Can we love God with our mind?
Is Christian faith virtually an affective meet with God, or about condign convinced nearly the instance for Christianity? Y'all will immediately exist crying 'Fake dichotomy!'—just it is worth reflecting on the residual between these two ideas in contemporary expressions of faith. There was a fourth dimension when the tradition of rational research was about influential, but the impact of the Charismatic Movement has decisively shifted the balance. Y'all might think that on the Blastoff Course from HTB in London it would exist the explanation of Why Jesus Died that would atomic number 82 to personal commitment—but since the influence of the Toronto Approval in the 1990s, it has been the 'Holy Spirit' 24-hour interval that has been seen as the turning point.
And withal there are people who accept either come up to organized religion or come to appreciate faith on the basis of thinking and analysis. Tom Holland is a historian, largely of the ancient world, and he explains in an commodity in the New Statesman how he came to realise through his studies that everything he actually valued originated with Christian organized religion and non with the values of the classical period:
Familiarity with the biblical narrative of the crucifixion has dulled our sense of just how completely novel a deity Christ was. About of us who live in post-Christian societies still accept for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. [Christianity] is why we by and large assume that every human being life is of equal value..In my morals and ethics, I take learned to accept that I am non Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.
(You can see him in discussion with Tom Wright on this bailiwick as part of the Unbelievable projection.)
Rodney Stark is an American social scientist and author ofThe Rising of Christianity where he applied social scientific analysis to explore the factors that explain the phenomenal growth of the Christian motion in the commencement four centuries. He came to committed organized religion as a issue of these studies:
I have always been a "cultural" Christian in that I have e'er been strongly committed to Western Civilization. Through almost of my career, however, including when I wroteThe Rise of Christianity, I was an admirer, but non a laic. I was never an atheist, simply I probably could take been best described as an doubter. As I continued to write almost religion and continued to devote more attention Christian history, I found one mean solar day several years ago that I was a Christian. Consequently, I was willing to accept an appointment at Baylor University, the world'south largest Baptist university. They do not require faculty member to be Baptists (many are Catholic) and I am not i. I suppose "independent Christian" is the best description of my current position.
Stark has continued to debate that it is the rational element of Christianity's belief in a transcendent, creator God which has had a major impact on the development of civilisation:
The appeal to reason also dominated Christian learning. Science, Stark points out, did not emerge in opposition to Christianity but within information technology: the first universities were established past the church, and early science was conducted almost exclusively by people in holy orders. Stark's roster of the most eminent 16th- and 17th-century scientists reveals that a majority were personally devout and many were themselves church officials. What is significant for Stark is that the first scientists were not but religiously affiliated just religiously inspired. Science was a calling to discover God's programme in the system of nature, or, as Stark puts information technology, to "know God's handiwork."…
Even today, Stark says, the alleged incompatibility of science and religion is not supported by the facts. Recent surveys show that more than half of "difficult" scientists such as physicists and chemists report a belief in God. A similar contour emerges in the life sciences. And if hard science is non antagonistic to religion, neither is strong organized religion inimical to science, insists Stark. "The most ardent evangelical Christians assume that the truth exists. And they don't simply hateful that God is at that place but that the world is there."
But information technology is not just sceptics outside the church building who think Christianity is irrational—there is ofttimes a strong voice within the church that claims religion is virtually trusting God in spite of the evidence. Many of our songs talk about loving God—merely they rarely mention the heed. Last week we sang that God was 'Worthy of every vocal I sing', but there was no line 'Worthy of every thought I think.' But in reality, faith and thinking belong together. David Wolfe writes (in his bookEpistemology: the justification of conventionalities):
The laic is a critical adventurer, taking rationally responsible risks. If he or she takes a leap of faith, it should exist a leap conditioned by criticism in its pick of alternatives and responsible for continued criticism later the jump. (p 71)
Faith is non a leap in the dark, but a spring into the light of understanding and truth.
When we look at Jesus' summary of the law, there is something interesting to notice:
'You shall dearest the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your force' (Deut vi.v)
'…with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your heed and with all your strength' (Marker 12.xxx)
'…with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your listen' (Matt 22.35)
'…with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your forcefulness and with all your mind' (Luke 10.27)
In each of the 3 versions in the Synoptic gospels, the term 'mind' has been added, in the case of Marking and Luke as a fourth term in addition to the other 3 that were present in the original in Deuteronomy, and in the case of Matthew in identify of the term 'strength'. What is going on here? It seems to me that there is an assumption in Jewish idea that the 'heart and soul' as metaphors for unlike aspects of the human being life are assumed to include the life of the heed, only by the time of the New Testament period these metaphors had changed their meaning. Aristotle believed that the 'listen' was in the centre ('cardiocentrism'), simply a new school of thought was arising ('encephalocentrism') which believed that the 'mind' was in the brain, a view which we more often than not concord to now. So in social club to communicate the meaning of the first commandment in Deut vi.5, either Jesus or the gospel writers (or both) needed to adapt their metaphors to this new cultural moment. Given the passionate and irrational nature of much contemporary debate, I wonder whether nosotros need to brand a similar shift, and once more emphasise the importance of thought in faith.
And at that place is a deeply theological reason why we should be doing this. The Fourth Gospel begins with an extraordinary arbitration on the 'Word, that was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst united states of america' (John 1.1, 14). Within the catechism of Scripture we would naturally call back of this Word as the expression of God's intention which created the world, the 'word of Yahweh' which came to the prophets, or perhaps the discussion of God's wisdom which functioned as the creative crafter at God'south side in Proverbs 8. But in Greek Stoic thinking, this Word, thelogos, was the generative rational principle that shaped the whole world. The gospel is making the extraordinary claim that, in Jesus, both God and the world that he has created have been made comprehensible—an idea which (every bit Rodney Stark rightly notes) has underpinned Christian thinking about science and the way the world works.
This thought of comprehensibility is clearly emphasised in the teaching of both Jesus and Paul—merely is something that nosotros often pass over. A quick search for the terms for 'mind',nous,dianoia,and 'understand', includingsuniemi, noeo andepiginosko, shows how mutual these terms are in Jesus' ministry. In the 'last supper discourse' in the Fourth Gospel, a repeated accent is on the understanding of the disciples.
I no longer telephone call you slaves merely friends—for slaves do not sympathize what the master is doing (John xv.15)
Before in his ministry building, when Jesus saw the crowds, he 'had pity on them—so he taught them' (Marker 6.34). Jesus did, of course, reply to the crowds in compassion by healing them and feeding them—but his compassion stirred by their lostness also meant that he healed and fed theirunderstanding by pedagogy them about the kingdom of God.
This emphasis on understanding is also institute all through Paul's writings. Although he begins his first letter to the Corinthians past rejecting certain Greek idea of clever rhetoric and philosophy, he in fact deploys some sophisticated arguments on a range of issues, and wants the Corinthians to fully understand:
Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil exist infants, but in your understanding be perfect (i Cor 14.20)
Paul is here using the linguistic communication of perfection,teleios, that we notice in Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: 'Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect'. In the opening of his alphabetic character to the Philippians, Paul has a similar accent on understanding:
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more than and more in cognition and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may exist pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. (Phil 1.nine–11)
Notice one time once again the interplay between dearest and understanding for maturity in the Christian life. And for the Romans, Paul's goal is that their minds would be renewed every bit they grow in organized religion:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God'due south mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. Exercise not conform to the pattern of this world, only be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you volition be able to examination and approve what God's volition is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom 12.1–2)
John Stott commented many years ago in his little volumeYour Listen Matters:
It is not plenty to know what we should be, however. We must go further and set our mind upon information technology. The battle is nearly e'er won in the mind. Information technology is by the renewal of our heed that our character and behaviour become transformed. Then Scripture calls the states once more and again to mental subject field in this respect. "Any is truthful," it says, "whatever is honourable, any is just, whatsoever is pure, whatever is lovely, any is gracious, if there is whatever excellence, if in that location is anything worthy of praise, think nigh these things."
We shouldn't be surprised by any of this; the life of the mind is essential for any beloved relationship. If we beloved someone, then we volition both think nearly them, and seek to empathise them. Relationships in which this does not happen are relationships which never achieve maturity.
When asked which is the greatest commandment, Jesus then puts the second aslope it: 'to love your neighbour as yourself'. If loving God includes the use of our minds, it appears from the New Testament that loving our neighbour also involves the life of the listen. When Philip is directed past an angel into the wilderness and meets the Ethiopian court official in Acts 8, the question he asks is 'Do you empathise what you are reading?' (Acts 8.xxx). Philip then leads him to faith by means of an expository Bible report—not a method of evangelism we oftentimes hear commended except in sure circles!
In Acts 17, when Paul is given a hearing at the Areopagus in Athens, we see him brand three moves. The showtime is to have a firm grasp on the essence of the gospel, 'Jesus and Anastasis' (Acts 17.18), which nosotros understand as 'Jesus and the resurrection' but which they mistook for a male and a female god (sinceanastasisis feminine). The second is to understand the culture that he is in—probably helped by his ain upbringing every bit a Roman citizen in Cilicia, since i of the thinkers he quotes, Aratus, was a Stoic philosopher from that region. The tertiary is and then to bridge the gap between the two, explaining how the respond of the gospel connects with the questions raised by their intellectual civilisation.
If nosotros are to beloved our neighbor, then nosotros need to do something similar. In his first letter, Peter urges his readers to do the aforementioned:
In your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Ever be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you lot to give a reason for the promise that yous have. But do this with gentleness and respect…(i Peter 3.15)
The discussion he uses for 'a reason' isapologia from which we get the term 'apologetics'. If someone asked you today, 'Why should I become a Christian? Can you lot give me any good reasons?', could you lot requite them an reply? If non, then (according to Peter) our love for neighbour lacks something. Loving with our mind is something for neighbor as well as for God.
(These thoughts are based on my training and preaching in a series on 'The Greatest Commandment' in which I explored 'Loving God…with all your mind'. In that location sermon can be listened to on the St Nic's website here.)
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