Christian Education, Character, and Wisdom
One of the big conversations in education scholarship today is about character. Character matters, and teachers and scholars are increasingly interested in exploring the question of character in education. Character formation should be at the core of education and character education fits with Christian education.
We all intuitively know character matters. When people are courageous, honest, gracious, generous, or kind, we see good character and we respond positively. Small displays of character, like the boy who gives his lunch to his hungry friend, and big displays, like the man who lays down his life for his friend – these all draw us in and cause thankfulness and admiration to rise up. Bad character also matters. We are repulsed by the leader who makes crude comments about the opposite sex. The man who refuses to take responsibility for his actions loses esteem in our eyes. And we pity the person who shows cowardice.
Character obviously, and intuitively, matters. According to Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, character is foundational to who the person is. The educational theorist, Charlotte Mason, argues that “character is the man.” You can have good health and bad character simultaneously. Yet, without good character you’re unlikely to keep a good reputation. Without good character, we are left with little.
As Charlotte Mason[1] also argued, character is the aim of education, and I want to argue further that character should be the centrepiece of Christian education. The best way for Christian educators and schools to do this is to focus on the concept of “wisdom” and take a “liberal arts” or “classical approach”. To be of good character, you need wisdom, and to get wisdom you need to know God, understand his world rightly, and live well in light of this. These things will lead to good character.
What is Education?
To start, I need to define what we mean when we talk about education. My working definition of education is “the deliberate formation of a person.” This definition has some important elements. First, education is a conscious choice. People can learn in all kinds of ways, and they can get educated without setting out to do it. However, I’m focusing on the deliberate choices, rather than the accidental happenings, that form a person.
Education is formation. This assumes that each person being educated, whether they are a child or an adult, is malleable and is capable of growth. Education directs and possibly hastens that growth and change. Formation also implies that this growth and change have a purpose, or an aim. Some philosophers and theologians use the Greek word telos to describe this. Education points somewhere; it aims at something. Education is a conscious choice, and in making that choice we direct ourselves or others towards a formation goal.
Finally, we come to the subject of education – what is the thing being educated? The person being educated is just that – a person. This implies they are sentient, and they are capable of growing and changing. In the Christian understanding of human persons, they are made in God’s image. This means that built into our being is a connection to the divine, and it also means there will be some interaction between the formation of a person and their relation to God.
The word “education” comes from the Latin educere or educare. These words mean “to raise up”, “to bring up”, “to train” and “to teach”. Conceptually, they are related to the ancient Greek idea of paideia. Plato uses the word paideia to describe what we call education. In his Republic, Plato says that paideia refers to the process of a person being turned towards the true, the good, and the beautiful. This means that education is not just downloading information or simply increasing in knowledge.
Plato says that the “power to learn is present in everyone’s soul.”[2] In other words, the power to learn is in every person, and is part of the essence of what it is to be human. Plato also says that education is “the craft concerned with … putting sight into the soul.”[3] Through the education process, we turn a person towards the truth and illuminate that truth. But how does this happen?
The word paideia conjures up numerous images and related ideas when translated into English: nurture, instruction, discipline, chastisement, and training. This means that paideia is not just changing one’s disposition; it is not altering the direction someone is pointing. Education is a kind of athletics, or a form of fitness. Elite level athletes have to train a lot to become good enough to compete at the highest level. Education is a training, but it is training for the soul rather than the body. It is the deliberate formation of a person through discipline, training, and instruction, where the person is directed towards the true, the good, and the beautiful.
What is Christian Education?
So far, I’ve described generic education, with no religious or denominational overtones. As I turn to the question of “Christian education,” the scriptures provide a helpful conceptual link. The New Testament uses the word paideia numerous times. For example, Ephesians 6:4 says “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the nurture (paideia) and admonition of the Lord.” In 2 Timothy 3:16, the Apostle Paul says “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training (paideia) in righteousness.”
Paideia is something carried out by parents, by God himself (cf. Hebrews 13), and by ministers in the church in their use of the Bible. That’s how the Christian scriptures use paideia, and so this concept is closely aligned with how we think about Christian education today. It is also connected to how Christians have thought about education across history. The early Christians took the Greek concept of paideia and used it to describe Christian formation.[4] The leading theologians and philosophers of the early church went even further, taking the best of ancient pagan thought, literature, and art, synthesising these with the Hebraic tradition, the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament, and creating a Christian conception of paideia.
Jesus was the capstone of the wisdom that the early Christians found in the Hebraic and Greco-Roman traditions. With Jesus Christ came a complete paideia, a perfect education. It was a paideia that not only provided knowledge about the truth, but formed (morphosis) the student in godliness and, more broadly, in wisdom, the wisdom of Christ and the practical wisdom that the Bible teaches. From this came a tradition of Christian education we now call “classical.” Understood this way, Christian education is classical education. Christian education is: the deliberate formation of a person by guiding them towards truth, goodness, and beauty, through nurture and discipline. And the highest point of that truth, goodness, and beauty is Jesus Christ himself.
The Aim of a Christian Education
I don’t think this makes total sense of what the Bible says about education, though. In particular, it downplays one of the main aims of education. There is more to Christian education than simply helping someone know what is true, good, and beautiful. We want to form persons. Truth, goodness, and beauty are things people can attain to. The question is this: what kind of person attains them?
The aim of education is not knowledge, aesthetic sensitivity, good manners, or good taste. The aim is character. The aim is to form students of good character, to train, disciple, and form good people. We want students to choose the right thing, to be honest, to be courageous, to be gracious and forgiving. We want them to choose the true, the good and the beautiful. What does it take to form people like that? It takes training in character.
But what lies underneath good character? Wisdom. The wise person will choose the good, the true, and the beautiful. The wise person will choose to be gracious and forgiving. The wise person will choose courage, and will choose to do the right thing. The wise person is the ultimate product of a Christian education, whether it is classical or not.
Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, talks about character as foundational to who the person is. The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue defines character as “a set of personal traits or dispositions that produce specific moral emotions, inform motivation, and guide conduct.”[5] In other words, how someone is in themselves is foundational to their motivations, morals, and actions. The way a person is defines their character.
Charlotte Mason, the educationalist and philosopher, was adamant that character was the aim of education. Character, she says, is the man. Mason further argues that a person is what they have become by their own choices and influences. These make up character. Mason says “a man is what he has made himself by the thoughts which he has allowed himself, the words he has spoken, the deeds he has done.”[6] Character is, also, a person’s “original disposition, modified, directed, expanded by education; by circumstances; later, by self-culture; above all by the supreme agency of the Holy Ghost.”[7]
The virtues are aspects of character – they are the parts of the person’s character that make them who they are. However, we must make a distinction here. Everyone has a character, but not everyone is virtuous. Your character is whatever you are, and what you are can be made up of virtuous characteristics or vicious ones. You display virtues when you act from your good character. You display vicious, or negative, behaviour when you act from bad character.
The Bible doesn’t talk about “character” explicitly. But it does talk about virtues. In 2 Peter 1:3-8, the Apostle Peter writes:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence (arete), by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
God is, here, described as having arete, or virtue. And we can become partakers in that divine nature, that divine virtue, by exhibiting virtues ourselves.
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is why James Arthur can say in his book A Christian Education in the Virtues that “Christian Education is an intentional process of building character through nurturing those virtues that assist us in our ultimate end – friendship with God.”[8] These virtues spur us on, not only to good character, but to fellowship with the Creator and Redeemer of the universe.
On a straightforward reading of 2 Peter 1, one must conclude that character does matter for the Christian, and for the Christian educator. The Apostle Peter is not arguing that virtue and character save people, but he is arguing that good character makes a difference for one’s walk with God.
Character Formation as Christian Education
Character formation fits into Christian education quite naturally. We can see that in the book of Proverbs, where a father says to his son that his teaching is “for gaining wisdom and instruction, for understanding words of insight; for receiving instruction in prudent behaviour, doing what is right just and fair.” (1:2–3) The aim of a Christian education, and education more generally, is the formation of character. But the key to character is wisdom. “The fear of the Lord” is the foundation of education; knowing and fearing God is the foundation of the getting of knowledge and wisdom (Proverbs 1:7).
Education is the process of growing in wisdom. The wise person is being formed to see God’s world rightly, read his Word truly, and act well in light of this. This is wisdom. Without wisdom, you cannot have good character, which is the main point of Christian education. It is wisdom that undergirds the desire for, and ability to choose, the true, the good, and the beautiful. It is wisdom that flows out of a person when she chooses to act honestly, show courage, and deal well with adversity. In other words, wisdom is the foundation of character. Wisdom and character formation go together, and therefore Christian education and character education should go together as well.
Editor’s note: This article is adapted from the Foundations of Christian Education Lecture delivered by Dr. Kennedy at Covenant Christian School in Gordon, ACT, Australia on July 1, 2026.
Endnotes
[1] https://www.cminst.org/about/about-charlotte-mason
[2] Plato, Republic, 518c.
[3] Ibid.
[4] See Werner Jaeger’s Early Christianity and Greek Paideia.
[5] https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/character-education-/framework-for-character-education/
[6] Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, 234.
[7] Ibid., 23.
[8] James Arthur, A Christian Education in the Virtues, 24.
