Of Saints and Scholars: The Spiritual and Intellectual Inheritance of the Medieval World

Well, hey, we're going to shift gears here, and the icebreaker here, I think, sort of gave away what I mainly want to come and talk about, which is I know you have experience teaching Latin as well, but I really wanted to get to talk about Medieval Omnibus partly because I am also very passionate about it, but also because I think it's super underrated and people can appreciate it more.

Before we get into talking about that vein...

You mentioned a little bit earlier, you had an office in Neyland Stadium.

So you have experience teaching literature at the college level at UT, which is obviously a secular institution.

How is literature instruction different here at a classical Christian school compared to the university level in our modern day and age? I know you're not teaching right now in 2026, so maybe...

To be fair, it could be even a little bit different in 2026 than when you were teaching.

Right.

But I'm just curious how those might look different between the university of the modern day and the current classical Christian school.

Yeah.

Well, so I taught over 25 years ago there, so I'm sure things have changed.

But the trends that are happening now were happening then.

But I'll tell you, I loved it.

I loved teaching literature there.

There was almost no oversight, which is a good and a bad thing.

So they just threw me in the classroom.

And of course, many of my colleagues were not believers and lost and pursuing the good in their own ways, which is not leading to the truth.

And so you could find a literature classroom that was focused on feminist theory or marxist theory or all kinds of different ideas they're the teacher's opinion of truth um and but there's no oversight so i'm there a christian teacher like okay uh i can do the same thing yeah and um we're you know we're reading great books usually great books that have passed the test of time are great because they have truth and beauty and goodness in them.

And so as I taught those books, I was just like, there's some important questions being asked here.

What's the nature of the human condition? One example is I taught Frankenstein and the whole thing is about God.

What would it be like if your creator is not a loving God who cares for you.

And so that's in the book.

I'm not bringing that to the table.

So we're just asking those good questions and talking about them.

I just saw it as a place where I as a believer can inject truth into this classroom.

And it was great.