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A few months back, my father-in-law recommended I read the book Bullies and Saints by the Australian historian John Dickson. Billed as an “honest look at the good and evil of Christianity,” my only regret in reading it is that I didn’t do it sooner. I wrote down two thoughts upon completion:
Christianity is not an exclusively intellectual pursuit.
However, Christianity is an inherently intellectual pursuit.
The first thought is readily observable in our present time. Christian nationalism and the mix of bigotry and power-seeking embodied by the macro-evangelical movement are frightening decades-old mutations. Moreover, there is an acceleration in both intensity and volume of anti-intellectual sentiment as the lines separating social and political ideology from Christianity become increasingly invisible.
The divorce from history, rather than the application of wisdom and scholarship over two millennia, creates much of the wrongheadedness in modern Christians.
Take, for instance, the perceived opposition of Christianity to science and vice-versa. This modern phenomenon is not one validated by history. Dickson writes:
This insistence on prescribed learning and observation was not constrained to Christian theologians.
Are any of you big John Philoponus fans?
Despite having a name that screams “drummer,” he was a scientist during the sixth century. He wrote not only extensive theological treatises but also produced detailed commentaries on Aristotle. To the latter, Dickson describes his work as:
…the first full-blown critique of Aristotle’s concept of an eternal cosmos. His argument was not that the Bible said so (“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,” Gen 1:1). Philoponus made his case for a time-bound, contingent universe—created ex nihilo (out of nothing)—on purely philosophical and logical grounds. His work touching on physics and metaphysics influenced early western scientists such as Galileo Galilei.
Galileo, a man Stephen Hawking says, probably bears more responsibility for the birth of modern science than anybody else. In fact, Albert Einstein referred to him as“the father of modern science.” Galileo, like many of his scientific forebearers, was a Christian.
When you look at Christianity today, do you see thinkers?
Do you see artists, scientists, and philosophers?
Do you see the generous, the loving, and the humble?
If you don't, is that due to a lack of existence or a lack of magnification?
For me, that is a fundamental question. Ignorance and convenience are parallel paths.
If you look at modern Christianity from the outside and only see the social and political ideologies stirred within, that is poor thinking; you should go deeper.
If you are Christian and find yourself in a church body teaching and espousing beliefs that are unsupported by Jesus and thousands of years of scholarship, that is poor thinking; you should go deeper.
Jesus states (emphasis added by me)” “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)
Christian nationalism, the health-and-wealth movement, and the pseudo-self-help, mass-market, easily digestible performative moralism of most prominent evangelical institutions all require the neutering of the mind to achieve their aim. An aim without question that points hearts and souls towards something different and distant from Jesus.
The Stoic philosopher Seneca states: “You should think in such a way that everybody could look into your soul and see what is transpiring there.”
What do you see in the soul of the church today?
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