The Structural Relationship Among God, Human Beings, and Education in Comenius’s Educational Thought

ABSTRACT

[Objective] This study aims to clarify the structural relationship among God, human beings, and education in Comenius’s thought from the perspective of human formation, and to examine its expansion through pampaedia across the life course, community, and the world. [Contents] To achieve this objective, the study reviews research on didactic principles, pansophia and pampaedia, and human formation. It analyzes God as the ground of educational possibility and order, human beings as objects of formation and responsive subjects, and education as a mediating structure of relational formation. It also interprets this relationship as a multilayered cyclical structure. [Conclusions] Based on the results of the study, four conclusions are drawn. First, the understanding of God grounds human existence and directs education. Second, human beings, created in the image of God, possess the possibility of formation but require education because of the Fall. Third, education mediates the integrated formation of intellect, virtue, and spirituality. Fourth, God, human beings, and education are not elements of equal status but are asymmetrically and purposively related, with God as the ultimate ground. Through pampaedia, human formation expands across the life course, community, and the world.