Christians, the Life of the Mind and Easter

In these days of cultural, spiritual and political chaos, it is relevant that sometimes we Christians fail to use the brains God gave us in order to understand truths as deeply as possible.  No less than the incisive apologist Dr. John Patrick, also a physician, has made the same point; that the evangelical world abandoned the life of the mind two centuries ago. (I paraphrase, so apologies if I misrepresent. It was from a lecture by Dr. Patrick, not a text, that I borrowed this.  You can find Dr. Patrick at https://www.johnpatrick.ca/)

Recently, this article was forwarded by a longtime mentor and friend.

The author is concerned that Christians have abandoned intellectual pursuits regarding the faith.

So I think that there are two issues at work.  One is that without question, some Christians are not ‘intellectual’ whatever that means.  If it means academically inclined, and given to deep reading and understanding of the faith, that’s probably true although perhaps more are than secular individuals might believe. If it means (by default) tending to be secular, upper class, skeptical and culturally progressive, then it’s even more true that Christians often are not.  Sometimes the word ‘intellectual’ is simply a thing used to draw distinctions between the right kind of modern people and the wrong kind. In that sense, it is a poor word indeed.

However, given the wide appeal of the faith, it was never going to be an intellectual sort of religion.  St. Paul said of the Gospel, in 1st Corinthians 1:23, ‘but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles’ (which meant, in a real sense, non-Jewish Greeks).  So the Gospel would defy the old law of works and would also be confusing to those trying to figure things out with philosophy alone.

However, one more thing concerns me. And that is that when men wish for the church to be more ‘educated’ and ‘intellectual,’ what they often mean is for the church to accept that it is preaching a nice moral story about a nice moral man named Jesus, who never did miracles and certainly didn’t die and come back from the grave.

Here again, St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:19  16For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19If our hope in Christ is for this life alone, we are to be pitied more than all men.

If we submit to this and say ‘well, I’m educated and all of that blather about death and resurrection and sin is nice but quite pointless. I simply try to live a good life,’ then we miss the point entirely.  Jesus was not crucified for being nice, but for condemning sin and calling himself co-equal with God the Father.

Easter is upon us this week.  Even now, there is no disconnect between faith and intellectual pursuits.  Obviously, libraries have been written on this topic.  But while I absolutely encourage Christians to grow in knowledge and seek deeper truths in the faith, it is not required and it will never be the thing that defines us as believers.  We are defined by Jesus. The one whose death and resurrection we remember this coming week.

Edwin

PS I also attached these links for those wanting to get a taste of the more intellectual side of Christianity.  This merely scratches the faintest bit of the surface.