Homo Adorans and Education

 

 

 

Homo Adorans: What’s It All About?

N.B. This is the first of a series of posts which come from articles written for the King’s Academy (Oregon City) newsletter. Each deals with a different aspect or application of Homo Adorans, and is meant to generate discussion, encouragement, and criticism. Please feel free to do any of the above in the comments section.

By Dennis R. Tuuri

In Christianity, worship has been considered by most Christians to be the central act of Christian identity throughout history. Many Christian theologians have defined humanity as homo adorans, that is, the ‘worshiping man,’ and thus the worship of God is at the very core of what it means to be human. (Wikipedia) 1

Well, it’s official. When even Wikipedia is using the buzz phrase homo adorans, it’s a real deal. But what does it mean in the context of Christian education?

To begin with, a common misperception is to think homo adorans means that man is only a worshiper. Current usage of the term homo adorans comes from Alexander Schmemann’s wonderful little book entitled For the Life of the World. (This book is available from Exodus Provisions in Oregon City.) Here’s a relevant quote from his book:

[M]an alone…is to respond to God’s blessing with his blessing. …in the Bible to bless God is not a ‘religious’ or ‘cultic’ act, but the very way of life. …All rational, spiritual and other qualities of man, distinguishing him from other creatures, have their focus and ultimate fulfillment in this capacity to bless God, to know, so to speak, the meaning of the thirst and hunger that constitutes his life. ‘Homo sapiens’, ‘homo faber’…yes, but first of all, ‘homo adorans’. The first and basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands at the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God….2

Homo is Latin for man. Sapiens comes from the Latin word sapientia, meaning wisdom or intellect. And faber is a person who builds or makes something. We can see the English word “adore” in adorans and “fabricate” in faber.

So, while Schmemann prioritizes homo adorans (man as worshipper), he recognizes that man is also (secondarily) homo sapiens (man as thinker), and homo faber (man as maker).

By keeping this sense of balance in mind, we can avoid falling into a mistaken conclusion—the idea that the curriculum and methods of a homo adorans educational model will downplay academic excellence and preparation for vocation. The opposite is actually true. Our model does not trivialize the aspects of our life that are not directly linked to formal worship. It does not denigrate the balance of our creaturely activities, our work (homo faber) or our thinking (homo sapiens). The model does not ultimatize formal worship, nor place it in opposition to the other aspects of our humanity. Rather, it heightens those secondary aspects by seeing them as flowing out of, and undergirded by, our worship of God. Instead of dragging down the importance of vocational skills, a worship view of our humanity raises our sense of importance of these skills. A proper stress on education that equips for excellence in various vocations will enable us to worship Him even more gloriously. In a general sense, all of life is re-sacralized in a homo adorans model, and is, as a result, richer and even more important.

Now, it is true that the homo adorans model is both informed by and leads back to formal worship. But this leads us to a specific tie between homo adorans and homo faber (as well as homo sapiens) which we can see by examining the liturgy of formal worship. A proper liturgy on the Lord’s Day includes the offering, the New Testament equivalent of the Levitical tribute offering.

The Old Testament tribute offering is described in Leviticus 2, where the King James version mistakenly translates it as the “meat offering.” Other translations refer to it as the cereal offering. While it is indeed a grain (or cereal) offering, the Hebrew word here means the tribute paid to a sovereign. The interesting thing about the tribute offering was that it could not be offered in its natural state. It had to be processed in some way – made into flour, cooked, fried, grilled, or baked. The worshiper had to “add value” to the grain, to transform it. It represented the labor of the worshiper.

In like fashion, our tithes and offerings brought in response to the powerfully transformative preached Word represent our labor, the transformation of that part of the world that God has called us to work in. The implications of this are profound. Our labor is not “secular,” since it is symbolically accepted by God as we draw near to Him in formal worship. And the natural state of the world is not good enough. God wants us to transform the world, and bring it back to Him in worship for His approval. Our “normal” work is both required and accepted in our formal worship.

This means that education must equip us to transform the world. This transformation requires us to be homo sapiens, thinking about our vocations and maturing in them thr0gh the proper use of our intellect. And it requires us to be homo faber, forming and transforming the world through our labor. To be truly homo adorans, then, we must also be homo sapiens and homo faber. Our intellect and labor must be undergirded and motivated by our desire to worship our Creator and Redeemer. We bring the transformed world to God as the result of our wise labors as homo sapiens and homo faber.

So, SATs, vocational skills, etc. are very important! The student is trained for “secular” work, but this work is always put before the student as “sacred” work. The student will be prepared to worship in his vocation, and also to bring the fruits of his labor to God in formal Lord’s Day worship. If we produce a student body that can all play musical instruments and sing beautifully in formal Lord’s Day worship, but has not been trained to use their minds and hands to transform the world vocationally and bring it back to God as tribute, we have radically misunderstood homo adorans.

A correct application of the model will indeed train students to worship God in song and in music. A homo adorans curriculum should certainly have music as part of its core curriculum. But it also must train the student in mathematics, science, language history, business, etc., so that the student will fulfill his created purpose of worshiping God in whatever God-given calling, he may enter into in his adult life. This is the essential meaning of homo adorans for the Christian school.

1. Wikipedia, “Christian Worship,” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_worship (Accessed November 26, 2007).

2. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 14-15.