the liberal arts tradition, a summary

“Grounded in piety, Christian classical education cultivates the virtue of the student in body, heart, and mind, while nurturing a love for wisdom under the lordship of Christ.”

In recent years, the concept of a classical education has seen an increasing popularity, especially in Christian communities. Drawing from ideas contributed by ancient philosophers, medieval thinkers, and modern authors such as Dorothy Sawyers and Charlotte Mason, many traditional and independent schools have begun to adopt a classical approach to education.

But what exactly is the format of a Christian classical learning system? What branches of learning are covered and how are they best presented? Perhaps most importantly, what is the distinguishing purpose or end goal of this style of learning?

In their book, The Liberal Arts Tradition, Ravi Scott Jain and Kevin Clark seek to re-introduce a full-orbed paradigm for a well-rounded classical Christian education. While many schools today trim these foundational ideas down to a simple three-part training in grammar, logic, and rhetoric, this book recalls ideas from ancient Greece and the medieval educational synthesis for a complex and harmonious liberal arts model that cultivates the mind, body, will, and affections.

To the ancients, the fundamental purpose, or telos of education was the shaping of the loves and the training of the soul. The classical model presented by Jain and Clark revitalizes this central guiding factor by encouraging six fundamental branches of learning: piety, gymnastic, music, the seven liberal arts, philosophy, and theology.

Piety

Though a well-known word, the definition of piety in the classical sense seems to have become vague and elusive. What is piety, and what does it mean to be grounded in this virtue? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, piety is defined as dutifulness in religion or fidelity to natural obligations. However, to the medieval classical and Christian thinkers, piety was not understood merely as duty and obligation, but was seen as a rich virtue that encapsulated love, respect, faith, and commitment to traditional values. Piety was considered the “mother of virtues” by Gregory Thaumaturgus, and was described by Augustine as ordo amoris or the “proper ordering of one’s loves.” John Calvin stated that “true piety consists rather in a sincere feeling which loves God as Father as much as it fears and reverences Him as Lord, embraces His righteousness, and dreads offending Him worse than death”, and went so far as to suggest that piety, or godliness as it is often translated in the Scriptures, could be “understood as the entire calling of the Christian life.” In its purest form, piety can be defined as “the proper love and fear of God and man”. It is the virtue that “shapes who we are and orders our loves,” and is a foundational layer in the educational process. 

An education in piety begins in early childhood and is developed and refined over a lifetime. This seemingly inauspicious virtue is the very core of our interactions with the Creator and with all of creation. It is piety that inspires us to learn from the past and to honor ancient wisdom and tradition. It is piety that enables us to act with integrity to our beliefs and to submit to authorities with love and joy. It is piety that aligns our will to God’s will and shapes our desires, beliefs and habits. 

Piety is “faithful devotion manifested in action.” It is a conscientious maintenance of the connection between our core values and our actions. A soul that has cultivated piety as a key virtue attributes deep value to the ideas of truth, beauty, and grace, and acts in accordance with those values. These actions are not performed solely out of obligation or dutifulness, but with love, joy, and honor. In a cultural and spiritual sense, piety “signifies the duty, love, and respect owed to God, parents and communal authorities past and present.” It is the transmission of culture, the training of virtue and wisdom, and the guidance towards faith-based actions.

Furthermore, piety is an essential tool in cultivating the ordo amoris of a soul. It guides a soul to love what it ought to love, respect what it ought to respect, and hate what it ought to hate. Grounded in piety, a properly ordered soul loves God first and foremost and recognizes the final purpose of humankind is the eternal glorification of Him. The training of value-based actions and the transmission of culture flow from this proper love of God, self, and man. Through the ordering of our loves, piety guides our thoughts, identifies our actions, and shapes our very being. It is both the foundation and crown of a classical Christian education, and a necessary prerequisite to the studies of gymnastic, music, art, philosophy and theology.

Gymnastic and Music

Following on the foundation laid by piety, the studies in gymnastics and music are meant to discipline the body and inspire the moral imagination. Broader than our modern definitions of music and gymnastics, these terms were used by ancients to describe training in basic human motion, advanced athletics, nature, ethics, aesthetics, and emotions. Together, the two realms of gymnastic and music plant the seeds of perseverance, good taste, and reason. They teach “passions more than skills and content.” It is this training of passions that prepares the body, mind, and soul for the later focused studies of the liberal arts and philosophies, and that cultivates a “lifelong love of learning.” 

The education in gymnastics begins in early childhood. Most simply defined as a training in physical dexterity and strength, gymnastics is not only essential to the development of a strong and healthy body, but also to the development of intellectual and moral virtue. Humans are created in the image of God. We are a mysterious “union of soul and body.” These two aspects of humanity are inseparably unified as a single entity, strengthened by each other’s strengths and weakened by each other’s weakness. An education that fails to train both body and soul fails to “cultivate the good of the whole person,” and, in so doing, necessarily fails in its goal of “perfecting inherent human abilities.” While no education can cause a student to attain a perfect level of physical or intellectual ability, this ideal should still be reached for by the curriculum. As such, physical training cannot be seen as merely“extra-curricular,” but must be viewed as absolutely central to a fully integrated education.

To ancient philosophers, the study of gymnastics included the “rudiments of control over the body” for younger students and continued on to cover advanced sports and athletics in the older years. While mainly devoted to developing a healthy and active body, gymnastics also carries significance in moral and intellectual education. The effort and determination required by bodily discipline develops self-control, patience, and perseverance, and forms “habits of hard work in attaining goals.” In addition to this very practical growth of physical and intellectual resilience, the discipline of gymnastics “provides the imagination with metaphors for overcoming other difficult tasks.” Consider the phrase “tackling a challenging text”, the remark “my heart danced for joy”, or even scripture references such as “running the [spiritual] race with perseverance.” These common expressions, along with countless others, convey much more weight and descriptive vibrancy to the student who understands what it is to tackle, dance, or run. From this standpoint, gymnastic is “more than simply physical education”and and is integral to a full-orbed education. The physical training of gymnastics, therefore, should be approached with as much care and consistency as every other branch of education.

Like its counterpart of gymnastic, musical training is a much deeper subject than its name would imply. To the ancients, a musical education was not “primarily or exclusively about instruments and singing,” although these fields of learning were included in musical development. Rather, it was meant to be an “education in wonder” that “formed the heart and the moral imagination.” Primarily concerned with the “joyful engagement with reality,” musical training shapes the soul through exposure to the wonder of music, the noble examples of history, the glory of creation, and the beauty of art. These sights and sounds “go directly to the heart.” They mould a student’s understanding of nature and give the soul a taste for what is true, what is beautiful, and what is virtuous. In this way, a properly executed musical training “tunes the soul, and makes one receptive to truth and goodness” and “the friend of reason.”

By bringing stories, nature, melody, and art into a student’s life, the musical studies fill the moral imagination with beauty and virtue. They train the sentiment, heart, and passions and nourish proper reasoning in ethics (the good) and aesthetics (the beautiful). 

As Plato said in The Republic, “he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.”

A musical education prepares the soul to recognize and know virtue, just as piety imparts the ability to act on these values, and gymnastic provides the determination to carry them through. Together, piety, gymnastics, and music develop the soul, body and mind. They cultivate a love of truth, beauty, and goodness, and provide the skills necessary to truly embrace and act on such values.

While these three branches of study often address the same content matter as the liberal arts, they do so “from the perspective of forming the heart, the sense of wonder, and the affections.” They cultivate the soil of the heart and plant the seedling ideas of the liberal arts and philosophies. These ideas will continue to grow and mature as the student engages personally with the liberal arts during the next phase of their education.

The Seven Liberal Arts

The seven liberal arts, comprised of the trivium and the quadrivium, form the bulk of a classical curriculum. Every form of art, whether fine, servile, or liberal, can be defined as imitation joined with reason. The arts are skills which create something of value. What then, do the liberal arts produce?

Laid on the imitative foundation of music, gymnastic, and piety, the liberal arts produce the works of reason. They are the tools of learning by which science is justified and understanding is formed, and the use of them forms products pertaining to the soul rather than to the body. These subjects teach not only what to think, but how to think.

A study of the liberal arts nourishes the mind with great ideas and gives the learner the tools to wonder, process, investigate, and express truth. These arts “make the acquisition of all later studies more simple and effective,” and in this way they bring great freedom to the mind of the learner. As Thomas Aquinas said, “they are called…liberal arts, in order to distinguish them from those arts which are ordained to works done by the body, which arts are, in a fashion, servile, inasmuch as the body is in servile subjection to the soul, and man as regards his soul is free.”

Thus, these knowledge-producing arts are called “liberal”—the study of them sets the mind free. The liberal arts include the trivium and the quadrivium. Together, they are the seven “ways in which knowledge is justified”, the pathways to all future study.

The trivium is comprised of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; studies that are distinct, yet inseparably built on each other. A common medieval mnemonic was “grammar speaks, dialectic teaches words, and rhetoric colors words.” While this saying does not cover the depths of the three tools, it provides a helpful resources for understanding the basic qualities of each subject. 

The classical art of grammar begins by learning how to read and write, and progresses on to include thorough studies of ancient languages.The primary goal of grammar is not solely to understand the nuances of the native tongue, but to develop the skills necessary to read, comprehend, and discuss ancient texts without the use of a translated copy. As these great historical texts and languages are explored, the rudiments of subjects such as history, geography, society, and etymology can be introduced to the student. Through this comprehensive approach to grammar studies, the mind is opened to a deep understanding of language, culture, and history.

As a student continues to discovering the riches of grammar, they also move into additional studies of dialectic. Known as “the art of reasoning,” dialectic can be defined as logic combined with dialogue. This study gives students the tools to reason through all of the information they have encountered in their musical and grammatical educations.

While studying dialectic, a student is given opportunities to participate in conversations, develop active listening skills, and orally reason through multiple varying perspectives in order to arrive at a sound and justifiable conclusion. In this branch of studies, students do not learn so much how to answer questions correctly as how to ask them correctly. The focal point of this study is guiding students to “know which questions are worth asking, and which are worth answering.” 

Dialectic provides students with a framework of logic and wisdom on which to hang all future discussions, debates, conversations, and rhetorical studies.

The linguistic skills inherited through grammar studies and the logical foundation laid by dialectic are completed by the art of rhetoric. According to Cicero, the primary purpose of rhetoric is “to move, to instruct, and to delight,” a purpose which is accomplished through the eloquent exposition of the truth. 

A student of rhetoric learns to appeal “to the reason, will, and affections” of their audience, and uses this appeal to illuminate the beauty of virtue and instruct the practice of it. While part of the goal of rhetoric is to develop skills in persuasive speaking, this skill is always held as second to the prominence of proclaiming truth. 

True rhetoricians know how to see “in each particular case all the available means of persuasion” and how to use the available means accurately and honestly. A powerful synthesis of truth and persuasion, rhetoric is “directed toward speaking the truth, but governed by an understanding that appealing to the whole person—mind, will, affections—is legitimate.”

While the trivium provides the tools of language, the quadrivium provides the corresponding tools of mathematics. Comprised of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, the studies of the quadrivium “lead the mind to the realm of eternal and unchanging truths.” They do this by exploring the connections, relationships, and harmonies of numbers.

To the ancients, numbers were not studied for their practical usefulness in the world, but for the training of the mind. Plato believed that the studies included in the quadrivium cultivated pure reason and the love of wisdom. 

By studying mathematics, the mind develops the ability to “transcend the level of changing opinions to identify objective truth.”In this light, mathematics should not be seen as specialized and segmented part of life, but as a skill of logic essential to anyone who needs to think clearly and make decisions.

There is a complexity and beauty to numbers that modern scholars often seem to miss. The intriguing puzzle of the one and the many, the discreet and continuous number, the debate between realism and nominalism. All too often, the subjects of the quadrivium are presented as tired, dry facts. Yet to the ancients, arithmetic was a subject of wonder and mystery.

The fingerprint of God is written into every line of mathematics. Studying numbers up close shows a unique and awe-inspiring aspect of His nature. There is a beauty in them, apart from the practical nature of mathematics in today’s world.

The idea of the one and the many, or discrete and continuous numbers, forms the core basis for the division of the subjects within the quadrivium. Arithmetic and geometry discover the depths of discrete and continuous quantity respectively. Music presents insight into discreet numbers in time, while astronomy explores continuous numbers in time and space.

While the studies of geometry and arithmetic investigate facts, the emphasis must not be on the facts themselves, but on why the facts are true. Presenting mathematical information in this way develops logic and reason, as well as number skills. 

As Paul Goldenberg said, “Within mathematics, geometry is particularly well placed to help people develop ways of thinking.” The concrete diagrams of geometry, followed by the abstract equations of algebra, form proofs that help “connect the wisdom to the wonder.”

In a classical setting, the study of geometry and arithmetic is not be reduced to a memorization of facts. Rather, these two subjects are seen as yet another path leading to the exploration of truths about the world and the Creator.

Astronomy and music, likewise, are approached with this idea of searching for the truth in wonder. During studies of astronomy, students are guided not only to understand the cosmos, but also to consider the concept of reality through studying nominalist and realist viewpoints. Do the patterns of the universe represent a tangible reality, as realists believe, or are they simply abstract observations in a system that do not represent reality, as nominalists hold to? Pondering this central question of astronomy cultivates a deep sense of wonder for the heavenly bodies and helps students to understand the concept of reality.

Music, as a liberal art, was considered by Plato as one of the peaks of education. While the early stages of musical cultivation prepared the soul for future learning, the liberal art of music identifies and explores the “harmonious composition of all reality.”

There are three categories of this liberal art. Musica instrumentalis is the heard harmonies of voice and instrument. The musica mundana represents the mathematical proportions that exist in nature and the musica humana reflects the mathematical proportions surrounding human society. The very presence of music in our world “suggests that all of reality is laden with mathematically proportional relationships.” Thus, the study of music explores the numerical harmonies found throughout the universe. In mathematics, the word harmony is considered “synonymous with ratios and mathematics.” As a liberal art, music approaches the harmonies of infinite numbers and the mathematical relationships that can be found in every aspect of nature, from humanity to the rest of reality.

Studies of music encourage learners to see the beauty that is woven into the universe. By observing heard and seen harmonies, students become aware that God had much more than functionality in mind when creating the universe, but goodness and beauty as well. Music opens the mind to the loveliness of mathematics and the perfect proportionality of reality, and is essential to developing a sense of wonder and true appreciation for the beauty of creation.

Together, these four liberal arts represent “well-worn paths to cultivate virtue in the mind and wisdom in the soul.” The mind is expanded and developed through explorations of the relationships between numbers, the movements and patterns of astronomy, and the harmonies interwoven into all of creation. These four subjects are the basis of all ensuing mathematical pursuits, and the natural starting point for studies in trigonometry, calculus, and physics.

While approaching these subjects, the emphasis ought always to be placed on why the facts are true, rather than on what the facts are. Based on the “presupposition that a perfect God has woven perfect mathematical harmonies into the world that reflect the truth of reality,”

these studies develop and cultivate both the mind and the soul. By exploring the causes of mathematical facts, students will learn not simply how to think and what to believe, but why what they believe is true. In this way, the skills developed through the quadrivium, combined with those of the trivium, lead the way to studies in philosophy and theology.

Philosophy

In the ancient Greek language, the word philosophy translates to “the love of learning”. It is the word used to describe the unity of knowledge and the soul-filled pursuit of learning. Wisdom cannot be possessed objectively or disinterestedly. Rather, it must be loved and passionately pursued from the heart and soul. Socrates, and Plato after him, believed that “a transcendent and unchanging reality” lies “behind our judgments of what is true, good, and beautiful.” To them, philosophy was the pursuit of the understanding of this reality.

Like the liberal arts, philosophy is a journey which begins in wonder and leads to wisdom. It cultivates a love of learning and harmonizes one’s soul with the reality of nature. Most importantly, the study of philosophy involves “a submission to transcendent truth, not the manipulation of knowledge for the exercise of one’s own power.” This is the true heart of philosophy: a love for and submission to the truth. 

This idea of the full-hearted pursuit of reality led ancient thinkers to understand philosophy in three branches: the divine, the moral, and the natural. Divine philosophy pertains to the Creator and transcendent spiritual truths. Moral philosophy explores the relationships between God and man, and the social interactions of mankind. Finally, natural philosophy contemplates the unique causalities of the created world. This threefold approach to philosophy encompasses, in one branch or another, the entirety of creation. It embraces the “whole of reality, in which God, His image, and His creation are the interpenetrating centers.”

Natural philosophy literally translates to “the love of wisdom in the natural world” and is the term ancient thinkers used to describe our current concept of the natural sciences. This broad branch of philosophy encompasses every aspect of nature studies, including biology, geology, chemistry, and anatomy. 

Unlike modern natural science, the emphasis of natural philosophy is placed on the love of knowledge, rather than on the application of knowledge. While the scientific method is still employed and the final purpose is to attain a demonstrable knowledge of causes, delight is held in supreme importance. To maintain this balance of love and learning, studies in natural philosophy must include four key elements: wonder, worship, work, and wisdom.

Questioning, awe-filled minds and souls attribute value to life and reason. Therefore, wonder is an essential prerequisite of wisdom. Cultivating a sense of amazement at the dynamic beauty and intricacy of the created world is the only way for a student to attain to true understanding. Because wonder is best developed alongside enjoyment, focusing on the love of learning is much more important than focusing on the learning in and of itself. Students who have discovered the world through the eyes of wonder and with the companion of enjoyment can see things as they are and value what is true, beautiful, and good.

Likewise, worship is a central component of a classical approach to natural philosophy. This study is dependent on the conviction of an ordered reality that tangibly exists. The immensities of the universe or the intricacies of life on earth serve to magnify the glory of the One who created all. The particular natures given to particular things declare the infinite creativity of God. By investigating the wonders of nature through the perspective of worship, the practical application of natural philosophy takes on a deeper meaning and eternal perspective.

Once a sense of wonder and worship has been established, studies in natural philosophy focus on work and wisdom by developing an applicable and justifiable knowledge of creation. Aristotle believed that the only way to“know a thing is to know its cause” and outlined the four types of causes as material, efficient, formal, and final. 

Material and efficient causes describe what a thing is made of and how it was made, respectively. The formal cause identifies the primary quality or essence of a being, while the final cause explores the ultimate purpose of the object.

Working with Aristotle’s definition of knowledge as a thorough understanding of the cause, it is essential that each of the four causes be explored and justified before a student can claim true cognizance. Knowledge depends on the ability to understand the “underlying causes which produce a thing and describe why it necessarily must be so.” In other words, to know any law of science is to know why it must be so and why anything controversial must not be so. It is not merely the ability to make calculations or predictions, but a thorough understanding of the concept and why it is true. The essence of knowledge is the ability to justify a truth, not simply the ability to apply it.

Discovering not only how to apply, but also how to explain scientific truths requires investigation through exploration, observation, and experimentation. This is where the work element of natural philosophy comes into play.

In its practical approach to work, natural philosophy is very similar to natural science. The scientific method of observation, research, hypothesis, and experimentation is still applicable and necessary. However, the key emphasis is always on discovering the causes and justifying the conclusion with a sense of wonder and worship. It is not enough for a student to know and apply the scientific laws and facts, they must be able to explain and justify them as well.

As a student works to identify the causes of the natural world through the perspective of wonder and worship, they will develop the love of wisdom in the natural world, or the art of natural philosophy.

Moral Philosophy naturally follows on the heals of natural philosophy. As a student discovers the harmonic intricacies of nature, they are led to inquire into humanity’s place in the greater created world. Moral philosophy explores the social sciences of economics, history, and politics through observing the relationships between God, humanity, and nature.

Once again, the conviction of a designed order of reality is a fundamental prerequisite of moral philosophy. The ancients believed that “both natural reality and the reality of the soul were of certain given natures which could be in harmony with each other or cease to be so.” The practiced pursuit of piety, virtue, and wisdom, along with the transforming grace of Christ for those who believe, is what aligns one’s soul both with nature and with the rest of humanity.

Moral philosophy is just this: the love of the wisdom of what is moral and good. Through studying the harmonies in the liberal arts, natural philosophies, and social sciences, students of moral philosophy observe the enduring role of humanity in nature. Likewise, the higher sciences of divine philosophy and theology play a crucial role in moral philosophy by connecting humanity to the nature of the Divine.

While moral philosophy covers such topics as social studies and political sciences, its central question should be anthropological. As natural philosophy covers the causes of nature, moral philosophy probes into the causes of man. What is he made of? Who made him? What is his essence or nature? What is his final purpose? Fundamentally, “the focus of Christian moral philosophy is comprehending man as the image of God and his actions and relations within the human society he inhabits.”

Of key importance is the placement of the natural order of things over the wishes of humanity. Like all branches of philosophy, moral philosophy requires an abandoned acceptance and love of the truth. Once the nature of the causes of humanity has been realized, the student of moral philosophy must submit and assent to them. 

Understanding the causes of humanity, in particular the formal and final causes, is essential for the formation of a healthy culture. The unchangeable given nature and purpose of man is the ultimate end society ought to strive for. Only once the moral requirements of a truly good life are understood can a culture begin to “analyze the most effective means of getting there” through historical, economical, and political studies. Following these studies, careful evaluation, application, and justification of the observations enables students to live ethically towards themselves, humanity, and creation at large. 

Divine philosophy, or metaphysics, is the study of being. In it, students learn to identify certain universal truths that apply to every created thing that is. Over the years, students of divine philosophy have determined five transcendent properties of being, qualities that every created object universally possesses. These qualities—being, truth, beauty, unity, and goodness—can be seen in some way in everything that exists.

By holding to the five universal truths of existence, metaphysics “recognizes that this world is a reflection of the heavenly realms and that through Christ, the two can be rejoined.” It “defends the culture from a philosophical collapse into relativism” and promotes the idea that “the mundane can still participate in the divine.” In this way, metaphysics is often considered by classical Christian scholars as the “guardian of the secret questions of culture.”

While metaphysics holds a strong focus on comprehending universal truths, it is much more interested in participating in the truth. To the ancients this meant allowing oneself to be “mastered by the truth rather than mastering it.” 

To be mastered by the truth, one must accept the realities of time and space and submit to one’s individual appointed end in Christ. Unlike the other branches of philosophy, metaphysics focuses almost entirely on the relationship between the Creator and the created beings and on establishing the causes for each.

Divine philosophy simply means the love of the wisdom of the divine. It is the natural birthplace of many discussion points such as the nature of the Trinity, the scriptural approach to natural science, and the contrast between God’s ordered governance of reality and the natural causality of the universe.

By considering the deep questions illuminated in the study of metaphysics, students “strengthen the tie between faith and reason” and deeply augment their studies in natural and moral philosophy.

Each of these three branches of philosophy stems from the previous studies in piety, gymnastic, music, and the liberal arts. The sense of wonder, so essential to meaningful philosophical endeavors, is cultivated during the elementary phases of education, while the liberal arts provide “the path toward reality leading to true wisdom.” Philosophy requires the insight from all three of the viewpoints offered by musical, linguistic, and mathematical studies, as they provide the student with a strong sense of common reason necessary to judge the truth. 

Only when the foundational tools of learning are applied does philosophy give students the opportunity to think properly and gain true wisdom. In this way, philosophy can be considered the culminating point of all previous learning.

Theology

Ancient thinkers viewed theology as the “queen of the sciences,” or the science of divine revelation. Theology integrates every other branch of learning and supplies them with reason and purpose. The studies which make up the core of a classical education—piety, music, gymnastic, the liberal arts, and philosophy—all revolve around theological truths. God, His creation, the relationships between divine and creaturely; these are all explored through the greater body of a classical education.

However, apart from the divine revelation of the Scriptures, much of what we see in the world around us is simply beyond human reasoning. Theological studies provide an “authoritative interpretation of the knowledge already available to human reason” and reveal divine truths that “inform the curriculum at its foundations.” 

In studying divine science, one must accept the truth that there is a limit to human understanding and learn to have faith concerning the things that are not yet understood. The thoughts of men are foolishness to God, and it has pleased Him to make His truth inaccessible to the wise men of the world who depend on their own wisdom. Theology teaches us to accept the truth of the Scriptures, knowing that we may never understand every detail of the nature of creation or the Creator. It enriches all other studies by informing them with the transcendent truths of God’s eternal kindness toward His creation and mankind’s ultimate end in His glorification.

In this way, theology is essential to every other realm of learning. It orders our knowledge, aligning all that we understand of the world to “its proper end in worship.” It guides learners to humbly submit to the revealed truths found in the Scriptures and to faithfully draw closer to God.

Theology unifies the other studies in piety, music, gymnastic, the liberal arts, and philosophy. It is the logos and the telos of an education, the unifying principle, the final purpose. A classical education is a quest for beauty, truth, and wisdom, and it is only by the insight gained through studies of theology that one can truly glimpse the perfect manifestations of these virtues.

In conclusion, a Christian classical education can be defined as a logocentric educational paradigm designed to form virtue, wisdom, and holiness in the soul of the learner. Through studies in piety, music, gymnastic, the liberal arts, philosophy, and theology, along with an environment of delight and wonder, the classical curriculum seeks to guide the heart, body, mind, and soul towards a worshipful end in the glorification of Christ. It is “a full-orbed education which aims at cultivating fully integrated human beings whose bodies, hearts and minds are formed respectively by gymnastic, music, and the liberal arts; whose relationships with God, neighbor, and community are marked by piety; whose knowledge of the world, man, and God fit harmoniously within a distinctly Christian philosophy; and whose lives are informed and governed by a theology forged from the revelation of God in Christ Jesus as it has been handed down in historic Christianity.”