The Bible’s Place Among Master Teachers and the Great Books
The Bible claims a unique place in the Western tradition of philosophy, education, and culture, given its influence upon all subsequent history and the ample attention that has been given to it throughout Western culture since the advent of the Christian Church. Ultimately, the Christian Church was responsible for carrying on the legacy of Greek and Roman philosophy and transmitting it to the Medieval and Modern worlds, and the Church was responsible for the development and transmission of Classical Education as we know it. And since the Scriptures are the foundational text of the Church, it certainly behooves us to ascribe due importance to the Scriptures among the other great texts of the Western tradition. To understand its key role in the Western tradition more clearly, I want to examine the similarities and differences between the Scriptures and the rest of the great texts, as well as some substantial ways the Scriptures shaped and changed the tradition.
First, in what ways is the Bible similar to other great texts of the Western tradition? The Scriptures include many different genres of writing, and these genres parallel many genres of other great texts. The Bible includes didactic epistles, dialogues, poetry, prose, historical narratives, and more. In this way, the Scriptures share the common literary forms of the other great texts. The Bible also deals with many common themes found in many of the great texts of the Western tradition. The Bible (specifically Genesis) treats of the origin of all things, and it roots all existence in God as the First Cause, the Creator, and the highest Good. Genesis also shows us mankind as a uniquely rational creature, sharing a higher level of reason than the rest of the creation. This account of man’s rationality overlaps much with Greco-Roman accounts of man’s rationality, yet the Bible states it more explicitly and theologically by saying that mankind is made imago Dei – in the image of God (Genesis 1:26 – 27). As with other great works of Western philosophy, the Bible is focused upon showing truth from falsehood and good from evil, as well as teaching us how that discernment is possible. The biblical narratives and exhortations also demonstrate the destructive consequences of choosing evil and pursuing vice.
While there are many similarities between the Scriptures and the other great texts of the West, there are also key differences. In the first place, unlike almost all other great texts included in the so-called ‘Western canon’, the Scriptures claim a sacred authority as revelation from God. In this sense, the Scriptures are fundamentally set apart from all the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and any other philosophers or writers. Taken as a whole, the Bible claims (in various passages throughout) to be the infallible, inerrant Word of God given by the inspired authority of the Holy Spirit speaking through human authors. In the Gospels, we encounter Jesus, who claims that He Himself is God and speaks with the authority of God His Father. This divine authority sets the Christian Scriptures apart, since they have a higher origin than merely a human one, and they thus have a more compelling authority. While this authority is not contrary to human reason, it transcends it. In his Confessions, Augustine describes his encounter with the Scriptures, saying, “The authority of the sacred writings seemed to me all the more deserving of reverence and divine faith in that scripture was easily accessible to every reader, while yet guarding a mysterious dignity in its deeper sense.” [1] The Scriptures harness the power of human language and reason and are understood thus, but they must be recognized as transcending and going beyond the limitations of human reason, since their origin and authority comes from God. [2]
Since the Scriptures are God’s divine revelation, they necessarily can instruct us in matters that transcend human reason. While human reason can access the truths shown through natural (or general) revelation, it is insufficient to grasp many truths of theology that God has shown us in His Word. To demonstrate the most obvious examples, while nature and reason can teach us the existence of God, the existence of universal truths, the existence of moral absolutes, and such, only revelation can teach us about how God became man for us and for our salvation – the Incarnation. This is what Augustine describes in Book 7 of his Confessions. The Platonists were able to teach him of God’s eternal, immaterial existence as the highest Good, but they could not show Augustine the mystery that God revealed in sending Jesus: “[B]ut that at the time of our weakness He died for the wicked, and that You did not spare even Your only Son, but delivered Him up for us all, these things are not to be found there [in the works of the Platonists].” [3] Similarly, the understanding of God as a Trinity is a mystery that can only be known through the testimony of the Bible. It is not against human reason, but it is beyond the grasp of unaided human reason.
Another key thing the Scriptures provide is an understanding of mankind’s original sin. While the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and other thinkers prior to Christ demonstrate that the best of the ancients had a good understanding of human fallibility and corruption, they still are not completely accurate in their assessment of human nature. The Scriptures provide us with the understanding that, in Adam’s sin, all mankind fell and is now born in a state of nature that is fallen, corrupted, and contrary to God. Consequently, there are serious impediments to human knowing. We assume that we experience some loss of understanding or intellectual light that Adam and Eve possessed before the Fall; this understanding or intellectual light we now lack. Even more importantly, we know that (apart from God’s regenerating grace) we have an innate moral opposition to the Truth and to God. Augustine expounds on this in great detail in Books 2 – 3 of his Confessions, demonstrating that sin is a problem of a flawed will, not merely a problem of ignorance or mistake. Our will corrupts us to seek other goods than God, and we do this culpably. As Romans 1:18 puts it, we “suppress the truth” of God due to our innate sinful inclination.
This leads us automatically into the next aspect of how the Scriptures improve upon the prior Western tradition: the need for grace and, subsequently, for humility. Since mankind is fallen into sin, it takes more than merely instruction or education – even the best education – to reorient him. It takes divine grace, which is shown in the Incarnation, as Augustine is fond of explaining. Augustine makes this clear in his Confessions: we cannot ascend to God by our own abilities of knowing apart from becoming humble enough to receive God’s grace in Jesus Christ. In Book 7 of the Confessions, he describes how his attempts to attain to God through Platonic meditation were futile, since he had not yet accepted Christ as his Savior and Teacher. He writes:
Accordingly I looked for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and humankind, the man Christ Jesus… Not yet was I humble enough to grasp the humble Jesus as my God, nor did I know what His weakness had to teach. Your Word, the eternal Truth who towers above the higher spheres of your creation, raises up to Himself those creatures who bow before Him… [4]
Once again, the ancients were not completely without knowledge here; they knew many things about God and nature, and some of them even knew the value of humility. In Plato’s Meno, for example, Socrates patiently attempts to lead Meno away from his Sophistic arrogance and domineering spirit and to render him a more patient, attentive, and teachable student. In the Meno, Socrates showcases the humility required to be a true philosopher and true student of wisdom. [5] However, apart from the Scriptures, we do not find an appropriately clear connection between our sinful condition, our need for God’s grace, and the subsequent attitude of humility that we ought to have. There are shadows in Plato, but we do not see the full understanding until the Scriptures.
Having surveyed several of the ways in which the Scriptures depart from or add to the prior Western tradition, let us examine briefly their subsequent influence on the rest of the Western tradition. In the first place, with the advent of the Bible into the West, we have the emergence of a text that is given a sort of priority of place among later interpreters. For all those in the Church (and much of the subsequent Western tradition is Christian), the Bible is the authoritative text that informs how we interpret and understand the rest of the great texts. It is not one among many – not primus inter pares; it holds the status of an original substance to shadowy copies, since it is the fullest explanation of divine truth, whereas the other texts are merely copying and conveying that divine truth to greater or lesser extents. A key step for Augustine in his conversion and later philosophical and theological writings was recognizing the authority of the Scriptures and submitting himself to that. Once again, this authority is not contrary to human reason or anti-intellectual; rather, it completes and fulfills what can be known through human reason. However, once we recognize this and submit to it, it informs our thinking and gives us many ‘fixed points’ from which to navigate and direct our thought. For example, throughout the copious writings of Thomas Aquinas, he quotes various Scripture passages as authorities in the various arguments. He (and many others) saw the Scriptures as authoritative in how we understand the arguments and the positions debated, since the Scriptures are the authoritative revelation from God.
Another way the Bible has shaped the Western tradition is in asserting the need for grace and humility. While we have already touched on this in regard to how it sets the Scriptures apart, I want to mention it as a way in which the Church (through the Scriptures) shaped the Western understanding of philosophy and education. Understanding original sin gave the Church the mission of advancing the Gospel of Jesus alongside its mission to spread liberal education; the two were inseparably joined. However, the Church prioritized the need for submission to God and His Word and for salvation in Christ to really be able to understand the Truth appropriately and comprehensively (as comprehensively as is possible for humans). As John Calvin writes in Book 1 of his Institutes, “Therefore, while it becomes man seriously to employ his eyes in considering the works of God, since a place has been assigned him in this most glorious theater that he may be a spectator of them, his special duty is to give ear to the word, that he may the better profit.” [6] Study of all God’s creation is worthwhile and profitable, but our greatest need and the one which illumines and orders our other studies and priorities is our need to attend to the teaching of God and salvation in the Bible.
We need God’s grace in salvation (which is revealed in the Scriptures), yet our entire attitude of study must be shaped and transformed by grace and the humility which it ought to beget in us. Augustine, for example, advocates that students read the Psalms as a “remedy against human pride”, for the Psalms show us our proper posture before God – one of receiving and crying out to Him, rather than presiding over Him by our supposed knowledge. [7] Augustine writes in Book 10 of the Confessions that he is wary of excessive curiosity as a vice, meaning a greedy curiosity that seeks to appraise human knowledge too highly and to pry into mysteries that we cannot know this side of heaven. Even while Augustine questions some of those mysteries himself in Books 10 – 13 (memory, time, eternity, creation, consummation of God’s Kingdom), he does it with a spirit of humility and prayer, not attempting to assert things he does not and cannot adequately comprehend. Augustine’s Confessions as a whole demonstrate the attitude of one praying, asking, seeking, and knocking to know God, rather than the posture of one inordinately claiming to possess indubitable and settled knowledge of God and His ways. Humility ought to be the spiritual fruit in us as we recognize our finitude before God and our dependence upon Him for all knowledge and for salvation.
Lastly, the Scriptures give a fuller and more intentional vision of human history and human knowledge than can be understood apart from divine revelation. The Scriptures provide the West with an understanding of the origin of humanity, its fall, the redemption available in Christ, and the ultimate end of history. In the Old Testament, we see the creation of all things, man’s fall into sin, the promise of salvation, and the beginnings of God’s plan to accomplish salvation in Christ. The New Testament makes God’s plan for humanity even more explicit: in Ephesians 1 – 2 and Colossians 1, Paul describes how God has predestined us for salvation before time began and is bringing salvation through His Church, which is the body of Christ and His own temple. This is the culmination of human history: that God will establish His Church and be in restored communion with His people. In Book 13 of the Confessions, Augustine, too, sees all of God’s redemptive plan forecast in an allegorical understanding of Genesis 1. He sees the Church as God’s final purpose – that all that God does He has done so that He will be glorified in the Church, which is Jesus’ body. Thus, the testimony of the Scriptures gives us a clearer understanding of the whole human story and of the ultimate end of human knowledge and human history.
While this survey has been necessarily broad, it shows that the Scriptures are a vital part of the Western tradition. In fact, they hold the superior position among the great texts because of their divine authority and the special revelation contained within them. As the Westminster Confession puts it, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture…”. [8] Through the Scriptures, we come to know our sin and our need for God’s grace, and that God has made a way of salvation and redemption in Jesus Christ. This shapes our entire attitude of learning and knowing, and it gives us a cosmic vision for the origin of all things, the place of mankind, and God’s ultimate end for His creation. For these reasons, the Scriptures comprise the most important text in world history.
Notes
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding, O.S.B., edited by David Vincent Menconi, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), VI.8.
If it is not already clear, I am side-stepping the question of how we validate the authority of the Scriptures. While it may be unnecessary to explain, I do not believe that the mere claim of authority (i.e., the claim made by the Scriptures to be authoritative) is logically sufficient to render them authoritative. Many texts claim such authority. I do believe that there are very strong arguments for the historicity and validity of the Scriptures and which give us reason to trust and respect their claims to authority. However, it would take another essay to pursue that. For this essay, I am sticking with identifying the ways they are different from the rest of the Western texts and the way in which they add to the tradition and subsequently change it.
Augustine, Confessions, VII.14.
Augustine, Confessions, VII.24.
See Plato, Meno, translated and annotated by George Anastaplo and Laurence Berns (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing / R. Pullins Company, 2004) and Jeffrey Lehman, “Meno and the Beginnings of Socratic Conversation” in Socratic Conversation: Bringing the Dialogues of Plato and the Socratic Tradition into Today’s Classroom (Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic Press, 2021), 25 - 44.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2008), I.6.2.
Augustine, Confessions, IX.8.
Westminster Confession, I.6. Included in We Believe: Creeds, Catechisms, and Confessions of Faith (Sanford, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2023).
