Abstract
The previous chapters have a slant towards the historicity of the text of The Epistle. The aim is to reclaim how a deep pedagogic reading of it can be rewarding. This chapter takes a slightly different angle. The discussion here, while anchors in The Epistle, will integrate critical perspectives and deliberative concerns about contemporary education. It aims to empower readers to come closer to some central beliefs and practices, especially if they are teachers or researchers. The focus here is to rethink and to philosophise critically about pedagogic perspectives, practices, and curricular issues. The authorial purpose here is neither to proselytise nor to preach. Instead, the central purpose is to pose genuine philosophical questions and to reassess the rationality and the defensibility of teaching about ideational and intellectual schemas that differ from the assumptions of the prevailing Secular Model of Education. That is, educators and schools do have legitimate philosophical grounds to refashion educational curriculums for reasoned pedagogic outcomes that truly reflect and embrace the developmental needs of learners as genuinely spirited individuals.
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Notes
- 1.
For an early prototype of “the Secular School (weltliche Schule)”, one may consult Hölscher (2013).
- 2.
“The knowledge attained by scientific inquiry is thus tied to a particular self-understanding by the sciences which is itself an [volitional-aesthetic] interpretation that cannot be confirmed by the same kind of objective proof possible within the inquiry itself” (Hoy 1978, p. 50).
- 3.
“Science” is a kind of “the law”. As the label of the “deductive-nomological (D-N) model” of science shows, it is directly related to the Greek word nomos which means lawful (Rosenberg 2000, p. 30). Hence, many people believe “science” has prescribed to them their personal epistemologies and life schemas. In this sense “the law” and “science” and “scientific/modern culture” are contemporary expressions of the big concept of nomos (ὀ νόμος) the one has encountered in The Epistle (see Chap. 4). Nowadays, people’s foreclosure to the principle of unearned grace stems also out of a “faith” in “the law”.
- 4.
Recalling the cluster taxonomy given in Chap. 3, if one wishes, one may certainly add smaller circles into Fig. 12.1, to stand for Types G, T, P, etc. Such insertions can help contemporary readers to rethink what a pedagogic and inter-perspectival curriculum The Epistle has sought to be in its original setting. In addition, referring to Figs. 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4, one should realise even within the circle for Type G so inserted, there could still be miniature sub-traditions with mutual disputes. Take Rom 16:15b as an example, there are the former sea god worshippers, such as Nereus and his sister. They should be one sub-tradition. Yet, before verse 15b ends, those believers with “Olympas” was another sub-tradition. As said in Chap. 3, it was most likely that these two sub-traditions did not always have similar perceptions and practices about life and rituals.
- 5.
That is, to Paul, it is “first experience, and only then, the tradition” (Rowland 2017, p. 137).
- 6.
Gibson observed (2000, pp. 331–332) “God was central to Ockham’s philosophy. He was a theologian who did philosophy, with a penchant for logic…. His principle for God and logic is simplicity. This is not a project about presentation… His simplicity has ideal in God: the unity, the necessity. ‘Ockham’s razor’ is a label for the philosophical counterpart of God: a principle to reduce, or keep, entities to a minimum. Just as a theologian views polytheism as a corruption threatening monotheism, so Ockham’s philosophy treated the multiplication of species as a corrosive infecting our perception of world-structure that mirrored God”.
- 7.
Mulhall (1996, p 13) has made a point, elucidating Heidegger: “Our prior understanding of Being may well be sedimented with the distortions of earlier theorizing and ancient prejudices, which must of course be identified and neutralized as quickly as possible; but they can only be uncovered by unfolding that prior understanding with the utmost vigilance, not by avoiding contact with it altogether”.
- 8.
The questions are (DLNT) “O human, on the contrary, who are you, the one answering-back to God? The thing formed will not say to the one having formed it, ‘Why did you make me like-this?’, will it?” (ὦ ἄνθρωπε, μενοῦνγε σὺ τίς εἶ ὁ ἀνταποκρινόμενος τῷ θεῷ; μὴ ἐρεῖ τὸ πλάσμα τῷ πλάσαντι Τί με ἐποίησας οὕτως;). Thus, the logic and lesson of Rom 9:19–21 (as a thinking experiment) are obvious. The axiomatic logic and pedagogic pun of the experiment lies in that: “The thing formed”, if it is un-spirited and hence absolutely void of conscientious self-awareness and volitional power, will not be exhibiting the dissenting will, mood, and judgement to say in dissension anything “to the one having formed it”.
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Ho, O.N.K. (2018). Rethinking the Curriculum: Learning and Teaching Romans Then and Now. In: Rethinking the Curriculum. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8902-2_12
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