Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, “What road do I take?”

The cat asked, “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” Alice answered.

“Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Without a destination in mind, choosing a path is rather pointless. After all, the point of a path is to ultimately arrive at a destination. In Greek, the idea of a destination, goal, or outcome is called a telos.

The telos (or destination) of these teachings on the theology of education is to know and understand the telos of education, as well as the tools for arriving at that destination.

Every question about how education is to be done doesn’t really matter without first knowing what education should be aimed at achieving.

For this study, we will largely follow the first section of my Catechism for Classical Education. These teachings, however, are not exclusively upon classical education but upon the theology of education in general, which ultimately a study in anthropology, what is means to be human.

THE CHIEF END OF MAN

For reasons that we will address in a moment, we cannot understand the telos of education without first establishing the telos of humanity. Or phrased as a question: what is the purpose of being human?

Simple enough, right?

Thankfully, greater minds than my own have attempted to answer this question, and I see no need to attempt fixing what isn’t broken. Here, then, is the first question and answer from the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

What is the chief end of man?

To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Of course, this reflects what God commands of us in Scripture. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

We exist to glorify God and to enjoy Him.

And to do so forever.

But what does it mean to glorify God?

To answer that question, we must first understand what the glory of God is. John Piper’s definition is simple and accurate to Scripture: the glory of God is the radiance of His inward attributes.

God’s attributes are who He is, the character of God, and they can easily be divided into two categories: His goodness and His greatness. The glory of God, therefore, is the visible display of how good and great God is. The plagues of Egypt, for example, showcased the terrible greatness of God to the Egyptians and the steadfast goodness of God to the Israelites. Of course, the glory of God was perfectly seen in Jesus Christ who is the radiance of the glory of God, as Hebrews 1:3 says. He alone is the image of the invisible God, the final and full revelation of God’s goodness and greatness to mankind.

With that in mind, the act of glorifying God entails at least two things. First, we behold and delight in His glory ourselves, obeying all that He commands us. Second, we declare His glory to others, summoning others to praise God’s goodness and greatness alongside us and teaching them all that He has commanded. Knowledge, obedience, and delight all go hand in hand, as Psalm 119 displays throughout its 176 verses.

This is the telos of being human. We were created to behold and delight in the goodness and greatness of God and to participate in His goodness through obedience to His commands. As Deuteronomy 10:12-13 make plain, God’s commandments are for our good:

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good?

Indeed, a significant good of glorifying God is that it liberates us. For the Greeks, freedom was not the ability to do whatever you want but the ability to achieve your telos. Rather, the person who chased their passions and lacked discipline was actually in bondage to them, for they kept him from his telos. The conception in Scripture is similar. Paul says that we were slaves to sin but that we are free in Christ. What does he mean? Christ has liberated us from our sin, which keeps us from fulfilling the purpose for which we were made. In Him, we are now free to walk in obedience to Him and to live for His glory.

WHAT IS EDUCATION?

With the telos of humanity, we can now discuss education specifically. Let us begin with defining our terms. Here is my attempt to define education:

Education is the learning, development, and enculturation of a person toward a particular ideal or end.

I chose the word enculturation because it best reflects the Greek concept of paideia, which I believe best captures the essence of education. For the Greeks, paideia was the total process of raising, shaping, and building a child into a properly functioning member of society. Indeed, G. K. Chesterton captures the idea well by saying that education is “the soul of one generation passing on to the next.”

Etymologically, our English word comes from the Latin verb educo, which means ‘to lead along’ or ‘to guide.’ By its very nature, education is the process of being led or guided. No education ultimately happens in a vacuum; it must have an outside source of some kind. Even self-education depends upon knowledge, tools, and resources.

And because education is a process of being led or guided, it is always toward some goal. Education, again by its very nature, must have a telos. Even if the telos is undefined, a destination will ultimately still be reached. It is rather like walking. You may choose a location to walk to, but even by not choosing, you are still making a choice. You must be somewhere, after all.

When it comes to educating our children, we are aiming them toward some goal. Whether choosing public school, private school, homeschool, or even unschooling, a destination of some kind will be reached.

The same is true of our continuing education as adults. A refusal to learn and develop is still an educational choice.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION?

While all education is aiming at some destination, what ought the destination be? To answer that, I suggest mingling the first and second questions together:

The purpose of education is to learn, develop, and enculturate into men and women who know, love, and glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Notice that I have added the acts of knowing and loving God. We cannot glorify God if we do not first know Him. Neither can we enjoy God if we do not first love Him. Both knowing and loving are implicitly required to achieve the chief end of man. The New City Catechism reflects this:

Q4. How and why did God create us?

A. God created us male and female in his own image to know him, love him, and glorify him. And it is right that we who were created by God should live to his glory.

In the first two chapters of Romans, Paul states that all people know God as Creator and as Lawgiver. But even so, we each reject that knowledge of God and refuse to seek Him. In the third chapter of Romans, the apostle quotes from both Psalm 14 and 58, saying:

None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside;
together they have become worthless;
no one does good
no even one.

The only way that we can know, love, glorify, and enjoy God is to be deliberately educated toward Him. Without any leading and guiding toward God, we do not seek Him. Not even one of us.

This is why Paul commands fathers to bring up their children in the education of the Lord, and the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) says that the book of Proverbs is for educating us in the wisdom of God. The Scriptures are the ultimate source for a Christian’s education, and through them, we are called to contribute to one another’s education.

Indeed, because God is infinite, education is not limited to children alone. It is not complete upon graduation nor even upon death. In comparison to the everlasting God, even the oldest of us are mere youths in His sight. And knowing the Eternal One will be an eternal pursuit. Whenever our faith is made sight and we look upon the face of our Lord, we are only continuing the education in worship that began here on earth.

Just as in Dante’s great epic, we will one day look upon the face of God, what theologians call the beatific vision. But that will just be the beginning. Lewis captures this marvelously in the final paragraph of the Last Battle:

And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. (The Last Battle, 228)

That eternally unfolding story will be spent in pursuit of God. Each day we will behold more and more of His glory, glorifying and enjoying Him more and more as well.

The beauty of the gospel is that Christ, who is the Himself the resurrection and the life, invites us to begin our eternal life here and now. In Christ, we are liberated from the bondage of our sin to finally pursue the purpose for which we were created: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

The chief end of education, therefore, is to know, love, glorify, and enjoy God forever.

Before we consider the topic of schooling, let me give us some questions to reflect upon:

As a Christian, do you view the telos of education as knowing, loving, glorifying, and enjoying God forever? If not, why not? If so, how is that goal practically being expressed?

As an adult, do you view your own education as a continuing and eternal reality?

What implications does this telos have for how you choose to educate your children?

There are no easy answers to those questions because they do not deal directly with modes and methods. But modes and methods can only be properly evaluated once we have a telos to aim toward. After all, if as a parent, you do not know where you are leading your children, it doesn’t really matter what classroom they’re sitting in, does it?

THE PURPOSE OF SCHOOLING

This brings us to the fourth question of my catechism, which addresses an important distinction between education and schooling. While the two terms are intrinsically related, they are not synonymous. Education is a much broader concept, encompassing the entire process of learning. School, however, is more specific and narrow.

School, most simply, is a place where one goes to be educated. We naturally think of children here because they attend some form of school throughout their childhood. But adults also attend schools, whether universities, trade schools, or online academies.

The purpose of a school, then, is to provide a particular form of education for a particular period of time. It is only one piece in the overall process of education. As we said earlier, education, by its very nature, requires guidance, resources, and a clear direction. It cannot happen in total isolation. Even if you sit alone learning through a book, you are still learning through the written word of someone else. The same applies for memes while scrolling social media. You are always being educated, for good or ill.

Of course, we can also speak about the process of schooling, which happens at a school. We should think of schooling as a structured and intentional effort to equip individuals with the tools they need to continue learning beyond the school itself. Thus, my fourth question asks:

What is the purpose of schooling?

Answer: The purpose of schooling is to learn how to learn.

This is particularly true of childhood schooling, though the principle applies to all forms as well. For example, if an adult attends a culinary school, the goal is not merely to master a set of recipes but to acquire the foundational skills and techniques necessary to continue growing in the culinary arts. No chef thinks of graduation as the end of their education in cooking. Instead, graduation simply testifies that they now possess the necessary skills for continuing to pursue further learning and mastery.

Childhood schooling ought to do the same. It ought to equip students with the necessary tools for continuing their learning throughout the rest of their lives. Given the abundance of options in life, no school can give students a full sampling of everything that they might encounter, especially by the time they are eighteen! They must instead be given the tools and lenses for learning whatever skill or science that they will need. Thankfully, there is an answer for doing this. They are called the liberal arts, and they are the tools by which we all learn, whether we know it or not. But they will be topic of our third lecture.

Again, the purpose of schooling is to provide students with the necessary tools to continue their own education. This, I believe, gives schools a manageable and achievable task because it provides a clear goal for the schooling process.

This leads us to the question of methodology: What is the best approach to achieve the goals of schooling? If the ultimate aim of education is for students to glorify God and enjoy Him forever as fully formed human beings, then education should guide us toward this chief end, and schooling should provide the tools necessary for this lifelong pursuit. The challenge, then, lies in determining what methodology and pedagogy that will best equip students to continue their pursuit of loving and knowing God, so they can glorify and enjoy Him forever, which we will consider more in the follow two lectures.

As we do so, we must recognize that the role of schooling is to provide tools, to equip students to learn for themselves. Yet it is God who awakens the desire in their hearts to pursue continued education, to know and love Him more, and to glorify and enjoy Him forever. As we consider methodologies, let us remember that schooling is the beginning of an eternal journey, and our task is to provide the tools for that journey, not to complete it.

A FINAL REFLECTION

Let me conclude with a brief mediation from Luke 10, where Christ is in the house of Martha and Mary. Luke tells us that Martha is distracted with much serving, but Mary is listening to Jesus. Martha complains to Christ, and He gently rebukes her rather than Mary.

How does this relate to education?

There are many things you can do: put your kids in the best schools, read the best books, master a trade or instrument, make yourself or your children into all these ideals. But at the end of the day, if we don’t know how to listen to Jesus and want to listen to Jesus, and if our children don’t know how to listen to Jesus and want to listen to Jesus, what’s the point? None of it matters. It’s all meaningless unless we have a relationship with Him. That’s the ultimate goal.

I love what Jesus says:

But the Lord answered, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken from her.’

One thing is necessary. There’s one thing that leads to eternal life.

One of the books that made this passage a favorite for me was Joe Bernard’s The Way Forward. He says, “The Christian life is difficult, but it’s not complicated.” This verse is perfect for that. It’s not complicated. You need to know Jesus. Listen to Jesus. Trust Jesus. That’s the only thing that matters ultimately and eternally.

At the beginning, Alice didn’t know where she was going, and so the road didn’t really matter. But Jesus tells us that there is a destination worth pursuing above every other destination. There is one thing necessary. We are educating our children and ourselves to walk toward Him.