Friday, March 30, 2007

Revival of the Mind, part 6

In order for the church to recover the life of the mind, church leaders must lead by example; this does not lessen the responsibility of every Christian in this recovery effort. The call of Christ is a call to be a disciple, which means to be a learner of Christ by allowing Him and His Word to shape our hearts and minds. Christ is the teacher and Christians are His students. It’s no mistake that Jesus added the word “mind” in Matthew 22:37 (also in Mark 12:30 and in Luke 10:27) to Deuteronomy 6:5, helping us not to forget that our minds, as well as our hearts and souls, must be involved in our love for God.

If Christians are students, then we must do what students do—learn. Learning requires the intellect; if Christians neglect the intellect, they will prove to be worldly Christians at best, false disciples at worst. James 4:4 tells us that to be friends with the world is to be an enemy of God. Worldliness is not about whether women should wear make-up or men should have short hair; it’s about keeping our minds from being conformed to the world’s way of thinking. Mark Noll wrote, “If evangelicals do not take seriously the larger world of the intellect, we say, in effect, that we want our minds to be shaped by the conventions of our modern universities and the assumptions of Madison Avenue, instead of by God and the servants of God.” In order to avoid worldliness, Paul tells us that we must not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by a renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2), minds shaped by the biblical worldview. The foundation of all Christian thought is that there is a God and He has spoken in the Bible. The Christian mind evaluates everything through the lens of the Bible, especially the biblical doctrines of creation, fall, and redemption.

What can Christians do to help facilitate a revival of the mind? The first priority should be for every Christian to become biblically literate. Sadly, the average Christian does not have a good grasp of what the Bible teaches, or of the flow and significance of biblical history. Studying the Bible and listening intently to teaching and preaching from the Bible should once again become a priority to Christians if we’re going to see a revival of the mind.

Christians must also seek to become theologically literate. Theology literally means “words about God.” Anyone saying anything about God is engaging in theology. Obviously this means that there is good theology (words that are right about God) and bad theology (words that are wrong about God). How can we know good theology from bad theology? The Bible is God’s words about Himself and is the standard by which all words about God should be measured. Christians should learn the great theological truths of the Christian faith by reading the Bible and books by gifted Christian theologians, both past and present (I recommend books such as “Systematic Theology” by Wayne Grudem).

Next week we will conclude this series by suggesting a few more areas of study and give some final thoughts about the Christian mind.

a pdf version of this entry is available here

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posted on  Friday, March 30, 2007    |  0 comments

Friday, March 23, 2007

Revival of the Mind, part 5

If the church is going to see a revival of the mind, it first must be modeled by its leaders. Pastors must model how faith and reason are inextricably linked. There’s a great need for our pulpits to once again be filled with pastor-scholars. Today, many Christians are suffering from light, airy, meatless, short, moralistic, human-centered sermons. There is truly a famine of the Word in the land (Amos 8:11). To counter this trend, a pastor must model sound biblical exposition. He must pay special attention to the nuances of grammar and do a thorough historical investigation of the cultural setting of the text. This careful study will help him determine what the text meant to the original hearers. He should consult other scholars (preferably from a variety of time periods and denominational backgrounds to keep from getting theological tunnel vision) in commentaries and theological journals. Once he has a solid understanding of the meaning of the text, he must then build a bridge from the biblical time period to the twenty-first century.

In order to accomplish this, he must be a student of the culture by observing current thoughts and trends. He must understand differing worldviews and engage in apologetics to defend the faith (1 Peter 3:15) and to dismantle the influence of worldly philosophies (2 Cor. 10:5). As C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.” The pastor then needs to bring all of this to bear in his teaching, carefully expounding the Scriptures, anticipating and answering objections, and helping the church to apply the truth of God’s Word.

As one can imagine, this takes hours and hours of hard study (2 Tim. 2:13). This is why C. H. Spurgeon wrote to his students, “A man great at teadrinkings, evening parties, and Sunday-school excursions, is generally little everywhere else. Your pulpit preparations are your first business, and if you neglect these, you will bring no credit upon yourself or your office.” Many church members, however, would rather have a light sermonette on Sundays as long as the pastor is out drinking tea with them during the week. This suggests that the pastor is central to the life of the church, rather than the Word of God proclaimed. When the pastor’s study time is guarded, the Word of God is honored.

What about other ministry tasks, such as counseling, administration, visitation, etc.? A careful study of Scriptures shows that it was never God’s plan for one man to fulfill all of these tasks. First Timothy 5:17 says, “The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.” This verse suggests a plurality of elders [pastors], one in particular whose job it is to “work hard at preaching and teaching.” Deacons were also added to assist the pastors.

If the church continues to demand that its pastor/teacher fill his days with countless duties other than prayer and study (Acts 6:2-4) it is unlikely that the church will experience a revival of the mind or of the heart, which means that the church’s impact in our culture for the Kingdom of God will continue to be negligible.

a pdf version of this entry is available here

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posted on  Friday, March 23, 2007    |  0 comments

Friday, March 16, 2007

Revival of the Mind, part 4

In the past few weeks we’ve discussed some historical influences that brought about anti-intellectualism and the subsequent elevation of feelings within evangelicalism. Emotions are good servants but bad masters, and there are many lasting negative effects on evangelicalism from this reign of emotion.

Perhaps there’s no better example than in the area of biblical interpretation. When feelings are given the ultimate priority, everything must bow to their authority—including Scripture. I recall attending a Sunday School class years ago where a passage from the Bible was discussed. The teacher read the text, stopped at each verse and asked, “What does this verse mean to you?” As each member formulated an answer, I noticed many prefaced their answers by saying “I feel…” What’s worse, after the teacher heard the various and sundry (and some contradictory) answers, rather than concluding with solid grammatical and historical evidence as to what the verse actually meant, the teacher quickly moved to the next verse. A constant diet of this would lead one to conclude that the meaning of the text comes from within the interpreter (based on feelings), rather than discovering the meaning of the text through the hard work of biblical hermeneutics. Because of this, major doctrines are denied or reinterpreted because they just don’t ‘feel’ right. Perhaps this is why we’ve seen so many denominations and splinter groups develop in the last couple hundred years. I’m sure we’d all be amazed how much doctrinal unity could be achieved among the denominations if solid principals of biblical interpretation were employed.

This anti-intellectualism has also hurt missions and evangelism. The emphasis on faith-as-feelings means that Christians in our culture are not ready to articulate why they believe what they believe. In spite of Peter’s admonition (1 Peter 3:15) to always be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you,” many Christians are woefully unprepared, and this lack of preparation is hurting our witness to the world. When a Christian is unsure of his beliefs, he is less likely to engage others with the truth claims of the Gospel. The inability to articulate the faith is not because Christians lack intellectual acumen; many have jobs that require much thought. Christians, like anyone else, do what they deem most important, and since feelings have trumped the intellect in religious matters, studying the Bible and its doctrines are low on the priority list.

This also highlights the common sacred/secular split within the Christian mind. Religion is relegated to the private world of feelings, while the intellect is reserved for public life. Our culture doesn’t mind Christian politicians or business people, as long as their Christianity stays private and does not inform or interfere in their public lives. Many Christians have acquiesced by compartmentalizing their lives, rather than letting the Lordship of Christ inform every aspect of life. This has opened Christians up to the (sometimes accurate) charge of hypocrisy, which has further damaged our witness.

In the next few weeks, we’ll examine how Evangelicals can return to the life of the mind.

a pdf version of this entry is available here

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posted on  Friday, March 16, 2007    |  0 comments

Monday, March 12, 2007

Revival of the Mind, part 3

Last week we discussed the emphasis of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) on religious feelings and how it influenced both liberal and conservative theologians. It was the conservative’s retreat into religious feelings and away from the hard work of scholarship that helped solidify an anti-intellectual sentiment among evangelicals. But Schleiermacher was not the only influencing factor; the Second Great Awakening (1800-1820) and the revivals of Charles Finney (1824-1837) also contributed.

The 19th century revival movements were centered on emotionally charged preaching with the goal of eliciting an immediate response. Although much moral reform came from these revivals, they tended to place personal conversion and a personal relationship with Christ over against church tradition (creeds and doctrines) and traditional learning. Since personal conversion was the only thing deemed necessary, church doctrine, including the issues surrounding the Great Reformation, was viewed as unimportant. In ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,’ Mark Noll writes, “They [revival preachers] called upon individuals to take a step of faith for themselves. In so doing, they often left the impression that individual believers could accept nothing from others. Everything of value in the Christian life had to come from the individual’s own choice—not just personal faith but every scrap of wisdom, understanding, and conviction about the faith.” Added to this extreme focus on the individual, revival preachers railed against the “learned clergy” and their classical university training, creating a general mistrust of formally educated pastors (and formal education in general).

Charles Finney not only despised formal theological training, he also despised formal sermons (expository sermons) because they “put content ahead of communication.” The style of sermon Finney preferred included moving stories, no-holds-barred emotional appeals, strong humor, graphic applications, and personal appeals to come forward and sit on the ‘anxious bench’ to be converted. These sermons were purposefully devoid of any serious reflection on Christian doctrines.

Of course, personal conversion is absolutely necessary in the Christian faith, but the revivals inadvertently created a shallow, non-thinking, doctrinally illiterate form of Christianity that emerged as a part of mainstream evangelicalism. In his book, ‘No Place for Truth,’ Dr. David Wells wrote, “The church-centered faith [reformed theology] that had been favored before the Revolution retreated before itinerant revivalism, reasoned faith retreated before exuberant testimony, and theological confession retreated before the axioms of experience.” Wells also noted that when Knut Hamsun, the Norwegian Nobel prize winner visited America in the 1880’s, he observed that the typical sermon did “not contain theology but morality….They do not develop the mind, though they are entertaining.” A quick scan through preachers on television reveals that nothing much has changed. Because of this continuing neglect of the mind, much of modern evangelicalism has become a mile wide and an inch deep.

A revival of the mind does not mean Christians should become stoic, but zeal without knowledge does not honor God (Romans 10:2). In John 4:23-24, Jesus tells us that the Father is seeking those who would worship Him in spirit and in truth, meaning that true worshipers must engage both their hearts and their heads for the glory of God.

a pdf version of this entry is available here

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posted on  Monday, March 12, 2007    |  0 comments

Friday, March 02, 2007

Revival of the Mind, part 2

What historical events brought about the anti-intellectual undercurrent within evangelicalism?

A thorough study of this question would span hundreds of pages, so a quick sketch will have to suffice. Bypassing important connections such as Descartes, the Enlightenment, and Immanuel Kant, we’ll begin with Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)—known as the father of modern theology. Schleiermacher emphasized the importance of subjective feelings within Christianity. Since he rejected the authority of the Bible, he felt this move was necessary in order to maintain his Christian faith. Dr. Paul House writes, “Partly based on his reading of Immanuel Kant, Schleiermacher concluded that religion consists chiefly of intuition and feelings that lead people to have a sense of and a desire for the infinite, which he broadly defined as God…This emphasis on feeling as the essence of religion remains his most enduring legacy.”

During the 19th and 20th centuries, liberal and conservative theologians drank deeply from Schleiermacher’s well. Liberal theologians emphasized life over doctrine because, like Schleiermacher, they rejected the major doctrines of the Bible. Surprisingly, many conservative theologians were influenced by Schleiermacher as well. Take, for example, a theologian from my own tradition (Southern Baptist), E. Y. Mullins. Mullins rejected Schleiermacher’s view of the Bible, but wrote, “Schleiermacher restored Christianity to the inner life of men…. The witness of the spirit within was of the utmost importance—experience and not theory [became] the basis of certainty.” Mullins concluded, “Schleiermacher restored the experience to its place as an authority, and legitimized mysticism in the Christian churches…” More could be said about Mullins’ influence, but clearly this thinking makes internal feelings a source of authority, which inadvertently lowers the authority (and need) for the Bible and its doctrines. Dr. Gregory Thornbury warned that a faith based on feelings rather than God’s revealed word cannot endure. The Apostle Paul did not point to his inward subjective feelings as proof of the Gospel; he pointed to the brute historical facts of Christ’s death and resurrection.

As many academic theologians with German-sounding names were busy shredding the Bible and essential Christian doctrines, the emphasis on inward experience gave evangelicals a safe retreat from the increasingly hostile world of rationalism, skepticism, and scientism. Rather than sharpening the mind for battle through the hard work of study in order to “…destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God…” (2 Corinthians 10:5), we fled the battlefield. We retreated from the life of the mind, and by doing so, abandoned the universities (how many Christians are leading thinkers in our universities?). This abandonment may turn out to be our undoing, since the cultural influence has shifted from the church to the university. The university, with its current commitment to philosophical naturalism, continues to render cultural acceptance of the Gospel and the historicity of the Bible implausible.

Thankfully, there were (are) some evangelicals who girded their minds and fought. Many left us books pointing out the soft underbelly of our opponents--if only we would come out of our emotional cocoons (and turn off our TVs) long enough to read them.

Next week we’ll examine how the Second Great Awakening and the Finney Revivals contributed to the anti-intellectualism among evangelicals.

a pdf version of this entry is available here

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posted on  Friday, March 02, 2007    |  0 comments