8. Jesus, the Illiterate?: The Education Fallout
It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.
—MAX PLANCK
If there be a Creator, and if truth be one of his attributes, then everything that is true can claim his authorship, and every search for truth can claim his authority.
—MICHAEL RAMSEY
“So what do you think?” asked Kyle as he finished his turkey sandwich.
“I think we need to get back to our interviews. That’s what I think,” I replied. The timing for this one-week forensic seminar couldn’t have been worse. We were almost done interviewing everyone who received a letter or drawing from Frank Webb, and we needed to determine if Frank’s mental condition led him to imagine a relationship with Tammy or if Frank was somehow involved in her disappearance.
Instead, we were stuck on a lunch break at a restaurant near the Los Angeles County Crime Lab.
“Well,” said Kyle, “ I’ve learned a lot.” Kyle was right, although I was too impatient to admit it. We were attending a seminar taught by a criminalist in the serology lab, and so far she’d described several new forensic processes that could be used to isolate and test DNA in a variety of mediums and settings. Good stuff, but I couldn’t help thinking about Frank and the few loose ends we needed to tie up to move on.
The evidence in the fallout, apart from whatever we might learn about Frank Webb, continued to point to Steve as the cause for Tammy’s disappearance. A week prior to our prescheduled seminar, we interviewed Charley, the woman Michelle said Steve was seeing while married to Tammy. We spent nearly a month investigating Charley to make sure she was no longer in contact with Steve. They hadn’t been living together for some time, so we decided it was safe to conduct an interview. We were glad we did.
Charley’s description of Steve was like that of Steve’s first wife, Gabrielle. Charley often feared for her safety, and after Tammy’s disappearance, she quickly regretted her involvement with Steve. He punched her on two occasions and repeatedly threatened her. She was clearly uncomfortable talking about Tammy, but I pressed on.
“Charley, I don’t suspect that you were involved in Tammy’s disappearance, but I think you know more than you’re telling us.”
STATEMENTS MADE UNDER “DURESS”
From a legal perspective, “duress” occurs when unlawful pressure is exerted upon a person to coerce them to say or do something they wouldn’t otherwise say or do. I was careful to encourage Charley to tell the truth, rather than coerce her with a threat. The earliest Christians were treated very differently, however. Many were forced—under threat of violence—to recant their faith in Jesus and worship the Roman gods. In criminal trials, statements given under duress are inadmissible.
She remained silent.
“You were lucky, Charley,” I continued. “You’re still alive. Tammy may not have been as fortunate. If you think of something important or change your mind about helping us, please call me. We’re just trying to get to the truth.”
I handed her my business card and turned to leave.
“What if he comes after me ?” she asked.
“If he’s in jail for murder, he can’t come after you,” Kyle replied.
More silence.
“I don’t know how, um, if he killed her,” Charley finally offered. “But, yes, I think he did something to her. When Tammy disappeared, Steve invited me to move in with him. I asked, ‘What about Tammy? She could return any day.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about her. I took care of it.’ After that I never discussed it with him. I didn’t want to believe anything bad about him, but after I moved in and he started to abuse me, I began to look for ways to end the relationship. It was so terrible. I haven’t dated anyone since then. I don’t think I ever will.”
Kyle and I knew we had turned a corner and were close to presenting a case to the district attorney for filing. We added Charley’s information to our fallout diagram:
Even though Steve appeared to be our person of interest, we still needed to investigate Frank’s role (if he played any), and we couldn’t do that until we were done with this one-week seminar.
“Remember,” said Kyle as he checked his watch to make sure we weren’t late, “you were the one who requested this training over a year ago.”
“I’m not opposed to training,” I replied. “I’m just opposed to training right now .”
FOR THE LOVE OF EDUCATION
Each year I was assigned to the detective division, I applied for advanced educational opportunities. My agency sent me to a variety of schools to help me become a better interviewer and investigator. I’ve always held education in high regard.
But as an atheist I often thought of Christians as people who were opposed to modern education.
There weren’t many Christians at my police agency, but the most outspoken one, Jason, was a blunt critic of modern education. He and his wife were unhappy with what the public schools were teaching.
DO YOUNG CHRISTIANS LEAVE THE FAITH IN UNIVERSITY?
Studies over the past two decades demonstrate that many Christians (raised in the faith as children) reject their Christian identity by the time they are surveyed in their university years. While it’s tempting to infer that universities are responsible for their deconversion, most studies also show that young people start questioning their faith between ten and seventeen years of age. Parents have more impact on the beliefs of young Christians than professors .
I rode with Jason as a partner on occasion when I was assigned to patrol, and he talked for hours about the dangers of public schools and the perils of university education. He complained that public schools and colleges taught principles opposed to Christianity. He also complained that many young Christians left the faith after attending universities.
Jason’s conversations left a lasting impression on me as an atheist. In my view back then, Christians—if they were like Jason—were anti-education fanatics who wanted to keep their kids in the dark. Christianity appeared entirely incompatible with a proper education.
But as I continued to study the Common Era fallout, I discovered that nothing could have been further from the truth.
JESUS AS THE CATALYST
Jesus followers led the modern education revolution, and they did so because they wished to advance the values of their Master. Education is yet another form of Common Era fallout that points back to Jesus as a person of interest.
Jesus followers ignited education in the Common Era for the following reasons:
Igniter #1: Christ Followers Celebrated the Life of the Mind
Jesus encouraged his followers to worship God with their intellectual and rational abilities. When a skeptical Jewish Pharisee (a sect of Jewish believers that strictly observed the Jewish traditions and law) asked Jesus, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind ” (Matthew 22:36–37 ESV, emphasis mine).
Jesus was a thinker, and he encouraged his followers to be similarly committed to using their minds, even as an act of worship.
Igniter #2: Christ Followers Collected and Protected Knowledge
The early Christians were also thinkers who studied the Scriptures as the “Word of God” and eventually became known (along with their Jewish predecessors) as “People of the Book.” Christians and Jews were students of Scripture. Moses started this educational emphasis many centuries earlier: “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children , and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7 ESV, emphasis mine).
Christians continued this tradition of education. Paul reiterated this emphasis in a letter to his disciple Timothy: “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching , rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16, emphasis mine).
OBJECTION: THERE ARE NO OBJECTIVE TRUTHS
Education is predicated on the notion that there are objective truths about mathematics, history, science, and other topics that can be transmitted from one generation to another. Some claim, however, that there are no objective truths. But if this is true, the statement “There are no objective truths” can’t be objectively true. Do you see the problem? If there are no objective truths, education becomes nothing more than the transmission of opinions.
Igniter #3: Christ Followers Were Called to Make Disciples
From start to finish, Jesus and his followers held education in high regard. Jesus’s last words to his disciples made this clear: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18–20 ESV, emphasis mine).
Jesus commanded his followers to make disciples , and this required them to become teachers of the Word.
Igniter #4: Christ Followers Embraced a “Teaching” Culture
Jesus was both a learner and a teacher. As a child he sat at the feet of instructors in the temple (Luke 2:46), and he later spent his entire ministry teaching his disciples. He prepared his students and sent them to share the truth with others and even used teaching imagery in his illustrations and sermons: “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40 ESV).
Paul later affirmed the duty to educate the community of saints: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” (Colossians 3:16 ESV).
So important was education to the second- and third-century Christians that new believers were “catechized” and educated for lengthy periods of time prior to their baptism. This training period was tailored to each baptismal candidate and could last from weeks to years. Bishops, deacons, elders, and laypeople taught these students from “the Book” on topics related to proper theology and Christian living.
Igniter #5: Christ Followers Embraced Their Responsibility to Learn the Truth
Early Christians understood their personal responsibility as students. They were individually transformed by learning the truth and by using their minds to continually evaluate the will of God as it was described in the Book: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2 ESV).
Igniter #6: Christ Followers Educated the World to Share the Gospel
Jesus followers took seriously the command to “go therefore and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19 ESV). They branched out into the world and immediately encountered a significant obstacle: discipleship was dependent on the Book, but not every new people group could read. Some groups didn’t even possess an alphabet of their own.
This didn’t stop Christian missionaries. Ulfilas (c. 311–c. 383 CE), for example, was born into captivity in a region that the Goths controlled (now known as Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania), but he eventually became a Christian bishop and missionary to the region. He evangelized the Goths and invented an alphabet that would allow him to translate the Bible into the Gothic language. This invention made it possible for Goths to read, a foundational skill that laid the groundwork for higher education in the region.
Saint Cyril (826–869 CE) and Saint Methodius (815–885 CE) followed in Ulfilas’s footsteps as they made disciples of the Slavic people in Eastern Europe. The Slavs possessed an unwritten language (just like the Goths), so Cyril invented an alphabet to translate the Bible into this language.
More than two hundred million people, representing more than one hundred languages spoken around the world, still use the Cyrillic alphabet. The invention of an alphabet such as this (for the purpose of translating the Bible) opened the doors for education on a global level.
Christians are still translating the Book and creating alphabets, even today. According to the Wycliff Global Alliance, at least part of the Bible has been translated into 3,415 languages (representing 7 billion people), the complete Bible has been translated into 704 languages (representing 5.7 billion people), and the New Testament has been translated into 1,551 languages (representing 815 million people). Jesus followers are largely responsible for advancing literacy across the globe.
IGNITING A REVOLUTION
These six catalysts ignited an educational revolution in the fallout of the Common Era, a movement driven by “People of the Book” who wanted to share their Book with others. This revolution initiated a series of events that led directly to the creation of humanity’s greatest educational institution: the modern university.
If you’ve attended a college or university, you can thank Jesus (and his followers) for the opportunity. The word university is derived from the Latin term universitas magistrorum et scholarium . It means, more or less, a community of teachers and scholars. Christians met in communities of teachers and scholars early in history, and these communities grew into universities as we know them today.
While the Greeks and Romans had their own notable instructors and philosophers, they developed no permanent, organized institutions of education like the universities we know today. The creation of formal institutions of learning “represented by faculties and colleges and courses of study, examinations and commencements and academic degrees” sprang out of the Christian community, and it started in antiquity.
The teaching efforts of the disciples and their students, for example, have been captured in an ancient Christian education text known as the Didache (“The Lord’s Teaching through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations”).
The Didache was used to teach new believers in a “question and answer” approach. Male and female students spent two to three years learning in an instructor’s home.
It wasn’t long before Christian students were being taught more than theology and godly living. Ignatius of Antioch (the student of the apostle John that I described earlier) encouraged teachers in Christian communities to “ ‘bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord;’ and teach them the holy Scriptures, and also trades, that they may not indulge in idleness.”
Christian communities, therefore, expanded the scope of their teaching, formalizing the curriculum and placing an emphasis on literary learning.
Justin Martyr (c. 100–c. 165 CE), for example, established formal catechetical schools in Ephesus and Rome and became known as the first great scholar of the Christian church. Around the same time, Saint Pantaenus the Philosopher (c. 130 –c. 200 CE) established a catechetical school in Alexandria, Egypt. These three schools, strategically placed within the Roman Empire, were influential communities that served as the template for future Christian training centers.
By the time Origen (the “prince of Christian learning” who lived from c. 184 –c. 253 CE) took over the leadership at the catechetical school in Alexandria, it had expanded its instruction to include mathematics and medicine, and “Christianity [had become] for the first time a definite factor in the culture of the world.”
As catechetical schools populated the landscape of the Roman Empire, they grew in stature and scope. The School of Edessa (second century) and School of Nisibis (350 CE), for example, are sometimes referred to as the world’s first universities. The School of Nisibis offered instruction in three primary departments: theology, philosophy, and medicine.
Shortly after the formation of these schools, the Pandidakterion (425 CE) was founded, also within the tradition of emerging Christian educational communities. Emperor Theodosius II established the school with thirty-one “chairs” (departments led by notable professors). He included departments for medicine, law, philosophy, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, and rhetoric in both Latin and Greek. The school grew and eventually became the Imperial University of Constantinople, an important Eastern Roman educational institution that survived until the fifteenth century.
Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–c. 547 CE) significantly raised the educational bar when he established his order’s first monastery at Monte Cassino, Italy, in 528 CE (quickly followed by the creation of several additional communities for monks). Benedict encouraged each enclave to collect the literature of antiquity, even texts that were written by non-Christians. As a result, Benedictine monasteries became repositories for Greek and Roman wisdom. Benedict was so committed to this objective that he has become known as “the godfather of libraries,” and these literary collections have been described as his monasteries’ “armory, similar to the armory of a castle.”
Cassiodorus (c. 487–c. 585 CE) continued this tradition of libraries when he founded the Vivarium monastery about 554 CE. Like Benedict, he collected manuscripts and directed his monks to copy Christian and non-Christian authors. So vast and timely was the collection in his library that without it, much of the wisdom of antiquity would be lost to us today. As the Roman Empire crumbled, Cassiodorus “helped to save the culture of Rome at a time of impending barbarism.”
The crumbling empire led to another important development in education: cathedral schools. Local bishops established these schools as the Roman educational system began to deteriorate. Augustine of Canterbury (c. 520–c. 604 CE), for example, helped establish a cathedral and school in Canterbury (597 CE). Others later emerged in Rochester (604 CE) and York (627 CE). Beverley Grammar School was established shortly thereafter (700 CE) in Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. These schools are still operating today. In fact, they’re the oldest continuously operating schools in the world .
These aren’t the only ancient cathedral schools, however. The Gymnasium Paulinum school in Münster, for example, is the oldest school in Germany, and there are many other similar examples. In fact, Charlemagne (the king of the Franks who later became a Roman emperor) issued several decrees requiring cathedrals and monasteries to establish schools so that “children [could] learn to read; that psalms, notation, chant, computation, and grammar [could] be taught . . .” using teachers who had “the will and the ability to learn and a desire to instruct others.”
Within a few centuries, the first modern universities were established in Bologna, Oxford, and Paris. All were founded by Jesus followers.
The University of Bologna (established in 1088 CE) still bears the motto, “St. Peter is everywhere the father of the law, Bologna is its mother.” Oxford University (founded in 1096 CE) has a motto that includes the opening words to Psalm 27: “The Lord is my light.” The University of Paris (founded in 1150 CE) emerged from the cathedral schools of Notre Dame and became “the most celebrated teaching centre of all Christendom.”
While the University of Bologna is often described as the world’s oldest university, Muslims also established two schools in the same period. But nothing approximated the nature of modern universities prior to the universities at Bologna, Oxford, and Paris, and these three Christian universities became the model for the universities we know today.
So influential were these three universities that they gave birth to these daughter universities, from which the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth century emerged:
University of Cambridge (1209 CE)
University of Macerata (1290 CE)
University of Palencia (c. 1212 CE)
University of Alcalá (1293 CE)
University of Salamanca (1218 CE)
University of Lleida (1300 CE)
University of Padua (1222 CE)
Sapienza University of Rome (1303 CE)
University of Toulouse (1229 CE)
University of Orléans (1306 CE)
University of Perugia (1308 CE)
University of Siena (1240 CE)
University of Pisa (1343 CE)
University of Northampton (1261 CE)
Charles University (1348 CE)
Jagiellonian University (1364 CE)
University of Murcia (1272 CE)
University of Vienna (1365 CE)
University of Montpellier (1289 CE)
Heidelberg University (1386 CE)
University of Coimbra (1290 CE)
University of St Andrews (1413 CE)
These historic institutions arose from the universities of Bologna, Oxford, and Paris, three educational institutions that descended from monasteries and cathedral schools inspired by Jesus and established by his followers.
Jesus followers had an overwhelming impact on the history of education, and establishing modern universities is only part of the story.
SCHOOL AS YOU KNOW IT
Even if you haven’t attended a university, you’ve experienced the impact of Jesus followers at some point in your education. Christians have been educational innovators:
If you were asked to read books as part of your education (at the primary, secondary, or university level), you can thank Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400–1468 CE), devoted Jesus follower and the creator of the printing press.
If you benefited from an organized, public educational system in your community, you can thank Johannes Bugenhagen (1485–1558 CE), a Jesus follower who pioneered the organization of schools; Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560 CE), a theologian who was also a pioneer of public education; John Comenius (1592–1670 CE), a Moravian Brethren bishop (considered the “father of modern education”) who advocated for universal education; and Jean-Baptiste de La Salle (1651–1719 CE), a French priest who promoted compulsory education and spent much of his life educating the poor.
If you had access to an education as a child, you can thank Martin Luther (1483–1546 CE), the German theologian and religious reformer who argued for universal education and literacy for children; John Calvin (1509–1564 CE), the French theologian and reformer who advocated for “a system of elementary education in the vernacular for all, including reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, and religion;” and Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852 CE), the son of a Lutheran pastor who is known as the “father of kindergarten education.”
If you found satisfaction in advancing from one grade to the next, you can thank Johann Sturm (1507–1589 CE), the Lutheran layman who introduced the notion of grade levels to motivate students to study so they could earn the reward of advancing to the next level.
If you had access to an education as a person with disabilities, you can thank Charles-Michel de l’Épée (1712–1789 CE), the ordained priest (called the “father of education for the deaf”) who developed sign language for use in schools; Laurent Marie Clerc (1785–1869 CE), the committed Christ follower who brought sign language to the United States; Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787–1851 CE), the Congregational clergyman who opened the first school for the deaf in the United States; or Louis Braille (1809–1852 CE), the Catholic priest (known as the “father of education for the blind”) who developed a system of reading and writing for the blind and visually impaired.
If you received an education in a foreign land, you can thank the inspiration of Frank Laubach (1884–1970 CE), a Methodist missionary (known as “the apostle to the illiterates”) who traveled to more than 100 countries, developed primers in 313 languages, and created a literacy program that has been used to teach nearly 60 million people to read in their own language.
Jesus matters to the history of education. Jesus followers laid the foundation for schools as we know them today, from kindergartens to universities.
Christians contributed to the progress of education and founded more universities and colleges than all their religious predecessors. Even though Hindus had a 2,300- to 1,500-year advantage, Jews had a 2,000- to 1,800-year lead, and Buddhists and Zoroastrians had a 600-year head start, Christians established more universities than all the other groups combined, by a magnitude of ten to one.
And universities founded by Christians still dominate the educational landscape.
WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL?
Imagine, for example, that your daughter wants to attend one of the best universities in the world. After an internet query of the three leading organizations that rank universities, she collects each organization’s top ten candidates and combines the schools into one list (not every organization lists the same top ten universities).
Her new combined list includes the top fifteen universities in the world based on the collective rankings of the best university evaluators:
Harvard University
Stanford University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Cambridge
University of Oxford
Yale University
Columbia University
University of Paris (Sorbonne)
Princeton University
University of Michigan
University of California, Berkeley
California Institute of Technology
University of Pennsylvania
University of Washington
University of Chicago
This is an impressive list of universities, and it represents the finest institutions of learning in the world. Your daughter would be fortunate to attend any of these schools, but would you be surprised to learn that all of them were founded by Christians, most for the purpose of teaching Christian principles ? It’s true.
If your daughter were inclined to personally visit these fifteen campuses and took the time to examine their original buildings and founding charters, she would learn something about the person who inspired their creation. In fact, from just these buildings and charters, your daughter could reconstruct the historical truth about Jesus of Nazareth.
That’s right. The original buildings on these campuses typically include chapels and halls that display either images of Jesus or passages from the New Testament. The original charters also reveal truths about Jesus, based on the stated purposes of each university. This is true for more than the top fifteen universities in the world. Christians founded most of the top fifty universities. If your daughter were interested, she could examine the buildings and read the charters of the best universities on earth to discover the following truths about Jesus:
That’s an amazing collection of data from an unlikely source, but most of the founders of the world’s top fifty universities were devout Christians who regularly preached and wrote about Jesus. Even though many of these schools have abandoned their Christian identity, their buildings and charters tell a different story, unanimously pointing back to the man who inspired their creation.
Any effort to remove Jesus from history would also require the destruction or reconstruction of the world’s leading universities. No other historical figure is better represented in university buildings, and bylaws, and founding charters.
AN EDUCATION LIKE OURS
“I can’t help but wonder,” began Susie one morning over coffee, “what would the educational system in the US look like if Christians hadn’t been so interested in creating schools and universities?”
“I’m sure we would have created something, but I’m not sure if it would have been this something.”
As I shared what I learned with Susie, I could see she was as surprised as I was. Susie and I received a modern education, one that was organized, offered publicly, and began in kindergarten. We learned about reading, writing, arithmetic, and grammar in schools that accommodated students with disabilities and were designed to advance students from one grade to the next. We received university diplomas at institutions where noted scholars were in community with students and ultimately certified our efforts. A Jesus follower at some point in history had shaped every aspect of our education, and neither of us had any idea.
But we were even more surprised by another—closely related—aspect of the Common Era fallout .
OBJECTION: CHRISTIANITY ADVOCATES VIOLENCE TO ADVANCE THE GOSPEL
Skeptics sometimes claim Christians haven’t historically advanced the gospel with a well-reasoned, educated approach, but have instead acted violently to force people to convert to Christianity. Have people behaved violently under the Christian banner? Yes. Does the Christian worldview as taught by Jesus endorse this approach? No. Christianity grew exponentially in the earliest centuries of the Common Era, when followers of Jesus were powerless, persecuted, and pursued. They simply obeyed the counterintuitive commands of their Master to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44), turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), and to pray for those who abused them (Luke 6:28). Christianity grew not as a result of violence, but as Christ followers advanced education across the globe.