119 Christian Anthropology and the (W)Holistic Approach 3 are workshops of humanity, where students should be taught ‘the whole art of teaching all things to all men’. For Smith (2017), this means a type of education that does not solely focus on basic skills or narrow vocational goals but is instead ‘broad in its scope (learning about “all things”) and holistic in its developmental goals (focused on the cognitive, the moral, and the spiritual)’ (p. 26). It is education of the ‘whole person’ instead of ‘narrow training or mere academic activity’ (D.I. Smith, 2017, p. 26). It embraces fundamental questions such as ‘how to live well with God, with one’s neighbour, and with the material creation’ (D.I. Smith, 2017, p. 28). Smith (2017) learned from Comenius that ‘true education must attend to the cognitive but also to the moral, the spiritual, the relational, and the practical’, while the end of it is ‘happiness, the life of the blessed, the realization of the garden of delight’ (p. 28). The way in which Comenius (1668/1983) combined the notions of inner piety and worldwide transformation gave his work a resonance that extends beyond the Christian circle, although it was not always well received or understood within it. Despite the narrow ties Comenius had with the movement of Nadere Reformatie in the Dutch Republic, the appreciation of his work suffered under the influence of the Kuyperian antithesis, especially where it entailed an opposition of people, not only of ideas. The final conclusion Groenendijk and Sturm (1992) reached, around Comenius’ 400th birthday, is that these strongly personal-ideological considerations pro and contra Comenius hinder a clear vision of his life and work in a 17th century context (p. 86). They noted that the Dutch pedagogue Bavinck did not criticise Comenius directly, however he did blame him for being the precursor to the reform pedagogy, which Bavinck showed himself hesitant about (Groenendijk & Sturm, 1992, p. 85). Another pedagogue, Waterink, can be related to real comenio-clasm. He portrayed Comenius as trailblazer of the modern idea of tolerance and other, in his eyes, unscriptural pedagogical principles (Groenendijk & Sturm, 1992, p. 77). Groenendijk and Sturm (1992) themselves opted for a more responsible and, therefore, more fruitful historical approach to Comenius. They perceived Comenius as a Calvinist with clear romantic influences on his anthropology and a remarkably positive and optimistic pedagogy (Groenendijk & Sturm, 1992, p. 85). D.I. Smith (2017) warned, however, that any direct identifications with Romanticism or Reform Pedagogy must be rejected as anachronistic: Modern studies of Comenius often have read his work through a postEnlightenment (and, in Eastern Europe, communist) lens that assimilated his pedagogical suggestions to modern ideas, stressing his anticipation of current views while leaving his own theological and philosophical framework aside.
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