Principia

First published in The Freeman nearly thirty years ago, this article by Robert A. Peterson entitled “Education in Colonial America” describes the success of America’s early free-market educational system.

In anticipation of Reformation Day (October 31), we are busily preparing our biggest project ever. We are creating a blog about the English Reformation. Our focus this year will be on the men who studied the Ersasmus’ Greek New Testament at the White Horse Inn in Cambridge, England. As we have time, we will also post previous years’ research.

Join us at www.englishreformation.blogspot.com in October.

Martin Luther’s Facebook wall:

Katherine Von Bora Luther thinks Martin is a jerk!

Desiderius Erasmus likes this!

Martin Luther Drop dead, Erasmus!

Desiderius Erasmus My will is free to express itself.

William Tyndale just harvested some olives while working on his farm in Farmville!

Philip Melanchthon Go Wittenburg U.!

Frederick the Elector is now friends with Johann Tetzel and 2 others.

Martin Luther commented on Leo X’s status.

Even if the internet had been around in the 1500’s, it is ludicrous to imagine these great figures of history engaging in such drivel. After all, this was the generation that turned the world upside down for Christ at a time when the hand-cranked Gutenberg press was state-of-the-art technology. They would have found a far more noble use for both Facebook and their time.

We remember Erasmus, Luther, Tyndale and others for advancing the Kingdom of God. Yet we often forget that they accomplished much during relatively short lives. William Tyndale was martyred at age 42. Luther died at 63. Even Erasmus only lived to be 70.  Christians of that era were more sober-minded than we are today. (With the possibility of being burned at the stake, who wouldn’t be sober?) They redeemed their time wisely and sensed an urgent need to leave a Christian heritage to the next generation. William Tyndale devoted all of his short life to giving the Scriptures to English-speaking people, even to “the boy that driveth the plow.”

In our modern era, we have become so accustomed to the idea that we might be the terminal generation of Christians that we have forgotten the equal possibility that we might not be the terminal generation  – that there might be many generations of Christians who follow us. What kind of legacy are we leaving to them? Will they look back on our generation and say that we were sober-minded, made good use of the technology of our day, and advanced the Kingdom? Or will future generations say of us, “They texted. They tweeted. They poked. They played Farmville”?

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 is the passage we homeschoolers often cite to support educating our children at home. Verses 10-12 of that same chapter, however, contain a strong warning:

And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full; Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

For most of us, the freedom to homeschool is like a well that we didn’t dig or a vineyard that we didn’t plant. We didn’t fight the legal battles to make home schooling legal in all fifty states. Our husbands didn’t go to jail, and we didn’t have CPS case workers threatening to take our children away. We are like the second-generation Israelites who enjoyed the fruit of Canaan but who did not remember the hard labor of Egypt. And like them, the warning of Deuteronomy 6:10-12 is for us.

Our first goal and commitment should be to the Lord and to training our children to love and serve Him. All other goals and commitments should be subservient to the first goal. As parents, we need evaluate our children’s activities by spiritual criteria. Will this activity be detrimental to my child’s relationship with the Lord? Will participating in this activity keep us away from church? Will this activity take up so much time that we will be unable to have private devotions or family worship? Will this activity require us to compromise our convictions or beliefs? Will this activity unnecessarily expose my children to worldliness?

As we enjoy our liberty and prosperity, let us be careful that we do not forget the Lord who gave us these blessings.

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The greatest problem in Medieval Christianity was the inaccessibility of the Scriptures. Before the invention of the moveable-type printing press all Bibles were hand-copied, rare, and expensive. Even after Gutenberg printed the Latin Vulgate, only the wealthy could afford to own a copy. But even if Bibles had been less costly, the truth of God’s word would have remained a mystery to most people because they could not read Latin. Jerome had translated the Bible into Latin in the fifth century, but by the late Middle Ages, only the most educated classes could read in Latin. Adding to the problem, Jerome’s text had been tampered with repeatedly by the Roman Catholic Church, resulting in a translation that scarcely resembled the original manuscripts. In fact, after reading the New Testament in its original Greek for the first time, English scholar Thomas Linacre wrote in his diary, “Either this is not the Gospel . . . . or we are not Christians.”

Unlike Christians in the Middle Ages, Christians today (at least those in the West) have unparalleled access to God’s Word. With the internet, they can retrieve in seconds the Bible in any language and in any translation. Furthermore, the wisdom of past generations of believers is literally at their fingertips in the form of online books, sermons, commentaries, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and concordances. Today’s problem is not access to the Scriptures; it is acceptance of the Scriptures as authoritative.

Many professing believers in America have built an impenetrable mental wall between that which is spiritual and eternal and that which is physical and temporal.  In their minds, the Bible is good for spiritual instruction, such as teaching the way to Heaven. But it does not inform the decisions they make from day to day. Thus, Christians can proclaim the Bible as the infallible, inerrant Word of God and yet live as though it had never been written.

More than a decade ago, pollster George Barna confirmed this fact when he reported that the faith of American Christians “is rarely the focal point of their life or a critical factor in their decision making.”[1] Over the years, Barna has discovered that Christians divorce at a higher rate than non-Christians, that the goals of Christian parents for their children are no different than the goals of non-Christian parents, that the way Christians view success has little to do with their faith, and that most Christians do not believe in absolute moral truth.

Though the Bible has much to say about life on this earth – about marriage, family, money, and priorities – few Christians are listening. They are like the Jews in Jesus’ day who “seeing, see not” and “hearing, hear not” (Matthew 13:13). The wall of separation keeps the light of the Gospel out of their daily lives. What would happen if the eyes of today’s professing believers were opened, and if they could read the Bible anew and with understanding as Thomas Linacre did 500 years ago? I believe many would discern, “Either this is not the Gospel . . . . or we are not Christians.”

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[1] http://ezinearticles.com/?Christian-VS-Non-Christian—Whats-the-Difference?&id=3905340&opt=print