2.3 A Pedagogy Rooted in the Trivium and Quadrivium
Chapter Two: The Seven Characteristics of a Classically Educated Christian (2.3)
I’m currently revising the second draft of a short seven-chapter primer on Classical Christian Education and would like to invite you into the process by sharing this “work in progress” publicly. Please share your feedback and help me title the book by offering your suggestions in the comments.
Read Parts 1 & 2 of Chapter Two
2.3 A Pedagogy Rooted in the Trivium and Quadrivium
As has been demonstrated in the previous section, Classical Christian Education is none other than the education of a free man, the study of the liberating arts. What constitutes these liberating or liberal arts and how they function (as method or body of knowledge) has been a matter of robust discussion throughout the history of education. For our purposes, it will be sufficient to point out that initially the Greeks and later the Romans first conceptualized the kind of arts to be studied by free men as artes liberalis (distinguishing from slaves and workmen who were relegated to learn mere servile arts). Later, when Christian educators built on these arts, they denounced the dualistic aspects of Greco-Roman education that viewed servile arts as lessor while simultaneously recognizing the contemplative aspects of seven specific arts that were valuable for liberating all humans from their ignorance and provincialism, from vicious strongholds so they could receive virtue, and from intellectual dependence on tutors so they could learn how to learn (to be autodidactic).
The seven liberal arts were codified and cultivated during the early to high Middle Ages of Christendom. Beginning with Boethius (c. 480–524 AD) and Cassiodorus (c. 485 – c. 585) perhaps reaching their zenith in the scholastic period (i.e., John of Salisbury c. 1120-1180 and Thomas Aquinas c. 1225 – 1274). These seven liberal arts structured around the Trivium (meaning three paths) and the Quadrivium (meaning four paths). The Trivium as we’ve come to receive it consists of grammar, logic, and rhetoric and provides the foundational tools of learning: how to apprehend knowledge, how to think clearly, and how to communicate persuasively. The Quadrivium consists of arithmetic (number), geometry (number in space), music (number in time), and astronomy (number in space and time) and teaches students how to understand the ordered beauty of the cosmos through number and proportion. The latter is also the basis of natural philosophy or the sciences (e.g., STEM subjects).1
By way of these seven liberal arts, a classically educated Christian does not merely consume information but learns how to learn, how to reason, how to communicate, and further how to apprehend, how to appreciate, and how to approximate one’s life toward the common good within the harmonious order of God’s creation. Whether the seven liberal arts are a method of study, or specific bodies of knowledge is still being debated. But if the insights of medieval thinkers like John of Salisbury (whose cardinal treatise, Metalogicon, has been called “a landmark in education”) have any merit, it might be helpful for us to think of the liberal arts in terms of both/and rather than either/or. In other words, the liberal arts are both a method of study and a body of knowledge. To this end, John lays his foundation of learning by advocating for a “harmonized education” on the grounds that the universe is intelligently created and ordered by a Triune God. He writes,
“The creative Trinity, the one true God, has so arranged the part of the universe that each requires the help of the others, and they mutually compensate for their respective deficiencies, all things being “members one of another…just as natural ability easily deteriorates when neglected, so it is strengthened by cultivation and care…Natural ability is an immanent power infused into one’s soul by nature…although it proceeds from nature, [it] is fostered by study and exercise…Whoever tries to ‘thrust asunder what God has joined together’ for the common good, should rightly be adjudged a public enemy.”
Interestingly, he goes on to advocate for a view of the human soul as treated in chapter one with regards to C. S. Lewis’s Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment statement—“The head rules the belly through the chest”—and discusses how that view harmonizes with the functionality of the cosmos, and how both reflect their Creator, the Triune God. He thus asserts that a harmonized education is an education that cultivates the soul according to its natural order, where the proclivities of its various natures reflect the created order where each of the parts are members one of another functioning in a complementary role. The specific kind of education that harmoniously reflects the created order and has as its object “to effect man’s liberation, so that, freed from cares, he may devote himself to wisdom” is called the liberal arts.
Next up will be:
2.4 Conversant in the Great Conversation
2.5 Some Proficiency in the Classical Languages
2.6 A Mastery of Rhetoric and Letters
2.7 A Personal Pursuit of Virtue and Wisdom
This note will expand to discuss the various ways in which the liberal arts have been conceived and discussed throughout history (i.e., nine, eleven, and seven arts) and provide further clarity about the nature of an art.
Do you think that there is nothing noteworthy or of merit that the originators of Classical education did not think it was for everyone? Is this a product of our modern sensibilities?