Task of Each Epoch
The task of every historical epoch is perhaps very close to Hegel's picture: the formation of The Perennial Philosophy in terms which can give the people of that time the electric sense of life which is contained in functioning religious inspiration or an integrated culture.
The cure for contemporary troubles would therefore hardly appear to lie in an attempt to revivify the Bible or reanimate the Christian revelation. The Christian heritage proved incapable of answering Bacon and Diderot. And while these men failed to provide a lasting alternative, they defined the work of any future religion. No future synthesis can simply ignore the problems raised by empirical science or temporal Utopianism. It must incorporate these elements into a new vision, making its Revelation relevant to contemporary dilemmas.
And so to talk of Christian education is, as Pollard suggests, quite fruitless, because Christian education requires Christian educators, and a Christian society. And we have few Christian educators because the Church is no longer talking a language which illuminates problems confronting the Academy. We have no Christian society because Christianity has failed to say and do anything finally effective about science and progress. We can only begin to talk about Christian education after we know what we mean by Christianity, and that word has not had an imminent experiential reference for four centuries.
If the Churches are trying to revive Medievalism, we must ask whether they have removed the shortcomings which led to the classical Renaissance.
Need to Define Order
If, on the other hand, the Churches are trying to create a new Christian order, then the first business at hand is to define that order and forget the educational experiment for a few centuries. What, for instance, is the contemporary world supposed to understand by the Christian use of the word "God"? How are we to take statements about heaven and hell or the day of judgment? When these questions can be answered in ways which move men to live again, then we can talk about Christian education