Two - Stage Solution

From Brown, p. 121-123:

We are dealing with a group of leading Christians who had “found their way around stark choices.” The current rhetorical antithesis between paideia and the artless wisdom of the Gospels; the somewhat strained attempts to lay down rules for a “proper use” of non-Christian literature: these were insubstantial afterthoughts compared with the solid weight of East Roman upper-class attitudes. Paideia was there to stay. And this was because paideia, as we saw, was a weighty matter. It was not the trivial ornament of a leisure class. It was the exquisite condensation of hard-won skills of social living - the one, reliable code that governed the behavior of the powerful. Paideia offered ancient, almost proverbial guidance, drawn from the history and literature of Greece, on serious issues, issues which no notable - Christian or polytheist, bishop or layman - could afford to ignore: on courtesy, on the prudent administration of friendship, on the control of anger, on poise and persuasive skill when faced by official violence. To speak of the virtues instilled by Greek literature as “a shadow-outline,” “a rough charcoal sketch” of true, Christian virtue, as Basil of Caesarea had once done, in his famous address To Young Men, on how they might derive profit from pagan literature, was to step back too far from late Roman reality. For the average notable, they were virtue.

Paideia continued to provide the bishops of the fifth century with what they needed most - the means of living at peace with their neighbors…

A subtle shift occurred by which the rhetorical antithesis between non-Christian paideia and “true” Christianity was defused. Paideia and Christianity were presented as two separate accomplishments, one of which led, inevitably, to the other. Paideia was no longer treated as the all-embracing and supreme ideal of a gentleman’s life. It was seen, instead, as the necessary first stage in the life cycle of the Christian public man. A traditional ornament, paideia was also a preparatory school of Christian character.

Deeply rooted assumptions about culture and religion made this “two-stage” solution seem eminently sensible. Christianity, Gregory of Nyssa had insisted, was “the sublime philosophy.” Its theology and higher moral practices (increasingly identified, in effect, with the monastic life) were not for beginners, still less for the uninitiated. It was paideia for “those inside,” not shared by “those outside.” But philosophy had always been seen in that light. Philosophy was a vocation to a higher level of intellectual and moral endeavor. The philosopher was called upon to adopt a distinctive and exacting way of life. In practice, the common culture of paideia provided the indispensable first stage in the formation of a philosopher. Groomed in the accustomed manner, a few serious young notables would rise, through becoming philosophers, to the forbidding heights of a life-style different from that of the majority of their peers. For such persons, paideia had always been seen as a preparation for higher things. All that Basil did, in his address To Young Men, was to make more insistent and more universal the concept of philosophy. All Christians were called to be adherents of “the sublime philosophy.” But “Greek letters,” that is, paideia, still functioned as it had done. It was a moral and intellectual boot camp in which the flighty young sharpened their minds and toughened their moral fiber before committing themselves, as adults, to the more serious choices associated with the Christian life.