基督教教育哲学简论｜G. H. 克拉克

A Christian Philosophy Of Education, Gordon H. Clark, The Trinity Review, May, June 1988 基督教教育哲学简论 戈登·H·克拉克《三位一体评论》1988年5月6月 基督教教育网翻译 中英文对照

很长一段时间以来，人类历史平静地向前发展，只受到一些小干扰。然后在短短几年内，一切似乎都在同时发生。一场风暴席卷了人类，冲毁了所有深渊的泉源；当洪水退却时，历史的进程已经为下一个时代设定好了。十六世纪就是这样一个风暴时代。亨利八世、马丁·路德、约翰·加尔文、弗朗西斯一世（Francis I）、依纳爵·罗耀拉、卡拉法（Caraffa），以及——稍后的——菲利普二世、伊丽莎白女王、亨利四世、阿尔瓦公爵（the Duke of Alva）和约翰·诺克斯都生活在十六世纪。在此期间，德国应该成为路德宗，苏格兰应该成为长老会，英格兰应该成为圣公会；宗教裁判所通过谋杀决定意大利和西班牙应该继续信奉罗马教； 1572年圣巴塞洛缪节前夕，大约 75,000 名加尔文教徒遭到大屠杀，法国因此一半是罗马教徒，一半是异教徒。这种结果持续了四百年。

十六世纪不仅见证了宗教改革，文艺复兴也见证了现代科学思想的诞生。虽然近年来发明和详细的科学应用成倍增加，但一般的科学世界观——基于数学在物理问题中的应用——在笛卡尔出生前就已经确定了未来几个世纪的走向。

二十世纪有望与十六世纪相媲美。两次世界大战已经发生，第三次世界大战的威胁不断，本世纪将真正是一个动荡的世纪。希特勒希望为未来一千年设定历史方向。他很可能已经做到了——当然，在罗斯福、丘吉尔和斯大林的帮助下。到目前为止，二十世纪还没有宗教大灾变的迹象。因此，它的变化可能更接近于文艺复兴时期的社会和教育革命，或者更可能是罗马帝国的崩溃，而不是宗教改革的精神加速。从目前所看到的一切来看，人文主义和共产主义对基督教的仇恨将成为未来时代的主流哲学。

虽然报纸头条的政治局势吸引了大众的注意力，但独裁者对教育手段的使用清楚地表明，学校和大学的作用更为深远。新社会的教育政策，无论是善是恶，都将是一个基本因素。

世界观的需求

我们训练有素的人确实可以发明收音机和雷达；他们确实可以降低伤寒和婴儿死亡率——这更能说明他们的能力；他们确实可以生产更大的潜艇和更好的炸药；但应该像信号弹一样清晰、像炸弹一样强调的是，谁在使用这些技术，这比它们的发明更重要。事实上，珍珠港、朝鲜和越南的影响应该让教育关注这个基本问题。

电话会成倍增加，但电话线路可能会传达屠杀犹太人和基督徒的命令；广播和电视将得到极大发展，但它可能会被用于极权主义宣传；没有死于伤寒的年轻人可能会成为优秀的克格勃特工。每一种机械辅助工具，一些人用来判断一个社会是好的，都可能被官僚或独裁者用来使他的社会变坏。

美国人民如何才能有能力判断并因此抵御宣传的轰炸？轰炸已经到来。《时代》、《新闻周刊》和电视上的新闻节目应该是新闻媒体。它们实际上是宣传渠道。例如，1969年8月15日星期五，切特·亨特利 (Chet Huntley) 以对新教徒的恶毒谴责结束了他的新闻节目。根本没有新闻。这是纯粹的谩骂。他差点说爱尔兰的罗马天主教徒应该入侵阿尔斯特（Ulster）并屠杀新教徒。当然，新闻也是有偏见的。民众的偏见程度该有多大，以至于电视上竟然允许这样的解读？如果某种形式的教育能让人们学会发现有偏见的新闻，从而防止形成一种接受仇恨宣传的社会氛围，那么它就不是现在的美国教育形式。它至少不是培养专家无知者的狭隘技术培训。这并不是贬低工程学，更不是反对物理和化学。但需要一些额外的、更重要的东西。那是什么？

只有一种哲学才能真正统一教育和生活。那就是基督教有神论的哲学。我们需要的是一个以上帝主权为基础的教育体系，因为在这样的体系中，人类和化学都会得到适当的地位，既不太高也不太低。在这样的体系中，人类的主要目的将统一起来，并作为人类所有活动的标准。因此，是一种与基督教最伟大的信条《威斯敏斯特信条》相一致的哲学。在这样的体系中，上帝和人都会有自己适当的位置。只有这样，教育才能成功；因为一个文明的社会、道德、政治和经济解体只不过是宗教崩溃的症状和结果。战争、瘟疫和经济崩溃的可恶之举是对忘记上帝的罪行（crime）、更确切地说是对罪（sin）的惩罚。

中立的神话

这似乎是对美国最高法院禁止在公共教育中祈祷和阅读圣经的裁决的普遍看法。祈祷绝对是一种宗教活动，国家不得支持任何形式的宗教。让我们教算术，而忽略宗教。现在，法院的裁决至少有一个好的观点。该案源于一个学校系统，其官员写了一份祈祷文，并要求教师祈祷。学校官员认为他们的祈祷文是无害的，并且让所有祈祷的宗教都满意。这是一种“非宗派”祈祷。自该裁决以来，已经提出了各种宪法修正案，允许非宗派祈祷。据推测，这意味着由学校董事会起草并由他们强加给教师的祈祷文。就过去和现在的情况而言，基督徒必须赞成法院的裁决。因为，首先，它迫使老师做她不认同的祷告内容，要么是因为她不信教，根本不想祷告——顺从使她成为伪君子，要么是因为她信教，认为这种非宗派祷告不是中立的，而是反基督教的。

“上帝从虚无中（out of nothing）创造了世界”这一命题和“宇宙是一个永恒的自存实体”这一命题之间没有中立的立场。但是，尽管反对者可能承认这里存在哲学上的不相容性，但他们可能同时认为哲学与教育儿童的实际业务相距甚远，因此对反宗教影响的任何担忧都纯粹是学术性的。即使是教师的乐观或悲观也不会影响算术的内容。他们承认，从哲学上讲，中立是不可能的；但从教育上讲，中立就是事实。

这些非宗派祷告是反基督教的，原因可以非常清楚地说明。圣经教导说，所有向上帝的祷告都必须基于耶稣基督的功德。除了基督，没有人能来到父那里。没有别的名字可以拯救我们。因此，在祷告中不包括基督是对上帝的冒犯。在学校里完全没有祷告比这种非宗派祷告好得多。使用宗派或非宗派这个词本身就是一种冒犯和侮辱。宗派一直有贬义，把基督教的祷告污蔑为宗派并不是中立的行为。

因此，最高法院通过禁止学校祈祷似乎保持了中立，只有那些想要祈祷的人才是反基督教的。当然，任何不想祈祷的人也是反基督教的；法院用同样的判决让虔诚的基督徒和大喊大叫的无神论者都满意，这真是一项壮举。但这一决定及其结果是否能让基督徒满意，学校是否保持中立——现在学校董事会的神学家们不能再强迫他们祈祷了——这仍需要进一步讨论。

随着对基督教有神论体系的进一步理解，中立的不可能这一事实变得越来越清晰。已经提到过这样一个事实，即基督教不应被等同于或局限于对上帝的纯粹信仰。例如，基督教有邪恶理论；它不同于人文主义理论；因此世俗学校不能采用基督教学校在处理顽固学生时所采用的相同政策。

顽固学生的存在几乎无需多言。但也许确实需要对那些故意忘记发生了什么的人说几句。除了第一章中叙述的内容外，1969年，在至少部分教师的批准下，印第安纳波利斯的高中生还被出售了颠覆性的、淫秽的黑豹党文学作品。但基甸会（the Gideons）在学校分发《新约》是违法的。在1969-70学年的前两周，印第安纳波利斯警方接到了50起抢劫和殴打事件的报告，其中包括刺伤事件。警方认为，这些案件还不到犯罪总数的一半，因为受害儿童往往害怕报复而不敢报告袭击事件。一些家长为了避免校园暴力而拒绝送孩子上学。在印第安纳波利斯的一所富裕高中，据估计，有50%的高中生毒品上瘾。当然，并不是所有学生都是海洛因瘾君子；但他们已经在路上，虽然现在是通过胶毒¹（glue）、傻瓜丸（goofballs²）、迷幻药（LSD）和类似药物来吸毒的。

这些恶劣的情况受到了自由主义、人道主义政策的鼓励，这种政策旨在处理学生行为较轻的不当行为。自由主义嘲笑基督教的惩罚观念。从婴儿时期开始，孩子就必须被宠坏，而不是被打屁股或以任何方式被压制。早在1922年，约翰·杜威在《人性与行为》（Human Nature and Conduct）（第二部分，第 2 节）中就鼓励年轻人反抗父母的管教。父母驯服了“孩子令人愉快的独创性”；他们向孩子灌输道德习惯；结果就是大量“非理性”和“幼稚行为”。当杜威的哲学被转化为强调改造的刑法典时（因为罪犯是病态的，而不是邪恶的；有罪的是社会，而不是罪犯），美国一年内就有两万人犯下谋杀罪，其中没有一个人被处决。第二年，自然有更多的人犯下谋杀罪。

这些犯罪的根源不应该归咎于约翰·杜威、自由派刑法学家或公立学校。应该指责的是那些未能压制邪恶的自由派神学家和自由派教育家。公立学校自称是民主的救世主，却应该受到嘲笑。他们的放纵助长了纵火、吸毒和性不道德行为。即使在严格的课程事务中，他们的放纵和对民主概念的扩展超出了其应有的政治意义，也常常导致他们试图通过将要求降低到最低限度来使所有学生平等，以便每个人都能通过。在这样的学校里，尤其是在大都市地区，学生不能不及格，必须升学。在笔者观察过的高中里，一些三年级学生（毫无疑问，四年级学生也一样，但以下例子仅限于个人知识）读不懂四年级的材料；在植物学实验室里，学生看不懂说明书，一个二十岁的男孩“毕业”了，却不会读书——好吧，连两段文字都读不懂。这种民主、这种纵容、这些自由主义政策鼓励和助长了邪恶，但它们并没有引发邪恶。邪恶源于约翰·杜威所说的孩子令人愉快的独创性（the delightful originality of the child）。

本论点旨在表明，学校系统不能在自由主义和基督教立场之间保持中立。学校系统必须对不良儿童或开始惹麻烦的儿童制定一些政策，而这种政策不能既左又右。它不能既是基督教的又是人文主义的；而且没有中间的中立立场。这两种哲学及其教育含义在做什么、什么是邪恶以及邪恶如何产生等方面存在差异。人们对公共教育者的主流观点有所评论；现在需要表明基督教对邪恶有着完全不同的看法，并有完全不同的打击邪恶的政策。

政府学校

早期的美国大学是明显的基督教机构。但与大学不同，公立学校系统凭的不是同样的感动。另一方面，公立学校并非旨在反对宗教。在我们祖父母时代的读者中，上帝和耶稣基督被提及。今天在公立学校的书籍中找不到这样的参考资料。原因不难找到。公立学校的创立理念是不偏袒某种宗教（not favoring one religion），结果是它们现在根本不支持宗教（favor no religion）。它们完全世俗化了。

最初，公立学校虽然不应该偏袒任何基督教教派，但也不打算攻击基督教。他们的想法是应该保持中立。而且由于大多数新教徒相信教育学者不会攻击宗教的诺言，所以新教徒没有像罗马天主教徒那样建立小学。现在很明显，罗马天主教徒采取了更明智的行动，因为那些学者的诺言很快就被打破了。

今天，基督教在整个公立学校系统中受到攻击。家长们的报告说，进化论否定上帝创造世界的说法被教给了二年级的孩子。一个七八岁的孩子怎么能抵抗有组织的对有神论世界观的攻击呢？父母们又怎么能保护自己的孩子呢？公立学校在宗教问题上并不假装保持中立，当家长们提出抗议时，他们就会立即遭到嘲笑和压制。宗教自由的概念，甚至对基督教的宽容——也就是最初的中立主张——并不是学者的思想装备的一部分。

前面已经提到公立学校禁止阅读圣经。结果是一代人的那些在英语语言和文学方面有障碍的儿童。英语圣经对我们的语言、文学、文明和道德的影响比任何其他书籍都要大，这是一个不争的事实。那些被剥夺了阅读圣经的孩子在文化上和宗教上都被剥夺了。有人说得好，没有大学教育的圣经知识比没有圣经知识的大学教育更有价值。鉴于这一事实，禁止阅读圣经与公立学校和我们社会的很大一部分对基督教的仇恨有着极为重要的意义。攻击基督教的书籍并不违法。教师可以否认上帝、创造和护理；但法律禁止他们推荐基督教。

由于这项政策的文化剥夺是如此明显，一些教育工作者希望将圣经作为文学来教授。将圣经重新引入学校也可能会减轻一些批评。然而，结果可能是，将圣经作为文学作品比没有圣经更糟糕。圣经是作为神圣文学还是人类文学来教授——仅仅是文学作品，而不是启示？在一所尝试这样做的学校里，老师要求学生写一篇论文。她的要求非常灵活：每个学生都可以选择圣经的任何部分作为他的主题。一个小女孩问她是否可以写以赛亚书。老师问，你是指第一以赛亚书还是第二以赛亚书³？因此，将圣经作为文学作品来教授就变成了对其真实性的攻击。它将被用来；它正在被用来破坏基督教。

当公立学校刚开始流行时，新教徒通常被公立学校人员似是而非的承诺所欺骗。他们认为，如果他们维持基督教大学，小学就可以委托给国家。但并非所有的新教徒都被这些不攻击基督教的虚假承诺所欺骗。路德教会和基督教改革宗人士很早就为他们的孩子建立了小学。他们相信基督教家庭的影响力和基督教教会的布道应该通过基督教学校系统得到加强。但是，路德宗和基督教改革宗都具有欧洲背景，因此它们仍然是某种程度上封闭的社会；不幸的是，至少在这方面，他们对美国其他新教的影响很小。然而，在讲英语的美国教会中，有一个人看到了公立学校系统的含义；他警告了接下来会发生什么，但他的警告没有引起人们的注意。如今，九十年过去了，事实证明他是对的，今天读到他的警告很有趣，甚至令人悲伤。因为 A. A. 贺智⁴在 1890 年之前的演讲中做出了现在被引用的预测。

在他的《神学主题通俗讲座》（Popular Lectures on Theological Themes）第 283 页中，他写道：

正如现在普遍提出的，一个与宗教分离的全面而集中的国家教育体系，将成为传播反基督教和无神论的不信以及反社会虚无主义伦理（个人、社会和政治）的最可怕的工具，这是这个罪恶的世界所见过的。

A comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social, and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.

在两页之前，他写道：

这可以准确地证明，如果国家中的每个政党都有权将他认为不真实的东西排除在公立学校之外，那么最相信的人必须让位于最不相信的人，然后最不相信的人必须让位于完全不相信的人，无论无神论者或不可知论者在少数群体中占多小的比例。不言而喻，如果这一计划在全国各地持续不断地实施，美国的全国大众教育体系将成为世界上传播无神论的最有效、最广泛的工具。

A. A. 贺智没有看到的是，至少他没有明确指出的是，尽管无宗教信仰者已经掌握了排斥基督教的权利，但基督徒却被剥夺了排斥对基督教的攻击的权利。没有中立。

显然，这些学校不是基督教的。同样明显的是，它们不是中立的。圣经说，对上帝的敬畏是知识的主要部分；但是，学校通过省略对上帝的所有提及，让学生们认为知识可以在上帝之外获得。他们实际上教导说，上帝无法控制历史，上帝没有制定任何事件计划，上帝不会预先决定任何发生的事情。除了稍后讨论的明确的反基督教教育之外，公立学校不是、从来不是、也永远不可能是中立的。中立是不可能的。让我们问一问，当涉及到上帝时，中立可能意味着什么。上帝如何审判学校系统，他对他说：“上帝啊，我们既不否认也不主张你的存在；上帝啊，我们既不服从也不违背你的诫命；我们严格保持中立。”任何人都不能忽视这一点：忽视上帝的学校制度教导学生忽视上帝；这不是中立。这是最恶劣的对抗形式，因为它认为上帝在人类事务中不重要，无关紧要。这是无神论。

基督教教育哲学

基督教教育的课程和管理必须由基督教人论来控制。像植物一样，人是活生生的存在，他需要食物，他繁殖；但人的特殊性并不存在于如此广泛的物种中。像动物一样，他有感觉和视觉图像；但如果这就是全部，他就只是另一种动物。教育据称将人视为人；所谓的体育教育将人视为野兽。人是什么以及教育是什么，这些问题需要通过评估人类活动的不同水平来回答。敏锐的感觉并不标志着一个受过教育的人，因为野蛮人的感觉往往比受过良好教育的人更敏锐。木工和水管工明显是人类的活动，超出了动物的一切可能性，事实上也超出了野蛮人的能力；然而这两种有用而光荣的行业并不是教育。音乐和艺术比木工和水管工更重要；我们通常说音乐教育，但严格地说，音乐和艺术需要训练。所有这些都是不同层次的活动——都光荣但并不都平等。有些人生来就擅长其中一种，而不擅长另一种。上帝并没有因为一个获得一千才华的人不能赚到五千才华而责骂他；他谴责他不使用他已有的一千才华。然而，不可否认的事实是，拥有五千才华更好。上帝并不要求没有技能的劳动者写出对所有未来形而上学的批判，也不要求他完成舒伯特的交响曲；但智商150比智商85包含更多的可能性。

人生的各个阶段都应该荣耀上帝，如果一个人是木匠或水管工，他应该也能够通过他的职业荣耀上帝，就像学生或教授一样。要令人满意地侍奉上帝，一个人不需要成为一名僧侣；也不需要成为一名学者。上帝给了一些人五种天赋，一些人两种天赋，一些人一种天赋。他给了一些人学术天赋，给了另一些人机械能力。要求的是每个人都应该忠实地使用他所得到的东西。

鉴于此，不能说教育在各方面都是民主的（democratic）。在政治上，服从人民意愿的代议制民主政府绝对比不负责任的极权主义和傲慢的官僚主义更可取。人人被造而平等——是从政治正义应该公正地实施的意义上来说。但经济和精神平等从未存在过，也永远不会存在。经济障碍可以通过奖学金的私人援助在一定程度上得到平衡。但是，精神不平等是无法治愈的。教育和艺术一样，永远不可能是民主的；两者都天生具有贵族气质。有些学生根本学不会。尽管他们努力尝试，但他们无法理解材料的意义。他们不仅没有从大学教育中受益，反而可能毁掉自己的精神和自尊。作为水管工，他们可以发挥有益的作用，如果他们认识到上帝因诚实的水管工而受到赞美，他们就可以以基督徒的尊严与人相处。

关于艺术也说一句。伟大的艺术家肯定比伟大的煤矿工人更优秀。伦勃朗的《夜巡》（Night Watch）令人印象深刻。伦勃朗知道如何绘画。但我不知道他懂艺术。贝多芬知道如何作曲，但我怀疑他是否懂音乐。艺术能力是一回事——上帝赐予的珍贵恩赐；对艺术、艺术在社会中的作用、艺术与宗教和道德的关系的理性理解是另一回事——上帝赐予的更珍贵的恩赐。后者是教育的主题。前者是技能。

然而，基督教是理智主义（intellectualistic）的。上帝是真理，真理是不可改变的。人文主义者当然反对任何有神论的真理观。在尼采、詹姆斯和杜威的指导下，他们沉浸在实用主义的潮流中，认为真理在变化，道德价值观在变化，唯一不变的真理就是没有固定的真理。有用的才是“真理”。技能和成功造就“真理”。由于人文主义没有最终的真理，人文主义者无法始终如一地充分承认智力。如果他赞扬智力天赋，他的意思只是指获得你想要的东西的职业技能。

然而，世俗人文主义并不是理智主义的唯一反对者，甚至不是最激烈的反对者。如果尼采、詹姆斯和杜威都有他们的门徒，包括存在主义者，那么克尔凯郭尔和施莱尔马赫一样强调情感（emotion），是真理更糟糕的敌人。因此，很多宗教人士鄙视理智，推崇情感。布鲁纳（Brunner）⁵说，上帝说的是谎言，人类应该相信矛盾，相信上帝和智慧是相互排斥的。

人有上帝的形象

我们注意到，首先，基督是上帝的形象（希伯来书 1:3），他是上帝的道和智慧。我们还注意到，亚当被赋予了统治自然的权力（dominion over nature）。这两点看似毫无关联，却表明上帝的形象是逻辑或理性。亚当优于动物，因为他是理性的，而不仅仅是感官的创造物。因此，上帝的形象就是理性。

形象（image）必须是理性（reason），因为上帝是真理（truth），与他的团契——创造中最重要的目的——需要思考和理解。没有理性，人类无疑会像星星、石头和动物一样荣耀上帝，但他不能永远享受上帝。即使在上帝的眷顾下，动物可以免于死亡并装饰未来的世界，它们也不能拥有圣经所说的永生，因为永生就是认识唯一的真神，而知识是思想或理性的锻炼。没有理性，就没有道德或正义：这些也需要思考。没有这些，动物既不正义，也没有罪孽。

将形象视为理性，这解释或得到了约翰福音1:9中令人费解的评论的支持，“那光是真光，照亮一切生在世上的人。”当圣经教导有些人迷失在永恒的黑暗中时，基督的生命是人类的光，他怎么能成为每个人的光呢？这个谜题源于用救赎的术语来解释光。如果一个人也从创造的角度来思考上帝的道或理性，上面说他创造了万物，没有一个例外，可以看作是用逻辑之光作为人类的独特特征来创造人类的。

由于这些原因，堕落及其影响，一些神学家在研究形象教义时对此感到困惑，而最容易理解的是将形象与人的思想联系起来。

由于道德判断是一种判断，被纳入一般智力活动，因此堕落的结果之一就是通过错误的思维产生错误的评价。亚当错误地认为，与其服从上帝并与她分离，不如与夏娃一起犯罪。于是他吃了禁果。外在行为紧随思想而来。“从心里发出恶念。”请注意，在圣经中，“心”一词通常指智力，只有十次中一次指情感：是心在思考。因此，罪干扰了我们的思考。然而，它并没有阻止我们思考。罪不会根除或消灭形象。它会导致功能失调，但人仍然是人。

圣经强调，心灵的失调（malfunctioning）因为它们很重要，所以明显是道德的问题。但罪将其堕落的影响扩展到通常不被视为道德问题的事务中。例如算术。我们不必假设亚当和夏娃懂微积分，但他们肯定能数到十。无论他们做什么算术，他们做的都是正确的。但是罪恶导致思维失败，结果我们现在在简单的加法中犯错误。这种错误被迂腐地称为罪恶的“理性”影响。但道德错误同样是理性的。当人们的想象力变得虚荣，他们愚蠢的心变得黑暗；当他们自称聪明，却变成了傻瓜；当上帝把他们交给堕落的思想时——他们的罪首先是一种理性、智力、精神上的失常。

重生和成圣过程（Regeneration and the process of sanctification）扭转了失常的罪恶方向：人的知识按照创造他的人的形象得到更新。首先，更明显、更严重的罪恶被抑制，因为新人开始按照上帝的诫命思考和评估。第二和第三，新人能进而去抑制更微妙、更隐秘、更普遍的罪恶，这些罪恶使他的心变得无比诡诈。相比之下，算术错误似乎微不足道，但这些也是罪的结果；而救赎将改善一个人在所有事情上的思维。

因此，将形象认定为理性或智力，保留了人的统一性，使神学家免于将形象（image）分裂成精神分裂（schizophrenic）的部分。这也符合圣经中关于罪和救赎的一切。

世俗反对人身上的上帝形象只能基于一般的非神论哲学。进化论认为，人类是从中子和质子，经过原子，到植物，再到低等动物，直到非洲、亚洲和东印度群岛出现了许多人类的自然发展。进化很难断言人类的统一，因为亚人类物种的几个个体可能或多或少同时产生了相同的变异。

这种非神论的自然主义观点很难接受因为它意味着心灵（和身体一样）也是进化的产物，而不是神圣的形象。心灵不是使用永恒的逻辑原则，而是使用生物适应的实际结果。概念和命题既不能达到真理，甚至也不能瞄准真理。我们的装备是通过生存斗争而进化的。理性只是人类处理事物的方法。它是一种简化，因此也是伪造的手段。没有证据表明我们的类别与现实相对应。即使它们确实如此，这也是最不可能的意外，没有人能知道；因为要知道逻辑定律适用于现存的现实，必须在使用这些定律之前观察现实。但如果这种情况曾经发生在亚人类生物身上，那么它永远不会发生在现在的人类身上。如果现在智力是自然产生的，那么不同类型的智力也可以通过略有不同的进化过程产生。也许这样的头脑已经产生了，但现在却像恐龙和渡渡鸟⁶一样灭绝了。然而，这意味着空间和时间的概念或直觉——矛盾定律、推理规则——不是固定的、普遍的真理标准，而是其他种族用其他术语思考的。也许未来的种族也会用不同的术语思考。约翰·杜威坚持认为逻辑已经改变，并将继续改变。如果现在是这样的话，我们的传统逻辑只是一个转瞬即逝的进化时刻；我们的理论——依赖于这种逻辑——是暂时的反应、狭隘的社会习惯和弗洛伊德式的合理化；因此，由这些生物冲动产生的进化论不可能是正确的。

自然主义和有神论之间的区别——关于进化和创造的最新科学观点之间的区别；弗洛伊德式的动物和上帝的形象之间的区别；对上帝的信仰和无神论之间的区别——是基于他们两种不同的认识论。自然主义声称通过观察和分析经验来学习；有神论的观点依赖于圣经的启示。再多的观察和分析也无法证明有神论的立场。当然，再多的观察和分析也无法证明进化论或任何其他理论。世俗哲学都会导致完全的怀疑。相比之下，有神论则以神启的命题为基础。它们可能不会给我们所有的真理；它们甚至可能给我们很少的真理；但除此之外，根本没有真理。世俗的替代方案就到此为止了。

因此，基督教对课程科目和学校学生的评价是理性（rational）和智性（intellectualistic）的，与当今时代的情绪主义和反智主义相反。

教育的目的是真理；将真理传授给年幼的学生，让更优秀的学生发现新的真理。教育的目的，至少是最纯粹和最好的教育的目的，是理智的理解。

颠覆基督教

原编者注：有些人不能或不会承认公立学校是反基督教的。除非学校大声反对基督教（它们通常会这样做），否则它们被认为是无害的。但正面攻击基督教并不是摧毁它的唯一方法。正如克拉克在这篇文章中所阐述的那样，巧妙的颠覆也被使用。

斯科特、福斯曼和公司出版了一系列优秀的小学教科书，其中有一本名为《我们的世界以及我们如何利用它》的书⁷，由坎贝尔、西尔斯、奎伦和汉纳合著。第 97 页，在解释驯养和使用动物的一章中，有一节题为“关于上帝的想法”。

你已经看到，我们关于财产、合作和战争的许多想法都来自很久以前的牧民。牧民们还有许多其他想法。

You have seen how many of our ideas about property, about working together, and about war have come from these
herdsmen of long ago. The herdsmen had many other ideas, too. 

牧民知道星星，因为他学会了像我们看日历一样看天空。白天，太阳是他的时钟，晚上，月亮和星星告诉他时间。在草原和沙漠国家的干燥气候中，夜空非常清澈，星星明亮。

The herdsman knew about the stars, because he had learned to read the sky as we read calendars. The sun was his clock by day, and the moon and stars told him the time at night. The night skies are very clear and the stars are bright in the dry climate of the grasslands and in the desert country.

牧民看着季节来来去去。他知道丰收的季节和饥荒的季节。他亲眼目睹他的牲畜出生、成长和死亡。他看到部落首领惩罚不听话的孩子和牲畜，奖励他们做对的事情。牧民在照料牲畜时有时间思考很多很多事情。

The herdsman watched the seasons come and go. He knew about times of plenty and about times of famine, too. He saw his animals born, grow, and die. He saw the head of the tribe punish his own children and his animals if they did not obey him, and reward them if they did right. Herdsmen had time to think about many, many things as they tended their animals.

于是牧民知道有一位伟大的上帝照顾着这个世界和世界上的一切，就像他自己照顾自己的羊群和家人一样。他教他的孩子们崇拜这位上帝，服从他。

And so the herdsman came to know that there was a great God that took care of the world and everything in it, just as he himself took care of his own flocks and family. He taught his children to worship this God and to obey Him.

牧民也知道他必须保护自己的牲畜、家人、仆人和工人。很多时候，他一定认为如果没有野兽或不友好的人，世界会变得更美好。他开始相信一定有什么不好的事情，某种邪恶的东西，它与上帝作对，就像狼、坏人和饥荒与上帝作对一样。他称这种邪恶的东西为撒旦。

The herdsman also knew that he had to protect his own animals and his family and his servants and workers. Many times he must have thought that the world would be a better place if there were no wild beasts or unfriendly people. And he came to believe that there must be something bad, something evil, which worked against God, just as wolves and bad men and famine worked against him. This evil thing he called Satan.

牧民们的许多想法都被写成了歌曲。你可以在《圣经》中读到其中的一些，比如牧羊人成为国王的大卫的诗篇。

Many of the thoughts of the herdsmen were made into songs. You can read some of them in the Bible, in the Psalms of David, the shepherd who became a king.

坦白地说，这一部分的目的是向学生传授关于上帝的知识。因此，这是一个宗教问题；宗教，无论是在讲坛上宣讲还是在小学教授，都不能是一个中立的问题。为了发现这本教科书是支持基督教还是反对基督教，让我们列出它所教授的五个主要观点。它首先教导牧民在照料牲畜时通过思考发现了上帝或对上帝有了想法；其次，他们发现上帝关心他们；第三，他们教导孩子们崇拜和服从上帝；第四，他们通过反思了解到魔鬼的存在；第五，大卫的诗篇是这个过程的结果。

由于这是一本四年级教科书的教学内容，因此对其进行深刻的哲学批评可能被认为不公平。然而，即使是四年级的学生也可以学到一些简单但深刻的哲学原理。这部分内容给人的印象是，对上帝的了解是一个纯粹的经验过程。没有提到哲学家所说的先验（a priori）学习能力。现在，康德的术语不是给孩子们用的，但当被告知所有人生来就有上帝的观念时，即使是孩子们也能理解。他们可能不知道先验和天生（priori and innate）这两个术语，但他们可以理解人类天生就会自发地想到上帝：他们生来就是这样。然而，不会特别强调这本书教授的是非基督教的经验主义（empiricism）。

但要强调而再强调的是，这本书没有提到启示。如果有人问一个真正的基督徒他是如何认识上帝的，他会立即回答“通过圣经，上帝的话语”。当一个人回答“通过经验和反思”时，很明显这个人不是基督徒。

其次，教科书教导牧民知道上帝关心他们，因为他们照顾羊群。这是什么样的论点？牧民照顾羊群是为了剪羊毛，然后吃掉它们。这样的反思会导致对上帝的最终信任吗？

第三，牧民教导他们的孩子敬拜和服从上帝。这引发了两个问题。首先，如果没有启示，牧民在哪里找到上帝要求我们遵守的命令？圣经说上帝的律法写在人的心里；它教导人是按照上帝的形象造的，天生就知道对错不同，上帝惩罚错误。但圣经也教导说，人用自己的邪恶来压制这种知识，他不想在知识中保留上帝，上帝已经将人交给了堕落的思想。显然，四年级的教科书这点和基督教并不一致。第二个问题更切题：牧人如何教导他们的孩子敬拜上帝？圣经不仅说，除了圣灵的重生大能外，没有人会寻求上帝，也没有人行善，连一个也没有；圣经还教导说，除了通过耶稣基督，没有人能到父那里去。这对古代的亚伯拉罕和今天的人们来说都是如此。耶稣说：“你们的祖宗亚伯拉罕欢欢喜喜地仰望我的日子，既看见了就快乐。”（约8:56）教科书没有暗示这种崇拜的必要先决条件。它教导说，一个人可以不提及耶稣基督而服从和崇拜上帝。

第四点不需要任何额外的批评，但第五点是高潮。这里说，大卫的诗篇是纯粹人类思考的产物。与基督教的观点直接对立的是，教科书将《圣经》降低到游牧民族在哲学上无法辩驳的想法的水平。

大卫写道：“耶和华对我主说，你坐在我的右边，等我使你的仇敌作你的脚凳。”⁸这是人的幻想还是神的应许？大卫写道：

“地上的君王……敌挡耶和华并他的受膏者……那坐在天上的必发笑⁹；耶和华必嗤笑他们¹⁰……我已经立我的君王在锡安-我的圣山上了¹¹……耶和华对我说：“你是我的儿子，我今日生你¹²……当以嘴亲子，恐怕他发怒，你们便在道上灭亡，因为他的怒气快要发作。¹³”

这是什么？毫无意义？还是那位大而可畏的上帝的声音？

引用这段话的教科书在教学法（pedagogically）和技巧（mechanically）方面都非常出色；它展示了技术能力的所有标志。因此，引用这段话不能归咎于无知。这是经过精心策划的。基于这些原因，唯一可能的结论是，这本书和它背后的教育者肯定是想摧毁基督教。

A Christian Philosophy Of Education by: Gordon H. Clark

For long periods of time human history moves placidly along, troubled only by minor disturbances. Then in a short span of years, everything seems to happen at once. A storm overtakes the race, breaking up all the fountains of the great deep; and when the waters subside, the course of history has been set for the next epoch. The sixteenth century was such an age of storm. Henry VIII, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Francis I, Ignatius Loyola, Caraffa, and—a little later—Philip II, Queen Elizabeth, Henry IV, the Duke of Alva, and John Knox all lived in the fifteen hundreds. During this period it was settled that Germany should be Lutheran, Scotland Presbyterian, England Episcopal; the Inquisition determined by murder that Italy and Spain should remain Romish; the mass murder of some 75,000 Calvinists on St. Bartholomew’s Eve in 1572 made France half Romish and half infidel. These results have endured for four hundred years. 

Not only did the sixteenth century witness the Reformation, it also saw in the Renaissance the birth of the modern scientific mind. While inventions and detailed scientific applications have been multiplied in more recent years, the general scientific world-view—based on the application of mathematics to problems of physics—was fixed for the coming centuries, even before Descartes was born. 

The twentieth century bids fair to rival the sixteenth. Two world wars have already occurred and with a third a constant threat, this century will truly be one of upheaval. Hitler wished to set the direction of history for the next thousand years. He may well have done so—aided, of course, by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. The twentieth century, so far, lacks indications of impending religious cataclysms. Its changes, therefore, may parallel more closely the social and educational revolution of the Renaissance, or, more likely, the breakdown of the Roman Empire, than the spiritual quickening of the Reformation. From all that can be seen now, humanism and Communist hatred of Christianity will be the prevailing philosophy of the coming age. 

While the political situation that makes newspaper headlines occupies popular attention, the use which dictators have made of the means of education shows clearly that the role of schools and universities is of more profound significance. Educational policy in the new society, whether for good or evil, will be a basic factor. 

 The Need for a World View 

It is true that our best-trained men can invent radios and radar; it is true that they can reduce typhoid and infant mortality—more power to them; it is true that they can produce bigger submarines and better explosives; but it ought to be as clear as a flare and as emphatic as a bomb that who uses these for what is a tremendously more important matter than their invention. In fact, the impact of Pearl Harbor, Korea, and Vietnam ought to have focused educational attention on this basic question. 

Telephones will multiply, but their wires may carry commands to massacre Jews and Christians; radio and television will be greatly developed, but it may be used for totalitarian propaganda; and young men who have not died of typhoid may make excellent KGB agents. Every mechanical aid, by which some judge that a society is good, can be used by bureaucrat or dictator to make his society bad. 

How can the people of the United States become competent to judge and therefore withstand the barrage of propaganda? The barrage has come. Time, Newsweek, and the news programs on television are supposed to be news media. They are actually propaganda outlets. For example, on Friday, August 15, 1969, Chet Huntley ended his news program with a vicious denunciation of Protestants. There was no news at all. It was unadulterated invective. He stopped just short of saying that the Roman Catholics of Eire should invade Ulster and massacre the Protestants. And of course the news is slanted, too. How slanted must the populace already be that such interpretation should be allowed on television? If some form of education prepares people to detect slanted news and thereby prevent a social climate where hate propaganda is accepted, it is not the present form of American education. Least of all is it a narrow technical training that produces expert ignoramuses. This is not to deprecate engineering, much less to oppose physics and chemistry. But something additional, some thing more important is needed. What is it? 

There is only one philosophy that can really unify education and life. That philosophy is the philosophy of Christian theism. What is needed is an educational system based on the sovereignty of God, for in such a system man as well as chemistry will be given his proper place, neither too high nor too low. In such a system there will be a chief end of man to unify, and to serve as a criterion for, all his activities. What is needed therefore is a philosophy consonant with the greatest creed of Christendom, the Westminster Confession of Faith. In such a system, God, as well as man, will have his proper place. This alone will make education successful; for the social, moral, political, and economic disintegration of a civilization is nothing other than the symptom and result of a religious breakdown. The abominations of war, pestilence, and economic collapse are punishment for the crime, better, the sin, of forgetting God.

The Myth of Neutrality 

This seems to be the commonly held opinion about the decisions of the United States Supreme Court banning prayer and Bible reading from public education. Prayer is definitely a religious activity, and the State must not support any kind of religion. Let arithmetic be taught and religion ignored. Now, there is one good point at least in the Court’s decision. The case originated in a school system whose officials had written out a prayer and had required the teachers to pray that prayer. The school officials had supposed their prayer to be innocuous and satisfactory to all religions that prayed at all. It was a “nonsectarian” prayer. Since the decision, various amendments to the Constitution have been proposed that would permit nonsectarian prayer. Presumably this would mean a prayer composed by the school board and imposed by them on the teachers. Insofar as this was and is the case, a Christian must view the Court’s decision with favor. For, in the first place, it forces the teacher to make a prayer with which she disagrees, either because she is irreligious and does not want to pray at all—and compliance makes her a hypocrite, or because she is religious and sees that this nonsectarian prayer is not neutral, but anti-Christian. 

There is no neutral ground between the proposition that God created the world out of nothing and the proposition that the universe is an eternal self-existing entity. But though objectors may admit that there is here a philosophic incompatibility, they may at the same time hold that philosophy is so remote from the practical business of teaching children that any concern over anti-religious influence is purely academic. Even the optimism or the pessimism of the teacher does not affect the contents of arithmetic. Philosophically, neutrality is impossible, they grant; but educationally neutrality is a fact. 

The reason these nonsectarian prayers are anti-Christian can very clearly be stated. The Bible teaches that all prayer to God must be based on the merits of Jesus Christ. No one can come to the Father but by Christ. There is no other name by which we can be saved. Hence to pray without including Christ in the prayer is an offense against God. It is far better to have no prayer at all in school than such a nonsectarian prayer. The use of the word sectarian or nonsectarian is itself an offense and insult. Sect has always had a pejorative sense, and to stigmatize a Christian prayer as sectarian is not an exercise in neutrality.

It might seem then that the Supreme Court has maintained neutrality by its prohibition of prayer in the schools, and that only those who want prayer are anti-Christian. Of course, also, any who do not want prayer are anti-Christian; and it was quite a feat for the Court to satisfy devout Christians and loudmouthed atheists by the same decision. But whether the decision and its results can satisfy the Christian, and whether the schools are neutral—now that the school board theologians can no longer impose their prayers—still requires a little more discussion.

That neutrality is impossible becomes clearer and clearer as the system of Christian theism is further understood. Mention has already been made of the fact that Christianity is not to be identified with and restricted to a bare belief in God. For example, Christianity has a theory of evil; it differs from the humanistic theory; and therefore a secular school cannot adopt the same policies a Christian school adopts in dealing with recalcitrant pupils.

That there are recalcitrant pupils hardly needs to be said. But perhaps it does need to be said to those who conveniently forget what is going on. In addition to the material recounted in chapter one, there was the case of subversive, obscene, Black Panther literature sold to high school students in Indianapolis in 1969 with the approval of at least some of the teachers. But it is illegal for the Gideons to distribute New Testaments on school property. In the first two weeks of the 1969-70 school session, fifty robberies and beatings, including stabbings, were reported to the Indianapolis police. The police believed that they were less than half the crimes committed because children who are victimized are often afraid to report the attack for fear of reprisals. Some parents refuse to send their children to school in order to save them from violence at school. In one of the affluent Indianapolis high schools it is estimated that fifty percent of the pupils are drug addicts. Not all heroin addicts, to be sure; but on their way by means of glue, goofballs, LSD, and similar drugs.

These evil conditions have been encouraged by the liberal, humanistic policy of dealing with lesser forms of student misconduct. Liberalism has ridiculed the Christian notion of punishment. From babyhood children must be spoiled, not spanked, or in any way repressed. As early as 1922, John Dewey in Human Nature and Conduct (Part II, Section 2) encouraged youth to rebel against parental discipline. Parents have tamed “the delightful originality of the child”; they instill in him moral habits; and the result is a mass of “irrationalities” and “infantilisms.” When Dewey’s philosophy is translated into the penal code, with its emphasis on rehabilitation (for the criminal is sick, not wicked; and the community is guilty, not the criminal), twenty thousand people commit murder in a single year in the United States, and not one of them is executed. The following year, naturally, more people commit murder.

Neither John Dewey, nor the liberal penologists, nor the public schools are to be blamed for the origin of these crimes. Liberal theologians and liberal educators are to be blamed for failing to repress evil. The public schools deserve ridicule when they claim to be the saviors of democracy. By their permissiveness they have encouraged arson, drug addiction, and sexual immorality. Even in strictly curricular affairs their permissiveness and their extension of the concept of democracy beyond its proper political meaning often have resulted in the attempt to make all pupils equal by reducing requirements to the minimum so every- body can pass. In such schools, more often in metropolitan areas, a student must not flunk; he must be promoted. In high schools that have come under the present writer’s observation, some juniors (no doubt seniors, too, but the following examples are restricted to personal knowledge) can not read fourth-grade material; in a botany lab a student could not read the instruction sheet, and a twenty-year-old boy “graduated” without being able to read—well, without being able to read two paragraphs of anything. This sort of democracy, this permissiveness, these liberal policies encourage and augment evil; but they do not initiate evil. Evil is initiated in what John Dewey calls the delightful originality of the child. 

The present argument aims to show that a school system cannot operate as a neutral between the liberal and the Christian position. A school system must have some policy for delinquent children, or for those who begin to cause trouble, and this policy cannot be both left and right. It cannot be both Christian and humanistic; and there is no middle, neutral ground. The two philosophies and their educational implications differ on what to do, on what evil is, and on how it originates. Something has been said of the prevailing views of public educators; now it is required to show that Christianity has a totally different view of evil and totally different policies for combating it.

The Government Schools 

The early American colleges were distinctly Christian institutions. But the public school system, unlike the colleges, was not so inspired. On the other hand, the public schools were not intended to be irreligious. In the readers of our grandparents’ time, God and Jesus Christ were mentioned. Today no such references can be found in the books of the public schools. The reason is not hard to find. The public schools were founded with the idea of not favoring one religion above another, and the result is that they now favor no religion at all. They are completely secularized.

Originally the public schools, while not supposed to favor one Christian denomination above another, were not intended to attack Christianity. The idea was that they should be neutral. And because the majority of Protestants believed the promises of the schoolmen that they would not attack religion, the Protestants did not found primary schools as the Romanists did. Now it is clear that the Romanists adopted the wiser course of action because the promises of the schoolmen were soon to be broken.

Today Christianity is attacked all through the public school system. Reports from parents say that the evolutionary denial of the creation of the world by God is taught to the children of the second grade. How can a child of seven or eight stand up against an organized attack of the theistic worldview? How can parents protect their children? The public school makes no pretense of being neutral in religious matters, and when a parent here or there protests, he is promptly ridiculed and squelched. The notion of religious liberty, or even of the toleration of Christianity—that is, the original claim to neutrality—is not a part of the schoolmen’s mental equipment.

Mention has already been made of the exclusion of Bible reading from the public schools. The result has been a generation of children who are handicapped in the English language and literature. It is an incontrovertible fact that the English Bible has had a greater influence on our language, our literature, our civilization, our morals, than any other book. The children who are deprived of the Bible are culturally deprived, as well as religiously deprived. Someone has well said that knowledge of the Bible without a college education is of more value than a college education without knowledge of the Bible. In view of this fact, the prohibition of Bible reading is acutely significant of the hatred the public schools, and a large section of our society, have for Christianity. Books attacking Christianity are not illegal. Teachers can deny God, creation, and providence; but the law forbids them to recommend Christianity.

Since the cultural deprivation of this policy is so obvious, some of the educators want to teach the Bible as literature. This reintroduction of the Bible into the schools might also allay some of the criticism. It may turn out, however, that the Bible as literature will be worse than no Bible at all. Will the Bible be taught as divine literature or as human literature—mere literature, and not revelation? In one school where this was tried, the teacher required the pupils to write a paper. She was very flexible in her requirement: Each student could choose any part of the Bible for his subject. One little girl asked if she might write on Isaiah. The teacher asked, Do you mean first Isaiah or second Isaiah? Thus the teaching of the Bible as literature becomes an attack on its veracity. It will be used; it is being used, to undermine Christianity.

When public schools first became popular, the Protestants generally were deceived by the specious promises of the public school people. They thought that if they maintained Christian colleges, the primary schools could be entrusted to the state. But not all the Protestants were deceived by these false promises not to attack Christianity. The Lutheran Church and the Christian Reformed people early established primary schools for their children. They believed that the influence of the Christian home and the preaching of the Christian church should be strengthened by a Christian school system. But both the Lutherans and the Christian Reformed, with their European background, have remained somewhat closed societies as it were; and unfortunately they have exercised little influence, in this respect at least, on the rest of American Protestantism. There was one man, however, among the English-speaking American churches who saw the implication of the public school system; he warned of what was to follow, but his warning went unheeded. It is interesting, sadly interesting, to read his warning today, now that ninety years have proved him to be right. For it was in lectures given prior to 1890 that A. A. Hodge made the predictions now to be quoted.

In his Popular Lectures on Theological Themes, page 283, he wrote:

A comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social, and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen. 

Two pages before, he had written:

It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the State has the right of excluding from the public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes most must give way to him that believes least, and then he that believes least must give way to him that believes absolutely nothing, no matter in how small a minority the atheists or agnostics may be. It is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country, the United States system of national popular education will be the most efficient and wide instrument for the propagation of Atheism which the world has ever seen.

What A. A. Hodge did not see, at least what he did not explicitly say, is that although the irreligious have seized the right to exclude Christianity, the Christians are denied the right to exclude attacks on Christianity. There is no neutrality.

Obviously the schools are not Christian. Just as obviously they are not neutral. The Scriptures say that the fear of the Lord is the chief part of knowledge; but the schools, by omitting all reference to God, give the pupils the notion that knowledge can be had apart from God. They teach in effect that God has no control of history, that there is no plan of events that God is working out, that God does not foreordain whatsoever comes to pass. Aside from definite anti-Christian instruction to be discussed later, the public schools are not, never were, can never be, neutral. Neutrality is impossible. Let one ask what neutrality can possibly mean when God is involved. How does God judge the school system, which says to him, “O God, we neither deny nor assert thy existence; and O God, we neither obey nor disobey thy commandments; we are strictly neutral.” Let no one fail to see the point: The school system that ignores God teaches its pupils to ignore God; and this is not neutrality. It is the worst form of antagonism, for it judges God to be unimportant and irrelevant in human affairs. This is atheism.

Christian Education 

The curriculum and the administration of Christian education must be controlled by the Christian view of man. Like the plant, man is a living being, he needs food, he reproduces; but the nature of peculiarity of man is not found in so wide a genus. Like the animals, he has sensations and visual images; but if this were all, he would be merely another animal. Education supposedly deals with man as man; so-called physical education deals with man as a brute. What man is and what education is are questions to be answered by appraising the different levels of human activity. Keen sensation does not mark an educated man, for savages often have keener sensation than the well educated. Carpentry and plumbing are distinctly human activities beyond all animal possibility, and factually beyond the savage; and yet these two useful and honorable trades are not an education. Music and art rank higher than carpentry and plumbing; colloquially we speak of a musical education, but strictly music and art require training. All these are different levels of activity—all honorable but not all equal. Some men are born capable of one but not of the other. The Lord did not berate the man to whom he gave one talent for not being able to earn five; he condemned him for not using the one he had. However there is no denying the fact that it is better to have five. God does not require the unskilled laborer to write the critique of all future metaphysics nor to finish Schubert’s symphony; but I. Q. 150 contains greater possibilities than I. Q. 85.

All phases of life should glorify God, and if a man is a carpenter or a plumber, he should and can glorify God by his trade as well as a student or professor. To serve God acceptably, one does not need to be a monk; neither does he need to be a scholar. God has given some men five talents, some two, and some one. He has given scholastic aptitude to some and to others mechanical ability. What is required is that each should use faithfully what he has received.

In view of this it cannot be said that education is in all respects democratic. In politics, representative democratic government amenable to the will of the people is decidedly preferable to irresponsible totalitarianism and arrogant bureaucracy. All men are created equal—in the sense that political justice should be impartially administered. But economic and mental equality never have existed and never will. The economic handicaps can be equalized to a degree by private aid through scholarships. But there is no cure for mental inequalities. Education, like art, can never be democratic; both are inherently aristocratic. Some students simply cannot learn. Try as they may, they cannot grasp the significance of the material. And instead of benefiting by a college education, their spirit and self-respect may be ruined. As plumbers they could serve a useful purpose, and if they recognize that God is glorified in honest plumbing, they can walk among men with Christian dignity.

A word about art too. Surely a great artist is superior to a great coal miner. Rembrandt’s Night Watch is indescribably impressive. Rembrandt knew how to paint. But I am not aware that he knew art. Beethoven knew how to write music, but I doubt that he understood music. Artistic ability is one thing—a precious gift from God. The intellectual understanding of art, of its function in society, of its relation to religion and morality, is another thing—a still more precious gift from God. The latter is a subject of education. The former is skill.

Christianity, however, is intellectualistic. God is truth, and truth is immutable. The humanists, of course, oppose any theistic conception of truth. Immersed in the flux of pragmatism, guided by Nietzsche, James, and Dewey, they hold that truth changes, moral values change, and the only fixed truth is that there is no fixed truth. What works is “true.” Skill and success make “truth.” Because there is no final truth in humanism, the humanist cannot consistently give adequate recognition to the intellect. If he praises intellectual endowments, he means only the vocational skill to get what you want.

Yet secular humanism is not the only, nor even the most vociferous opponent of intellectualism. If Nietzsche, James, and Dewey have their disciples, including the existentialists, Kierkegaard, with Schleiermacher’s emphasis on emotion, is an even worse enemy of truth. So it happens that large numbers of religious people despise the intellect and exalt the emotions. Brunner says that God speaks falsehoods, that man should believe contradictions, and that God and the intellect are mutually exclusive.

Man the Image of God

We note for one thing that Christ is the image of God (Hebrews 1:3), and that he is the Logos and Wisdom of God. We note too that Adam was given dominion over nature. These two points, seemingly unrelated, suggest that the image of God is Logic or rationality. Adam was superior to the animals because he was a rational and not merely a sensory creation. The image of God therefore is reason.

The image must be reason because God is truth, and fellowship with him—a most important purpose in creation—requires thinking and understanding. Without reason man would doubtless glorify God, as do the stars, stones, and animals, but he could not enjoy him forever. Even if in God’s providence animals survive death and adorn the future world, they cannot have what the Scripture calls eternal life because eternal life is to know the only true God, and knowledge is an exercise of the mind or reason. Without reason there can be no morality or righteousness: These too require thought. Lacking these, animals are neither righteous nor sinful.

The identification of the image as reason explains or is supported by a puzzling remark in John 1:9, “It was the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” How can Christ, in whom is the life that is the light of men, be the light of every man, when the Scriptures teach that some men are lost in eternal darkness? This puzzle arises from interpreting light in exclusively redemptive terms. If one thinks also in terms of creation, the Logos or Rationality of God, who just above was said to have created all things without a single exception, can be seen as having created man with the light of logic as his distinctive human characteristic.

For such reasons as these, the fall and its effects, which have so puzzled some theologians as they studied the doc trine of the image, are most easily understood by identifying the image with man’s mind.

Since moral judgments are a species of judgment, subsumed under general intellectual activity, one result of the fall is the occurrence of incorrect evaluations by means of erroneous thinking. Adam thought, incorrectly, that it would be better to join Eve in her sin than to obey God and be separated from her. So he ate the forbidden fruit. The external act followed upon the thought. “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts.” Note that in the Bible the term heart usually designates the intellect, and only once in ten times the emotions: It is the heart that thinks. Sin thus interferes with our thinking. It does not, however, prevent us from thinking. Sin does not eradicate or annihilate the image. It causes a malfunction, but man still remains man.

The Bible stresses the malfunctioning of the mind in obviously moral affairs because of their importance. But sin extends its depraving influence into affairs not usually regarded as matters of morality. Arithmetic, for example. One need not suppose that Adam and Eve understood calculus, but they surely counted to ten. Whatever arithmetic they did, they did correctly. But sin causes a failure in thinking, with the result that we now make mistakes in simple addition. Such mistakes are pedantically called the “noetic” effects of sin. But moral errors are equally noetic. When men became vain in their imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkened; when they professed to be wise, but became fools; when God gave them over to a reprobate mind—their sin was first of all a noetic, intellectual, mental malfunction.

Regeneration and the process of sanctification reverse the sinful direction of the malfunctioning: The person is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. First the more obvious, the grosser sins, are suppressed because the new man begins to think and evaluate in conformity with God’s precepts. Second and third, the new man advances to restrain the more subtle, the more secret, the more pervasive sins that have made his heart deceitful above measure. Errors in arithmetic may seem trivial in comparison, but these, too, are effects of sin; and salvation will improve a man’s thinking in all matters.

The identification of the image as reason or intellect thus preserves the unity of man’s person and saves theologians from splitting the image into schizophrenic parts. It also accords with all that the Scripture says about sin and salvation.

Secular opposition to the image of God in man can be based only on a general nontheistic philosophy. Evolution views man as a natural development from the neutron and proton, through atoms, to plants, to the lower animals, until perhaps a number of human beings emerged in Africa, Asia, and the East Indies. Evolution can hardly assert the unity of the human race, for several individuals of subhuman species may have more or less simultaneously produced the same variation.

This nontheistic, naturalistic view is difficult to accept because it implies that the mind, too (as well as the body) is an evolutionary product rather than a divine image. Instead of using eternal principles of logic, the mind operates with the practical results of biological adaptation. Concepts and propositions neither reach the truth nor even aim at it. Our equipment has evolved through a struggle to survive. Reason is simply the human method of handling things. It is a simplifying and therefore falsifying device. There is no evidence that our categories correspond to reality. Even if they did, a most unlikely accident, no one could know it; for to know that the laws of logic are adequate to the existent real, it is requisite to observe the real prior to using the laws. But if this ever happened with subhuman organisms, it never happens with the present species man. If now the intellect is naturally produced, different types of intellect could equally well be produced by slightly different evolutionary processes. Maybe such minds have been produced, but are now extinct like the dinosaurs and dodos. This means, however, that the concepts or intuitions of space and time—the law of contradiction, the rules of inference—are not fixed and universal criteria of truth, but that other races thought in other terms. Perhaps future races will also think in different terms. John Dewey insisted that logic has already changed and will continue to change. If now this be the case, our traditional logic is but a passing evolutionary moment; our theories—dependent on this logic—are temporary reactions, parochial social habits, and Freudian rationalizations; and therefore the evolutionary theory, produced by these biological urges, cannot be true.

The difference between naturalism and theism—between the latest scientific opinions on evolution and creation; between the Freudian animal and the image of God; between belief in God and atheism—is based on their two different epistemologies. Naturalism professes to learn by observation and analysis of experience; the theistic view depends on Biblical revelation. No amount of observation and analysis can prove the theistic position. Of course, no amount of observation and analysis can prove evolution or any other theory. The secular philosophies all result in total skepticism. In contrast, theism bases its knowledge on divinely revealed propositions. They may not give us all truth; they may even give us very little truth; but there is no truth at all otherwise. So much for the secular alternative.

Therefore the Christian evaluation of subjects in the curriculum and of pupils or students in school is rational and intellectualistic, in opposition to the emotionalism and anti-intellectualism of the present age.

The object of education is truth; the transmission of truth to the younger pupils and the discovery of new truth by more advanced students. The aim of education, at least the aim of the purest and best education, is intellectual understanding.

The Subversion of Christianity

Editor’s note: Some people cannot or will not admit that the government schools are anti-Christian. Unless the schools vociferously oppose Christianity (as they usually do), they are regarded as harmless. But frontal attacks on Christianity are not the only way of destroying it. Subtle subversion is used as well, as Clark illustrates in this essay.

Scott, Foresman and Company, publishers of an excellent line of grade school textbooks, has one called Our World and How We Use It, by Campbell, Sears, Quillen, Hanna. On page 97, in a chapter explaining the domestication and use of animals, there is a section entitled, Ideas about God.

You have seen how many of our ideas about property, about working together, and about war have come from these herdsmen of long ago. The herdsmen had many other ideas, too.

The herdsman knew about the stars, because he had learned to read the sky as we read calendars. The sun was his clock by day, and the moon and stars told him the time at night. The night skies are very clear and the stars are bright in the dry climate of the grasslands and in the desert country. 

The herdsman watched the seasons come and go. He knew about times of plenty and about times of famine, too. He saw his animals born, grow, and die. He saw the head of the tribe punish his own children and his animals if they did not obey him, and reward them if they did right. Herdsmen had time to think about many, many things as they tended their animals. 

And so the herdsman came to know that there was a great God that took care of the world and everything in it, just as he himself took care of his own flocks and family. He taught his children to worship this God and to obey Him. 

The herdsman also knew that he had to protect his own animals and his family and his servants and workers. Many times he must have thought that the world would be a better place if there were no wild beasts or unfriendly people. And he came to believe that there must be something bad, something evil, which worked against God, just as wolves and bad men and famine worked against him. This evil thing he called Satan. 

Many of the thoughts of the herdsmen were made into songs. You can read some of them in the Bible, in the Psalms of David, the shepherd who became a king.  

Confessedly the aim of the section is to teach the pupils about God. Therefore it is a matter of religion; and religion, whether preached in a pulpit or taught in a primary grade, cannot be a neutral matter. To discover whether this textbook favors Christianity or opposes it, let us list the five chief points it teaches. It teaches first that the herdsmen discovered God or got ideas about God by thinking as they tended their animals; second, that they discovered God cared for them; third, that they taught their children to worship and obey God; fourth, that they learned, by reflection always, that there is a Devil; and fifth, that the Psalms of David are a result of this process.

Since this is the teaching of a textbook for the fourth grade, it may be deemed unfair to offer profound, philosophical criticism. And yet even pupils in the fourth grade can be told a few simple, though profound, philosophical principles. The section as written produces the impression that learning of God is a purely empirical process. No reference is made to what a philosopher would call the a priori equipment of learning. Now, Kant’s terminology is not for children, but even children can understand when they are told that all men are born with the idea of God. They may not know the terms a priori and innate, but they can understand as well as they can understand anything else that men are so made as to think of God spontaneously: They are born that way. However, no particular stress will be laid on the argument that the book teaches a non-Christian empiricism.

But stress, great stress, is to be laid on the omission of all reference to revelation. A true Christian, if asked how he has learned of God, will answer immediately, “through the Bible, God’s word.” When a person replies, “by experience and reflection,” it is instantly clear that that person is not a Christian. 

In the second place, the textbook teaches that the herdsmen knew God cared for them because they cared for their flocks. What sort of argument is this? The herdsmen take care of their flocks in order to shear them, and eat them. Does such reflection lead to an ultimate trust in God? 

Then third, the herdsmen taught their children to worship and obey God. This raises two questions. First, if there is no revelation, where do the herdsmen find the commands God requires us to obey? The Scripture speaks of the law of God as written on the hearts of men; it teaches that man was made in God’s image and has an innate knowledge that right is different from wrong and that God punishes wrong. But the Scripture also teaches that man suppresses this knowledge by his wickedness, that he does not wish to retain God in his knowledge, and that God has given him over to a reprobate mind. Obviously the fourth-grade text book and Christianity do not agree. And the second question is still more to the point: How can the herdsmen teach their children to worship God? The Scripture not only says that no one, apart from the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, seeks after God and that there is none that doeth good, no, not one; the Scripture also teaches that no one comes to the Father except by Jesus Christ. And this is as true of Abraham of old as it is of men today. Jesus said, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad.” The textbook gives no hint of this necessary prerequisite of worship. It teaches rather that one can obey and worship God without any reference to Jesus Christ.

The fourth point does not require any additional criticism, but the fifth point is the climax. Here it is stated that the Psalms of David are the products of purely human reflection. In direct antagonism to the Christian view, the textbook reduces the Bible to the level of the philosophically unjustifiable thoughts of a nomad.

David wrote, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” Is this a human fancy or a divine promise? David wrote:

The kings of the earth set themselves…against the Lord and against his Anointed…. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision…. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion…. The Lord hath said unto me, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee…. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.” 

What is this? Nonsense? Or is it the voice of the Mighty God and Terrible? 

The textbook from which the quotation was taken is pedagogically and mechanically excellent; it displays all the marks of technical competence. The inclusion of the section quoted therefore cannot be attributed to ignorance. It was deliberately planned. For these reasons the only possible conclusion is that the book and the educators behind it are definitely aiming to destroy the Christian religion.

1. Glue可能为胶毒，胶毒就是强力胶，一种有机溶剂，易挥发。强力胶中主要溶剂为甲苯。长期吸食会导致心律不整、心脏衰竭等症状，严重还可导致死亡。也可能是“嗅胶”（Glue Sniffing）。 Glue Sniffing就是吸入致幻气体 ↩︎
2. 将兴奋剂及鸦片类药物混合而成被称为“speedballs”或“goofballs”的新型药物。 ↩︎
3. 译者注：大多数保守的圣经学者都同意以赛亚是这本书的唯一作者，这本书以他的名字命名。然而，有些自由派学者对任何指向圣经是超自然默示的事物，均持怀疑态度。事实上，他们甚至将这些书中的预言，重新确定为事件发生之后，来解释这些书中预言的应验！多个以赛亚书的理论，正是那些想要质疑圣经是上帝所默示的话语的人，所持怀疑态度的一个例子。（更多阅读：张逸萍：以赛亚书是由两个以赛亚写的？） ↩︎
4. Archibald Alexander Hodge 阿奇博尔德·亚历山大·贺智（1823 年 7 月 18 日 – 1886 年 11 月 12 日）是美国长老会牧师，1878 年至 1886 年间担任普林斯顿神学院校长。贺智博士（小）和他的父亲查理士贺智博士都被认为是美国最杰出的神学家。 ↩︎
5. 杰罗姆·布鲁纳（Jerome S. Bruner，1915年10月1日—2016年6月5日），美国心理学家，他的贡献是教育心理学中的认知学习理论。 ↩︎
6. 渡渡鸟（学名：Raphus cucullatus）又称毛里求斯愚鸠、愚鸠、孤鸽，是已灭绝的渡渡鸟属的唯一物种，属鸽形目鸠鸽科 ↩︎
7. Scott, Foresman and Company, Our World and How We Use It, by Campbell, Sears, Quillen, Hanna. ↩︎
8. 耶和华对我主说：你坐在我的右边，等我使你仇敌作你的脚凳。(诗篇 110:1 和合本) ↩︎
9. 世上的君王一齐起来，臣宰一同商议，要敌挡耶和华并他的受膏者，(诗篇 2:2 和合本) ↩︎
10. 那坐在天上的必发笑；主必嗤笑他们。(诗篇 2:4 和合本) ↩︎
11. 说：我已经立我的君在锡安－我的圣山上了。(诗篇 2:6 和合本) ↩︎
12. 受膏者说：我要传圣旨。耶和华曾对我说：你是我的儿子，我今日生你。(诗篇 2:7 和合本) ↩︎
13. 当以嘴亲子，恐怕他发怒，你们便在道中灭亡，因为他的怒气快要发作。凡投靠他的，都是有福的。(诗篇 2:12 和合本) ↩︎