Lutheran Not Reformed Classical Education: A National Lutheran Schools Week Conversation with Rev. Dr. Tom Korcok

Online Interview with Rev. Dr. Tom Korcok by Mrs. Jocelyn Benson, Wittenberg Academy, for National Lutheran Schools Week 2024, January 24, 2024, transcribed by Dr. Jackquelyn Veith.

JB: Today we’ll talk about the idea of what we would call reformed classical education.  As good Lutherans, we should probably define our terms.  But first of all, Dr. Korcok, what is reformed? What is that background?  We know it’s not Lutheran, but what is it?

TK:  Maybe you’ve been driving down the street and you see a sign by a church that says First Reformed Church or something like that, and you scratch your head and say what is that? They’re probably driving past your church saying St Paul Lutheran Church and saying, what is that? We won’t worry about the Lutheran part; you already know a little bit about that, but what about the Reformed part of the world? Where do they find their beginnings? Shortly after Luther comes along, there’s John Calvin, who’s working in the south around Strasburg. He picks up on Luther’s ideas but he takes them in a slightly different direction.  How do you grasp the difference? I’ll tell you a  short-cut way..  The Lutheran Church was born by Luther, by a monk, who’s on his knees before God saying How can I be saved?  That gives a DNA of the Lutheran church by which we’re always worried; it’s a very personal thing. How does God save me, a lost and condemned person? There’s no way I can work my way into heaven and it becomes a very practical and very personal issue.  Calvin is working in a university; he wants to come up with a very rationalistic or rational explanation for the Reformation.  So he molds his doctrine—some of his points are excellent—but what takes center place in Reform theology is the intellect and understanding the faith. If you can just picture, one is taking place with a monk on his knees praying to God and the other one is taking place in a university lecture hall. You get how the ethos, how the flavor of those two strands is going to develop. 

Within the Reformed church you’ll have many different strands that branch off.  You have Presbyterianism, Anglicanism or in the United States Episcopalians, the Reform Church itself, and several other different groups.  There are different flavors, but basically, the Reformed will still emphasize the authority of scripture; that’s great; they’ll emphasize the need for Christ and the centrality of Christ, that’s great; but at the heart and core they’ll say what’s most important is that God is glorified. So the glory of God becomes the center whereas we would say the grace of God, the forgiveness of God is the center.  Justification is at the center of it. Then this will branch out into the job for Reformed is to seek to glorify God in everything that we do.  Now you’d say that’s right but that’s not at the heart and core. Our glorifying God is an outgrowth of our faith, not the goal of our faith, not the center of it.  

JB: Fantastic. Any follow-up questions there, scholars? Alright.

TK: This affects the way we’re educated as Lutherans and Reformed. Now maybe some of you know about Reformed Classical schools. One of the unfortunate things especially in America, is that there are an awful lot of Reformed Classical schools. And there are relatively few Lutheran classical schools.  I say that’s unfortunate, why? It’s because actually this thing that we’re calling classical education, (I like better a liberal arts education) is our thing. We invented it.  It was at the very beginnings of the Lutheran Reformation and we’re the ones who really came up with this idea of what a liberal arts education should look like. What the Reformed did is copy it and so they took what we had done, and they copied it. And then the Roman Catholics said “Hey what about us?” So, they copied it as well. 

Maybe you’ve heard about Melanchthon, Philip Melanchthon. To give you an idea, Philip Melanchthon wrote a Latin textbook that is used across Europe, across the denominations for the next 200 years. In the late 1980s and 1990s when there’s a desire to get back to the roots of how Christians teach their children, the Reformed went back before we got there and said we’re going to take this Lutheran thing and reinvigorate it and reinvent it for the 20^th and 21^st century. So we’re still playing catch-up with our own thing.

JB:  It’s almost like we didn’t know what we had, like we had lost our heritage. And I think that you would agree that part of what we are teaching our children is our heritage.  So they don’t lose it again.

TK: Exactly. I think part of the reason was that we didn’t get on the bandwagon is because we had established a vast system of Lutheran schools well into the 19^th century and we were resting on that, not realizing how much our Lutheran schools had been reshaped by state-run schools and state-run education. And that was unfortunate.  That said, I’d like to say that there are many good teachers who are working in our traditional Lutheran schools who are doing an excellent job of teaching the faith and teaching what it is to be a Lutheran, even though they are not working within a so-called “classical” school. So if you have friends going to a traditional Lutheran school, don’t look down on them; chances are that they might be getting a very good education as well.  

JB:  So, in the 80s and 90s, you mentioned that there was this capturing of our bandwagon, perhaps, if we can say it like that.  And there was this Reformed movement or desire within the Reformed tradition to look at education and say, you know I think there’s a better way. Can you flesh out the history of that—they’re pulling on our coattails as Lutherans, but then they do their own thing. 

TK: Right. I’m going to mention one name and I’m going to come back to him later on because this is really important for all of us to be aware of, moving forward into the year 2024 and beyond. There’s a man whose name is Douglas Wilson.  Doug Wilson is working in a place called Moscow, Idaho and he actually gets the idea to try this as a model of education. He reads an essay by Dorothy L. Sayers called “Lost Tools of Learning.” And he starts what’s called the Logos School in Moscow Idaho. That’s what’s recognized as the starting point for all of these, at least in an American setting. That model gets replicated throughout the United States and eventually grows into quite a system of Reformed classical schools.  One of the big associations is the ACCS, the Association of Christian Classical Schools, which is very much influenced by Douglas Wilson. Now I’m going to come back to him so put a check mark by his name. Now he gets started and where do the Lutherans come along?

Well, there’s some very influential people early on. One of them is Pastor Joel Brondos who was at a school in Fort Wayne. He heard about Douglas Wilson and looked into his model and said hold it,  maybe we should be doing this as Lutherans.  Another influential person is Dr. Gene Edward Veith, and he gets involved very early on. I remember meeting him at one of the first classical ed conferences had up in Mequon way back in the mid-90s. And this movement was just starting to get rolling. But their concern—and I think they correctly had their little antennas up–saying, “There’s some differences how we should be approaching this whole question of education and the way the Reformed and Douglas Wilson are approaching it.” They start working towards “So what’s the Lutheran part?” of education. What historically, what have we ever taught? How have we done education? I have to say I’m indebted to them because that’s actually the question that got me interested in researching such questions.  

JB: So you have what we could say is two paths and they may not have diverged in the woods.  It is…the distinctions matter and I think that’s where we’re leading with this. I think it would be helpful if we dive a little bit more into the Reformed theological perspective on things as we proceed looking at some of these distinctions. Take us through some of these things. What would be perhaps the anthropology of, (and you might have to briefly define that term for us just in case we have younger scholars who are curious about that), what would be the anthropology of the Reformed perspective?

TK: Sure. So the anthropology is how do they understand the position of man before God? Now here I’m going to go back, if you remember, to where I said the characteristic is set, one is a monk on his knees, the other is a professor in the classroom, a university classroom.  We just wholeheartedly say that there’s nothing that we can do for God in and of ourselves; that we are wholly and totally reliant on God’s grace, on His mercy given to us in Christ Jesus, and that becomes the heart and core for everything we do. Thus, we have to return back to that, because though we are completely forgiven, you know from your own life you’re still sinful; you still sin each and every day.  So, each and every day you have to return to the baptismal font to have that old Adam put to death through contrition and repentance so that the new man may rise to live before God in righteousness and purity.  Right.

For the Reformed perspective, they will say yes, yes, we’re completely sinful; we’re dead, totally depraved but at the same time they will say “But the intellect—there’s something going on there that will lead us to God.” And there are various strains within the Reformed church, that it will have different emphases. So often you’ll find when you’re talking in Reformed education, they’ll say “We should learn the Greek, we should learn the Greek and Roman masters, because as we study these things and learn of truth, and goodness, and beauty, the study of truth and goodness and beauty will actually lead us to God. It will lead us to the Divine.” That’s actually an idea that goes way, way, way, way back to Plato because Plato talked about the emanations of truth and goodness and beauty and if you just follow those along, eventually you’re going to get to the divine. And they will ascribe something of a divine spark that enables you as a student to use those eternal standards of truth, goodness, and beauty to become better people, to become virtuous people, to become more holy people. As Lutherans, we say well, not really. Because the one that leads us to God and the one that leads us to sanctification is not truth, goodness, and beauty, but the Holy Spirit. “I cannot by my own reason and strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him but the Holy Spirit has called me by his Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”  See Luther says, No, no, no; it’s the Holy Spirit that leads us all the way along.

Now, you’re learning about truth, goodness, and beauty—Praise be to God for that. But what you are doing is that you have been enlightened by the Spirit, right? You know Christ Jesus is the author of all those things. So as you see them in the world around you, you’re getting to better know who Christ is, which is exactly what we learn from Scripture—that I may know Christ. And that’s the whole goal of Lutheran classical education, that we would know Christ better, not just from Scripture, but as He is manifest in the world all around us as well. That we would be able to separate out that in the world which is true, good, and beautiful from that which are lies, and ugly, and evil. 

Maybe you’ve heard Philippians used this way, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things…practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. (Phil. 4:8-9). The Reformed are more likely to interpret that verse as if we do all these things, then, the God of peace will be with you. Well, as Lutherans we should be thinking “…I don’t think that’s the way it works.” God doesn’t give us these grand contracts where if we do a certain number of things He’ll hang around with us.

How do we understand Philippians 4?  The question is: who is good, who is beautiful, who is true, who is lovely?  It’s Jesus, and as we dwell on Jesus, as we meditate upon him, as we receive him in His words and in His sacraments, guess what?  The God of peace dwells with us.

JB:  Sometimes these things, if we’re not thinking carefully, can trip us up because we hear good, true, beautiful, and we go, yeah, I’m with that. Then we don’t think about all of the distinctions. Why is it so important that we know and understand that there are differences between the Reformed and the Lutherans? So we don’t fall into the trap of thinking, well, you know, we’re all Christians so it doesn’t really matter that much in terms of differences, because we’re all Christians, we all bleed red?

TK: (laughing) Right, I think so. Especially when you say, well, look, we’re all studying Latin, we’re all learning about Plato and Aristotle; we’re all studying these things so maybe there’s no difference.  But I think that what I want to do now is switch and ask, how does this really play out in our lives? How can we see it affecting our nation and the way we approach our problems in America, in Canada as well, even today? 

JB:  A comment here:  I love your phrase, “grand contract.” 

TK:  Yes, that God would set up this big contract with us to do our part. Again you can see there tends to be a rationalist, an intellectual approach to the faith as opposed to just the reliance upon the relationship that God establishes with us in baptism, this warm loving relationship based on forgiveness through Christ.

JB:  Another comment, “I also like your explanation of the different way of thinking.  They think if/then but we think Jesus.”

TK:  Right, yeah, you don’t want to be reductionist about it. But it is all about Jesus, correctly understood; I’m not being reductionist where all you have to do is just believe in Jesus and forget about everything else. But it all comes together in Christ. 

JB:  Right, absolutely. We always talk about doctrine drives practice, right?  What you believe is going to form what you do.  And this is why I’m always emphasizing to our scholars “Think like Lutherans.” Right? Because that is going to impact how you act in the world. What you do, what you believe, teach, and confess, your creed, is going to influence you.  Everybody has a creed and it influences what they do. So, the Reformed beliefs, there are some of them that, as you said, we can agree with, right? This comes directly out of Scripture, we agree.  Then there are others, that we say, “Okay, yeah, that’s not in the Bible at all.” And one of those is their view of the end times. And so even though we might think, we don’t spend a ton of time teaching on the end times at Wittenberg Academy, why does it really matter?  So talk to us about post-millennialism.

JB: Another comment here.  “From what I can tell about the Reformed they think that they can get to heaven without the help of God. What do they think they can do to get to heaven?”

TK:  Okay, so that’s a little bit of a misinterpretation. No proper Reformed would ever say “Oh we can get to heaven without God at all.”  But the idea of becoming more holy places a lot more emphasis on what we are supposed to do. And on achieving righteousness, achieving holiness. So they will say no, you can only get to heaven through Christ, by believing in Jesus, by believing in Christ’s work. They’re pretty strong on that.  Again then there are variations in here but generally they’ll say that. So it’s more a question of how do I become righteous?  How do I become holy? And there the emphasis isn’t on God working through the word and sacraments because He doesn’t work through those words and sacraments.  This is God’s ordinances, this is God’s direction book to us as to how we are supposed to live as Christians.  So let’s just move on. By the way, I do like your comment Think Lutheran.  In class both when I taught undergraduates at Concordia University Chicago  and here at Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary, often when I ask a question and the students are wrestling with it, I always say “Think Catechism.”  Because at the end of the day all the answers that you ever will give to your faith will grow out of your catechism. Even if you’re in seminary or you’re getting a doctorate, if what you’re saying doesn’t line up with the Catechism, then you can say ”Maybe there’s something wrong here.” Because the Catechism is a true exposition of Scripture so we know that it should all line up. it should be like a square (gesturing with hands) all matching.

Okay, now, I’m going to get very current, and we can talk about some of the current events that we see happening in our society around us and how we want to be careful and understand the difference with how we approach classical education. Mrs. Benson mentioned postmillennialism.  That’s a particular view for how the end times are going to play out. 

Since the late ‘90s and early 2000s, there has been this resurgence of what’s called postmillennialism. And there’s lots of different facets that connected with postmillennialism. You could write books about it and read books about it. It’s endless. Essentially, it’s that we have to, in some way, Christianize our culture. We have to Christianize the world, or our nation, and after our nation has been Christianized, then it will be ready for Christ to come again, for Christ to return. We are to make a fit nation, or a nation that is fit for Jesus to return again. 

Part of that comes because they say that Christ isn’t working through the sacraments. They don’t believe Jesus is physically and actually present with His church now.  Jesus is up in heaven, and they say, because He ascended up in heaven, there’s no way He can be physically present with His people through the sacrament. If Jesus is up in heaven, wherever that is, then what about us who are here? Well, our job is to prepare a kingdom for Him to return to.  As I said, this has gained a lot of traction, a lot of interest across, especially America, over the past 20 years or so.

There is this strain of thought, that we have to Christianize America, that we have to create a Christian government and Christian institutions, Christian leadership in business in order to make this a fit place for the church and for Christ. Now, we’re all for Christians being in leadership, and we should pray that God raises up good Christian leaders and if they are not Christian, we should be praying that God raises up wise leaders.  In many respects, I would rather have a wise and fair pagan leading me than a klutzy, inept Christian leading me. The one can do much more damage.  I won’t go there.  So we should pray for good, wise, Christian leadership.  But it’s quite a different thing to say that we have to make our government into a Christian country or into a Christian government.  And that the church is dependent upon this happening.  The church isn’t dependent on anything in this world.  Remember, the church is Christ’s kingdom, the church is Christ’s body and I like to say, if Christ could triumph over Satan and all of his enemies and crush his head into the ground with his resurrection, He’s really not going to have much trouble dealing with any old government that we happen to elect, right? He can work through that quite handily, with one hand tied behind his back.  He can handle it, okay?

Now, there are some, not all, but some within the classical Christian education movement who see classical Christian education as a way to get this and bring it about.  I mentioned Doug Wilson.  For you parents, you might want to just YouTube some of Doug Wilson’s videos and his views of post-millennialism.  It’s very very revealing.  So he argues that, in order to establish this, what we’re going to have to do is set up all these Christian classical schools; we’re going to train up Christian leaders, train up Christian business leaders, and train up Christian thinkers so that when the government implodes upon itself and crushes, then the Christian community can move in and take over and be in charge. That’s not an enticing thought. And as Lutherans, we don’t want that at all.

There are some in there, and you might hear this from time to time, of Christians even advocating for violence, and Christians saying we should do something to fight to make sure we get our way.  That goes completely against God’s command to us to live peaceably with all men.  For you young people, this is the world you’re going to be growing up to, and your ears should be attentive to this to say—this is not what we confess and not what we teach as Lutherans. It’s certainly not what Scripture teaches.  Doug Wilson has gone so far as suggesting that he would like to see the Apostles’ Creed embedded in the Constitution.  That’s a scary thought. It’s scary not just the idea that this could even happen but the Apostles Creed is Christians’ sacred gift; it was given to you in your baptism, it is precious; I would never want that Creed being used by people who either don’t understand it or people who don’t believe it, and thereby blaspheming God by misusing His Creed which He has given to His church.  

But that’s what happens when we start going down this path. All sorts of crazy things happen.  That’s a big huge overview; I don’t want to scare you in any way, because again here’s the beauty of coming from the church that was started by the monk on the knees—we trust in the grace and goodness of God and we know that no matter what happens, God will keep His church and it will be victorious as it is already victorious over sin, death, and the devil. 

JB:  So where do you see the most danger for Lutherans as they are trying to make decisions regarding the education of their children either now or the scholars here present in the future making decisions for their children?  Where or what are the dangers?  In terms of some of the things that you say, we want to get right along with them and what the Reformed are saying sounds really good, but then you’re saying, okay, there’s this kind of hidden danger.  So how do we know?  How do we decide in terms of the options that are out there?

TK:  Right.  Here’s the thing.  Our culture has changed very quickly. In the US it’s changed faster than in Canada but it’s all relative.  It’s all changed very, very quickly. When I was a boy, I went to a public school in Ontario. We had religion classes; I actually have the old Ontario religion curriculum book.  It’s Bible stories, and I could almost use it in our Sunday school. I wouldn’t but it was pretty decent stuff.  We had prayers; we would talk about going to church. That was just kind of a normal thing. Now we’ve just spun so fast in the opposite direction. 

It feels like we’re just on the defensive; it feels like we’re just on a losing battle, and that we had better get on board. We had better fight back before we lose the last of any Christian identity. And that is a very natural reaction, to feel like you’re among the oppressed and then to lash out. I think it’s important to recognize that’s where we stand in relation to the world, that we do have to be more diligent and more deliberate in who we are as Christians, what we believe as Christians, and how our lives are differentiated from what the world tells us we should be doing. That’s something that all of us, young and old, have to wrestle with in different ways.  Maybe it’s wrestling with “Why can’t I play this video game? Or watch this on tv?” Or maybe, it’s, if you’re older, “Can I have this job or how do I deal with this job when they’re telling me to do something that contradicts my faith?” 

That’s something we all have to learn to work through and that’s a very healthy thing. The church will be stronger because of it, at the end of the day. What we don’t want to do is go down the path in saying everybody in the world, not the world, everybody in the world is our enemy.  They aren’t the enemy.  The world is our enemy.  The men and women God has created we are to love and witness to and win over. So they’re not the enemy. Nowhere in our Confessions does it talk in those terms. It says, yes, the world, that’s different. So how are men and women won over? How are boys and girls won over? It’s when we speak the truth; we speak truth and beauty and goodness when we speak Jesus Christ in a wise and eloquent way.  And that wisdom and the eloquence is something that your education is really trying to get you to do.  So that you can go out and talk in a persuasive—that’s rhetoric—and in a logical way and also in a way that makes sense, in a grammatically proper way, right, that you don’t up mix your words.  That’s what the world needs, and that’s how those in the world will be won over. That men may see your good works, and glorify God in heaven. And part of our good works are our good words.

JB:  One of the things that I emphasize to scholars frequently (and you can affirm whether this is an important distinction between the Reformed and the Lutherans), is ultimately our goal for our children is to see them in heaven.  So the education that we are giving them, we don’t want to teach them out of their faith.  We don’t want to teach them away from their faith.  We want what we are teaching them to nurture their faith and to encourage their faith. So that in our education, we always have a heavenward focus. It seems, and you can correct me if I’ve heard incorrectly, that the Reformed—perhaps—have more of an earthly focus. Our goal is heaven and while we are here on earth, we want to be a good to our neighbor.  That’s living out our vocations that God has given us, so we’re not monastic in our education, we’re not going to go away, and we’re not going to deal with this evil world. No, we’re called to live in the world but not of the world. But our focus is on heaven and equipping our children for however many days God gives them here on earth. It almost seems like the Reformed have a different perspective on that which would fundamentally influence the goals of their education.

TK:  Right, so much of the Reformed view is that we’re going to Christianize the world around us so they can live like us. Well, actually the life grows out of faith in Christ and you can’t force faith in Christ. And that comes from the witness of the proclamation of the Gospel. From what you were saying, Mrs. Benson, in the Formula of Concord, I think it’s Article 5 (don’t quote me on this) it says we are to teach Christians to walk according to Law.  That’s language we don’t often use now in the Lutheran church. But it’s a very useful phrase to bear in mind. So that there is this understanding that we have been saved, that we have faith in Christ. But what does that faith do? How does it manifest itself in our lives?  

The Formula says we are to teach people to walk in the Law.  Well, what does the Law teach us?  The first table of the Law teaches us how we are to look to God in faith.  And part of what your education does is teach you to look to God in faith.  So when you go to the Divine Service, you can sit there, receive God’s gifts, hear the pastor preaching, and receive his word as it is from God.  It is the word of God to be taken to heart. We are to receive God’s gift of forgiveness and what have you. The second table of the Law teaches us how we are to look to our neighbor in love. 

And what does our neighbor need?  This goes against a lot of what one was talking about earlier, with the way Christian nationalism and post-millennialism looks at it.  No, I’m to look at my neighbor:  the person living next to me, the people living in my house, that I work with, and ask what do you need?  What’re your needs in this life? That’s all summed up in the second table of the Law.  How do I teach my neighbor to love their authorities? To honor them and obey? And not just parents, but other authorities?  How do I teach my neighbor, how do I care for my neighbor in the body (5^th commandment)? How do I help my neighbor live a sexually pure and decent life and how do I treat them in a pure and decent way?  How do I protect his possessions and income, and so on.  That’s the second part of your education, so that you know, you’re learning these things not just so you can get a good job, not so you can make money, not so that you can run the world and be king or queen.  It’s not about that. Wherever you are, if you’re living in rural Kentucky or if you’re living in downtown San Francisco, how do you serve those people there? And what do you do to make their lives just a little bit better and serve them? Because that’s why God has placed you there. 

JB:  Other questions or thoughts?  One comment here a little bit further back: This is very clarifying; I hear my Reformed friends saying things like ‘for such a time as this’ or ‘redeeming the time or saving the world one student at a time’. I see them being passionately, almost obsessively involved in political campaigns. You’ve really summarized the ‘why’ behind this.

TK: You will hear about evangelicals doing this and that’s such a broad term, it’s almost useless, but there’s this underlying theme going this that grows out of post-millennialism.

JB:  In our final minutes here

I’ll put a shameless plug-in for the Wittenberg Academy grammar school curriculum, written by Lutherans for Lutherans.  We’re rolling out our science curriculum right now, Day by Day. Day by Day is how we study science in our grammar school curriculum.  Day One is published and in hard copy for folks to purchase. Day Two is almost ready to go out the door and hit the printers.  Exciting things in that regard in terms of curriculum availability.  

CCLE has a conference each summer and I strongly recommend that to everyone, a fantastic opportunity to learn and meet other Lutherans who are in the throes of either educating or being educated.  So it’s a fantastic conference.  Keep your eyes and ears open, scholars and families. The Lutheran difference is an important one, so think like Lutherans.  Be Lutheran.  Dr. Korcok any final word?

TK:  It’s been great being here. God’s blessings and enjoy the rest of the day because today is the day that the Lord has given; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

JB:  Amen.  Scholars, don’t forget tomorrow we’ll be right back here at noon. Come on back and look forward to another great presentation tomorrow. Thanks, Dr Korcok; it was great seeing you.