Why Your Mind Matters
By Tim Chester and John R. W. Stott
John R. W. Stott was a theologian, pastor, author of more than 50 books, and one of the most influential evangelicals of the twentieth century. He was also a proponent of Christians loving God with their minds and a critic of anti-intellectualism in the church. Below, author Tim Chester summarizes Stott’s biblical case for the importance of the Christian mind.
Addressing evangelicals . . . in Your Mind Matters Stott identifies four reasons why Christians should use their minds based on the doctrines of creation, revelation, redemption, and judgment.
First, God created humanity with a capacity to think. This is one factor that distinguishes us from other animals. Indeed, unthinking people are rebuked in the Scriptures for behaving in a bestial way (Pss. 32:9; 73:22). “God expects man to co-operate with him, consciously and intelligently.” It is true that humanity’s reason is now corrupted by sin, but this does not allow us to retreat from reason, not least because our instincts and emotions are also corrupted by sin. In spite of our fallenness, God still commands people to think and to interpret the world around them (Isa. 1:18; Matt. 16:1–4; Luke 12:54–57).
Second, God’s self-revelation indicates the importance of the mind, for God’s revelation is rational revelation, both his general revelation in nature and his special revelation in Scripture. God himself is “a rational God, who made us in his own image rational beings, has given us in nature and in Scripture a double, rational revelation, and expects us to use our minds to explore what he has revealed.” “The assumed ability of man to read what God has written in the universe is extremely important,” says Stott. In The Contemporary Christian he explains, “All scientific research is based on the convictions that the universe is an intelligible, even meaningful, system; that there is a fundamental correspondence between the mind of the investigator and the data being investigated; and that this correspondence is rationality.” In other words, God has made a rational world with predictable patterns in nature, and God has made humanity with rational minds that can discern these patterns in nature.
So Stott refuses to view science as an enemy. He critiques the god-of-gaps approach, in which the notion of God is employed merely to explain whatever is otherwise inexplicable. The problem with this is that the space left for God has been increasingly squeezed as scientific understanding has advanced so that now there is no need for God in a modernist worldview. But it is wrong to conceive science and Scripture as parallel or competing approaches. The real parallels are between nature and Scripture (complementary sources of information), and science and theology (our complementary attempts to make sense of this information).
Third, Christians need to use their minds because salvation is applied through the proclamation of the gospel—words addressed to minds. Human rationality is key to redemption. “Communication in words presupposes a mind which can understand and interpret them.”
What about Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1:21: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe”? The contrast here, says Stott, is not between a rational and irrational presentation. The limitation of human wisdom does not mean God has dispensed with rationality. Instead, the contrast is between human wisdom (which, blinded by human pride, is in fact ignorance) and divine revelation (rationally presented in gospel proclamation). Not only does the gospel address the mind; it also renews the mind (Eph. 4:23; Col. 3:10). Indeed, a spiritual person can be said to possess “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:15–16). In The Living Church, Stott adds, “I do not hesitate to say that anti-intellectualism and the fullness of the Spirit are mutually incompatible.”
The fourth reason Christians should use their minds is that the doctrine of judgment assumes the importance of the mind. “For if one thing is clear about biblical teaching on the judgment of God, it is that God will judge us by our knowledge, by our response (or lack of response) to his revelation.” Stott cites Jeremiah’s warnings of judgment because the people had failed to listen to revelation (Jer. 7:25–26; 11:4, 7–8; 25:3–4; 32:33; 44:4–5) and Paul’s assertion that all people are guilty before God because everyone has received revelation in some form or other (Rom. 1–2). Jesus himself says, “The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day” (John 12:48).
These four reasons explain why the Scriptures exhort us to acquire knowledge and wisdom (Prov. 1:22; 3:13–15; Isa. 5:13; Jer. 4:22; Hos. 4:6; 1 Cor. 2:6; 3:1–2; Heb. 5:11–6:3; 2 Pet. 1:5). They explain, too, why so many of Paul’s prayers focus on growth in knowledge (Eph. 1:17–19; 3:14–19; Phil. 1:9–11; Col. 1:9–10). Stott concludes:
Perhaps the current mood (cultivated in some Christian groups) of anti-intellectualism begins now to be seen as the serious evil it is. It is not true piety at all but part of the fashion of the world and therefore a form of worldliness. To denigrate the mind is to undermine foundational Christian doctrines. Has God created us rational beings, and shall we deny our humanity which he has given us? Has God spoken to us, and shall we not listen to his words? Has God renewed our mind through Christ, and shall we not think with it? Is God going to judge us by his Word, and shall we not be wise and build our house upon this rock?
Content taken from Stott on the Christian Life by Tim Chester, ©2020. Used by permission of Crossway. Find Stott on the Christian Life at Amazon and other major booksellers.
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