The aim of this three-part series has been to outline biblical education as enculturation, with a focus on the role of fathers. To succeed in shaping a culture and impressing it on future generations, education as paideia requires the attentive, firm, imaginative presence of fathers.

As subcreators, tasked with extending dominion in the form of culture, fathers have the responsibility to prescribe and enforce their community’s boundaries, specific norms, and overarching rhythms of life. Again, the heavenly Father is the prime example of this. His speaking of creation into existence can be seen as legislation, as prescribing the boundaries of a cosmos carved like an island out of Chaos.[1] From elsewhere in Scripture we know that these boundaries (beginnings and ends) are the Son himself as logos, the creative and sustaining speech-act of the Father.[2] The Son’s legislation just is his speech/self; similarly, fathers are called to create and rule with speech backed by action.

God’s natural law is not an impersonal means of managing cosmic machinery; rather, his creating-sustaining word extends from himself as the superstructure of things (Jn. 1:10, Col. 1:17, Heb. 1:3).[3] Nor does he tyrannize his creatures like Allah or Hammurabi, with a list of norms that he wields from on high without manifesting–and giving–his nature. Rather, he is intimately involved with his creation and his human pieces de resistance. He has, as the song says, the whole world in his hand. His law is the means for distinguishing his people from the nations by marking them with his name (Deut. 7:6; 28:9-10). Thus structured, thus sanctified by obedience to law, we can flourish and be filled.

The root of steadfastness (cult) and steady fruitfulness (culture) is adherence to law, and fathers are (to paraphrase Aristotle) the “ensouled law” of their families.  A father who loves God’s law and attends to it, the way some fathers attend to sporting events, will be strong and life-giving. He will be structured, ordered, capacious, and full–brimming with cultural energy for those around him, whether family, co-workers, or fellow church members. He will shape and fill those around him. He will be strong because he is humble, and a leader because he follows.

The Proverbs highlight the importance of law for Christian living and the father’s role in teaching law (1:8; 2:6; 3:1-2). In Proverbs 6:20 the images of bondage and adornment are striking: ^“My son, keep thy father’s commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother: Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck.” This is a paradox totally incomprehensible to the modern mind: The way to beauty, flourishing, selfhood, and the free flow of creative energy is to have the law of a parent hanging over you, to have the parents voice in your head.

More important, though, is that all these passages highlight the father’s role in giving instruction as law. Of course both father and mother receive the law, and mothers need to speak law and be a kind of strength, especially in the father’s absence (II Tim. 1:5). But the father comes first and more often in these proverbs because he is primarily responsible to speak law and model joyful obedience.

Teaching the law and being an ensouled law do not mean grim obedience out of painful duty. In this regard we naturally think of David’s words in Psalms 1 and 19. But the most profound biblical meditation on the law in relation to the godly man is surely Psalm 119. The Psalmist delights and rejoices in the law.[4] He loves and obeys it, fixes his mind on it, plants it in his heart, studies it wholeheartedly.[5] He depends on it for his flourishing and safety.[6] It anchors his hope for Shalom.[7]

Though God’s word will stand forever, His law has come on hard times. In  churches today, it is not unusual to hear praise songs of the “personal-relationship-with-God” type. Yet songs about loving God’s law are harder to find, as are songs featuring the fear of God. And while we may hear talk about knowing Christ and the Spirit, we hear less about the seemingly more distant and fearsome Father. But if religion is the root of culture, then this neglect means that many Christian parents and teachers are being shaped by and antinomian and un/anti-patristic worldview. When pastors, elders, family-fathers, teachers and city-fathers abdicate their paternal responsibility (especially with regard to discipline, standards, accountability), a culture declines to emotionalism, chaos, and banality. Spinelessness, conformism, and shallowness migrate from church to classroom, from classroom to popular culture, from culture back to church.

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