Article: The concept of Education in our Christian faith by Archbishop Amel Nona

In this article, I would like to emphasis the idea of Education according to our faith-based concept and is founded on the term (The Word) which is mentioned in the preface to the Gospel of John.

Why is the term of (The Word) not another title?

((The Word)): is an expression to the language, it is a dialogue.

The characteristic of each person is a “Dialogue”. This (The Word) has no time, as it is in the past, the presence and the future. In these times (The Word) remain an expression or “dialogue”:

I Speak: I talk, I speak to you… I talk to you: there is Me and You… I have a relationship with You, I recognise You, I love You.

Speech is an Engagement, Relationship and Love. The word is an expression of Me and recognition of You. The Word is Me and You. By the Word we unite, we exist and we live.

The Word that comes out, is that who it came out from him, it is an expression of his ego.

The Word: comes out from a person towards another person, to another thing. It has an objective, it has a destination, turns towards man. its orientation is a recognition of him and when reaching him it creates him, it renews him.

Dialogue requires more than one person, and man does not speak alone, therefore the Word is “a word directed towards another person”, it is a relation with another person, an engagement and love.

God is (The word) because He “goes to another person”, because He is Love, He is Relationship.

God is “Dialogue” speaks, and the speak of God are acts because He creates, and the word of God is an expression of His Ego, it is His Son.

Based on this, Christ is “The Word”:

The word is the mode of communication between the two, the mode of dialogue: one speaks and the other listens and responds, if the other does not respond, the word losses its value. In the creation, God speaks and the creatures respond in reality, it accomplishes what God said.

At the fulness of the time God said His complete Word ((The Word became flesh and came to dwell among us, and we see his glory)) Joh 1.

God’s creative act here has come to its last perfection. We humans, the listeners to His Word, The Christ, we can recognise the whole world and the wise worlds that are hidden in Him.

Hence the Fathers of the Church have come to believe that the true knowledge cannot be neither empirical nor rational. It is essentially Christian and dialogical: through Christ we know the world and discover its hidden meaning.

The dialogue here is a dialogue with the creator of all things, it is a personal dialogue and not the illusion of children or free poetry without grammar and rules, nor is an impersonal abstract knowledge.

The dialogue is an exchangeable love experience ((the love that drives the Sun and the other Stars)) Dante. The right relationship between Me and You– occurs in the dialogue when the two interlocutors know each other as an individual.

Each dialogue can be considered as a “mutual journey” based on commitment to honesty, mutual readiness and an exchange of influence.

On this base we see the concept of Education in our Christian faith: as it is built on a dialogue that leads to knowledge and mutual human`s relationship, for the sake of the perfection in God.

 

 

 

Archbishop Amel Nona

St. Thomas Cathedral. Sydney

19. Dec. 2018