It’s rare for me to read a book that’s modern and trending but when I heard an interview with Jonathan Rosen, I was intrigued enough to line up in my library’s queue and wait my turn for The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions (New York: Penguin Press, 2023).
{Warning: this post contains spoilers.]
The Best Minds was worth the wait, but it is not a book that is ultimately satisfying in many ways. It gives us problems but does not give us the solutions. On a societal level, the solutions are not easy and a book like this is just not going to have all the answers, though it does a decent job of painting a picture of the problems. On a more philosophical/theological level, there are answers out there (or rather one Answer) but Rosen is not able to give them to us.
Rosen’s story is non-fiction but it is filtered through his own experiences and perceptions. It is the story of his childhood friend Michael Laudor, a brilliant if cocky boy who seemed destined to conquer the world but was afflicted with schizophrenia and ultimately committed a horrible crime and was sentenced to life in an institution.
For Rosen a lot of the focus is on how this could happen, how our society, through well-intentioned policies enacted in the 1960s and 70s, ends up failing those who have the greatest need. His analysis here is good though ultimately a bit unsatisfying. As is often the case with social programs, there are no easy answers. We went from casting too big a net and sweeping in people who didn’t need institutionalizing and were hurt by that to not casting any net at all and letting those who really did need help forced upon them out to wander the streets in delusion. One would hope that there could be a middle ground. We don’t seem to have found it.
There are a couple of ideas behind the policies that Rosen acknowledges, one good and one bad. On the plus side, a major driving factor behind the move to deinstitutionalization was a respect for the personhood of the individual, even mentally unstable individuals. There was a recognition that we as a society had done things to people — confining them, medicating them against their will and often to a state of catatonia — which violated their rights and their personhood. On the down side, there was a lack of norms, an inability to say what is or isn’t good, what is or isn’t normal, and even ultimately what is reality and what is hallucination. So if the individual chooses to live on the street, naked and covered in lice, the society has no standard by which to say, “no, that isn’t normal and it isn’t good.” And should this individual say that he is a flowerpot that woodchucks are out to get him, there is still no grounds to say this isn’t true. The only standard, the only barrier left is that of violence; only when someone hurts themselves or others can society intervene in any way.
We always struggle with this same basic issue — how to balance the respect for the divine breath in man with the recognition of his fallen, sinful nature. We struggle to be able to say “I value you but I do not accept or approve of everything you say, do, and think.” It is almost trite to say it so we shy away from “love the sinner, hate the sin” but there is still a lot of truth there. And who I am to say what in you is wrong or sinful? We need a standard outside ourselves, outside any human being, that allows us to say both “that is sin” but even “it is not good to live on the street in filth.”
Another concern for Rosen, though one that operates a little more below the surface, is “why him and not me?” In the first part of the book, the dynamic between the two boys feels very familiar. It’s a story that I feel like I have seen in a lot of movies: two males, as close as brothers, alike in many ways but one is the golden child. He outshines all others. Everyone can see his future is bright but, Icarus-like, he flies to close to the sun, or he is cut down by illness or accident, and the remaining boy is left to go on wondering why the one everyone agreed had more potential was taken and he, imperfect being that he is, was left. Rosen gets what both boys wanted — a wife and family and, because both dreamed of being authors, books deals — but with is comes a kind of survivor’s guilt, amplified by a sense of unworthiness.
But the truth is that Rosen is not as unworthy as he seems. Even in their youth there are clues that Laudor is not such a wonderful golden child after all. There is an arrogance and an inability to admit wrong. When Rosen is attacked, Laudor stands back, not only does he not interfere (which might have been dangerous) or run for help, he never admits to his own failings and retells the incident in such a way that his own cowardly part in it is minimized. When the boys compete for a position at the school newspaper, Laudor refuses to be anything but number one. You have to applaud the teacher who seems to be the only one to see that brilliance is not always as important as being able to see others, to compromise and work with them. Rosen, who perhaps today would be diagnosed with some kind of dyslexia, does not do drugs because he feels that his hold on his own faculties is tenuous but Laudor takes what he has been given for granted.
It is a Cain and Abel story, a tale that Laudor himself becomes obsessed with. It is easy to say that Laudor, like Cain, is proud and that as in the biblical story his downfall comes because he fails to appreciate what he has been given. But there is a deeper level as which we can ask why God made each boy as he was. Why is one destined for blessing and the other for a curse? It’s one question that we are never given the answer to.
Though I am not sure Rosen ever uses the word “sin,” he does a wonderful job of describing the far-reaching effects of Laudor’s crime. When Rosen finally snaps and does a horrible thing, he is affected, and of course his victim is, but so are so many others in an ever-widening circle around them. There is a lot of pain and grief to go around. There is also a lot of vicarious guilt, a lot of questioning: “What if I had done…? Could I have prevented this?”
We are given the fall, but, sadly, there is no redemption here. Rosen’s book, in which he himself is a character, ends with pain and with some half-hearted attempts to offer solutions (perhaps we can manage to construct a policy which better helps the mentally ill?) but really with no answers. For the social issues, there are not going to be easy answers because they are not easy questions. But for the stain of this crime — this sin (for it is a sin, even if Laudor was hallucinating at the time) — which has spread like a pool of black ink slowly creeping over so many lives there is ultimately hope. There is no sin so awful that it is beyond divine forgiveness.
I am reminded of the Netflix documentary in Jeffrey Dahmer (which I reviewed here). Dahmer, who makes Laudor’s crimes pale in comparison, learned the lesson when he saw another serial killer repent: If he can be forgiven even for that, then so can I. Laudor himself as the book ends does not seem to have learned this. After his crime, he retreats into himself and never has true clarity again because he cannot face what he has done. He can’t face it because he sees no hope of healing and of redemption.
As one reads The Best Minds it is easy to identify with Rosen. He is the everyman, the imperfectly human character. But ultimately that is not where we need to place ourselves in this story. We are all Laudor. Perhaps we are even more guilty than he is (if one can measure such things) because while most of our misdeeds will not be so headline-grabbing, neither do most of us have the excuse of mental illness. But we need to be able to look and say not “how can some people be like that?” but “the same basic tendencies that are in him and in me.” It is the same fallenness and we, like Laudor, could easily be left in despair. But there is hope because there is forgiveness and redemption. There is One who can wash away all that staining black ink of sin if we trust in His ability and not our own.
It counts as long as I get this post out in January, right?
Books Read 2023
Fiction
The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner — A lesser known Twain book but good.
Three Men and a Maid by P. G. Wodehouse (audio book) — Wodehouse=humorous
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh — Also humorous. A short read.
Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes — An easy, funny read.
East of Eden, Travels with Charley, The Winter of Our Discontent, The Grapes of Wrath, and Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck — As I did in 2022, I tried to read a number of books by one author. I like East of Eden (though the bit of biblical interpretation that forms a key concept in the book is just not supported by the Hebrew) but I think The Winter of Our Discontent is the overlooked volume which may be his best.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf — I know it’s supposed to be a feminist manifesto of sorts. Is it wrong that my main thought was: Of course the woman is the one who got everything done while no one noticed; tell me something I don’t know. I did enjoy the book though.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath — Another book I had never read that is supposed to be significant. I liked the story but the message seemed to fall flat.
The Reef by Edith Wharton — I like Wharton. This is not her best.
The Claverings by Anthony Trollope — I like Trollope for easy, older books.
If Winter Comes by ASM Hutchinson — A hidden gem of a sweet older book
Theology
Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright — I don’t recommend Wright’s theology generally but I think he is on target with a lot of what he has to say about the afterlife.
Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence by Jon D. Levenson — By an old professor of mine. A lot of what is here is just what I was taught in grad school. It’s hard not to feel sadness at what is being missed in his theology.
General Revelation by G.C. Berkouwer — I reviewed this book here. This one is dense and so probably not to everyone’s taste.
Worship Feasting Rest Mercy by Daniel Howe — By my pastor 😉
The Sabbath, the Covenant and the Houseof God by Ken Hanko — Another short book on the Sabbath. This one is pretty basic and easy to digest but it did make me think about the Sabbath in new ways. I wish it had had more practical discussion of Sabbath-keeping.
Mountains in the Mist, A Bunch of Everlastings, and Casket of Cameos by F.W. Boreham — Boreham is a favorite of mine. His books are comforting, not deeply theological. Some of these were re-reads.
“The Greatest Thing in the World” by Henry Drummond — I honestly don’t remember a lot about this one. It is short and inspiring.
“Christ’s Mediatorial Kingship: A Developing Doctrine” by The RPCNA Synod’s special committee on Christ’s Mediatorial Kingship — I found this paper very helpful in understanding a key RP doctrine and how the language around it has developed over time.
The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalismby Daniel Hummel — long and somewhat hard to follow if you don’t already know all the names but an interesting read, especially to see how many of the ideas we take for granted came to be
The Unseen Realm by Michael S. Heifer — reviewed here. Short take: I don’t recommend it.
Reformed Thought: Selected Writings of William Young edited by Joel Beeke and Ray Lanning — I had never heard of Young but stumbled across him. He helped me understand some things about how the Dutch Reformed tradition has evolved (not necessarily for the better). I wish I could find more of his writings, particularly his thoughts on education.
Strange New World by Carl Trueman — This is the shorter version of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self which I had previously read. We did this as a women’s book study. I do really like it. It’s not an easy read but it very helpful for understanding how our society got to be where it is on gender issues. We found as a group that we had more compassion and understanding for those we would disagree with after reading this volume. I do wish the book had more practical applications.
Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age by Rosaria Butterfield — I read this one pretty quickly hoping it would be a good follow-up book to study after Trueman’s. There is a lot here that is good. Butterfield shines when she gets to the practical ideas on how to deal with a child with gender issues. There are other bits that give me reservations about recommending it or reading it in a group though.
The Other Worldview by Peter Jones — Butterfield’s book led me to this one. At times Jones seems to go too far with his thesis but the basic paradigm of every philosophy being Oneist (all things are connected) or Twoist (creation and Creator are separate) is helpful for understanding a lot of what is going on in one’s social media feed these days.
Tell Her Story by Nijay Gupta — If any book were going to convince me to be egalitarian, this would be it. Gupta does well when he is dealing with historical scholarship but ultimately, as with many modern Christian books, his arguments are based on an ever-growing (yet unstable) pile of “possibly”s and “perhaps”es. Where we start and what verse we take as normative when discussing gender roles in the Bible seems to make so much difference. Gupta like many (most? all?) egalitarians starts with descriptive passages (eg. Was Phoebe a deacon?) and discusses the prescriptive ones (eg. “I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority…”) only at the end as an epilogue. This just seems like a backwards approach to any biblical issue.
What God has to Say About Our Bodies by Sam Allberry — This may be the one we study next. I listened to it as an audiobook (because I could access it for free that way) and really liked it. It touches on issues of transgenderism and all that is trendy but is much more comprehensive on its view our our bodies.
Education
Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie — I wish I had had this little book when my kids were younger. Well worth the read for anyone homeschooling.
Miscellaneous
From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks — On how we think and finding what you should/want to do later in life. (Am I “later in life” already?)
I seem to see more and more lately in the reformed world on spiritual beings and their influence. Michael S. Heiser’s The Unseen Realm was recommended by one source and so I picked it up, not fully knowing exactly what it was about or who Heiser was.
It turns out we actually share an academic pedigree (up to a point at least). Heiser received a Ph.D. in biblical Hebrew from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This is the same small (but quite good) program where I did my undergrad1 and got a Master’s in biblical Hebrew.2 It appears that he was there a few years after I left so we did not overlap but I think we must have known people in common. All of which is to say, I know where Heiser is coming from, academically speaking. We have a common intellectual background and many of the observations he makes, particularly those that arise from the text of the Old Testament, are things that I was taught as well.
I will add that Heiser was a Christian (was, because he passed away not long ago).3 From the little bit of poking around I have done online, I have no reason to doubt the reality or sincerity of Heiser’s faith. But there are also some pretty big differences between his brand of Christianity and mine. Specifically, I am reformed (aka Calvinist) and he is not. While we start from many of the same places, this difference proves pretty significant in where we end up.
My short take on The Unseen Realm is that Heiser has some good observations that I think could be very useful to bring to a more general Christian audience but that he also makes some assumptions and has some ways of dealing with the text that cause him to push things too far so that he ends up in places I would not go. Ultimately, I cannot recommend his book.4
Heiser’s story is a well-known, even cliched, one: Christian student goes to study the Bible at a secular institution, is confronted with new ideas, and has his faith shaken.5 For Heiser, this did not lead to an abandonment of that faith but it did lead to some pretty big readjustments.
The text that initially threw Heiser for a loop is Psalm 82:1 which, as Heiser quotes it,6 reads:
God [elohim] stands in the divine assembly;
he administers judgment in the midst of the gods [elohim].
The picture we are given here and in a number of other places in the Old Testament is of a kind of divine assembly. It is not God alone but God in the midst of what is essentially a small congregation of gods (little “g”). This idea that there is a divine council is the basis for all that follows, for a whole system that Heiser goes on to develop. This is a bit of a stretch. We can accept the idea that the Bible speaks as if there is a divine council, even that there is something like this, without drawing all the conclusions that he does.
Having told a bit of his story and introduced his subject, Heiser gives us the “rules of engagement” in chapter 2. This is key because it is Heiser’s presuppositions and the ways that he deals with the biblical text that are going to explain why he goes one way and I would go another.
Heiser says that Psalm 82 caused an intellectual crisis for him because it broke his filter. He had been reading the text through a lens and didn’t even know it. So he threw away his filter. As a part of his desire to get rid of his “filters,” Heiser argues that we must read the biblical text as its original audience would have done:
“The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of then biblical writers — the context that produced the Bible. Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational differences.” 7
(p. 18; emphasis original)
On the surface, this may sound good. It has a ring of sola scriptura to it — just the Bible in its original context. But this is not how we read and understand the Scriptures. None of us come to the text without what Heiser calls “filters.” We always have ideas, often unconscious ones, that are lurking in the back of our minds influencing how we understand the text. It is always good to consider what the human author of a text would have known and how his original audience would have understood him, but this is not all there is. Even apart from the Bible, it is an open question how we understand any form of art whether the artist’s or author’s intent defines the meaning of the piece or if there can be meaning that he never intended. This is even more true when it comes to the biblical text which we believe has not just human authors but a divine one. God’s Word was for the original audience but not just for them. It is also for us and the Divine Author knew what was coming though the human authors often would not have. Finally, there is the rejection of creeds and confessions. Now creeds and confessions are not infallible. I believe that the Bible is the “only infallible rule for faith and life.” That is, it is the only rule that is infallible. But it is not all we have. We know, even from Scripture itself, that God’s Word can be misused and misapplied (Luke 4:1-13). As Christians we believe that God the Holy Spirit reveals to us the meaning of His Word and guides us in a right understanding of this. He does this not primarily individually but over time through His church. The creeds and confessions are records of how the church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has understood His Word. While Heiser is correct that “biblical theology does not derive from the church fathers” (p. 118), we must also have the humility to acknowledge that our forefathers in the faith may be good people to consult when it comes to interpreting the Scriptures.
A second assumption that Heiser makes is that “if it’s weird, it’s important” (p. 23). What he means by this is that the odd passages that we often want to gloss over in Scripture (eg. Genesis 6:1-4) are vital. Now I am not going to say that any part of Scripture is unimportant but there are certain principles that we use to interpret the Bible and one is that the obscure should be interpreted in light of the clear. Heiser demonstrates in this book a tendency to elevate the obscure and to derive from them theories with which he then interprets all of Scripture.
Beyond techniques of interpretation, Heiser comes to the text with a certain theological framework (a “filer” even) which I do not share. Specifically, I am reformed and he is Arminian. Though he never uses that language or openly identifies himself as such, we see his views clearly when we talks about God’s management style, man’s ability to image God, and God’s foreknowledge.
Heiser has a particular, and very non-reformed, understanding of how God relates to His creatures. “God decrees his will and leaves it to his administrative household to carry out these decrees” (p. 61). God’s management style (if you will) is relatively hands-off; He decides what is to be done but leaves the specifics up to His servants. He bases this primarily on 1 Kings 22:19-22 and Daniel 4. I will not spend a lot of time on the specifics of his argument except to say that it is always tricky to base a theological position on a narrative text (or two in this case). The passage from Daniel comes in a dream or vision so we have to allow that it may not be literal. In passages like the one from 1 Kings that Heiser cites, we have to consider that we may be getting a story from a certain perspective and again these passages should be read in the light of others which are more clear on these issues.
At times Heiser speaks of God as a slightly distanced manager who is nonetheless still in control of the final outcomes. At other times, his God seems to be one who is not really in control but is dependent upon the whims of His creatures. His plans are thwarted: “God’s plan that all the earth be Eden came to a screeching halt almost as soon as it began.” (p. 143). His creatures are able to obstruct His plans (p. 429) and so He is dependent on their actions and responses: “We mustn’t conclude that God didn’t try to turn the heart of his people back to himself.” (p. 257) He is not a God who planned the salvation of His people from before creation but One who had to come up with a plan B and adapt to circumstances He did not control: “As Israel reached the final stages of failure, God announced through the prophets that plans had changed.” (p. 245)
Heiser spends some time on what it means that man is made in the image of God. After discussing some of the options, he concludes that the image of God is something man does rather than an ability or characteristics he has. He argues that the image cannot be an ability like intelligence, reasoning ability, or communication because then those who die in infancy or who are severely handicapped could not be in God’s image and any pro-life stance who would undermined (p. 48). He concludes instead that the image of God is something that we do, a calling if you will. Specifically, it has to do with being like God in having dominion. Now this is not my position but neither is it a unique one. I would say it is well within orthodox Christian theology.8 The problem is that Heiser seems to circle back around on himself. Having said that the image is not an attribute but a thing we are called to do, he then makes this calling to image God dependent on one human ability: the ability to choose freely. Imaging for Heiser is only possible because of an ability and that ability is the free will: “If humanity had not been created with genuine freedom, representation of God would have been impossible” (p. 70). Here he seems to contradict his own pro-life argument when we says that imaging God is something that those “who survive birth without suffering severe impairment” are able to do (p. 70). I am less concerned with the pro-life argument here than with the rampant Arminianism. Heiser, without reference to the biblical text, maintains both that man is free to choose to image God or not and that he can actively do good by imaging God. As reformed people, we would say that man apart from saving grace can neither do actual good nor even will to do good. Heiser says man can do both — he wills good and he does good. His argument is that since God is not a robot or automaton that we, to be like Him, must also be beings able to freely will (p. 70) though he has argued elsewhere that we cannot just identify the image of God with characteristics or abilities of God (p. 48), even including free will on the list of attributes which we are not to identify as the image of God in man (p. 46).
If this all seems confusing, that’s because it is. To sum up, Heiser’s line of thought seems to be:
The image of God has been identified with one of more of these attributes of God, giving a list that includes free will. (pp. 46-48)
The image of God cannot be limited to these attributes or the unborn and handicapped people could not be said to be in the image of God and pro-life arguments would be undermined. (p. 48)
The image of God is rather something we are called to do: “To be human is to image God” (p. 50).
In order to do this thing — which Heiser assumes we are able to do — we must have free will (p. 69).
Free will is an attribute of God and so to be in His image, we must have it or we wouldn’t be like Him. (p. 70)
Oh, and by the way, it is only people who survive birth and develop more or less normally who can actually image God. (p. 70)
Not content to weigh in on the free will debate, Heiser also tackles the issue of predestination (p. 71). Here again, his methodology is suspect because he bases his understanding of what is a pretty big theological issue on one text, and that one a narrative, without considering other texts which speak more directly to the issue. As Heiser begins to discuss this issue, he again makes the appeal that we need to lay aside our theological systems and think like an ancient Israelite (p. 72). While there are many instances in which knowing how the original audience thought will help us gain a better understanding, we also need to allow that man’s understanding of God has evolved over time, not because God Himself has changed but because He has revealed Himself with progressive clarity to His people. There are many Old Testament texts that we are going to have more clarity on than the original audience did or even than their human authors (remember that the disciples did not see fully Christ in the Old Testament until after the resurrection; Lk. 24:27).
Heiser’s position is that God can have foreknowledge without predetermining events. The passage he goes to for this is 1 Samuel 23:1-13. Here David asks the Lord if the men of Keilah will deliver him into Saul’s hand. The Lord says yes, they will, and so David changes course and the men do not deliver him over to Saul. Heiser argues that since God was wrong (he said the men would deliver David over and they did not) that He did not predestine or predetermine what happens.9 God’s knowledge was conditional. There is another way to read this passage, however. David is not consulting the Lord just to know what will happen. As those going to battle in the Old Testament often do, he is consulting the Lord before going to fight so that he can decide what course of action to take. There is an implied conditional —if I go to meet Saul, will they hand me over? The answer he gets is yes, if you do, they will, but the “if” never happens because David changes course. God was answering a hypothetical. He was not wrong just because the “if” didn’t happen. It is not that Heiser’s interpretation is impossible, but when deciding how to interpret this passage, we should do so in the light of other biblical texts which speak more clearly to this very complicated theological issue.
Heiser often shows a lack of understanding, or at least a carelessness, of basic theology. He says that after the Fall “God, the Life-giver, forgave Adam and Eve” (p. 143). No doubt God did forgive them; but only later through the death of God the Son. Again, he says “We affirm that Jesus is on of those Persons. He is God. But in another respect, Jesus isn’t God — he is not the Father.” (p. 172) I don’t think he is meaning to make a heretical point here but the language is careless; there is no way in which Jesus isn’t God.
Heiser also seems to make little, unsubstantiated assumptions which can spiral into larger issues. A small one would be that, had the Fall not happened, “Adam and Eve would have been the mediators between God and other humans, their own children.” (p. 261) And similarly: “Had the fall not occurred, humanity would have been glorified and made part of the [divine] council” (p. 56). Working off of this, Heiser further argues that, once God has gone to plan B and worked around the obstacles thrown in His way by His creatures, that His original plan will come to fruition and believing humans will be made divine.
This idea that humans will be divinized is called theosis and it is not unique to Heiser. But neither is it good Protestant theology. (Theosis, as the term is usually used, is generally associated with the Eastern Orthodox church.) In Heiser’s defense (if it is a defense), I will say that it not entirely clearly what he means by divinization. At times he seems to use the term “divine” to just mean “spiritual.” Early in the book, when arguing for the concept of a divine council and divine beings other than God Himself, he is clear that to be “divine” as he uses the term is not to be like God in all ways. The elohim are not omnipresent or omnipotent (p. 35) but are merely “inhabitants of the spiritual world” (p. 37). And yet at the end of the book, when Heiser says that we humans will become divine, he does equate divinity with becoming like God (p. 357). He says that: “Joining God’s divine family is inextricably linked to the New Testament concept of becoming like Jesus — becoming divine.” (p. 363). This is not how we usually speak. We do believe that God’s people are being and will be conformed to Christ’s image (Rom. 8:29) but we do not say that we will become divine like He is. Heiser seems to conflate these concepts when he says that “theosis” is “being transformed into his likeness” and that our destiny is “immortality as a divinized human” (p. 364).
When he looks at the Sons of God and the Nephilim in Genesis 6:1-4, Heiser says that the marriages in this passage are what corrupted the earth and led to the flood (p. 115). Now these few verses do seem like a kind of prelude to the flood story but the Bible does not connect them or blame these beings (however we identify them) for the flood. We are told that it is humanity’s sin that led to the flood (Gen. 6:5). Heiser later argues that either the flood was not universal and did not kill everyone or that the sons of God again had relations with human women and produced more Nephilim (p. 218). This is a theory he plays out as he argues that the reason the Israelites were told to kill the inhabitants of the land was that they were not fully human; there were among them partial descendants of the sons of God (and if any fully human people were killed in the process, they were unfortunate collateral damage; pp. 232, 240). This may be pleasing on some level as it seems to mitigate one of the classic thorny issues of the Old testament — how could God order what was basically a genocide of the Canaanites? The problem is that there is little scriptural basis for any of it.
The Unseen Realm is a long book and there is much more we could discuss. Though my review has been largely critical, Heiser does make some good observations based on the Hebrew text and the world that the original Israelite audience would have known. Unfortunately, these are obscured by Heiser’s flawed methodology, his unclear and often imprecise thinking, and above all his own theological filter of which he does not seem to be aware but which is so very, very Arminian.
As far as I know, I am the only one who actually majored in biblical Hebrew as an undergrad so all of my coursework in the department was done with grad students. ↩︎
Having gotten a BA and an MA in biblical Hebrew from UW, I had done most of their coursework so I went on to a Ph.D. program at another school (it rhymes with Shmarvard) though I never finished the Ph.D. since I began having kids, something that affected my academic path as a female more than it would affect that of my male colleagues. ↩︎
This was not uncommon in the program at UW. At least when I was there, most of the grad students were Christians and most were what I would call “solid” Christians. The professors tended also to be what you might call people of faith, though as likely to be Jewish as Christian. This was not so true at that other school. ↩︎
Some more internet searching has shown me that Heiser is a fairly polarizing figure. He has some strong proponents who seem quite devoted to his ideas but he also has his critics. ↩︎
In case you are wondering, I really didn’t have this experience. Though I was raised in the Catholic Church, I didn’t come to faith until college. I was in the biblical Hebrew program at the same time I was becoming Christian so perhaps I just didn’t have as much of a sense of dissoance as others. ↩︎
I read the Kindle edition and my page numbers are from that. I apologize if they do not line up with the page numbers in the print edition. ↩︎
Heiser would also include the created spiritual beings (what he calls the lesser elohim) among those who image God (p. 71). Again he is not the only one to make this case so I will not say he is unorthodox on this point, but the Scriptures do not tell us that spiritual beings are made in the image of God. ↩︎
Heiser speaks only of “predestination” without any nuance. If we wanted to be more precise, we might confine predestination to the doctrine that God has an elect people chosen before the creation of the world and call His control of events such as this one predetermination. ↩︎
I try not to spend my time beating up on other philosophies of education but I was struck by this quote from Susan Wise Bauer, classical education guru and co-author of The Well-Trained Mind:
“What we are talking about here is the embrace of classical education by a group of particular socially conservative Christians who otherwise would seem unlikely to latch on to a model of education that was conceived of and taught my ancient polytheists who were sexually permissive, certainly not by and large heterosexual, and often ended up being the enemies of the conservative governments of their time. It’s a very odd sort of historical connection there.” (“Where is Classical Education Going?” The Well-Trained Mind Podcast, episode 5)
Bauer here is criticizing some particular people and movements within the classical world which she would rather disassociate herself and her movement from (see also this earlier post on the classical label). These are very socially conservative Christian folks and her point is that classical education which they have latched on to and tried to make their own is actually a very bad fit for what they believe. Bauer herself seems to be a Christian but the method of education which she has described at length in The Well-Trained Mind and which so many, of all faiths and no faith, have adopted is meant to be a model for everyone and not a distinctly Christian way of educating.
And today I would like to just say: listen to her. Bauer is absolutely correct. It is not that there is nothing good that we can get from the ancient Greeks. I do believe that all truth is God’s truth and that that which is good and true and beautiful will often come to us through non-Christian sources, but at the same time we need to be discerning and not swallow something wholesale when we don’t know its source and the ideas behind it — and even more so when we do know the source and ideas and when they are not things that we fundamentally agree with.
I have argued on this blog that any approach to education inherently asks and answers questions about who we are as human beings and what our ultimate purpose is. These are big questions and they are religious questions. As Christians, our starting place for answering them and therefore for building a philosophy of education should be in God’s Word, in the things that we as believers know to be true.
As kind of an addendum, there is some debate as to how much modern classical education (another oxymoron) actually connects with the ancient Greek ideas. If you are tracing your roots back not to Greece to but Dorothy Sayers, do take the time to read her “Lost Tools of Learning,” the article which jump-started this whole thing. You can read my review of it here (spoiler: I was not a fan).
Through one of those internet rabbit holes, I ended up listing to an episode of The Well-Trained Mind Podcast entitled “Where is Classical Education Going?” Susan Wise Bauer, co-author of the WTM book and classical education guru, was being interviewed on the state of classical ed today looking specifically at curricula that use the classical label and its perception in the media.
It is not new news that “classical” is a label that is so widely and diversely used that it becomes hard to define (see my posts on Sorting Out Classical and Characteristics of Classical Education) but one gets the impression that Bauer has reached her breaking point. What does seem to be new (at least it was new to me) is that “classical” has now also become political. Apparently the term is used by the likes of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to describe a style of education that is not “woke” but otherwise perhaps has little to do with what we would normally have described as “classical.”
As Bauer discusses on the show, there is a general tendency for terms to be co-opted over time so that their meaning gradually becomes lost (think “fundamentalist” and “evangelical”). This has certainly happened with “classical.” My concern today is how we are also beginning to see this happen with “Charlotte Mason” as a label affixed to various books and curricula.
I would be very surprised if Gov. DeSantis began talking about “Charlotte Mason” education as the antidote to wokeness (though if there is one thing the modern political climate has taught us it should be: you never know), but there has definitely been a co-opting of the CM label. The world we live in is a marketplace. If companies perceive that a term is gaining some traction, they are going to try to use it to sell their product. “Classical” got there first but “Charlotte Mason” is catching up. We see more and more curricula describing themselves as CM, often with little attention to what her ideas actually were. (Curious if the curriculum you use actually follows CM’s ideas? See this chart on CM, CM-inspired, and CM-labeled curricula.)
I do think we have a but of a leg up in the CM world because she was a single person who created a philosophy of education. It is easier for us to look back to a source and say “yes, she said this” or “oh no, she didn’t.” “Classical” by its very nature is a little more amorphous. (Bauer in the podcast points to Sayers’ “Lost Tools of Learning” article as the fountainhead of modern classical ed, and of course her own WTM book.) On the other hand, there are also going to be legitimate areas where we can have disputes about what the CM way would be, particularly when we come to situations and resources she never had — how, for instance, would Mason herself have felt about a TED talk in which an expert talks about a subject he is passionate about?
A label which is degraded becomes useless. The warning for us in all this, the lesson we can take from the classical ed world, is that it is worth guarding the meaning of the “Charlotte Mason” label. I am not a CM purist and I have had my reservations about those who are, but I do really appreciate that they can help keep us on track by always bringing us back to the questions “What did Mason say?” and “How did Charlotte do it?”
I do also want to say that it is okay to take parts of Mason’s philosophy and not to use the whole. There are areas where I disagree with Mason and have adapted her methods. I would urge us all to be intellectually honest, though, and not to call CM what is not. We can keep the term pure while still adapting in our own homeschools.
Though they do not end up in the same places, both Peterson and Mason claim to have found (not created) a philosophy of education and both claim some religious basis for their approach. Mason bases her philosophy on what she calls the three gospel principles which she finds in the biblical book of Matthew. Peterson does not cite a specific textual source for her philosophy but does say that she sought God’s methods for education.
Peterson cites a number of earlier thinkers that informed her ideas. She mentions Masons specifically though as far as I have seen the main, if not the only, idea she gets from Mason is that “true education is between child’s soul and God.” Though Peterson cites this line specifically more than once, I cannot find where Mason said these exact words.1 It is true, however, that Mason speaks of the Holy Spirit as “the Great Educator” and her 20th principle reads:
“We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and ‘spiritual’ life of children, but teach them that the Divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their Continual Helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life.”
Based on the how much she discusses him, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi seems to have been a bigger influence on Peterson. Like Pestalozzi, she places a large emphasis on the role and influence of the mother and she sees the child as a basically good creature who will develop along the right lines without outside negative influences. She attributes to Pestalozzi her emphasis on educating the feelings before the mind.
Perhaps second after Pestalozzi, Peterson cites Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the modern kindergarten movement, as one of her influences. Mason also knows Froebel but largely rejects his kindergarten movement. For Peterson, the child is a plant to be cared for tenderly, an image which Mason again rejects.
“Now persons do not grow in a garden, much less in a greenhouse.” (Mason, Home Education, p. 186)
” . . . it is questionable whether the conception of children as cherished plants in a cultured garden has not in it an element of weakness.” (Mason, School Education, chapter 6)
The Parts of the Person and His Abilities
Peterson’s approach, as its name suggests, is primarily about educating the heart. Feelings are prioritized over reason. Then child in the WEH philosophy develops through stages and in the youngest years it is not clear that he has intellectual abilities as such. Peterson says, for instance, that little children hear and respond to the music, not the content, of language. There is skepticism about human reason but seems to be no corresponding qualms about the emotions.
Mason is explicit that the child is born as a person with all the faculties of an adult. He does not need to be taught to think and from the youngest ages he is to be fed a diet of ideas.2 Ideas, for Mason, are the food of the mind and to withhold them from a child would be to starve him intellectually. Yet we should not think that Mason elevates the mind to the exclusion of other parts of the person. As I have argued elsewhere, Mason does not see the mind as separate from the child’s spirit but rather to feed the child’s mind on ideas is also to feed his spiritual nature. The two are so closely entwined as to be inseparable. Nor does the mind operate in isolation from the heart. The goal of education for Mason is to teach the child to care — to build relationships with what he studies about and to develop affinities for all manner of things. So one might say feeding the mind/spirit builds the heart as well. We must not make too big a distinction here; I believe Mason tends to see the person as a unified whole and tends not to distinguish parts within his nature.
Mason has a skepticism of the child’s reason but also of his emotions. Both, if left untrained, can lead one astray. In terms of the goodness of the child’s nature, Mason seems to take a slightly more pessimistic view. Both would see potential in any person to accept the good.3 However, Mason acknowledges that, if left to his own devices, the child will not choose the good, true, and beautiful. His mind must be filled one way or another and if we are not deliberately giving him good spiritual and intellectual food, he will ingest the bad. Mason also devotes a chunk of her time to what he calls “habit training.” There is in this a recognition that we will not naturally form good habits and that there does need to be some degree of discipline that occurs.
For Peterson, there is less explicit recognition of how a child might go wrong. Perhaps it is just not a topic she feels the need to bring up in her writing on education, but I saw no talk of discipline. While the implication is there that a person’s heart can be hardened and that he might not find joy or return to God in heaven, this comes across as more of the absence of goodness than of a turn to badness per se.
The Goal of Education
The goal of education for Mason is to, as she says, set the child’s feet in a wide room. By this she means that he should form relations with as many things as possible. Other words she uses for these connections we build are “intimacies” and “affinities.”
“Our aim in education is to give children vital interests in as many directions as possible –to set their feet in a large room.” (Mason, School Education, p. 166)
For Peterson, as we saw last time, the goal is joy. There is also an element of putting things together, however. She does not make forming relations as Mason would phrase it the goal of education but she does criticize curricula for making connections for children and speaks of their need to create order out of chaos for themselves4.
Methods
When it comes to the practical details of education, we can consider what the two philosophies have in common and where they differ.
Both Mason and Peterson eschew the use of force or coercion in education. For Peterson, this seems tp mean that the child is not obligated in any way to participate in his education but that he may be won over by the example of others (particularly his mother). She would allow the use of some incentives (read: ice cream) to help with early rough spots. The principle behind this stance is that as God does not force anyone to come to him, so we should not force children to learn (which ultimately is to lead them back to him). Mason would use natural consequences to get a child to do his schoolwork, e.g. not being able to have free time because he has wasted school time with dawdling, but she does not allow parents or teachers to be manipulative in how they deal with children. They must not for instance predicate their love upon the child’s obedience. Again, this is a principled stance — we are to respect the personhood of the child by not encroaching upon it or using his natural tendencies (eg. his desire for approval) against him.
For Peterson education is more about how the child learns (heart first) than what he learns. For Masen I would say the how is important but the what is also key. We must give children’s minds quality food — good books, beautiful art, etc.
Peterson has an emphasis on early learning through the senses which Mason would reject. For Mason, the mind is always in play, even in the early years.
Both Peterson and Mason use living books. In a Charlotte Mason education the child responds to what he reads and internalizes it through narration. The WEH uses notebooking. While there is some similarity here in terms of an emphasis on the child making what he reads his own, narration is designed to build composition skills in a way that notebooking cannot.5
Both give the arts a large role, value time in nature, and accord history a place of prominence in the curriculum. For Peterson, history and science/nature form the two educational tracks because they have to do with people and creation. Mason speaks again of relations and would see three areas of learning, including relations with people and things but also with God.
Though I have said that the WEH does not mention discipline as such, there is a emphasis on reading stories of heroes as a means to build character in children by their example. Peterson is careful though to say that we cannot be deliberate in how we do this. We cannot target these stories in such a way as to determine what they child will get from them because each child will come away from the story with his own lesson. Mason’s approach would be the same (and it is actually a pet peeve of mine that so many CM educators miss this and try to target stories to teach particular lessons — eg. “What book can I read to teach my child to be kind?”).
Peterson favors a spiral approach with a short rotation of subjects (each topic coming up once a year) and lots of repetition. Here is is quite different from Mason who eschews repetition and favors a slow, deep reading of books. For Mason, to repeat is to allow the child to develop the bad habit of not paying attention the first time.
Conclusions
Peterson does not claim that the Well-Educated Heart is a Charlotte Mason approach to education. While there are some significant overlaps in the practical details particularly, there are also many significant philosophical differences between the two, the emphasis on the heart as opposed to the mind being perhaps the most obvious. Though the two might use the same books, works of art, etc., their ideas will come out in how these materials are used.
——————————-
An online search turns up sites which quote Mason as saying “Look on education as something between the child’s soul and God” but give no specific reference. I cannot find this quote in Mason’s Home Education series. ↩︎
Though one must acknowledge here that a formal education for Mason does not start till age 6 so she has less to say on the toddler years. ↩︎
This idea of Peterson’s — that what we are doing as we learn is mirror God’s creative act by to creating order ourselves within our minds — is I think the biggest contribution of her philosophy. ↩︎
I highly recommend Karen Glass’s book Know and Tell for an explanation of Charlotte Mason style narration and how and why it works. ↩︎
When the Well-Educated Heart came to my attention, I thought I would be adding another Charlotte Mason curriculum to my list. What I found when I looked more closely was a full-orbed philosophy of education in its own right which, while it has some CM-influences, stands on its own.
The Well-Educated Heart (WEH) is the work of one woman, Marlene Peterson, a homeschool mom and now grandma. She has put together a truly impressive quantity of material. The curriculum she gives us, called the Rotation, is fairly straightforward, but she has also supplied the books for this curriculum in her Libraries of Hope and, because what Mason would have called “Mother Culture” is a big part of WEH, she also gives us lots we can use as we think about education. I will not claim to have read everything that Peterson provides (I am not even sure that is possible!). I have watched a video or two on the website and have read her Introduction book and large portions of her books on the Philosophy and Methods of WEH (the first half of the Methods book was actually more useful in initially grasping the philosophy). Because she presents her philosophy in such a straight-forward way, I feel I have a pretty good grasp on what she believes but, of course, there may be gaps and elements I am missing.
When I have looked at various philosophies of education, I have asked four questions of each:
1. What do they assume about how learning works?
2. How do they view children?
3. How do they view human nature?
4. What do they believe is the goal of education?
My goal in this post is to present a broad overview of Peterson’s philosophy and to answer each of these questions. In another post, I would like to compare her philosophy to that of Mason and to offer more of a critique of the ideas behind it.
One of my arguments in this series has been that the ideas we hold will come through in our approach to education and that therefore we need to make ourselves aware of the beliefs of those who create our curricula. Peterson provides the perfect example of this. Though I have not seen that she states it explicitly, it is clear from her work that she is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, aka Mormon). Though I thought I was pretty educated on such things, I actually learned quite a lot from her writing on education about what LDS believe so it was fairly interesting on that level as well. Her beliefs are not only front and center, they have clearly shaped her philosophy of education. I don’t know how much variation there is in the LDS community; I would assume that if you are part of the same community that Peterson’s ideas would resonate with you and fit your own beliefs and values well. For those who come from different belief systems, one might want to pause and consider a little more deeply before diving into WEH.
So what are the ideas behind the Well-Educated Heart? I don’t know how Peterson herself would characterize it but I see two strands, one theological and one political, which come together to form this philosophy.
On the theological side, Peterson believes that we all existed with God before our births. We were sent to this earth to learn to love and our ultimate goal is to return to be with God. Love leads to joy and so our goal — in life and in education — is joy. In Peterson’s words: “We can’t go wrong when we align our will to God’s, and His will is: ‘Man is that he might have joy.’” (Philosophy, p. 89; Peterson does not that I see attribute the proverb she quotes but a quick Google search shows that this verse is from the Book of Mormon)
The child is not an empty vessel but more like a tender plant. It is the mother’s job in particular to educate and tend to him and she is uniquely gifted for this task. Her job is to soften her children’s hearts so that they are receptive to the work of God in their lives. God shines His light on everyone. The difference is our ability to capture the light — the more we capture, the more joy we have. It is the arts which soften hearts and attract light into the child’s soul. This light gives the spiritual light something to attach to and gives the divine spirit room to work.
Thus the heart is first and foremost in education (hence the name of the philosophy) and there is a pattern of always addressing the heart before the mind. Emotions come before intellect. The heart is fed not on facts and information but images and feelings so there is a lot of use of art, music, and story, especially in the early years.
WEH is a fairly individualized approach to education. There is a pattern (heart then mind) but not a formula or precise curriculum because each child is a unique individual with a unique calling. There is no force or coercion in this approach. There is a big emphasis on the mother setting an example in education by working on her own heart but she does not impose on her children if they are resistant. The reason behind this is also theological — God, Peterson believes, does not force anyone to heaven so we too do not and cannot force the softening of our children’s hearts.
Perhaps because of the emphasis on patterns, repetition is key to the WEH. This is a spiral approach to learning which is designed to prepare the child by establishing neural pathways. Other curricula may debate 4 versus 6 year history cycles but WEH uses a one-year cycle of history and science/nature topics. This is the Rotation. With a month per subject, the child does not go deep but will come back to each topic annually.
It is when we consider what is studied that we find the second, political strand that informs the WEH. Peterson believes that we live in a time of crisis. The differences between men and women have been obscured; heroes have been knocked off their pedestals; America’s founding stories have been denigrated. She sees a golden age of children’s literature as having occurred at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century and so the stories she selects (and reprints in her Libraries of Hope series) are older ones. There is an emphasis on heroes, especially for ages 8-11 when children are naturally focused on such things.
The Rotation follows the arc of American history and Peterson urges even those in other countries to follow this sequence. She has a strong belief in American exceptionalism. Because the US is a melting pot, the study of American history will inevitably bring in the study of other cultures and societies. There is good in many cultures (example: we get respect for elders from Chinese culture) but it is only here in the United States that these cultures have all come together and that freedom has truly been achieved. It is only in freedom that we can obtain joy, which again is the goal of education and of life.
There is much more that could be said but this is the core of the WEH philosophy of education so now we may turn again to our four questions to see how Peterson’s approach would answer them.
1. What do they assume about how learning works?
In the WEH, learning is first and foremost a work of the heart. The intellect or mind is secondary. So the arts which are of the heart come first. History is prioritized over science, the latter being most of all the realm of the mind. Education is not forced but is something that is caught and so the role of the example is key, particularly the mother’s example. She may spend as much time on her own education as on her children’s because they will follow where she goes. Education is also very cyclical as patterns and neural pathways are established so this is a spiral approach which emphasizes repetition over depth.
2. How do they view children?
Children are unique individuals with their own calling from God. Peterson compares them to plants tenderly cared for by their mother but warns the mother not to be disappointed if she thinks she is growing a rose but ends up with a peony. Children do go through stages of development. The earliest years are most about the heart. Toddlers respond to the music of language more then the content and so we give them songs and nursery rhymes. Up to age 8 or so is the time of imagination so stories are key. Ages 8-11 are a time for hero worship and stories of great men. It is only in the tween/teen years that children begin to put the pieces together and they are not fully developed till age 26.
3. How do they view human nature?
If not inherently good, human nature at least has the potential for good.. Peterson does speak of hardships which will come in life, but there is no indication that these struggles are internal ones. The great threat seems to be a hardening of the heart but even in that there is no talk of personal sin. There is a lot of choice and freedom in human nature. Anyone could obtain joy and return to heaven but not everyone will. God sends forth his light but does not compel anyone to receive it.
4. What do they believe is the goal of education?
The immediate goal of education is the softening and preparing of the heart so that it can receive the divine light and thereby obtain joy and return to heaven to be with God again.
This then is the philosophy of the Well-Educated Heart. Next time we will compare Peterson’s ideas to those of Charlotte Mason.
I came to G.C. Berkouwer’s Studies in Dogmatics: General Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955) with a bit of an agenda. I have said in my own philosophy of education that God’s general revelation is the fodder of education. Put another way, all that stuff we learn and teach our kids — math and literature and science and history and the arts — are subsumed under the heading we call general revelation. Yet there was something is this idea that I didn’t feel I had quite worked out. It is perhaps easier to envision how the knowledge we gain of the physical world could fall under the heading of general revelation, but what of literature and the arts which are mediated through the minds of men, even unredeemed men? How do we justify studying these things?
I had really liked Berkouwer’s work on the image of God in man so I was hopeful that his General Revelation would help me clarify my own thinking. I am not sure it has done so, but there were also a number of places that gave me some insight into how we might think about education.
General Revelation is a long and very meaty book. Berkouwer spends a great deal of time discussing various approaches to the issue at hand and arguing for or against them. A lot of that discussion is not really relevant to my purposes. To briefly sum up Berkouwer’s own take on general revelation I would say:
Christians have tended to fall off the horse one way or another when it comes to general revelation. There are those who want to deny its existence altogether and there are those who make so much of it that special revelation becomes all but unnecessary.
General revelation is not natural theology. It does not, as in Roman Catholic theology, rely on the human reason and our ability to know God through creation.
Rather, general revelation is revelation. That is, it is an act of God in which He reveals. Revelation is a light that comes from God and shines on men whether they are able to perceive it or not. And men, apart from the work of the Spirit, cannot see it. Revelation has not changed but our ability to perceive it was damaged by the Fall. God did not withdraw His revelation post-Fall; it was men who hid themselves from God. It is not that nature leads us to Christ but that salvation in Christ leads us to be able to see God in nature again.
Before the Fall, God’s work and His word were intimately connected. They were never meant to be severed, but in the Fall they were. So now too when God’s word is not heard, His working is not understood. The tendency to confine God’s revelation to nature led to an association between general revelation and the natural sciences which in turn led to a dichotomy between scientific and religious knowledge. And, along with it, an opposition between general and special revelation. But, Berkouwer argues, God’s work and His word were originally united. His works are defined by his word so they are not so distinct as we may think.
We must be careful not to too closely identify general revelation with nature and nature alone. One temptation is to tend toward a pantheism in which God is present in creation simply because it is. But revelation is always an act of God. It is a deliberate revealing. It is not merely that the creation reflects the Creator in a passive way.
Nor is general revelation confined to nature. Calvin distinguishes three categories: nature, history, and man. Nature, the created world, is God’s work. History is the story of God’s acting. And man as created in the image of God also is a means by which God reveals Himself.
With this last point we begin to get at some of the implications for education. There can be a temptation when we think of education as general revelation to put nature on a pedestal, thinking that it comes most directly from God and therefore is of most value in teaching us. Berkouwer dispels this myth. History as God’s work is revelation. Man, as one created in the image of God, is if anything even more a means of revelation. Berkouwer speaks of man as a mirror of God. In this he gives us a justification for our study of the humanities.
If we are to learn from our fellow men, we must ask: which men? One question I have wrestled with is how much non-Christians can truly know and how much we can learn from them. Berkouwer does not address the educational aspect directly, but he does argue that apart from God, man can only know humanly. “Men,” he says, “may examine and analyze many aspects of human life but in their synthesis they will not get further than a sum total of what they discovered in the different realms of human life” (p. 221). They are limited in their understanding.
Yet the world we live in as a part of western culture is one which is thoroughly steeped in Christianity. It may not seem so when so many around us are just incredibly biblically illiterate and when the most educated seem to despise faith, but the roots of our culture are Christian and the ideas upon which it is founded, and upon which our academic study is based, are Christian ideas. It is Christian because it believes in God as an orderly Creator, which assumes a logical world, one that we as humans can study and make sense of. Christianity gave us science. “The Western-European world, for instance, cannot be conceived of apart from the Gospel and it strongly influences anthropologic thought” (p. 226). It is easy to say that non-Christians can never get to the Truth (capital “T”), but living where and when we do, we cannot know what men entirely devoid of Christianity would understand because even the most pagan modern scholars still rest on the people and ideas which came before them, many of whom were devoutly Christian.
Berkouwer’s purpose in General Revelation is not to discuss education but there are some good insights we can gain from his work. Because of the density of this book, I am not sure that I would recommend it if your purpose is to think about education but if you are looking for a good discussion of views of general revelation from a reformed standpoint, Berkouwer is well worth the time.
The field of available curricula is ever-expanding so once again we find ourselves with a new edition of “Is It CM?”, the game where we look at products marketed to homeschoolers as Mason-esque and ask “Really?”
Tapestry of Grace is not a new curriculum but I have been asked to add it to the list. It is a Christian, classical curriculum which claims to also use many of Mason’s methods. It includes many of the humanities — history, geography, literature and government — but not math or science.
What’s CM about it?
In general, the books used seem to be good, living books. It includes study of the art, music, and geography.
What isn’t CM?
I don’t seem any mention of CM-style narration. It does not use copywork/dictation as far as I can see. There is a lot of busywork and added projects, including for grammar and vocabulary which in a CM curriculum would be covered through copywork/dictation (at least until middle school). The emphasis on Sayers’ three stages of classical ed (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) is not CM. It also lays out specific (and very detailed) learning goals for each level and says things like “the most crucial facts are…” In a CM education we place the materials before the child but recognize that each one will get something different from what we give them and that it may not be what we want or expect them to get.
Quick Take Summary:
ToG is very much classical and not CM. The points of contact with Mason’s approach are really those where classical and CM meet anyway (i.e. an emphasis on history and the use of living books).
A free history curriculum. The materials for the teacher are all online. URead uses books you can get from your local library (hopefully) as well as some online resources. It claims to be a “Charlotte Mason style (Literature-Based) approach to learning history.” (The creator seems to also make a science curriculum, Glory of Kings, but I cannot access its materials in any way; it may still be “in progress.”)
What’s CM about it?
The books used seem to be good, living ones.
What isn’t CM?
While the books used are good, there is no mention of narration. Instead lists of discussion questions and writing assignments are given. There is some busywork — activities and printable worksheets are suggested but could easily be skipped. It also seems like the books are to be read fairly quickly and one at a time whereas a CM approach would keep multiple books going at once and read them more slowly so that connections can be made.
Quick Take Summary:
URead’s approach is fairly simple and family-friendly. The books used are good as is the emphasis on history and literature. However the omissions rob this approach of some of the key elements of CM’s approach, especially those that allow children to make connections and form relationships with the material. The lists of books and general break down of history subjects could be quite useful but as a whole I would not say URead is CM.
I have hesitated to write this review because I know that the series itself is controversial. I am even a bit abashed to say that I did watch Netflix’s Dahmer series, but, well, I did. Towards the end of last year I had a lot of work that required my hands but not my brain so I wanted something to watch and I had heard that the series gave a pretty good presentation of the gospel message. Plus I was living in Wisconsin when Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes were discovered so there was a base level of interest there and a feeling of connection to the events.
A couple of caveats before we begin — First, since I did watch this some months ago, there may be inaccuracies in my memory but I will try to describe the series as I recall it. And second, while I will speak of Dahmer and the other characters, I recognize that the Netflix series is a fictionalized account and so my remarks are not really about Dahmer the historical person but the fictionalized movie Dahmer. One critique of the series is that it does take some creative liberties, for instance merging the experiences of a few neighbors into the one prominent neighbor character in the series.
Let’s start with the bad. Dahmer is violent and has a fair degree of sexual content. I wouldn’t say that it is gratuitous and really not much is actually shown but the series does not shy away from the reality of events that were inherently violent and sexual. It is not explicit in the sense of showing nudity but takes the “let the audience know what is happening and then pan away” approach which can at times be even more creepy. I had heard that the gospel content came in episode 7 or so but it actually comes later so I persisted through the series thinking I would get to the good bits any time. If I had known I would have to keep waiting, I might have abandoned the whole enterprise because this was so very hard to watch.
The other bad is the controversy surrounding the series. It seems that its creators did not get the consent of the victims’ families. That is really what makes me hesitant to write this, because I do not want to pile on to that. I can understand that for those affected by these events, that there is probably a desire never to see them recreated and certainly not to see others make money off of them. But I will say that the series did a really good job of showing just how profound the effects of Dahmer’s crimes were, not just on the families but also on all those around him including his neighbors and his parents.
Which brings me to my first observation: the sins, the very heinous sins, of this one man were utterly corrosive, not just to his own soul and to his victims but to everyone around him, anyone even tangentially involved. The series does not shy away from the degree of trauma and disruption that was brought into the lives of so many. While most of us will not become cannibalistic, homosexual murderers, it does make one pause to think about how profound the effects of our sin can be, not just in our own lives but in the lives of those around us.
There is somewhat of a sociological message to Dahmer. Its creators are clearly trying to show that the system failed Jeffrey Dahmer. As an example, his father at one point asks a judge to require him to get help and is turned down. There are also choices that his parents make that may have contributed to his behavior. Yet one is always aware that this is not the whole story. Dahmer himself never says that others failed him or made him who he is. Indeed, he seems always aware of his sin. He knows he is different and that what he does is wrong. Yet — to paraphrase Paul in Romans 7:15 — he does what he hates. Again, the sins here are over the top, more than most people will ever even contemplate, but the basic tendency is so very human. The difference between Dahmer and any of us is a matter of degrees but not of the basic heart condition.
In my denomination, when we have our children baptized, we promise to teach them of their sin nature. This may sound harsh to modern ears, but I have come to think that it is so very essential. The world will tell them a lot of things but it will not tell them this. In fact, it will do everything it can to teach them the exact opposite — that they are good, that they can change on their own, that they don’t need a Savior. Jeffrey Dahmer did some of the worst things we can even imagine and yet (as this series portrays him) he was closer to salvation than many “good” people because he knew he was evil.
Dahmer also knows that he deserves death. It is not clear that he sees is as a punishment and there is no indication that he sees his own death as in any way atoning for his crimes, but he seems to desire death as an escape and the only way to end his sin.
Dahmer’s salvation comes when, in prison, he hears that another infamous serial killer, John Wayne Gacy, has repented.* This leads him to conclude: “If there can be salvation for him who is even worse than me, maybe I too can be saved.” Think about that for a moment. What does this say to us, the audience? As Gacy is to Dahmer so Dahmer is to us. If even Jeffrey Dahmer can repent and come to faith, maybe there is hope for all of us.
At last we are at the gospel presentation which lured me into even starting this series. It is brief but it is not awful. The emphasis is on grace, the fact that we bring nothing to the table — because what could a Dahmer possibly bring? Again, the story before us is an extreme one but none of us have any more to offer to our own salvation than Jeffrey Dahmer did.
I am a little less enamored of the effects of Dahmer’s salvation as the series portrays them. We see him repenting to his father but there is no indication that he reached out in any way to the many, many people whom his deeds impacted. Maybe the series just doesn’t show it, maybe he didn’t have time before his own death. I can’t say if Dahmer’s conversion, which was much touted in Christian circles at the time, was real. I hope it was. But as the series portrays it, there does seem to be a lack. It is not our deeds that save us, but faith and salvation should come with sincere repentance and a desire to atone for one’s deeds in some way. When Dahmer dies at the end, killed in prison, all those people who were affected by his sin are still left with their trauma and pain. It doesn’t magically disappear.
(Side bar: One interesting tidbit that is thrown in at the end of the series, the Dahmer character mentions that he was into occult things as a child. This is said very quickly and not much commented on, but from a Christian perspective, it is hard not to wonder if early childhood experiences with the occult lead to the profound degree of sin in Dahmer’s later life. I don’t want to get too woo-woo about this but I do believe that these things are often related and that there is no harmless experimentation with things that are truly evil.)
The creators of the Dahmer series took liberties with the story and I have no reason to think that they are Christian or intended to give a religious message. Yet from a Christian perspective, they present a compelling story that should lead us not to say “look at how horrible that guy was; I am so much better than him” but “all those things which were so profound and obvious in his life are latent but no less real in mine.” This horrible, horrible story (which I can’t actually recommend since it was so hard to watch) should lead us to repent of our own sin and to see our own need for a Savior who can free us from it.
*This is one of the details my memory is fuzzy one. It may be that Gacy did not repent per se but just had a priest with him at the time of his own execution or some such. At any rate, it is made clear that Dahmer’s reaction was one of “if him, why not me?” and not just a fear at the thought of his own possible death because, as I said, he wanted to be put to death though he was actually only given life sentences.
Letters from Nebby 