Storming the Intellectual Ramparts, Part 4

Spirituality Column #196
August 10, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Storming the Intellectual Ramparts, Part 4
By Bob Walters
Last in a series

Author Mark Noll graciously replied to an email I sent after I finished reading his “Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.”

I wondered, now 16 years after Christianity Today named “Scandal” its 1994 Book of the Year, if he thought Evangelicals were gaining ground intellectually. I asked if there was a follow-up book in the works.

He responded that as it happens, he has just recently finished a manuscript that Eerdman’s in Grand Rapids will publish next year, titled “Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind.” Noll said that the book “tried to make a positive statement concerning how traditional Christian belief can support strong intellectual life.”

He also referred to a postscript he wrote for the new book that is a revision and expansion of an article he wrote for First Things journal, Oct. 2004, “The Evangelical Mind Today.” He lists 10 areas where positive impact is being made. I’m looking forward to the release of the book.

Noll points to a couple of glaring intellectual weaknesses in modern evangelicalism. One is the nearly total absence of serious consideration for tradition and the 1800 years of Christian thought that preceded the great evangelical revivals.

Missing from evangelicalism are the likes of Augustine, Aquinas, Galileo, Luther, and Calvin. Similarly Jonathan Edwards, C.S. Lewis, even Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, are immense Christian intellects given less stature in the evangelical community than a Sunday preacher.

Sorry … not to harangue any specific preacher, but to put a point on it – deep feelings do not equate to deep theology, or bedrock, true, biblical understanding.

We cannot study great music without studying great musicians. How could we possibly study great theology without studying great theologians?

Quoting Galileo, “It is most pious to say and most prudent to take for granted that the Holy Scripture can never lie, as long as its true meaning has been grasped.”

A second glaring weakness is evangelical separatism, a resistance to engaging the Christian mind and energy in the whole spectrum of modern learning, from political science to economics to linguistics, history, science and literary criticism.

Says Noll, “Personal faith in Christ is a necessary condition for Christian intellectual life, for only a living thing can develop.” Evangelicals definitely have the heart, soul and strength of personal faith … Noll insists we plug in our minds.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) figures this is a good stepping off point as school begins. Take Christ along, in your heart and mind.