Christ Across the Disciplines by Lundin Roger;Barr Stephen M.;Bassard Katherine Clay;Bebbington David;Begbie Jeremy S.;

Author:Lundin, Roger;Barr, Stephen M.;Bassard, Katherine Clay;Bebbington, David;Begbie, Jeremy S.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Published: 2014-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

The Gift of Thought

For Christian faith, the intellect and its operations are not pure natural elements but created realities, to be explicated by reference to God’s loving work of origination, preservation, reconciliation, and perfection. Only as we are brought to know that divine charity is the setting in which we enact ourselves do we come to understand our own nature, including our intellectual nature. But God’s charity and its formation of our lives are only indirectly perceptible, known only in the course of making our answer to divine grace. Because this is so, Christians cannot escape a measure of estrangement from their neighbors who do not make the Christian confession; the estrangement is such that those neighbors may sometimes view Christian conceptions of the intellectual life with amusement, disdain, or even hostility. There is no surprise in this: it is an axiom of Christian faith that “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God” (Rom. 8:7), and Christians trying to map the world with a firm eye on their confession will endure a share of that hostility. It is important to respond to this state of affairs prudently: neither anxiously nor with belligerent zeal, but with tranquil confidence that the gospel outbids the world; with modesty, because the gospel can look after itself; and with charity, because the gospel seeks our neighbor’s good and not just our neighbor’s defeat. To this end, calm exposition of first principles serves the gospel best. The truth will establish itself; we must simply let it run on its own path.

177. On this, see K. L. Schmitz, “Analysis by Principles and Analysis by Elements,” in Graceful Reason: Essays in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy Presented to Joseph Owens CSSR, ed. L. P. Gerson (Toronto: PIMS, 1983), pp. 315-30.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.