The following is the transcript of a plenary address I delivered on March 7 at the School of the Ozarks Classical Christian Education Conference. The theme of the conference was “Education as Discipleship.” Davies Owens gave the first two talks and I was asked to give the third.

We’ve already heard from Davies Owens a couple of times about education and discipleship. In his first talk, he set forth a definition for classical Christian education: “forming what our children love through their joyful discovery of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.” In his second talk, he focused more on the classical Christian classroom and the way we help form habits in our students. Of particular focus was the practice of narration and the skill of attending. In this final plenary address, I want to continue to speak about education as discipleship, this time emphasizing its role in cultivating love.

Since ancient times, education was about virtue formation. Though debating if and how virtue could be taught, the classical world emphasized prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude as the aims of education. All four of these cardinal virtues are attested to regularly in Scripture, and when the church began to formally take up the question of education, the church fathers naturally adopted these cardinal virtues as consistent with the Christian faith. These four cardinal virtues, however, were understood through the lens of the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love.

In his work, “Of the Morals of the Catholic Church,” Augustine writes:

For these four virtues (would that all felt their influence in their minds as they have their names in their mouths!), I should have no hesitation in defining them: that temperance is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved; fortitude is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object; justice is love serving only the loved object, and therefore ruling rightly; prudence is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it.

Just as the Apostle Paul speaks of faith, hope, and love, but says the greatest of these is love, he defines each of the four cardinal virtues in light of love. Love, for Augustine and the church throughout history, seems to have been the virtue that best encapsulated the Christian life. We see something of this reality in 2 Peter 1:3-11, which says:

3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 11 For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Notice, Peter is fully aligned with an education in virtue. In fact, he goes so far as to tell us to supplement our faith with virtue, by putting our faith into practice by the practice of virtue. Similarly, Peter speaks of supplementing our virtue with knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. The goal, in short, is godliness. I think this passage helps us understand that for Peter, virtue bears fruit through the exercise and practice of Christian love.

When we think about education, then, we see that the Scriptures and church history direct us towards cultivating virtue, especially with reference to love. It turns out that discipleship, too, is rooted in love.

The Gospel of John

I make a frequent habit reading and meditating on the Gospel of John. It is my favorite of the four gospels for a number of reasons, and I find myself returning to it often to help shape not only my view of Jesus, my practice of prayer, and my understanding of the gospel, but also to form things like my leading and teaching. Perhaps someday I will get around to a bigger project that I hope to explore—how the Gospel of John serves as an education paradigm. This gospel provides us, through the words of Jesus, with a fairly comprehensive educational paradigm if we can agree that education and discipleship, at minimum, have overlapping goals and are in many ways synonymous.

In our short time together, I want us to explore three interesting questions that Jesus asks in this gospel that show the overlapping nature of education and discipleship and the centrality of love for both. What are you seeking (1:38)? Do you want to be healed (5:6)? Do you love me more than these (21:15)?

We will explore each individually to uncover some deeper truths, but before we go there, I want to set this talk in the context that I think our topic (education as discipleship and the cultivation of love) and these questions have in common: desire. Each of these three questions to some extent answers the fundamental human question: What do you want?

In his excellent work, You Are What You Love, James K. A. Smith begins his book with this key question. The last part of his introduction and the beginning of chapter one read:

If you are passionate about seeking justice, renewing culture, and taking up your vocation to unfurl all of creation’s potential, you need to invest in the formation of your imagination. You need to curate your heart. You need to worship well. Because you are what you love. And you worship what you love. And you might not love what you think. Which raises an important question. Let’s dare to ask it. What do you want? That’s the question. It is the first, last, and most fundamental question of Christian discipleship.

I want to propose to you that education is discipleship into a way of life. Let me say this again: education is discipleship into a way of life. Not just Christian education, mind you. All education is discipleship into a way of life. The question we must ask when we send our children to school is not if they will be discipled, but into what way of life will they be discipled. And if discipleship and education have overlapping aims, then I suspect this might be the most fundamental question of any kind of education, but especially a Christian education: what do you want? What we want reveals what we love, and what we love defines who we are. As we heard yesterday in a quote from Thomas Cranmer, “the mind is captive to what the will wants; and the will is captive to what the heart wants.” Simply filling a mind with information will not shape our wills nor our hearts, and therefore, it will not shape our loves. To shape our loves we must speak to our desires, and we speak to those desires through attention and habit. Asking the question “What do you want?” in the context of education speaks to the core of who we are as a human person and how we are going to be shaped and formed—for good or for ill.

Remember, I told you I am thinking through a much bigger project, so I have to be brief here and summarize some of what we see in the Gospel of John by looking at discipleship in the gospel.

1. A disciple is a follower of Jesus who imitates Jesus by loving God, loving others, and making disciples.
2. Disciples are characterized by keeping Jesus’ commandments, abiding in Him and His Word through prayer, and thereby bearing much fruit.
3. Discipleship is about following Jesus and His way of love expressed in the Great Commandment. Though we don’t get the Great Commandment in John, it’s echoes are everywhere, perhaps nowhere more evident than when Jesus gives His disciples a new commandment: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). To Jesus in the Gospel of John, the mark of a disciple is love.

Now, as I have already claimed, the definition of education: education is discipleship into a way of life. We aim to disciple students into the way of life found in Jesus, a way marked by love. To disciple and to educate, therefore, both require that we cultivate the virtue and practice of love.

Before we move on to three questions asked by Jesus in the Gospel of John, let’s summarize the answer to the larger question: what do you want? Biblically speaking, I think we should want to be discipled in and through our education to become like Jesus by practicing the virtue of love. But, as Smith reminds us, we may not love what we think. And so Jesus asks a question: what are you seeking?

Question #1: What are you seeking? The Destination of Learning (John 1:38)

The first question we explore turns out to be the first words of Jesus in the Gospel of John. When Jesus finds some of John the Baptizer’s disciples following Him, Jesus turns and asks them this question: what are you seeking? How would you answer this question? How do we truly pause and reflect upon what we want? Is it possible that we say we want something but our lives, schedules, decisions, and ultimately our loves are pointing towards a different goal? “What are you seeking?” is a destination question. It asks what horizon our eyes are cast upon, for our feet will follow our eyes on this path.

When it comes to classical Christian education, the question remains: what are you seeking? What is the destination of learning—the telos or purpose at which it aims? As a classical Christian educator—teacher, administrator, support staff, parent—whatever your role or roles, what are you seeking in this vocation? What is your goal for you, for your students, for your school? These questions are of paramount importance because our destination will be determined to a significant extent by our desire.

Returning to John 1 for a moment, the disciples respond to Jesus with a question: where are you staying? Jesus follows up their question with an invitation: come and you will see. Jesus invites the disciples to come and see what Jesus is doing. He invites them to share in His life. And He invites them on a journey with a destination—the cross. The reality is that classical Christian education is going to have feeding of the five thousand and mount of transfiguration moments, but if it’s truly Christian it is headed towards the cross. Students, parents, and teachers ought to be headed on a path that invites them to give up everything this world has to offer for the sake of Christ. Jesus’ invitation to come and see where He is going and what He is doing is not an easy invitation, but it’s the only one worth accepting. And the good news is, like the story of Jesus in the Gospel of John, it ends in resurrection.

So, classical Christian educators, what do you want?

Question #2: Do you want to be healed? The Motivation for Learning (John 5:6)

The second question is closely related to the first. In many ways, what are you seeking is not only a destination question, it is implicitly also a motivation question. What are you seeking also implies some question of why are you seeking that which you are seeking? This question in John 5, however, helps solidify this second question’s emphasis on motivation. Here we get a specific type of motivation—do you want to be healed? I’ve always found this question interesting. Who wouldn’t want to be healed?! But I’ve met plenty of people who are happy in their sin, who don’t think they need to be healed. Still others may recognize that their lifestyle is destructive and they ought to pursue healing, but not yet.

Likewise in education, I’ve come across many students who have no desire to be healed from intellectual ignorance or arrogance. Maybe sometimes we realize that the healing process will be painful and require more discipline than we care to give. This is why the question is so closely linked to the first. We might think we want something, but are we sufficiently motivated to pursue it once we learn what it will take? Perhaps not.

The question, do you want to be healed, again requires serious introspection. If question one concerns whether or not I know what I want, question two concerns whether I know who I am and who I want to be. When I look at myself, do I consider myself healthy, in no need of a physician as Jesus says in the gospels? Or, when I look at myself, do I see sickness, brokenness, something that needs healing? And then the question comes: do I want to be healed? Am I willing to accept the prescription for that healing? It may not be pleasant, and therefore my desire to be whole and healthy in my soul must outweigh my worries about the difficulty.

In classical Christian education, we aim not only at information but especially at formation. We and our students need to ask this difficult question. Moreover, we are asking not only the spiritually formative question but an intellectually formative question as well. Am I content in my ignorance, or do I want to be healed? Am I willing to receive the prescription (aka, the syllabus) to heal my ignorance and insufficiencies of my intellect. If I am to love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind then I need to answer in the affirmative. Yes, I want to be healed that I might love God with all my mind as well. But like all forms of healing, it may, in fact likely will, be painful at times. Until a student agrees that he or she must be healed and develops the desire to be healed, he or she will not be sufficiently motivated to learn.

So we must help guide our students towards the proper destination in learning, and we must also help shape in the them the motivation for learning. But Jesus asks one more question I want us to explore.

Question #3: Do you love me more than these? The Prioritization of our Loves in Learning (John 21:15)

Years ago when preaching through the Gospel of John I came upon this passage and was intrigued by something I had missed in simple readings of the English text. It turns out that there is some ambiguity in this passage, and I find it thrilling. Jesus says, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” At least three possibilities are set forward by scholars. One, Jesus may be asking Peter whether he loves Jesus more than he loves his friends who are nearby. This is a question of placing love for Jesus greater than our love for a friend. It fits nicely with the Great Commandment, to love God first and then love our neighbor as ourselves. Peter would be right to love his friends, but he must love Jesus more. Jesus could be asking him this important question.

Second, however, Jesus may be asking Peter whether he loves Jesus more than his friends love Jesus. This would be a question of qualitative comparison. Is Peter’s love for Jesus stronger than John or Andrew’s love for Jesus? This might seem a little more odd, as it seems clear in many passages that we should not compare ourselves to others, but it’s a plausible interpretation here, especially in light of the context. Peter has not long before publicly denied Jesus. He is ashamed. To ask Peter if Peter loves Jesus more than his friends love Jesus is to invite Peter into a deeper relationship with Jesus. Jesus hasn’t given up on Peter; has Peter given up on Jesus? Either way, it draws out a question of Peter’s devotion to Jesus.

Third, and perhaps most interestingly, these could refer to the fishing equipment laying near Peter in the context. Jesus is asking a vocation question: do you love me, Peter, and all that may entail, more than you love the life you know and find more comfortable. Since Jesus tells him soon after the death he is going to die, it is a real question whether Peter’s love for Jesus is great enough to leave a semi-comfortable (or at least known) vocation for one that will lead to a gruesome death. This third possible interpretation draws our attention to the battle between a love for God and the things of the world.

It’s not my purpose to solve which of these are primary here (maybe it’s intentionally ambiguous so that all three are in mind), but I think it raises questions for us about how we order our loves. To answer the question of what we want is to ask what we love—but this requires that we honestly reflect upon the prioritization of our loves.

In his excellent work On Christian Teaching, Augustine says the person who lives a just and holy life is one who rightly ordered his loves,

so that he does not love what it is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved, or love too much what should be loved less (or love too little what should be loved more), or love two things equally if one of them should be loved either less or more than the other, or love things either more or less if they should be loved equally.

An education in formation must include the right ordering and prioritization of loves.

Conclusion

My hope in this talk is to encourage you that your work matters. Your work aims towards a noble end. Focusing on the destination towards which we aim in our learning, considering the motivation for which we learn and teach, and recalibrating the prioritization of our loves can help us become better and more faithful educators that help guide our students into the way of life found in Jesus, a way of life that leads to eternal life.

As we near the end of the conference, and the end of this talk, let’s revisit some key ideas and suggest some takeaways.

1. Discipleship and education both have a formative aim, to shape us in virtue, particularly with reference to cultivating love. This is the answer to the first question of Jesus in the Gospel of John: What are you seeking? The destination, the telos, the purpose of education is virtue expressed through the practice of love.
2. Do you want to be healed? This is the question of motivation Jesus asks in the gospel. Are we willing to admit that apart from Christ, something is wrong that needs healing? In answer, discipleship and education are a long obedience in the same direction towards the love of God in Christ.
3. Do you love me more than these? Can we learn to rightly order our loves so that our love for God in Christ comes first and keeps our other desires in proper perspective?

Whether parents, teachers, or administrators, the Gospel of John can remind us that our aim in classical Christian education can be summarized in the cultivation of love. The ways in which we can model, teach, and guide our students in this way of love are myriad. I’ve written a short document called “Partnering in Faith” that explores some practices that schools and families can use to help shape students affections and desires, and ultimately their loves. But keep in mind, the Gospel of John also shows the stark reality that Judas betrays Jesus and Peter, for a time, denies Him. As teachers, administrators, and parents, we cannot ensure by our effort that a student will reach the destination of loving God in Christ. They must answer the question for themselves: do you want to be healed? But we can, and should, provide an education in love that helps students learn how to prioritize their loves so that they may rightly order their affections and be shaped in Christian virtue in the practice of love.

I pray that the Lord will bless your efforts in this education in love. Thank you.