Teaching and Learning in Early Christianity

Probably in the year 245 ce, someone named Theodore delivered an oration celebrating the character and work of the great Christian scholar, Origen. This panegyric has traditionally been attributed to Gregory Thaumaturgus, the founder of the church in Pontus (north-east Turkey). Whoever the author was, he was clearly a student of this renowned teacher during the years that Origen spent in Caesarea. The speech is of great importance in revealing to us the kind of curriculum Origen offered. By the mid-third century, then, we have clear evidence that a Christian teacher like Origen could offer a complete philosophical education, which paralleled that which was offered in schools all over the Graeco-Roman world. Christianity was developing its own paideia (‘education’, ‘training’), or at least appropriating and adapting that of the Graeco-Roman world.

Teaching and learning were characteristic of Christianity from the beginning. The term used in the gospels for the followers of Jesus is ‘disciples’ (mathētai), that is ‘pupils’, and Jesus himself is addressed both as ‘rabbi’ and ‘teacher’. In second-century texts such as the Apostolic fathers and the Apologists, Jesus is presented as the teacher, with the teaching that fulfils and surpasses all others. This teaching focused on ethics, but its warrant lay in the revelation of the will of the one creator God who oversees everything, even seeing into the heart, so that not just actions but motives were laid bare. Christian Gnosticism reflects this ‘teaching’ emphasis in its claim to have received true knowledge from revelations imparted by the Christ.