I don’t even know Greek.  I’ve never studied it.  I do recognize and can say most of the alphabet, simply because the math in my graduate level engineering classes was nothing but one Greek letter after another, with perhaps an integral sign thrown in here and there.  But that’s about as far as my knowledge of Greek goes.

Which is ashamed, really, since Greek was the original language used to transcribe a large portion of God’s story in the Christian Bible.  The pastor at our church frequently talks about the nuances and connotations of “the original Greek” when expositing on a particular New Testament text, and I am always fascinated by the enlightenment one can receive from a study of language.  It is also quite alarming how much meaning can be “lost in translation.”

My interest in Greek piqued by our pastor, I began to take New Testament passages from the Daily Lectionary and try to find the original Greek words used for some of the key words or phrases in the text.  This practice led me to the discovery of Strong’s Concordance online (true Greek scholars, you may begin your judging of me in earnest now), which turns out to be a treasure trove of lexicons, searches, and cross-referencing capabilities.  The search for one word leads to a list of where else that word appears in the Bible, which then leads to other verses where that word has a slightly different connotation, or perhaps where the context in which the word is used in the second text further clarifies its usage in the first.  Suffice to say, if you have the tendency to “geek-out” on things, you can quickly find yourself several bifurcations down a deep rabbit hole and an hour later into the evening.

So because I find Greek interesting, and because Strong’s Concordance can now make me look like I’m smart enough to know a little Greek, I decided to use it in my title and byline.  Well, not exactly.

But I did want the title and theme of this blog to have “thick” meaning, meaning which is both self-evident but also which will tie into (hopefully) later thoughts on education.

So let’s look at each word.

ποίησις (poiesis) means, in its most literal sense, “a making.”  The verb form, ποιέω, literally means “to make,” or, more connotatively, “to create.”  But this “creation” need not be a tangible thing; in fact, in Plato’s Symposium, one form of poiesis is described as “poiesis in the soul through the cultivation of virtue and knowledge.”  James K.A. Smith goes a step further in his Desiring the Kingdom and translates poiesis directly as “cultivation.”  Thus, poiesis may not only refer to creation ex nihilo, but also cultivation: that is, perfecting something or creating something out of something that is already in existence.  Or, as our pastor says, “taking something that is good and making it really good.”

The Greek scholars are probably having a hay day right now with my perhaps inaccurate but for sure weakly supported etymological analysis of poiesis.  If you have found error in my analysis, please correct me – I want to learn a little bit of Greek, not use it poorly to support my arguments.

But whatever the scholars will say, I am using poiesis hereafter to mean “cultivation.”  Now, why cultivation?  Well, that could be another blog post probably.  But I will summarize here by saying that “classical education” has often been described as “the cultivation of wisdom and virtue” (note the parallel to (but distinction from) Plato’s quote above).  Since I am writing about my experience in education (well, hopefully I will at some point actually write about education when I feel as though I have given this blog sufficient preface), and since I teach in a classical school and wholly subscribe to the classical pedagogy, this idea of “cultivation” is essential to what I envision the theme of this blog becoming.  The biblical parallels are of course numerous, but we will stop here for now so that I can talk about the second word before I lose you (if I haven’t already).

ἀνακαίνωσις (anakainosis) is probably best translated “renewal,” the connotation of which suggests a process, like an ongoing renovation.  In fact, the verb form, anakainoo, can also connote “to constantly renew by transforming from one stage to a more completed or higher stage.”  I will spare you any further etymological analysis and jump straight to Romans 12:2, one of the only two places in the Bible (scholars, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m blaming Strong’s) where this word appears:

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing (anakainōsei (gerund form)) of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”

Wow – there’s another blog post just on these two verses.  And perhaps even another based on the fact that the one other appearance of anakainosis is in Titus 3:5, when this “renewing” is described as being accomplished “by the Holy Spirit.”  And we could do another on the fact that the word for “perfect” (teleios, which is probably better translated as “complete” or “having all its parts” or “full grown”) describing God’s will in Romans 12:2 is the same word used for “perfect” at the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount when he ends with the seemingly impossible exhortation, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Why “seemingly impossible”?  Well, if you look at perfection as teleios, or “completion” or “full growness,” in the sense of being completely refined into a new creation, Jesus’ words start to make a little more sense.  But I digress . . .

Back to the title of this blog.  Why renewal?  Well, I take this reasoning directly from Romans 12:2 and Paul’s exhortation for us to renew our minds as a direct antithesis to being swept up by the popular cultural current.  I believe that Christian education can and should play a pivotal role in this renewal.  So again, as I write about education and Christian education specifically, I hope to find in my ruminations space to elaborate on this theme of renewal.

So there you have it: Pi Alpha, an acronym for ποίησις and ἀνακαίνωσις, or poesis and anakainosis, or “cultivation and renewal.”

Commence the bashing of my Greek analyses.