Phaëthon vs. Jesus

What happens when someone challenges a young man's paternity?  Should he take up the challenge and prove his accusers wrong, or should he use a different approach?  And what is the role of pagan mythology in a Christian school?

Jesus Teaches Logic Class

In Books I and II of his Metamorphoses, the Roman poet Ovid tells the story of Phaëthon, who was challenged by his friends regarding whether the sun, personified as Sol, was in fact his father.  To prove his lineage, Phaëthon asked Sol for permission to drive his chariot, which pulled the fiery ball across the sky.  Chaos ensued when the young man was unable to control the horses as they soared high above the earth, causing the tops of mountains to freeze, or dove too close to the earth's surface, burning the areas that became deserts.  In the end Zeus was forced to intervene by hurling a lightning bolt that killed Phaëthon and allowed Sol to regain control.

There is an interesting parallel between this famous story of Greco-Roman mythology and an episode we find with Jesus in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-12.  After having fasted for forty days, Satan tempts, or tests Jesus regarding His identity as the Son of God.  In the first two of the three tests, Satan begins by saying, "If you are the Son of God."  For the sake of this piece, we will only look at the first of the three tests, the one in which Satan challenges Jesus to turn stones into bread.  His exact words are, translating literally from the Greek, "If you are the Son of God, speak to this stone so that it may become bread."

Whereas Phaëthon sees the challenge to his paternity as a simple matter to be proven, Jesus recognizes that there is more going on and that Satan has in fact presented Him with a dilemma, which runs as follows.

If you are the Son of God, you will turn this stone into bread.

If you turn this stone into bread, you are doing what I tell you to do and thus are subservient to me.

You have only two choices.  You will either turn the stone into bread or you will not.

If you do not turn the stone into bread, then you are not the Son of God, but if you do turn it into bread, then you are doing what I tell you and thus are subservient to me.

It would seem that Satan has trapped Jesus on the horns of a dilemma, but Jesus deftly avoids the logical trap by, as we say, going through the horns.  He simply refuses to accept either of the two unacceptable options, admitting to not being the Son of God or admitting to being subservient to Satan, and cites Deuteronomy 8:3, which says that we are not to live on bread alone in the first place but on every word that comes from God.  As we read so often throughout the gospels, Jesus simply will not be taken in by the verbal trickery of others, and this can be a good reminder to us as well that just because people may try to trap us in argument, we do not have to respond in the way they expect.  By keeping our eyes fixed on God and His word, we will respond in truth and need never fear the conversational dilemma.

Christians and Mythology

It may seem that Christians should not bother themselves with reading and studying pagan mythology, and some Christians have taken just such an approach to learning, relying on no less redoubtable a supporter for their position than St. Augustine.  In Confessions I.13 he wrote,

Quid enim miserius misero non miserante se ipsum et flente Didonis mortem, quae fiebat amando Aenean, non flente autem mortem suam, quae fiebat non amando te, Deus, lumen cordis mei...?

For what is more wretched than some wretch not pitying himself and weeping over the death of Dido, which happened by loving Aeneas, but not weeping for his own death, which happened by not loving You, O God, the light of my heart...?

Augustine rightly saw that it is folly to delve so deeply into the lives of fictional characters like Dido and Aeneas from Vergil's Aeneid while ignoring our own spiritual condition, but this does not mean that we must approach literature and faith as an either-or proposition.  Contrasting the story of Phaëthon with the episode of Jesus and Satan, we gain an even greater understanding of and appreciation for the boldness of Christ's response to His enemy.  It helps us see more clearly how we can respond to our own temptations as we endeavor to stand strong in imitation of our Lord.

What works of fiction have helped you grow in your walk with Jesus?  How has Scripture allowed you to critique and read differently the novels and plays and poetry and movies that enter your life?

A Not Untypical Day In High School

I teach at a public high school of just under 4,000 students. Our classes are huge. We are not elite. And yet these things happened today. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

In my Period 2 class of Latin I, one of my students taught the grammar lesson. I have recorded myself teaching key grammar points, posted those videos on our website, and the students must watch them at home while taking notes. The following day students volunteer to teach, or re-present, the lesson. Today Samantha not only put the information on the board, but asked questions of her classmates and and sought volunteers. She did not merely regurgitate information. She taught.

In my A.P. class we discussed an alternative form of a verb in Latin poetry (for you Latin folks out there, it was the -ere suffix for -erunt in 3rd person plural perfect active indicative). In this instance it was the verb fulsere, meaning "they flashed," and one of my students said, "Oh, that's just like in that Catullus poem we read last year where the suns flashed for him." He was referring to Catullus 8, and I simply shook my head in admiring disbelief.

Perhaps my emotional pump had been primed by discussions over the past few days. In my Latin III class we had read about a murder in 53 B.C. on the Appian Way. The wife of the victim demanded that her husband's corpse be displayed in the forum for all to see, and we discussed the parallel with Emmett Till, whose death in 1955 prompted his mother to have an open casket for her son and for Jet magazine to run the pictures. As the story of the ancient murder developed, it described the mob violence that followed and led to the burning of the senate house. My students discussed violence in the modern world and that free speech does not mean shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. They discussed the proper limits to freedom that make freedom livable without devolving into chaos.

Again, it was my A.P. students who just yesterday discussed the dangerous role of rumor as depicted by the Roman epic poet Vergil and as seen today in our social media. In both the Latin III and A.P. discussions, I shared that I was concerned for my students' well being and that they not find themselves caught up in the kinds of messaging or activities that have led to ruined lives.

And then, after school, a young man who observes me twice a week from Indiana University in preparation for student teaching, engaged with me in the most heady and delightful of discussions. We talked about his passion for Medieval works. We looked at the prayers of St. Ambrose and talked about St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, the Dies Irae, and the Stabat Mater. We talked of Boethius, and he introduced me to Alan of Lille.

To be sure, not all days are as rich and satisfying, but those described here are not untypical, and because of that they stand as a testament to both the depth and the breadth it is possible to explore in high school.

Without Classification in the Pigeonhole Age

Ours is the age of the specialist, and long gone is the day of the educated amateur, the person of letters who who could paint, write, and serve in elected office, who could lead in battle and yet publish in science and compose sonnets.  The vapid dating line, "What's your sign?" has given way to the even more insulting, because it is so limiting, "What's your major?"

For this and other reasons, Samuel Rocha's A Primer for Philosophy & Education will be a challenging read in the current age.  It does not fit nicely within the pigeonhole of an accepted educational theory.  It does not even fit in that most elite and revered of pigeonholes, the one that says we should break free from pigeonholes.  Instead, it weaves its way through a variety of thoughts, poetically meditating on a concept so rich and deep that some may mistake it for something trite and commonplace, but more on that in another post.

This comes as no surprise after his acknowledgment in the preface of his debt to William James.  He observes that James "didn't always write to or for an exclusive field of peers, due in large measure to the fact that he never belonged to a single field in the first place -- he began in anatomy and physiology, moved to psychology, and ended in philosophy with major interests in religion and metaphysics.  Perhaps a better way to think about him is this:  James belonged to a field of study coincidentally, classified by whatever he was working on at the moment, but never limited by or to that classification."  (preface, ii)

This is what the world needs and in fact has always needed.  Fortunately, there do seem to be a few in any given age capable of answering this need.  These are the broadly learned, those driven not by the party line, but by insatiable curiosity and interest in the mysteries of creation.  They are the deep readers who will move from Pope's epitaph for Newton to Newton's scientific writings.  They engage meaningfully in casual conversations on everything from politics to art to literature to theology to sports to finances with reference not just to unconsidered opinion, but to carefully processed articles and books.

Such a person is not interested in jargon for an academic elite.  Such a person is interested most in that shared journey of discovery taken with interlocutors, friends, and students.  Rocha notes of James, "James published mostly works of popular philosophy that began as lectures he presented to audiences of all kinds of people.  He also frequently wrote essays, reviews, and letters to periodicals and popular journals....  [H]e had a deep sensitivity to what I call 'pastoral philosophy' -- an ordinary sense of philosophy that is thoroughly and principally educational."  (preface, ii-iii)

St. Augustine wrote some of the greatest works of Christian theology while engaged in the work of a bishop.  Indeed, it was in response to pressing issues of his day that had practical relevance for his flock that he did his thinking and writing.  In his 1984 speech "Advice to Christian Philosophers," which has since become a famous and foundational text, Alvin Plantinga proposed that Christian philosophers need not be bound by the limits of what their non-Christian peers set for philosophical discussion.  Their work, inasmuch as it was conducted in and for the particular community of those confessing Christ, had a duty to respond to the matters most relevant to that community.

Clearly standing in such a tradition, Rocha has written his slender book with a particular audience in mind, his students.  It is first and foremost a love letter, a paternal (yet never paternalistic) love letter from a paidagogos to his pupils.  Because, like James, Rocha will not be limited to a particular classification and because his approach is one of "pastoral philosophy," fully appreciating what he has to say will require the setting aside of often pet classifications.  Having made it through to the end of his book, I can assure you that it will be worth the effort to do so.