The Educator’s Context:  Cosmology

School’s Back!  Educating to Transform People and Glorify God

You shall love the Lord your God with all your . . . mind^[1]

No longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds^[2]

Be transformed by the renewal of your mind^[3]

Preparing your minds for action^[4]

Preface:  Thinking Christianly About Education

How should we think Christianly about education, writ large^[5]?  Because we are commanded to love God with all our minds, educational effectiveness should be a concern to all who follow Jesus.  Being sober-minded is crucial for arresting pagan influences as advanced by the devil himself.^[6]  Last week, we began to explore this question by examining the Educator’s Audience – who is the teacher’s audience and what from Scripture do we know about them?  Answers to those foundational questions impact pedagogy.  This week we tackle the Educator’s Context, including providing a helpful guide for teachers.  This tool outlines how instructors can identify and integrate cosmological considerations into their educational efforts.

Introduction:  Cosmology at the Museum of Tolerance

A few years ago, a formal debate occurred at the Museum of Tolerance in Beverly Hills.  That museum had been established to “never forget” the Holocaust in particular and to oppose antisemitism in general.  The debate that night, sponsored by the Beverly Hills Bar Association, centered on whether marriage should be legally reconfigured to recognize same-sex relationships.

During the Q&A segment, someone noted that the proponent for same-sex “marriage” had frequently intoned about “rights” and the supposed “right” to same-sex “marriage.”  He then asked a simple question: “What is the source of rights?”  The respondent, a credentialed Harvard-educated lawyer who had clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, stammered and stuttered.  He then quickly identified what in his mind were not the sources of rights:  morality and religion.  Then he offered his final answer: the source of rights resided in and with “the State.”  On rebuttal, the other participant – me – stated:  

“David, you should be very careful with that answer, because what you just told this audience is that Nuremberg was wrong and Dachau was right because everything the Nazis did was legal.”  

You could hear a pin drop – the audience, personally familiar with the Holocaust, had connected the dots.  If the State confers rights, as my opponent contended, it can then define who receives them or loses them.  Thus, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim, Amin, Putin, Hussein, et al all acted legitimately and should stand beyond criticism.  Put differently, if the State (or its delegate) acts with ultimate authority, it operationally becomes the untouchable “god” of the regime.^[7]  The horrific “Final Solution” thus rested on the supposed finality of the State’s authority.  Millions of innocents have died from such thinking.

The debate’s real underlying issue therefore was not same-sex “marriage” but rather who or what functions as “god” in society:  The true and living God of the Bible, or something from the created order treated as god.  This foundational issue – predicated on cosmology, that is, the structure of real reality – should underpin and inform all educational endeavors.  Let’s get to the gist.

Cosmology and Transcendent Authority

When we say “who or what functions as god,” we are asking what do people and society imbue with or recognize as transcendent authority.  The law of a culture, its operating authority, will identify what is functioning as the “Lord” – the ruling lawgiver – of society.  Why?  Law expresses Lordship.  Society’s law is driven by the “lord” of the culture, who then approves or disapproves the ethics, behavior, and law of that society.  A culture’s “lord” could be the King, the High Priest or Iman, the Party, Tradition, the Majority, the People, the Constitution, or the Sun, Moon, and Stars.  Note that though different, each of the foregoing resides in and derives from the creation, not the Creator.

This is why TxC often references Paul’s analysis set forth in Romans 1.  Keeping this scheme familiar helps correct errors in our worldview:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppressthe truth.  . . . [they] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.^[8]

Note the progression set forth by Paul’s view of reality, or cosmology:

• Truth: Suppressed

• Truth:  Exchanged

• Spiritual Response:  Creation Worshipped and Served

• Unrighteousness:  Practiced

• Unrighteousness:  Approved

Several implications arise from this analysis.  First, Paul tells us that only two options exist regarding reality’s structure:  Either, there is a foundational binary – the Creator/Creature distinction.  Or, there is a mono-metaphysic – only one essence, what Christians know to the created order – that can be expressed in a myriad of ways.  

Second, given humanity’s divine design, mankind is by nature religious and therefore cannot not worship.  Therefore, worship will occur.  The only question is whether it will be directed at the Creator, or to some aspect of the created order – which again could take many forms, but always comprises idolatry.  

Third, idols are never idle.  This means that, since we become like what we worship,^[9] theology and ethics correlate.  Put differently, worship impacts conduct.  Worship falsely → Act wrongly.

Further and fourth, people desire justification and vindication^[10]for their actions, and therefore they seek to have their practices approved.  Law and the legal system form the paramount approval mechanism in society.  That law, driven by one’s conscience, either accuses or excuses,^[11] which is why identifying the correct operative standard is so crucial. Otherwise, a society can find itself calling evil good and good evil, which is precisely what tyrannical and murderous Statist regimes regularly do.^[12]

Why does this matter to education?  When a culture and thus its legal system functionally attributes ultimate authority to something within the created order, notice what happens.  The result does not eliminate “god” from the culture.  Rather, what functions as “god” will be found within creation – this means that the operative authority will be idolatrous.  Why?  Because:  Creation or some aspect of it is deemed transcendent.  This explains why in Scripture idolatry appears and damages the culture.^[13]  This creates very practical problems.   As Chesterton noted:  

[But] it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticize the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God. . . The truth is that irreligion is the opium of the people. Wherever the people do not believe in something beyond the world, they will worship the world.^[14]

This again presses the point made at the Museum of Tolerance:  Nuremburg or Dachau?  War crime tribunals or gas chambers?  Are they moral equivalents?  If not, why not?  Without a transcendent standard standing outside the created order, choosing Nuremberg over Dachau is simply arbitrary – a matter of preference like choosing between Coke or Pepsi, Superman or Batman, boxers or briefs, dogs or cats, In-n-Out or Five Guys, Michigan or Ohio State, The Godfather or Good Fellas, downhill skiing or snowboarding, thin crust or deep dish, Army or Navy, etc.  

Moreover, given the ascendancy of Critical Theory which trumpets “lived experience” as normative, how can we evaluate the Third Reich?  The Nazis had their own “lived experience.”^[15]  If Critical Theory is true, how can the Nazis be critiqued?  The Nazis were shaking off their oppressors following World War I.  They may have been distasteful and violently aggressive, but how can they be immoral under Critical Theory since they liberated the oppressed German volk? And that’s all that [supposedly] matters in that worldview.

And more to the educational point:  How and by what standard can our students be “those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil”^[16] absent a knowable transcendent standard, which biblical cosmology supplies.  Knowing and understanding a true transcendental is crucial for training the next generation to “think God’s thoughts after Him.”^[17]  What are the implications of understanding this point? Let’s consider how these observations impact a particular topic, law and politics.

Consider a vexing question posed by the Psalmist:

      Can wicked rulers be allied with you,

            those who frame injustice by statute?

      They band together against the life of the righteous

            and condemn the innocent to death.^[18]

Here the Psalmist, in inquiring about the public use of law – an approval mechanism – assumes several things.  First, he assumes that the positive law^[19] frames a moral dimension.  Second, this means that positive law can be a conduit for either righteous or unrighteous legislation, just or unjust laws.^[20]  Third, one simply cannot flip on autopilot when educating students about governance and the State.  In other words, when the Truth is exchanged for the Lie, modern legal matters cannot in the nature of the case be neutral.  They will always at some level assume a moral perspective.  Good education probes that perspective.

The educator must learn to apply these implications of cosmology in training students to discern good from evil.  Good education rejects the notion that “you can’t legislate morality.”  Rather, the good educator asks the correct question:       “In this situation, whose morality is being advocated, advanced, and codified?”  And, the follow-up should be: “And, is it right?”  Education therefore does not simply transmit data; rather, it should transform people – to God’s glory.

Implications of a “God-rigged” Cosmos

Because God is the sovereign Creator, His structure and rule of that creation is inescapable – even if unacknowledged.  Thus, there is always a “lawgiver;” the only question is whether people recognize that it’s the Creator or instead trust something finite in creation postured as ultimate.  Pressing this point as an educator possesses great explanatory power for the student.

Moreover, fallen man seeks to determine for himself what is good and evil,^[21] and in doing so seeks to push back against the creational and legal dictates of the Lord and His Anointed:  

      The kings of the earth set themselves,

            and the rulers take counsel together,

            against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,

      “Let us burst their bonds apart

            and cast away their cords from us.”^[22]

When men partially succeed is denying God’s rule, they tend to affix transcendence and ultimate authority in one of two places:  the Self or the State, both of which comprise idolatry.  This produces cultural implications:

• Blurring the Creator-Creature Distinction, reality’s fundamental binary thereby generating confusion, if not chaos

• Discarding Mediating Institutions, like family, church, and societies thereby exposing the individual to the State’s direct coercive power

• Vesting Sovereignty ONLY in the State, tending toward Statist over-regulation and eventually totalitarianism

• Eliminating Justification for True Moral Authority, meaning that obtaining, maintaining, and exercising power becomes the new morality, lacking any objective standard thereby codifying ethical relativism

• And, eventually, Absolutizing Man = Man AS God, fulfilling Satan’s tempting yet false promise:  [Y]ou will be like God [determining for yourself] good and evil”^[23]

All this is deeply problematic because it centers sovereignty in the State/Self rather than God.  Christian educators take note:  This idolatrous move constricts and categorizes religious liberty, including Christian education, to being a permissive activity instead of an inherent inalienable right:

“But the bottom line is that actual legal and political jurisdiction — sovereignty — will now belong to the state, period.  The state may defer to the church for various reasons and in various ways, but the church will ultimately enjoy as much freedom or immunity, and only as much, as the state sees fit to allow.”^[24]

Educators must commit to Paul’s Cosmology because if it is True – and it is – then:

1.   Man is Created by God and thus he is defined by God and is therefore a religious creature

2.   Therefore, the Purpose of the State—Derived from this Created Reality—must be to the Protect that which the Creator Bestows

3.   Laws therefore, do NOT Confer Fundamental Rights; they Protect them

4.   Put in Political Parlance, this notion might sound like this:

 . . . . We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,^[25]

Accordingly, rights, properly understood, are pre-political.  They exist as properties of humans as human beings, not as citizens:

Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.^[26]

A corollary to Paul’s Cosmology is that mankind enjoys a universal fixed human nature.^[27] The educator, armed with this truth, can alert students to schemes and ideologies that attempt to remake or alter human nature.  Prime examples of this include Darwinian evolution which denies human nature, and Marxism which seeks to create a “new man.”  Current examples include the merging of man and machine inspired by The Singularity.^[28]  No matter how expressed, the denial of human nature changes the purpose of government.^[29]  Understanding this truth equips the educator with great explanatory power.  While Christians should study non-Christian ideas, they should be wary of them and their seductive sirens by remembering that:

[In Christ] . . . are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.  . .

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.^[30]

Transforming the Mind Addendum:  A Teacher’s Guide to Spawning Cosmological Discussions

What follows outlines key points derived from Paul’s cosmology.  Astute educators – including parents at the dinner table – can, using this outline, quickly show his students which ideas align with the Christian worldview and which oppose it.  

A.   The Conflict of Fundamental Visions:

a.   Two Views of God:  Creator or Created?

b.   Two Possible Trajectories:  Truth or Lie?

c.   Two Possible Minds:  Undiscerning or Discerning as to key categories?  This impacts:

i.    Theology:  Who is God; Creator or Creation?

ii.    Spirituality/worship:  How/What do we Worship; Creator or Creation?

iii.   Behavior, especially Sexuality and Sexual Behavior:  How do we Act?

d. Illustrations:

1. Homo or Hetero Cosmology?

a.   Nature is One (union and synthesis), OR

b.   Creator/creature ontological distinction

2.   Homo or Hetero Theology?

a.   Any “god” is really US; we ARE divine, OR

b.   God is separate/holy, the Other and we are created

3.   Homo or Hetero Spirituality?

a.   We worship nature and ourselves, OR

b.   We worship and serve the Creator

4.   Homo and Hetero Conduct, expressed via Sexuality?

a.   Embrace Sameness, OR

b.   Embrace Otherness

B.   Implications from Theology:  The Nature of God

1. The True God is Other

• The True God is One and Many:  Holy Trinity

i. Therefore the True God is Personal, unlike Rabbinic Judaism or Islam

  ii.  The True God therefore does NOT need NOR is Dependent on the Creation to be Personal^[31]

C.   Implications from Anthropology: The Nature of Humanity:

1. Justifies Human Dignity – as a pre-political reality rooted in the Imago Dei

• Makes sex (male/female) sensible as it reflects the Unity and Distinctions of the Creator’s essence

D.   Implications from Logic:  The Nature of Rationality

a.   Paul’s Cosmology justifies the Intelligibility of the Universe

i.    The Mind is a distinction-producing, sense-making factory

ii.    Rationality, the action of making distinctions—affirming and denying—is NOT possible without presupposing the Truth of distinction; without distinction logical thought would be impossible

b.   Because “in the beginning” was the Word, the Universe IS a rational and knowable object of study

E.   Implications from the Story:  The Justification of History

a.   The Bible’s cosmology contains a Story:  with a Beginning, Plot, Middle, and an End – 

b.   Pure eternality, for example, as the Greeks posited, cannot rationally HAVE a story, as it lacks story elements like Beginning, Climax, and End.  As Dr. Jones observed:

If there is no divinely-ordered beginning with God creating “the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1) and no post-historic ending which only God can produce [the consummation], then no final meaning to things can possible merge.  The resolution of history cannot come from within history, so waiting for one will always be frustrating.  The resolution will come from beyond.^[32]

• Sequencing and Thematically Orienting the Story:

1. Creation:  protology

ii.    Fall:  Hamartiology

iii.   Redemption:  Soteriology

iv.   Restoration:  Eschatology

Education in the final analysis should channel and contextualize God’s story.  Cosmology provides fertile soil for doing so because it forms the Educator’s Context.  And, as we should learn from hermeneutics:  Any story or text, extracted from context, morphs into a mere pretext.

^[1] Matt. 22:37

^[2] Eph. 4:17

^[3] Romans 12:2

^[4] 1 Peter 1:13

^[5] Curriculum and preferential modes of educating children – home schooling, private Classical Christian schooling – is beyond this discussion’s focus.

^[6] 1 Peter 5:8: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

^[7] Compare the Declaration of Independence which articulates “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men”.  The State itself confers no rights in the minds of the Founders.  This coheres with the Biblical narrative.

^[8] Romans 1:18, 23-27, 32

^[9] Ps. 115:8

^[10] As one example, consider the young killer in the film Unforgiven who salves his conscience with whiskey and telling himself that “[his victim] had it coming.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFJm9xbFzc0.  For a further exploration of how the conscience seeks to vindicate one’s actions, see, J. Budziszewski, The Revenge of Conscience – Politics and the Fall of Man(1999)

^[11] Romans 2:15

^[12] Is. 5:20

^[13] See., e.g., Is 44:9-20

^[14] https://www.chesterton.org/lecture-65/

^[15] Timothy Hsiao, The Lived Experience Fallacy, https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2021/12/13/the-lived-experience-fallacy/

^[16] Heb. 5:14

^[17] This phrase, although not original with him, certainly formed a key tenet of Cornelius Van Til’s approach to apologetics.  See, Charles Sigler, Thinking God’s Thoughts, https://faith-seeking-understanding.org/tag/thinking-gods-thoughts-after-him/

^[18] Ps. 95:20, 21

^[19]“Positive law” is the law enacted by man via established political and legal apparatuses.  

^[20] This helps explain the justification for proper civil disobedience – see Acts 5: “We must obey God rather than men” (v. 29) – and accordingly the call to obey the State is not an absolute command.  There also exist jurisdictional matters as well, as Jesus noted: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God that things that are God’s.”  Matt. 21:21

^[21] Gen. 3:5

^[22] Ps. 2:2,3

^[23] Gen. 3:5

^[24] Steven D. Smith, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (2010), 131.  For further development of this and related points, see this prior Dicta:  https://truthxchange.com/idols-in-our-midst-2/

^[25] Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

^[26] Frederic Bastiat, The Law, https://fee.org/ebooks/the-law/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwiuC2BhDSARIsALOVfBLYW7wBuUyd2OINk7vvrkCC0jW0kysSk7x9Mmdo1KOIcfEHTPomfugaAm5EEALw_wcB

^[27] The implications of this truth have been explored in prior Dicta editions.

^[28] See, Jeffery J. Ventrella, Messiah or Matrix:  AI, Singularity, and Paganism’s Rosey Technicolor Eschatology,https://truthxchange.com/matrix-or-messiah/

^[29] This point is expounded here:  Jeffery J. Ventrella,  Idols in Our Midst:  Christ, Caesar, or Self:  Recognizing Political Idolatry, Part 3, https://truthxchange.com/coziness-with-state-power/

^[30] Col 2:3, 8

^[31] Compare:  Allah, as a monad deity knows no eternal love and cannot know love at all except in dependency on the creation.  In contrast, the God the Bible is the Holy Trinity, who eternally enjoys a perfect loving relationship among the Persons of the Godhead: “God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he has made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them.”  WCF, 2.2

^[32] Peter Jones, The Other Worldview – Exposing Christianity’s Greatest Threat, (2015) 172