Why Athens and Jerusalem Still Need Each Other, and Why a Healthy Democracy Needs Both
By: Nadya Williams
Nadya Williams spent 15 years teaching Classics and Ancient History at secular state universities before walking away last summer. She is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church (Zondervan Academic, 2023) and Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (under contract, IVP Academic). She is Book Review Editor at Current, where she also edits The Arena blog.
“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”
This question from the early third-century CE theologian Tertullian, has become arguably his most famous saying—surpassed in fame only, perhaps, by his quip that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
It is always risky to take famous quotations out of context. And yet, these two statements, uttered in different contexts, readily reveal something about Tertullian and his worldview. First, no one has yet accused him of having a sunny disposition. For Tertullian, the glass wasn’t half-full or half-empty. The glass was broken, shattered, destroyed beyond repair. Second and related, Tertullian believed in the necessity of suffering well as key testimony in the life of a Christian. Finally, third and most relevant for us here, Tertullian’s question about Athens and Jerusalem is one of the earliest Christian expressions of concern about the learning that happens (and doesn’t happen) at secular or downright pagan educational institutions and intellectual centers.
Athens, for Tertullian and the rest of the Roman pagans and Christians of his day, stood for the centuries-long tradition of pagan educational excellence in philosophy, rhetoric, and all we might generally label today as the liberal arts. In 431 BCE, over six-hundred years earlier, the Athenian democratic statesman Pericles famously boasted about Athens: “we are the school of Hellas.” His confidence was not in excess of truth. This was a city where philosophers and public intellectuals roamed the streets, engaging the public—some of them, admittedly, unhappily captive audiences—in intellectual debates and conversations. Over the centuries that followed Pericles’s day and the heyday of the Athenian democracy, Athens’ political influence steadily waned. Its reputation, however, as the school of not just Greece but the entire Greco-Roman Mediterranean was only rivaled by its most famous copycat—Alexandria. Athens was academia part excellence—all brain. But what is a brain without heart and soul?
Jerusalem, by contrast, was for Tertullian and his Christian conversationalists the symbol of faith and true belief. Much as Athens was all brain, Jerusalem was all heart and soul—a city with a Temple-shaped void left in the Jewish and Christian imagination long after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE.
In asking his question, Tertullian was expressing his view that one cannot simply reason one’s way into faith in Christ through the study of pagan philosophy and rhetoric. As all educated men of his day, Tertullian was well steeped in the pagan Classics, so his statement seems shocking at first glance: here he is, using the very rhetorical training he has received from his Athenian-style education to argue against the need for such an education for Christian faith. Except, that is not what he is doing.
In asking his question, Tertullian calls Christians not to reject education as unnecessary, but rather to probe deeper. Just as the brain alone cannot bring someone to saving faith, neither can the heart and the soul alone ground one’s faith with deep roots and lead to a flourishing life. Similarly, we can say, just going to college—relying on Athens—will not bring someone to saving faith in God. But then, a life that relies on one’s heart without employing the intellect in a meaningful way is going to produce a shallow faith and even shallower ethical compass. If we presume that the good life is one that involves, first and foremost, loving God with all our mind, heart, and soul, what has the university to do with it?
I propose as my answer here three connected points that, I think, would not have upset Tertullian overly much. First, Athens needs Jerusalem, and second, Jerusalem needs Athens. We will turn now to consider each of these assertions in turn before concluding with an important third point: a healthy collaboration of Athens and Jerusalem at modern universities is essential for human flourishing—the good life of individuals, families, and democratic society—in the twenty-first century. It is, indeed, both Athens and Jerusalem working together that could be the “School of Hellas” of our age—if we let them.
Athens Needs Jerusalem
Pericles’ Athens may have been the school of Hellas—the unrivaled intellectual center of the Greek-speaking world—but the history of the Athenian democracy in the decades following Pericles’ statement showed clearly that knowledge and academic excellence on their own are dangerous. A democracy of educated citizens will not flourish but may disintegrate into mob rule or oligarchic tyranny. Why? Because moral dilemmas arise, and intellectual and philosophical knowledge alone are insufficient for dealing with them. Here are just a few examples.
In 416 BCE, at the height of the Peloponnesian War, the brutal war between Athens and Sparta that engulfed the rest of the Greek-speaking world, Athenian forces besieged the tiny island state of Melos. The reason? In this war where everyone was taking sides, Melos wished to remain Switzerland. This was not acceptable to the Athenians, who demanded that the Melians pick a side. The Melians, principled and foolish people that they were, refused.
The Athenian general and historian Thucydides records a dramatized version of the diplomatic debate that took place in the Melian Dialogue episode of his history of the war. In Thucydides’ account, we find the Athenians utilizing excellent rhetorical arguments based on natural law: it is natural for those who are strong to get their way, and the weak have no choice but to submit. And so, the Athenians act in accordance with this principle: they capture the city, kill all adult males, and sell all women and children into slavery. Even Thucydides, hardened military man and Athenian, was shocked by the casual cruelty of it all and the utter lack of moral compass that the Athenians exhibited.
Things got worse. In 404 BCE, after Athens surrendered to Sparta, an oligarchic revolution shook the city. With Sparta’s support, the Tyranny of the Thirty installed itself as masters of Athens. For eight months, a regime of bloodletting, a veritable reign of terror, convulsed the city already traumatized by the prolonged war that preceded. Chief among the Thirty, and the one known to have been the most blood-thirsty of all? Critias, a student of Socrates, the philosopher whose excellent educational methods we still praise as we talk about the Socratic method of classroom dialogue. He was joined in the group by several other alumni of the school of Socrates.
It appears that as Socrates’ students debated matters like the ideal state, the nature of virtue, and what makes something or someone good, they learned to argue well, articulate their ideas brilliantly, and all other skills required for securing political power. They did not, however, learn ethics or compassion. This is a charge, by the way, that the Athenians themselves had wielded against teachers like Socrates—this is the subject, for instance, of Aristophanes’ comedy Clouds (423 BCE), in which a comically exaggerated Socrates, floating in clouds above the theater stage, teaches young men how to win a case that is known to be wrong.
Socrates’ students were known as brilliant. They received an excellent education. But without genuine character formation in the virtues, some of them turned that education against fellow-citizens, overthrowing the democracy and ruthlessly killing anyone who opposed them. Selfishness and desire for power, after all, are the only impulses that do not have to be learned. They are in-built.
These are important reminders for us today, as we too are prone to idealize education as the filling up of a brain with all the knowledge and methods. The problem is, such an education leaves no tools for addressing moral dilemmas. And yet, moral dilemmas that demand ethical thinking are the defining characteristic of our age, just as they were in the Athenian democracy. But knowledge without ethics is dangerous. Just knowing how to argue a case well may win the case. If we care about justice, however, we should know that some victories come at the price of the soul—ours and that of the democracy around.
And so, the history of Athens, “school of Hellas” that it was, reminds us that college should not just be a place to soak up knowledge (for students) and produce knowledge (for those who teach these students). It must also be a place for character formation of the sort that, unfortunately, the Athenians failed to produce. Their story shows that knowledge and even superb education without the virtues—without character formation—is at best neutral, and at worst downright dangerous. Such an education merely renders the morally rootless person a danger to self and others with no tools for resisting the cruelty, moral ambiguity, and anxiety of our age.
Character formation in the virtues is key for the good life both for individuals but also for the society as a whole and, let’s not forget, our democracy. But where do our ethics come from? Where does our knowledge and valuing of virtues come from? While echoes of the virtues come through in some pagan writers, they are examples of seeing through a mirror dimly. The pagan religious traditions could hand down rules—for instance, the gods hated blood pollution, so sure, murder was bad. But they could not provide for true, genuine transformation of character beyond just getting someone to follow the rules. They could not explain why, to use the example of murder again, it was so bad. In the pagan imagination, it had nothing to do with humans, and everything to do with the arbitrary preferences of the pagan gods and the desire to keep general order in community. And so, I contend that this need for character formation in the virtues shows clearly that Athens needs Jerusalem. Without Christ, there is no clear declaration of the preciousness of every human life—because each is made in the image of God.
Without the understanding of humanity’s preciousness in God’s eyes, the Athenians’ conduct at Melos can be considered perfectly natural—in accordance with nature, as they themselves claimed. Sometimes we can best see what is most needed by its absence. Mercy, love, and compassion for those outside our tribe are essential virtues for building a functional home, community, and a society of citizens willing to co-operate with each other and, at times, sacrifice their own interests for those of the larger whole. When focused on self-interest without any regard or compassion for others, it is tempting for the strong to behave towards the weak as the Athenians did towards the Melians. But we should recognize how morally bankrupt such conduct is—and condemn the warping of our own souls in which it would result.
But then, the question naturally follows, does character formation—this education in the virtues for citizens—really even need universities? In other words, we have established above that Athens needs Jerusalem. But does Jerusalem really need Athens?
Jerusalem Needs Athens
As we have already established, Athens needs Jerusalem. Jerusalem too, however, needs Athens. While Athens without Jerusalem is dangerously unmoored from ethics and love for fellow human beings, Jerusalem without Athens is ignorant of the dangers of this world, both physical and spiritual. It is Jerusalem that offers grounding for a soul and the heart, but intellectual development is an integral part of this spiritual formation as well. Christian intellectuals in Late Antiquity were aware of this important connection. In their writing about spiritual matters, they leaned on the lengthy tradition of pagan learning, including not only rhetoric and philosophy and history, but also literature that is timeless and beautiful. All of this they employed in the service of educating Christian citizens in the virtues. Let us consider one example.
In the early fifth century CE, Christian philosopher and poet Prudentius wrote an unusual epic poem. Psychomachia (battle within/for the soul) described in vividly graphic and violent detail the epic battle to surpass all other epic battles: the battle of virtues and vices for the soul of every Christian. In writing this poem, Prudentius was consciously writing himself into the tradition of epic poetry going back to Homer. He was also aware of his role as an educator—the bringer of Athens to Jerusalem. The greatest and most beautiful works of literature in the ancient world were meant to inspire, teach virtues, and form good citizens.
We can, in fact, draw a fairly direct line of epic tradition connecting Prudentius back in time to earlier models whose influence his audiences would have readily recognized. Homer’s Iliad produced an unforgettable set of heroes, especially Achilles, the best of the Achaeans. These heroes all competed for excellence on the battlefield, all by killing other heroes in duels so bloody as to verge on the grotesque. Drawing on the Homeric model, the Roman poet Vergil produced the most famous of Roman epic poems—the Aeneid, an epic about the hero, Aeneas, who fled from the burning city of Troy to found a new Troy in Italy.
Vergil depicts Aeneas as a model warrior and hero. He is repeatedly described as pious—respectful of the pagan gods, including his mom, the goddess of love, Venus. In addition, he demonstrates virtus—the Latin term that means quite literally “manliness” or “bravery.” In the language of the early Christians, however, this eventually came to mean virtue as we know it—something heroic off the battlefield and imbued with more spiritual implications.
This shifting meaning of virtus corresponds to the different nature of heroes that Christianity produced. While the heroes of pagan epics were men—to a man—who won glory on the battlefield through the killing of other heroes, Christianity afforded a new path to heroic glory through martyrdom. These martyrs, the new heroes of this revolutionary movement, were often weak—young nursing mothers, teenage girls, slaves, defenseless old men. And yet, through heroic martyrdom, through their suffering that offered the blood that became that “seed of the church” that Tertullian spoke of, they won glory to rival or surpass that of Achilles or Aeneas.
Prudentius took this full history to heart in devising his epic, one in which the heroes are no longer guys who kill other guys on the battlefield, but virtues that defeat sins to the applause of the glorious martyrs of the church. Just watch Faith drop-kick Pagan Worship on the head, or Good Works strangle Greed with dramatic abandon. The same vivid duels for which earlier pagan epics have been known are harnessed to describe these duels of the virtues against the vices. But there is more. Prudentius’s epic straddles genres. While clearly a martial epic, it is also a didactic poem. Its purpose was primarily to educate.
Research on good pedagogical practices over the past couple of decades has emphasized the importance of storytelling. Certain parts of the brain are activated by stories, and we retain better information presented to us as stories than as simply a list of facts. Prudentius’ didactic poem follows this same wisdom. It is one thing to list the virtues and vices to students and say: do this, not that. But that would be boring and forgettable, even if true. Telling these stories of virtues and vices in a more engaging way required Prudentius to harness all of the rhetorical and intellectual tradition of Athens in the service of the good, the beautiful, and the true. Pagan epic, in the service of Jerusalem, has become a redeemed tool of education for the soul.
With his poetic experiment, Prudentius brought Athens and Jerusalem together in a particularly obvious and highly entertaining way. A rich spiritual life, he shows in the process, blossoms when combined with a virtuous life of the mind that is spent in pursuit of things that are good and beautiful—like edifying poetry.
Prudentius admittedly did not become as big a hit as maybe he had hoped—and I will refrain here from casting judgment on the quality of his poetry. At any rate, much as he tried to write himself into the same tradition as Homer and Vergil, it is quite likely that you, gentle reader, have never heard of him—and it is just as likely that you have heard of Homer and Vergil. And that is okay. His example, nevertheless, reminds us of the important work that educators do, whether their names become immortalized in history or not. Forming souls through education in the virtues is a weighty responsibility. It is one, also, that perhaps we should approach more deliberately and talk more about.
College, as the cliché goes, is a time of transitions. Students are often living away from home and family for the first time. They must manage their own time and responsibilities. To name just a few of these responsibilities in addition to classwork and general time-management, they must do their own laundry without mom’s reminders. They must also feed themselves and manage their own friendships and relationships. These sound so basic and banal, yet such is the stuff of everyday life. All of these tasks require an understanding of the virtues and of vices and, most important, an awareness of the difference between the two. After all, the vices have historically been quite strong on college campuses, flourishing naturally in a space where young people have sloughed off for the first time the constraints of parental authority over their everyday lives.
Many fail this first test of adulting in various ways, great and small. One of my brothers-in-law came home after the first semester of college with all of his dirty laundry—literally, not figuratively. Questioning revealed that over the course of the entire semester, he did not do laundry even once. But while “cleanliness is next to godliness” in polite company, the implications of other failures of discernment for college students are much worse—for instance, when it comes to matters of relationships or abuses of drugs or alcohol. A lack of prudence and self-control in these areas can have tragic and, on occasion, life-ending consequences. In the midst of it all, the study of the humanities—philosophy, arts, history, and literature—can point students to think about the virtues in conjunction with something transcendent, greater than what can be seen with the naked eye, showing them both the encouraging outcomes and the cautionary tales of virtues and vices for people both historical and fictional.
True, one might argue that universities are not necessary for this process of building character and learning discernment about virtue and vice through thoughtful study. And yet, while anyone can and should be a life-long learner, reading on their own for continued education and character formation, the reality is that there are only twenty-four hours in the day. The period of university study, when blocked off in one’s life trajectory, allows one to build in deliberate time for this study and growth in a way that simply cannot be done when working forty or more hours per week and taking care of a family.
Nevertheless, while universities offer what may be the most concentrated and deliberate period in many students’ lives for growing in the virtues through the process of intensive study, what happens on campus and in the classrooms is not the end of that story. It is the responsibility of universities—and university professors who diligently combine Athens and Jerusalem in their thinking, teaching, and writing—to continue the legacy of stewarding an approach to learning that builds up our democracy today. The university, put simply, is a servant of democracy in ways that extend far beyond merely educating college students. Right formation of societal character is on the line.
Athens and Jerusalem: The School of Democracy
On the one hand, our time is short. I mean this both in the sense of reflecting on humanity’s very nature as “frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,” and people living in an over-scheduled and busy industrial society that is obsessed with squeezing the most from each second of the day. And yet, on the other hand, even amidst all this busyness, Americans manage to waste a prodigious amount of time on entertainment, much of it neither edifying nor wholesome. Recent statistics note, for example, that American adults waste a lot of time on streaming entertainment, some of it even during work hours. When not binging Netflix, many people binge the news and doom-scroll on social media. Or, really, why not all three at once?
What are we filling our minds with? This is a question of great importance for our democracy, because this entertainment continues to shape our character—as individuals, but also as citizens of a society. Something will always fill the role of the school of democracy. It would be better for us all if that something provides education in the virtues rather than the vices.
Universities have a natural role, I contend, to play in providing continuing education for the society that can shape the character of citizens of all ages for the better. It begins with these same professors who educate students in the classroom, taking their knowledge and expertise and using it for public service. One natural place where this happens is through writing for the public—whether in books aimed for general audiences or in online publications. For example (shameless plug), Current, for which I serve as Book Review Editor, was founded with this very mission in mind—to offer “Commentary, Reflection, Judgment” that is edifying and rooted in a love for the virtues in a democracy. And there are a number of other publications that build an edifying intellectual community for democracy by promoting love for things that are timeless, beautiful, and true in that transcendent sense—for instance, Plough and Front Porch Republic readily come to mind, but the list could keep going. While not all those who write for these publications are professional academics, many are.
The work of these writers is a testament to the ways universities can and do contribute to the good life of members of the larger society today. Good public writing is edifying in ways that echo the work of professors in the classroom. Such writing becomes an essential extension of the university space into the public digital sphere, an instance of Athens and Jerusalem working together harmoniously for the public good. This work is more necessary than ever in our age of click-bait. Instead of filling the minds of the public with something that erodes character, we want to offer useful knowledge about something the reader might not have known, while also considering implications of that knowledge in a way that encourages the reader to employ and apply it for personal and societal good. This is beautiful work of intellectual and spiritual formation that ChatGPT cannot do.
Jerusalem, ultimately, stood for Tertullian and other early Christians for something eternal. They were thinking, after all, not of the old Jerusalem—destroyed, gutted, burned, with nary a stone left upon another. They thought, rather, of the new Jerusalem—a place of beauty and harmony beyond imagining. Athens stood for something timeless in an earthly sense—the wisdom that we will always need to flourish in the here and now, and a wisdom we so desperately need to understand things unseen. But then, again, without an awareness of our need for Jerusalem, can we even know what we are missing? Can we love Athens well without loving Jerusalem?
This work is never ending, as each new year’s crop of students requires the effort to begin anew. Just last year, philosopher Mary Townsend reflected on the significance of “The Day No One Would Say the Nazis Were Bad” in her college classroom. And yet, shocking as her students’ relativism was to encounter, it became a learning moment—an opportunity to consider timeless principles and the ethical quandaries that modern relativism is unable to resolve, but with which ancient wisdom and the love of God can wrestle together.
In an age where we are bombarded with too many opportunities for developing disordered loves, ideas, and ideals—and concomitantly disordered lives—the university remains yet a place of refuge where thinkers can bring together Athens and Jerusalem in the classroom and for the greater public, all to promote the good life for all—a life that is oriented not towards the present but the eternal.
I love the juxtaposition between the Jerusalem of inner lives and the Athens of the outer world.
God has arranged life in the complementarity of heart and head, introspection and circumspection, motivation and outcome. The Bible is an account of people living their personal stories within its grand one, laying bare the hearts of its participants, and through them our own hearts, with its overarching theme of fall and redemption on terms beyond us and for us.
Only the King of glory come down could fulfill the demands of God’s holy requirements and remove the indelible stain of our cosmic guilt. His Spirit making us alive by faith in his substitutionary death unites motivation with productivity, inward forgiveness and righteousness with outward learning and service, as we ourselves become united forever with our perfect Groom.