The Secret of Christian Paideia

“Be obscure!”

So says the teacher Quintilian finds in Livy who instructs his students to acquire the vice called unclarity. Many of us, of course, come by this obvious defect honestly in our speech and writing, with no need to cultivate it with “an infinity of toil.” But perhaps it behooves the classical Christian educator to do just such a thing. Perhaps the good teacher should help all students come to a clear understanding of the truth, sometimes through the free and open exposition of texts and artifacts and the straightforward interrogation of reality, and sometimes not. Sometimes it may be far better to seem or to be frustrating, obscure, obtuse, off-putting, scattered, unsystematic, divisive, and even esoteric.

Cultivated obscurity is fundamentally different from its accidental alternatives (incompetence, insanity, inartfulness) or from its snobbish cousins (elitism, pedantry, pretentiousness). It also differs from mere rigor or intensity, that kind of difficulty that trains the mind or body to handle future toils by the imposition of arbitrary obstacles. Esotericism is, one hopes, not the same as lying or deception (sophistry, gnosticism, cultishness).

But what is ‘esotericism’ as a pedagogy?

It’s unclear.

The conundrum may be obvious: if it isn’t possible or advisable always and everywhere to teach openly or exoterically, is it possible or advisable nevertheless to teach this teaching? Readers of Plato’s books may recall Socrates’ critique of the book, in a book (in the Phaedrus), or of what the poets say, by saying what they say (in the Republic). Yet as Plato seemed to resolve the problem without altogether rebelling from his teacher, perhaps it is possible to speak about esotericism, esoterically, that is, without doing so from an exoteric point of view, even while announcing the difficulty to all and plainly.

Now, if all I succeed here in doing is that my readers find my explanation frustrating, obscure, obtuse, off-putting, scattered…then the thing is half proved, more or less.

History or history-writing is a good place to find one of the more straightforward explanations for obscure writing, as well as to get beyond those pretexts, back to the problem of education itself. Tacitus, in the introduction to his Agricola, illuminates this fact most clearly: the years under bad emperors teach us what is true about all emperors, about the political constraints on the best way of life as such, individually and together. Political persecution reminds us of the need to write, read, and speak carefully, but it is not political persecution that represents the most serious concern. Inquisitions and show-trials may remind us of the heroic witness of the stalwart in speech and life, but this image is one to be remembered and applied in all places and times.

A survey of ancient and medieval literature would reveal that very many authors engage in a practice which is inimical to moderns seeking to obtain or promulgate enlightenment. Such authors would seem to conceal their own thoughts and to speak of others doing the same. There was perhaps a time, in the obscurity of the Enlightenment, when willful ignorance of this practice could claim some legitimacy, but no reader will long honestly maintain—whatever they think or like of the practice—that it is not present even in the best, most honest men and their works.

"Christian educators should not adopt an essentially modern, and unchristian, view of education. God has really revealed himself in his Word and world, especially in the person of his Son."

And yet this historical or historiographical conflict between ancients and moderns is really a permanent (perpetual if not sempiternal) set of alternatives. Among the temporally-ancient, you may find enemies and abusers of esotericism. It is not so much the advocates of ‘open society’ and ‘open education’ who emerge on their own terms in opposition; it is rather the tendency of even these types, and certainly those who were never committed to openness in the first place, to form an inner circle or series of inner-circles, of so-called gnostics, sophists, elitists, and frauds.

Christian paideia, by grace, leads the disciple to God. This cannot be engineered by trying to maximize clarity or openness or precision—nor indeed by their opposites. Christian educators should not adopt an essentially modern, and unchristian, view of education. God has really revealed himself in his Word and world, especially in the person of his Son. The coming of his kingdom, the preaching of his gospel, did not come except by teaching that—willfully and not accidentally—hardened hearts and minds (see Matt. 13).

The history of obscurity in the Western tradition is not particularly obscure. To take only one rather interesting example, Augustine, that hater of lies, recognizes the difference between the careful arguments of the philosophers (Plato, Socrates, Cicero) and the lies of the poets and theologians (Varro, Apuleius). But what of avoiding the sophistry of “vain philosophy” and “moronic investigations and genealogies and torahic battles”—perhaps the characteristic intellectual failings of the Hellenic and Judaic worlds of the early centuries of the Christian era? Doesn’t an esoteric approach to teaching encourage or even require these targets of Pauline and divine ire?

Christian paideia or discipleship (paidagōgē) is culture or inculturation (agōgē) and ascent and consummation (anagōgē); it is even initiation into certain rites (mystagōgē), which is also a turn away from the things of the world that is nevertheless not other-worldly (metagōgē). One could probably proliferate such Greek terms, with ever more compounds or prefixes, but perhaps the point is clear enough. In being led up to God, the disciple exchanges one way for another—or is redeemed out of one way of life and brought into another, as into a new household.

Readers of Lewis’ Ransom trilogy will recognize the difference between the company at St. Ann’s and the folks of the N.I.C.E. You can be “nice”—with objective science and modern journalism and capital demonic necromancy—or you can be part of the extended family of Christ, ask questions of the Fisher King, and seek the marriage of heaven (or the heavens) and earth.  Not every secret fellowship is a cult.

The problem is not only that of modern education and modern science but one which emerges also in a fundamentally classical world. False consummation comes in at least two forms: the training regimen of Sparta and the mystery religion of Athens. (Of course, a characteristically Spartan soul may desire initiation into a secret cult, and many a citizen of an Athens has tried the Laconophilic LARP.) The Spartan educational system might seem to have the benefit of clarity, but, as Xenophon reveals (darkly or obscurely), it is really a system based on lies and encouraging lies.

Clement of Alexandria is probably the best (and most notorious) example of a Christian who cultivated obscurity, and perhaps the mixed reception of Clement and his later successors does not inspire confidence. Isn’t Clement a Gnostic, or doesn’t he at least have Gnostic tendencies? However complex, however strange, however obscure Clement’s teaching becomes over the course of his Protrepticus, Pedagogus, and Stromateis, the purpose is never to inaugurate his readers into the cult, the inner circle, the gnostic cabal; he is always pointing disciples to Christ, through Christ, the real Logos, the real Gnōsis, the true God and true Man.

As evangelism to the Greeks, Clement’s book isn’t just an encouragement to Christian conversion; it is the announcement of the Protreptikos Logos himself, that is, Christ the Word who causes us to turn, away from sin and toward God. His second book is not just a repository of teachings; it is the presentation of Christ the Teacher, teaching. The third in the trilogy—the so-called Miscellanies or Patchworks or Coverings—is indeed obscure and difficult, yet it is the unveiling (aletheia: truth) of the one who sends our sin and sorrow into oblivion (epilethos), the revelation of the truth in the person of Christ. The evident lack of system is not a flaw but a part of the “covering” to be “uncovered.”

The yoke of the lying, drunken, ‘demonizing’ poets and deceitful sophists is exchanged for the paideia of God, in whom is no darkness, who is rather “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” His good and perfect gifts include, preeminently, His Word and world. He has said, however blindingly obscure or wonderfully bright—if it is permissible to speak in that way—

“Let there be light!”