By Alex Fogleman
We use all sorts of metaphors for teaching: growing, building, producing, journeying, forming, guiding, shaping. Each embodies a certain moral and metaphysical universe, and not all are equally useful. In Christian circles, one of the ways we often talk about Christian education is with the language of formation. The term “spiritual formation” has become almost a distinct discipline in book publishing, spawning a host of organizations and conferences. We probably forget it’s even a metaphor. But what does it mean?
The building metaphor has good biblical pedigree. Paul is a “wise builder,” laying the “foundation” of faith, Christ is the “cornerstone.” I’ve considered this topic in relation to catechesis elsewhere. But here I want to draw attention to the way this metaphor highlights the role of examples and imitation in learning. Obviously both words and deeds play an important role in any form of education. But it seems to me that the use of formation and crafting metaphors especially highlight the way true learning happens as we seek to follow wise examples and virtuous models.
There’s good precedent for this, of course, in classical philosophy. Plato has Socrates critique the sophists all the time because they merely talk—they don’t live what they teach. It shows up in classical rhetoric and oratory, too. In Quintilian’s famous treatment on rhetorical education, we find this:
[E]ven more important are the records of the notable sayings and actions of the past. Nowhere is there a larger or more striking supply of these than in the history of our own country. Could there be any better teachers of courage, justice, loyalty, self-control, frugality, or contempt for pain and death than men like Fabricius, Curius, Regulus, Decius, Mucius, and countless others? Rome is as strong in examples as Greece is in precepts; and examples are more important. So if anyone thinks it not enough to fix his eyes solely on the immediate past and the present day, but holds that the whole memory of future ages forms the field of the good life and the course where honor’s race is to be run, let him (I say) drink deep draughts of justice from this source, let him find here the liberty he is to display in his Causes and in the counsel he gives. No one can be a perfect orator who does not both understand the language of honor and have the courage to use it. — Quintilian Institutions 12.2.29–31 (LCL 494:236–37).
Early Christians would also pick up on the distinction between two words and deeds. One great example comes from Gregory of Nyssa’s early treatise On Virginity (some time in the late 370s). It’s an important text on the ascetic life more generally. But particularly of interest here is the role he gives to the personal and social conditions of learning. Real learning happens in the context of on-the-ground, flesh-and-blood relationships. He also uses several fascinating metaphors for teaching: the “workshop of the virtues”; the difference between teaching in word only versus teaching by word and deed as the difference between a lifeless image and a living person; and the learning of virtue as learning a new language taught by a native speaker. Here’s Gregory:
There are many written instructions teaching the particulars: how it is right for the person choosing to live with this philosophy to conduct his life, what to guard against, in what activities he should engage himself, the limits of self-control, the manner of spending one’s time, and all the things one must learn once such a goal has been established. However, the guidance of deeds is more effective than instructions in words; nor is this a cause for discontent, since it is necessary for those starting a long trip or an extensive voyage to have a teacher. The apostle says: ‘The Word is near thee.’ Grace begins at home. Here is the workshop of the virtues in which such a life is purified to the highest point. Great is the power to teach this divine regimen through deeds, both on the part of those who are silent and those who speak out, since every word seen apart from deeds, even if it is beautifully decked out, is like a lifeless icon which portrays a form blooming with paint and color, but ‘he that shall do and teach,’ as the Gospel says somewhere, this man is truly alive and outstandingly beautiful and effective in his movements.
Indeed, the novice who is going to acquire the habit of virginity in accordance with convincing logic must have this kind of teacher. For just as one eager to learn the language of a certain people cannot teach himself, but is taught by those who know it, and thus comes to speak the foreign tongue, making quick progress because of the habit of hearing the language, in the same way, I think, one’s nature does not make progress in this life automatically, since it is foreign to the novelty of the regimen, unless the person is taken in hand and learns the details from someone who has succeeded in it. In everything we do in life, it is better for the one entering upon something to gain a knowledge of whatever he is striving for from teachers than to undertake to learn by himself. This undertaking of ours is not so simple that one can necessarily judge for himself what is advantageous, and when a person dares to try out what he is not familiar with, he takes a risk. Just as men, through experience and close observation, have gradually discovered the previously unknown art of healing, so that the beneficial and the harmful are recognized through the experiments, knowledge is garnered for the profession, and instruction as to what is going to be observed is handed down by those who have learned beforehand, and thus the neophyte does not have to decide the effects of medicines, whether a drug is harmful or helpful through his own experiments, but becomes a successful physician by learning what is known from others; in the same way, it is not necessary to gain a knowledge of the healing art of the soul through conjectures and assumptions (I am speaking of philosophy through which we learn the cure for all diseases touching the soul), but through the authority of the learning of one who has established the habit through long and extensive experience.
— Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity 23. From Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical Works, trans. Virginia Woods Callahan, Fathers of the Church 58 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1967), 68–70.
Another good case study is Ambrose of Milan, who was bishop of this major Italian city from the 370s to the 390s—roughly equivalent to Gregory. Ambrose, like many others of his day, both criticized and appropriated pagan philosophy. Among other critiques, he reported that pagan philosophy was too theoretical and not related to real-life examples. In a recent article on this topic, Andrew Harmon writes that perhaps Ambrose’s “greatest worry about philosophy” pertains to the role of examples: “by misunderstanding its source, philosophy threatens disembodied speculation rather than praiseworthy action” (Harmon, 222). As Ambrose himself wrote in a treatise called On Duties, a text written to explain various aspects of the role and formation of Christian clergy, Ambrose writes the following:
We want to shun artificiality: we could rather put forth the examples of our ancestors, which are neither difficult to understand nor tricky to handle. The life of our ancestors ought to be a mirror of discipline (disciplinae speculum), not a commentary of our craftiness (non calliditatis commentarium), and we should show respect by imitating them instead of looking clever in the way we structure arguments. — Ambrose On Duties 1.25.116. From Ivor Davidson, ed. and trans., Ambrose: De Officiis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1:184.
Among the many Christian exemplars out there, Ambrose especially highlighted the Old Testament patriarchs. He wrote a series of treatises on each of the Genesis patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—and many scholars (Marcia Colish, Warren Smith, Gerald Boersma) have argued that these treatises originated in a catechetical context, which were later polished for publication. At the beginning of a sermon given to the newly baptized, entitled On the Mysteries, Ambrose reminds his hearers of their preceding course of study:
We have given a daily sermon on morals, when the deeds of the Patriarchs or the precepts of the Proverbs were read, in order that, being informed and instructed by them, you might become accustomed to enter upon the ways of our forefathers and to pursue their road, and to obey the divine commands, whereby renewed by baptism you might hold to that manner of life which befits those who are washed. — Ambrose of Milan, On the Mysteries 1. From Saint Ambrose: Theological and Dogmatic Works, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, The Fathers of the Church 44 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 5.
There’s not a good substitute for simply reading Ambrose’s portraits. But a particular nice passage where he let us in on his theory of exemplarist pedagogy comes in the Introduction to the treatise On Joseph. In this section, Ambrose links a particular virtue/character trait with each of the patriarchs, and then reflects overall on the importance of exemplary models in teaching and how they concretize the words of Scripture:
The lives of the saints are for the rest of men a pattern of how to live; accordingly, we are interpreting more fully the order of events set out in the Scriptures. Thus, as we come to know Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the other just men by our reading, we may, as it were, follow in their shining footsteps along a kind of path of blamelessness opened up to us by their virtue. While I have often preached about these patriarchs, today the story of the holy Joseph comes up. Although there were many kinds of virtue in him, there shone forth above all the mark of chastity. In Abraham you have learned the undaunted devotion of faith, in Isaac the purity of a sincere heart, in Jacob the spirit’s signal endurance of toils. For it is right that after the treatment of the virtues in general you should give attention to moral principles in their specific kinds. Although the former have wider application, still the latter are more precise and enter the heart the more readily, the more they have been defined and delimited.
— Ambrose of Milan, On Joseph 1.1. From Seven Exegetical Works, trans. Michael P. McHugh, Fathers of the Church 65 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1972), 189.
There’s much more to say about these passages, but I’m content to let them stand on their own for now. These and other examples from patristic literature I’d like to collect and store for future reference. Chrystostom is another great source here. More anon… In the meantime, I’m glancing through Morwenna Ludlow’s excellent book, Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors (Oxford University Press, 2020), after reading this article tying craftsmanship metaphors to education.