The Old Testament is replete with examples of God’s people conquering their enemies. They never fled, except as a ruse. When we discuss the issue of how Christians should deal with the writings of the pagans, that is an important thing to remember. Culturally speaking, Christianity conquered Greece and Rome. And when you conquer something, you can do two things with […]
Category Archives: Classical Studies
Very often we call something modern because we do not know what is ancient. Many so-called “modern” ideas are really old errors with new labels. We owe a greater debt to the past than is generally recognized. The waters of ancient cultures are constantly washing our shores. One of the greatest epic poets who […]
From earliest times, Christians have argued about the role of pagan learning in Christian education. The debate has never gone away, but generally speaking, the church has preferred rather to use the learning of the pagans than to repudiate it. An essential part of the classical Christian education that held sway in schools from the […]
We have begun to see a world in which the classics have virtually disappeared—though they have been woven so tightly into the patterns of our culture that meaning, for us, is hardly separable from them. For a while we may be able to get by on the echoes of their past glory; but when they […]
By Bryan Smith We all participate in a broad human conversation. Sometimes the conversation is casual and banal, at other times it is more formal. In either case, it can be trite or profound, flattering or confrontational, degrading or uplifting. Books are one of the ways we have packaged our reflections upon our common experiences; […]
What has the Greek quest for excellence and order and beauty to do with the Hebrew quest for the living God? This is the question the Church Fathers asked themselves, a query that we still must raise from time to time. And in our day in particular, it is the question that Christian educators in […]
This is the third and final in a series of articles describing Memoria Press’ history scope and sequence. My initial purpose for these articles was to give the reasoning behind our classical studies choices, and in particular to explain the sequence shown on our curriculum map on pages 20-21: 3rd grade Greek myths, 4th Rome, […]
By Evan Wilson When it comes to history, rhetoric comes before grammar… What has the teaching of history become in private Christian establishments? Here is a section out of a commonly used Christian school textbook, slightly rewritten to protect the innocent (namely myself), but preserving the idea of the original: During the Second Punic War […]
For most classical educators, teaching history chronologically means covering the eras of history in three cycles, each cycle in increasing depth, and each cycle corresponding to one stage of the trivium. Here is a typical sequence of historical eras covered chronologically within each four year cycle: Old Testament and Egypt Greece and Rome Middle Ages, […]
Benjamin Disraeli was one of the great 19th century prime ministers of Britain. His wife once revealed the confusion we all feel about the subject of history when she famously stated that she “could never remember who came first, the Greeks or the Romans.” Since American schools have largely ignored ancient and world history in […]