Rejoicing in the Truth: Wisdom and the Educator's Craft - Softcover

An incisive examination of the causes and effects of Enlightenment thought, "Rejoicing in the Truth"makes a strong case for renewing education with attention to the classic Thomistic understanding of the interpenetration of nature and grace. Christopher Blum inspires readers through recalling and applying the legacies of Aquinas, Bossuet, Newman, Stein, and Benedict XVI to the challenges of our time."Rejoicing in the Truth"convincingly explains the necessity for self-discipline and virtue in the acquisition of knowledge and clearly explicates key principles for re-orienting education towards the Incarnate Word. Sister John Mary Fleming, O.P., Executive Director for Catholic Education, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops"

Nobody is better suited to enrich our discourse about education than Christopher Blum. In an age still enamored of the factory model inputs and outputs, metrics and measures here is a consummate teacher and integrative thinker calling us back into the more humane and subtle workshop. This is a book about learning, and it draws on a great deal of it: speaking comfortably as a philosopher, theologian, intellectual historian, theorist of education, and even if there is still such a thing man of letters, Blum guides us back into the heart of the classical and Christian tradition, reacquainting us with saints and sages of intellectual virtue. The result is not just an exhortation to pursue, but a stunning example of, a well-formed mind. Joshua Hochschild, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Mount St. Mary s University"

In these essays Blum offers more than an incisive diagnosis of the unfolding catastrophe of contemporary education. He also proposes a beautiful, integrated, and compelling vision for recovery and renewal. In prose that sings, these essays inspire hope in the reader for a Catholic education reborn. Blum writes as a Newman for our age. George A. Harne, President, Northeast Catholic College

" Rejoicing in the Truth"will delight every teacher dedicated to the revitalization of education in the Catholic tradition. Blum brings into focus the aim of our common task, and the hope of its accomplishment. John R. Mortensen, Academic Dean, Wyoming Catholic College"

Rejoicing in the Truth offers a vision for the renewal of Christian education through the intentional pursuit of wisdom. When educators make it their goal to accompany their students along the path to wisdom and to instruct them by showing them how to delight in the truth, then their practice is illuminated and enlivened at every level. Informed by the philosophical and theological visions of John Henry Newman, John Paul II, Alasdair MacIntyre, and, above all, Thomas Aquinas, this volume offers a series of different looks at the life of a Christian educator.
 
The first three chapters treat the dispositions that need to be brought to the pursuit of Christian wisdom, chief among them the kind of restraint that follows from always seeking to ascend to the most noble forms of knowing. Chapters four through eight treat some of the tools of education: first-hand experience of nature, Euclidean geometry, imaginative literature and poetry, history, and biology, bringing to bear on them Aquinas’s conception of the order of the different fields of inquiry. The last two chapters reflect upon the settings of the pursuit of wisdom, first the school or college and second the life of the educator taken as a whole.
 
As a whole, the book invites the reader to a joyous pursuit of truth and to a life dedicated to intellectual charity.