Coherent Education

In the varied classes, lectures and courses offered by ResSource, we are seeking something very simple, yet very difficult to express in educational terms – a new coherence, perhaps. For us, a coherent education would be one in which the various disciplines converge to reveal the intelligibility, beauty and goodness of the world in which we live. For these qualities, we believe, are not merely subjective, “in the eye of the beholder”, but objectively present in the world itself. They are, of course, known only in a relationship between a subject and an object. But education involves learning to perceive, to discern and distinguish – as well as to act and to do – in harmony with the underlying, objective order of our multi-leveled cosmos, granting at all times its fullest possible meaning.

The Roman Catholics directors of ResSource draw this principle from the Christian vision of a cosmos created and ordered from within by the archetype of all order and meaning, which the Greeks called the Logos, in whom “all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers,” and in whom “all things hold together” (Col. 1:16, 17).

“The mathematics of the universe does not exist by itself, nor ... can it be explained by stellar deities. It has a deeper foundation: the mind of the Creator. It comes from the Logos, in whom, so to speak, the archetypes of the world’s order are contained. The Logos, through the Spirit, fashions the material world according to these archetypes. In virtue of his work in creation, the Logos is, therefore, called ‘the art of God’. The Logos himself is the great artist, in whom all works of art – the beauty of the universe – have their origin. To sing with the universe means, then, to follow the track of the Logos and come close to him... Yes, it is the cosmic context that gives art in the liturgy both its measure and its scope. A merely subjective ‘creativity’ is no match for the vast compass of the cosmos and for the message of its beauty” (from The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, pp. 153-4).

Other religious traditions possess the same insight, though they do not identify the Logos with the human being Jesus Christ, nor do they recognize that after a cosmic Fall it was through this man assumed by the Logos that “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20). Nevertheless the principle of coherent education – coherence in the Logos – is one that is not exclusively Christian, and it is one in which many traditions may come together and find common ground. ResSource may be rooted in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions of Christianity, but precisely as such we intend to be open to the truth, beauty and goodness in every great tradition, studying those traditions with care and respect, and learning from them.

If the Logos is metaphysically implicit in all finite existence, we believe with Robert Barron that: “the sciences become hyper-materialist and reductive when they are severed from their theological ground, and the arts, when celebrated for their own sake, apart from a theological purpose, become morbid, sentimental or bizarre; even abstract mathematics devolves into a fussy and self-preoccupied rationalism when its link to sacred geometry is lost.” (Robert Barron, The Epistemic Priority of Jesus Christ)

The disarray and confusion, the fragmentation and even corruption of modern education is due to the loss of any sense of coherence in the divine Logos and forgetfulness of the primary spiritual purpose of education. That is not to say that education can be healed by a restoration of the medieval quadrivium, or an imposition of religious belief. The search for coherence must start from where we are today, and the motivation for the search within each discipline is simply the reawakening desire for beauty, truth and goodness.