Christ of the Academic Road 1

Christ of the Academic Road 1 September 7, 2011

No American evangelical scholar has risen up through the ranks of a discipline more than Mark Noll. He is the dean of American church historians, and a prolific author, seemingly capable of taking on most any topic. His newest book examines a theme close to his passions and one not close enough to heart of enough American evangelicals: the life of the mind. His book is called Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind.

But his approach will irritate some, while it delights me. His contention is that evangelicals ought to be at the forefront of intellectual pursuits (because of their faith), and that such a pursuit derives from who Jesus is and what Jesus did, and the womb of such intellectual endeavor is the classic creeds: Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon. He’s right, and I speak this from observation: Christian traditions that eschew the creeds are the most bereft of intellectual endeavors and diminish the intellectual life the most. Think about it.

Do you see anti-intellectualism in your church? How is such a view expressed? Why do you think American evangelicalism has this anti-intellectual approach?

Where have the best minds of evangelicalism emerged into fullness of form: among the Presbyterians, among the Anglicans, among the Methodists, among the Lutherans … in other words, among those evangelicals who have embraced the great (intellectual) tradition of the church. On to what Noll contends:

“My contention in this book is to that coming to know Christ provides the most basic possible motive for pursuing the tasks of human learning” (x). He digs in: “Christian bodies that claim to follow ‘no creed but the Bible’ put themselves at an enormous disadvantage for many purposes, not least for promoting Christian learning, because they cut themselves off from the vitally important work that has been accomplished by the numberless assemblies making up the communion of saints” (1).

He examines the creeds as supreme expositions of Scripture (I’d argue there that there is more of a dialectical relationship here, and that means the creeds flow from the regula fidei that regulated dialected which texts were authoritative and which also was derived from those same texts). He has an excellent sketch of the theme of Glory and the Lamb of God as illustrations of the concentrated energy of the earliest Christians on Jesus Christ himself.Then a good sketch of Apostles’ Creed, Nicea, Constantinople and Chalcedon.

Now hear how he concludes: “What we can be drawn from the creeds? The Christian traditions that have embraced these ancient formulas, as well as the classic theologies that the creeds have anchored, provide the scope and the depth required for practicing a Christian scholarship worthy of the name” (21-22). So the “great hope for Christian learning is to delve deeper into the Christian faith itself” (22). “Intellectually, there is no other way.”

And this flourishing claim:

“The light of Christ illuminates the laboratory,
his speech is the fount of communication,
he makes possible the study of humans in all their interactions,
he is the source of all life,
he provides the wherewithal for every achievement of human civilization,
he is the telos of all that is beautiful.
He is, among his many other titles, the Christ of the Academic Road” (22).


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