Why is it that wherever the gospel goes the academy follows? What does the gospel have to do with the mind? I have tried—across five major themes—to delineate something of the relationship between the Christian vision of God, man, and the world and the intellectual life. The two theses I have argued are:
1. The Christian vision of God, man, and the world provides the necessary precondition for the recovery of any meaningful intellectual life.
2. The Christian vision of God, man, and the world offers a particular, unique understanding of what the intellectual life might look like.
When we look at the five main themes of this book, we see that the Christian understanding of reality provides a coherent account of the possibility of the intellectual life. There is an inextricable connection between the gospel and the mind.
First, I suggested that a doctrine of creation provides a reason to attend to reality, since historically to believe in creation is to believe that we live in a real and ordered and good world. There is something there to be understood and studied, and reality is not simply an illusion. We also saw that there is an important corollary of the doctrine of creation—the centrality of history. For a number of reasons, including the affirmation that we live in a created world, the Christian faith encourages attention to history. At the heart of all of reality lies a series of events that make up the gospel. And this gospel—the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15)—shapes all of human history. It is a past-tense reality that bears on all that follows. Hence at the heart of Christianity lies the impetus to be a people who regard the past as important to the present. Likewise, we saw that often in Scripture God’s people are called to remember, to recall what God has spoken in the past as central to life in the present. Christians, in short, are a people who look both backward and forward.
Second, we noted that the premodern (and generally) Christian world was often shaped by a belief that there was a telos at the center of history. History is going somewhere, and so are we. All of life is animated by a goal. In Paul’s terms, we will one day see God face-to-face, and “I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). I maintained that this sense of a telos shaped premodern intellectual life in profound ways, for people knew that their intellectual deliberations had meaning and purpose, and that they were thinking and living in a world guided and governed toward an appointed end. With the loss of this sense of a telos in the modern world there has been a corresponding confusion in thought, for when the denial of a telos is taken to its natural and logical conclusion, it leads ultimately to nihilism.
Third, I contended that the cross is central to the life of the mind. On a biblical understanding, we live on this side of the fall, and sin marks all of who we are, including our intellect. The cross redeems not just part of us, but all of who we are. Thus, it is proper to explore the ways in which the atoning work of Christ relates to the life of the mind. I suggested that the atonement allows us to think God’s thoughts after him, and to see the world in light of who God is and what he has spoken to us. It is a mistake to privilege the human mind as sequestered from the effects of sin. The work of Christ allows—and invites—us to approach the living God, and it is only through the atonement that we can understand both God and the created order. Indeed, nullus intellectus sine cruce: “There is no understanding without the cross.”
Fourth, I jumped into the contemporary fray over the nature of language. These were perhaps the densest chapters in the book. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have witnessed bewildering developments in the understanding of language. There have always been pockets of skepticism in the Western intellectual tradition, but trends like deconstructionism, I argued, were the full flowering of the modernist worldview applied to language. Rooted in nihilism, deconstruction denies the possibility of determinate meaning and indeed cuts the heart out of the possibility of meaningful language. I suggested—leaning heavily on Augustine—that a Christian understanding of reality provides a compelling and coherent account of language. We live in a world with a Word—the Logos, the second person of the Trinity—at the heart of all reality. Since God is a communicating being who has created us through a Word to be communicating beings, and since all things cohere in this Word, there is good reason to affirm the possibility of meaning in language. All language is spoken against the backdrop of the Word, and all language should find its ultimate end in the “transcendental signified”—the triune Creator and Redeemer and Word sender, God.
Fifth, I emphasized that on a Christian understanding there is a fundamentally, though often overlooked, moral component to knowledge, and that true knowledge includes within it an appropriate response. I took my cue from John Calvin that “our mind cannot apprehend God without rendering some honor to him.” To know God is to honor him, and the honoring of God is not a peripheral addition to the knowledge of God; rather, honoring God actually helps constitute the knowledge of God itself. I stressed that knowing is a moral reality, and that our hearts and wills are bound up with our ability to know. Following Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, and Pascal, I suggested that we ultimately do not know or “see” rightly when our loves are disordered (Augustine), or when the eye of our heart needs cleansing (Hugh), or when we do not approach all things through the reality of Jesus (Pascal). In short, all knowing is inextricably moral, and the only way to have our loves ordered rightly is through Christ.
What I have written is a type of apologia (defense) of the Christian faith—perhaps not in the traditional sense, but an apologia nonetheless. If what I am arguing is true, then the recovery of any sort of meaningful intellectual life will be rooted in Christ and the gospel. And this makes all the sense in the world. The God of the Christian Bible is a God who is personal, relational, triune, and rational. (I realize that the word rational needs the proper qualifications.) He is a God who is not primarily sensed or felt—although that is part of our experience—but known. Thus, the fundamental goodness of knowledge is at the heart of a Christian understanding of the intellectual life. This God, who is himself personal, relational, triune, and rational, has made a world, and this world reflects the one who made it. We humans as image bearers reflect God in a unique way (a truth about which there will be pressure to compromise in our day), but the world as a whole ultimately reflects the God who made it. And hence, the Christian faith encourages attention to the world, its structures, and its mysteries.
If what I am arguing is true, then the anti-intellectualism that sometimes marks traditional Christianity needs to be addressed. If the gospel has within it the resources to promote the life of the mind, why do we see anti-intellectualism in portions of the Christian church? I can only offer three brief comments here.
First, it is likely that some persons have been unfairly written off as anti-intellectuals. Christians should be slow to believe what the secular media tells us about this or that Christian group.
Second, much of what passes for intellectual sophistication in contemporary culture is—if we are honest—undeserving of that description. If the acquisition of true knowledge requires—as I have argued in this book—that our hearts and wills be properly ordered, then much of what passes for knowledge is not, in fact, true knowledge.
Third, a pastoral word: C. S. Lewis argued in “Learning in War-Time” that certain Christians are called—by vocation—to apply their minds in a sustained way to the intellectual life. Christians who engage in intensive study should never forget the Christian church.[*] Much like the Dúnedain in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, who patiently and faithfully guarded the Shire (even though the hobbits were unaware of their presence), so Christians engaging in scholarship should consider the moral obligation of their task. We engage in the life of the mind—at least partially—because we have a moral obligation to help and indeed to protect other Christians as we are able.
As is often the case with writing, many things have been left unsaid, and inviting trails unexplored. We are finite beings, and time and space are limited. I have not explored in any detail the fascinating world of contemporary science, and an extremely important field it is. I have suggested, however, that all knowledge, at the end of the day, can only be accounted for with the insights provided by the Christian vision of God, man, and the world. I have not suggested that only Christians have knowledge, although I have said that a fuller knowledge requires minds and hearts transformed by Christ. I have argued that it is the Christian understanding of reality that can account for the possibility of the intellectual life.
We are pilgrims traveling to the celestial city, and like Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress, we encounter various challenges and dilemmas along the way. We are progressing to our ultimate destiny, where, as Paul says, we will see God face-to-face. We will know fully as we are fully known (1 Cor. 13:12), knowing God more than we do now, though never exhaustively. And that knowledge will always be a gracious gift, as is all of our current knowledge. We will enter into the heavenly city because of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. We will one day see the face of God because we have been transformed by the cross of Jesus.
As pilgrims, we live in this “already-and-not-yet” age between the inauguration and consummation of the kingdom of God. We may see “dimly” now, but we are still called to see and to know both God and his world. We engage in intellectual deliberation not only with the confidence that knowing is consistent with the Christian faith, but also with an awareness that the Christian gospel itself—and the larger Christian vision of reality—can account for the possibility of any knowledge whatsoever. This should make us profoundly humble rather than proud. We are God’s creatures, and we think and know and engage our minds on his terms. We know now with confidence that all of our intellectual efforts find their true and ultimate terminus in knowledge of God himself. Such knowledge is possible because we have been transformed by God’s most gracious act on Calvary two thousand years ago.
This essay is taken from the epilogue to The Gospel and the Mind: Recovering and Shaping the Intellectual Life)
This essay was first published here in April 2013.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
* C.S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949).
The featured image is “Saint Isidor of Sevilla” (1655) by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
“Third, I contended that the cross is central to the life of the mind.”
Does this man mean that Jews cannot think? And Muslims and the rest of the non-Christian world? Or did he just forget to mention them as an oversight, maybe because his ordinary audiences are almost all Tennessee Christians?
Uncharacteristically for me, I would like to hear the author’s answer to this.
I am not the author, but he does state further into the article:
“I have not suggested that only Christians have knowledge, although I have said that a fuller knowledge requires minds and hearts transformed by Christ. I have argued that it is the Christian understanding of reality that can account for the possibility of the intellectual life.”
While I certainly do not speak for Dr. Green, I believe the argument here, and one I agree with, is that while all people, created in the image of God, are able to consider and reason and stumble upon truths, we are not able to find Truth without the Cross. This means that while all truth is God’s truth, any seeking of Truth without the Cross is necessarily flawed because it doesn’t not ultimately arrive at a proper understanding of God and His creation.
This affirms what I have long believed about Christian faith and the human intellect. Too many people, Christian and non-Christian alike, have equated faith with an unwillingness to think critically and independently. How unfortunate!
I disagree that to know God is necessarily to honor Him. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God, or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Romans 1:21, ESV.
Many in our culture know God, or claim to know Him, but they deny His true nature. They substitute their own conceptions of God for the truth about Him, practicing idolatry.
We must reclaim the intellectual life if we are to truly honor God.
“In short, all knowing is inextricably moral, and the only way to have our loves ordered rightly is through Christ.” I share Mr. Masty’s concern about the possible implications of such statements, though I understand that a Christian apologist will, by definition, insist on the superiority of Christianity. Isn’t it possible that Christ can “order” and guide the loves and lives even of non-Christians, benighted sorts who will never to their dying day confess him as Lord? Is the search for the true, the good and the beautiful to be fruitless for those who don’t utter the proper password? That just doesn’t seem fair.
Not to be glib, but if “we have been transformed by God’s most gracious act on Calvary two thousand years ago”: why don’t I feel transformed? And why doesn’t the world around me appear to have been transformed? (A line from Walker Percy’s LANCELOT, I believe: “Look around you–does it look like we are redeemed?” That character did not, of course, speak for Mr. Percy, but I found him persuasive.)
Hi All: Thanks for taking the time to read and respond.
Just a thought or two . . .
1. On Christians and non-Christians and how they know or do not know things. I am making a couple of points in the book which are briefly summarized in the epilogue printed here at TIC. First, I am suggesting (at an ontological level) that it is because we live in this world–a world created, governed, and sustained by God–that knowledge is possible. This first point does not delve into the questions of whether Christians and non-Christians know in the exact same way, etc. The first point is simply stating that it is because we live in a certain kind of world–created, governed, sustained by God–that knowledge is possible. The second point is (likely?) more tricky and controversial. I am arguing that not only are all persons created, but all persons are (now) sinful. And sin affects our minds, or our knowing process. I DO think non-Christians know things. Virtually all brances of the Christian faith affirm something akin to “common grace”–we live in a world where God graciously provides for all of creation, and provides for both Christian and non-Christian alike. I believe that Christian and non-Christian alike “know”–at one level. But nonetheless, sin does have an impact on our noetic (knowing) abilities, and it is only when we know/interpret/make sense of the world in light of God and his revelation to us that we can more fully and deeply and truly know as we ought (note: I am not saying we know things exhaustively).
2. On knowing and honoring God. Short reply: the word or concept of “knowing” can be used differently in the Bible. We can “know” God as Romans 1 talks about–a knowledge where we know God but fail to honor him. And this is just my point–such knowledge is woefully short of what it ought to be. My point is that there is also a knowledge which–if it is truly knowledge–includes within it as a constitutive reality the honoring of God. We have been sold a corrupt bill of goods in the modern era (although all ages have struggled with this): the idea that “knowledge” simply consists in downloading data, facts, etc. I am suggesting that to know God–in a saving and more ultmate way–means we will be a people marked by honoring God (cf. John 14 and 15), and my forthcoming book, “Covenant Command: Works, Obedience, and Faithfulness in the New Covenant”, InterVarsity Press; tentative title).
Happy to correspond more!
Thanks for the great questions.
Takecare,
Brad
Okay, Dr Green, I am surely no theologian and may even be a bit thick. But i was looking at some 16th C prints up for auction (it is Old Masters season at the auction houses), especially Israhel van Meckenem who was possibly Jewish and Rembrandt who was certainly Jewish. Many of their customers were Christians, and a vast amount of their work was scenes from the New Testament. By most accounts it rivals Durer whose was a Christian. For most of us it is moving and powerful Christian art. God can see their souls while we can only see their works, but in what respect could their thinking have been clearer and their art better or more inspirational had they been Christian?
S. Masty:
Greetings. I like your point. Yes, I do affirm that all sorts of folks can produce great art, literature, architecture, etc. And I would suggest that God’s common grace is behind all such efforts.
A slightly different point I am making is that it is only when God and the world are viewed through the lens of the lordship of Christ that things come more thoroughly into focus, for it is in Christ that all things cohere, and He is Lord of all reality. Similarly, as a Christian I affirm that knowing is a moral endeavour, and as long as one does not bow the knee to the risen Jesus, one is engaged in a moral suppression of the most central truth of all (the Lordship of Jesus)–and this moral suppression has epistemological consequences.
By the way, could I get your name, so I could address better than “S.”! 🙂
Take care,
Brad
And S. Masty–please do call me Brad.
Take care,
Brad
Brad, that echoes Lewis in Mere Christianity, and probably gets you a corner seat in the celestial pub with the Inklings! Best wishes, Stephen
Stephen:
Happy to be associated with the Inklings! Take care Stephen.
Brad
Worthy comments. I have had the privilege of studying the Bible from the perspective of intellectualism, since the days when I took a Master of Arts in American Social & Intellectual History. During the time of earning that degree, I postulated that if the Bible was inspired by Omniscience then it must reflect a depth of wisdom commensurate with that fact. Further studies confirmed that idea. One of the things I discovered is that the revelation makes use of therapeutic paradoxes in order to deal with man’s fallen situation as in the case of the woman of Canaan in Mt.15:21-28. Further research also revealed that the teachings of the Bible are set forth in a fashion that is apparently contradictory and not meant to be reconciled but, instead, to produce a tension which enables and empowers the believer to be balanced, flexible, creative, constant, and magnetic. In short, God’s best advertisement of the Gospel, a mature believer.
Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God…Doctrine & Covenants 109:8
Bravo! A virtuoso of performance of rational thought, a commentary of understanding. I find the use of the “reasonable” in Roms.12:1 (KJV), “rational” in others (though I reject the “spiritual” in one translation, yet is true that logic is the servant of such and by implication could be so identified, but, considering, the abuses of that term, it is misleading). However, the term, “logical,” virtually a transliteration of the term from the Greek to the English, along with the call to repentance, “a change of mind based upon reflection, upon thinking of a matter as God thinks, tells us that we are dealing with the supreme intellectual tour de force of the Supernatural God who is communicating to man His deepest and most challenging reflections. It was in many years of research in church history and in the Bible that I came to realize that the ideas of Scripture are so designed as to make the believer balanced, flexible, creative, constant, and magnetic, in short, the best subliminally seductive advertisement of the Gospel, a mature believer in Christ.
Can it be that we are on the verge of an intellectual renaissance of thinking that shall capture the minds and hearts of all of mankind, even of the whole earth, and that for a thousand generations (note: not years, but generations, anywhere from 20,000-900,000 years), beginning, hopefully, in this one and winning every last soul and continuing for all those milleniums and reaching millions and billions of planets as mankind spreads to the stars in order for God’s bit of humor in Rev.7:9, “a number that no one can number,” to have a real punch to it?
I completely agree on all points, but am sometimes amazed at the wisdom of non-Christians. Ludwig von Mises was tge greatest economist of the past century though an agnostic Jew. He may have become a Christian late in life.
Great intellect is the image of God leaking through.