Courageous Generosity
By Evan Gurney
“And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears.” Acts 17:19-20
Recently I was compelled to write a new “Statement of Teaching Philosophy,” which is the bane of all university professors. Frustrated by my inarticulate efforts to describe the complex art and vocation of teaching, I decided to start and finish with a single line: “I am all things to all students so that I might teach some.” I wrote this little riff on Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians with tongue firmly in cheek, but I’ve decided to leave it for now. Whether providing instructions on how to build and sustain a harmonious classroom community, modeling how to encourage but also challenge students, or illustrating how to discern what is important and what is less so, Paul offers an excellent pattern for teachers to follow. He understands that teaching and learning is always a relational enterprise relying on mutuality and reciprocity.
If Paul’s letter to the Corinthians offers his philosophy of teaching, this moment in Acts 17 shows us his pedagogy in action. The stakes are raised, moreover, as Paul tries to educate even those antagonistic to his project. The ruling authorities of a city proud of its philosophical inquiry but also jealous of its own native culture, the Areopagus of ancient Athens was at once curious and conformist, ready to punish anyone, from Socrates to Paul, whose novel beliefs did not honor their society’s accepted pieties. With every reason to be fearful and complaisant or stubborn and truculent—this is not a happy classroom!—Paul chooses instead to practice courageous generosity.
What makes Paul generous is his hard work to accommodate the audience -- citing an Epicurean philosopher, quoting a Stoic poet, and gesturing toward an apparently pagan altar. At the same time, Paul remains courageous: he never lets go of his convictions. In Acts 17, Paul threads the apostolic needle, complimenting Athenian religiosity while condemning their idolatry, citing their own beloved writers but showing their limitations, making use of irony in the service of devotion. Taking seriously the philosophical discourse of Athens, Paul invites them to discover answers far more profound than the ones their glib questions were seeking.
As I stand before a crowd at the front of the classroom, I try to keep Paul in mind. My students are a far cry from the Areopagus, but they are often skeptical and sometimes resistant to my assigned readings. I teach the Very Old, Very Dead, Very White Men, as my students like to say with loving snark, and those modifiers serve for them as markers of privilege and (somewhat contradictorily) irrelevance. Why should we read these works of a bygone era? What do they have to say to me and my world? These aren’t frivolous questions. As it happens, I do think these texts have important things to say—I think the cultural history of a past age might offer us resources to envision a more life-giving future—but I shouldn’t assume that students will accept this outright. I need to meet them where they are.
So, like Paul, I try to find something from my students’ cultural ken that they can use as a handhold on their perilous climb to knowledge. Recently while teaching John Milton, I found myself referencing the Ghostbusters movies and talking about Twitter and TikTok. (Sometimes it’s a little easier to find common ground, as with Boccaccio’s pandemic-plagued Decameron.) It is my task to bring strange things to my students’ ears, to shock them out of their assumptions, and to show how the very old thing might be more novel, more radical, more generative than even the very new. But this kind of Pauline teaching requires constant translation, hospitality, and mutuality. An up-to-date Statement of Teaching Philosophy might call this (quite rightly) student accommodation.
When I think of that accommodation, I am reminded of the accommodations made for me. Aren’t we all confused or intransigent students? Some of us even need to be knocked off our horse on the road to Damascus before we can receive the light of inspiration and be transformed. I often wonder if most of us who have adopted the vocation of teaching were rather wayward students. Certainly I’m glad I’ve had (and still have) teachers willing to walk patiently alongside me, despite my lethargy and pride, who then offer me an alternative path, one that might be more arduous but is also more worthwhile. Paul never stops teaching, even when the odds are slim that anyone will listen or learn, even when hauled to the Areopagus.
The distance between us is never too far to cross. Paul knew this better than most. And he responded with a courageous generosity that many of us could learn from still today.
Evan Gurney is associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina – Asheville and a 2022-2023 Newbigin Fellow with The Carver Project.