What should shape the education of our children: Greek philosophy or biblical discipleship? In this episode, Scott Brown welcomes Kevin Swanson of Generations for a candid discussion on the foundations, goals, and methods of Christian education. The biblical model — as described in Deuteronomy 6 and the Proverbs — is family-centered, character-focused, life-integrated, and rooted in the fear of the Lord. Whereas the Greek model — central to many classical education programs — is rooted in the pride of man, emphasizing the “greet books” penned by such pagans as Aristotle and Homer. Their conclusion: we must bow the knee to God’s word, not the “wisdom” of pagans, in how we teach our children.   

To learn more about Generations’ God-centered, Bible-based, life-integrated, Christ-exalting, Gospel-emphasizing, family-discipleship curriculum, click here.

Thanks for checking out the podcast. Just a quick reminder, not to use this as a replacement for the good pastoral leadership and teaching in your local church, but really just an encouragement for quiet faithfulness through the sufficiency of scripture. ["The Spirit of the Holy Spirit"] of scripture. Kevin Swanson, man, it's so great to see you. We've been pounding the pavement, beating our head against the wall for years, like two, you know, two decades.

And I want to talk to you about the Hebrew model of education, You know, which is, what is it? It's God-centered, it's family-centered, it's multi-generational. It's, well, it's character before information. It is memorization of scripture, it's apprenticeship. You know, it's education that's integrated into the local life, the local church life where discipleship is happening.

It's like a full orbed, biblically defined, you know, methodology of education. So you stirred up a bit of controversy. Well you have been stirring up a bit of controversy for a long time. Not the first time. And you took some looks at the classical education model and you contrasted it with Jesus model of discipleship the Hebrew model of Discipleship and so people are asking a lot of quick.

There actually are a lot of questions that should be asked of it. So what are some of the questions that are really jumping all over you in this discussion? Well, you know, this is a huge question because I'll tell you the classical model has just taken over the world. I travel to 20 countries around the world, 45, 50 states, and everywhere I go, classical dominates, and especially in reformed congregations. The Greek model, Aristotle and Aquinas rule the Reformed Baptist, Reformed Presbyterian, and Conservative Angelical market today.

That's a little odd because it wasn't the case in the 1990s, or the 1980s, or the 1970s. So what's the deal? The question is this. People understand that secular education is messed up, man. It's undermined the faith, it's breaking down academics itself, it's ruining the country.

I think people understand this. But then they go, well, maybe the Greeks can help us here. You know, I think a point like this, Scott, we've got to say maybe God can help us on this. You know, I think we have to be desperate enough that we're gonna reach for the word of God, the Bible. You just gotta get desperate enough where you say, this is so messed up and I so love my children and I want so the very best for my children that I am actually so desperate that I'm actually going to God.

And I'm going to ask God, what do I do with this? What is your model of education? God, you are all wise. You made us in your image. You sent your son to disciple, to teach, and to educate.

So is God wise enough for this? Is God good enough for this? Should we go to God's word? Should we appeal to Jesus? Should we appeal to Ephesians 6-4, Deuteronomy 6-7 and 9?

Or shall we go to Aristotle? Scott, is that persuasive to you? To me that's persuasive. I don't know why that doesn't persuade, you know, even like four, five, six percent, your average Reformed congregations or your average evangelical. They apparently don't want to go to the book of Proverbs.

They don't want to go to Ephesians 6 for Deuteronomy 6-7 or Proverbs 1-7 or James 1 for a biblical epistemology. They just don't want it. They just don't want it. So maybe there's a little frustration here, and that's why I'm okay with stirring up some controversy. In fact, I've had some people, some leading voices contact me after some of these podcasts and they say, what's the deal?

And I'm saying, well, can we have a conversation? Can we at least get into a room and have a conversation on these things? It's as if nobody thinks it's important enough. I believe it's really important. Our souls of our children, the minds of our children, the next generation are at stake.

We are dealing with the largest apostasy in the history of the Christian faith right now in the Western world. Everybody knows that. Wouldn't this be a good time to ask the question? What does God say? And how does that compare to Aristotle?

So, Kevin, do you think- Little group therapy here this morning. So are there gradations in this whole matter of classical education? Like for example, you know, we're appealing to Deuteronomy 6, Psalm 78, the Book of Proverbs as you know, central, you know, the formation of character is central, understanding of Scripture, understanding God in the universe as central. Are there gradations in the classical movement where you do have Plato Aristotle and Socrates, but you also have Deuteronomy 6 and the families? Are there gradations in this movement?

You know, occasionally, you know, you'll find people like the blue dawns who would say, yeah, the Bible has something to say about the Trivium. And I get that. Okay. There's a memorization stages, logical stages, rhetoric. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, but that to me is, is a second, third, fourth tier in terms of the fundamental principles that need to inform how we educate our children. And what's happening is they're finding maybe a little thing, the pagans, they had toothbrushes and they had this thing about the Trivium, this minor issue.

But when it comes to other issues relating to worldview, the great books, the messing around in the form of natural law and Aquinas' blending of or separation of natural revelation from special revelation in a very, very abrupt kind of way. We need to discuss these kinds of things. This is what has destroyed the faith in the Western world. The synthesis and the Greek thinking brought about through humanist renaissance and destruction of the faith in those centuries. And then again, and then during the period of the light and meant same thing happened.

And now it's happening again, the third time with our modern Christian homeschool and Christian school movements. So sadly, sadly, sadly, we're losing the faith again for the third time. So Kevin, you're advocating explicitly biblical, but very practical in everyday life, you know, kind of educational model that actually focuses on the things that we know are true. And it's very interesting. I mean, in our family, I just didn't want to have Deborah, I didn't want us to spend our time reading Plato and Socrates, I want us to read other stuff.

And I'm not here to wage war against the classical education model, but I just didn't feel like we had time to do that with all the other stuff, all the other books, history books and stuff like that we wanted to read. But you, you, you frame this in a particular way. You talk about the fishermen and the philosopher, the difference between the fishermen and the philosopher. Could you explain that? I taught at a classical school, maybe 22, 23 years ago, Scott, in the Parker, Colorado area, they gave me the rhetoric class.

I had to pull from Aristotle's rhetoric. And so it's a Christian classical school. And we're new to all of this. And so I opened up the class and looked through Aristotle's rhetoric book. Of course, he's got the Athos, the Pathos, and the Logos, but forgets the Thelemos.

So immediately, I realize there's no application, no will, no bring the Word to the application. Life integration is a huge, huge part of a biblicalist epistemology, something largely, largely missing in a typical academic, intellectualized form of education that comes from the Greek system. So the Bible obviously wants us not just to be hearers of the Word, but also doers of the Word, and so the life integration principle comes into all of our conferences, all of our presentations relating to education. And that life integration element is something that has to happen, not in a classroom, but it has to be life integrated in a home, in a home business, in a home economy, in the church ministry, etc. Okay, so these are huge differences, massive differences, philosophical differences.

But then immediately I also noticed that the Bible had something to say about rhetoric, so I looked it up and found, you know, 1 Peter 3, 16 and 17, be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks for a hope that is within you, but do it with meekness and fear. You know, so here the fisherman has, you know, one little methodological thing, doesn't really give you 320 pages like Aristotle did, but two words, it's all we get, meekness and fear, humility and the fear of God. And So I'm going through Aristotle's rhetoric and what does he say about meekness and the fear of God? Of course, nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing. Aristotle's ethics effectively comes to the point and says that humility is not a virtue.

You do not want to be humble. You absolutely need the accolades of men. This is the whole goal of rhetoric and every other part of life. So structurally, Aristotle's virtues, Greek virtues, are absolutely warped beyond all recognition. Their structure of thinking is wrong.

They might have one or two little things they get right. You know, you gotta be courageous and boar or whatever. Okay, okay, but what about the fundamentals? The absolute fundamentals of fear of God and reverence before God and a trembling before God and his attributes of power and wisdom and goodness and mercy and grace at the cross of Jesus or humility. What about humility?

These are fundamentals, but of course, largely missing in worldly academics that are pushed so hard into almost all of the Christian schools these days, it seems, or certainly the home schools. So, these are fundamentals. What does a fisherman have to say? Well, the philosopher is wrong. It turns out the fisherman has it right.

And so these are the sorts of things that got me to think, whoa, this is not a healthy form of education. So humility, the fear of God, absolutely fundamental. Absolutely. Okay. I want to, I want to do a lightning round on three questions.

Okay. Are you ready? All right. I want you to compare and contrast. I want you to compare Aristotle with Deuteronomy six seven.

Aristotle presents a form of education that is largely academic. Parents are not involved. In fact, the parents are pretty much get them out of the picture Aristotelian classical form of education is way too much work This is a point Doug Wilson has made recently in one of his podcasts that there's No way a homeschooling mom can do this. Too much, too much. It's for professionals.

And so we take parents out of the equation and Jesus presents something different. Jesus presents fathers and mothers as responsible. So question number two, compare and contrast Aristotle with the book of Proverbs. Well, of course, Aristotle does not believe the beginning of wisdom knowledge is the fear of God. He doesn't believe that that humility and the fear of God come before honor and riches, etc.

So those are fundamental for us. And so, you know, we're gonna put that into every aspect of the education of our children. And of course we weave it throughout the teachings of our curriculum, the generations curriculum, very, very crucial. Okay, so compare and contrast Ephesians 6.4 with Aristotle. Ephesians 6.4, fathers bring your children up in the nurture of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do it Jesus's way. How did Jesus do it? He put it in a boat. That doesn't sound right. He didn't put it in a classroom.

He put it in a boat. He put it in real life. He walked along, talked along. He didn't start a seminary. I'm just saying it.

You know, and by the way, seminary doesn't work in a boat because the whiteboard just shifts around way too much. And then the water gets up and smears the ink. It just doesn't work. Didn't somebody tell Jesus that this is not the way in which to educate or to disciple the next generation of pastors? Didn't somebody tell Jesus, the creator of the universe, the founder of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, that whatever he's doing isn't going to work.

No, my conclusion is we should do whatever Jesus did, life-integrated, character-focused. He's encouraging his disciples to get out of the boat. It's not about the algebra. It's about the character of your children while they're studying algebra. It's about faith, the character of the things that matter most.

And this is what discipleship consists of, right? Life integration, focus on character, the fear of God, and of course the principle of individuality where there's a lot of one-on-one interaction. You brought up mothers a couple of minutes ago. One of the dangers, one of the weaknesses of homeschooling, what you're talking about, is that it's pretty dependent on family culture. It requires, it actually requires a healthy orderly family to do it right.

And, you know, and then the question often is asked, you know, it, you know, is every wife, is every wife adequately equipped to do such a thing? It's a remarkably taxing thing, especially when you have little kids growing up, you know, in your house. And, you know, the idea is don't try this at home. You need professionals to do this for you. It's just too complicated for the average mom.

So what say you about that? My answer is nobody knows that child. Nobody loves that child more than the mother. And the core, the heart of home education and the family discipleship model as we get from the book of Proverbs is My child my son give me your heart come close observe my ways It's it's the relationships matter relationships incredibly powerful And in fact what we find is that the average homeschooler does do that great the first year or the second year, but by the third and fourth year they have the maximum disparity between the national average in terms of academic performance and the homeschool performance. So, you know, it takes a while because you're building relationship.

Relationship matters. Jesus loved his disciples and then gave his life for them. Relationship matters. And when you have a different teacher in every class, a different teacher in every year, then relationship is of no consequence whatsoever. There's a separation of heart, hands, and head in this modern form of education.

It's not discipleship. It doesn't integrate the head, the heart, the hands. All it does is just pump facts into the kid's head. Turns out the human being is more than a mind. The human being is a heart and character matters.

And the parent is probably the one who's most likely to really work the character issues. Because at the end of the day, if the character issues are really worked out, turns out the head pretty much follows. Moreover, there's gotta be a ton of life integration that cannot happen in a sterile classroom. No way, no way, no way. So biblical form of discipleship is so different than what we find in the classical model or even in the public school model that we see today.

So another question about the pagan classics. We both read, you know, Reformed and Puritan books and many of them, you know, very freely quote classical writers and for illustrative material and things like that. What say you about that? Well, I would say that they were gradually being purged of it. You find in Tyndale and others writing that, you know, these, these young people have to attend Oxford and Cambridge and it takes the rest of their life to rid themselves of these classical ideals.

The same thing I think happened with the Puritan generation. It's my view that the Puritans were ruined. I could read my book, Epoch, The Rise and Fall of the West, I think you'll be entirely convinced that the Puritans were ruined by Oxford, Cambridge, by the university. John Knox's last words, beware of the universities, very dangerous, extremely dangerous. So I put together, keep the faith on education.

Scott, I highly recommend this for every single pastor and certainly every parent listening that if, you know, if this is a critical issue, if this is the most critical issue that you're gonna deal with in your lifetime, you probably should get some wisdom. And the wisdom of the Church Fathers, absolutely critical. As well as the Reformers, guys like Martin Luther, very, very down in Aristotle and the classical model. As well as Tyndale and somewhat Calvin. But at the end of the day, Augustine was looking at Homer and said, this is a torrent from hell.

Who in their right mind would give their kids an education in Homer? And Jerome called it the food of demons. Now I'm not talking about Tertullian here, who was a little bit less Athens and more Jerusalem. I'm talking about Augustine. I'm talking about Jerome.

Now, okay, the Cappadocian brothers were a little off, but their sister was constantly correcting them in terms of their love affair with the Greeks. So, you know, the Church Fathers are almost universally opposed, Absolutely opposed. Jerome wrote a letter to his homeschooling mom. It says, do not, do not, do not give your children books written by the pagans. Please don't do this.

Give your child the Word of God first, and then you can give your child the books written by Christians, but don't waste your time with the pagan stuff. This is what the Church Fathers said in a pre-Christian age. Now we're in a post-Christian apostate age where it seems to me like most of the, much of the Christian Church is running after the post-Christian authors and the pre-Christian authors. Much, much rather get some wisdom from the Church Fathers. And it's a short little book, it's like 80 pages.

Put it by the bathroom, you can read it three or four, you know, visits. And I just, I think we need the wisdom of the Church Fathers here. The didascally apostolorum is really interesting, Scott. This is the history of the apostles' methodologies that come out of Antioch in the first two centuries. But read it.

You're going to find almost exactly what we're saying right now. Whatever you do, do not give your children books written by the pagans, but rather give them a practical education formed in the fear of God. I read that, I'm like, that's exactly what we're trying to say in the family discipleship movement, the modern Christian homeschool movement, that I've summarized in my book upgrade the 10 secrets to the best education for your child. So I would recommend upgrade. I recommend keep the faith on education.

I mean, this to me, I mean, it's worthwhile. Get a couple of 80 page books. You know, it's your children's souls at stake, it's your children's minds. It's the next generation during the greatest apostasy we've ever seen. And Scott, I've just seen so much, so much of the modern kids running off into classical education, and then before you know it, they're off the highway of orthodoxy, and they've apostatized from the faith.

How many times have you seen this? I've seen it tons of times. I was at a conference out in Washington state one time, this was probably five, six years ago and this young man wanted to meet with me. He said, I got to have lunch with you. About five years ago, you came into our state and you had these books and you had a prostate and I read these things where you were critical of the worldviews that were conveyed by, you know, the Shakespeare and Hawthorne and some of these great classical writers.

And he said, I hated the book. We all hated the book. I was part of a literary group, classical group in my church. It was kind of a reformed type of church. He said, you know what?

I read the book again. I want to thank you for it because right now, today, all of those boys have left the faith, including the pastor's son. And I just want to thank you for writing the book apostate because it saved me from running off into these aberrant ideas that were so destructive to the faith in our little local church. So, Scott, I mean, I think this is a massive discussion. And at the very least we need to have some conversations with our fellow pastors on this.

It's the sheep, the lambs we're concerned with. Boy, do we need to be talking through these things. You know, it's always important to have, have the target in mind. Could, could you just state as we wind this up, how, how would you describe the primary goal of education? The primary goal of education is not to prepare citizens for the ultimate state or to prepare our citizens to be successful in a material way in building the kingdoms of men.

We're preparing our children to glorify God, to enjoy Him forever, to know God, to glorify God, to seek His kingdom first. And we do that by reading the Christian authors that share that same vision, that same heart, that same goal. Amen. Amen. I love the way you frame that.

And I think that should be our goal, really, of everything in the church, you know, and in the family and in the school, and in this case, at home. Kevin, thank you so much. I really, I know you've been pressing so hard on this for so long and I think your voice is very important and I really really appreciate you being bold enough to cross to go against the grain you know of a culture. I mean just homeschooling enough is such a massive aberration in the culture. Although it's growing tremendously, right?

When we were homeschooling our kids, there were just a few thousand people. It was illegal in North Carolina when we moved here and all over the place, you know, people were hiding out. Now there are millions, still very small percentage, but the growth is astounding. So I know some of that has to do with what you've been saying for so many years. So keep it up.

I've been teaching at homeschool conferences for 40 years. This is my 40th year, my first homeschool conference where I spoke in 1986 in Paso Robles, California. Wow. Since then 20 countries, almost all 50 states. And we're going back to South Africa and Brazil later on this year.

Wow, wow, well that's great. Well Kevin, thank you so much for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. And I hope you all can join us next time. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com.