Education for the Next Life

Basil the Great on Sacred Scholé

Psalm 46:10: Enjoy scholé, [leisurely consider, recognize] and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.¹

The Greek church father Basil the Great (330 AD - 379 AD) made an astonishing claim about the purpose of education. He said that “everything we do is by way of preparation for the other life”  by which he meant the next life. He goes on to say, “Whatever, therefore, contributes to that life, we say must be loved and pursued with all our strength; but what does not conduce to that must be passed over as of no account.”²

Later in his book, Basil writes, “It is for this eternity that I would exhort you to acquire travel supplies, leaving no stone unturned, as the proverb has it, wherever any benefit towards that end is likely to accrue to you.”

This claim is astonishing because nearly all education in America is oriented to this life, to job preparation and training, to getting a job, and to making money and acquiring the goods money can secure for us. Basil does think there is a place for practical training and earthly goods; but he thinks that education is oriented toward the “care of the soul” and training the “eye of the soul” and that practical training is something adjacent to and different from education. 

Imagine this: What if education had its primary and ultimate focus on eternity, on the next life? Would this be a blessing? Would such an education serve us well in 21st century America? Some will think that this kind of “heavenly” education cannot be of much “earthly” good. But this has not been the testimony or evidence of traditional, classical education. The most practically effective people have had heavenly orientation–you might say that those who have earnestly sought truth, goodness, and beauty have been the most transformative of–the world in which we live.

Yes, it is a paradox, but one that is very old and well known: Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you (Matt. 6). Meditate on the law day and night and you will become like a tree planted by a stream that bears fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither (Ps. 1). Chesterton says, “Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist.” 

Basil writing in the fourth century and Chesterton writing in the 20th century, notes the same paradoxical truth: by orienting to what is not practical, we become more practical than ever. Put another way, they argue for putting first things first, or properly ordering education according to what is true about human beings, God, and the cosmos he has created. Education should be ordered to the Creator, his creation, and to our nature as his creatures. Yes, we are to till the earth; but we were created to glorify and enjoy God forever, to enjoy his rest and even to celebrate it. 

If we get our priorities wrong, much can be lost. C. S. Lewis puts it this way: “every preference of a small good to a great, or partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice is made. Apparently the world is made that way… You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.”

So Basil reminds us that a Christian education is so radically oriented toward our life in Christ, that we see all education through that eternal destiny. He also notes that orienting our life is not without difficulty, for it is hard to orient oneself to eternity in the midst of so many distractions and temptations. Regarding this orientation he writes, “And because this is difficult and calls for toil, let us not on this account draw back, but recalling the words of him who urged that every man should choose the life which is in itself best, in the expectation that through habit it will prove agreeable, we should attempt the best things.”

The word used in the New Testament for this Christ-Life is zōē (ζωή) and is contrasted with biological life (βιος). The Scriptures proclaim that we belong to Christ, that his zōē life is already in us, our life is hid in Christ (Col. 3:3), that we will appear with Christ when he returns (Col. 3:4); that he is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), he comes to give us this life abundantly (John 10:10) which can never be snatched away (John 10:28). Therefore our education is oriented to Life, and this life is eternal–present with us now and coming in fullness soon. This life, therefore, will be our foundation and goal, our anchor and our hope (Heb. 6:19). 

It is this eternal viewpoint that informs education as restful and contemplative. Aristotle³ used the word scholé to describe undistracted time to study the things most worthwhile, usually in a beautiful place and with one’s friends. Basil transforms Aristotle’s scholé into a sacred schole that is wed to prayer and eternity. Such an orientation of soul will only increase the surprise when we learn that scholé is the root of our word school.⁴

Basil has noted that orienting our souls in this sacred schole is difficult. But he is following the Apostle Paul, who had to exhort the Colossians to an eternal disposition:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, seek those things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Much of the Christian life is a matter of living out what is the most true about us–that we have been raised with Christ and our life is now with him, that in fact our life is now him. Christian education must partake of this journey, for Christian education has as its supreme goal preparing for and living out eternal life. Therefore when Paul says “seek those things above” this is a goal for education. When he says “set your minds on things above” this too, students must learn. What Paul describes is a form of contemplation, and contemplation requires a focused, peaceful disposition and setting, which is to say, scholé. 

While there is much in Christian education that involves active learning (for love compels us to act and serve) there is also much that compels us to affirm, contemplate, pray, and celebrate. For Basil this means we should consider anything true, good, beautiful, and virtuous (from any source) as belonging to God, as a manifestation of Christ, the author of all that is good, true, and beautiful.

For Basil, the Greek writers before Christ (like Hesiod,  Homer, Plato, Aristotle), could be sources of the good–thought they should be read carefully with discrimination and Christian students should be careful not to “drink down poison with the honey.” But he believed (as did Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Boethius, Benedict, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, and Calvin) that there was good in these writers in harmony with the Scriptures. Basil claims essentially that all truth is God’s truth, and anything good is rooted in God who is good.   

So Basil urges careful, discriminating study, urging us to be like bees that visit not every flower, but only those flowers that are worthy of generating the honey they seek to make. But what Basil considers primary is the study of Scripture; in fact the study of Greek writers is for the purpose of preparing students for the deep study of Scripture which is the pure and vast treasury of the good, true, and beautiful. 

Speaking of the bee as our model, Basil writes:

It is therefore in accordance with the whole similitude of the bees that we should participate in the pagan literature. For these neither approach all flowers equally, nor in truth do they attempt to carry of tenure those upon whey they alight, but taking only so much of them as is suitable for their work, they suffer the rest to go untouched.

We have a phrase in English “busy as a bee” and indeed bees do appear to be busy. But Basil uses the simile to describe the discernment of the bee not its incessant activity. Elsewhere Basil makes it clear that contemplation or scholé is paramount:

What, then, shall we do? Someone may ask. What else, indeed, than devote ourselves to the care of our souls, keeping all our leisure (scholé) free from other things. 

Basil then exhorts students to privilege the care of their soul by “scorning the pleasures that arise through the senses, in not feasting the eyes on silly exhibitions of jugglers or on the sight of bodies which gives the spur to sensual pleasure, in not permitting licentious songs to enter through the ears and drench you souls.” Instead he encourages the listening to wholesome music which for his time was in the Doric mode. He goes on to warn against paying undue attention to the body, wealth, and popularity or reputation which he regards as contrary to “making sound reason [the] guide of life.”

 If Basil could see the way we use screens of all kinds, particularly the small ones we carry in our hands–well we know what he would say. We should devote ourselves and our students to the care of our souls, preserving scholé for the school of eternity.

1. Psalm 46:10 in the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) reads: Σχολάσατε [scholasate] καὶ γνῶτε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ θεός ὑψωθήσομαι ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν ὑψωθήσομαι ἐν τῇ γῇ.

2. All of my quotations from Basil come from his small book, To Young Men Studying Greek Literature, published by the Loeb Classical Library in Basil, Volume IV, 1934.

3. See Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and his Politics, Books VII and VIII.

4. Scholé is also the root word for the Latin schola, the Spanish escuela, the Italian scuola, the French école and the German schule.