247: Classical Education Part 4: Dominion Over Learning

Out of the Question Podcast: Uncovering the Question Behind the Question

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Welcome to Out of the Question, a podcast that looks behind some common questions and uncovers the question behind the question while providing real solutions for biblical world and life view. Your host is Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor and founder of The Chalcedon Teacher Training Institute.

Andrea Schwartz

We have come to the fourth and final segment on our Dominion in Education or Dominion for Education. I hesitate, Cathey, to say the final because this is not the final word. I would say this is probably the final part of the introduction on what everyone should know, whether or not you’re going to sit down and teach with or without a classical curriculum because that was the springboard on which we decided to have this conversation. But the dive takes us into a pool that we need to examine and maybe have the answer as to why are Christians not in a position to change the world? I mean, the first century Christians overturned the world. How come we don’t seem to be able to do that? The Bible hasn’t changed. Maybe we’ve changed, and this is a good examination of that. So why don’t you just recap for us the things we’ve covered in the past three sessions, in case people are not listening to this, I would think? One after another, one after another.

Cathey Brown

Well, we’ve had some important themes that we’ve carried through with all of them to help you remember this, so that you know what we’re considering and what some of the bigger perceptions of this topic is and how we’re supposed to shape our world view about this biblically and for the purpose of Dominion. We’ve talked about the importance of understanding by what standard, which such something by and for what ends, it’s being used in. That gives us a really good Dominion of knowledge and education and curriculum in general. We’ve also looked at the difference between the secular versus sacred knowledge comparison, but what it really should be, city of man versus city of God. It’s not just they happen to be part separately. Note, they’re actually in competition with each other. They are antagonistic to each other. We’ve seen how that really comes into play with the two different types of classical schools that we looked over. Then we also, on our last session, saw how that came into play in the other phases of curriculum. We’re really familiar with, Okay, these are the subjects. This is what we learn. But that’s only the explicit curriculum.

Cathey Brown

There’s also the implicit curriculum, our thought shaping. There’s the hidden curriculum, which is meant to shape our behaviors. Then there’s the excluded curriculum, which are intentional omissions in the educational process, which means somebody doesn’t want you to know something. Where does that all lead us then?

Andrea Schwartz

I can imagine someone listening to this who came because they really want to how should I educate my child, or how should I help my children educate their children, or as a believer who understands this, what am I supposed to do with all this? And it’d be really easy to just say, Okay, just forget it. Let’s just sit in the corner and say our prayers, and that’s all we really need to do. But that isn’t Dominion.

Cathey Brown

No, that’s fear and that’s being better safe than sorry, and that’s throwing out the baby with the bath water. And that’s honestly making an excuse for ourselves saying, no, I’m completely overwhelmed. This is way too big of a project for me to take on, so I won’t even start. I’ll feel bad in my heart about it. I’ll feel convicted in my heart, but then I’ll fold my hands. We’re not allowed to do that. We have to get started in making this better. So today’s is really about giving you some of the pieces where we can start making it better. You’re not going to get everything done in one fell swoop, but this is going to give you some good ideas of where to start and why they might be good places to start in building Dominion education for your children.

Andrea Schwartz

Let’s define Dominion because I’m not sure we ever did in the first three sessions, but clearly we talk about the Dominion mandate. You using the word Dominion isn’t just coming, Oh, gee, that was a clever way to describe this. It’s a biblical concept. Explain it so that as you continue, we get a better sense of what we mean by Dominion in learning.

Cathey Brown

Dominion means bringing all of the created order under the lawful rule and the holy reign of our sovereign God. We read verses like, Take every thought captive. The totality of our lives that’s supposed to be designated to living righteously and holily and for God’s glory, that’s Dominion. The more of those moments, the more of those thoughts that you are intentionally applying and to put in God’s law at work in the world around you and bringing his glory, that’s bringing Dominion here on Earth.

Andrea Schwartz

Okay. So it’s not so much a suggestion or, hey, this is a good idea. It’s a command that applies to everyone.

Cathey Brown

Part of the problem is we don’t realize just how thorough that is. That’s part of our sanctification journey is every day we wake up and discover something else that, Oh, I’d never considered before that I made no endeavor to find out how biblically I’m supposed to live regarding that. I just thought it was somewhere out there in neutral and extra whatnot. But if everything has to come under God’s rule and reign, then every single aspect of our lives has to be considered. The Bible has to be brought to bear on and go in what we need to do. This includes the created order of learning.

Andrea Schwartz

So thy kingdom come gives us a responsibility. If we’re asking for something that your kingdom would come, Lord, then it behooves us to find out what he’s told us to do in turn terms of having that accomplished.

Cathey Brown

Yeah, that’s the Dominion mandate. My kingdom come, thy will be done. What is our responsibility to that? What tools have we been given for that? The greatest tool we’ve been given is that image of God within us, knowledge and righteousness and holiness unto Dominion. Right there it says up front, knowledge. We’re supposed to have knowledge. We’re supposed to have a certain measure of learning. We need to consider biblically what that looks like. I don’t think it’s an accident when they put that into the Westminster that knowledge helps us then with righteousness and holiness, learning how to learn about God and how he’s supposed to be working in the world around us and what we’re supposed to do, what our duties and our obligations are to him regarding that, that builds to Dominion from that knowledge base. So we have to start and go, Okay, what knowledge do I need? How do I learn it? How do I keep learning it? How long do I need to learn it?

Andrea Schwartz

So the Bible gives us advice and examples of how we should avoid the things that God doesn’t want us to do.

Cathey Brown

The best practical of that, because we read a lot of the Bible advice and we immediately go back to the way that the law is stated, Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. Yes, okay, so we’re avoiding things. But the Bible also shows us the best way to avoid those things is to fill them with the good positive sides of that. Thou shalt not kill means I shall value life. I shall do everything I can to understand it, to preserve it, to keep myself healthy and safe, to keep my family healthy and safe, to keep my neighbor healthy and safe, to keep all the little critters around me healthy and safe.

Andrea Schwartz

So the negative is restrictive in terms of what you cannot do, then by implication, we should be looking at then what we can and should be doing.

Cathey Brown

If we want to avoid the God hating and God defying influence of the classical system, then we want to willingly and eagerly and devotedly subject ourselves to the influence of thoroughly God honoring, God fearing and God loving system. So the subjects aren’t bad. We have to be able to take dominion over the subjects of classical education without falling prey to that God hating influence of the system of classical education.

Andrea Schwartz

When we say the subject matter of the classical curriculum or classical orientation, it’s not like they made it up, the people who formulated, these are aspects of creation. This is a way in which to communicate better, to understand better, to look at the past, look at the present, consider the future. So all these subjects are really aspects of how we serve God, and that’s why it’s important to know them.

Cathey Brown

And the problem comes is that most people don’t want to build a system to get this accomplished. There’s lots of reasons why, but we’re going to touch on three very big ones so that we can understand. Before we even get started building the system, we’re going get rid of a lot of the hang ups to people wanting to build a system. The first one is it comes from a pseudo Christian pseudo spiritual place. The concern or the resistance against what many people consider regimenting the Spirit. They think that if you have a, you have to learn this list of the Bible in Christianity, then you’re going to be playing favorites on topics. You’re going to be setting an unfair bar. There’s going to be things excluded. But there’s a problem with that concern. How many years do kids learn? How long is a typical education in the US public system? 12 years, 13 years, if you include kindergarten?

Andrea Schwartz

When you look at —– laws, the state’s telling you how long education is supposed to be.

Cathey Brown

That’s over a decade, people. Think back 12 years ago in your own life, there’s a lot that’s gone on in that. Think back to your own education. There was a lot that you acquired during that. How many years of human history were you taught during that period? How many advancing levels of mathematics were you taught or did you acquire during those years? How many classical books did you read during that 12, 13 years of education? A lot can be covered. Now, are you saying that the world can devise a city of man system to squeeze all of that information into a dozen years with a maturing, emerging youth mind. But we can’t devise a God honoring city of God system to establish knowledge in the foundational trees of our faith? Are they better teaching their purported secular subject matter than we are at instilling biblical foundations?

Andrea Schwartz

Well, I would say that some people say, Well, obviously they have been. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t replace the status quo with the implementation of God’s commands.

Cathey Brown

Yeah. The problem is the perception of whether or not we’re going to put the time and the effort into it or whether we should even mix around with it. We have a couple of legs up in this. Instead of saying you’re stifling the Spirit. No, we’re not trying to stifle the Spirit. We’re trying to utilize the Holy Spirit. Do you think the Holy Spirit isn’t working in our kids when they learn the Bible? Is the Holy Spirit only working after a certain age? Well, then why did that Proverbs 22 point out, Train up a child in the way they should go, and then when they are grown, they won’t depart from it. You’re not hanging around and waiting to expose them. You’re going ahead and putting this into the educational experience early on, but you’re doing it intentionally now. That’s the big thing we want to key in on here. This is purposeful, intentional engagement that.

Andrea Schwartz

We’re asking for. Let me add that people seem to have a very accepting attitude, most, not all, on compulsory education. And so their concern when they begin to homeschool or send their child to a place that’s other than a state institution is how we’re going to have all those box checked that they want checked. Does God have a command of compulsory education? Yes, he does. The state just imitated it, counterfeited it, and said, Well, we’re going to do it this way. So the whole idea of compulsory education is not wrong. It’s whose education, as you said, by what standard and for what purpose.

Cathey Brown

And what are you being compelled to learn? Most people won’t argue, Oh, yeah, you need 12 years in mathematics taught, but you’re going to argue that we shouldn’t also then teach 12 years in the Bible? Oh, well, no, you can do that because you’ve got the time frame for that. But they don’t have the time set up within the school day. Actually, we’ve learned that those who had their kids sent home during the COVID break realized how little learning is actually going on in the classroom. And if you sit a kid down and focus on them, you can get their lesson done in a the amount of time that they spend on it in the schooling system. It’s not that it takes anywhere near that long. So if you do it more effectively, if you do it more efficiently, then you have more than enough time. You’ve just been wasting your time piddling around in these secular subjects, piddling around in the city of man, educational constructs in their curriculum. And you said, because they take up so much time, I just don’t have time to put in a thorough God honoring system to learn the Bible.

Cathey Brown

Somebody has got their priorities messed up. Somebody’s got their priorities not in alignment with the Bible. This is what we’re trying to open our eyes to see.

Andrea Schwartz

Very good. Okay. Number two, what’s the second reason why people go, Maybe not. Well, it seems.

Cathey Brown

Like we’re just copying the world. We’re making a Jesusy version of the system the world came up with first. They’re the ones that did it. They’re the ones that discovered these hidden faces, the curriculum stuff. That’s their system. That’s a worldly system, right? No, the world might have noticed it first, and they might have put it into a formalized system first.

Cathey Brown

But every structure, every system, every method, every order, if it’s based on a real observation, the true observation of the true world around us, of the way that man’s mind works, of the way that he would fall in man’s minds work, it’s just an acknowledgement of the system and the structure and the method and the order that God placed within creation at the beginning of time. If man’s mind works like this, if man’s mind not only learns the exact curriculum, the exact stuff that’s written on the board, but they’re also shaped by the perceptions, this is what learning is, this is what I need to know, these are the behaviors I need to follow, these are the things I don’t need. Then that part of the mind that God put within us. If it holds true to the Pagans and the way that their minds can work, then God made the mind that way. And we need to recognize that. Why would we not be taking advantage of that? The problem is it’s our failure in Dominion, that the God haters discovered the thoroughness of the impact, the importance, the influence of the educational systems and schools in the curriculum before we did.

Cathey Brown

And it didn’t start out like this. When did public education, the more universal mass education, begin? It wasn’t the Pagans. It wasn’t Horace Man. It started with the Christians in the Reformation who suddenly had Bibles in their own language languages. We’re going around saying, Okay, we can get Bibles in our own language. We need to learn how to read. Let’s make sure everyone can read so everyone can read their Bible. It lasted great for a century. Then the world stepped in and kicked up the level of organization to it. We sat back and went, Oh, no, it’s good enough as long as we can read our Bible on our shelf. We stopped taking dominion. We didn’t keep advancing the dominion of learning.

Andrea Schwartz

The laziness aspect falls into that. But I think we mentioned it before, it’s much more of a dereliction of duty than just being lazy. The Bible has been clear. As long as you’re reading the word of God, you’re going to hear and read these commandments. But I guess people have decided, Well, that was good for then, but we do it differently now.

Cathey Brown

Well, all it takes is a little sitting to rest, a little folding of the hands, and we lose dominion. They are ravening wolves. They want to take over. They want to devour. The second that we are not keeping watch on the watch tower like we’re supposed to, the second we are not claiming that dominion, they’re going to try to move in and obliterate us. That’s why we read in the Bible that the covenant has to be ruined in every generation. This is our generation. This is our time. How are we going to renew Dominion learning in our time?

Andrea Schwartz

And one thing I might add, a lot of people are up in arms because in the month of June, there were the pride parades, and they were saying, We are coming for your children. And everybody’s, They have been coming for your children. And in many cases, they had your children. And that’s why this is being tolerated. So we have to take it seriously because we’ll see the consequences of disobedience. If you don’t like the status quo, first look in the mirror.

Cathey Brown

That ties in here, we go to our third big reason why most people don’t want to build a Dominion educational system. Personal responsibility, personal oneness. Unfortunately for us as Christians, a lot of that comes down to our embarrassment or our pride. This is hard to discuss because it hits very close to home to far too many of us, even if we don’t want to admit it. I’m going to be the first one to jump out there and say, Guys, I am not always good about practicing what I preach. I have a wonderful Read the Bible system that my daughter follows really well. My husband has even joined alongside. I go, Oh, but I’m in the middle of seventh volume of John and I’ve got these other fancy things I need to be reading. Suddenly you go by and it’s been three months since I sat down and specifically picked up the Bible just to read through, just to keep the familiarity going, just to keep deep diving and learning and seeing what else is in there so that know it more. It’s not that I’m not learning on this life, but I’m leaving my Bible itself on the shelf.

Cathey Brown

I will be the first one to admit this is hard. What we’re trying to train up and in here, we want the system to be better for our children than it has been for us. We have to be willing to admit we have fallen short. The tendency for parents is to respond to this embarrassment with this little bit of pride by restricting their kids either in, Okay, you can learn like this because that’s how I learned it at your age. So you’re going to turn out to be just like me, and that’s good enough. Or, No, you can go a little bit beyond. Look, see, you have improved a little bit, but we don’t want to go for full bore because that just seems like a lot. And we can do that consecutively. We can do that in multiple generations. Just a little step here and now, and that’s all I need, and I can be content with that. Part of the series has been to point out how the system has been affected us without even knowing it and how we need to change that. This is the point where we have to confess and repent.

Cathey Brown

We didn’t realize just how far off base we were in how we should be learning, not just how our kids should be learning, but how we as believers need to be learning, how we need to be prioritizing learning, and how we need to have a thoughtful, purposeful, intentional God honoring approach to increasing our learning throughout our whole lives so we can keep growing in grace and knowledge with Almighty God. Now that we know these things, what are we going to do with them? Are we going to do just a little incremental step? Are we going to step back and go, No, it hasn’t been right. We are all joining in this endeavor together. I’m joining in this endeavor with my kids. That’s what’s going to help you here. That’s what’s going to save you here. If we’re going to take back Dominion in our kids’ learning, we have to admit and reclaim Dominion in our own learning, in our own perspective, perspective of learning. But we’ve got a blessing here, too. We’ve got an easy factor. We get to learn alongside our kids. We don’t have to know it before we teach it to them.

Cathey Brown

Some of the best lessons that I’ve shown my daughter is I did not do this well. This was never an opportunity for us growing up. Now that I’m grown, now that I’ve learned, now that I’ve matured, I wish it had come earlier because it would have been a lot easier to learn done this earlier. I want to make myself better at doing this, so we’re going to do this together. We’re going to do this alongside each other.

Andrea Schwartz

Here’s the thing, which a lot of people, I don’t know, maybe because we have this sadomasochistic bent, when you start obeying God, he rewards you. He says, Well done. You don’t have to look back and say, Oh, those years, I didn’t do it. Today is the day of small beginnings, but we’re not supposed to despise the day of small beginnings. Instead of looking back, we need to look ahead and recognize that God keeps his promises, just like a culture that has fallen apart because God kept his promises. If you do this, this, and this, this will be the outcome by the same token when you begin to obey God deliberately and self consciously, there’s blessing. So there’s no real room for being overwhelmed as a virtue and as a reason not to do something. It says, Okay, all right, so I’m starting here. The same way if you were swimming in a polluted pool, as soon as you found out it was polluted, you wouldn’t say, oh, well, I guess I’m here. I might as well… No, you would get out.

Cathey Brown

Find me a shower and get me rinsed off.

Andrea Schwartz

Exactly.

Cathey Brown

So we want to take advantage of this now that our eyes have been opened, now that we’ve realized just how thoroughly the system has been affecting us, we want to take advantage of the wonderful opportunity we have. Dominion learning is a wonderful opportunity to acknowledge our own fault in a very specific sin of omission. We have not taken every thought captive. We have not loved the Lord with all our hearts, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all of our strength. I don’t think anybody would argue that we have, but specifically here in learning, in how we understand knowledge, we haven’t taken these things captives. Our hearts have been more concerned with how it would look to our kids if we didn’t have the same foundational knowledge, the biblical knowledge and perspective of the Bible learning as we’re asking them. Our souls have resisted considering our lack of faith knowledge as a sin in leaving necessary things undone. Oh, it’s not really that bad. I haven’t done as much as I could or should, but it’s less bad than what it could have been. Our minds have been very content to achieve only a certain level of knowledge for dominion, or to only acquire a little bit more on a very low, very achievable, very constant, steady, nonchallenging trajectory.

Cathey Brown

Where do we put all of our time? Where do we put all of our spare minutes? How much of our time do we contribute to adding to our Dominion learning, to adding to the knowledge base that we need to go out and take the world for God, to bring everything captive under his rule and reign?

Andrea Schwartz

And you don’t have to be a politician. You don’t have to be somebody who heads a corporation or has offices all around the earth. No, mothers, fathers can do this. That’s why the family has been systematically chopped up because this is the best place of learning. So as we reclaim it, we have to recognize that, okay, maybe it’s just myself and my children. Okay, that’s a start because if those children grow up and understand a Christian orientation to serving God in every area of life and they have children, gee, what will the future look like?

Cathey Brown

Yeah. And not only can we do it, but it’s our duty to do it. It’s our biblical obligation to do it. Now that we’ve brought us to a place of necessity, we need to get this done. The place of humility, saying, Okay, I haven’t been doing this right. I’m ready to learn. I’m ready to step forward. I’m ready to make some changes. It’s time to build that thoroughly God honoring that God fearing and God loving system that’s going to teach us what we need to know. It’s going to shape our perspectives towards heavenly mindedness, and it’s going to train our behaviors towards obedience, towards glory to God and to our enjoyment of him, both for this life and for the world to come. So ready? Dominion in learning, Dominion in education. How do we start? Well, we start with a good foundation, right? Most people would say, yes. If you answer the Bible to that, if you think, yes, but the Bible needs to start by that is the foundation. Okay, what does it mean to know the Bible? And how do you go about getting that other than, Oh, just sit down and read it.

Cathey Brown

Do you remember how you were told when you first became a Christian? How did you learn the Bible, Andrea?

Andrea Schwartz

At first I was told to read the Bible, yes, but they gave me a whole bunch of other short books. There was no rush. In other words, just take your time. It was never assumed that it should be the most important thing you do and the thing that you give most time to. And by God’s grace, it was my hunger and thirst for like, This meal is not satisfying me. I can read my Bible, but a good portion of it, I have no idea where these places are, who’s being spoken to, why it’s important. So the need for teachers and expositors is enormously important because without it, you’ve read a bunch of stuff that you don’t understand and has no meaning in your life, so I guess it’s not that important.

Cathey Brown

I was raised within a Christian, a purportedly Christian household, and the thought of the Bible was, Oh, well, you’re good if you crack it open. You just get that gold star. Look, she’s sitting over in the corner reading her Bible. They never bothered to see what I was reading. I still have my first Bible, and it’s got the most crazy random verses highlighted through it. I can remember in elementary school ages, well, that’s what adults did when they went through and they listened to sermons and whatnot every now and then they’d highlight something and so I got me some highlighters and I would randomly flip open my Bible, find a verse and read it and highlight going, yeah, I did that one. That one right there. Now, that’s not a very good approach to learning the Bible. That’s very scattershot. But this is what most people’s experiences are going to be. Oh, yeah, you should learn. You should read. I’ve come across a couple of people that have been told, just read the Bible from beginning to end and you’ll be good. That can be a little hard, especially as an adult to just say, sit down and read this 1200 page book.

Cathey Brown

Just go and you’ll figure it out. That’s not a very good foundation. We’re going to look, I want to propose four different ways of how we should know the Bible and where those can be reasonably placed in a system of Dominion learning. For those of you parents who want to put this in with your kids and you haven’t had a chance to do these all yourself, guess what? If you teach these to your kids, if you get the resources in your house to help your kids through this, you’ll be walking through it with them. You’ll be acquiring this knowledge as well. Four different ways we need to know the Bible. We need to know it. Number one, with a general familiarity. Number two, we need to know how to determine comprehension in context. Number three, we need to know the greater web of theology. Big, big fancy term there. Number four, we need to know the Bible for life application. So we’re going to break those down as a system here, and we’re going to start with general familiarity. Familiarity is the quality of being known. Something is recognizable based on long or close association with it.

Cathey Brown

So what do we need first and foremost to build a general familiarity with the Bible? We’re going to need long and close association. We’re going to need repeated exposure over a long period of time. So we have to start building biblical familiarity early in the Dominion learning process. Now, most of us are already doing a piece of this. How many of those listening have read Bible stories to their kids or to their grandkids? Or you’ve watched little videos showing what Noah and the Ark looked like, or what Daniel and the Lions didn’t look like? We’ve exposed them to the stories of the Bible. So they’ve already started building familiarity with those. Unfortunately, that’s the last semi organized way that we have tried to teach the Bible to our kids. Once they get beyond story time out, we’re like, Okay, just open your Bible. No, no, we want to… What’s the next step beyond that? We want to look at the next step beyond that. Young kids have that general familiarity. We’re going to build off of that. The next stage, walking up from that, is starting to learn the Bible, beginning to end. We’ve had all these little pieces.

Cathey Brown

We’ve had your Daniel in the lion’s den. We’ve had Abraham, we’ve had Jesus. We’ve had Paul over here. How do we know where they go in the Bible? There’s a lot of adults that still don’t even know where those pieces fit into the Bible. If we’re going to make it better, that’s the next step for our kids. We want them to learn the Bible, beginning to end. We’re going to consider this our first general familiarity building block, knowing the Bible, beginning to end. We want to start shaping our understanding of the Bible as a historical narrative, as a story, as this is what happened earliest, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, covers some very known, very knowable historical events in order. And that is a foundational perspective of history. We use our Bibles to teach history, to teach what history qualifies as, to shape kids to understand what history is. Because the world is going to try to convince kids the Bible isn’t reliable history. It’s going to try to convince them it’s just story times. And we want to emphasize this before we ever get into world history, before we ever get into US history.

Cathey Brown

No, here’s known history. There’s no error in this. These are the times this is when it happened. And even better, it spells out, this is God working in the world. Now, that’s a wonderful foundational perspective of history.

Andrea Schwartz

Give a framework here. Now we’re at the stage where you’re saying beginning to end and shaping and understanding. How might that be accomplished?

Cathey Brown

What you’re looking for is it’s probably going to take you three to four years so that you’re not rushed because you don’t want us to spend an early grammar school kid first, second, third, fourth grade. You don’t want to have them try to cover the whole Bible in one year. You’re going to have to skip over a lot of things if you do it that way. Set apart three or four years at the beginning of elementary education to go through the entirety of the Bible sequentially so they can learn to start saying, Oh, wait a minute. I recognize this story. That’s where that’s at in the Bible. That’s what it came after. That’s what it comes before. Hey, look at this over here. I didn’t realize that this was even a part of this, but it follows right after this. And that makes sense now. So we can put events and people into their proper places in the biblical narratives. There are a lot of curriculum systems like this available out there. We happened to use one called God’s Great Covenant. It was four years, and we did two years in the Old Testament and two years in the New Testament and God’s great provision and plan for us.

Cathey Brown

We did the two years right before we started then the world history, the two years of Old Testament, and then it ended up lining up with our world history course. Okay, we just covered those. I know these. This is half my first year world history. The Old Testament stuff, I just did. I have confidence in this. I have confidence in understanding history. Now I can start placing the rest of the world events in context to the history I already know from the Bible. That was a wonderful process. There’s lots of these things out there. Hopefully, find it if you’re involved with a Christian school, see if you can nudge them to use doing something that’s going to work the kids all the way through history early on in the process.

Andrea Schwartz

At the end of this beginning to end block, what should kids be expected to know and do?

Cathey Brown

We’ve set this up early in the process, the first three or four years. So you’re looking first to third grade or first to fourth grade here. Okay? So kids are going to be able then to give a historical timeline of the major events of the Bible. I’m not saying they’re going to sit down and do an absolute test and be able, but they should be able to talk you through. This happened in Genesis and these are the things in here. And then after that, then we have the Exodus that happened over here. And then after that, this is what we have with the histories that went on here. But we talk about them even more over here in the Prophets. And these are the high points and these are the low points. And then we went off into captivity over here. And then we came back and then we came back. They should be able to talk you through this in general. And it should be as easy to breathe because they’re familiar with it now. It should be as easy as breathing. They should also know categories of biblical books. I’m not saying they have to memorize every biblical book front to back.

Cathey Brown

That seems like a very jeopardy trivia quiz question, show off knowledge. I don’t want trained monkeys. It’s nice for those of you who have all of the books of the Bible memorized in order. That’s very nice. I was a little embarrassed when I graduated with the highest honors, the number one of my class, the honor grad for the Bible graduates, and I could not name the books of the Bible in order when they asked me. I was the highest student they had, but I couldn’t do that. You don’t need to. You do need to know, what’s the Pentateuch? Can you name a couple of books out of there? What are the prophets? What it means, the difference between a major and a minor? What are the Gospels? You know the Gospels? You know the types of Epistle there are? And who wrote some of these things? What’s the difference between an Epistle to a Church and an Epistle to a person? Those are general questions. That’s general familiarity. But think about how many adults out there don’t know that.

Andrea Schwartz

I would venture to say, Cathey, that if you were to ask those same questions to adults out of the blue that they don’t know why you’re asking, I think some of them would be offended and say, Oh, see, you’re just interested in head knowledge. Well, I think the result of not being able to answer those questions is that there’s an absence of head knowledge. It’s not that there’s too much. It’s that it’s not there. It is important to know whether Noah came before the tower of Babel. It’s important to know which prophet was speaking during which time period. So it’s not just, Oh, this is a prophet, and he’s opening up the window and screaming and hoping somebody would listen. He existed in a time frame. So the fact that there’s so many people who would consider this over the top, Hey, if I had wanted to go to seminary, I would have. They failed to realize that it’s not a question of going to seminary. It’s for what purpose did God create you? And what you going to do with the life that God gave you?

Cathey Brown

Remember, these are four different foundational knowledge s we need to have. And this is just general familiarity. If you can’t know, if you won’t know the Bible on the very basic level of this is what’s in it. Not every single verse. I don’t expect you to have memorized every single verse. But if you can’t tell me, yeah, this is what happened. This is the story that happened in there. This is where ended up happening. T hese are the types of books that are included. These are what they’re technically named off of and what you can expect. Then how are you going to ever argue against worldy knowledge, sacred knowledge? How are you ever going to engage with Homer,

Cathey Brown

about whether or not he’s biblical? If you can’t even tell me the basics of what is in the Bible, you’re missing a foundation. I’m sorry, if you’re going to argue back against knowing the Bible, then I’m going to say you hate God. This is how we know God. Why would you not want to know his word more? That’s our first building block. Now that I’ve made fun of memorizing, our second building block is actually memorizing. For all of the things that Dorothy Sayers did wrong with her system and all the limitations in the end that she used childhood development for, she did at least recognize that young elementary kids are well suited for and well served by memory and recitation. And that’s not a bad thing, especially here for the Bible. There are many voices in the Bible that point out how necessary and helpful it is to have the exact words of the inerrant word of God readily available in our minds. Once that comes about, thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against thee. The law of God is his God and his heart, his steps do not slip.

Cathey Brown

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you can be careful to do everything according to everything written in it. Each from childhood, you have known the sacred writings, which are able to give you wisdom that leads to salvation. But the Bible is constantly telling us you need to know these words. You don’t have to know absolutely everything. Every single word in the Bible, though it shouldn’t surprise you, maybe it will surprise you, that there were people in church history that would memorize entire books like Isaiah. We should have this there, though, so that it’s able to encourage us, so that it’s able to support us in times of stress and times of difficulty so that it’s able to encourage us, so that it’s able to guide us towards more obedience. This is a perfect time to start working on those skills is early elementary age when they’re primed for it.

Andrea Schwartz

Right. Here’s a practical example. I was having a conversation with somebody and we were talking about transgenderism. The person certainly had the view, biblically, that it’s not correct. But the person made the comment that one of her children at least was compassionate towards these people. My question to her was, Well, does she think it’s wrong? She goes, Oh, no, she doesn’t think transgenderism is wrong. I said, Well, then she’s not compassionate. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. That’s right out of Proverbs.

Andrea Schwartz

When the Bible tells us to be ready to give an answer, that was the answer right then. That’s not compassion. Don’t look at that as compassion.

Cathey Brown

These are the most trustworthy words. If we’re going to go on and engage with, and the rest of our educational careers, some very untrustworthy words for some very untrustworthy God hating authors, wouldn’t we want to have these hidden in our hearts first and foremost so that we know when those words come up, we’re not even tempted to listen to them going, that right there is a heathen. That is a pagan who hates God. I can hear the hatred. It’s just seeping off the page. I probably need to go wipe off my hand. It’s all goopy from that. Again, we want beginning to end basic knowledge of what’s in the Bible. We want to start the process of memorizing scripture so that we can see how good that is and to start acquiring because over your lifetime, you should acquire more and more of these scriptures that just come to mind that are automatically memorized and in there and available and helpful because God uses those recollections to help you. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing those to mind when you need them. But the Holy Spirit can’t bring them to mind if you never bothered to put them into your mind.

Cathey Brown

So our third building block, our last one on our general familiarity here, talk about daily engagement. And this is going to be the hidden curriculum of the Dominion learning system. Okay? So we’re seeking to establish a behavior of daily going to the Bible so that we might keep growing more and more familiar with it. Now, lots of parents are hesitant to require daily Bible reading from their kids. I feel a little embarrassed that my daughter turns to her Bible every single night and does her three to four chapters a day. And yet mom’s like, It’s been two months. I need to get back onto the reading plan with them. But that doesn’t mean that we stop trying, that we stop endeavoring it. This only makes it more important that we train kids with their young so that they’re not struggling like us as adults to get this thing. If it’s a habit learned young, think about all these other habits that you teach your kids, moms, you teach your little boys to put the seat down. That’s being a good mom. That’s being a good future mother in law. These things we train in so that they don’t struggle with them one day.

Cathey Brown

Why would we not train them to read their Bibles every single day? We know the value there is in reading the Bible. I want to bring up a very practical subject of this for you to chew on. The Bible has, here’s your trivial for the day, 1,189 chapters. That means reading a chapter a day, only a chapter a day, you could get through the whole Bible in three years and three months. You read three to four chapters a day, which only takes around 15 minutes. That’s the same amount of time most people will spend with those little Christian daily devotionals, your daily bread that everyone manages to have in their bathroom reading around here. You could make it through the… With only three to four chapters a day, you’d make it through the whole Bible in a year. Now, why is that important? Yeah, that’s a great concept, great idea, and I’ll try to do it so I get the Bible read in one year eventually. But let’s take this and let’s give it an impact with our kids. A 12 year old, so we’re talking about somebody on the cusp of the teenage and young adulthood when most of them, if we’ve raised them well, would consider for themselves setting a daily Bible reading habit if we haven’t already.

Cathey Brown

If they started reading a chapter a day at 12 for the remaining 70 years of their life, they would have ended up reading the Bible 21 times in their lifetime. Andrea, do you know how many times you’ve read the Bible in its entirety?

Andrea Schwartz

Probably 10.

Cathey Brown

I’m on 9 or 10 right now, and that’s with having been a major in it where I had to be submerged in constantly. That’s already on a break through, and that’s only one chapter a day. Now, here’s where we really blow your mind. A 10 year old now, my daughter is 10 years old, so they’re now on the reading level where they can easily make it through multiple chapters in the Bible in one sitting. They can sit down for 15 minutes at a time. If they read 3 to 4 chapters a day throughout the end of that same lifespan, that same now 72 years, they will have read the entirety of the Bible 72 times in their lifetime. Whoa, stop it. Your 10 year old, your 10 year old child, your 10 year old grandchild, if you can encourage this behavior of 15 minutes a day with the Bible, just getting familiar with it, just reading straight through so that you know where everything’s at. You don’t even have to go beginning to end. Just cross off the books when you get them done. Just go here or go there, wherever. Seventy two times in their lifetime.

Cathey Brown

Now, how familiar will that 10 year old be with the Bible by the end of their life?

Andrea Schwartz

Well, not only that, I noticed because I not only read my Bible, I listen to my Bible because we have audio Bibles and such like that. I’m always amazed at how get to a part in Genesis and I’ll say, That’s in Genesis? I’ll go back and I’ll look through my actual hard text Bible and I go, Wow, that’s in Genesis. Now, I’ve been through the book of Genesis many, many, many times, but these are God breathed words. The repetition, it’s like, I need this nutrition.

Cathey Brown

We say repetition, but it’s a living and active word. It’s not a simple drowning monkey reading the same thing over and over. There is a fresh breath of grace that comes every time we read the Word of God. Every time we read, every time we come back to the same verse. I’ve covered that verse seven times in my life. Whoa, wait a minute. I get what that verse means now. That’s had a recent implication for me. That applies over here in this other thing that I was learning about. That’s going to help me over here in this other… Why didn’t it set in before? Because God, in his timing, one of the means of grace is the preaching of the word, is the teaching of the word, is the exposure to the word of God. So why would you not open that door and say, Come, speak. I’m here. I want to learn daily. And these are the days to do that in. Most of what we covered here in this knowledge number one, this is our general familiarity, most of that has been a statement of explicit curriculum. But if you were listening closely, you found some indications about how that also shapes our perspectives and it trains our behavior.

Cathey Brown

This is a great time to get that started and we want that. We should want these things for our kids. We should want them to be familiar with the Bible before they even start learning anything else in their academic career. We should want them to know this as a foundation because it’s going to serve them well in all of those other subjects they’re going to move on to.

Andrea Schwartz

And just so people are aware of the fact that this is just so radical, we train our children to brush their teeth. We train our children to wash their hands. We train our children to do a lot of things, and somehow or other, we have time for it because we see the consequences if we don’t. Rotten teeth, infecting if they’re cooking a meal and things like that. So why should we think by not establishing this habit that there are going to be good outcomes?

Cathey Brown

More scared of rotten teeth and a rotten soul, and that is not training up a child in the way they should go. At the end of the day, however you train them, that is how they will go. If you train them, if you do not train them to read their Bible daily, then you’ve trained them that they don’t have to read their Bible daily. You’ve set that standard, and that will be the way that they go. It should not surprise you when that’s the way that they go.

Andrea Schwartz

Number two.

Cathey Brown

Now, this is comprehension and context. We’re building off that step of familiarity, so we want to go a little bit deeper into our Bible. Next, we want to start understanding. It does us no good to be familiar with everything in the Bible if we don’t understand any of it. You look at Philip in the Ethiopia and eunuch, do you understand what you’re reading? And the unit translates it goes, how am I supposed to understand it if nobody explains it? So we want to get to the explaining. We want to learn how the Bible is explained. So this is foundational Bible knowledge in how we understand the Bible. And these are two Christian disciplines of exegesis and harmonious. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Those two terms. That sounds like something for seminary, right? Well, we’ll explain what they are and then tell me whether it’s something for seminary or something that every person who opens the Bible should know how to do. Exegesis is the sensible interpretation of Scripture through critical analysis. The same type of critical analysis you’ll use on literature in your learning career. But this one is guided by faith in the consistency of God and his desire to communicate coherently with his people.

Cathey Brown

You’ll do reading comprehension. This is Bible reading, comprehension, and it doesn’t come naturally. Our fallen natures are not going to want to know how to read the words on the page. They’re going to want to find little ways in and out of it. We have to know how to read the Word of God or rightly in a way that’s going to grow our faith. That’s all exegesis is.

Andrea Schwartz

It’s very helpful then when you hear somebody says, the Bible says, and you’ve got the familiarity, and you have been given the tools to exegete the Scripture to say, I don’t think that’s what that Scripture passage is saying. I think you’re putting something into it, you’re not pulling something out of it.

Andrea Schwartz

It takes a trained ear to be able to say, This is not right.

Cathey Brown

A trained ear, a trained mind, a faithful heart and mind. That’s training that we can do that we can give to our kids and we should. The second, the idea of hermeneutics. This one’s even a little bit more advanced, it seems. This is the branch of knowledge that deals with the framework or the perspective for interpretation. In other words, we want to teach how to study and interpret the Bible faithfully using particular principles. Some of these really sensible. It sounds real high and mighty. But see if you disagree with this. Texts of Scripture have to be interpreted in context, both their immediate context and their broad context. You don’t want to interpret something completely to a different culture than the one it was within because washing hands and washing feet in Jesus’s time is not going to have the same context as washing hands and washing feet in Africa at certain times or over in child’s time. Some of that was actually considered bad manners in other parts of the world. We need to understand that so we know the implications of everything in the Bible. Another faithful principle, following the analogy of Scripture. Those who have not heard of that, I hope you have heard of that by this point in your life.

Cathey Brown

This is a principle of faithful biblical interpretation. Quite simply, clear passages of Scripture are used to interpret less clear passages. We don’t get to say something ambiguous like God is love. Then ergo and ignore all of these things where God says, He hates this, he hates this specifically, he hates this specifically. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. God is love. Ergo, he’ll ignore those. I hate this. I find in the abomination passages. That is not following the analogy of Scripture. Anything that we say is doctrine. It’s good doctrine. It should come from clearly didactic passages, clearly teaching passages that deal with that particular doctrine explicitly. We can’t sit there and go, Oh, well, it mentioned that there was this number of steps or that they went at this time of day, and there’s a lot that we can glean from that, that there’s something evil about this time of day, or that we’re supposed to be doing this at this time. That’s speculation and all sorts of crazy. The Bible is very clear. If it’s a teaching passage, we should probably learn from it. If it’s a story passage, then let’s read the story of it and let’s see what the overall…

Cathey Brown

But it’s not the same thing as this specific teaching passages for doctrine.

Andrea Schwartz

So the difference between a command and a parable. The parable may have commands implied, but there are different, you might say, form of communication. And that takes an active reader, an active listener to say, Okay, what’s being said here and why?

Cathey Brown

And there are good rules. There are easy rules and principles so that we can find the difference between those and know how to use them rightly. Now, nobody would argue, Oh, okay, yeah, obviously, the parables and this, but I understand that. Congratulations. If you understand that, then you know a hermeneutic. You know a faithful principle. You’ve already got a piece of this. We want to start laying that groundwork in our children. This is the graduating from our general familiarity. Now we’re going up into the upper elementary years. We’re starting to say, Okay, you’re into your Bible daily. You’re doing this more daily. Let’s make sure that what you’re reading in there, you’re understanding it rightly. How many of us were actually taught to read and try to understand the Bible like this? Bible major in college. I was a Bible major in college, and they threw these words around, but then they never actually sat you down and made sure that you knew how to do it. It was just presumed, Oh, well, you pick up a Bible, you’ll just figure it out. No, let’s teach so that we make sure that we’re not making the mistakes.

Cathey Brown

In an age of heresies and denominationalism and false teachers teaching another gospel, it should be vital to us that we teach our kids how to read the Bible in a way that is faithful and leads towards God’s glory in our sanctification. We’re putting these, like I said, we’re putting these in those later elementary school years for the Dorothy Sayers people who understand that system. This is the beginning of the logic stage, not because we want this to be an argumentative study or anything, but because it requires enough maturing discernment to be personally committed to figuring out why we need to know this. We don’t want them just parroting back to these are the rules, these are the rules. Do you see why it’s important? Well, now I’m old enough to stop and consider why is it important? I can figure out why this is important. I already have a good familiarity with the Bible. I’ve already got a good basis, I can start to begin to wrestle with this stuff. So this is fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh grade that we’re going to start wrestling with this.

Andrea Schwartz

You said wrestle with this stuff. Even children are sinners.

Andrea Schwartz

So of course, they’re going to wrestle with this stuff as we wrestle with this stuff, because anytime God shines a light and says, No, that’s not how it’s to be done. That’s not what pleases me. You are going to have to wrestle with it. But unless you have the previous steps, it becomes, Oh, I don’t like that. This is what the Bible says. The Bible is so negative. Force, force, force. No. It’s like God expects us to interact with Him in the living word. And that’s why this should not be given short trips. And we can pick it up at any time, but let’s make sure we get our calculus in, or let’s make sure we get our grammar of our particular language in.

Cathey Brown

Think about your most elite athlete. At what age do they begin training? Pretty early, right? Because in order to get the body grown up, grown into a frame and a musculature and a pattern of movement that is going to Excel at a specific activity. It needs several years and several constraints put on it, several specific training regiments to maximize what it can do. What’s the same thing with our ability to engage with the Bible. If we want to be able to use the Bible well, not just in learning, not just in learning in our later years, but learning through the rest of our life, being able to take it into the world and take dominion, then we should want to start training early to maximizing our ability to be able to engage with the Bible in a way that is faithful, in a way that brings God’s glory, and in a way that works out our salvation with fear and trembling.

Andrea Schwartz

Just so it’s clear, most children are not listening to this podcast. The people who are listening might feel convicted that they fall short. But in everything that you’re saying, you can start today. The same way. Imagine that the child you’re teaching is you. How would you do it? Well, you’ve just laid the groundwork. Instead of being in a rush, it all has to happen tomorrow. You didn’t get to this point of biblical ignorance overnight. Don’t expect biblical literacy, comprehension, and then the availability of it in your personal life to happen overnight. But you start.

Cathey Brown

When we said three to four years for the kids to get fully familiar with the story of the Bible, beginning to end, some of that’s because they’re younger and they don’t have the same reading comprehension. But you, you’re an adult, so you are going to be able to comprehend that and build that a lot better. Over the next three to 4 years, you could have a perfect, a wonderful comprehension of the Bible, beginning to end. You could know all of these books, all of these categories of books where they’re at. Now you don’t have quite as much time to devote to it as kids do, but you’ve got a more mature brain, so you got a little bit of a leg up there. It’ll balance itself out. So why not start? Why not start trying to add to this? It’s never too late to learn the Bible. It’s never too late to learn how to learn and how to serve God better with your learning.

Andrea Schwartz

Just to clarify, this second knowledge, comprehension and context, really helps someone in the interpretation phase. In other words, how do I interpret it? I once heard Dr. Rushdoony in answer to the question, what is Christian reconstruction? I expected a very abstract erudite. He said it’s reading the Bible as though every single passage is God talking to you and that you need to apply it. I was like, Wow, that’s not what I was expecting.

Cathey Brown

This is, again, on the surface, it looks like a statement of explicit curriculum, but think about making this a purposeful inclusion or a purposeful plan in learning theology within childhood education. That shapes our perception about what we’re supposed to know, how we’re supposed to be able to engage with the Bible. We’re not just supposed to be sitting back and technically, I read it all the way through and I think I remember this, but we have to be trying to understand what’s in our Bible. This also trains our behaviors. It’s not just to say, Okay, you ou go out your three to four chapters a day so you’re keeping familiar, but then you sit down separately from that and you do a deep dive here going, What does this mean? How am I supposed to be living this? How am I supposed to be applying this? This also excludes things from our understanding or our Dominion use of knowledge and learning. This should exclude the mindset that the tools and the skills and the training to study the Bible are solely the domain of seminaries and theologians. No, sorry, you should not turn over the whole understanding the Bible to only seminary graduates.

Cathey Brown

This is not only supposed to be for pastors, this is supposed to be for all of us. If you’re a believer, you should want to understand the Bible. You need to understand the Bible, and you cannot afford with all of the false teachers in the world, all of the wolves in sheep’s clothing, you cannot afford to not know how to read the Bible and go, You’re saying that from the pulpit. But while you’re texting technically using those words out of Scripture, that’s not comprehension and context. I know that fails the hermeneutics. I know that that’s not good, faithful exegesis, and I can prove it here, here, here, here. So I’m not going to listen to you. I’m not going to be led astray. It also excludes us from thinking that knowing the Bible never needs to go beyond familiarity or easy reading. We should struggle to understand. We should endeavor. We should keep pushing ourselves. Are you going to pick up the Bible? If you’ve got this in your heart, you’re going to be able to pick up the Bible tomorrow to absolutely understand absolutely everything in it? Although I can’t do that to pretty much any book I read now, maybe C spot Run.

Cathey Brown

I could analyze See spot Run really well and understand every single word in there. But everything else beyond that, it’s not about being able to get 100 % at the end of the day. It’s about the endeavor to keep adding to the knowledge and adding to the learning for the glory of God.

Andrea Schwartz

Because it’s a living word and you’re a living person, that living word is going to mean certain things to you at 35 that it could never have meant at five. The whole idea of if somebody lives to be 72, three score and 10, how many times, if you figure, well, it takes them at least three, four, or five to even learn how to read, how many times they would go through it, they would have a very different perception of thou shalt not steal that went beyond mommy said not to have the cookie and I had it.

Cathey Brown

Exactly. So that’s our second knowledge, comprehension and context. Third, we’re going to move on to the next step up. So we started doing just completing the basic Bible. We started to build some basics about how we understand it. But what do we do with these pieces now that we understand? We want to build this greater web of theology. We want to learn the doctrine of the Bible, how they relate to each other, what our duty is regarding them, and how they bring glory to God and help us enjoy him forever. We assemble a body from all of these pieces that we’re starting to get. We start to assemble a greater web of theology through the education process. We start assembling this web in the early elementary years. We focus on three familiar standards. We focus on the Lord’s prayer and the Ten Commandments and the Apostles’ Creed. Now, a lot of people will say, No, we teach those. What do you teach? Do you memorize those or do you stop and break down and work through everything that those things mean? This is where we start setting the standard of we want to strive to understand and we want to strive to see how it’s going to apply to our life.

Cathey Brown

And we have to strive then to start building this system that we’re supposed to live under. Young elementary kids will probably not be able to understand the entirety of all of these doctrine, but they can begin to have a perspective shape that there is more to these than just memorization. Yeah, I can recite the Ten Commandments. Okay, but what do they mean? What’s the full implications of thou shalt not steal? Is it just keep your hand out of the cookie jar and mom’s going to smack your hand? You can start wrestling with that. We want to train you. We want to get you used to wrestling with that. We want your mind to be shaped that I should be wrestling with this. This is part of what it means to be a Christian, is that I should be wrestling with trying to understand these and to see what it means at the end of the day and how it ties into the rest of my life as a Christian. You never know what the leading of the Holy Spirit is going to allow a kid to suddenly understand. You will be amazed at the things that you’re like, Oh, there’s no way.

Cathey Brown

That’s completely beyond them. What do you mean? No, that’s exactly right. Wow, you caught that. You understood that. You parented back. You’re calling it simple? I didn’t think you’d be able to understand that, but I was to faithful to put it out there and give you the chance to know that it’s going to be there. At some point, you will understand this.

Andrea Schwartz

I remember teaching through the Apostles’ Creed, and you’re right. Apostles’ Creed, probably most people would say, Well, that’s just not as important. Many people have never been exposed to it. But how many people, once they are exposed to it, realize that the very first sentence negates evolution? I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. Boom. Okay? Anything after that. If a child has not learned that and now is being exposed in whatever, whether it’s a neoclassical or they’re going to bring up the doctrine of evolution, do they bring it up on some people believe, but we believe, or as it’s the tenet of our faith that it couldn’t be possible?

Cathey Brown

It’s going to be a lot less of a sirensong, and it’s going to be a lot more of a snicker going, Those idiots. Of course, that’s not true. God made the earth. I know this.

Cathey Brown

Right. So we continue building this great theology. Those are early elementary years. So we’re going to move out of that parroting that grammar stage into the emerging engagement years, those late elementary, middle school studies, say or says your logic years. Since we’re more able to understand more complex concepts, we’re going to try to move into some more full statements of doctrine. And this can be done through one of two avenues. You can either do specific doctrine studies for students, which is like an early systematic theology. They present the doctrine according to major categories stories. They give biblical proofs and they discuss the implications of those. Rory is actually going into her first year of it. For the next two years, she’ll be using Joel Beeke’s series. It’s biblical doctrine for Younger Children and then biblical doctrine for older children. It’s literally 20 weeks in each. It’s not like it’s that hard, but it’s just down the walks through. This is what salvation is. This is what the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper is. This is what a doctrine of the Ten Commandments is. We go through all of these and we break them down more into depth.

Cathey Brown

We keep building this web. We’re normally Westminster people, but we’re going to be studying those Westminster standards later on, so I don’t mind using the Dutch three forms of unity like the Beeke system does. Specific doctrine studies are one avenue. You can also just go straight to catechism studies. A lot of reformers help their kids understand the importance of catechisms and have had to memorize them. We’re not looking at memorizing now. We’re outside of the memorizing stage. This is where we want to work doctrinally through these historical question and answer formats. We want to start looking into the scriptural basis for these. We already learned how to do comprehension and context. Now at the bottom of this little card you get with the question and answer for all of your catechism, we can go pull up all those little individual verses and practice that comprehension and context to see, oh, yeah, there’s that’s what it means. And that’s how this gets contributed into this question from the catechism. This is how it all ties in. This is how that web is built. This string connects to this string, connects to this string, and this is the biblical basis for it.

Cathey Brown

I can read it here. I can learn how to go looking for it in the Bible here. So that’s our middle school years. And then finally, we’re going to move into our secondary school years. Okay, this is when those big non central studies, I call them non central, we put the Bible in the middle, right? We put God and learning about the Bible in the middle. This is where we really start adding in more of that science and literature and philosophy and the things the state expects you to know and understand. It’s not that we haven’t done before, but they haven’t been that big and as prevalent in our studies. We begin to engage more with the world in its doctrine. We want to do it in a way that the city man never has an opportunity to speak in the educational process without coming to conflict, contact with the city of God. We want to keep building our greater web of theology. We want to keep building up a good theological basis while we’re starting to engage with. These are Darwin’s theories. This is Homer. This is advanced mathematics stuff over here.

Cathey Brown

This is what’s going on with global warming. This is Rousseau and the Marquis de Sade. But while we’re doing all of this stuff, I can already turn those guys down because of what I learned in the Bible. I’m going to kick it up another notch. I’m going to kick it to deeper theology. This is where we get into reading some of the bigger, heavy hitting Christian classics like Calvin’s Institute, like systematic theologies and reform dogmatics and more in-depth studies of law. Rushdoony’s Institutes. Why not bring those in in your junior high school ages? They’re ready for it. You’ve already had a beginning understanding of the Ten Commandments. Then you’ve built on that some in the middle school years in this greater web. Let’s go full board now. Let’s really try to work through the full implications of this. This is where we sit, the perception and train the behavior that intensive theological studies are not limited to seminary trees. Every believer has a duty to search the scriptures, to grow in knowledge, and to grow in grace, and to be always able to give an answer for the faith that they believe in. They’re not going to be able to do that unless we put it in front of them and say, You should be learning this.

Cathey Brown

This is good to learn. Do you see how much this is helping? Do you see how this is helping you resist the temptation from some of the other subjects to see the lies within some of those other subjects? Real quick, we’ll take this beyond because that sounds like just explicit curriculum. But to really sink it home, we want to look at the implicit curriculum, the hidden curriculum here, and the excluded curriculum. Consider for a moment, how does purpose including big studies in theology like this, moving from the bottom up through the whole learning experience, how does doing that within the childhood education process affect a perspective of what it means to learn, of what knowledge is? If you have spent 12 years learning history, you spent 12 years learning math, you spent 12 years building a theological system and understanding. Imagine the thoroughness of the understanding coming out of that with. How is that going to train your behaviors while you get done with those 12 years? Are you going to stop learning about theology? Are you going to say, Nope, I’ve already covered these books. I’m not going to push any further, or No, wait a minute.

Cathey Brown

I’ve gotten so used to learning theology as just part of what it means to learn, part of what it means to have dominion, part of what it means to be a believer. What am I doing next? I’ll go and find out. I’m going to read the complete works of this one over here to learn. I’m really going to dig into that reformed dogmatics over here. There’s so much more for you to dig into. Now you’ve trained the behavior that it’s supposed to be part of what you read and learn from life.

Andrea Schwartz

Some people are going to say, Well, you’re going to have a bunch of people who are just always talking theology. You’re trying to say this should be all consuming. Yes. Because without that template and that emotion into this, how could you possibly combat things that go on in our society without a reason to say, Why my perspective is different and better than yours? Not because I woke up one day and I thought it, and then being able to give a whole timeline of Christian thought over the millennia. Now somebody says, Whoa, you’re really smart. And the answer is that has nothing to do with it. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. The point is, the same way you eat every day because you need nutrition every day, this is spiritual food. And if you don’t use it, if you don’t intake it, then you’re going to be malnourished.

Cathey Brown

So we got some general familiarity with the Bible as our first knowledge. We got some context. We learned how to read in the context of Scripture with some good, faithful principles of how to interpret Scripture. We’ve built this greater web of theology in the educational experience. Our fourth knowledge is for life application. Now, technically, everything that we’ve done so far has been something that’s going to have life application. But this is really going to be specifically in on the practical side of all of these studies. We’re going to incorporate instruction how to stay not only encouraged but thriving and growing as we begin to engage in our Dominion endeavors of the city of man. Life application in our younger years, it’s often really just conversations and encouragement from multiple sources. It’s a good thing you’re reading your Bible. I’m so impressed with this because we want them to see that this is good. We want them to keep going. We want to train them up. We as believers should be encouraging each other in our learning, in what we’re learning, instead of shaming each other, going, Oh, well, why would you need to know that?

Cathey Brown

You don’t need to know that’s amazing. How can I help? How can I support? Can I come along side? What could I do with this? How could I learn alongside with this? When we get into the middle school years and then off into the secondary studies years, we start bringing in those advanced scientific theories, all of that wonderfully cajoling, enticing literature that wants to claim your heart, and all of those wonderfully God despising philosophers, the psychiatrists, the sociologists, and all around about atheists, we need a purposeful plan to push back the discouragement and the frustration that’s going to come with having to read those people knowing that they’re against Almighty God. We want to bring in some more courses that help keep us going and keep us engaged. I want to offer just a few categories for you to consider. Put this into an educational plan because it’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make a Dominion learning plan for kids. Consider an intentional course in the lives of the saints. One of the biggest encouragement for believers in their struggles is seeing how others who have gone before us have lived their lives faithfully.

Cathey Brown

We got to see the struggles that were pointed to them in their times and how they faithfully lived there. Well, that’s only going to help us more see, Oh, well, okay, in their time, they were struggling with this, and they might have gotten lashed to a pole and burnt to the ground. Foxe’s book of Martyrs, anyone. We probably don’t have to worry about getting burnt to the ground on a stake, but there’s struggles that we’re going to face in our time. Seeing how others have faced them in their times, gives us good advice, gives us good encouragement to keep pressing on. I would also consider course or courses in church history. You’ll find most history courses completely eliminate anything about the church. We discuss that in our curriculum podcast that we had. History loves to overlook anything of God working in the world. Let’s go back through and make sure that we don’t miss those vital pieces. We are the people of God. We have a history of Him working in this world. We were only able to get to the point we’re at because God spread his message in a particular way and that brought it here to us.

Cathey Brown

It’s important to continue the centrality of God in the world in our perspective of viewing history while we’re learning the other history. Of particular importance here, in studying history at the Church, I want to focus on heresies and heretics. We’re able to spot all these instances of the dogs returning to its vomit in our other historical studies, even within the Church itself. How do we get rid of a lot of these denominational problems? Well, it would help for us to realize that, oh, wait a minute, that little denominational difference there, that’s been declared a by the Church on five separate occasions over the last 2,000 years. And yet here we are again with somebody saying, No, I’m pretty sure it’s true. I’m pretty sure everyone else messed it up. If you know those heresies, then you can defend and say, Oh, well, you know what? Technically Christians for 2,000 years have said that’s a bunch of bullark. So we’re not going to listen to it.

Cathey Brown

Another course to consider, apologetics, spreading the faith. Most people say you want to be able to defend your faith. You want to be able to spread it. There’s a lot of courses now that will actually teach you good ways to do that. And this is exciting. This is part of the great benefit of living in our times. These resources weren’t available 200 years ago. But guys, you go looking for the curriculum with stuff like this for these specialty Christian studies, there are so many of them. Incorporating as many of them into your educational plan as you can is only going to encourage your child in the faith is only going to encourage you in the faith and is only going to keep God as the central figure in the education process, in the learning process.

Andrea Schwartz

You know what I think is interesting? I know a lot of faithful believers who would love to evangelize, but they just say, I’m just not capable. I wouldn’t know what to say. My response is, What’s the one question you don’t want someone to ask you? Well, they know those questions right off the bat. I said, Well, that’s what you should be studying. If you’re afraid to hear that question, you must not know the answer. And a lot of times they don’t know the answer. At other times, yeah, but that answer is going to offend someone. Oh, no. All right. So then we’re back to those hidden curriculums that told you that by all means, you can have your ideas, keep them in your head, but don’t ever bring them into practice because nice people don’t talk about religion and politics. So this is an equipping stage with apologetics, and it’s an exercise in the training part of it to answer those questions that maybe you have that have never really been answered.

Cathey Brown

I would also have you consider looking at studies on world religions because we don’t live in a small world anymore where you’re only going to come in contact with your own culture and your own community. We are an international world now. We are a full… You have the Internet, you have the ease of travel, you’re going to come into contact with a lot of other religions. And spreading your faith, relating to other people, knowing the differences between their world view and your world view is important. So this is another great study to do. Lots of different specialized Christian studies, from cultural issues to worldview studies, religious liberty studies, great Christian classics, practical Dominion stuff. Like I said, there’s a lot of these courses available. F or all the adults out there who are going, Gosh, it’d be nice for my kid to learn that, but I don’t even know. Most of these now that we’re into the life application, the older stuff, these are secondary school studies. This is grade 7 through 12. Who’s to say you can’t pick up one of those textbooks and read through it. She sounds pretty smart on the podcast.

Cathey Brown

Guess what I just got done reading two months ago? I just got done reading a textbook. Kevin Swanson’s Worldviews in Conflict. It’s meant for 10th or 12th graders to learn how to engage with philosophy and the different psychiatrists and the classic literature and the world history and all of these people that have put bad world views front and center into the middle of the educational process. You can pick these things up. You’re not limited. There’s no time cut off saying, Oh, well, if you don’t get this in by age 12, by grade 12, then you’re out of luck. The whole purpose of this, the whole attempt here in our Dominion learning is to say, this is how we’re supposed to be learning. As believers, we shape these perspectives, we shape these behaviors while we’re still within school so that we can keep doing them afterwards. So go back through. Start shaping your own Dominion perspective in learning. Go back through and pick up stuff that you’ve been missing. It’ll help you. It’ll encourage you. Your kids will be watching and they’ll be encouraged by it. And you’ll be able to answer those questions and your faith will grow as a result of it.

Andrea Schwartz

Let me add, having had personal experience for 15 years with Dr. Rushdoony, I heard him say often because he was a graduate of the State University at Berkeley. He said, I had to spend so much time unlearning the things that I learned. He went in as a believer, but he obviously had to come to terms with the implied and the hidden curriculums. That’s why going back and seeing curriculum books that were meant for children, if you have a deficiency in your biblical education, it’s a great place to restart it. Because people have already worked this out. Not to say that you will necessarily agree with every single aspect of it, but I always like to tell my students, you’re not really educated until you have looked at your faith, understand it, and then read what the people who oppose it say, and you evaluate what’s right or wrong. That’s being educated. I don’t think it’s too high a bar. I think we have set the bar way too low, not only for children, but for ourselves.

Cathey Brown

The last of our life application for us to touch upon is practical dominion in all those other subjects. We’re going to go back through them. We’re going to pick up all those other subjects. We said there’s nothing wrong with learning the subjects of a classical system. The problem is learning under and through the classical system. It’s important to know history. There are good uses for grammar and rhetoric and logic. You should know the created order studies of biology and chemistry and geology. You can even pick up Latin. There’s a lot of different ways and reasons that you would be good to know that, that it would be useful to know that. But when we’re building a Dominion learning system, when we pick up those subjects to learn them, we pick them up from Christian sources, from a Christian world view and a Christian perspective. I don’t want to read any classical literature guide that waxes poetic about the wonders of the horrible atheist Mark Twain. I don’t want to hear it. But again, we live in wonderful times where you can find resources to still learn all of these subjects in a way that engages with them according to a baseline of biblical belief, according to foundational faith knowledge.

Cathey Brown

And you should, whenever possible, you should be buying a Christian science textbook. No, you’re not going to absolutely agree with every single little thing in there. There’s a lot of the Christian stuff nowadays that puts a lot of Antinomianism in there that puts a lot of Arminianism in there. But if you’ve already set up some good biblical foundations and general familiarities in the beginning of our Greater Web of Theology with doctrine, then you can overlook those things and you can hold on to all of the good engagement. There are so many good resources out there that we don’t have an excuse there for to use systems or curriculums or books that hate God.

Andrea Schwartz

As a practical example of what you just said as an adult, I’m very interested in healthy living, preventing disease. I will listen to or read books by people who aren’t necessarily Christian but have done medical research, biomedical research, etc. When they start spouting on how wonderful is that evolution has designed this thing, I can laugh and say, and you think you’re a smart person that you believe that? Now, granted, I don’t get a chance to talk one on one with these people, but I can take what’s good out of it and not be negatively affected by the presuppositions that really have nothing to do with the actual, this chemical interacts with this chemical. This is why this way, this is good, or this is bad. Too many people basically give their mind and their behavior offer to someone else and say, tell me how I should live. The Bible already is there to tell us how we should live.

Cathey Brown

That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to reclaim Dominion in how should I live? How should I learn? What do I need to know? And what am I supposed to be doing with all of these things that I learn? That’s the heart of Dominion learning. And that’s the heart of what we’ve been aiming for today. And hopefully, like Andrea said, it’s been a very good springboard to give you good encouragement, to give you good ideas, to help you open your eyes a little bit more to see. This is where systems have been lacking. This is where our concepts, our preconceptions, our own influence under previous education systems has caused us to be blind in this area for too long. We’ve had the blinders taken off, and now we’re going to go take Dominion.

Andrea Schwartz

Now, I said at the outset of this segment that it was hard pressed to say this is the final segment, but I would encourage people to do who have made it all the way through My email where you can reach me is [e-mail]. And I imagine there will be questions. So send the questions and at some point in the future, I’ll snag Cathey again, and we’ll tackle some specific questions. What we’re interested in is helping you advance quickly enough to be able to give your children this great legacy. And that’s what it is. It’s a legacy.

Thanks for listening to Out of the Question. For more information on this and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu.