If we look to fathers to educate, and if God is the “one father of all” (Eph. 4:6), then we should look to God for the basic pattern of education. And we find this pattern in the creation story. God begins with formless and void matter, takes it in his “hands,” imposes order on it, and fills it with life. In a six-day ritual God divides (1:4, 6, 7, 9, 14, 18) while also naming to distinguish, to mark out, the differences in cosmic order. Thus God’s dividing, his distinguishing and ordering, is the structuring of world-making. The cosmos is a hierarchy of rule and service.

Editor’s Note: This is the first part in a series on the relationship between education and fatherhood. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for part two!

“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” — George Herbert

“I write not these things to shame you, but as beloved sons I warn you. For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me.” — I Cor. 4:14-16; KJV

I have long been acquainted with the phrase in loco parentis (“in a parent’s place”). It is often applied to Christian school teachers, though for a while I considered it little more than hyperbole for a special kind of supervisor. Then I started rethinking another familiar expression: “fathers . . . bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4 KJV). I had always taken this verse as a biblical theology of education in general, distilled in a few clear drops. The words for “nurture” and “admonition” overlap somewhat, but suggest two main actions in education: Instruction (telling) and enculturation (showing). In this case, fathers are responsible for the showing and telling that shapes character.

What I began to realize–possibly because the arrival of my third child instilled a new pressure to consider the implications of fatherhood–was how much biblical education is intertwined with the theology of fatherhood. At the same time, I began to see how Ephesians 6:4, far from being a Pauline innovation, was really a summary of God’s fathering of his covenant people throughout the Old Testament. Of course, I shouldn’t have been surprised; the more we see things in light of the Word, the more they “hold together” (Col. 1:17). 

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