Don’t Discourage Christian Scholarship

“Don’t go to seminary; it will ruin you.” That sentence has been frigidly shot like an arrow into the heart of many a seminary student before he makes the journey to a center of Christian training, learning, and scholarship. For the most part, these icy comments come from well-intentioned hearts. Many churchgoing people assume that once a student begins the process of Christian higher learning, he will be more concerned with higher education than Christ. His passion for the gospel will be replaced with arrogant, theologically liberal academia. This assumption results from a bias against Christian scholarship and a consensus, either consciously or subconsciously, that it simply doesn’t matter. Therefore, the goals of this article are to construct a proper, skeptic-swaying definition of Christian scholarship, consider why it matters, and describe how it is rightly accomplished.

Christian Scholarship Defined

Before one can construct a definition of Christian scholarship, one must admit that the Scriptures are replete with warnings to those who have overly inflated views of their intelligence. The skeptical congregant has a biblical warrant for the warning fired at the young seminarian. Paul writes, “This ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God” (1 Corinthians 8:1-3). Elsewhere he instructs the Colossians: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8). So, the Scriptures clearly point out the reality of intellectual pride. Still, as James Sire rightly observes, “Many Christians have interpreted these passages to mean that Christians should avoid the world of scholarship and philosophy. This is surely not a proper understanding of Paul’s word.”[1] While it is undoubtedly true that the Scriptures rebuke pride, the conclusion cannot be drawn from references to intellectual pride that all academic pursuit is pride. Christ commands Christians to love the Lord with all their minds, and Christian scholarship is an intentional loving of the Lord with one’s entire mind. More precisely, Christian scholarship is a vocational devotion of the mind to God by faith toward the end of God-glorifying Christian virtue.  

Vocational Devotion of the Mind to God

“Vocational devotion of the mind” refers to the commitment of one’s mental and intellectual faculties to study. It is a given that other obligations may be present, and as such, the academic pursuit is more than a job. Indeed, it is a vocation, a sacred calling. Sertillanges agrees when he comments, “A vocation is something that cannot be had for the asking. It comes from heaven and from our first nature.”[2] Therefore, as such a heavenly calling, the mind’s devotion is to God, in whose image humanity is made (Genesis 1:26). More precisely, as Christian scholars, vocational dedication comes through the reign of Christ in the heart. “Christ reigns by unfolding himself in men.”[3] As Christ himself commanded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

Faith

Vocational devotion of the mind isn’t accomplished in a vacuum or due to specific, intentional effort on the part of the Christian scholar. Instead, this devotion is performed by the transformative work of Christ in the heart of the Christian through faith. David Crump makes this point clearly: “The integrating point of my life with Christ, both devotional and intellectual, must be found in this experience of personal encounter forged in faith.”[4] The personal encounter with Christ through faith alters the entire course of human existence and thus revises the course of the human intellectual pursuit. Crump points out that faith in no way undermines or excludes such an intellectual pursuit.

This pathway of faith is not just one possibility among many. It is not an anti-intellectual evasion of difficult questions or a mystical mantra circumventing reason or analysis. It is quite simply the only avenue available for authentic Christian understanding, given the distinctive natures of both the seeker (self-deceived sinners like us) and the Sought (an incarnate, resurrected Savior).[5]

So there needn’t be a dichotomy between the vocational devotion of the mind to God and a “simple faith” in Christ. On the contrary, faith in Christ is the center of Christian scholarship.  

Goal: God-Glorifying Christian Virtue

What then is the goal of Christian scholarship or vocational devotion of the mind to God by faith? The ultimate end of Christian scholarship, and indeed the universe, is the glory of God (Isaiah 48:9-11; Romans 11:36; 1 Corinthians 10:31). One precise ascription of praise to God comes in the form of Christian virtue or the actual living of the Christian life. James Sire rightly summarizes this concept when he says, “We are made in the image of God: we thus glorify God by reflecting the character of God in our being—the way we think and act.”[6] So, the goal of Christian scholarship is God-glorifying Christian virtue. In her book By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine, Ellen Charry argues that doctrine and its study are fundamentally character-forming and transforming. “Christian doctrines function pastorally when a theologian unearths the divine pedagogy in order to engage the reader or listener in considering that life with the triune God facilitates dignity and excellence.”[7] The “unearthing of divine pedagogy” engages the reader and points them to the character-shaping reality of truth. Charry calls this “aretology,” meaning “conducive to virtue.” So Christian scholarship unearths divine truth, which changes the reader (and the writer, for that matter) into one more reflective of the character of God, which ultimately glorifies God and achieves the end for which he created the universe.  

Why Christian Scholarship Matters

Let’s assume Christian scholarship is genuinely a vocational devotion of the mind to God by faith toward the end of God-glorifying Christian virtue. In that case, it is essential in the life of the church. Ultimately what is at stake here is the Christian understanding of discipleship. Christ commanded his disciples to go and make more disciples (Matthew 28:18-20), and within that commission was the warning to teach specific things Jesus had taught. A disciple is, by definition, a learner.[8] Indeed, before one can live in the truth, one must learn the truth. Charry agrees, “Development of character will not happen without knowledge.”[9] The Apostle Paul tells Timothy, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). That is, the communication of biblical truth, or the “unearthing of the divine pedagogy,” is profitable to equip the people of God to live toward God-glorifying Christian virtue. Thus Paul commands Timothy to make the word of God the subject of his preaching (2 Timothy 4:2), public worship, and teaching (1 Timothy 4:13). That is also why Paul tells Timothy to “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Paul essentially tells Timothy to be a Christian scholar, as he is tasked with the weighty duty of dispensing truth to the people of God that they might know God and glorify him in their being. Christian scholarship matters because Christian discipleship demands the study, learning, and living of the truth.

How Christian Scholarship Is Accomplished

Considering the definition of Christian scholarship and the weight of the task itself, how should it be done? Three primary behaviors come from the definition itself, and two additional characteristics arise from Scripture. First, Christian scholarship is accomplished with a particular kind of devotion, a calling, as it were. It requires time, focus, and commitment to one’s subject and craft. Second, Christian scholarship is accomplished in faith, all through the filter of Christ and the gospel, the very center of scholarship itself. Third, Christian scholarship is conducted with a view toward God-glorifying Christian virtue, or the practical transformation of the lives of those who interact with the truth. Fourth, Christian scholarship is accomplished in humility. Paul warns Timothy to guard his life and his doctrine (1 Timothy 4:16), and humility must be closely guarded as pride ruins Christian scholarship. “Intellectually, pride is the father of aberrations and artificial and pretentious productions.”[10] Finally, Christian scholarship is accomplished out of love for the church. If Christian scholarship is essentially intentional, intellectual discipleship, then one engaged in this endeavor must do so out of love for the locus of discipleship, the local church. Scholars themselves can eradicate the anti-intellectual bias against scholarship by directing their intentions toward the local church and Christ’s command to make disciples. Then the comment to the new seminarian might be, “I’m glad you’re going to seminary. May we all become better disciples of Christ because of your study.”

Notes

[1] James W. Sire, Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling, First Edition (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2000), 24.

[2] OP A. G. Sertillanges and SJ James V. Schall, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary Ryan, New edition edition (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987), 4.

[3] Ibid., 5.

[4] David Crump, Encountering Jesus, Encountering Scripture: Reading the Bible Critically in Faith (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013), 3.

[5] Ibid., 4.

[6] Sire, Habits of the Mind, 208.

[7] Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 18.

[8] William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 183.

[9] Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds, 19.

[10] Sertillanges and Schall, The Intellectual Life, 131.