Classical learning and education in the early church

Schooling, the study of pagan literature, and its use for Christians. Part of Philosophy.

Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Greek A) 6Anonymous · ca. 150-200 (the original; Greek A is later) · The teacher Zacchaeus takes Jesus to teach him letters, but Jesus calls him a hypocrite who does not know the Alpha and expounds its shape in mysterious terms.
Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Greek A) 14Anonymous · ca. 150-200 (the original; Greek A is later) · A second teacher strikes Jesus for challenging him on the meaning of Alpha, and falls senseless under his curse; Joseph orders that the child be kept indoors.
Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Greek A) 15Anonymous · ca. 150-200 (the original; Greek A is later) · A third teacher takes Jesus gently; Jesus teaches the law by the Holy Spirit, the teacher acknowledges his wisdom, and for his sake the stricken teacher is healed.
Miscellanies 1.5.29Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · There is one way of truth fed by many streams; Scripture speaks of many ways of wisdom; the harlot of Proverbs is foolish pleasure, not Greek learning; worldly studies should be used but not dwelt in, as some neglect their mistress philosophy for her maidservants.
Miscellanies 1.6.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Mathematical studies train the mind, purify the soul from the senses, and prepare it to see truth; good education improves good natures, as Proverbs' ant and bee show.
Miscellanies 1.6.34Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Prayer and the care of the soul need knowledge: goodness comes by learning, not by nature alone; the gifted can fall through neglect, the less gifted rise by education; God made us sociable and just.
Miscellanies 1.6.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · One can believe without letters, but understanding the faith requires learning; education makes virtue easier to attain and guards against deception by the sophists.
Miscellanies 1.7.37Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Greek learning and philosophy came from God indirectly, like rain falling everywhere; by philosophy Clement means not any one school but the selection of whatever each has said well about righteousness and piety.
On Idolatry 10Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Christians should not be schoolmasters, who must teach the myths of the gods and keep pagan festivals, but they may learn literature, rejecting the idolatry in it.
Octavius 23.1Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Children learn myths from parents, school, and poets, who harm the truth.
To the Nations 2.7Tertullian · 197 · The heroes and gods of myth were men, many of them wicked, and pagans cannot both honor the poets who tell of their crimes and deny those stories while basing rites on them.
Didascalia 1.6 (English)Anonymous · first half of the third century
Address of Thanksgiving 5Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · Orphaned at fourteen, Gregory began to receive the Word; providence diverted his journey to study law at Berytus and brought him to Origen at Caesarea.
Address of Thanksgiving 7Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · Like a farmer clearing a field, Origen first trained Gregory's mind in logic, teaching him to test arguments and not to assent rashly.
Address of Thanksgiving 8Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · After logic Origen taught natural science, geometry, and astronomy, turning amazement at the world into rational wonder.
Address of Thanksgiving 13Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · Origen had his students read all the ancient philosophers and poets except the atheists, so that no single school would capture their minds.
Homilies on Exodus 12.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · To turn to the Lord is to leave worldly cares and give the word of God the undivided attention parents give their children's schooling; those who leave as soon as the readings end have not even reached the veil.
Homilies on Leviticus 5.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The peace offering of praise is offered by one whose life causes God to be praised; its flesh, the solid food of perfect teaching, belongs to priests, and the leavened bread signifies secular learning admitted only to serve the word of God.
Homilies on Leviticus 7.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The clean animal chews the cud (meditates on Scripture spiritually) and divides the hoof (lives with the age to come in view); the captive woman of Deut 21 signifies pagan learning, to be purified of everything dead before it is taken up.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 3.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Literally, a little gained honestly is better than wealth gained unjustly; spiritually, the simple believer’s small faith is better than worldly learning, though best of all is to be rich in the whole of Scripture and in good works. The breaking of the sinners’ arms is read in several ways.
Against Celsus 1.62Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus does not even know there were twelve apostles; that uneducated fishermen and tax collectors converted the world shows divine power, not human eloquence.
Against Celsus 3.45Origen · ca. 248 · Origen shows from the Old Testament, from David, Solomon, Hosea, Daniel, and Ezekiel, that God's word wants believers to be wise.
Against Celsus 3.48Origen · ca. 248 · “Not many wise” does not mean none; Paul requires a bishop to be able to teach and refute opponents, so the church welcomes the educated as well as the ignorant.
Against Celsus 3.49Origen · ca. 248 · Christ is Savior of all, the wise as well as the simple; true education is a road to virtue and helps, rather than hinders, the knowledge of God.
Against Celsus 3.54Origen · ca. 248 · Christians seek to heal the souls even of the foolish, as Wisdom invites them in Proverbs, just as philosophers like Pythagoras and Zeno taught slaves.
Against Celsus 3.58Origen · ca. 248 · Christians speak freely before good fathers and teachers; they turn youths away only from immoral teachers, and they build on a good philosophical education to lead students to the deeper wisdom of the prophets and apostles.
Against Celsus 6.14Origen · ca. 248 · Origen replies that the truly uneducated are those who pray to idols, and that the Church, like Moses and Daniel of old, includes learned people who have moved on from human to divine wisdom.
Against the Nations 1.59Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Faults of grammar do not affect truth, grammatical gender is a human convention, and the pagans' own classics vary in the same way.
Church History 5.10.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Pantaenus, a former Stoic, headed the Christian school at Alexandria.
Church History 5.10.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Pantaenus finally headed the Alexandrian school, teaching by voice and pen.
Church History 6.2.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · His father made him memorize and recite Scripture daily.
Church History 6.18.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Origen held general learning to be useful preparation for studying Scripture.
Homilies 4.18Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Myths learned in childhood take root like evil seed and, as custom becomes second nature, are hard to remove.
Divine Institutes 3.25.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Philosophy requires much prior learning, beginning with reading.
Divine Institutes 3.25.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Grammar takes years.
Divine Institutes 3.25.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Rhetoric, geometry, music and astronomy are also required.
Preparation for the Gospel 10.1.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Greeks gathered the arts and sciences from the barbarians.
Preparation for the Gospel 10.3.26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius concludes that Greek learning as a whole came from barbarians.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.17.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato: children learn their future work through play.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.17.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Education is right nurture leading the child to love excellence.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.17.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses commanded teaching the law to children, as the Jews still do.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.18.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato: true education is training in virtue for citizenship.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.18.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Training for money or strength without justice is not education.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.18.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Right education makes men good and must be pursued through life.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.18.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Education trains children to love and hate rightly.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.18.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · David taught children the fear of the Lord.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.18.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Solomon’s Proverbs instruct children in wisdom.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.20.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato: education draws children toward the right principle of the law.
On the Witch of Endor 28Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius quotes Plato's Republic on the danger of telling children false myths and the need to censor the myth-makers, beginning with Homer and Hesiod.
Against Marcellus 1.3.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 336–337 · Eusebius says he quoted the passage to show Marcellus's vain display of Greek learning.
That One Must Die for the Son of God 11Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer mocks Constantius's shifting creeds and his promotion of Eudoxius, contrasts the polished but unpersuasive speech of the Arians with the plain truth of the Scriptures, and says that religion is defended not by killing but by dying, as the apostles did.
Letters 336, 338Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Libanius thanks Basil for a letter and a new student, recalls Basil's youth and conversion to a life devoted to God, and asks after his former student Firminus; in a second letter, whose opening is lost, he tells how Basil's letter was read aloud and judged superior to his own, and says he will teach poor students who are willing to work.
Letters 345, 346, 348Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Libanius excuses his delay in writing and teases Basil for refusing to read Homer with him; a second letter reports on the young men Basil sent; the end of a third, Basil's, promises Libanius three hundred rafters.
Letter 41Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · The end of the letter to the governor, praying he may join the persecuted rather than the persecutors; then a rebuke to Gregory for leaving his office as reader to become a teacher of rhetoric.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.0.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hilary introduces Psalm 118 [119] as an alphabetic psalm that teaches like the alphabet taught to children, with eight verses for each of the twenty-two Hebrew letters.
Three Letters to Sympronianus 2.4Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian defends his use of a line of Virgil by Paul’s quotations of pagan poets and mocks Sympronian’s appeal to the Muses.
Oration 4.1Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory summons the whole world, the angels, and the soul of Constantius to hear his thanksgiving for the fall of the emperor Julian, whose letters and sacrifices he condemns.
Oration 4.5Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Julian's ban on Christian teachers of Greek letters was unjust and cowardly; Gregory calls the persecuted and the wavering to celebrate.
Oration 4.60Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The rest of the first invective: Julian's indirect persecution, his assault on the army and the cross-standard, the outrages of Heliopolis, Gaza, and Arethusa (Mark of Arethusa), his law against Christian teachers, his plan to copy the church's institutions, and Gregory's satire of pagan myth and ethics compared with Christian morals.
Oration 7.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Caesarius's studies at Alexandria, his providential reunion with Gregory at Byzantium, his career as court physician, and his steadfast confession before Julian.
Oration 43.10Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory defends secular learning against Christians who reject it: like the creation, it is to be used for what is good and purged of what leads to demons and error.
Oration 43.12Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Basil was first educated in life and learning by his father, then at Caesarea, where he excelled as orator, philosopher and Christian, treating letters as a servant of the Christian philosophy of withdrawal to God.
Oration 43.16Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory describes the student factions of Athens and the initiation of newcomers, from which, through Gregory's influence and his own reputation, Basil alone was exempted.
Oration 43.23Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Basil mastered rhetoric, grammar, philosophy and dialectic, took from the mathematical sciences only what was useful, learned medicine through his own illness, and excelled above all in character.
Homilies 12.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Instruction also means choosing useful learning over geometry, astrology, poetry, rhetoric and sophistry; Basil then turns to “words of prudence” and the puzzle of the “prudent” serpent.
Homilies 22.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil, writing as an experienced elder and near kinsman, offers the young advice on their education, recalling Hesiod's three kinds of men.
Homilies 22.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Pagan literature can prepare the young for Scripture as dyeing prepares cloth: take from poets, historians and orators, like bees from flowers, what praises virtue (Homer, Solon, Theognis, Prodicus, the deeds of Pericles, Socrates, Alexander) and reject the rest.
Letter 21.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the pigs' pods as the vices, and also the pagan literature, that feed demons, and warns clergy against reading the classics for pleasure.
Letter 22.29Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome advises Eustochium on companions, humility toward her maidservants, and avoiding idle widows and affected speech, and asks what pagan literature has to do with Scripture.
Letter 22.30Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells of his famous dream, in which Christ the Judge condemned him as "a Ciceronian, not a Christian" for his love of the classics.
Letter 53.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises Paulinus's zeal to learn and shows from Scripture that teachers and priests must know the Scriptures.
Letter 66.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Pammachius to give all his wealth to the truly poor and to follow Christ, making secular learning serve him like the captive woman of Deuteronomy.
Letter 70.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome defends his use of pagan literature by the examples of Solomon and Paul and by the law of the captive woman in Deuteronomy.
Letter 70.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome cites Christian and Jewish writers, from Origen against Celsus to Josephus and Philo, who used pagan learning against pagans.
Letter 70.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome lists Latin Christian writers, from Tertullian to Juvencus, who used secular learning.
Apostolic Constitutions 1.6.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Pagan books are to be avoided.
Apostolic Constitutions 1.6.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Foreign writings turn the unstable from the faith.
Apostolic Constitutions 1.6.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Scripture supplies history, wisdom and poetry better than pagan literature.
Apostolic Constitutions 1.6.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Foreign and diabolical writings are to be avoided.
Apostolic Constitutions 2.61.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Pagan writings are inspired by the devil and lead to polytheism.
On the Christian Faith 3.1Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Opening the third book, Ambrose explains why he writes more, defends his use of poetic images by Scripture’s own use of poets and myth, and turns from the Sirens to Christ’s fasting.
Life of Macrina, part 2Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380 · Macrina is educated in Scripture rather than pagan poetry, refuses all suitors after her betrothed dies, holding that marriage, like birth and death, is one, and stays always with her mother.
On the Life of Moses 329Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The ark in which the infant Moses is saved signifies education; the princess who adopts him is pagan philosophy, which may be used for a time provided one is not cut off from the Church’s milk; the fight with the Egyptian is the fight of godliness against error.
On the Life of Moses 335Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The hand made leprous and restored figures the Son who took our nature and raised it to freedom from passion; the staff turned serpent figures Christ “made sin” to destroy the serpents of sin; strengthened thus, the soul confronts Pharaoh, with pagan learning as a permissible companion.
On the Life of Moses 359Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The command to take the Egyptians’ goods cannot mean fraud; it means that Christians should take over the riches of pagan learning to adorn the Church, as Basil did; at the Red Sea, temptations assail new believers, and the leader must encourage them while speaking to God in his heart.
Letter 101.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Only what accords with truth is truly liberal; poets, orators and philosophers who did not know God are not, though honest history has some nearness to freedom.
Letter 135.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Volusian writes to Augustine describing a gathering of friends where rhetoric, poetry, and the philosophical schools were discussed.
On Order 1.4Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine assures Zenobius that through liberal learning he will come to understand how all things form one ordered whole while sin is still to be avoided, and commends the books to him.
On Order 2.13Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine adds that faults of language, low style, and even fallacies have their proper place and value when governed by order.
On Order 2.35Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine distinguishes three domains of the reasonable, in action, teaching, and delight, and describes how reason, for the sake of human fellowship, invented words, letters, and numbers, the beginnings of grammar.
On Order 2.38Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine describes how reason, after grammar, produced dialectic, the discipline of disciplines that teaches how to teach and learn, and rhetoric, which moves those who cannot be taught by truth alone.
On Order 2.39Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Reason, seeking to rise to divine contemplation by steps, turns to the senses, beginning with hearing, and distinguishes three kinds of sound: voice, wind instruments, and struck instruments.
On Order 2.42Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Turning to sight, reason finds that visible shapes fall far short of those the mind contains and founds geometry, and from the ordered movements of the heavens produces astronomy.
Soliloquies 2.11Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Reason argues that grammar and every discipline are true because they are disciplines, formed by the definitions and divisions of the art of disputation, so that truth is true through itself.
Homilies on Matthew 59.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · We must not call a brother wicked or give up on him after two warnings, since God never stops exhorting us; Chrysostom rebukes parents who care for possessions rather than the souls of their households, leave their sons unbridled instead of marrying them early to keep them pure, and educate them only for money.
On Illustrious Men 54Jerome · 392–393 · Origen: his youth, teaching at Alexandria, ordination in Palestine and conflict with Demetrius, his Hexapla and learning, and his suffering under Decius.
On Christian Doctrine 2.39Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Of pagan learning only history, the useful arts, logic, and mathematics are useful; Augustine proposes reference works on the places, creatures, and numbers mentioned in Scripture.
On Christian Doctrine 2.40Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · What is true in pagan philosophy, especially Platonism, should be taken for Christian use, as Israel took the Egyptians' gold, as Cyprian, Lactantius, and others did.
On Christian Doctrine 4.3Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Eloquence is better acquired young by reading and imitating eloquent writers, including Christian ones, than by studying rhetorical rules.
Confessions 1.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine argues that the ability to read and write is worth more than the poetic fictions he loved, such as the story of Aeneas and the fall of Troy.
Confessions 1.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine denounces the custom of teaching boys the myths of the poets, in which Jupiter both thunders and commits adultery, giving divine authority to vice.
Confessions 1.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine criticizes paid, publicly funded literary education for teaching vice through poets such as Terence, whose character cites Jupiter's seduction of Danae to justify his own lust.
On Catechizing the Uninstructed 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · Candidates from the schools of grammar and rhetoric must learn humility, value truth above eloquence, learn that Scripture's hidden meanings reward study, and not mock clergy whose Latin is faulty.
Commentary on Daniel 1, scholion 21Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Polychronius explains that the youths learned letters, not magic, and that dream interpretation was Daniel's special gift.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 25Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Scripture praises Moses not for Egyptian learning as such but because, renowned for learning and position, he put piety above both and chose to suffer with God's people.
Apology against Rufinus 1.13Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome answers Rufinus's mockery of his Jewish teacher Baranina, whom Rufinus called "Barabbas," and cites Origen and others who learned from Jews.
Apology against Rufinus 1.30Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome rebuts the charges of slandering his predecessors and of breaking his dream-oath, arguing that his vow concerned future reading, not memory of what he learned as a boy, and mocks Rufinus's style.
Apology against Jerome 2.6Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus quotes Jerome's account of his dream, in which he was beaten before Christ's tribunal as a "Ciceronian" and swore never again to own or read secular books.
Apology against Jerome 2.7Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus charges Jerome with breaking his oath, since his writings are full of quotations from Cicero, Horace, Virgil, and Greek philosophers.
Apology against Jerome 2.8Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus gives witnesses that Jerome had Cicero's dialogues copied on the Mount of Olives and taught the classical poets to boys at Bethlehem.
Apology against Jerome 2.12Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus contrasts Jerome's brief stay with Didymus with his own years among Alexandrian teachers and desert fathers, and mocks Jerome's Jewish teacher as "Barabbas" and his debt to Porphyry.
Letter 14Firmus of Caesarea · early fifth century · Firmus welcomes a bishop's son sent to Caesarea for education.
Letter 25Firmus of Caesarea · early fifth century · Firmus thanks a friend for taking in a young man sent away for study.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 7.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Nathanael, though praised by Christ, was not made an apostle because he was learned in the law, and Christ chose the unlearned; his learning led him to hope at the name of Nazareth.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.30.3Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Julian bars Christians from teaching.
Retractations 1.5Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing On the Immortality of the Soul, Augustine calls it obscure and corrects several statements; he then lists his unfinished books on the liberal disciplines, of which only Grammar and six books On Music were completed.
The Conferences 14.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Cassian confesses that the poems and war stories of his classical education return to his mind even in prayer, and despairs of being rid of them.
The Conferences 14.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Nesteros replies that the impure have only skill in words, “knowledge falsely so called”; true knowledge follows the order of practical virtue, above all chastity, as the prophet, the psalmist, and Paul show, and may flourish even in the unlettered.
Letter to Valerian, paragraph 13Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 432 · Examples of the learned and noble who turned to the Christian life: Clement of Rome, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Gregory who drew Basil from the school of rhetoric, Paulinus of Nola, Hilary and Petronius, and the eloquent Latin writers.