The burden of this editorial is that the Christian school is a demand of the covenant. The covenant of God with believers and their seed requires that those believers work together to establish, maintain, and use a Christian school for the rearing of their seed. A Christian school is not merely an option for a believer but is an obligation for him. His obligation is to have a Christian school with other parents, not merely Christian education for his own children, which is also his obligation. Although the form of a Christian school may vary according to circumstances, God’s covenant demands that there be a Christian school.
What is a Christian school? What is the essence of a Christian school? A Christian school is believers’ (especially parents’) working together in the covenantal rearing and instruction of their covenant seed.
This definition attempts to pare a Christian school down to its essence. About the who of the Christian school, the definition says only believers (especially parents). About the what of the Christian school, it says only the covenantal rearing and instruction of their covenant seed. About the how of the Christian school, it says only working together.
This definition of a Christian school does not include elements that are often included. For example, it says nothing about the organizational or institutional aspect of a Christian school, such as the formation of an association, the appointment of a school board, the securing of a building, and the adoption of curricula. Of course, of necessity there will be organization as believers work together in the covenant rearing and instruction of their children. The instruction cannot proceed without organization. Father Bill cannot wake up on Monday and decide that he will teach chapter 5 of the algebra book to the neighborhood children, wake up on Tuesday and decide that he will teach chapter 3, and wake up on Wednesday and decide that he will teach chemistry from now on. There must be organization in the rearing and instruction, and that organization will require some level of association and oversight on the part of the parents. The parents will undoubtedly establish a formal institution as the most efficient way to work together in the rearing and instruction of their children in the necessary subjects, and they will secure a building where the instruction can be carried out. But this organizational and institutional aspect is not the essence of the Christian school.
The above definition also says nothing about the hiring of teachers through whom the parents in part fulfill their calling to rear and instruct their children. The hiring of godly, qualified teachers is the most important thing that the parents will do in their working together to rear and instruct their children. The teachers will stand in the place of the parents in the classrooms and train the children in all of the necessary subjects in the light of God’s word. Parents need such assistance from godly, qualified teachers in light of the breadth and depth of instruction that children need to fulfill their God-given callings today. By Thursday father Bill will realize that he can teach neither algebra nor chemistry, and, with the other parents, he will set about to find a fellow believer who can. But as necessary as is a qualified Christian teacher, even this aspect of the Christian school is not its essence.
What then is the essence of the Christian school? The essence of the Christian school is the togetherness of the endeavor to instruct the covenant seed. The Christian school is the covenant parents’ and other believers’ working together in the covenantal instruction of the covenant seed. Wherever you have the parents’ and other believers’ joining together for the instruction of the covenant seed, there you have the essence of the Christian school.
The Christian school is a distinct work from the parents’ other work of rearing and instructing their children privately in the home as part of their daily calling. Family devotions around the dinner table, the provision of sound reading material for the children and youth, conversations about the glory of God in his creation and the mercy of God in Christ to his church, and the discipline of the children are all part of the private instruction in the home. But this private instruction in the home, which is good and necessary, is for that family. There is no working together with other families in it. The instruction profits only the children of the one family but does not reach the children of the other families. Therefore, in addition to the private rearing and instruction of the children in the home, parents also have the calling to work together with other parents and believers in the rearing and instruction of their covenant seed. In the working together for that rearing and instruction, there you have the Christian school.
Because the essence of the Christian school is parents’ working together in the rearing of the covenant seed, the opposite of a Christian school is independentism on the part of a family. Rather than working together with the other parents in the rearing and instruction of their children, a family keeps itself apart from the other families. The parents see to the rearing and instruction of their own children, but only their own children. Probably they even give competent academic instruction to their children through the use of the multitude of homeschool curricula that are available today. Perhaps they even give outstanding academic instruction to their children, so that their children far outshine their peers. Being believing parents, they also undoubtedly strive to see to it that the instruction is spiritually sound and godly. They labor to raise their children in the fear of the Lord, and the faith and godliness of their children are evident to all. But in this good, sound, godly instruction of their covenant seed, the parents are independent of the other believers. Even if they regularly send a check for financial support to the Christian school, the family itself is separate from and apart from and independent of the other families in the rearing of its covenant seed.
A Christian school, on the other hand, is the opposite of such independentism. A Christian school is believers’ (especially parents’) working together in the covenantal rearing and instruction of their covenant seed.
The Christian school is a demand of the covenant. The covenant of God with believers and their seed requires that these believers work together in the rearing and instruction of their covenant seed.
In the covenant of God with believers and their seed, the issue is not only that the content of the instruction be covenantal. Covenantal content of the instruction certainly is a requirement of the covenant. The children who are being instructed are God’s covenant children, as many as he has called. By the gospel of Jesus Christ and by his Spirit, according to his gracious decree, God has brought these children into his own fellowship. Therefore, they must walk before God in gratitude and service. Their lives in the world must be governed and illuminated by the word of God in every sphere. They must be instructed in this life from the scriptures, and the light of God’s word must be shined upon all their subjects. The content of the Christian education must be biblical and covenantal.
But the covenant of God with believers and their seed governs more than the content of Christian education. The covenant of God also governs the manner of Christian education. The manner of Christian education must be together. The covenant of God requires that parents labor together in the covenant rearing and instruction of their children. Therefore, the Christian school, the essence of which is the togetherness of the endeavor, is a demand of the covenant. The covenant demands Christian education, and the covenant demands the Christian school.
Inasmuch as the covenant of God requires a Christian school, the covenant also forbids independentism in the rearing of the covenant seed. The family that gives its own children a Christian education has not exhausted the demands of the covenant. Rather, the covenant demands that that family must also work together with the other believing families for the covenant rearing and instruction of its own seed and of the other families’ seed.
It must be demonstrated that the Christian school is a demand of the covenant. In our day there is growing opposition to the truth that the Christian school is a demand of the covenant. The most powerful challenge comes from those who say that scripture does not require the Christian school. The argument goes that scripture often explicitly requires Christian education for the covenant seed but that scripture nowhere explicitly requires the Christian school. Appeal is made to passages like Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” The passage obviously calls for Christian education but says nothing about the Christian school. Further, the argument goes that scripture lays the responsibility for the Christian education of the children only upon the parents of those particular children. Whether the argument states it explicitly or not, the argument means that the responsibility for the children’s instruction belongs exclusively to the parents of those children independent of any other parents and independent of any other children. Appeal is made to passages such as Deuteronomy 6:7: “Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children.” The passage, so the argument goes, speaks only of the parents’ teaching their children and does not give that responsibility to any other believer.
This form of opposition to the Christian school is powerful and has a strong effect on the thinking of godly parents. Godly parents love the Bible and want to govern their lives by God’s word. They are persuaded by the argument that the Bible only requires Christian content in the rearing of the children but does not require a Christian school, especially when they notice that the Bible does not use the word school. But the argument is in error. The Bible does require the Christian school, even though it never uses the term Christian school.
God’s word requires the Christian school explicitly. God’s word does this by explicitly requiring the whole church to teach the children. The much-beloved and oft-quoted passage in Deuteronomy 6 is not addressed to individual parents, as is often thought. The passage is addressed to the whole church. The grammar of the passage is unmistakable on this and can easily be tested by anyone with a King James Bible. The KJV uses thee / thou to refer to the singular and ye / you to refer to the plural. In Deuteronomy 6:4–9, God is addressing all Israel. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (v. 4). God continues to speak to his nation, Israel, as “thou.” “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (v. 5). We could read it this way: “And thou, Israel, shalt love the Lord thy God.” In the passage God never changes the one whom he is addressing. He never leaves “O Israel” to address “O parent.” All of his commands to teach the children are still addressed to “thou,” which is Israel. “And thou [Israel] shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou [Israel] sittest in thine house, and when thou [Israel] walkest by the way, and when thou [Israel] liest down, and when thou [Israel] risest up” (v. 7).
Yes, it is true that the individual parent in Deuteronomy 6 bears the primary responsibility for the rearing of the children. The parent is the one sitting in the house with the children and walking by the way with the children and lying down and rising up with the children. Nevertheless, God’s address is unmistakably to “O Israel” throughout. Israel together has the responsibility to teach God’s precepts diligently to Israel’s children. This togetherness in the teaching of the children is the essence of the Christian school. When God says, “O Israel, teach thy children,” he is saying, “O Israel, teach thy children together.”
Psalm 78 also requires togetherness in the instruction of the covenant seed. The fathers are to make known to their children the works of God. “For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children” (v. 5). About this, the fathers say that they will show these things not only to their own children but to others as well. “We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done” (v. 4). The togetherness of the endeavor to instruct the children is the essence of the Christian school.
The teaching of this editorial that the Christian school is a demand of the covenant is the doctrine of the Reformed confessions and Church Order. This doctrine of the confessions and Church Order has been opposed, confused, weakened, and changed by Reformed churches who are not satisfied with their own confessions and Church Order on this point. Nevertheless, the confessions and Church Order are plain and unambiguous that God in his covenant with his people demands that they establish and use Christian schools together for the rearing of their covenant seed.
Lord’s Day 38 of the Heidelberg Catechism explains the fourth commandment of God’s law, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The Catechism asks, “What doth God require in the fourth commandment?” The Catechism answers, “First, that the ministry of the gospel and the schools be maintained” (Confessions and Church Order, 128). The schools that the Catechism mentions are not primarily the seminaries, where the seminary students learn theology. Rather, the schools are the day schools, where the boys and girls are taught the arts and sciences. Some of these boys may be ministers someday, and their training in the arts and sciences will serve their ministries. Zacharias Ursinus, the primary author and the authorized expositor of the Heidelberg Catechism, writes this about the meaning of “the schools” in Lord’s Day 38: “The maintenance of schools may be embraced under this part of the honor which is due to the ministry; for unless the arts and sciences be taught, men can neither become properly qualified to teach, nor can the purity of doctrine be preserved and defended against the assaults of heretics.”1
In the fourth commandment, requiring the keeping of the sabbath day, God requires his people to maintain schools where the arts and sciences are taught. The boys who will become ministers need to be educated in the arts and sciences in order to learn to think and to apply the word of God to every branch of earthly knowledge and every facet of earthly life. Training in the arts and sciences equips these boys to be teachers themselves, who will someday teach the church of God the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Training in the arts and sciences also prepares them to defend the faith against learned heretics, who are the apostles of Satan but who deceptively transform themselves into apostles of light. To see through the heretics’ deception and to ward it off so that God’s people do not bear patiently with the heretics, ministers must be educated and equipped in the skills of thinking, understanding, and teaching.
In the Reformed explanation of the fourth commandment, the maintenance of the schools is first! The Reformed explanation of the fourth commandment does not begin with diligently frequenting the church of God on the day of rest, although this also is the Reformed explanation of the fourth commandment. The Reformed explanation of the fourth commandment begins with the maintenance of the schools, which schools stand in the service of maintaining the ministry of the gospel.
The Heidelberg Catechism does not make the maintenance of schools optional for the Reformed believer, so that he may maintain a Christian school or he may not maintain a Christian school. For the Catechism this is a matter of God’s holy law. It is required. The confession of every Reformed church member in Lord’s Day 38 is that God demands Christian schools. “What doth God require…? First, that…the schools be maintained.”
The Church Order also requires the establishment, maintenance, and use of good Christian schools. The Church Order establishes the demand for good Christian schools in three places. First of all, and most powerfully stated, in article 21: “The consistories shall see to it that there are good Christian schools in which the parents have their children instructed according to the demands of the covenant” (Confessions and Church Order, 387).
The matter being treated in article 21 is good Christian schools. This is the plain teaching of the main clause of the article: “The consistories shall see to it that there are good Christian schools.” The matter being treated in article 21 is not Christian education in general. Then the article would read, “The consistories shall see to it that there is good Christian education.” Rather, the entire article is about good Christian schools. Everything that the article says, it says about the good Christian schools. Article 21 is not saying anything about private Christian education in the home. It is not saying anything about official Christian education by the church in catechism classes. Article 21 is strictly about the good Christian schools.
The fact that article 21 is about good Christian schools and not Christian education in general is evident from the original article 21 as adopted by the Synod of Dordt in 1618–19: “Everywhere Consistories shall see to it, that there are good schoolmasters who shall not only instruct the children in reading, writing, languages and the liberal arts, but likewise in godliness and in the Catechism.”2 The Synod of Dordt was not speaking about Christian education that may take place in the home or anywhere else. The synod was speaking about the institution of the Christian school, in which good schoolmasters would instruct the children in their lessons.3
Article 21 as we have it today requires, first, that there be good Christian schools. The consistory is to “see to it.” This does not mean that the consistory itself sets up a Christian school. The school is parental. The school is that “in which the parents have their children instructed.” The parents establish the school, maintain the school, and govern the school. The consistory’s role is not to establish, maintain, and govern the school but to see to it that the parents are doing so. The consistory’s role of seeing to it that there are good Christian schools shows that the school is required. It is not merely advisable for parents to establish a good Christian school, or in their best interest to establish a good Christian school, or optional for them to establish a good Christian school. Then article 21 would read, “The consistories shall promote and advise and encourage the establishment of good Christian schools as much as possible.” Article 21 uses the language of obligation and duty: “The consistories shall see to it that there are good Christian schools.” In its fulfillment of this requirement, the consistory may certainly promote and advise and encourage the establishment of good Christian schools, but it promotes and advises and encourages the establishment of good Christian schools as the obligation of the parents. In seeing to it that there are good Christian schools, the consistory does not bring some good advice, but it brings the duty and requirement of the parents. “The consistories shall see to it that there are good Christian schools.”
Second, article 21 requires that parents use the good Christian schools. “The consistories shall see to it that there are good Christian schools in which the parents have their children instructed.” The parents, having established a good Christian school, have their children instructed in that school. Of course, using the school was the point of establishing the school. The parents use the school by sending their children to the school. They enroll their children in the school, and then they bundle them up with their lunches, their backpacks, and their pencils, and they send them to the school. The parent’s obedience to his obligation is not finished once he has established the school, but the parent must also have his children instructed in the school.
This, too, the consistories shall see to as part of the obligation of the parents. “The consistories shall see to it that there are good Christian schools in which the parents have their children instructed.” If a parent does not have his children instructed in the good Christian school, the consistory shall see to it that he does. The consistory’s method for seeing to it is not through coercion, force, or threats as lords over God’s heritage, but through the steady and unflinching application of the word of God to the parent to call him to his duty, to rebuke him for his neglect of his duty, and to encourage him in his life of gratitude in that duty.
God in his providence may prevent a particular family from being able to send a child to the school. The unique need of the child laid upon him by God may make it impossible for that child to go to school. This is God’s will, and it is no neglect of the parents’ duty when they do not send that child to school. Just as the Lord in his providence may make it impossible for a saint through age or infirmity to attend worship on the Lord’s day, so the Lord may make it impossible for a particular family and a particular child to use the good Christian school. In such a case the parents are right not to use the good Christian school. But in such a case let all the other covenant parents see if they might assist their brethren by including teachers and curriculum in their good Christian school that would accommodate the needs of that child.
For all of those who are able to use the good Christian school but refuse, impenitence for their neglect may lead to Christian discipline by the consistory. The parents have a duty to use the good Christian schools, and the consistory has a duty to see to it. Reformed consistories have always trodden softly here in the past, preferring not to discipline for the fact of a parent’s failing to use the good Christian schools. Instead, the preferred method of consistories has been to instruct, urge, and exhort the parent to his duty. In light of the long, long history of treading softly on this issue, perhaps it is to be recommended. But let the consistory remember three things.
First, the consistory must remember to keep on instructing, urging, and exhorting the parents to use the good Christian school. The soft approach can often become no approach at all as the consistory gets busy with all its other work. In addition, both consistory and parents quickly grow weary of a back and forth with no resolution in sight. Both consistory and parents find it easier simply to peek through their fingers at the problem without regularly addressing it. On the way to family visitation, the minister and elder can all too easily assure themselves, “We already talked about that with them last year” or “They know where we stand on this.” That is not seeing to it that there are good Christian schools in which the parents have their children instructed.
Second, the consistory must remember that its instructing, urging, and exhorting the parents to use the good Christian school must be from the word of God. The officebearer’s urging is not a matter of his own preference or opinion but of the word of God. The only right that the officebearers have to insist on the parents’ duty is found in what God himself has made the parents’ duty. When the officebearers bring the word of God, they have a solid foundation upon which to stand. That word gives them the confidence that even if it is unpleasant to their own flesh and to the flesh of the parents to bring this admonition, it is nevertheless the word of God. The word of God is what makes the urging and exhortation so serious for the parents as well. It is the most serious thing to neglect and reject the word of God.
Third, when the consistory allows impenitence regarding the parents’ duty to use the good Christian schools, it fills up a keg of gunpowder in its pulpit. The minister, the consistory, and the congregation all know that there are families who neglect or refuse to use the good Christian school. The moment anything is prayed or preached about good Christian schools, the families who do not use them feel singled out, and the entire congregation feels uneasy. The moment any command is brought from the pulpit to use the good Christian schools, and the moment any rebuke is made to the congregation for its negligence regarding the good Christian schools, the fuse is lit. The wisdom of man in dealing with a powder keg is to tiptoe around it, not to light it. The minister (to his shame), the consistory, and the congregation all prefer that the pulpit just remain silent about the Christian school. Let the pulpit say something about Christian education, fine, but let the pulpit be silent about the Christian school. If the soft approach has the effect of filling up a powder keg in the pulpit, then it turns out not to be a soft approach after all. Rather, it becomes an approach that threatens to blow up the church. The blowup might not take the form of a big to-do, but it might take the quieter form of enervating the preaching and cultivating in the congregation an atmosphere of mutual silence about some of the things of God. This quieter blowup is no less damaging. Rather, let the elders in their work and the minister in his preaching not neglect to bring the word, however it may pierce and wound the congregation to its benefit.
Although the soft approach may be advisable in general, it may not be used in the case of parents who reveal carelessness toward their covenant seed or in the case of parents who have carnal, earthly reasons for refusing to use the Christian school. For example, if the parent not only refuses to use the Christian school but also neglects any meaningful Christian instruction of his children by other means, that parent reveals carelessness toward the covenant seed and even hatred of the covenant seed. He destroys the seed that God gave him by neglecting to bring up that seed in all things in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Or, for example, if a parent refuses to use the Christian school because of mammon, he reveals that he is an idolater who worships filthy lucre. Either he refuses to pay for a Christian education though he could, or he is too proud to receive help from the body of Christ when he cannot pay. For the sake of his dollars, he does not use the Christian school.
Article 21 grounds the Christian school in the covenant of God. “The consistories shall see to it that there are good Christian schools in which the parents have their children instructed according to the demands of the covenant.”
The covenant of God with his people in Christ is togetherness. It is the fellowship of God with his people in Christ, and his covenant with them establishes fellowship among his people. The covenant is the foe of independentism. The demand of the covenant is not only that parents have their children instructed but also that they have them instructed in the good Christian schools.
The second and third places where the Church Order requires Christian schools are articles 41 and 44, in questions that are regularly put to consistories.
Article 41 requires that the president of the classis ask each consistory at every classis meeting, “Are the poor and the Christian schools cared for?” (Confessions and Church Order, 393).
Article 44 (and the questions appended to article 44) requires that the church visitors ask each consistory each year, “Does the consistory see to it that the parents send their children to the Christian school?” (The Church Order of the Protestant Reformed Churches, 2020 edition, 134).
The demand of the covenant to rear and instruct our covenant seed together is a glorious demand. It is not an onerous burden but one that makes the child of God glad. The doctrine behind the command is the gospel of God’s unconditional covenant of grace with believers and their seed. The gospel of that doctrine is that the covenant children belong to God and not to us. God has given our children, as many as he has called, to Jesus Christ, who is responsible for them. The rearing and instruction of my covenant children and your covenant children are accomplished by him, just as much as the salvation of our children is accomplished by him. In the matter of the rearing and instruction of our covenant seed, he uses our instruction as means. But he accomplishes it, not at all dependent upon the means; rather, the means depend upon him. Therefore, we take up the rearing of our seed with relief and freedom and peace and zeal in humble thanksgiving to our covenant God. And we join together with fellow believers who have that same freedom and zeal to see to it that all of the covenant seed know their covenant God.
Something must be said yet about the form of the Christian school. Next time, God willing.
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