ShelfLife

Scattershooting while spending a September Sunday afternoon thinking about the role of mind in developing a biblical worldview instead of about football or golf . . .

1. Who is J. Gresham Machen? How many of us flew by the quotation that introduces Chapter 3? If I had not known the name, I might have. Machen lived from 1881 to 1937, taught at Princeton Seminary, led a conservative revolt against the influx of liberalism into Princeton, and later founded Westminster Theological Seminary as a conservative alternative. You can read some basic facts about Machen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Gresham_Machen. He was the author of at least three fascinating books: Christianity and Liberalism, The Origin of Paul’s Religion, and The Virgin Birth of Christ. Check them out and you will find that the author valued engagement in the battle of worldviews and ideas as a highly worthwhile pursuit for people committed to biblical Christianity.

2. The Thesis of Chapter 3 (p. 67)

• “The mind is the soul’s primary vehicle for making contact with God, and it plays a fundamental role in the process of human maturation and change, including spiritual transformation.”
• “[S]ince truth dwells in the mind, truth itself is powerful and rationality is valuable as a means of obtaining truth and avoiding error. Therefore, God desires a life of intellectual growth and study for His children.”

Why is this so? If you think about it, the mind is the central player in the drama we call growing up. We cannot either will or emote ourselves to maturity. The mind must comprehend and translate information into knowledge and understanding that can be acted upon by the will and emotions. Obtaining truth and acting in conformity with it characterizes the maturation process.

3. Is Redeemed Man Dichotomous or Trichotomous and does it matter? Moreland views man as being made up of body and soul and views the spirit as a faculty within the soul. Others view redeemed man as trichotomous; that is, being made up of body, soul, and spirit (see, e.g., Romans 8:16, Ephesians 4:23, 1 Thessalonians 5:23). Not sure that it matters for our purposes, but if you are interested in digging further into this question, you can start at http://www.gotquestions.org/body-soul-spirit.html. We will leave for another day a discussion of how our view of the nature of man impacts our theology, but as the gotquestions.org article concludes, it is impossible to be dogmatic about whichever of these views we adopt.

4. Why This Book Matters–Part A? If you remember nothing else from this chapter, remember and meditate on the Machen quote on p. 76 and on this sentence: “Our modern post-Christian society is perilously close to regarding Christian claims as mere figments in the minds of the faithful.” (p. 76) This is why this book matters and why we cannot cede the public discourse on the culture wars to the secularists and humanists. If Christianity no longer can be entertained seriously within the plausibility structures of the minds of nonbelievers, then our evangelistic efforts will be relegated to the category of “harmless delusion” or fig newtons in the minds of the faithful.

5. Why This Book Matters–Part B? Moreland posits that “the mind stands out for special emphasis because it is so neglected today by many Christians. The contemporary Christian mind is starved, and as a result we have small impoverished souls.” (p. 80) He adds:

[T]he power of the spiritual life is real but unavailable to us if we don’t understand the true nature of prayer, fasting, and so forth. This is why truth is so powerful. It allows us to cooperate with reality , whether spiritual or physical, and tap into its power. As we learn to think correctly about God, specific scriptural teachings, the soul, or other important aspects of a Christian worldview, we are placed in touch with God and those realities. And we thereby gain access to the power available to us to live in the kingdom of God. (pp. 81-82)

I desire access to that power. Do you? What are you willing to do to gain access to that power?

6. Diet and Exercise for the Mind. Just as our physical bodies are reflective of what we eat and how we exercise, so our minds reflect what we feed them and how we exercise them. It is a fact morphing into cliche to say that the church today has lost its distinctiveness from the surrounding society. Whether the comparison is divorce or intellectual vigor, the church looks like the rest of society. Herbert Schlossberg’s warning against the “intellectual flabbiness of the larger society” (p. 85) gives context to Moreland’s statement that “[m]any people today, including many Christians, simply do not read or think deeply at all.” (p. 87) Blame schools, TV, emails, or whatever, but we tend to avoid things that make us work hard or think deeply. A life of spiritual virtue requires hard work, self-discipline, sacrifice, and perseverance. I often hear people wistfully declare how they would love to know the Bible as well as Todd Wagner does. My reply is that when they have spent 25 years studying and memorizing Scripture, they will have a great start in having Scripture inform their daily thinking. To develop a mind that can compete in the arena of ideas, Moreland explains that believers must alter their reading habits and indeed their “entire approach to the life of the mind as part of Christian discipleship.” (p. 87)

7. Scriptural Antidotes to the Empty Self. I have listed below some verses that provide scriptural antidotes to the traits of the Empty Self described in chapter 4. What other verses can you cite to combat the Empty Self? List them in a comment and commit them to memory!

• Individualistic–Hebrews 10:24-25, Acts 2:42-47.
• Infantile–1 Corinthians 13:11; Hebrews 5:11-14.
• Narcisstic–Philippians 2:3-8; Philippians 3:7-9; Romans 12:3.
• Passive–1 Corinthians 16:13-14.
• Sensate–2 Corinthians 4:16-18.
• Definition by external factors–Philippians 3:3-9.
• Hurried and busy–Matthew 11:28-30.

Hope you are enjoying this book as much as I am and that it will both encourage and inform your development of a mind prepared to do battle for a biblically Christian worldview in the marketplace of ideas. BC

Bobby Crotty
bcrotty@watermark.org
214.361.2275