Philip Donnelly is professor in the honors college of Baylor University. He is the author of

Milton's Scriptural Reasoning. He's also the co-editor

of transformations in biblical literary traditions. His new book is The Lost Seeds of Learning,

grammar, logic, and rhetoric as life-giving arts. That's our topic today. Welcome, Professor Donnelly.

Thank you for having me. You begin with a basic reminder, somewhere near the beginning of the Bible.

It says that God speaks creation into being. What is the implication for us as speaking animals?

Yes, I think it clearly implies that this is one of the crucial ways in which humans are like God

and made in the divine image. I think that passage in particular in Genesis, the beginning

of Genesis does illustrate how it is that humans are clearly not God and yet also implicitly

also like God in certain ways. And that's one of the ways in which we are then called to participate

in the good gift of creation is by means of the naming of things and by the use of language.

You also highlight the other side of communication. For Christians, this God-speaking creation into being,

lays out a very important goal of education, and that being a listening one, or as you put it,

quote, to improve the ability to hear the divine voice.

This is an explicit goal of education, yes?

Yes.

I think that's one of the seldom acknowledged benefits of a training in the verbal arts.

And by that I mean specifically grammar, logic and rhetoric.

They have, of course, other benefits as well that people have often noticed, right, the ability

to attend to reality by connecting words to reality, but also the ability to make logical arguments,

the ability to persuade people. But I argue that ultimately all of this training in the verbal

arts actually, for Christians, has its highest fulfillment in the practice of listening to the divine voice.

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