Alumnado extranjero matriculado en el curso 2007/2008

prin-ciples per se but the lack of motivation to do good: here, only the Christian message offers a sound solution.

5.91 Plato, on the basis of his positive view of human nature, be-lieved that knowledge alone would produce goodness—that if we know what is right, we will do it.

5.911 We have already seen the centrality of that conviction to the ra-tionalistic tradition (Kant, the neo-Kantians, et al.).

5.912 Rousseau (Emile), in line with Plato’s maieutic belief that knowledge is inherent in mankind and that the teacher needs only to assist its birth (as a midwife brings forth a child from the pregnant mother), held that pupils should be allowed unlim-ited choice to achieve maximal educational development.

5.913 John Dewey and the so-called progressive education move-ment operated essentially with this philosophy of education.

5.92 The results of maieutic rationalism have not been encouraging.

5.921 A French nobleman of Rousseau’s time declared: “I have assid-uously followed the precepts of Emile in the education of my

5.922 Two generations of American and British beneficiaries of pro-gressive education can neither spell nor write decent English.

5.93 Psychoanalytic theory, whatever its particular manifestation (Freud, Adler, Jung, Horney, Lacan) insists that, below the level of the conscious mind, there lies a dark unconscious, and that the will is very often influenced far more by it than by ra-tional considerations.

5.931 Query: How does a psychoanalyst differ from a coal miner?

Answer: The psychoanalyst goes down deeper, stays down longer, and comes up dirtier.

5.94 Biblical revelation declares that the fallen creature’s funda-mental problem is a lack of motivation to do what is right (in-deed, a penchant to do what is wrong), even when she rationally knows the truth and the difference between right and wrong.

5.941 “The devils believe [in one God]” (James 2).

5.942 “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Romans 7).

5.95 The provision of absolute revelational standards of ethics is therefore a necessary but not a sufficient condition of individ-ual and social morality.

5.96 Such standards must be accompanied by a mechanism to change human hearts so that they will indeed “love the neigh-bour as themselves.”

5.961 The claim, in Marxism and in liberal Western social reform, to achieve such a change by altering the means of production or by improving the external environment, has never produced the desired effects.

5.9611 Marxists, in spite of their high ideals, and because of their false beliefs—“the end justifies the means,” etc.—have committed horrendous human rights violations.

5.9612 Western social reformers have replaced slums with better hous-ing and have then seen that houshous-ing turned into new slums, ow-ing to the fact that the value systems of the occupants remain the same.

5.9613 Educational programmes in prisons often produce more edu-cated and well-trained criminals.

5.97 It follows that, as the aphorism puts it, “What the world needs is not more good advice, but Good News.”

5.971 The New Testament word for Gospel (euangelion) means, lit-erally, “good news.”

5.98 Christian faith offers not merely the finest moral example—Je-sus Christ himself—but also the possibility of redemption and a genuine change of motivation (“conversion”) so that Jesus’

example can be followed in practice (1 Peter 2:21).

5.981 “Whoever commits sin is the servant of sin. If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8).

5.982 “If any person is in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthi-ans 5; cf. H. Drummond).

5.9821 The mechanism of new creaturehood is the presence of God the Holy Spirit in the believer’s heart: “He [the Holy Spirit] shall glorify me [Christ], for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you” (John 16).

5.99 The result: the Christian believer becomes a “little Christ to his neighbour” (Luther; cf. George Forell, Faith Active in Love).

5.991 God’s grace in Christ touches the world at the point of the re-deemed sinner, spreading out from her to those whose wounds need to be bound up.

5.992 At the same time, “no Christian is more than one day old” (Ki-erkegaard).

5.9921 Since the believer remains simul justus et peccator—justified and yet still a sinner—it is essential that she return to the Cross continually.

5.9922 Perfection is not attainable in this life (pace Wesley and his

“Holiness” followers).

5.9923 Those who believe that they have attained perfection have ei-ther (1) lowered God’s standards to their own condition, or (2) unrealistically inflated the moral quality of their inner and outer conduct.

5.993 Granting all the deficiencies in the walk of Christians, one must agree with the empirical evidence that they have been more re-sponsible for ameliorating social evils than has any other group in human history (K. S. Latourette).

5.9931 Christians have motivated, inter alia, the first orphans’ homes and hospices, the Red Cross, the abolition of slavery, the eleva-tion of women, charity in general, literacy and public educa-tion, the common and civil law traditions, the modern university, etc., etc. (A. J. Schmidt).

5.994 We conclude, therefore, that both in theory and in practice, transcendent Christian revelation provides the only justifiable answers to the ultimate questions of ethics and human worth.

6 The Christian revelation satisfies the deepest general and particular longings of the human heart.