Storming the Intellectual Ramparts, Part 3

Spirituality Column #195
August 3, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Storming the Intellectual Ramparts, Part 3
By Bob Walters

American Christian historian Mark Noll wrote about the limitations of Evangelical intellectual development in "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind."

But I hope no one thinks he’s saying Christians, or Evangelicals, are stupid.

He’s saying that since God created everything and gave us freedom, every Christian ought to have the courage to study everything.

Right on. Noll’s thoughts are critical to reclaiming intellectual life for Christ.

Noll writes from the refreshing, academic viewpoint of the reality of God. The absence of that reality is one of the most distressing omissions from modern education at every level. Schools – except for religious ones - are not only afraid to admit God exists, they are afraid to mention His name. Satan must love that.

Noll, if I’m reading him right, is calling it a “Scandal” that believers too often and for too long have retreated from the big, messy, public, social, scientific square of academic knowledge and cultural opinion that conflicts with biblical comfort zones.

We Bible Christians are likely to say: "Here’s the Bible, I believe it, end of discussion." Well, it’s not the end of the discussion. Consider Galileo, who suggested that the earth revolved around the sun. He was a heretic! No, wait, he was right.

The only unchanging truth is Jesus Christ. As for physical science, our global knowledge of that changes all the time.

I think it’s a mistake to limit one’s understanding of Jesus Christ to one’s understanding of the Bible. Start with the Bible, sure. Read it. Study it. Know it. Repeat.

But don’t worship it. Worship Christ.

Believe the Bible, of course. But it’s more important to believe Christ.

Think through and with the Bible, but develop a mind for Christ.

The Apostolic Christians who actually knew Jesus, then those who came after the Apostles, then those who formed early doctrine and battled early heresies, didn’t have a Bible to study. But they knew and worshipped Christ.

If our heart, soul and strength are in our faith in God, we still come up short if we don’t accept the importance of the full engagement of our mind. God loved the world and made the world. We better be enthusiastic about studying the world.

Scripture encourages us to “have the mind of a child” (Matthew 11:25, 18:3).

Right. I think that means, “Be curious and grow.” That’s what freedom is for.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) contacted Noll for an update on what the Evangelical mind looks like in 2010. That’s next week.