This post was written by Randy Newman on February 1, 2009
Recently, I mentioned John Piper’s book, The Pleasures of God. The final chapter, The Pleasure of God in Concealing Himself from the Wise and Revealing Himself to Infants, has some pertinent things to say about thinking, the life of the mind, intelligence, and related topics for thoughtful Christians to consider.
I don’t think I need to place this chapter in the larger context of our current evangelical climate. Suffice it to say that Christians vary in their levels of valuing the intellect. Part of the problem flows from a selective reading of the Scriptures. Part comes from recent history.
Piper addresses the issue well and allows the complexity of the problem to shape his depth of response. He recognizes that the Scriptures do not “uniformly portray mental productivity as praiseworthy.” Sometimes “knowledge puffs up” (1 Cor. 8:1). God often condemns the “wise of this world.” (Consider Jer. 9:23, James 3:15, or I Tim. 6:20). On the other hand, Scripture praises wisdom and exhorts us all to pursue it more than jewels. (See Proverbs 8 and many other places).
Piper raises many important questions, examining recent history (quoting Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in America), and lands on “the crucial question,” “How does the Word of God portray the life of the mind?” I won’t recreate his argument here. It deserves a thorough reading and much reflection. I do believe he is exactly right to see that being an “infant,” for both Jesus and Paul, is “not always viewed as praiseworthy.”
He wrestles with the tensions long enough to draw what I believe is an important distinction. “A fundamental difference between divine wisdom and human wisdom is that God’s wisdom exalts what the cross stands for, and human wisdom is offended by what the cross stands for. God’s wisdom has the supremacy of God’s glory as the beginning, middle, and end of it, but man’s wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self-determining, and not utterly dependant on God’s free grace.”
If this is correct, then study, research, contemplation, the life of the mind, and other academic endeavors are not to be shunned or ridiculed, but pursued as appropriate responses to a God who reveals himself not only in Scripture, but also in general revelation of nature, other people, art, beauty, and the like.
He concludes, “If the gospel is to be preserved for the good of Christ’s church, and God is to be known for who he truly is, we will need to cultivate the life of the mind that prizes and reserves this kind of rigorous study.”
This chapter may be encouraging to you as you seek to love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. I hope you’ll seek it out.
This post was written by Randy Newman on January 12, 2009
Previously I suggested certain authors to read to prompt intelligent engagement regarding the Christian life. Recently I pointed to C.S. Lewis and Jonathan Edwards. Today I want to recommend the writings of John Piper.
You probably already know some of the strengths of Dr. Piper, pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is intense, scholarly, devotional, and rich. All of his books, without apology, have the same thesis - his life’s message - ”God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”
In the past, I have appreciated Piper’s books - but only to a certain point. I found that reading any of his books (without exception!) resulted in the following experience:
First, I would struggle to grasp his main point. Second, once I understood it, I would appreciate it and then marvel that I had not heard this point before. Third, I would start to apply the lens of his insight to areas of my life. Finally, I would tire of his point. I found that by the time I finished one-third of the book, I no longer needed to have the point repeated.
So I found the first one-third of his books to be beneficial but the rest to be tedious to read. Apparently, I’m not alone because I’ve heard that same insight from others.
But someone recommended his book, The Pleasures of God, and told me I would not find it repetitious. Many have said it’s his best work. Now that I’ve read it, I would agree. The book flows and holds together but does not bog down into simply restating the same point with different words. It consistently challenges the reader to think more comprehensively, apply more rigorously, and meditate more deeply.
The subtitle of the book is Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God. Piper first entertains the notion that God is not egotistical to delight in himself. Then he considers what that would entail in God’s delight in His Son, in all He does, in His creation, in His fame, etc.
In ways that should encourage a scholar’s heart, Piper applies the discipline of thorough thought to these kinds of themes, explores the Scriptures to support them, and then applies them to various areas of life - areas that do not get addressed often enough (or ever!) in many contemporary, self-glorifying Christian books.
The final chapter, “The Pleasure of God in Concealing Himself from the Wise and Revealing Himself to Infants,” is especially challenging. In the course of his discussion, he explores the whole issue of the life of the mind. Special consideration is given to the pressure towards anti-intellectualism that has plagued the church for many years, especially in the past century. I’ll share more thoughts about that chapter in a future post.
In a day when many minor issues are receiving major emphasis and God-glorifying themes get subsumed (or eclipsed) by self-glorifying themes, I am very thankful for the ministry and writing of John Piper. I hope you’ll consider reading The Pleasures of God.
This post was written by Randy Newman on September 25, 2008
Christianity is an intelligent faith. It demands and encourages thought.
Consider the many exhortations to recall to mind the past deeds of the Lord. The Psalms model and urge us to “remember,” “meditate,” “reflect,” and “dwell on” the truths about God and his dealings. (See, for example, Psalm 77:10). The person who will be like a tree instead of like chaff attains this by “meditating on the law of the Lord” (Psalm 1:2). Note that the same verb, translated as “plot against” is used in the partner Psalm (2:1) to show that every mind is engaged in one way or another: either for God and his law or against him and his anointed one.
At crucial points in the epistles, we are told to “renew our minds” (Rom 12:1), “set our minds” (Col. 3:1), and to be “like-minded” (Phil 2:2).
This contrasts dramatically with Eastern mysticism, which seeks to empty one’s mind of words or content. It also contrasts starkly with common contemporary views of spirituality (even among Christians), which encourage people to feel more than think (as if these two aspects of personhood are in conflict with one another).
On occasion, as I’ve discussed certain topics with Christian friends, I have been told, “You think too much!” Well, I’ve given a lot of thought to this accusation. (This is meant to be a joke!) I think that’s impossible. We cannot think too much. We can think well or we can think poorly. We can think deeply or we can think shallowly. We can think Biblically or we can think with a host of other influences shaping the thoughts in our minds. We can think in ways which mold us into people who resemble Christ or we can think in ways which feed upon lusts, anger, self-righteousness, foolishness, or hopelessness.
Let us think well, actively, continually, deeply, Biblically, prayerfully, and meditatively.
This post was written by Matt Bazemore on September 17, 2008
In Part II of Dynamics of Spiritual Life, Richard Lovelace switches his attention from the aspects of renewal to the renewing of the church. By renewal, he is referring to the sanctification process whereby the Holy Spirit works in the individual, transforming him into the image of Christ. He begins this part of the book with a focus on the local congregation and prescribes some principles for implementing the aspects of renewal covered in Part I of his book. He observes a phenomenon which he calls the sanctification gap, a “conspiracy to somehow mislay the Protestant tradition of spiritual growth and to concentrate instead on frantic witnessing activity, sermons on John 3:16 and theological arguments over eschatological subtleties” (p. 232).
According to Lovelace this laying aside occurred as a reaction to hyper-calvinism. With hyper-calvinism many of the requirements of the Christian life were lumped into conversion (p. 233-5). This implied one had to be a practicing mystic in order to be considered a Christian. The reaction led to a lessening of the requirements for initial conversion. Charles Finney is characteristic of this reaction by his call for “instantaneous commitment and instantaneous conversion.” While hyper-calvinism made it difficult for those to enter the kingdom, the reaction made it easy for people to enter on the basis of simple faith and initial repentance. The result of this reaction was that sanctification was left out of place.
With sanctification out of place Christians were left with a general ignorance of how to grow from the Real to the Ideal. The Ideal is simply that which comes to mind when we think of the end result of the Christian life, i.e. individuals fully transformed into the image of Christ. It also includes the feeling that we often have when we feel like we should be more spiritually mature than we are. The exhortation from many pulpits is to be like Jesus, and three more things to do are adumbrated as application. Unfortunately there is very little connection between such sermons and what believers experience on an every day basis. Hence we feel guilt and shame for not being farther along in our journeys when we fail to measure up. The Real is this every day experience of our own sin that still exists in us. It is the constant awareness that we are not even close to being like Jesus and we have no idea how to change. We are left constantly aware of where we should be, without the knowledge and skill of moving in partnership with the Spirit from where we are in that moment in our growth and development.
The sanctification gap, therefore, is the ignorance of how to move from the Real, where we truly are, toward the Ideal, where Jesus is. Because of the sanctification gap, Christians often engage in frantic witnessing activity, sermons on John 3:16, etc., in order to feel like they are doing something that contributes towards their growth. They do not have the tools, so to speak, to partner with the Spirit in the process of sanctification and are left in the shallowness of outward activity without inner transformation. This shallowness ultimately leaves us thirsty.
As Lovelace closes his chapter he discusses three things of importance regarding the closing of the sanctification gap. I will mention only one. The first thing to do is open ourselves to the truth and recognize that it is there. Our problem, both individually and corporately, is that the content of our spirituality is anemic and superficial and thus people looking in from the outside see a spirituality that does not correspond to our claims about the Christian life. This hurts our credibility. As Lovelace states, “…unless what we export is more than a two-dimensional [i.e. superficial] caricature of Christian spirituality, we will not overcome the credibility gap among consumers” (p. 236).
This is the crucial point for Christians desiring to be faithful in the academy. An anemic spirituality will have at least two effects. First, it will not provide the nourishment that one needs as a redeemed image bearer of God in light of academic culture. Second, Christianity will not be worthy of consideration by those who appreciate having depth or richness of life, which, I think, includes a large number of academics.
This post was written by Randy Newman on September 8, 2008
Many people speak of the current shift from modernism to postmodernism as seismic. Is it really that huge? I believe it is. For years, church historians spoke of the four eras of Christianity – the age of the church fathers, the medieval period, the reformation, and the modern (or post-enlightenment) period. Some suggest that we now add a fifth portion to our time charts. I agree with them.
It’s not just that gradual adjustments are taking place – along the lines of the shifts from the 1930s to the 1940s or other decade passages. Postmodernism and the realities of pluralism are radically (“to the root”) altering how we know not just what we know. In other words, we are in the midst of an epistemological earthquake.
The good news is that we can learn from ways the church responded to other epochal shifts. The bad news is that there are still uncharted, unprecedented waters ahead.
At other times of radical rethinking, the church looked diligently into the Scriptures for clarification and answers to challenges. Emerging from those times of crisis were documents like The Apostles Creed, Martin Luther’s Theses, The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, and others that helped God’s people think clearly and speak boldly about central tenants of the faith.
We rejected unitarianism in favor of trinitarianism. We said no to universalism and restated the realities of God’s final judgment. We answered the attacks on the scriptures’ authority and accuracy with resolutions about inspiration. We dug into the ancient texts as well as the dusty earth (through archeology) and affirmed that God had indeed spoken and his word was not convoluted.
Today we face challenges no less formidable than the church fathers and the reformers did. We need to follow their lead and not shirk from the attacks. Intellectuals in a wide range of academic fields need to join in the efforts. The task is too multifaceted to rely solely on theologians.
Some are saying we must respond to the shift from modernism to postmodernism by returning to modernism and just restate old arguments – perhaps louder. I think this would be incomplete. Others are saying we need to not only adapt our modes of communication but also change the very content of our message. “Everything must change,” they cry and they really do mean “everything.” I can’t imagine a more foolish response. (Nevertheless, such siren calls are gaining a very large hearing).
It is good that people are asking foundational questions – How do we know anything? Is there anything unique about the scriptures? Can God really be known in a personal way? Is there really only one way to heaven? What exactly did the cross accomplish?
It is bad that many inside the church are retreating in the face of such questions. In the next blog, I’ll offer some suggestions about how we respond in these deeply challenging, opportunity-laden days.
This post was written by Matt Bazemore on August 11, 2008
The Teacher in Ecclesiastes rightly said, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is weariness to the flesh” (Eccl. 12:12, ESV). Living a life that values the mind is hard work and can be very tiring. But there is a danger that lurks in the shadows from which we must guard ourselves. The danger is that in developing one’s mind one ceases to live as an integrated being, i.e. neglecting the rest of one’s humanity. Since this neglect of one’s humanity is a very big topic I will be expounding on it, highlighting those things that have surfaced in my thinking as it currently stands.
In order to live a fully human life we need to have a grasp of what life is. Paul Gould in The Two Tasks of the Christian Scholar correctly locates the task of integration in the human person, who in turn finds himself in the meta-narrative of Scripture. It is in this meta-narrative that we also find the answer to the question of what life is.
Everyone has his own understanding of life which is dynamic and is (typically) refined over time. As Christian scholars we must call this understanding a theology of life in virtue of God’s relation to humanity. The word “theology” implies this relation as well as the knowledge God has revealed through Scripture and Creation. For example, we find that our Triune God is a humanist in the sense that he is for human flourishing. The glimpse we have of the Garden of Eden is a rich and full experience of life as it was meant to be. We also find in his general revelation that he has structured the world in a way that allows us to flourish as his image bearers.
I understand that in defending one’s dissertation one is usually asked how one’s work contributes to humanity’s knowledge. I think an important activity for Christian scholars to pursue is to reflect on how their field of study contributes to a biblically grounded theology of life. How does your field contribute to human flourishing? Such reflection is a crucial first step towards living as an integrated being.
This post was written by Mark Hansard on April 7, 2008
Dear editors and publishers of Christianity Today,
I am becoming more and more dismayed at the editorial direction of your magazine, which appears to increasingly embrace the “emergent” or “emerging church” movement and promote it, as if this movement(s) will do our churches a valuable service. While it is true that today’s culture of young people is different than previous generations, it is not in their interest to abandon the life of the mind and the soul’s powers of reason in order to reach them. Much of what I read in CT and hear from youth leaders, is anti-intellectualism of the worst kind: the kind that dismisses logical thinking and apologetics as “modern” and irrelevant today.
For example, in Scot McKnight’s “Five Streams of the Emerging Church” (Feb. 2007), he says that postmodernity “cannot be reduced to a denial of truth” but instead “is the collapse of overarching metanarratives…like those of Marxism and science…because of the impossibility of getting outside of their assumptions.” But this is self-referentially incoherent, since postmodernity has a set of assumptions that, presumably, it cannot “get outside of.” If none of us can “get outside of” our assumptions, the only recourse is complete agnosticism about knowledge itself: an admission that radical skepticism is the only option. True, on his description, McKnight’s view of postmodernity doesn’t lead to a denial of truth. Rather, it leads to a denial that truth can be known. This is somewhat silly in my opinion, since McKnight is probably writing his article on a word processor, something he would not be able to do unless scientific presuppositions about physics had turned out to be true and led to the construction of microchips.
In another egregious example, Molly Worthen, in her article “Not Your Father’s L’Abri” (March, 2008), quotes John Sandri as saying, “I’m not an inerrantist, but I’m not an ‘errantist’ either. Both are wrong. Man makes these opposing points of view. The modernist agenda is behind both.” The problems with such a quotation are legion. For one thing, I assume that he holds to some middle position between inerrancy and “errancy,” but the way the quotation is constructed it appears he is denying the law of the excluded middle (either there is at least one error in Scripture, or there is not—no other logical option is available). Whether he intends to deny this law of logic is unclear, but it certainly leaves a muddleheaded impression that does your readers a disservice (besides—what’s wrong with inerrancy?!). Frankly, I grow weary of hearing youth leaders say that logic is “modern,” and thus something irrelevant to young people today. I suppose they get such ideas from professors like Sandri, but I find that exactly the opposite is true.
As I have occasion to speak to college students and 20-Somethings, I teach of the importance of reason, how Jesus used logic in his debates with the Pharisees, and how we can defend Christianity rationally. The response is often stunned amazement and interest, rather than hostility or indifference. Often, after the teaching time is over, students will rush forward to be the first in line to ask questions. It is as if the reasoning portions of their souls, which have to this point been anesthetized, are resurrected. Occasionally an emergent adherent will scoff, not because he does not have the same needs which this sort of teaching meets, but because he has been trained to think it will not work in reaching the unchurched.
Today’s leading literature departments are abandoning deconstructionism and a whole host of postmodern beliefs. At the same time, the emerging church movement (if it is even one movement that can be defined) is embracing many of these same postmodern beliefs. Instead of being counter-cultural like many emergentists believe, they are simply following academic ideas that are twenty years out of date. It is difficult enough to get today’s youth to use their minds without emerging leaders encouraging this sort of intellectual lethargy.
Today’s evangelical leaders have a choice: either to acquiesce in the anesthetization of the mind, or to take part in its rational resurrection. It is clear that Christianity Today has made its choice to go along with the anesthesiologist. For this reason, I will not be renewing my subscription to CT.
Sincerely,
Mark Hansard
This post was written by Patrick Rist on February 11, 2008
Last week, a number of tornadoes tore through Tennessee, where I live. Many homes were destroyed, and dozens of lives were lost. Near our home, friends of ours lost their church in the storm. It was obliterated.
Natural disasters often raise questions concerning God’s providence and sovereignty. Why, if God is both all-powerful and loving, do these things happen? Does he allow them? Are they the work of Satan? Are such things simply beyond his control?
Questions such as these are, of course, categorized under the heading, “The Problem of Evil.” More specifically, the technical term for these questions and the arguments that seek to answer them is theodicy: the defense of God’s righteousness and omnipotence in the face of evil and suffering. At your next cocktail party, try to use the word theodicy in conversation – it’s a real showstopper.
There is a long and ever-lengthening history of theodicy in Christian thought, which is evidence of how desperately we want to understand this issue. It is also probably evidence of how far we are from resolving it. It seems to me that theodicies come in two categories: (1) the fairly helpful, and (2) the awful.
Under the fairly helpful category, one might place work that Alvin Plantinga has done. To simplify almost to the point of slander, Plantinga’s argument is that it is perfectly reasonable to state that if there is evil in the world, and if there is an all-powerful, all-righteous God, then there must be a perfectly good reason for God to allow the evil.
This is not a particularly comforting counsel to share with someone who’s grieving the loss of a home or a loved one. Plantinga’s main project was to demonstrate that it was not a logical contradiction to hold that evil and the biblical God could both exist. And remarkably, many of Plantinga’s philosophical adversaries acknowledged that he’d done so.
We may find Plantinga’s arguments pretty thin stuff. But at least he is not trying to get God “off the hook,” even at the cost of ignoring the biblical data, which is what many of the most awful theodicies seem to be attempting.
“Open theism” seems (to me) to spring from an unwillingness to allow the Bible to say what it says, and to take us where we would probably rather not go. Among other things, some of its advocates hold that while God knows everything that is knowable, he can’t know the future because it hasn’t happened yet. Thus, I suppose I could share with my friends who lost their church: “Take comfort! God’s just as surprised by this as you are!”
The Bible clearly teaches that God knows the end from the beginning; further, it is replete with sobering statements concerning his foreknowledge and foreordination of events, indicating a supervision and orchestration of history that I believe is beyond our ability to understand.
This is why I used the phrase, “fairly helpful” in describing the best theodicies. I do not believe that we can ultimately know the answer to the “why?” questions that natural disasters raise. We can and should try to understand all we can, but in the end we are left with mystery.
I have colleagues who think that I play the “mystery card” too readily. But we see Job getting an answer directly from God, and it is not an answer that causes Job to slap his forehead and exclaim, “Oh, of course! Now I get it! Thanks, God!” Instead, Job’s forehead is slapped by the ground as it rushes up to meet him.
Is appealing to and accepting mystery un-academic? Probably. But for the Christian, even the Christian scholar, there are worse things to be. For while there are many things we cannot know about this issue, there is one thing we can know, and it is the most important thing to know: The God who is sometimes pleased to allow hard and painful things into our lives is the same God who was pleased to crush his Son for our iniquities.
This post was written by Patrick Rist on December 11, 2007
When one hears all the shrill, alarmist language from some quarters of Christendom concerning a movie like The Golden Compass, some of us may be tempted to respond with a, “C’mon, is it that bad?”
This is understandable, considering that similar shrieks greeted every Harry Potter book and movie. However, The Golden Compass is a quite different issue.
For an excellent overview of the movie, the books on which it is based, and the not-so-hidden agenda of author Philip Pullman, please visit this link to an article by Dr. Albert Mohler. Dr. Mohler is always a measured voice, yet a clear thinker and excellent communicator.
This post was written by Patrick Rist on December 6, 2007
The word for today is “kitsch,” meaning something created to appeal to sentimental, popular or undiscriminating tastes. It is often an elitist word, used as a weapon to discredit that which is disliked.
But it is just as often used accurately. Certainly the art world is in confusion, and manifests a substantial amount of moral corruption, but unless we want to jettison all critical judgments, it should still be possible to distinguish between good art, not-so-good art, and kitsch. However, those distinctions and how to make them go far beyond what I want to discuss here.
Ask the average churchgoer to name a Christian artist, and sad to say, you will probably hear the name Thomas Kinkade. Kinkade’s work is (dare I say this?) the epitome of kitsch. While technically quite competent, his pictures present fantasy world of light, pastels, and imaginary settings that have nothing to do with our lived lives. In this sense, Kinkade’s work is akin to pornography. It tells lies for emotional effect.
Perhaps that’s a bit harsh. Pornography is evil for multiple reasons. I would not say that what Kinkade is doing is evil. But it is misguided, and when one sees the level of promotion that sustains Kinkade’s empire, one suspects that he is painting to please a market rather than his Creator. And the two are not the same, even if the market is mainly evangelicals.
The question that interests me, though, is that even if we believe (as I do) that Kinkade’s work lies, what does our enthusiasm for the lies tell us about our desires? Are those desires legitimate? Could it be that Kinkade’s popularity tells us something about our souls, or at least about our vision for the Good Life?
Kinkade presents a life like this:
But in reality, most of us live like this:
The fantasy and the reality are so far apart, Kinkade could just as well include a Pegasus grazing in the front yard of his cottages.
But would not most of us rather live in the Kinkade picture, even if we wouldn’t hang it on our wall? Why is that? What does it say about how we want our lives and homes to be?
My suspicion is that Kinkade’s popularity contains clues to deep-seated longings shared by many, if not most Americans. The challenge is draw out these longings into the open. There they can be discussed, and compared to the decisions that we make as a people that condemn us to kitschy fantasy rather than a better reality.
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