Loving God with All Your Mind: Intellectual Rigor and Biblical Faithfulness

By Jason, M.Ed., M.A.R., Headmaster

Harvard and Yale were both founded with the primary mission of training faithful pastors for ministry. The founders of these schools knew that men needed the highest quality education in order to properly handle God’s Word and apply it to the cultural context of their day. They expected their students to be fluent in Hebrew, Greek and Latin and also to be well versed in the intellectual and philosophical ideas of the day, so they could engage them intelligently and Biblically.

One of the first presidents of Princeton University was Jonathan Edwards, a Yale graduate, who has been called by some the greatest thinker in American history. Edwards is also known as the leading theologian and one of the central preachers of the Great Awakening. As recently as the early 1900’s, Princeton was a leading center of Biblically faithful scholarship, having trained some of the best theologians and pastors in American history.

I give you this background because, obviously, if you visit Harvard, Yale or Princeton today, you probably won’t see much evidence of their founding ideals and rich history. While Harvard still has “Veritas” (truth) on its college seal, most of its professors today have very little patience for “truth,” which they regard as merely relative and subjective. Those who claim that truth is absolute and universal are rejected as oppressive and bigoted.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Christian church is marked today by a deep rejection of the intellect. Mark Noll wrote The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind 15 years ago, and its message rings even truer today than it did when it was first published. Many Christians boast in the fact that they have no patience for theology and no taste for doctrine. One of our most prominent Christian leaders even led a campaign that proclaimed a devotion to “Deeds, Not Creeds.” If we care more about what we’re doing than what we believe about why we’re doing it, at what point do our deeds cease to be acts of devotion to God and become mere do-good-ism?

So we see two tracks in the history of Christianity in America: One has been an over-emphasis on scholarship and academics and the other has been an undervaluing of the life of the mind, right? Not quite! I think we see two rails of the same track, which is the track of worldliness. Both the unfaithful scholar and the anti-intellectual are guilty of allowing the world to set the value system and priorities for the church. One runs after the world’s valuing of academics and intellectualism as ends in themselves. The other runs after our culture’s rejection of rigorous thought and deep reflection. The end result in the same: The Bible is ultimately set aside, intentionally or unintentionally, and is replaced by the values of our culture.

The Bible is not a simplistic book. To really understand and apply its message requires strong reading comprehension skills and some understanding of literature and history. The Bible displays prolific use of simile, metaphor, analogy, poetry, imagery, personification, logic, rhetorical device, etc. Part of the confusion in the church today is a misunderstanding of the difference between a proverb and a parable, between an analogy and a prophecy, between a figure of speech and an historical account. The more we sharpen our reading skills and the closer attention we pay to the language and literature of the Scriptures, the more we benefit from them. The benefit grows as we study and understand the historical and cultural background of the texts. All of this is a call to intellectual rigor.

Yet the call is not to intellectualism as an end in itself. Many Christians have been lured away from faithfulness to Scripture by the siren song of academic respectability. Evolution and naturalism both poke fun at and seek to poke holes in Scripture. Many Christians have turned their backs on the Bible in order to win the praise of men, especially in intellectual circles.

Jesus reminded us that the greatest commandment is to love God, including with all of our minds. God has chosen to reveal Himself and His plan to us in a Book - a long and complex and richly beautiful book at that. These two truths call us to attend to the life of the mind. We neglect our intellect to our own peril. Learning the patterns of history as well as the structure of sentences are essential to fulfilling our calling as Christians.

Yet we do not sharpen our minds merely to accumulate knowledge. Paul was very right when he warned us that “knowledge puffs up.” Yet he himself could build complex arguments in disputations with Jewish and Greek scholars. In this, Paul provides a model for us: Our goal is not to inflate our own knowledge and egos. Our goal is to better serve the Lord and bless others as we use that minds He has given us for His glory and for the good of others. Neither intellectual laziness nor academic snobbery have any place if we are to pursue this calling with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength! May God be pleased to grow us and to use us, according to His good purposes.

Comments

[bondChristian]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This gets my "Best post I've read today" award.

I loved the title, Loving God with all your mind. I loved the set up talking about the different universities. And I loved the points about "deeds, not creeds," knowledge puffing up, and the real purpose of knowledge. You covered so much in not too many words.

Thanks for sharing. I'm RTing this again... the first time I just said I was reading it. This time, I'm recommending it. :>)

-Marshall Jones Jr.

[Jason]

Thanks for the very kind words and the recommendation, Marshall! This is a passion of mine and I'm glad I could share it.