Martin Luther and Liberal Arts Education

In 1524, Martin Luther wrote a letter “To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany that they Establish and Maintain Christian Schools.” The German saint tactfully navigates a Scylla-and-Charybdis situation in his beloved Germany, denouncing the catholic monastery schools on the one hand, yet offering an alternative to the “trade only’ approach on the other. My first reading of this letter was not long after The Gospel Coalition released a “Good Faith Debate” on whether Christian parents should send their children to public or private school. Although separated by 500 years, Luther’s letter and the TGC conversation represent the Preacher’s proverb that “there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9). In both cases, Christians ponder the implications of large cultural change on education. In the spirit of “semper reformanda,” I propose here a brief adaptation of Luther’s letter onto our cultural context. 

Like Luther, we find ourselves in the midst of great cultural change. However, we ought to point out the differences between these changes also. In Luther’s time, the momentum of the Reformation brought about what protestant Christians would generally consider a positive change. In contrast, 21st century American culture bears all manner of change which orthodox Christianity identifies as problematic. Nevertheless, within the larger cultural movement, Christians have begun establishing counter-cultural sub-movements. The revival of classical Christian education (henceforth CCE) serves as an example. The steps taken by the CCE movement could resemble the spirit of the 15th and 16th century Reformers. Both movements see themselves as situated in what was a well-established Christian tradition which has devolved into all manner of idolatry. Seeing a total reformation of the current institutions (Catholicism or the public school system) as inadvisable or impossible, they break off and establish their own. Pardon the gross oversimplification, but there seem to be at least enough similarities to warrant a comparison. 

Luther’s Evaluation

Luther, in typical fashion, pulls no punches when addressing the implications of the Reformation on education. If the modern reader finds it brash, it may be because Luther is willing to identify as the devil’s work what we would call “problematic.” Luther identifies the great errors of the Church and of culture as demonic. There is no neutral playing field; all things, education included, are either in service to the Lord or Lucifer. 

Luther identifies two threats to the education of German children. The first threat is found in the status quo––the current system does not provide a proper education. The second threat is found in an improper reaction against the status quo. 

In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, most education took place at monasteries and cathedral schools. The obvious problem for the Reformers was that these schools were the Devil’s territory:

It was a most prudent course, therefore, that he adopted in the days when Christians had their children taught and trained in a Christian manner. The young multitude bade fair to escape him entirely and to work intolerable havoc to his kingdom. Then he went to work, spread his nets and set up such monasteries, schools and estates that it was not possible for a boy to escape him without a miracle from heaven. 

Although he does not give specifics about what kinds of teaching he has in mind, Luther accuses these schools of being “unchristian and devoted only to men’s bellies,” which provides at least one critique of these institutions: they exist to gratify man’s desires. Luther asks the teleological question: to what end does a school devote its work? We ought to ask the same question of our institutions and ask it frequently. Again, if Luther is right, any teleology apart from God’s glory is demonic. 

But Luther does not stop at identifying the Devil’s hand in the academic status quo. He goes on to describe a demonic (that is, Devil-inspired) reaction to the problems of academia. Many in Germany, rightly dissatisfied with the corrupt school system, wrongly decide against educating their children at all, saying “‘Tell us…why should we send them to school, if they are not to become priests, monks or nuns? They had better learn such things as will help them to make a living.’” Falling into the other ditch, these parents would rather skip education entirely in favor of teaching their child a trade only. 

Luther identifies such an attitude as playing right into the Devil’s hands. “Now, however, that he sees his snares [the monastery and cathedral schools] exposed through God’s Word, he flies to the other extreme and will not suffer anybody to study at all.” This attitude, Luther illustrates, ironically falls into a similar error as the monastery schools themselves. Just as the Roman Catholic institutional education taught children to serve their own desires, so the lack of education teaches children to set their minds on earthly things only. In both cases, the children do not look beyond the things of this world and fall into the Devil’s hand.

The reaction against formal education seems to come from the assumption that a liberal arts education is only useful for “priests, monks or nuns,” and consequently irrelevant for the working-class German. After calling the Germans “brutes and stupid beasts,” Luther stresses the importance of Hebrew, Greek and Latin for everyone, again citing the devil as one who has 

always raged against them and is still raging. For the devil smelt a rat and perceived that if the languages were revived, there would be a hole knocked in his kingdom which he might have difficulty stopping. Since he was unable, however, to prevent their being revived, his aim is now to keep them in such slender rations that they will of themselves pass away.

In contrast to the devil’s work, 

No one knew for what purpose God suffered the languages to be revived, until we now begin to see that it was for the sake of the Gospel, which He intended afterwards to reveal, in order to expose and destroy thereby the kingdom of antichrist…In proportion, then, as we prize the Gospel, let us guard the languages.

Luther interprets knowledge of these languages as a matter of cosmic warfare between God and the devil. The devil would suppress the knowledge of the languages, so that he might rule over the world in their ignorance. In contrast, God preserves the languages for us so that we might combat the darkness of ignorance with the light of the gospel communicated first in the languages of Hebrew and Greek.

Luther is not, however, a mere idealist. In tune to the practical concerns of the German everyman, he writes,

It is not in the least my intention to have such schools established as we have heretofore, in which a boy sat over his Donatus and Alexander for twenty or thirty years and yet learned nothing. We are living in a new world today and things are being done differently. My idea is to let boys go to such a school for one or two hours a day, and spend the remainder of the time working at home, learning a trade or doing whatever their parents desired; so that both study and work might go hand in hand while they were young and able to do both.

If the students are meant to spend only one or two hours at school each day, then work with their parents for the majority, Luther’s educational vision is certainly not meant to make a bunch of academics. It would seem that the liberal arts education is meant to supplement and strengthen the life of the family rather than overtaking it. Nevertheless, Luther warns against the danger of having a citizenry composed of those who only know their trade.

Luther’s Advice for Today

I suggest that we have four primary things to learn from Luther: 1) speaking about our context; 2) evaluating the status quo; 3) finding a temperate response to the status quo; and 4) integrating liberal arts education with the practical matters of modern life.

First, we would do well to adopt Luther’s tendency to interpret education as a matter of spiritual warfare. With admonitions such as “train up your child in the way he should go” (Prov 22:6), and “do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph 6:4), we cannot be passive or assume a neutrality in our children’s education. 

This means that, to our second application, we need to evaluate our current institutions in light of their teleology. The CCE movement has rightly recognized the danger in American public education, particularly the underlying assumptions and teleology which govern its operation. Dissatisfied with the status quo, organizations such as the ACCS have responded with an alternate vision of education. However, should we not expect Satan to be livid, seeing the growing number of Christians practicing private education? Even within our private institutions, we ought to practice the “semper reformanda” spirit, lest our pride, laziness or apathy lead us into a different kind of unchallenged status quo.

Third, Luther teaches us that not every reaction against the status quo is alike. Change is not progress. In Germany, the reaction against monastery schools led the populus to truncate education to practical concerns only. This would be like deciding that, since American public education means to train us as factory workers, we should go start a Christian Republic of Philosopher Kings in the mountains of Appalachia. Our goal is not to do the opposite of the status quo; rather, to set a different teleology for our institutions. The results might look more similar to the status quo than we would expect. 

Finally, Luther encourages liberal arts as a companion to, not a priority over, the everyday life and trades of the common man. Actually, the students are expected to spend a majority of the day involved in whatever trade or vocation their family is involved in. So, while the liberal arts education which Luther proposes should be significant and necessary for each individual, it does not appear to be the seven-hour-a-day programs which our public schools, and even most private schools, operate under. Part of this might be the result of living in a post-democratic world—if our children have the potential to be anything, educators have to give them the vocational tools for everything. In Luther’s day, the child’s career options were much more limited. Sure, democracy is great and all that, but how much time is wasted in a generic, one-size-fits-all education? Somehow, the government keeps spending money on education and the practical results come up short. Is it the best use of time and effort to create catch-all educational programs which try to account for every possible career for every child––particularly  these programs take up the majority of the day?

Luther’s option has students in school for the smaller part of the day, and at home for the larger part. I will suggest two possibilities afforded here. First, the child’s time at school could become more of a high point in the day, contextualizing and supplementing the rest of the day’s work at home. This would stand in contrast to the hours in sterile classrooms staring at a board, while children wait impatiently for the fun part of the day (whether recess or the hours of screen time before bed and another menial day in the system).

Second, in-class education could be focused on the things which concern all students. For Luther, these appear to be more spiritual in nature. Thus, instead of education being a kind of blanket job-training which hopes to account for any and every career the child might choose, education tends to spiritual formation primarily, while bringing along the child in practical tools as a secondary. To use an example from my own work: I do not teach Latin for the practical benefits to the student. I teach Latin because it is good and because it is an integral part of their place in history. If they learn some derivatives which help them through medical school, so be it. But these interests are not in conflict––if I teach Latin because it is good, they will pick up the practical benefits anyway. Again, this is a question of teleology. If formal education sets spiritual formation as its primary goal, while reaping practical skills as secondary benefits, formal education can spend less time in the classroom and more time in working the spiritual realities into the trade.  

A primary objection to Luther’s model today would be the difference in home life between his time and ours. In many houses, there is no parent home during the day. In such cases, school serves the secondary function of day-care. Additionally, most parents have jobs which do not allow them to bring their children in to help. I do not propose any grand solution here. However, it might be worth considering what measures schools might take to be more specific to the students themselves. As students get older, these options might become clearer, as the student could test out different fields of study. 

Much of this essay doubtless sounds like blind idealism. But history represents the working out of the ideal in the “real” (understood in the sense of the immediate world). If we set our sights only on what is now, we will have no vision for what we could be or what we ought to be. Simultaneously, the ideal should not immediately necessitate a total retreat from our moment. We must begin what we have, hope for more, and work as we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”