Re-education
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, Titus 2:11-12 NASB
Instructing – Everything you need to know about life you learn in kindergarten. It seems that God thinks that’s true too. The verb used here is about training children. “The words paideía and paideúō relate to the upbringing of children, who need direction, teaching, instruction, and discipline. Both the way of education and the goal are indicated by paideía.”[1] We still embrace this Greek model of education.
“The goal of personal education is virtue, and happiness is brought by culture. In Stoicism the aim, by way of self-scrutiny, is Hellenistic cosmopolitanism. The Roman ideal of firmness of character as the goal of education has an impact here.”[2]
Paul is writing to Hellenists. They may have embraced Jewish thought through the Messiah, but they come from a Greco-Roman world (like most of us). They need to be re-educated. As you can attest, it’s not so easy to shift from the Western Greco-Roman paradigm to an Eastern Hebraic one. There are lots of conflicts, lots of unpacking and re-packing, lots of cognitive dissonance. We can immediately recognize this enormous change when we realize that:
Originally the biblical tradition has no pedagogic vocabulary. God is holy, and he demands holiness from his chosen people. Breaches of holiness are either punished or expiated. Since holiness has a moral dimension, moral commandments are an obligation. God helps the covenant people to keep them by way of instruction, punishment, and reward.[3]
Religious education is not a biblical idea. “The prophets relate God’s discipline to his historical acts rather than to teaching.”[4] It is the culture itself, the ethos of God in the midst, that supplies the necessary instruction. Educational systems are a foreign invention. Bible schools and Sunday school are essentially Greek. That doesn’t mean they aren’t necessary. They are, for the simple reason that we are essentially Greek. Re-education is a complete life change.
Now notice the goals of this re-education. “Deny ungodliness and worldly desires,” and “live sensibly, righteously and godly.” Each of these needs investigation. We might discover that our ideas of these goals aren’t quite the same as the concepts in the new paradigm we are called to learn.
Topical Index: instruction, paideía, paideúō, education, paradigm, Titus 2:11-12
[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 753). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[2] Ibid., p. 754.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., p. 755.
