Vision
I am becoming a saint. I will marry a woman who is becoming a saint. I will raise sons and daughters who live to be saints. I am building a curriculum and school to train all ages in the immortal wisdom of the Saints, to save as many souls as possible and to preserve the true civilization of man.
I desire your freedom to be free, to know the Trinitarian Logic, to live in Trinitarian Beauty, to choose with the Trinitarian Will. I give here freely what was freely given to me: a map to the life of growth in holiness. This is not mere classic liberal education. This is a new embodiment of the ancient Way for modern times. I am a unique personality, seeing the pattern of Being in myself, becoming the fullness of the archetypal Man, meeting the future in the present, assisting God in the maturation of His Body. This is my construction site where I am developing adult level open-source cross-disciplinary courses for public consumption: Trinity & Sanity. I am doing my part to rebuild Christian patriarchal society and restore Logos to the family; to rescue the many lost children of Light by all means necessary.
To rebuild the leadership capacity of men as first to sacrifice and fearless to act in the world
- Towards the elimination of all pleasures outside charity
- Sainthood through the embrace of civilizing labor; 'Husbands love your wives'
To rebuild space for the femininity of women to become receptive to God for the nurturing of all
- Towards becoming the sign of heaven and inspiration for men
- Sainthood through the support of good men; 'Wives be submissive to your husbands'
I desire your freedom to be free, to know the Trinitarian Logic, to live in Trinitarian Beauty, to choose with the Trinitarian Will. I give here freely what was freely given to me: a map to the life of growth in holiness. This is not mere classic liberal education. This is a new embodiment of the ancient Way for modern times. I am a unique personality, seeing the pattern of Being in myself, becoming the fullness of the archetypal Man, meeting the future in the present, assisting God in the maturation of His Body. This is my construction site where I am developing adult level open-source cross-disciplinary courses for public consumption: Trinity & Sanity. I am doing my part to rebuild Christian patriarchal society and restore Logos to the family; to rescue the many lost children of Light by all means necessary.
To rebuild the leadership capacity of men as first to sacrifice and fearless to act in the world
- Towards the elimination of all pleasures outside charity
- Sainthood through the embrace of civilizing labor; 'Husbands love your wives'
To rebuild space for the femininity of women to become receptive to God for the nurturing of all
- Towards becoming the sign of heaven and inspiration for men
- Sainthood through the support of good men; 'Wives be submissive to your husbands'
Synthesis
No soul is an island, and I am no exception. When I speak of myself, I speak of every person who has ever loved me and every person who I love. My life and theirs is part of the same story, and many of our experiences are shared. I am the product of my genetic potential, my evolving environment, and the choices I am making in response to both. I believe, with the conviction of experience, in the power of choice to mold reality, by working the clay I have been given. To be given anything proved to me a Giver. In Him I trust. In some ways I have been given wealth enough to move mountains, in other ways, I am as naked and poor as a refugee. For the good which I possess, I am entirely indebted to my family and friends; without them I would not know the face of Love. For the evil which lives in this world, I blame only myself and the devil. I choose to believe in the devil, because, only if the devil exists can I logically transfer my anger away from persons and onto the bad ideas which plague them. Few would deny the existence of bad ideas. With these legions, I wage war. My weapon is that charity which discerns between bone and marrow, dividing premises from propositions, propositions from conclusions, and conclusions from their physical manifestations. I choose the one premise which holds the most potential, and I choose to believe this premise is alive in me. He is the mediator of all paradoxes: the bridge between suffering and joy, truth and love, body and soul. To defend Him rationally and experientially is my only peace, and the single consistent focus of my life since 2004. I have yet to be let down by Him (as I define Him with the aid of the Catholic Church) though all my others passions have left me empty. Still, I welcome His assailants with genuine openness to new relationships and fresh corrections. The Truth does not defeat, but transforms me.
He is the Trinity of Love, He is God Incarnate, He is Jesus Christ.
Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying on your own behalf;
your testimony is not valid.” Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own
behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I
am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.
You judge by human standards. I judge no one."
- John 8:13-15
He is the Trinity of Love, He is God Incarnate, He is Jesus Christ.
Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying on your own behalf;
your testimony is not valid.” Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own
behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I
am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.
You judge by human standards. I judge no one."
- John 8:13-15
Mission & Philosophy
It has always seemed to me that life itself is a classroom. My experience is the rubric for my understanding. Learning is nothing less than a perpetual fascination with ‘being’ in its infinite emerging forms. A wonder which captivates intellect, emotions, and body together, parts dynamically united in the human spirit. The Greeks understood learning as an end in itself, that is, as a communion with the divine. I have, for as long as I can remember, (even as a former atheist!) implicitly believed this too. The role of truth stands forefront in my history. Elementary school played, for me, like a series of games. I reveled in the struggle to comprehend the living and eternal ideas. Until Middle school, there was no division between school and home, or public and private, life. This chasm, into which so many students are lost, opened only after a diagnosis of ‘ADHD’. Avoiding contentions about the etiology of this ‘disorder’, I bring it up only to recall the general moment where intellectual and social development diverged in my own life. Because of difficulties with typical classroom strictures (i.e. seats and walls), the education of my mind became isolated from the development of my body, emotions, and relationships. The latter facets of my person had to breath outside. I learned best through synthesizing the disciplines and integrating knowledge with action, but lacking these, my formation veered first in the direction of emotionalism to the neglect of reflection, and then, into rationalism to the neglect of physicality. In short, I was in need of a holistic pedagogy. Unfortunately, I found it only after having dropped out of high school, earning a GED and working manual labor for several years. All of the above brings me to the main thesis of my teaching philosophy: education is not the mere conveyance of bullet point facts; it is the facilitation of transformative personal encounters with the Lord God, and the development of particular human faculties for knowing and loving one’s neighbors. Research has shown that memory and passion are best served by connecting neural pathways. Conversely, the more compartmentalized an idea, or a function, or a community is, the more likely it is to be forgotten or abandoned. No force in history works toward this building of bridges more than the Catholic Church. To become fully human is to actualize one’s place in the Mystical Body of Christ, which is cosmic (scientific), historical (philosophical), and everlasting (theological). The practical need to specialize the workforce should not bypass the liberation of the spirit, lest labor degrade into slavery. Differentiated, personalistic, liberating education may well be the privilege of the bourgeoisie in modern America, nevertheless, it is the pedagogy of the Church and should be restored by our example and initiative. The Catholic teaching that parents are the primary educators of children is the archetypal analogy for the teaching endeavor in all its other forms. To unite these precious ‘ends’ (persons) in a single end (God) is a paradox that can be realized only by means of divine assistance. To mediate this sacramental union is the responsibility of the teacher, who like Christ, witnesses to trinitarian communities of thought and practice. There is no more humbling work than attempting to stand in proxy of the Father, but this is my philosophy of education nonetheless. The particulars will require a context.
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Life is a struggle between extremes. Creation oscillates between being and nothingness. Human persons swing between love and hate. The ancient concept of Yin and Yang symbolizes this well, and its pervasiveness in human culture testifies to its truth. People convert and revert, remember and forget, find and let go, waxing and waning within the dynamic whole of life. However, the absolutizing of dichotomy manifestly leads to indifferentism. If all opposites are equal, then why ever choose? My own Catholic faith hinges on this very practical need to choose, and to choose consistently. The Holy Trinity, as a philosophical premise, is a formulaic description of reality where creative indeterminacy and personal definition cohabit one’s logic, guiding one’s decisions by this model of resurrecting Love. To understand the Trinity, one has to understand the Incarnation. The Incarnation, the sacrifice of God into the world, is the third term of the pattern and the key that explains the human condition. Like the Hegelian dialectic, from every thesis (yin) and antithesis (yang) there always emerges a synthesis. Yin and Yang is a closed circle, but the Trinity is a spiral. A spiral can synthesize new truths, while the circle is a finished story. Either history is a deterministic chain, random events, or self-generating diversity. The eruption of categories occurs rarely, but unforgettably and irreversibly. Chemical collisions somehow transformed into organic life. Neural interactions emanated into self-aware persons. There is a paradox but not a contradiction at the core of human experience. The logical contradiction is only avoided by the third terms of the dialectics. The third term is always a faith premise. We know that absolute concepts exist theoretically, as we know that contingent persons exist empirically, but to understand how the two realms are communicating requires a faith. You might have faith that material processes create the illusion of essences, you might have faith that matter is a spiritual construct, or you might have faith in a living personal-creative synthesis. This chosen faith will become the hermeneutic principle for all experiences. Since the extremes of human behavior throughout history can be generalized as forms of materialism or spiritualism, then a third term is needed to balance them.
Because many people are not consistent in their faith, frequently altering the third-term-belief in accord with how they feel in a given situation. Certain environments evoke that “feeling” of the determinism of physical laws, while others inspire the “feeling” of freedom to transcend animal limitations. Few would fail to witness having one or the other or both of these intuitions about reality. Thus, it is important to note that a good third term should not be merely intellectual, it must equally resonate with the emotional life. The novelty of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, through which the Church developed the doctrine of the Trinity, was that it rooted its faith in a real Absolute Being who also became a real human being. In this way, it avoided both intellectualism and mythology because it was historical, grounded in an actual socio-religious upheaval in first-century Palestine. As a third-term-faith, the Incarnation has unique explanatory power. By the thread of its logic, it weaves together Ultimate Reality and the human experience through a dynamic love relationship. This interactive interpersonal process gives lucidity to several existential mysteries, including existence itself, the “big bang,” wave-particle duality, organic life, abstract selfhood, sexuality, evil, free-will, art, and religion.
It would be foolish to think Christianity’s profuseness in history has nothing to do with these philosophical insights. It took the Church nine centuries of almost unceasing theological debate to reach consensus on the meaning of the Incarnation precisely because people did indeed realize the vital implications of a properly articulated three term faith. Millions have been martyred in defense of this faith’s legitimacy. Metaphysically, the doctrine has taken many of its terms from ancient Greek culture. God is One Substance or essence, and Three Subsistences or persons, a Trinity. Jesus Christ is the second Subsistence of the Trinity, hypostatically, personally, united to a real human nature, with a human will and a human intellect, whose human ministry is recorded in the New Testament Scriptures. The essential point is this: a clear line between spirit and matter cannot be drawn, yet more is needed than the spirit-matter conflation of Yin and Yang. Only in Christianity has Spirit fallen in love with the flesh; only in Christianity has God proposed to marry us, as if each one of us were His only lover. Since, “greater love has no one than this to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13), no other God can claim to truly love the world. Lovers exhibit “mutual simultaneous causality” (Joseph Bracken’s language), hypostatic-union, and “one-flesh,” as expressed in the Trinitarian Godhead, the Incarnate God-man Jesus Christ, and human matrimony respectively.
The metaphysical paradigm of subsistent-relations enriches human experience with a sense of creative collaboration, as if God and humanity were recreating the entire universe, instantaneously, with each choice, a path opening up before our feet. Physical laws exist because we need them to exist; they make the playground for our bodies. But God’s eternity makes limitations transient as well. Some fields of experience are utterly unpredictable, such as the relationship between citizens and government or between child and parent, because the gift of freedom is real. Trinitarian-incarnational metaphysics is the framework in which one can be attuned to the predictable yet prepared for the unexpected synchronously. Living gracefully in this tension between extremes is what the life of Christ teaches. The logic of Incarnation prepares men and women for those inevitable “agonies in the garden” wherein life’s enigmas torture, or at least confuse, the soul. When we do not know how to choose, we can rest in the peace of knowing we do not choose alone.
From an epistemological perspective, I believe knowledge is a limited participation in the mind of God, drawing on Illumination Theory, as articulated by St. Bonaventure. In “Question IV,” of Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, Bonaventure defends the position that certain knowledge is attained through “eternal reasons,” the divine ideas of higher reason, in conjunction with the principles of knowledge gathered from created things in themselves, through lower reason. This “Illumination Theory” seeks to preserve, at the same time, the “nobility of knowledge” and the “dignity of the knower.” In Bonaventure’s view, the light of divine ideas is built into human nature and informs, or co-intuits, with the lower reason about the essence of things. In this way, we can understand how every thought is a form of prayer and part of a living relationship with God. “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
In regard to axiological philosophy, I agree with St. Augustine who said that every desire is itself a prayer. Therefore, I also believe in the value of aesthetic and emotional life and their indispensable role in human formation. In response to the world I have experienced, my educational mission is to promote and build a curriculum that nourishes emotional intelligence (feminine-type) as much, or more than, conceptual intelligence (masculine-type), though ideally they walk together. Within the nexus of economic philosophy, the over 'masculinization' of society has created arbitrary standards of success that have no authentic sustainable goals, besides shameful wealth and political influence for a handful of privileged men. The crown of power is an idol which will fall or else destroy the world. This truth is already evident in the perpetual poverty and constant violence around the world. Of particular blame is the sexual-degradation of women, an epidemic which is deteriorating belief systems around the globe. Ironically, every human soul will always be primarily feminine in relation to God, and therefore, no man can know how to lead others or himself until he has first submitted to the authority and leadership of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, women in Western society have forgotten or abandoned their responsibility for the moral leadership of humankind. Women influence culture to a higher degree than men, not only because they control the marriage market, but also because they define the standards of sexual attraction. The myth of an evil patriarchy is an endemic that has turned women away from their God-given power and destiny. Hence, many studies that reveal women’s increasing unhappiness in direct correlation to the so-called social advancements of voting, professionalism, contraception, pornography, abortion, and now all brands of social deviance.
The only counter-measure available to us is the refusal to participate in poisoned systems, despite widespread addiction to these systems and their 'goods' and 'services.' A simple and humble community-focused lifestyle is the only solution. Self-sufficiency and human communion removes all the chains and leverage of elite power. Emotional-intelligence, broadly speaking, is the ability to find meaning, peace, motivation, and joy in relationships, regardless of the environment or circumstances in which they occur. Only from this root can genuine human progress bloom. The masculine-values of logic, innovation, and technology are tools that must be governed by respect for the immeasurable dignity of each human person, from conception to eternity. Otherwise, our children will be the victims of bloody classist evolution.
Fallacies come in trios because the Truth is a Trinity. Satan never attacks on a single front. One danger in becoming too focused on emotional-intelligence or feminine social-methodologies is risking a total elimination of structured interaction. In education, this fallacy comes in the form of radical existentialism or post-humanism. In modern political philosophy it might be labeled libertarian-anarchism or the personal-sovereignty movement. In either case, any presumption of authority or tradition is guilty until proven innocent. Of course, the principles of these movements are themselves an authority, but they are legitimized by their proximity to the students or to the citizens professing them. The problem with this philosophy is that it isolates one from history and from society. Without disregarding the good reasons for distrusting history and society, there still needs to be some common ground between people of all ages and beliefs. A third-term-faith which does not allow the reconciliation of authority and equality, or hierarchy and dignity, cannot be sustained. Authority is a true good that allows contingent beings to function; without parameters there can be no program, without rules there can be no game. The third fallacy strikes at the memory of the Trinity in history…
Some philosophers claim that a “higher consciousness” requires an individual to undergo and survive some serious existential crisis (the ‘seriousness’ being relative). The often neglected facet of this fact is that such an experience acts as a gateway to an equally critical moment of choice. The choice is the beginning of a faith, a religious experiment. The feminine leads the way to the masculine and the masculine to a new childhood. Every child is destined to return to the Mother of God. At a specific time in my early teenage years, I was quite literally traumatized by the social life of my parochial school. All of a sudden, my friendships became unbearable to me. I reacted to this ordeal by retreating deep into myself. In response to a violent betrayal, I turned to cynicism as a kind of silent revenge. I became critical of everyone (and their beliefs) around me. Though the drama faded, my personality was forever changed. Though I was raised quasi-Catholic, by the time I dropped-out of high-school, I was a convicted atheist. My distrust of people turned into self-loathing as well. Despair gripped me tightly in my 19th year of life and I attempted to escape through suicide. It was in the darkness and emptiness of death that I first recognized the Light. My epiphany occurred over ten years ago. This moment of “awakening” was intensely emotional yet simultaneously philosophical in nature. Through a complex series of events, I came to the realization of two important facts. First, that “progress” was not guaranteed by evolution, as is clearly evinced in human history. Secondly, that the human person is constitutionally religious.
Secularism, Individualism, Atheism, Agnosticism, Relativism, Humanism, Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, Gnosticism, Spiritualism, Creationism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, these are all professions of faith. The point has drastic logical implications. Most people believe that their own faith is the correct one. For one hypothesis to be more correct than another it must demonstrate a higher correspondence to experienced reality, and all these faiths, of course, claim superior evidence to this effect. But what is their evidence? Evidence comes in two forms: inductive and deductive. Inductive reasoning is limited by one’s personal experiences. Deductive reasoning is limited by one’s imagination or desire. Therefore, because everyone induces and deduces from relatively isolated experiences and imaginings, evidence from all parties is often highly subjective – this is especially true in regard to philosophies of God/life because in them one claims to comprehend that which is beyond human understanding by its very definition. So where is the common ground here? Though God is so far above us, can we not still meet each other in experience and desire? The only answer I ever received (not created) that carried any sustenance for my heart was the answer I received that fateful night when I met death face to face. This answer changed every aspect about my existence and continues to do so every day. That single transforming moment was a simple encounter with my own desire for Divine Love. I have come to recognize that this desire is actually the most universal of all human characteristics. The desire itself is the most compelling evidence that there is a God who is Love, since technical arguments breakdown here, and a relationship with God is offered without qualification.
As a philosophy and theology enthusiast forever after, and eventually as an official philosophy/theology student in my undergraduate and graduate studies, I explored the two major consequences of faith in Divine Love: first, how Jesus Christ most perfectly resembles the meaning of the word “love,” and second, how the Catholic Church most perfectly resembles the definition of Christ. I came to these convictions over the course of several years. In the spirit of a true philosopher, I have tried my very best never to stop listening to others and never to exclude the possibility that I might be wrong. This is perhaps the most accurate phrase I can use to identify myself: I am a professional student. That being said, I have not yet heard a legitimate truth that contradicts the faith I now hold. Only the straw men fall. What I have seen, without a doubt, is that the evils of this world are real yet have no place in Catholicism genuinely lived. In fact, Christianity has been instrumental in initiating most of the privileges we take for granted today from literacy, to architecture, to music, to hospitals, to law, not to mention the entire concept of a non-profit charity.
Of course, evil deeds have been committed by Christian men and women repeatedly throughout history but, far as I can tell, (open to argument here) none of those men and women were focused on following the same Jesus I know when they acted thus. Some will say that conforming to the institution of Christianity is not the same as living like Christ himself, but they beg the question: what is an institution? Is it not a kind of living memory preserved on a large scale; in the Church’s words, a Mystical Body? If the memory of God bearing our sins in human-nature and opening the gates of Heaven for us is a historical and theological fact that cannot be preserved in time with integrity than why did He ever come? Such an idea makes God into a tease or a fool, both definitionally impossible conclusions if God is Love and God is Truth. Thus, Protestantism never made any sense, even though the protest itself was needed. Either Christ came to save us once and for all or He did not. If we are saved by a man who lived 2000 years ago, it can only be through an institutional, albeit mystical, connection with Him. The sacramental character of the Catholic institution is all that can extend the hermeneutic of Incarnation into the future. There are no other logical options; one cannot have a personal relationship with God that does not branch out into social structures. The organism of Christianity cannot live without unity in its cells. Because God is in love with all of us equally, we must be in love with each other equally. Either we can trust the institutional body Jesus gave us or we should abandon the Christian faith all together. It is easy to doubt the authenticity of ancient Christians dead and gone, it is much harder to doubt the miraculous resilience of the Roman Church. If God has the power to become human, He certainly has the power to protect His memorial-institution, His anamnesis (sacramental remembrance), in our world.
All of the above plays an indispensable role in my philosophy of education. Because I believe that the mind of God has been infused into creation by the power of Christ, and that his physical body-soul now subsists in the Catholic Church, I also must believe that His Spirit is, slowly but surely, is teaching humanity to be like Him. Education, therefore, is nothing less than learning to participate in the mission of Christ and in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). This has been the mission of institutionalized schooling since its maturation in the Carolingian Renaissance. The Cathedral Schools of 9th century Europe laid the ground-work for the university system that exists today. Education began in the monastery and there it should find renewal, for holiness and wisdom walk hand-in-hand. Holiness is not confined to the monastery, but it was highly religious men and women who seeded Western Civilization with vines of holiness. Society withers because it has abandoned it roots. The Catholic Church has always been the stronghold of virtue, even when it has concurrently fostered the great vices in its ranks. The wickedest of Bishops were still held to the judgment of a continuous moral doctrine. Catholic theology is the foundation-stone of the only free civilizations this earth has ever seen. In a highly imperfect world, the Catholic Church has been the least imperfect of all.
Although contemporary educational philosophies have often presented themselves as reactionary toward traditional (Christian) teaching methods, this juxtaposition is often an illusory opposition. The history of education is long and complex, but as a result of its over-simplification some will equate Christian education with Perennialism. The perennial philosophy of education refers, more precisely, to the scholastic model of the liberal arts (Ornstein & Hunkins 2014). Although this model was used in traditional Christian education, it had also taken on a life of its own by the 20th Century. For this reason, I do not consider Perennialism the most accurate description of my own educational philosophy.
Progressivism also set itself in contradistinction to perennialist thought, and likewise, it should not be considered incompatible with a Christian education. Progressivism’s emphasis on “how to think” versus “what to think” was far from a new idea, nor was its interdisciplinary curriculum. What was fresh in progressivist education was the highly subjective approach to learning, operating on the assumption that there is no fixed body of knowledge, and also that the most important aspect of learning is developing personal relationships with teachers, with peers, and with the community. A branch of Progressivism in particular, called Humanism, takes this individualized “student-centered” approach and makes it the main characteristic of education (Ornstein & Hunkins 2014). While it should be easily admitted that Neo-Scholastic education had become somewhat stale and impractical in the 20th century, because of its abstract-conceptual and impersonal-informational foci, this problem was not directly related to the source of the method (i.e. Christendom). In fact, Christian education had a long history of humanistic elements going back to the Italian Renaissance of the 16th century. In reality, no philosophy has been more ‘humanistic’ than Christ’s own teaching: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).
In the 20th century, the lack of attention given to individual learners had more to do with scientific and industrial revolution than with the academic content of perennial education. Thus, I am convinced that a truly Catholic model of education is a unique blend of personalistic methodology and scholastic content. Also, the progressivist concern with adapting to the needs of the future is not without precedent in Christian tradition. For example, the Dominican teachers arose in response to extreme forms of asceticism, the Franciscan teachers arose to respond to clericalism, and the Jesuits arose to respond to German-idealism and later to Reformation and ‘Enlightenment’ thought. Today, I, with the Church and its inherent educational mission, long to meet humanity’s needs for economic distribution, private property, free enterprise, healthy nourishment, personal safety, intellectual freedom, emotional community, physical discipline, and cultural creativity. When the world goes too far to one or the other extreme, the Church always reminds her of the balance that Jesus has struck for us. If we return to Christ as lovers of Love and gather in imitation of his humble service, we will discover that well of living water that cannot run dry. Therefore, I define my own philosophy of education as a Humanistic-Scholasticism, in the image of religious community life: “prayer and study,” ora et labora.
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” – Matthew 22:34-40
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Life is a struggle between extremes. Creation oscillates between being and nothingness. Human persons swing between love and hate. The ancient concept of Yin and Yang symbolizes this well, and its pervasiveness in human culture testifies to its truth. People convert and revert, remember and forget, find and let go, waxing and waning within the dynamic whole of life. However, the absolutizing of dichotomy manifestly leads to indifferentism. If all opposites are equal, then why ever choose? My own Catholic faith hinges on this very practical need to choose, and to choose consistently. The Holy Trinity, as a philosophical premise, is a formulaic description of reality where creative indeterminacy and personal definition cohabit one’s logic, guiding one’s decisions by this model of resurrecting Love. To understand the Trinity, one has to understand the Incarnation. The Incarnation, the sacrifice of God into the world, is the third term of the pattern and the key that explains the human condition. Like the Hegelian dialectic, from every thesis (yin) and antithesis (yang) there always emerges a synthesis. Yin and Yang is a closed circle, but the Trinity is a spiral. A spiral can synthesize new truths, while the circle is a finished story. Either history is a deterministic chain, random events, or self-generating diversity. The eruption of categories occurs rarely, but unforgettably and irreversibly. Chemical collisions somehow transformed into organic life. Neural interactions emanated into self-aware persons. There is a paradox but not a contradiction at the core of human experience. The logical contradiction is only avoided by the third terms of the dialectics. The third term is always a faith premise. We know that absolute concepts exist theoretically, as we know that contingent persons exist empirically, but to understand how the two realms are communicating requires a faith. You might have faith that material processes create the illusion of essences, you might have faith that matter is a spiritual construct, or you might have faith in a living personal-creative synthesis. This chosen faith will become the hermeneutic principle for all experiences. Since the extremes of human behavior throughout history can be generalized as forms of materialism or spiritualism, then a third term is needed to balance them.
Because many people are not consistent in their faith, frequently altering the third-term-belief in accord with how they feel in a given situation. Certain environments evoke that “feeling” of the determinism of physical laws, while others inspire the “feeling” of freedom to transcend animal limitations. Few would fail to witness having one or the other or both of these intuitions about reality. Thus, it is important to note that a good third term should not be merely intellectual, it must equally resonate with the emotional life. The novelty of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, through which the Church developed the doctrine of the Trinity, was that it rooted its faith in a real Absolute Being who also became a real human being. In this way, it avoided both intellectualism and mythology because it was historical, grounded in an actual socio-religious upheaval in first-century Palestine. As a third-term-faith, the Incarnation has unique explanatory power. By the thread of its logic, it weaves together Ultimate Reality and the human experience through a dynamic love relationship. This interactive interpersonal process gives lucidity to several existential mysteries, including existence itself, the “big bang,” wave-particle duality, organic life, abstract selfhood, sexuality, evil, free-will, art, and religion.
It would be foolish to think Christianity’s profuseness in history has nothing to do with these philosophical insights. It took the Church nine centuries of almost unceasing theological debate to reach consensus on the meaning of the Incarnation precisely because people did indeed realize the vital implications of a properly articulated three term faith. Millions have been martyred in defense of this faith’s legitimacy. Metaphysically, the doctrine has taken many of its terms from ancient Greek culture. God is One Substance or essence, and Three Subsistences or persons, a Trinity. Jesus Christ is the second Subsistence of the Trinity, hypostatically, personally, united to a real human nature, with a human will and a human intellect, whose human ministry is recorded in the New Testament Scriptures. The essential point is this: a clear line between spirit and matter cannot be drawn, yet more is needed than the spirit-matter conflation of Yin and Yang. Only in Christianity has Spirit fallen in love with the flesh; only in Christianity has God proposed to marry us, as if each one of us were His only lover. Since, “greater love has no one than this to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13), no other God can claim to truly love the world. Lovers exhibit “mutual simultaneous causality” (Joseph Bracken’s language), hypostatic-union, and “one-flesh,” as expressed in the Trinitarian Godhead, the Incarnate God-man Jesus Christ, and human matrimony respectively.
The metaphysical paradigm of subsistent-relations enriches human experience with a sense of creative collaboration, as if God and humanity were recreating the entire universe, instantaneously, with each choice, a path opening up before our feet. Physical laws exist because we need them to exist; they make the playground for our bodies. But God’s eternity makes limitations transient as well. Some fields of experience are utterly unpredictable, such as the relationship between citizens and government or between child and parent, because the gift of freedom is real. Trinitarian-incarnational metaphysics is the framework in which one can be attuned to the predictable yet prepared for the unexpected synchronously. Living gracefully in this tension between extremes is what the life of Christ teaches. The logic of Incarnation prepares men and women for those inevitable “agonies in the garden” wherein life’s enigmas torture, or at least confuse, the soul. When we do not know how to choose, we can rest in the peace of knowing we do not choose alone.
From an epistemological perspective, I believe knowledge is a limited participation in the mind of God, drawing on Illumination Theory, as articulated by St. Bonaventure. In “Question IV,” of Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ, Bonaventure defends the position that certain knowledge is attained through “eternal reasons,” the divine ideas of higher reason, in conjunction with the principles of knowledge gathered from created things in themselves, through lower reason. This “Illumination Theory” seeks to preserve, at the same time, the “nobility of knowledge” and the “dignity of the knower.” In Bonaventure’s view, the light of divine ideas is built into human nature and informs, or co-intuits, with the lower reason about the essence of things. In this way, we can understand how every thought is a form of prayer and part of a living relationship with God. “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
In regard to axiological philosophy, I agree with St. Augustine who said that every desire is itself a prayer. Therefore, I also believe in the value of aesthetic and emotional life and their indispensable role in human formation. In response to the world I have experienced, my educational mission is to promote and build a curriculum that nourishes emotional intelligence (feminine-type) as much, or more than, conceptual intelligence (masculine-type), though ideally they walk together. Within the nexus of economic philosophy, the over 'masculinization' of society has created arbitrary standards of success that have no authentic sustainable goals, besides shameful wealth and political influence for a handful of privileged men. The crown of power is an idol which will fall or else destroy the world. This truth is already evident in the perpetual poverty and constant violence around the world. Of particular blame is the sexual-degradation of women, an epidemic which is deteriorating belief systems around the globe. Ironically, every human soul will always be primarily feminine in relation to God, and therefore, no man can know how to lead others or himself until he has first submitted to the authority and leadership of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, women in Western society have forgotten or abandoned their responsibility for the moral leadership of humankind. Women influence culture to a higher degree than men, not only because they control the marriage market, but also because they define the standards of sexual attraction. The myth of an evil patriarchy is an endemic that has turned women away from their God-given power and destiny. Hence, many studies that reveal women’s increasing unhappiness in direct correlation to the so-called social advancements of voting, professionalism, contraception, pornography, abortion, and now all brands of social deviance.
The only counter-measure available to us is the refusal to participate in poisoned systems, despite widespread addiction to these systems and their 'goods' and 'services.' A simple and humble community-focused lifestyle is the only solution. Self-sufficiency and human communion removes all the chains and leverage of elite power. Emotional-intelligence, broadly speaking, is the ability to find meaning, peace, motivation, and joy in relationships, regardless of the environment or circumstances in which they occur. Only from this root can genuine human progress bloom. The masculine-values of logic, innovation, and technology are tools that must be governed by respect for the immeasurable dignity of each human person, from conception to eternity. Otherwise, our children will be the victims of bloody classist evolution.
Fallacies come in trios because the Truth is a Trinity. Satan never attacks on a single front. One danger in becoming too focused on emotional-intelligence or feminine social-methodologies is risking a total elimination of structured interaction. In education, this fallacy comes in the form of radical existentialism or post-humanism. In modern political philosophy it might be labeled libertarian-anarchism or the personal-sovereignty movement. In either case, any presumption of authority or tradition is guilty until proven innocent. Of course, the principles of these movements are themselves an authority, but they are legitimized by their proximity to the students or to the citizens professing them. The problem with this philosophy is that it isolates one from history and from society. Without disregarding the good reasons for distrusting history and society, there still needs to be some common ground between people of all ages and beliefs. A third-term-faith which does not allow the reconciliation of authority and equality, or hierarchy and dignity, cannot be sustained. Authority is a true good that allows contingent beings to function; without parameters there can be no program, without rules there can be no game. The third fallacy strikes at the memory of the Trinity in history…
Some philosophers claim that a “higher consciousness” requires an individual to undergo and survive some serious existential crisis (the ‘seriousness’ being relative). The often neglected facet of this fact is that such an experience acts as a gateway to an equally critical moment of choice. The choice is the beginning of a faith, a religious experiment. The feminine leads the way to the masculine and the masculine to a new childhood. Every child is destined to return to the Mother of God. At a specific time in my early teenage years, I was quite literally traumatized by the social life of my parochial school. All of a sudden, my friendships became unbearable to me. I reacted to this ordeal by retreating deep into myself. In response to a violent betrayal, I turned to cynicism as a kind of silent revenge. I became critical of everyone (and their beliefs) around me. Though the drama faded, my personality was forever changed. Though I was raised quasi-Catholic, by the time I dropped-out of high-school, I was a convicted atheist. My distrust of people turned into self-loathing as well. Despair gripped me tightly in my 19th year of life and I attempted to escape through suicide. It was in the darkness and emptiness of death that I first recognized the Light. My epiphany occurred over ten years ago. This moment of “awakening” was intensely emotional yet simultaneously philosophical in nature. Through a complex series of events, I came to the realization of two important facts. First, that “progress” was not guaranteed by evolution, as is clearly evinced in human history. Secondly, that the human person is constitutionally religious.
Secularism, Individualism, Atheism, Agnosticism, Relativism, Humanism, Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, Gnosticism, Spiritualism, Creationism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, these are all professions of faith. The point has drastic logical implications. Most people believe that their own faith is the correct one. For one hypothesis to be more correct than another it must demonstrate a higher correspondence to experienced reality, and all these faiths, of course, claim superior evidence to this effect. But what is their evidence? Evidence comes in two forms: inductive and deductive. Inductive reasoning is limited by one’s personal experiences. Deductive reasoning is limited by one’s imagination or desire. Therefore, because everyone induces and deduces from relatively isolated experiences and imaginings, evidence from all parties is often highly subjective – this is especially true in regard to philosophies of God/life because in them one claims to comprehend that which is beyond human understanding by its very definition. So where is the common ground here? Though God is so far above us, can we not still meet each other in experience and desire? The only answer I ever received (not created) that carried any sustenance for my heart was the answer I received that fateful night when I met death face to face. This answer changed every aspect about my existence and continues to do so every day. That single transforming moment was a simple encounter with my own desire for Divine Love. I have come to recognize that this desire is actually the most universal of all human characteristics. The desire itself is the most compelling evidence that there is a God who is Love, since technical arguments breakdown here, and a relationship with God is offered without qualification.
As a philosophy and theology enthusiast forever after, and eventually as an official philosophy/theology student in my undergraduate and graduate studies, I explored the two major consequences of faith in Divine Love: first, how Jesus Christ most perfectly resembles the meaning of the word “love,” and second, how the Catholic Church most perfectly resembles the definition of Christ. I came to these convictions over the course of several years. In the spirit of a true philosopher, I have tried my very best never to stop listening to others and never to exclude the possibility that I might be wrong. This is perhaps the most accurate phrase I can use to identify myself: I am a professional student. That being said, I have not yet heard a legitimate truth that contradicts the faith I now hold. Only the straw men fall. What I have seen, without a doubt, is that the evils of this world are real yet have no place in Catholicism genuinely lived. In fact, Christianity has been instrumental in initiating most of the privileges we take for granted today from literacy, to architecture, to music, to hospitals, to law, not to mention the entire concept of a non-profit charity.
Of course, evil deeds have been committed by Christian men and women repeatedly throughout history but, far as I can tell, (open to argument here) none of those men and women were focused on following the same Jesus I know when they acted thus. Some will say that conforming to the institution of Christianity is not the same as living like Christ himself, but they beg the question: what is an institution? Is it not a kind of living memory preserved on a large scale; in the Church’s words, a Mystical Body? If the memory of God bearing our sins in human-nature and opening the gates of Heaven for us is a historical and theological fact that cannot be preserved in time with integrity than why did He ever come? Such an idea makes God into a tease or a fool, both definitionally impossible conclusions if God is Love and God is Truth. Thus, Protestantism never made any sense, even though the protest itself was needed. Either Christ came to save us once and for all or He did not. If we are saved by a man who lived 2000 years ago, it can only be through an institutional, albeit mystical, connection with Him. The sacramental character of the Catholic institution is all that can extend the hermeneutic of Incarnation into the future. There are no other logical options; one cannot have a personal relationship with God that does not branch out into social structures. The organism of Christianity cannot live without unity in its cells. Because God is in love with all of us equally, we must be in love with each other equally. Either we can trust the institutional body Jesus gave us or we should abandon the Christian faith all together. It is easy to doubt the authenticity of ancient Christians dead and gone, it is much harder to doubt the miraculous resilience of the Roman Church. If God has the power to become human, He certainly has the power to protect His memorial-institution, His anamnesis (sacramental remembrance), in our world.
All of the above plays an indispensable role in my philosophy of education. Because I believe that the mind of God has been infused into creation by the power of Christ, and that his physical body-soul now subsists in the Catholic Church, I also must believe that His Spirit is, slowly but surely, is teaching humanity to be like Him. Education, therefore, is nothing less than learning to participate in the mission of Christ and in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). This has been the mission of institutionalized schooling since its maturation in the Carolingian Renaissance. The Cathedral Schools of 9th century Europe laid the ground-work for the university system that exists today. Education began in the monastery and there it should find renewal, for holiness and wisdom walk hand-in-hand. Holiness is not confined to the monastery, but it was highly religious men and women who seeded Western Civilization with vines of holiness. Society withers because it has abandoned it roots. The Catholic Church has always been the stronghold of virtue, even when it has concurrently fostered the great vices in its ranks. The wickedest of Bishops were still held to the judgment of a continuous moral doctrine. Catholic theology is the foundation-stone of the only free civilizations this earth has ever seen. In a highly imperfect world, the Catholic Church has been the least imperfect of all.
Although contemporary educational philosophies have often presented themselves as reactionary toward traditional (Christian) teaching methods, this juxtaposition is often an illusory opposition. The history of education is long and complex, but as a result of its over-simplification some will equate Christian education with Perennialism. The perennial philosophy of education refers, more precisely, to the scholastic model of the liberal arts (Ornstein & Hunkins 2014). Although this model was used in traditional Christian education, it had also taken on a life of its own by the 20th Century. For this reason, I do not consider Perennialism the most accurate description of my own educational philosophy.
Progressivism also set itself in contradistinction to perennialist thought, and likewise, it should not be considered incompatible with a Christian education. Progressivism’s emphasis on “how to think” versus “what to think” was far from a new idea, nor was its interdisciplinary curriculum. What was fresh in progressivist education was the highly subjective approach to learning, operating on the assumption that there is no fixed body of knowledge, and also that the most important aspect of learning is developing personal relationships with teachers, with peers, and with the community. A branch of Progressivism in particular, called Humanism, takes this individualized “student-centered” approach and makes it the main characteristic of education (Ornstein & Hunkins 2014). While it should be easily admitted that Neo-Scholastic education had become somewhat stale and impractical in the 20th century, because of its abstract-conceptual and impersonal-informational foci, this problem was not directly related to the source of the method (i.e. Christendom). In fact, Christian education had a long history of humanistic elements going back to the Italian Renaissance of the 16th century. In reality, no philosophy has been more ‘humanistic’ than Christ’s own teaching: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).
In the 20th century, the lack of attention given to individual learners had more to do with scientific and industrial revolution than with the academic content of perennial education. Thus, I am convinced that a truly Catholic model of education is a unique blend of personalistic methodology and scholastic content. Also, the progressivist concern with adapting to the needs of the future is not without precedent in Christian tradition. For example, the Dominican teachers arose in response to extreme forms of asceticism, the Franciscan teachers arose to respond to clericalism, and the Jesuits arose to respond to German-idealism and later to Reformation and ‘Enlightenment’ thought. Today, I, with the Church and its inherent educational mission, long to meet humanity’s needs for economic distribution, private property, free enterprise, healthy nourishment, personal safety, intellectual freedom, emotional community, physical discipline, and cultural creativity. When the world goes too far to one or the other extreme, the Church always reminds her of the balance that Jesus has struck for us. If we return to Christ as lovers of Love and gather in imitation of his humble service, we will discover that well of living water that cannot run dry. Therefore, I define my own philosophy of education as a Humanistic-Scholasticism, in the image of religious community life: “prayer and study,” ora et labora.
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” – Matthew 22:34-40
Curriculum model, rationale, and Open Online Courses coming soon.