Greekpaideia, designed to prepare the Roman upper class or the free men
(liberales) for running their estates and governing society. We can see, then,
that from their very beginning humanistic or liberal studies were associated with
literary, rhetorical, and philosophical training rather than with trades or profes-
sions. Classical humanistic education as conceived by Greco-Roman ideals did
not demean specialized training, but‘the main thing was to become a person of
intelligence, someone with insight and good judgment, in order to frame prac-
tical and political life’.^14 For classical humanistic education,‘no form of govern-
ment, no branch of knowledge, no technique, should ever become an end in
itself: since they are created by man, and supposed to serve man, they should
always, no matter what their results, be subordinated in the way they are used to
one supreme value: humanity.’^15
In his classic studyEarly Christianity and Greek Paideia, the classicist
Werner Jaeger (1888–1961) has shown how the legacy of Hellenistic education
was taken up and transformed by early Christian theologians into an‘ancient
Christian humanism’, without which classical humanist ideals would not have
survived well into the early twentieth century.^16 The church fathersfirst
revitalized the classic heritage, and their effort was renewed by medieval
theologians and Renaissance humanists.^17 The belief that God had become a
human being to redeem humanityfilled the old wineskin of classical culture
and education with new life. The key idea in this transformation wasdeifica-
tion. In early Christian theology, deification describes the glorious hope
brought into the world by Christ for the transformation of human beings
into their full Christlikeness, their true humanity in the image of God. Patristic
writers from Irenaeus, to Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, and beyond
marvelled at God’s becoming human for the sake of healing and transforming
humanity. Augustine sums up the central teaching of this Christian humanist
tradition when he tells his congregation that‘the Son of God became the Son
of Man, so as to make the sons of men into sons of God’.^18
The historian of Christian doctrine Henri de Lubac grasped the heart of
patristic theology when he referred to the‘comprehensive humanism’of the
church fathers.^19 Recognizing the central importance of deification ortheosis
(^14) Marrou,History of Education, 225. (^15) Marrou,History of Education, 225.
(^16) Jaeger,Early Christianity, 102.
(^17) Werner Jaeger,Humanism and Theology(Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press,
1943), 24–6. See also Charles Trinkaus,‘The Religious Thought of the Italian Humanists and
the Reformers: Anticipation or Autonomy?’, in Charles Trinkaus with Heiko Obermann (eds),
The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval And Renaissance Religion(Leiden: Brill, 1974),
358 – 61.
(^18) Augustine,Homilies on the Gospel of John, ed. Allan Fitzgerald, trans. Edmund Hill, The
Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, iii/12 (Hyde Park, NY: New City
Press, 2009), 372.
(^19) Henri de Lubac,Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot
Sheppherd and Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988), 321.
Introduction 5