Men, Carry Your Father

As a boy I lived for a period in Florida, the capital of retirement homes. As a result, for various reasons, we visited a few of these homes. They were nice. Like little vacation villages. Yet they were also tragic. This is where the most essential members of our society spent their most important years. 

We were living in Florida because my grandfather was dying of cancer, and we lived with him during his last days. He never lived in a retirement home, and died Christmas morning in his own bed, surrounded by family. What a gift to him, but what a greater gift to us. 

In book II of Vergil’s Aeneid, we encounter one of the most moving scenes in the epic story. Aeneas carries his father Anchises from the burning ramparts of Troy, while holding his son’s hand. In one image famously depicted by artists throughout the centuries, we see Aeneas preserving both the past and the future; his father, and his son. It’s easy to understand the need for the future, but even his father argued with Aeneas, telling him to “Make haste to save the poor remaining crew / And give this useless corpse a long adieu.” (Aeneid Book II.870). His father feared he would be a burden, and unneeded. But Aeneas needed Anchises. He didn’t need his strength, or even longevity. In fact, Anchises would die on the voyage. He needed his father for his wisdom, but more importantly, he needed what every father represents to his son: identity. To abandon his father, while alive, even if it made logical sense, would have symbolized an abandonment and death of his identity. 

Even after his death, we are reminded what his father represents when Aeneas goes into the underworld in book 6, and speaks to his father. There Anchises reminds Aeneas who he is, and what he is destined for. This is what fathers are for. 

Earthly fathers give their children a name, a household, and a lineage.

Our Heavenly Father also gives us His name in baptism, a household, and a lineage.

Our spiritual fathers have gifts to give us as well. 

The theologian Hughes Oliphant Old explored the concept of fathers in the faith this way: 

“It is an old custom to call John Chrysostom ‘our father among the saints.’ John Chrysostom, however, was celibate. Not one of us can claim him as our ancestor. What makes him then our father? Augustine had one son, who died at the age of twelve…How is it that we call such men Fathers? 

The answer is this: Chrysostom, Augustine, and Jerome have again and again engendered spiritual children, in one generation after another, in one culture after another…The Fathers were the seminal thinkers of Christian theology. If it were not for this ability of theirs to speak to the most devout and fertile of minds of every age and nation, they would have been forgotten long ago.” 
(Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship Reformed According to Scripture, 168.)

We need our fathers. Our earthly fathers by blood, our spiritual by faith, and our cultural fathers by inheritance. We need to carry them on our backs if our city is sacked. They are not dead weight, they are the treasure to retrieve from the flames. 

This Father’s Day, honor your earthly father, honor your Heavenly Father, and honor your spiritual and cultural fathers. This exhortation is embedding in our motto, “Inherit the humanities.” “To inherit” assumes the heritage is already yours and that it is a blessing to receive. 

Happy Fathers Day!

Daniel Foucachon, for all of us at Roman Roads Press

http://www.romanroadspress.com

The Very Strongest Bodies Commenced with Milk

“We are giving small instructions, while professing to educate an orator. But even studies have their infancy, and as the rearing of the very strongest bodies commenced with milk and the cradle, so he, who was to be the most eloquent of men, once uttered cries, tried to speak at first with a stuttering voice, and hesitated at the shapes of the letters. Nor, if it is impossible to learn a thing completely, is it therefore unnecessary to learn it at all.”

– Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory

Learn about Quintilian in Old Western Culture: The Romans

Kepler Education

Introducing Kepler

Kepler Education is a consortium of independent teachers, united by a vision for classical Christian education and on a single platform.

Learn how this unique approach to online classes offers a tailored education to your family as you go through jr. high and high school with your children.

See our current (and growing) number of class offerings and teachers at https://kepler.education

Children’s Church

A friend ran into this argument:

“Can you give biblical reasons for not having someone watch your ONE YEAR and 2-month-old child while you’re in church? Come on man. 14-months-old?? Can you tell me exactly what you think you are accomplishing by having a 14-month-old in church?”

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He responded simply with Bible references.

Have you not read?

“Call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants.” -Joel 2:15-16

“And Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” -Matthew 21:16

“Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” -Luke 18:15-17

“There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.” -Joshua 8:35

“Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.” -Deuteronomy 31:12-13

“Meanwhile all Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children.” -2 Chronicles 20:13

“While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women, and children, gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly.” -Ezra 10:1

“When our days there were ended, we departed and went on our journey, and they all, with wives and children, accompanied us until we were outside the city. And kneeling down on the beach, we prayed and said farewell to one another.” -Acts 21:5-6

Ephesians 6 assumes that children would be present at the reading of the letter to the congregation.

Children were present at Jesus’ preaching (Matt 14:21).

Keep your kids in Church! The Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. The elements of a service are didactic even if they don’t have full comprehension. What they will quickly gain is the knowledge that “these are my people, this is where I belong, this is the Body of Christ where I worship God.” It may take years for them to put that into words, but they understand it as surely as they understand that they belong at your dinner table. Have you ever tried removing a one-year-old from a dinner table full of older siblings?  They know to whom they belong. They have an incredible ability to discern the Body.

A Better Admissions Test: Raising the Standard for College Entrance Exams

a-better-admissions-testIt was a real privilege to contribute to A Better Admissions Test: Raising the Standard for College Entrance Exams by Classic Learning Initiatives! It was especially delightful when my search for a primary source brought me to the University of Idaho special collections, and the inaugural address of Frederick Kelley, President of the University of Idaho in 1928. Kelley, the original creator of the standardized exam in 1915, changed his views with age and wisdom, and spent the latter part of his career advocating for classical liberal arts.

My chapter (Chapter 1) gives a brief history of entrance exams in the United States, starting with an overview of the classical liberal arts, a needed foundation to understand the change brought about by standardized testing.

Robert Bortins of Classical Conversations said it best about this book: “A must read for anyone in education or admissions who is brave enough to admit that things aren’t quite right in higher education any more.”

English and the Latin Question

“We are all—more or less deliberately—students of English; we all recognize the value of accurately expressing our ideas and of exactly understanding the ideas of other. Now, though the notion has never dawned upon the large, good-humored, unenlightened public opinion which indirectly shapes our educational policies, to the serious student of English some acquaintance with Latin is not merely convenient, not merely valuable, but quite literally indispensable. At every onward step towards the mastery of his own language and literature he must use his Latin lamp if he has one, or stumble and go astray in the darkness if he has not. In this position the value of Latin is unique.”

—The Classical Weekly, Vol. V, No. 26. May 1912. Full column HERE (highly recommended!)

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Teaching to Tests

Quote

“If the unhappy day ever comes when teachers point their students toward these newer examinations, and the present weak and restricted procedures get a grip on education, then we may look for the inevitable distortion of education in the terms of tests.”

—Carl Brigham, creator of the SAT recanting his invention, and arguing against its advancement.
From The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, by Nicholas Lemann