Did you ever stop to think that God’s common grace is what allows culture, arts, science, and ordinary vocations to flourish—even among non-Christians?

Today Marlin Detweiler sits down with theologian Dr. Michael S. Horton to explore how common grace shapes classical Christian education and why we should value truth and beauty wherever we find it.

Dr. Horton explains why classical educators should appreciate the insights of “virtuous pagans” like Aristotle and Cicero and how to balance the final authority of Scripture with the wisdom of the Great Books. The conversation also addresses the restlessness of our modern culture, the importance of ordinary excellence, and the challenges AI poses to wisdom and deep thinking.

Introduction

Marlin Detweiler:
Welcome again to another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today, we have with us a person whose name may be familiar to many of you, Dr. Michael Horton. Michael, welcome.

Michael S. Horton:
Marlin, it's great to be with you.

Marlin Detweiler:
For those of you that don't know you, let me just mention that you have been a prolific author in the reformed community and you teach systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary in California and you've done that for decades. But tell us a little bit more about yourself. Your education, your family, your career.

Michael S. Horton:
Sure. Well, I'll start with my family. My kids are adults now. That's hard to believe. They're 24 and 22. The three of them are 22. I have triplets and so I spend a lot of time hanging out with them and love them tremendously.

And education, I went to Biola University undergrad and then to Westminster, California for my seminary and then off to Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, in England for my doctoral studies and came back to Yale Divinity School for a two-year post-doc when I got a call from Bob Godfrey to consider coming out to Westminster, California.

Marlin Detweiler:
Student becomes professor in his hometown. That's pretty good.

Michael S. Horton:
Yeah. It is. And they haven't kicked me out yet!

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, it's too late now. You could quit on them, right?

Michael S. Horton:
Yeah, they're very lax. I have to say.

Common Grace Preserves Culture

Marlin Detweiler:
That's great. Well, I want to hear a little bit of an area that I think you have written on well and show a great deal of expertise and that's the whole category of common grace and talk in the context of education about common grace and maybe even for the audience give a definition of common grace. But I want to ask about a statement so you can answer these two questions at once.

Common grace is a gift to all humanity for the preservation of culture.

What do you think of that statement?

Michael S. Horton:
Absolutely. Yeah. And I have to just say that I think that classical Christian education has really raised a couple of generations now of Christians who appreciate common grace. I'm not sure that we did as much as we do now because of that movement. You know, when Adam sinned, God posted the cherubim at the tree of life so they wouldn't enter and eat from the tree of life in a state of guilt because then you know there would be no hope of salvation.

And instead, God opened up a space in history for the promise to be fulfilled that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head. And that whole history of salvation comes with a history of providence. God directs all the ordinary affairs of this world to that end, to that ultimate end of redemption in Christ.

So God is with us even after the fall. God has preserved not only his church but also secular society. I think one example of this is Cain, right? Even Cain, who killed his brother. God put a mark on him so he could go build a city. And we read in the same section there in Genesis four that his children were the founders of the you know symphony orchestra and the ironworkers and everything. The architects.

And then that little line, one sentence for Seth and his line and then men began to call in the name of the Lord. And so Seth's line is the church calling on the name of the Lord, worshiping the true God. But God allows Cain to create a city. It's violent, like Cain himself. It bears resemblances to him. And yet God doesn't wipe it out. And he allows culture to flourish.

Marlin Detweiler:
What, from a reform perspective, and you see this, you may have even been somebody that's encouraged that. So as I expect this will be a familiar thing you've thought about. But how should classical educators view the virtuous pagan, the authors like Aristotle and Cicero?

Michael S. Horton:
Yeah. You know, I think John Calvin says a lot better than I could in the institutes, he upbraided those who he says fanatical spirits who say that we can't appreciate the heathen authors. He says, who taught us how to speak well? Who taught us medicine, who heals our bodies? Is mathematics the invention of mad men?

It goes through the whole list. What about the arts? And he says, well, yeah. You know, this is the gift of the Holy Spirit. It's remarkable. He even says the gift of the Holy Spirit and to reject whatever truth can be found in the very people you mentioned, is really to grieve the Holy Spirit.

Are Non-Christian Insights Worth Valuing?

Marlin Detweiler:
Interesting. Yeah. Well, that leads to the next question. So as we think in terms of what we've sometimes called “plundering the Egyptians”, is it simply that, or is there a deeper theological reason to value their insights? You've touched on it a little bit already. So the question overlaps some, but I think there's more to be said.

Michael S. Horton:
It's a great question. You know, the whole trope of “plundering the Egyptians” is already kind of poisoning the well because you know of course Christian.

Marlin Detweiler:
The how the Jewish people got the gold and jewelry.

Michael S. Horton:
Yeah. Right. Exactly. And you know the idea is we'll we're taking the we're taking the best in heathen culture. Because all truth is God's truth. And you know we do find gems there and we take it and bring it into the church. Not unguarded. Not without discernment. But we you know we take them.

I would say we're also reaping the harvest of God's common grace. That God has given non-Christians and Christians secular callings. And so I'm no different. if I'm a dentist who's a Christian doesn't mean I'm necessarily a better dentist than a muslim or atheist dentist. But the God has given these gifts indiscriminately to all people.

Not the gift to salvation. This is the gift of common grace. And so I think we need to appreciate the fact that all people are created in the image of God. So “plundering the Egyptians” kind of I think skips that one.

Everyone's created in the image of God. And though fallen and unable to save ourselves we still have those the remnants of that image. All people do.

And we have to love and serve our non-Christian neighbors. Regardless of their profession of faith or no faith because they are created in the image of God.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Well if you think that the application of plundering the Egyptians is a bad metaphor is there one that you would apply to the context or the concept?

Michael S. Horton:
Yeah I think and it's not that I just totally reject it I think it might help to augment it with something like, harvesting the fruit of God's common grace wherever we find it.

Balancing the Authoroty of the Bible with the Wisdom of the Great Books

Marlin Detweiler:
Okay so what we've got you know obviously you're committed to sola scriptura. Kind of explain for us the relationship between the final authority of the word of God and ministerial authority of the great books and the historic creeds that a school might use or might be found in the homeschool.

Michael S. Horton:
Sure. Yeah. Well you know first of all God's word came to us just as the incarnate Word came to us in flesh and assumed a fully human nature. And it along with a fully human soul. The Word of God written also comes to us in a particular culture. And it's really interesting. The more you study the classical philosophy the more you see influences of it in the New Testament itself.

Like oh well that's similar to Aristotle or that's kind of a stoic view. And of course Paul in the Areopagus directly quotes they're philosophers by memory. So there's always been this appreciation in Christianity from the New Testament self on appreciation for where we come from we're situated we're historical beings. And Christianity isn't some doctrine hovering above culture and history but is embedded in it.

And so though it's a universal faith a universal gospel to all people everywhere it emerged in a particular place and it helps us to know where it came from and what kind of culture it emerged in how it took that particular shape. But Scripture ultimately tells us what the story is. It gives us the authoritative interpretation of reality.

Marlin Detweiler:
I like the way you put that.

Michael S. Horton:
Yeah from God's perspective. And because it is God breathed it is unlike any other literature. It's something that we measure everything by. And so it's humanity doesn't negate its divine authorship because God is in the business of doing that sort of thing of assuming that was which is natural as his way of communicating his supernatural revelation.

Marlin Detweiler:
What do you think? I would attribute this and you may be able to be more specific but the late 19th early the 20th century was the beginning of what I would call an aversion to learning from what we might categorize as great books that are secular.

What what happened to caused that? What was the reaction of the church? What what are the historic things that you can tell us?

Michael S. Horton:
Yeah. Well you know I think a lot of it was the fundamentalist modernist controversy. And a kind of anti-intellectual ism evolved after the initial generation of fundamentalists. That was averse to secular authors. You know back in the with the Church Fathers all the way back to the late second century and third century you have on the one hand people like Clement of Alexandria saying let's plunder the Egyptians.

Let's have Christian philosophy let's take what is good from the pagans and especially Plato and bring that into the church. On the other hand you had Tertullian who said what does Athens have to do with the church? He says all heresies have sprung from bringing philosophy into theology. And so you still fundamentalist modernist controversy reflects sort of those different attitudes.

Marlin Detweiler:
Everything old is new again.

Michael S. Horton:
Yeah. And it was true of course that the modernists were bringing back old heresies. But there were also centuries centuries of faithful Christians. This in a discerning way taking from Aristotle and Plato and other writers and taking the their insights on board realizing that they were not normative insights but that they were fruitful ones and reformed theology followed in that medieval scholastic terrain.

You read the Reformed Orthodox Writers of the 16th and 17th centuries and boy do they know their great books. So there's no reason for reformed Christians to be averse to a wide education, especially at Harvard. You know they had scarcely built their own cottages in New England there. Then they erected a church and a college and they called it Harvard College because the pastor named after the pastor who gave them their library and they they taught Cicero and Seneca and Ovid and Homer and Plato and Aristotle along with the Old and the New Testaments in their original languages.

That is really I think the legacy of Reformation piety when it comes to education.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. You know as you're talking one of the thoughts that came to mind is as the fundamentalists and I'm drawing a blank on the other group.

Michael S. Horton:
Modernists.

Marlin Detweiler:
Modernists. Thank you. We're fighting. The bottom line is formula can never be a substitute for wisdom.

Michael S. Horton:
What a great line.

Marlin Detweiler:
It can't.

Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World

Marlin Detweiler:
I want to get on to a book. How long ago did you write Ordinary? Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World is the full title. It goes by the term Ordinary. When did you write that book?

Michael S. Horton:
Oh gosh. Terrible with years. But about I would say eight years ago maybe.

Marlin Detweiler:
Okay so it's not the last. Is that the last book? You know you've written some since then.I was thinking it might have been the last one but in it you you critique event the obsession that we have with being radical or world changing. What were you trying to accomplish in writing the book? What problem were you addressing?

Michael S. Horton:
Yeah there's a kind of restlessness in our culture. You know at his young people were always restless. Anyway that's one of the great things about being young right? You have all this energy and you want to change the world and that's wonderful. That's fantastic. But what happens when you're disillusioned? What happens when you find that you can't get a job much less change the world?

What happens when you're expecting a miracle and it doesn't come? You're expecting church to be exciting every week and it isn't. How can we live in a family that is boring a lot of the time? Well if we're bored then we're just going to find some action somewhere else. You know this restlessness that we have is actually undermining excellence.

A Young artist who makes a Stradivarius violin, he can't be restless. He or she can't be all over the map. Can't doing this one the one time that another always checking their email. You know they've got a focus over a long period of time under apprenticeship to make every stroke matter.

And a whole process that takes a long time to conclude with a not with a lot of repetition. A lot of repetition. And you know and then to play one for Pete's sake you know it takes a long time to become a doctor. An artist in another sense. And it should take a long time to become a pastor. Again a lot of repetition a lot of you know learning languages and stuff.

But when it really matters if something really matters it should be done well. And so ordinary is not a call in my mind to laziness or to mediocrity. It isn't. It's actually the antidote I think a lot of mediocrity that we have is because we're just restless. Impatient.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Is that a fairly new phenomenon with the convenience mindset or is that a a problem of fallen man that's been with us?

Michael S. Horton:
Oh I think it's been a it's certainly a problem of the of the fall but boy is it exacerbated by technology today. And you know not to just go on a screed about technology but you know I have found my habits changing over time that I'm more scatterbrained. I've always been scatterbrained but it's like we all have ADHD.

Marlin Detweiler:
All you need to do is pay a doctor to tell you that. Because he'll tell you.

Michael S. Horton:
He'll tell you. Yeah we're all ADHD and it makes it hard to focus when our brain patterns change.

Marlin Detweiler:
You're referring to the technology world that we live in.

Michael S. Horton:
Social media and the pings and the and the you know the urgency of getting back to this person and doing that and following this. I think people find it really hard to sit down and just read a book from cover to cover or to have a long conversation with somebody without checking their phone.

Marlin Detweiler:
Laughing because I'm guilty.

Michael S. Horton:
I am too. That's the thing. It's even when we're in the book business you know it's hard to deep dive in a jet ski world as as one author put it.

Marlin Detweiler:
We'll play this out over a few decades. Are you a prognosticator? My sense is you're a bit of a cultural apologist which comes with the subcategory of prognostication so I want to hear it.

The Impact of AI on Our Minds and Society

Michael S. Horton:
I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet. I have no idea. I really you know AI is here obviously. And it's going to be transformative as everybody says. No one is a Luddite on an operating table. You know that's going to do good things. It's going to it's going to it's not that the technology does this or that but the technology changes us and our habits.

And I think we need to ask questions about what really matters right now because we can't do that later when the technology has already reshaped us. We have to ask those big questions now: why do we do this? Why why do we need this? Why? Yeah what can be adapted so that I can be useful without being becoming a huge tragedy?

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. We have in our involvements in education which go back to 1992. Now in terms of classical education one of the things that we've always answered people with regard to calculators for math students was we want to view the calculator as a tool and not a crutch. And then we had some ways of applying that that meant students still needed to learn their times tables and that sort of thing.

But when it came to multivariable algebra to create a graph is to do the same formula a lot of times get enough dots to see the lines that are reflected. Well that could then be considered a bit of a waste of time at some point. Let's use the graphing calculator to finish it and that sort of thing.

But if you know how it works then using it to make it work is a little different. AI is taking things to a bit of a new level though and it is concerning that we now have availability to information and the communication of that information in ways that substantially remove our minds and our thinking from the process.

Michael S. Horton:
Right. It's not just it's not just the you know for instance you can you know we hear about child sex offenders using AI and all of that. It's not just that you know AI could possibly lead a person to commit suicide. And it's the technology itself. Even when it's doing good things that changes us that reshapes us.

And those are the questions we have to ask. Is it just a tool? Technology's never just a tool. It's also something that becomes a part of us and the way we think and the way we behave. And I love your calculator analogy because they've already learned the times table. They've already I feel like in the early years we've got to just help young people learn to read learn to analyze learn to think learn to debate learn to engage other people and learn to listen.

And then later they can use computers and calculators. And AI maybe in a way that's responsible because you have to have discernment to know whether AI is telling the truth or not. And. Right. I mean these are technologies we make. Yeah. So they reflect both the image of God in us and our perversity our depravity.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. It one of our teachers in our online school wrote a book with a guy that was involved in creation of AI technologies called wiser Than the Machine and that one of the things that he points out is the technology including AI will never be wise.

Michael S. Horton:
That's good.

Marlin Detweiler:
And I thought that was a good good distinction. But it raises real scary things. Because if technology was I guess a different category but AI for example doesn't have it's not unless it's substantially programed into it. It doesn't have a worldview a Christian worldview ethic. It has no ethic unless it's given something. And that's pretty scary to think about.

Michael S. Horton:
In fact a lot of people I've done it myself of asked to chat boxes you know theological questions. And it all comes down to pantheism I mean. Right yeah. Most of the worldview that you get out of these chat boxes is a kind of neo pagan you know could call it New Age kind of outlook.

And again you get the I well that's that is the spiritual but not religious phenomenon that's out there right now. And it's just scraping the internet for information. But wisdom isn't algorithms.

Marlin Detweiler:
It's not.

Michael S. Horton:
It's and it's developed as Aristotle said over time in a virtuous community it's like learning how how to make good wine. You have to you don't just put up a vineyard. And then the next vintage bottle it. It takes years and years under apprenticeship to do this sort of thing. Wisdom means young people have to listen to older people, and not all older people are wise but they have a better chance of being wiser than a 13 year old.

Marlin Detweiler:
So one would hope.

Michael S. Horton:
Yeah we need community. We desperately need community.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Well back to the book ordinary. How do you propose fostering high calling of excellence while teaching students to value ordinary vocations? You might want to channel Martin Luther here.

Michael S. Horton:
Through Christian spectacles even the tree outside your window Luther said takes on more vivid color. It's it it's it's not just that a scriptural worldview teaches us things that we can't know from nature but it also gives us a deeper appreciation for a knowledge of nature itself.

And so I think that patiently attending to that in whatever calling we are given is loving and serving our neighbor. Luther said that God comes to us wearing masks and he doesn't, when we pray give us this day our daily bread. He doesn't rain manna from heaven. He has a baker trained to grind the grain and put it together and make a dough and bake the bread and today we have so many more steps in that process.

The guy driving the truck carrying the loaves of bread to the supermarket and so forth Luther says these are all masks. These are all God answering our prayer. Give us this day our daily bread but not directly and immediately. He does it through these masks. He comes to us in the mask of a baker the mask of a milkmaid. And I love that image.

Marlin Detweiler
Yeah. Recognizing God's provision through the people and providence that he is superintending. Yeah. This has been it has been wonderful. Thank you so much Michael. It's great to visit with you again. It's been a while and it's really good to have you on Vox. Thanks.

Michael S. Horton:
Thanks Marlin. I sure appreciate everything you're doing.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well I appreciate that. If you knew everything you probably would appreciate some of it.

Michael S. Horton:
I can say the same. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
Folks thank you for joining us on Veritas Vox. The voice of classical Christian education. We hope to see you again next time.