The word “deconstruction” usually carries a negative connotation for many Christians. Yet, we still need to keep and employ both the term and the activity it signifies. After all, when scholars talk about deconstructing, they refer to dismantling assumed ways of thinking that are false, unjust, based primarily upon power acquisition, or, to use a Christian term, fallen in some way.
Of course, how we determine what is false, evil, or ugly is based upon some prior metanarrative or worldview. Understood in this way, Christians, especially professors, should recognize that we must constantly engage in deconstruction within our intellectual lives using the biblical metanarrative. Moreover, it is one of the important skills that we must teach our students.
To learn how to engage in this process and to teach others to do it Christianly, we need models. In this blog post, I am going to point out how Augustine’s Confessions provides a helpful introductory example for deconstructing one’s past education.
From the start, Augustine recounts how he critiqued his own higher-level pagan education in the liberal arts in light of Christian educational ideals. Now, any good philosophy of education must answer four questions: Who? Why? What? and How? The first question, Who?, contains three parts: 1) Who were we meant to be? 2) Who are we now? and 3) Who are we to become? We can see how Augustine corrected the answers he received to those questions.
Who?
Augustine answers the first question, “Who?” Christianly on the first page of the Confessions, in his prayer to God, “for you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”[1] He starts with Christian anthropology.
Yet, Augustine also recognized the present aspect of human identity—our fallenness. Unlike most forms of deconstruction that focus on the problems with the social world and others around us, Augustine deconstructs by first recognizing his own sinfulness. He acknowledged, “I did not love study and hated to be driven to it, and good was thus done to me, but I myself did not do good. I would have learned nothing unless forced to it.”[2] Later, he confesses, “Often beaten at games, out of a vain desire for distinction I tried even there for dishonest victories. And what was I so loath to put up with, and what did I so fiercely denounce, if I caught others at it, as what I did to them? If I was caught and argued with, I chose to fight rather than to give in.”[3] As Christ taught us (Mt. 7:5) and Augustine demonstrated, we need to deconstruct our own sinful tendencies in learning before we make grand critiques of fallen educational systems and structures.
Of course, he also realized that he was surrounded by other fallen humans as well. He knew his parents had “hopes for learning, which, as I knew, both parents desired too much.”[4] His father, he noted, failed to correct his sexual escapades. Furthermore, he remarked about one of his teachers, “If he was outdone by a fellow teacher in some trifling discussion, he was more tormented by anger and envy than I was when beaten by a playmate in a ball game.”[5] Augustine recognized the need for redemption in his own heart and those guiding his education.
Augustine also recognized that his own God-given conscience could help guide him. By listening to it, he knew he was meant to become someone different and to bear God’s image. Through his own Christian deconstruction of his education, we understand what he perceives to be the important Christian education necessary for reaching that end.
Why?
The second important question is: Why should we engage in learning or a particular type of learning? Augustine recounted the basic answer that he received about why he should obtain an education: “This was all that I might succeed in this world and excel in those arts of speech which would serve to bring honor among men and to gain deceitful riches.”[6] Honor and riches were the purposes of education. Yet, he found those purposes unsatisfactory and therefore concluded, “Hence, I was sent to school to acquire learning, the utility of which, wretched child that I was, I did not know.”[7]
He later recalled how he pursued honor with his learning, “from the nineteenth year of my age to the twenty-eighth, we were seduced and we seduced others, deceived and deceiving by various desires, both openly by the so-called liberal arts and secretly in the name of a false religion…we pursued empty fame and popularity even down to the applause of the playhouse, poetical competitions, and contests for garlands of grass, foolish plays on the stage, and unbridled lusts.”[8] Like most of us, he was taught flawed reasons for learning.
What?
The third key question that any approach to education must answer is: What should be taught? Augustine deconstructed the content of the curriculum he learned. Unlike some Christians today, he does not have whole-hearted praise for the liberal arts. He viewed Homer as feeding his immoral desires and distorting the development of his affections (e.g., he wept over Dido’s death “because she killed herself for love” but he failed to weep over his own spiritual death). He also lamented how Greek myths assigned fallen human characteristics to gods and god-like characteristics (unlike the book of Genesis). He also thought the curriculum demonstrated disordered priorities, “Regard…how carefully the sons of men observe the properties to letters and syllables received from former speakers, and how they neglect everlasting covenants of eternal salvation which they have received from you.”[9]
He admitted, “I learned many useful words in such studies, but they could have been learned from things that were not vain.”[10] Later, Augustine wrote On Christian Teaching, in which he set forth a more robust Christian approach to education that starts with the Christian scriptures and only then begins to mine for gold and silver among pagan writings.
How?
Augustine’s deconstruction of his education also focused on the pedagogy. He lamented, “If I was slow at learning I was beaten.”[11] Fortunately, that method has largely been abolished. The methods that helped Augustine are not surprising. He asked lots of questions and received intellectual answers to many of them. On a side note, I find that many of the students I encounter struggling with their faith have been told at some point in their lives, “You shouldn’t be asking those questions.” That’s the worst response we can give.
Augustine also benefited from models such as Ambrose and some desert fathers, and stories of other academics coming to faith that stirred his passions. Yet, ultimately, his redemption comes about from the Spirit of God that prompted him to read a random verse. Both our own personal salvation and our intellectual salvation involve all of these things. We need freedom to question, sufficient intellectual answers, stories, models, and ultimately God’s grace in our intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage.
My Own Educational Confessions and God’s Grace
I can remember my own experience of God’s grace when it comes to my academic pilgrimage. I was coasting through on my ability in junior high, but I was not really taking the academic life seriously. Yet, I remember one day looking at the A honor roll and the A-B honor roll and thinking to myself, “Why am I settling for the A-B honor roll? I bet I could get all As. I’m going to make it my goal to get all A’s in high school.” Why I had this idea, I simply attribute to God’s grace. I wouldn’t say it was the best of Christian motives, but God used that burgeoning desire for excellence to propel me to both deepen my love for learning and achieve learning outcomes.
That being said, I remember I still needed God’s grace to help me deconstruct the initial ways I answered the “Who?” and “Why?” questions of learning. I may not have admitted it at the time, but I entered Rice University as someone who derived part of my identity and worth as an achiever. I also had chosen my engineering major because I thought it would help get me an enjoyable job at a nice salary (which I considered two answers to the “Why?” question). By God’s grace, mentorship from leaders in a Christian group I joined at college helped me deconstruct those answers. I learned to find my worth and larger purpose in Christ and recognize the intrinsic worth of learning about God and God’s creation. I decided to study what I enjoyed (history, political science, and religion) instead of what I thought would provide job security and money.
Deconstructing the “What?” and “How?” of my education, however, has actually involved much of the rest of my scholarly career. Indeed, significant portions of my writing on this site (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) and in some of my journal articles and books (see here) address how Christian colleges and universities need to reform their curricular requirements. My passion stems from my Augustine-inspired effort to deconstruct the curriculum we currently offer in Christian education. Inspired by Augustine, I have been asking what it would mean for Christian identity and purpose to guide it instead of simply past precedent or the standards of secular universities or accrediting bodies.
Course catalogues that outlined the curriculum and the reading associated with it started to emerge among American colleges in the early nineteenth century. Sadly, in my study of the liberal arts curriculum of every pre-1900 American Protestant college, I have yet to find one college that required the reading of Augustine’s Confessions. We have changed and should continue to change that. One reason to do so is that Augustine’s Confessions provides a fantastic example of how to deconstruct one’s past education.
[1] Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. John K. Ryan (Image Books, 1960), 43.
[2] Augustine, The Confessions, 55
[3] Augustine, The Confessions, 62.
[4] Augustine, The Confessions, 69.
[5] Augustine, The Confessions, 52.
[6] Augustine, The Confessions, 51.
[7] Augustine, The Confessions, 51.
[8] Augustine, The Confessions, 93.
[9] Augustine, The Confessions, 61.
[10] Augustine, The Confessions, 58.
[11] Augustine, The Confessions, 51.
