All education, law, and culture were pagan. How could
the Christians be educated; and how, unless they were educated, could
they appeal to the minds of educated men? So began a long struggle,
which continued for many centuries, and swayed this way and that. Was
Christianity to be founded barely on the Gospel precepts and on a way of
life, or was it to seek to subdue the world by yielding to it? This, the
religious problem, is the chief educational problem in recorded history.
There were the usual parties; and the fiercest, on both sides, counselled
no surrender. Tertullian, careful for the purity of the new religion,
held it an unlawful thing for Christians to become teachers in the Roman
schools. Later, in the reign of Julian the Apostate, an edict forbade
Christians to teach in the schools, but this time for another reason,
lest they should draw away the youth from the older faith. In the end
the result was a practical compromise, arranged by certain ecclesiastical
politicians, themselves lovers of letters, between the old world and the
new. It was agreed, in effect, that the schools should teach humane
letters and mythology, leaving it to the Church to teach divine doctrine
and the conduct of life. All later history bears the marks of this
compromise. Here was the beginning of that distinction and apportionment
between the secular and the sacred which is so much more conspicuous in
Christian communities than ever it has been among the followers of other
religions.
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