2.4—John Amos Comenius (15 min video)

Transcript

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Welcome back. In this lesson we’re going to take a look at a character from the 30 Years War, John Amos Comenius. He’s not a soldier, he is not a general, he is not even a political leader in charge of one of these German states, for example.

He’s actually a teacher and a pastor. Hermann Bavink called him the greatest figure of the second generation of reformers. Andrew Bonar, one of the great later leaders of the Reformation, called him the truest heir of Jan Hus, one of the early leaders of the Reformation, you could say.

and the chief inspiration of Thomas Chalmers and the first model for William Carey, the great missionary. Hudson Taylor said he was the single greatest innovator of missions, of education, and of literature during the Protestant Reformation. And yet, he’s hardly remembered. It’s an interesting thing about him because he is someone worth knowing a little bit about. I’ll give you his dates to start out with so you have a bracket to plug him into. He was born in 1592, not too long after the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the hands of the English, and he died in the year 1670, by which point the Puritans and many colonies throughout the English-speaking parts of America had been founded.

He’s responsible for shaping the educational systems, the beginnings of the modern educational systems that is, of places like Holland, places like Sweden, of places like Prussia, which is now Germany, Scotland and of New England.

He was someone who sent missions, missionaries that is, to the Jews, to the Turks. He actually translated or began translation that is, of the scriptures into the Turkish language so that the people down there could actually read what had actually convinced him of the faith.

He sent missions to the Gypsies, an often forgotten people group of Europe who wander from place to place often. He sent missions to Roman Catholic supporters explaining as diplomatically as they possibly could why the Reformation was being followed, not because it was about the Reformation but because it was about the scriptures themselves as the final authority.

He even sent missions to the Eastern Orthodox churches that had long stopped talking to the churches in the West for many centuries. He even sent missions to the various skeptics and the Enlightenment thinkers who we’re going to talk about and look at in the next major lesson. But all of these things that he did including the beginning of an encyclopedia, including the many works he wrote, in fact it’s estimated that he wrote over 250 works, about half of which we have and about half of which have been lost due to the fact that they were often burned deliberately by his enemies.

He was someone who was invited to preside as president over both King’s College at the University of Cambridge and also over Harvard and the great city of Cambridge, Massachusetts near Boston. He was also someone who served as chaplain to the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, and often used the scriptures as inspiration for why that king was fighting such a difficult fight, a fight that would ultimately take his life.

As for Comminius himself, he was born in Moravia, which was another center of the Reformation early on, and his parents eventually moved to Bohemia, believing that it was experiencing a greater freedom of religion, which it was at the time.

They also spoke Czech, so it made the move very easy. He was raised in a Bible-believing, Bible-reading home, but when he was 12, both of his parents died of the bubonic plague. That’s the plague that you hear about in the Black Death. It doesn’t just show up in the middle of the 14th century when it takes away a third of the population of Europe. It actually shows up throughout the history of Europe until medicines that could combat it were finally developed many centuries later. As for Comminius himself, he was trained at the University of Heidelberg, actually trained specifically in theology. He eventually was ordained a minister but also had an incredible interest in education and served as a teacher and as a headmaster for much of his career.

What’s interesting about about Cominius, besides all of these incredible details about him, is the fact that he corresponded with so many different characters. It’s the fact that he had no problems with writing to characters like Cardinal Richelieu, kind that diabolical leader of France, or René Descartes, the great thinker of the Enlightenment we’ll talk about later, or Cotton Mather, one of the great leaders of the Puritans over in New England, or Oliver Cromwell, one of the great leaders of the English Civil War and England during the time period of the later Reformation.

What’s also incredible about him is his view of others, and especially his view of freedom. I’ll read to you, well, several quotes about, or from, Cominius, that is. He says this about freedom. He says, “We must aim unreservedly to restore to the human race freedom of thought, religious freedom, and civic freedom. For freedom is the most precious human asset created along with man, and it is inseparable from him.” In other words, we see this incredible idea that you’re going to see throughout this time period, this focus on freedom. Now, for Comminius, that always meant having proper authorities, that always meant having proper laws and so forth. But he saw freedom as something essential, something that actually gave people the ability to freely worship God according to their conscience and to actually freely pursue their callings without hindrance from the state.

Now, of course, we can talk about all kinds of details there, but that kind of gets away from the whole point of the fact that he was one of the great champions of freedom in a time period that was seeing the erosion of freedom by more and more tyrannical powers.

The incredible thing about Comenius is especially Comenius as an educator. In fact he was someone who not only taught directly and influenced many through the schools that he taught at but he was also someone who had a lot to say about what good teaching looked like.

In fact I want to give you or share with you some of the things that Comenius emphasized in his teaching and in the way he believed that education should actually go about.

The first one I want you to write down is that Cominius was a strong supporter of learning foreign languages. He had this incredible idea, rightly so, that when you learn another language it allows you to think in a whole new way. I know when I first encountered in the Latin language the words “liber” “liberi” and “libertas” it changed my way of thinking because liber means book, liberi means children, and libertas means freedom. These are three words that are three very different things and yet in the Roman worldview they put those three things together. In fact you could argue that those three things naturally go together or that the knowledge that is gained through being able to read and think for yourself and the knowledge or the freedom that is gained I should say by passing those on to children, they all help encourage greater liberty.

The Romans thought in terms of that, even if they didn’t always practice that in their everyday lives. Secondly, Cominius argued that we really learn not just when somebody speaks to us, but we especially learn when we can see it for ourselves or when we can touch it.

So he would have been a great champion of things like science experiments, or things like math manipulatives or even things like this where you’re seeing pictures as you hear me speak. It’s not enough just to hear this you actually need to see pictures of it and especially need to do things like your portfolio where you actually create your own textbook of sorts that narrates what you’re learning or the projects which are hands-on practicums in what you’re actually learning. And so to that end Comenius wrote and published a work called the Orbis Sensualum Pictus, which was essentially a textbook for young children to teach them things like Latin as well as basic knowledge in the sciences and grammar, but it was all done not just through words but also through pictures.

In fact, if you’ve ever learned a foreign language, a good foreign language book will often have lots of pictures in it so that you can associate whatever words you’re learning with a picture of that very thing. Third, Comenius also argued that we move from the known to the unknown. It’s kind of a normal thing the teachers sometimes talk about. You have to lead a student from what is familiar to them to what is unfamiliar to them. So I’ll do this in a class often. If I have a students who I know love Star Wars, then I will use Star examples to help explain some idea that I’m teaching them. Or if I have a student that loves certain supercars, I will use that as an example to help them understand, yes, maybe some concept in Latin, for example.

So we move from the known or from the familiar to the unknown. Another thing that Comenius taught, this will make this number four under this, is he believed that education should be comprehensive. He really believed that education could not just to be religious. In fact, he saw religion as really the proper way it should be seen as comprehensive. It addresses the whole man. So education was to be religious. It was also to be informative. It was also to be moral. It was also to be classical, rooted in the great wisdom of the past. It was meant to be environmental, meaning that it affected the way that you treated the world around you. It was meant to be social, meaning it affected the way you treated people around you. It was even meant to be physical, meaning it should actually improve the way that you interact with this world or even the way that you take care of yourself.

In fact, this idea is often called holism. And Comenius commenting on this would say things like this, “All to all, and by all means, all because all things are related and one thing left unrepaired can still damage other things already repaired, as one sick limb can canker the whole body.

to all, because all people form one organism, in which a minority of the unreformed can harm all others; and by all means, because that is the only way in which the repairing process can acquire a general base on which all can be built.

” In other words, what Comenius argued is that when you’re addressing someone, when you’re teaching someone, you have to pursue all of the things that they care about. You have to actually educate the whole man. That’s why good education doesn’t just play to the things that we’re naturally good at or the things that we naturally like. It plays to things that we may not actually want to do. So you have many different subjects, probably some that are not your favorites or less your favorite than others. This has always been a Christian idea that all the different subjects, whether it be history, whether it be grammar, whether it be a foreign language, whether it be math or science, or even something like physical education, or something like some kind of extracurricular activity like art or drama.

All of those things are necessary for the whole man because they all communicate God and who he is in different ways. Another thing that Commenius emphasized in the way that he taught was he emphasized that education is a privilege. The ability to take time, to read something, to learn something, to pursue these things, is meant to be seen as a great pleasure, a great delight.

In fact, going back to the Romans, their word “ludera” could mean both “to play” and also “to learn.” So the Romans had this idea as well. There’s really no primary difference between learning something and actually playing something. Cominius had this to say about wisdom. He said, “Wisdom is the breath of God’s power. It’s a pure influence flowing from the Almighty’s glory. It is the radiance of eternal light. It is God’s immaculate majesty and image of his goodness. It teaches us sobriety, restraint, honesty, and power. It understands the subtlety of words and the solutions to darkened sentences. It knows in advance signs and wonders and future events.” So it’s an incredible delight to actually pursue wisdom. Of course, what I love about Commenius is that he also was a humble character. So he could say things like this, “The more one knows how much one doesn’t know, the more one knows.” In other words, we actually become wiser when we realize how little is we actually know. It’s a form of humility. I mean, the more that I research and study history, the more notes and things that I pour into lessons like these, the more I teach my students in my classes, I recognize there’s a whole lot I do not know. Sometimes it comes out when a student asks me, “Hamstram, did you know this story from history?” And I have somebody say, “No, I’ve never heard that before.” And they’re like, “How did you not know that?” Well, history is kind of this really, really, really big subject. And you’re always learning something new. Even when I deal with things like these, I’m always thinking, “Okay, what else do I need to know? What am I not teaching you?” And that’s just kind of the way that life works. We have the sheer pleasure and privilege to pursue these things. Finally, Cominius believed that education should be easily accessed by all. He had this to say, something that you’ll find familiar from the very first lecture in this lesson. He said, “We, the entire human race, we’re all one breed of descendants. We’re all one blood. We’re all one home.” Meaning, we’re all made in the image of God. “Therefore, as a part helps the whole, as a limb helps all other limbs, we too must help each other. We all stand on the stage of the great world and whatever takes place here concerns us all. It’s very different from the way the ancients thought. It’s very different from even certain time periods, even in medieval history. Although most of the time in the history of Christendom you’ll see a similar idea. And that idea is this, is that God communicates to us through the written word and so that should be widely spread to as many people as possible.

There’s always an idea within Christianity that a well-educated people, a well-informed people, will actually have greater responsibility and they will encourage greater freedom and less corruption.

We’ll talk more about those ideas, however, in the next lecture.