Truths Worth Dying for: The Authority of Creation in Education and Life

This article—addressed to students, parents, teachers, and administrators alike—argues that the close study of creation is not optional to any authentic form of education, most especially the Catholic Liberal Arts tradition. Such a study, however, must take our incarnational reality, and thus our sensory experience, as normative and primary. Modern secularism has stunted this fundamental mission of education by enforcing a mechanistic and materialistic ontology that has severed the bond between education and the love of wisdom. Drawing on Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, as well as twentieth century Catholic authors, the need to recognize the authority of creation in education, and the nature of that authority, is examined. Five lessons of a close study of nature are offered as features of the path from the knowledge and love of creatures to the knowledge and love of God. Ultimately, an authentic education cultivates goodness and love via wonder, contemplation, and self-gift in the teacher and the student, participating in the redemption of the world wrought by Christ through witness to His truth, goodness, and beauty in all things.