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Literature and History of New Testament Times

[277] <h2>LESSON L</h2> <h3>THE CHRISTIAN USE OF THE INTELLECT</h3> <h4>1. THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE</h4> The last two lessons have emphasized the duty of consecration. The enjoyment of simple, physical blessings, the opportunities afforded by earthly relationships, are all to be devoted to the service of God. Exactly the same principle must be applied in the lesson for to-day. If physical health and strength and the companionship of human friends may be made useful in the Christian life, surely the same thing is true of intellectual gifts. The most powerful thing that a man possesses is the power of his mind. Brute force is comparatively useless; the really great achievements of modern times have been accomplished by the intellect. If the principle of consecration is true at all—if it be true that God desires, not the destruction of human powers, but the proper use of them—then surely the principle must be applied in the intellectual sphere. The field should not be limited too narrowly; with the purely logical and acquisitive faculties of the mind should be included the imagination and the sense of beauty. In a word, we have to do to-day with the relation between "culture" and Christianity. For the modern Church there is no greater problem. A mighty civilization has been built up in recent years, which to a considerable extent is out of relation to the gospel. Great intellectual forces which are rampant in the world are grievously perplexing the Church. The situation calls for earnest intellectual effort on the part of Christians. Modern culture must either be refuted as evil, or else be made helpful to the gospel. So great a power cannot safely be ignored. (1) The Obscurantist Solution.—Some men in the Church are inclined to choose a simple way out of the difficulty; they are inclined to reject the whole of modern culture as either evil or worthless; this wisdom of the world, they maintain, must be deserted for the divine "foolishness" of the gospel. Undoubtedly such a view contains an element of truth, but in its entirety it is impracticable. The achievements of modern culture are being made useful for the spread of the gospel by the very advocates of the view now in[278] question; these achievements, therefore, cannot be altogether the work of Satan. It is inconsistent to use the printing press, the railroad, the telegraph in the propagation of our gospel and at the same time denounce as evil those activities of the human mind by which these inventions were produced. Indeed, much of modern culture, far from being hostile to Christianity, has really been produced by Christianity. Such Christian elements should not be destroyed; the wheat should not be rooted up with the tares. (2) The Worldly Solution.—If, however, the Christian man is in danger of adopting a negative attitude toward modern culture, of withdrawing from the world into a sort of unhealthy, modernized, intellectual monastery, the opposite danger is even more serious. The most serious danger is the danger of being so much engrossed in the wonderful achievements of modern science that the gospel is altogether forgotten. (3) The True Solution.—The true solution is consecration. Modern culture is a stumblingblock when it is regarded as an end in itself, but when it is used as a means to the service of God it becomes a blessing. Undoubtedly much of modern thinking is hostile to the gospel. Such hostile elements should be refuted and destroyed; the rest should be made subservient; but nothing should be neglected. Modern culture is a mighty force; it is either helpful to the gospel or else it is a deadly enemy of the gospel. For making it helpful neither wholesale denunciation nor wholesale acceptance is in place; careful discrimination is required, and such discrimination requires intellectual effort. There lies a supreme duty of the modern Church. Patient study should not be abandoned to the men of the world; men who have really received the blessed experience of the love of God in Christ must seek to bring that experience to bear upon the culture of the modern world, in order that Christ may rule, not only in all nations, but also in every department of human life. The Church must seek to conquer not only every man, but also the whole of man. Such intellectual effort is really necessary even to the external advancement of the kingdom. Men cannot be convinced of the truth of Christianity so long as the whole of their thinking is dominated by ideas which make acceptance of the gospel logically impossible; false ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. And false ideas cannot be destroyed without intellectual effort. Such effort is indeed of itself insufficient. No man was ever argued into Christianity; the renewing of the Holy Spirit is the[279] really decisive thing. But the Spirit works when and how he will, and he chooses to employ the intellectual activities of Christian people in order to prepare for his gracious coming. <h4>2. THE APOSTOLIC EXAMPLE</h4> Abundant support for what has just been said may be discovered in the history of the apostolic Church. Paul's speech at Athens, for example, shows how the Christian preacher exhibited the connection between the gospel and the religious aspirations of the time. This line of thought, it is true, was merely preliminary; the main thing with which the apostles were concerned was the presentation and explanation of the gospel itself. Such presentation and explanation, however, certainly required intellectual effort; and the effort was not avoided. The epistles of Paul are full of profound thinking; only superficiality can ignore the apostolic use of the intellect. (1) Christianity Based Upon Facts.—The fundamental reason why this intellectual activity was so prominent in the apostolic age is that the apostles thought of Christianity as based upon facts. Modern Christians sometimes cherish a different notion. A false antithesis is now sometimes set up between belief and practice; Christianity, it is said, is not a doctrine, but a life. In reality, Christianity is not only a doctrine, but neither is it only a life; it is both. It is, as has been well said, a life because it is a doctrine. What is characteristic of Christianity is not so much that it holds up a lofty ethical ideal as that it provides the power by which the ideal is to be realized. That power proceeds from the great facts upon which Christian belief is founded, especially the blessed facts of Christ's atoning death and triumphant resurrection. Where belief in these facts has been lost, the Christian life may seem to proceed for a time as before, but it proceeds only as a locomotive runs after the steam has been shut off; the momentum is soon lost. If, however, Christianity is based upon facts, it cannot do without the use of the mind; whatever may be said of mere emotions, facts cannot be received without employment of the reason. Christian faith is indeed more than intellectual; it involves rejoicing in the heart and acceptance by the will, but the intellectual element in it can never be removed. We cannot trust in Christ, in the Christian sense, unless we are convinced that he lived a holy life when he was on earth, that he claimed justly to be divine, that he died on the cross, and that he rose again from the dead. [280] (2) Christianity Involves Theology.—Furthermore, Christian faith involves not only a bare acceptance of these facts, it involves also some explanation of them. That explanation can never be complete; the gospel contains mysteries in the presence of which only wondering reverence is in place; but some explanation there must be. It is quite useless, for example, to know merely that a holy man, Jesus, died on the cross; it is even useless to know that the Son of God came to earth and died in that way. The death of Christ has meaning for us only because it was a death for our sins; the story of the cross becomes a gospel only when the blessed meaning of it is explained. The explanation of that meaning forms the subject of a large part of the New Testament. The apostolic Church had none of our modern aversion to theology. It is time for us to return to the apostolic example. Mere bustling philanthropy will never conquer the world. The real springs of the Church's power lie in an inward, spiritual realm; they can be reached only by genuine meditation. The eighth chapter of Romans has been neglected long enough; neglect of it is bringing deadly weakness. Instead of adapting her message to the changing fashions of the time, the Church should seek to understand the message itself. The effort will not be easy; in a "practical" age, honest thinking is hard. But the results will be plain. Power lies in the deep things of God. (3) The Duty of Every Man.—The great intellectual duty of the modern Church is not confined to a few men of scholarly tastes. On the contrary, the simplest Christian may have his part; what is needed first of all is common sense. By an unhealthy sentimentalism, old-fashioned study has been discredited. If God is speaking in the Bible, surely the logical thing for us to do is to hear. Yet modern Christians are strangely neglectful of this simple duty. Bible study is regarded as of less importance than social service; improvement of earthly conditions is preferred to acquaintance with God's Word. The evil may easily be corrected, and it may be corrected first of all by the old-fashioned reading of the Bible. That requires intellectual effort—there is no use in turning the pages if the mind is elsewhere—but the effort can be made by the plain man as well as by the scholar. Simple acquaintance with the Bible facts by the rank and file of the Church will accomplish as much as anything else toward meeting the arguments of opponents. By learning what Christianity is, we shall be able, almost unconsciously, to refute what can be said against it. [281] <h4>3. THE PRACTICE OF THE TRUTH</h4> This intellectual effort, however, should never be separated from practice. The best way to fix truth in the mind is to practice it in life. If our study teaches us that God is holy, let us hate sin as God hates it. If we learn that God is loving, let us love our fellow men as God loves them. If the Bible tells us of the salvation offered by Christ, let us accept it with a holy joy, and live in the power of it day by day. That is the true "practical Christianity", a Christianity that is based solidly upon facts. Conduct goes hand in hand with doctrine; love is the sister of truth. <h4>4. GOD THE SOURCE OF TRUTH</h4> The ultimate Source of all truth, as of all love, is God. The knowledge for which we are pleading can never result in pride, for it is a knowledge that God gives, and a knowledge consecrated at every point to God's service. Presumptuous reliance upon human wisdom comes from knowledge that ignores part of the facts; true science leads to humility. If we accept all other facts, but ignore the supreme fact of God's love in Jesus Christ, then of course our knowledge will be one-sided. It may succeed in producing creature comforts; it may improve the external conditions of life upon this earth; it may afford purely intellectual pleasure; but it will never reveal the really important things. This one-sided knowledge is what Paul was speaking of in I Cor. 1:21 when he said that "the world through its wisdom knew not God." The true wisdom takes account of the "foolishness" of God's message, and finds that that foolishness is wiser than men. The true wisdom of the gospel is revealed only through the Holy Spirit; only the Spirit of God can reveal the things of God. Without the Spirit, the human mind becomes hopeless in dismal error; it is the Spirit of truth who sheds the true light over our path. <div class="poem"> "O grant us light, that we may know The wisdom Thou alone canst give; That truth may guide where'er we go, And virtue bless where'er we live." </div> <hr class="tb" /> In the Library.—Patton, "A Summary of Christian Doctrine." Greene, "Christian Doctrine." A. A. Hodge, "Outlines of Theology" and "Popular Lectures on Theological Themes." <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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