. 11-12) Further, Clement offers an understanding of the telos of this educational enterprise, namely to "cultivate holy wisdom." The goal of education, in Clement's mind, could never be merely technical competence. It could never be merely theoretical. Wisdom that is of God is the truth which humankind seeks. Not technology, not raw data, not unexamined information, but knowledge which is wise for life. Does that discount the search for theoretical 6 knowledge? I think not, but I believe it transforms the search form an end in itself, to an encounter with the truth which is God's truth wherever it may be found. Do we say, then, that the rational animal, I mean man, ought to do anything besides contemplate the divinity? I maintain that he ought to contemplate human nature, also, and live as the truth leads him, admiring the way in which the Educator and His precepts are worthy of one another and adapted one to the other. In keeping with such a model, we ought also to adapt ourselves to our Educator, conform our deeds to the World, and then we will truly live. (I:100, p. 89) We know that Clement paved the way for Origen and the school at Alexandria to teach grammar, rhetoric, music, geometry, and astronomy as well as theology. The curriculum that is valid for study by the Christian thinker is, in fact, the world and all its questions. I believe he would validate the search for knowledge in every field of human study, that he would affirm all human curiosity, but that he would bring us to a stewardship understanding of all such enterprises. The education that God gives is the imparting of the truth that will guide us correctly to the contemplation of God, and a description of holy deeds that endure for ever. (I:53, 54, p. 50) In other words, we research, study, explore, investigate, analyze and test, but we do it Christianly, that is, with an a priori assumption that God is revealed in this universe and that truth is of God, wherever it may be found. It can be argued that he favors an ontological, rather than a purely epistemological pedagogy. Education is for wisdom, wisdom is for living. Most educators trained as they are in modern secular universities are directed to the 7 goal of knowledge for knowledge sake. Clement would disagree. He seems to believe that every Christian professor in every field of study is ultimately a faith educator. Our disciplines are not merely utilitarian tools to teach faith in a purely instrumental sense. It may be reading in too much to say this, but I am further struck that Clement sees the spiritual formation of the Christian leader, teacher, professor, campus minister, or administrator as essential to this work of education. His treatise is specifically addressed to Christian leaders, catechists really, whose task is to shape the next generation of Christians. But it is an integral pat of the raison d'ętre for every Christian. And essential to the effectiveness of this teaching, is the spiritual formation of those who teach. We are all like children on the journey of our own spiritual growth and maturation. Such an understanding and practice would contribute greatly to the spiritual vitality of any campus. It has been well said that "the heart of Christian education is the heart of the Christian educator." Therefore, the all-loving Word, anxious to perfect us, in a way that leads progressively to salvation, makes effective use of an order well adapted to our development; at first he persuades, then he educates, and after all this he teaches. (I:3, p. 5) Such perfecting in us will be reflected in those whom we teach. Implications for Christian Education To make this more accessible, I would like to attempt a 8 Clementine definition of education: "Learning takes place when content (advice) and process (example) collide in a relationship of receptivity for the spiritual formation of the student-participant." In other words, teaching takes place when the instructor becomes a catechist seeking to offer sound content through appropriate processes for the purpose of spiritual formation. Does every classroom become a chapel? Yes and no. No in that the discussion need not always focus on things religious. Yes in that the goal is the common human search for truth which we believe to be rooted and grounded in the creator God. No in that "religious" or liturgical activities are not the mode of the classroom, but yes in the sense that all that we do can be sacramental. Education is comprised of content, process, and purpose. The content is the specific curriculum or a specific discipline. The process ought to reflect a Christian ethic and anthropology. The purpose asks, "to what end do I teach?" The metapurpose is that we teach to the end of promoting the Reign of God on earth as it is in heaven.3 What can we learn about the ministry of education from this brief study? 1. The educator will recognize a spiritual goal at the core of all teaching. Whatever the content, teaching must place its activity in a "big enough" focus. If one only teaches mathematical equations and formulae, the focus is too small. If one merely teaches dates, places, and facts of history, the focus is too small. The instructor can be 9 freed from the tyranny of the detail by a vision of is discipline as part of an ecological or symbiotic whole. All teaching participates in this spiritual quest for truth. Integration of the particular discipline and a spiritual search for truth is then a recognized goal for every course. The old saw contains wisdom for us: we teach people, not merely content. The learner is a subject, a person, a spiritual being on a quest through human history for truth. In that way, every academic discipline has a spiritual goal. 2. The educator will never neglect the role of "giving advice" or of the careful presentation of her content. Content is not unimportant, nor is the enterprise of rational discourse . While I may prefer a Hebrew epistemology based on experience, concrete interaction, and earthy truth, I cannot ignore a Greek epistemology based on fact, abstraction, and intellectual truth. Both have their place. In the classroom, we are taught best by one who is truly a "profess-or," that is, one who freely and passionately professes what they believe about the subject at hand. But every course of study joins every other course of study in a community questing for truth. How do I teach? 3. Still, the educator must engage the life and praxis of the learner through active participation. Learning, according to Clement, is not merely cognitive and intellectual, but is that which engages habits, deeds, and passions. The will, the body, the heart are all intricately 10 involved. Learning may need to become practical and life-centered rather than abstract and theoretical only. Whatever the student brings becomes a teachable moment, whether she brings questions, pain, brokenness, doubts, anger, fear, confusion, or victory, success, and elation. In my work, we talk about "the three R's of campus ministry" as relationships, relationships, and relationships. Even the repeated questions about dating, love, sex, and marriage become moments for practice in thinking. The Apostle Paul intimates in 2 Corinthians 4:7 that anything in life can hold the sacred. Thus every educator is alert for the clay pots which can indeed hold the sacred and holy. All course content can become containers which hold ultimate truth. What is my understanding of anthropology?-i.e., what assumptions do I make about the students seated in my classroom? 4. To that end, the educator will honor the learner as one's own child and approach teaching as stewards to God's own children. This will be seen in the respectful treatment and value placed on each learner. This will further take on the political edge of inclusion of all children, rather than the exclusion of those who are different. In my own setting that means a continual attentiveness to exclusion in any of its forms. If my vocation of teaching is spiritual, than I relate out of my spirituality to the learners with whom I work. I value them for their own spirituality and embrace them as co-participants on the journey of discipleship. While Clement does not use the biblical language of 11 stewardship from Genesis, I believe he hints at the notion as he says, "The plain truth is that what is perfect belongs to the Lord, who is ever teaching, while the role of the child and little one belongs to us, who are every learning . . . ." (I:17, p. 18) God as perfect teacher empowers us-all perpetual and imperfect learners-to walk with others on the imperfect journey of learning. How do I engage students on the journey of their own learning? 5. As a consequence of such teaching, healing will come. "Healing of the passions follows as a consequence." (I:3, p. 4) "Our soul needs the Educator to cure its ills." (I:3, p. 5) It is interesting to note that Clement sees healing as a by-product, almost a serendipity or unexpected result of teaching. Education brings healing. In a culture that seems to overemphasize counseling and therapy, perhaps greater attention to a spirituality of education is needed! Truth will make you free and whole. Healing emerges from encounters with truth. An Old Testament Perspective on Teaching and Learning The ancient Hebrew faith offers a model of an education worthy of conviction. In Deuteronomy 6 the family of the child-learner was to teach at teachable moments-when walking or standing or sitting or lying down-in other words, in the moments of natural interaction between parent and child. The teaching parent was to be alert to intersections and convergences. The teaching parent would follow the natural rhythms and motions of the relationship and teach without "teaching." The teacher-parent was one who "professed" 12 with passion. This notion of parent as teacher can offer the instructor of today important clues to the task of teaching and learning. That the ancient Hebrew taught a sacred and remembered tradition is understood by a careful study of Israel's history. That their goal was to inculcate a worldview and value framework is further understood. I do not argue that we revert to teaching as indoctrination. I contend that professing is essential to teaching, that passion is a necessity to effective education and that conviction is integral to both teaching and learning. What can be observed in the ancient Hebrew way of teaching? Firstly, teaching has a specific content. There are necessary levels of content mastery that are essential to learning. The Hebrew parents wanted their children to know certain facts and truths about Yahweh, their God. The daily recitations of the shema of Deuteronomy 6, the "Hear O Israel" guaranteed that the child would understand certain basic facts of their Hebrew faith: Yahweh is One, faithfulness to Yahweh is expected of covenant people, faithfulness to Yahweh further calls for faithfulness to one's people, the neighbor. The call for passion in teaching takes seriously the need for solid scholarship and analysis based on sound content. Thomas Groome is persuasive in his argument that "Few people have placed as much emphasis on remembering, reenacting, and retelling their faith Story as have the Hebrew people."4 Teaching was not devoid of specific 13 content. Just as Christian Religious Education must convey fides quae (that which we believe), so each discipline has specific material to be taught. Every discipline has a story to tell. Teaching requires a solid commitment to content, to scholarship, to serious study. It has often been observed that Jews do not "read" Torah, they "study" it. Secondly, teaching has a variety of styles. The ancient Hebrew parent-teacher taught from many postures: sitting, lying down, walking, standing. The authoritative posture of professor as lecturer ex cathedra simply cannot be the only style used in Christian education. The lecture may be useful as one methodology, but is deadly when used exclusively. The ancient Hebrew parent-teacher understood the concept of "teachable moments." When content collides with felt need, learning effectiveness is at its highest. There is a naturalness inherent in this approach to education that needs to be understood today. One could build a strong case for a hermeneutics of teaching. Just as we interpret texts according to context and literary genre, so our content ought to shape our presentation. Some things simply ought not be taught through the lecture method. Some material demands to be taught through reflection while other material demands to be taught through action. There is an urgent need for educators to creatively seek forms of teaching that are uniquely appropriate to the content being taught. Thirdly, teaching has a particular relationship. We 14 learn that teaching is most effective when teacher and learner have a relationship of respect and mutuality. Much is being written these days about the teacher as mentor.5 Much is being rediscovered about teaching within a relationship of trust and challenge. The dynamic of parent-child cannot be duplicated in religious education and ought not be copied, but few of us can argue the evidence of our own experience: students learn most effectively within a relationship of trust and mutuality in the shared task of learning. We might call this community and think of every classroom as a potential community of learning. The goal is not education by majority consent but rather to become a viable community where ideas are held up to the light for community discernment. This is cooperative learning instead of competitive, adversarial learning. Finally, we learn from the Hebrew parent that teaching requires a commitment, a passion, something to be "professed." No Hebrew parent would approach the task with indifference. To tell the story to the next generation was a vital, essential mission. It was done with passion. In the Hebrew language, "to know" was loaded with sexual overtones. Knowledge had more than cognitive implications. To know meant to be committed to that knowledge. To know God meant far more than to possess a certain collection of information: it implied an intimacy born of passion. To know God was not unlike the sexual knowing of a husband and wife. At its core, this kind of knowing is holistic, organic, passionate. Thus, teaching is not merely the 15 transmission of course content; it cannot be so reduced. Teaching is instead an incarnated quest for truth. We recognize that knowledge is embodied in both teacher and student and thus will be sought with a passion born of the quest, the adventure, the crusade. At times that quest will demand rigorous discipline while at other times it will be joyously playful. At times the quest will take the learning community to sacred places of profound depths while at other times to sacred places of rest from wearying thought. But always the journey is guided by one passionately engaged in the quest, committed to the adventure, convicted of its import. To teach, in my view, is to tell our story with vision and passion. To teach is to disorient in order to re-orient. To teach is to take a world apart and then to be responsible enough to show how one can move ahead in new, integrative syntheses. To teach is to show our students there is something worthy of our commitment because we teach from conviction. Practical Applications How then can we implement such ideas from an early church father into the enterprise of teaching in ministry today? The following are suggestive responses to Clement. 1. We need to create opportunities for students to think about life . . . period! At Bethel College, our missions trips always include a time for careful debriefing and interaction. This action-reflection is essential to our goals. The event plus its interpretation creates the 16 opportunity, the moment, for revelation. "An unexamined life is not worth living." 2. We need to create opportunities for experiences of life, life's issues, and life's questions to emerge. The focus is incarnational; it is life-centered; it values praxis. The theoretical questions may be raised, but the purpose is to bring the learner to ask the existential questions. God is the great intervener in human history and in our story and in my story today. That story becomes an essential part of the curriculum. 3. We need to create opportunities for students to think and serve in community. Alongside the individualistic and privatized forms of ministry, we aggressively look for ways to form students into ministry teams which can also become learning communities in microcosm. How do we prepare students to live and serve in a diverse and multicultural world unless we give them practice in cooperative learning? How do we honor the ecology of the church as the "body of Christ" unless we practice being the body of Christ now? And how dare we preach community, unless we are hard at the task of living in respectful community with our colleagues? 4. We need to create opportunities for the learner to come into dialogue with God. No question is out of bounds, no "hot potatoes" are avoided, but all are brought into dialogue with God. The biblical mandate of the psalms is that we bring to God what Calvin called "the anatomy of all parts of the soul." We bring them all-bitterness, anger, rage, doubts, joy, love, and elation. But we bring it to 17 the right source-to God's own self. I believe we are most effective when we recognize that this is the pastoral role in all of life: to create moments in which people can give attention to their own lives in dialogue with God. For at the heart, isn't that the work of liturgy, preaching, and teaching: to create opportunities in which people can give attention to God? I was returning to the Twin Cities from some work in Virginia on the night of the NCAA basketball championship. While the rest of the country watched Duke defeat Michigan, I sat on a plane with Moses. I became intrigued by God's instructions to Moses in Exodus 3 to take off his shoes. Why did God place such a demand on Moses? Why did God have a thing about shoes? What was the issue at stake? Why did Moses need to get out of those animal-skin sandals? What is the revelatory truth in this mundane biblical detail? The traditional answer says it was an act of obedience. I can accept that as a primary answer, but I think there are also other more "earthly" reasons that emerge from an imaginative historical consciousness. I've been in that part of the world and I know that the sand is not smooth, soft, and kind to the feet. Perhaps God wanted Moses to stand still, to stay put. If the shoes were removed he couldn't so quickly cut and run from God. He would need to stay with God long enough to truly "hear" the divine Word. Attentiveness to God demands time, time for reflection, time for meditation, time to listen. Attentiveness to God is a counter-cultural activity of 18 wasting time in a culture obsessed with productivity. Perhaps God wanted Moses to be in touch with the earth through his own body. His feet might feel the fiery heat of the sand or the coolness of its, but perhaps God wanted Moses to pay attention to his own body and its gut response to God. In that posture, Moses could "feel" God in ways greater than the cognitive or intellectual. Perhaps God wanted Moses to have a visceral experience of revelation and not merely to listen with his mind. And perhaps God wanted Moses to feel the relaxed sense of being "at home" which I feel when I walk through the door at night and kick off my shoes. Those leather instruments that protect me from pain during the day in unfriendly environments also bind me tightly and restrict me. But when I am home, when I walk the friendly confines of my home, I need neither the protection nor the restriction. Perhaps God wanted Moses to learn to feel safe and empowered in God's presence. Henri Nouwen6 says that we learn to create free and safe places where we can meet God. Clement seems to understand education in a similar way, to give times of attentiveness to God through advice, example, receptivity, and life. Is Clement actually a patron saint for those few of us who are privileged to spend our life in Christian higher education? Perhaps, for he attempts to develop a pedagogy for teachers responsible for the next generation, and, as Walter Bruggemann says, "Every community that wants to last beyond a single generation must concern itself with 19 education."7 References 1Clement of Alexandria, Christ the Educator, trans. Simon P. Wood, C.P., vol. 23: The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1954), p. 278. 2Parker Palmer, To Know As We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), p. xi. 3Thomas H. Groome, Sharing Faith (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 14. 4Thomas H. Groome, Christian Religious Education: Sharing Our Story and Vision (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 144. 5See especially Laurent A. Daloz, Effective Teaching and Mentoring: Realizing the Transformational Power of Adult Learning Experiences (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986). 6See Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975). 7Walter Brueggemann, The Creative Word: Canon as Model for Biblical Education (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), p. 1. 20