SPROUL: We're living in the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Christianity. And
again, what I mean by that is not anti-academic, not anti-scientific,
not anti-technological, but anti-intellect.
The Scripture offers evidence. The Scripture offers the testimony of history,
the testimony of the senses and of the sight. The Scripture do not ask us to crucify our minds,
and do not ask us to believe in an unwarranted assumption.
But rather, Christianity is a faith that is credible, that is, it is believable
because it makes sense, and because it is verified through the testimony of history.
Now, that's very important, because people in our day want to divorce their
religious life from their scientific life or their otherwise intellectual pursuits,
as if to say religion is something strictly of the heart and does not engage the mind. I understand
how popular that idea is, but church history and the Scriptures themselves bear witness that
Christianity certainly involves the commitment of the heart, and certainly involves the movement of
the will and all of those things, but whatever else it is, it is also profoundly intellectual.
That is to say, the Word of God is addressed first to the mind.
And nothing can be in the heart or in the will that is not first in the mind.
You can't respond with love and adoration, for example, or devotion
to nothing, or to a mental blankness. You have to have some idea of the object of your adoration,
some idea in your mind of what it is you believe in and who it is you are following.
And so, insofar as faith has content, and the only way content can be processed is by the mind,
then Christianity at that point is profoundly intellectual. I mean, I hate to even take the
time to labor that point, and I do it only because I'm convinced we're living in the
most anti-intellectual period in the history of Christianity. And again, what I mean by that
is not anti-academic, not anti-scientific, not anti-technological, but anti-intellect, anti-mind,
as if the mind were some kind of bad thing. But it is the mind that God has given you as the means
to hear, embrace, and to understand His Word. Mindless Christianity is not Christianity at all,
because mindless Christianity would be a Christianity with no content.
To put one's trust in God is not a leap into irrationality,
but rather, it is an exercise in sanity, wisdom, and reasonableness, because there
is no one in all of reality more worthy of trust than God. So again, for the Christian,
it's not a matter simply of believing in God as an intellectual premise that we affirm, but the heart
and soul of biblical faith flows out of believing God, trusting in His authority. That's how Jesus
manifests the life of faith when He says that ""man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceeds forth from the mouth of God,"" because Jesus was convinced, and reasonably so,
that every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is absolutely trustworthy. Indeed if we
were to hear God speak and not trust the truth of what He's saying, would be insane. It would
be irrational. But it is eminently reasonable to trust one who is absolutely trustworthy.