by Lindsey Ralls
| Last week, my homegroup read through 1 Corinthians chapter 2, where Paul basically tells the church in Corinth that he doesn’t speak to them with impressive or persuasive speech and that his words are not polished or philosophical. As a result, it is obvious that the power behind his words are only a product of the Holy Spirit and nothing that Paul could have said. As I thought through this passage, and how it connects to what we teach at the Upper School, I was reminded that Aristotle’s three appeals can only take us so far. Our attempts to be convincing (ethos), to stir our audience (pathos), or to highlight logic and reasoning (logos) is not as powerful as the Holy Spirit. While this could serve as an excellent reminder to our students, as they prepare speeches and write persuasive papers…it was an even greater reminder to me, as a teacher. On occasion, I’ve had students leave our halls, head off to college, and seemingly forget everything they’ve been taught. While this is certainly not the norm, it’s still hard to not take is as a personal failure. It’s easy to correlate a student’s decisions to one of the three persuasive appeals. If they walk away from their faith it must mean that Ministry Team wasn’t impactful enough (pathos) or that I wasn’t intentionally relational enough (ethos), or that our curriculum wasn’t clear on the truths of the gospel (logos). In 7th grade English, one of our catechism questions asks, ‘Why do we study the ancient Greeks?’We study the ancient Greeks because they were the first society to ask deep and good questions about humanity. A few hundred years later, we received the answers to the questions that the Greeks asked, in the perfect man of Jesus Christ. How bold of me to think that our students’ sanctification is simply a result of the right persuasive formula? If I get it all right, as a teacher, then I should see complete success. If a student strays, then I clearly need to go back and correct my formula. Persuasion has its place and there is value in helping our students (and ourselves) understand how to appeal to an audience, but there is also incredible power in the Holy Spirit. As the catechism mentions above, Aristotle had incredible foresight and wisdom on what persuades an audience, but Jesus has true power. |
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Practical Paideia 
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