Which of the Below Correctly Indentifies the Liberal Arts as Taught in the Monasteries

The patron saint of Ireland is rarely credited with what was perhaps his greatest accomplishment.

past Gary David Stratton

"I am driven by the zeal of God, Christ's truth has roused me. I speak out besides for love of my neighbors who are my only sons; for them I gave up my dwelling country, my parents and even pushing my own life to the brink of death. If I have any worth, it is to live my life for God so as to teach these peoples; even though some of them still look downwards on me."

–Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick is credited with numerous extraordinary feats, both legendary and mythical. In fact, the myth and the man are so intertwined, it is frequently difficult to tell fact from fiction. Can y'all name which of the following common behavior about the patron saint of Republic of ireland are true and which are myths?

i) Patrick converted pagan Ireland to Christianity. Generally true: When Patrick arrived in Ireland in c. 433 there were few if any known churches. When he died c. 461 his followers (and other missionaries) had established equally many as 700 churches in more than 30 of Ireland'due south 150 tribes.

two) Patrick collection abroad every snake in Ireland. Myth: There were never many snakes in Ireland. However, God did use Patrick to perform many other miracles in order to demonstrate the ability of the Gospel over and confronting the nighttime powers of the druids.

3) Patrick and his followers saved the slap-up texts of Greco-Roman civilisation from distruction. True: As popularized by Thomas Cahill'due south best-selling How the Irish Saved Civilization , virtually of the texts of classical antiquity were preserved in Celtic missionary communities during continental Europe'southward darkest ages.

4) Patrick made the Shamrock a grand symbol of Ireland. Truthful: He used the three-leafed plant to teach the doctrine of the Trinity.

v) Patrick invented green beer. Myth: Merely Patrick probably would have liked it. Beer and mead were the favorite drinks of the Celts and many monasteries became known for their first-class breweries. (I'thou not sure what he would have made of green milkshakes.)

Patrick's Greatest Achievement: Missionally Focused Liberal Arts

Ironically, while these achievements, both real and imagined, have made Patrick i of the most pop saints of the modern world, he is rarely credited with what was arguably his greatest achievement: the reshaping of monasticism into a missionally-focused liberal arts pedagogy movement.

Permit me explain.

The liberal arts and the Christian faith were not immediately on the best speaking terms. While the classically trained apostle Paul treated philosophers in Athens as fellow truth-seekers (Acts 17), Greco-Roman philosophy and philosophers were as likely to be viewed as enemies of the gospel as anything else (1 Cor. 1:20; Col. 2:viii). Many early on Christian apologists used their liberal arts teaching to refute much of the Greek philosophy of their persecutors, the end result was often an entrenched anti-intellectualism in the church. Jean LeClercq notes that the general pattern for much of the era was that of "studies undertaken, and and then, not precisely scorned, but renounced and transcended for the kingdom of God."[3]

Following Constantine'southward reforms (313 CE) churches began to formalize the catechumenal schools (children and teens) they had founded nether persecution and established catechetical schools (higher age) often attached to Roman rhetorical schools. Perhaps the well-nigh notable of which was the catechetical school and religious community was established past Augustine of Hippo (354-430) in the early years of the 5th-century. Trained in the finest higher instruction of his day—he held i of the well-nigh prestigious academic positions in the Latin world as a professor of rhetoric for the imperial court at Milan—Augustine'south philosophy of teaching formed the foundation not only for post-Rome Christendom, but in Christian Education and Education of the Uninstructed for the ascension of catechetical schools and monasteries throughout the region. [4] Nigh chiefly, Augustine found at least a "mensurate of compatibility" between Christian and classical thought in training priests and teachers. He devoted several sections of Christian Instruction to the liberal arts and fifty-fifty began (simply never finished) a complete treatise devoted to the liberal arts.[5]

Saint Patrick's Missional Educational Revolution

As the church building grew in influence among the educated classes the commonalities of Greco-Roman liberal arts didactics, and Jesus' more Rabbinic college education model eventually led to the church subsuming the liberal arts academy into its larger project. Their common goals of truth-seeking and leadership training coupled with their nigh identical discipleship-based pedagogy helped at-home the one time stormy relationship. However, it was only after the autumn of the Rome that Greco-Roman culture and its techniques of teaching were "woven into the texture of Christian Didactics in the eye ages."[half dozen] And the leader who helped initiate this revolution is none other than Saint Patrick.

Patrick'southward mission to Ireland helped reshape monasticism into missionally-focused liberal arts educational activity movement. Patrick arrived in Ireland non as a solo missionary, but every bit the head of a liberal arts embracing religious community comprised of masters and disciples.  Their methodology was the highly relational educational approach they had inherited from the monastic movement, now turned to a missional purpose.

Patrick's relational approach to the life of the mind was crucial to his missional success. After making contact with the heads of various Celtic tribes, he sought permission to establish a community on the outskirts of the village. A grammer schoolhouse where Celts were taught to read was one of the start projects in each hamlet, instilling a dear of learning where Christianity and the liberal arts were each held in high accolade. The native Celts were then invited to accept function in discussions, classes, creative, and agronomical projects. Invariably this relational intellectualism slowly won the village to faith and a local Celtic church was established.[vii]

Civilization-making–contextualization, didactics, social justice, and the arts–were all fundamental elements of Patrick's mission. Patrick was very familiar with Celtic customs, and language due to his fourth dimension spent as a slave in Ireland in his youth. He sought to redeem Celtic art and worship rather than eradicate them. He created what nosotros at present know every bit the "Celtic Cross" by superimposing the sun—one time an object of worship—onto the traditional Roman cross, and recalibrated the apply of bonfires in pagan worship by using them to celebrate Easter. Not surprisingly, Patrick was one of the kickoff vocal opponents of slavery in church building history. The Irish slave merchandise was virtually abolished in Republic of ireland wherever Patrick established a church. Devastating social practices such as revenge murder and inter-tribal warfare were also greatly reduced.

Similar all monasticism, the life of the listen was eclipsed only by devotion to the life of the Spirit. Prayer played a particularly critical office in Celtic learning communities. The strength of Patrick's prayer life was legendary and his followers became known for their commitment to praying all 150 Psalms everyday. The strong Trinitarian elements of Saint Patrick'due south Shield/Breastplate Prayer attest to the rich theological life of the mind that undergirded the prayer life of the motility.[eight] Students learned to pray because prayer was "theology on fire" where they could experience the dear of God, and larn to come across God's love set loose in the world. (Encounter, With Prayer in the School of Christ.) Like Patrick, the graduates of his liberal arts learning customs were fearless in request the Spirit of God to arbitrate in the world in supernatural ways. And God answered those prayers with miracles, signs, and wonders far beyond anything the Druids could muster.

This Celtic synthesis Spirit, Mind, and Art in a communal arroyo to missions was nearly irresistible in its power.He was a true "two-handed warrior," who established a vast and vital community of Christ followers in a genuinely pagan nation in less than a single lifetime. His schools were so effective at training leaders that he was able to ordain over ane,000 Celtic priests. The Celtic spiritual awakening continued after Patrick's death as Spirit-empowered missional learning communities nether Colomba (521-597) and Augustine of Canterbury (597-604) converted well-nigh of Scotland and the English peoples. (Augustine was fifty-fifty warned by the Pope non to get too big a head due to all the miracles God had performed through him.)

In the process of winning the British Isles to organized religion, Patrick and his spiritual descendants succeeded in saving the liberal arts tradition every bit well. LeClercq chronicles how "during the long catamenia when invasions were devastating Europe, Latin culture was preserved primarily in England."  While invaders plundered and destroyed many classical texts, Celtic Christians gathered and preserved as many extant manuscripts from antiquity as they could.  And information technology was from England that missionaries carried Latin civilization, books and learning back to a large part of the Continent."[nine] God used Patrick to salvage the Irish gaelic and the Irish saved Western civilization.

Is information technology possible that Patrick's missional approach to Christian liberal arts education might aid salve the future of American civilization besides?

How Patrick'due south Missional Liberal Arts Education Might Save Culture …Once again!

Anyone post-obit the work of the National Report of Youth and Religion (NSYR) knows that we demand saving.While over three quarters of America's youth place their religious faith as "Christian," near none of them actually follow Christ in any meaningful way. Last nighttime I fell asleep reading Kenda Creasy Dean'south analysis of the NSYR data entitled Almost Christian: What the faith of our Teenagers is Telling the American Church[10]. I woke this morning time with a unmarried thought going through my head, "We're in trouble."

Indeed, if Dean is merely one-half right, so the Christian faith in American is in serious trouble. Building upon the previous NSYR publications of Christian Smith, Melissa Lundquist Denton,  Patricia Snell and others, Dean warns that:

"American young people are unwittingly being formed into an imposter faith that poses as Christianity, simply that in fact lacks the holy desire and missional clarity necessary for Christian discipleship…"[eleven]

What was so interesting to me in lite of Patrick's life is Dean's assessment that it is precisely this lack of "missional clarity" that is so devastating the next generation of American believers. The Moralistic Therapeutic Deism[12] that defines the faith of America's youth is "the unholy residue of a church that has lost its missional imagination."[13] One of her proposed solutions for rescuing genuine Christianity from its imposter faith is to recapture that imagination.

Patrick and the Christian liberal arts customs he founded were divers by their missional imagination. To Patrick, both the church and school existed to "live my life for God so as to teach these peoples." He was driven by the zeal of Christ and the love of neighbor to direct his life—his relationships, his study, his teaching, and his prayers—in such a manner every bit to make a difference in the world. Are we?

I would debate that for the Christian liberal arts Higher of the 21^st Century to be of any use to God and to the world we must recapture our missional imagination likewise. I exercise non mean by this "mission trips" (although such trips have their place), I mean "thinking missionally" nigh our mission as Christian colleges. Building upon the missiological thinking of Leslie Newbigin, Andrew F. Walls, Lamin Sanneh and gimmicky "missional church" advocates such as Alan Hirsch, Dean asserts: "The betoken of God's incarnation was mission, the sending of God-as-honey into creation… created the template for church's missional mode of life."[14] Genuinely Christian communities exist not for themselves, but for the world. Embracing God's mission to the world is the "litmus test" for determining whether a Christian is really a Christian and a community is actually Christian. [xv]

If colleges are genuine Christian learning communities then aren't nosotros bailiwick to this missional litmus test equally well? Patrick certainly thought so.

Thinking Missionally About College Education

How might we practise this? At the danger of losing the principle in the midst of flawed practices, permit me suggest 4 means that missional thinking might help transform our colleges into better earth-changing institutions and more than deeply transform our students in the procedure.

1) Think at present! Nearly all Christian colleges express their "mission argument" in future-oriented language concerning what our graduates will somewhen do someday. How odd this linguistic communication would have sounded to Patrick.

Patrick'southward relational intellectualism and liberal arts based apprenticeship-oriented pedagogy moved the "mission" of his educational community from the future to the present. Making a departure in the earth was something faculty and students did together every bit office and parcel of their shared educational experience. Without detracting from the preparatory nature of higher education nor giving style to knee-jerk activism that too frequently serves largely out of a sense of guilt or cocky-congratulation, one way to reenergize our schools and our over-entertained and profoundly bored students would be for kinesthesia to invite students into missional communities seeking to employ their expertise to make a difference in the world at present.

I like the fashion Gabe Lyons describes the hunger for the next generation of Christians to live out their calling beyond the walls of the church:

Brokenness exists within each channel of culture… We are called to find things that are broken and touch on them in some positive way… Put simply, the adjacent Christians recognize their responsibility not simply to build upwardly the church building simply also to build up gild to the glory of God. From genetic scientists to artists, businesspeople to educators, these Christians are letting their gifts flood the earth from the identify they feel called to work. They have a keen middle to sense what is missing, broken, or corrupted and are mettlesome plenty to reply.[16]

In other words, they need psychologists to assistance psychology students, philosophers to help philosophy students, economists to help economy students use their calling to missionally better the world at present.

2) Call up relationally! One of Kendra Dean's primary findings is the profound lack of adults willing to dig in and practice the messy work of helping students "translate" their faith from professed story to experienced story. Adults who will engage students in "catechetical conversations" that evoke what Walter Brueggeman calls a language of 'transformative imagination.'[17] Students rarely get to transformation solitary. "(T)heir faith is the legacy of communities that have invested time, energy, and love in them."[eighteen] If not the states, who? If non at present, when?

3) Think strategically! Business as usual will not cut it. If faculty, staff and executives are to lead students in the process of missional education then something has to change. For instance, schools might consider augmenting their stand-alone missions trips and/or service projects[xix] by creating positions that serve faculty in the development of service-learning components in their courses and/or designing missional opportunities based upon faculty passions and talents. Faculty senates could redefine faculty tenure and promotion policies in such a way that peer-reviewed scholarly writing is coupled with student-shared scholarly engagement in civilisation. College executives could release strategic resources (i.due east. funding) for visionary programming, conversations, and staffing.

4) Recollect big! Dean concludes her book with a note of hope. Students want to exist part of something bigger than they are, something that really makes a difference in the world.  The real problem "may only be that Christianity—or what passes for Christianity…—does non merit a primary commitment."[xx] A vision for preserving comfortable Christian subculture just isn't big plenty to capture the imagination of a awareness-craving, but meaning-starved generation.  They desire to change the earth. A culture of video-games and CGI activity movies has trained them to call back in merely 2 categories: "Get large or go dwelling house." Volition 21^st Century Christian higher education ascent to the claiming?

Patrick was over 45 years onetime, well past the life expectancy of his day, when he launched his mission to Ireland. His vision was enormous, perhaps even foolhardy. It was besides transformative. Patrick redirected the liberal arts learning communities of his solar day from their purely interior focused purpose to one that was truly missional.  In doing so he actually strengthened their spiritual vitality, and their intellectual firepower rather than diminishing it.

He also changed the world. If nosotros followed Patrick'southward instance of missional liberal arts, perhaps we could alter our world as well.

So, today whether you're drinking a light-green beer, throwing back a Shamrock shake, or merely wearing something green, thank God for Saint Patrick—one of the coolest Saints in history, and but maybe the future of missional Christian college education.

Next: Exercise America's Colleges (and Churches) Need 'Revival'? The Liberal Arts and the Great Enkindling

Part 5 in series: The Holy Spirit and the Liberal Arts: The Hereafter of 'Two Handed' Higher Education

Meet Too:

Shield'southward Up! Saint Patrick'south Amazing Prayer of Spiritual Warfare

The Holy Spirit and the Liberal Arts: The Future of 'Two Handed' Higher Education

The Greco-Roman Liberal Arts: Instruction with Friendship and Heart

Rabbinic Higher Education: The Life of the Heed and the Discussion of God

With Prayer in the Schoolhouse of Christ: The Liberal Arts and the Knowledge of God

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[1] A Letter to the Soldiers at Coroticus, in The Confession of Saint Patrick, John Skinner, Translator (New York: Doubleday, 1998), p. 2-3.

[2] Perhaps just St. Nicholas and St. Valentine rank college on the hipness chart.

[3] The honey of learning and the desire for God: A study of monastic culture, three^rd Edition (New York: Fordham Academy Printing, 2007), p. 12.

[4] J. Van Engen, Christianity and the University: The Medieval and Reformation Legacies. In J. Carpenter (Ed.), Making Higher Education Christian (Chiliad Rapids, MI: Christian University Press, 1987), p. 20.

[5] Cited in Alan Cobban, The medieval universities: their evolution and organization (London: Methuen & Co, 1975), p. ten.

[half-dozen] Ibid., p. 3.

[7] While somewhat simplistic and overstated, George Hunter's The Celtic Way of Evangelism is a highly inspirational account of Patrick'due south methodology.

[eight] Or at least the prayer tradition he established. It difficult to know for certain if Patrick actually wrote the prayer personally or if it grew out of the Celtic prayer customs.

[nine] The love of learning, p. 38.

[10] Oxford Printing, 2010.

[11] Italics mine, p. 6.

[13] Italics mine, p. 104.

[fourteen] Ibid., p. 91

[xv] Ibid, p. 90.  Dean notes that the missional "litmus test" argument was start proposed past Karl Barth in Church Dogmatics IV.3b (Edinborough: T&T Clark, 1962), 875.

[16] The side by side Christians: The good news well-nigh the end of Christian America (New York: Doubleday Faith, 2010), p. 120.

[17] Cited in Dean, p. 126.

[18] Almost Christian, p. 194.

[nineteen] Oft largely divorced from students' bookish experience and almost identical to programs offered past high school youth groups.

[twenty] Nearly Christian, p. 193.

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Source: https://garydavidstratton.com/2017/12/08/saint-patrick-and-the-liberal-arts-the-future-of-christian-higher-education/

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