Christians and The Mind

Many people now know that I'm a Ph.D student at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton Ontario Canada. Most of them know me to be an intellectual Christ-follower, who they believe to be "gifted" in the understanding the complexities of theological inquiry and thought. This description of me may be accurate. I honestly don't know, as Christian thought is just simply something I enjoy, and it is something that doesn't come easy, as all Ph.D students and the teachers than instruct them must continually be in study. But, the reason I am pursuing an academic degree is not simply because I enjoy studying, writing papers, or learning German. I pursue the learning because I think it has been significantly neglected by Christians, especially in the last century. As Mark Noll has pointed out, in his excellent text The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, saying: "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." What Noll means by this statement is that Evangelicals do not think comprehensively about the world any longer. Although we have a rich theological and spiritual heritage, we have not thought significantly and intricately about politics, science, arts, sociology, philosophy, etc. Noll gives reason as to why we lost our zeal for thinking about the whole nature of God and I find these reasons compelling, BUT many evangelicals do not even see the need to even avail themselves of the vast theological heritage of those that made a significant mark in our history. Too often we leave the thinking to the pastors or significant church leaders of our day and don't even attempt to join in to the great thinkers that directly or indirectly shape even the most basic Christian thought we have. Somehow we think it isn't important to engage our minds but our hearts. But God demands BOTH. We don't simply learn for learning's sake. We learn because God has created a universe for us and we must engage that universe without abandon. We will engage our mind in Christian ways, or the mass media and non-Christian university will do it for us. In fact, the general culture has shaped our mind for too long and only a willingness to think Christianly about it will begin to reverse this trend.

Now, many will think it an overwhelming task to begin engaging the mind. This is not so anymore, as there are many books that have done a fantastic job of telling us about the significant figures of our Christian heritage in ways that all our us can understand. Two beginning resources come to mind immediately. The first is the Armchair Theologian Series by Westminster John Know Press. The have put out concise and non-technical books on Augustine, Aqinas, Luther, Calvin, Karl Barth (one of the greatest, if not THE greatest protestant theologian of the 20th century), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (oh, how evangelicals love his Cost of Discipleship, but few know his life that led him to write it), John (evangelicalism would have not been what is without) Wesley, Martin Luther King Jr. (us White people could learn a thing or two from his message and life) and Jonathan Edwards (the last evangelical thinker before we didn't the evangelical brain went to pot). Each of these text is around 200 pages. If you think that a lot, just remember that Aquinas and Barth wrote volumes of work. One last resource is called Coffee Shop Theology and the sequel entitled More Coffee Shop Theology. Both of these texts translate jargon into everyday life, and both are around 150 pages. All these books you can get online and they won't cost you much. They average $12.

Some may find this post a little judgmental perhaps, but I simply want to challenge and encourage all of my readers to read one practical and one theological work a year (as I have demonstrated, the books don't need to be 1000 pages for you to learn something). You might be surprised what you learn and the Lord may give you an enjoyment for learning that you would have never thought possible.

One last thing. I don't talk about the mind in a whimsical manner. Acquiring knowledge is easy. Faith is hard. But we need knowledge and the world needs our knowledge just as it needs our faith.

Blessings