tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8291620875524102366.post5086337660308317493..comments2024-02-15T12:09:26.361+00:00Comments on Kevin J.Bidwell: Bitzer was a Banker!Kevin Bidwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11098663879570603771noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8291620875524102366.post-11960025899033268182015-01-31T21:21:28.600+00:002015-01-31T21:21:28.600+00:00The history of education definitely has played a s...The history of education definitely has played a significant role. Prior to the turn of the century, most ministers would have been educated within the broader Christian Humanist tradition that goes back to the pre-Reformers. As Ben House puts it in an article he wrote on the subject: "Typically the schools in early American history were Classical Christian schools. The instructors were usually ministers whose training was a combination of classical languages and literature and Protestant theology. In other words, they studied the Bible in its original Hebrew and Greek, and they read Homer's Iliad in Greek, Tacitus' histories in Latin, as well as studying John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. For example, Moses Waddell, a Southern Presbyterian preacher and teacher (1770-1840), began studying Latin at age eight, and after six years of school, he had finished courses in Greek, Latin, and mathematics. After his conversion and entrance into the ministry, Waddell established, in a log building, a school with an enrollment of as many as 180 students a year. In his book Southern Presbyterian Leaders, Dr. Henry Alexander White made these comments about Waddell's school:<br /><br /> The food furnished to the students in Waddell's log college was plain, for it was usually nothing more than cornbread and bacon. A blast from a ram's horn called them all together from morning and evening prayers. When the weather was mild the students sat or lay beneath the trees to prepare their lessons. The sound of the horn told the class in Homer when to assemble, and all of the members rushed at once to the recitation hall in the main building. Then the horn called up, in regular order, the Cicero, the Horace, and the Virgil classes, as well as those engaged in the study of mathematics and English." (You can read the full article here: http://www.reformed.org/master/index.html?mainframe=/christian_education/classic_educ.html)<br /><br />The first-hand knowledge that such an education provided laid a strong foundation for study of the Biblical texts; something which much modern education does not give.B.E. Frankshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00226264162310496844noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8291620875524102366.post-70881870568700770522015-01-07T19:22:31.702+00:002015-01-07T19:22:31.702+00:00Yes, I think we should set this as a goal. When we...Yes, I think we should set this as a goal. When were they lost, what is the history of this? How much, if anything, did it have to do with the change in secular education away from the classics, which gave ministerial students Greek at least to begin with? AndrewAndrew Chapmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02716283869652111731noreply@blogger.com