Intellectual Discipleship

KEVIN HARRIS: A very warm welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. It’s Kevin Harris. And, boy, do we have something for you! Next week, an interview with both Dr. Craig and Dr. J. P. Moreland – together, in the same podcast, in the same universe! This is in honor of the 20th anniversary of the book they collaborated on: Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. I hope that book is in your library. It was a fun interview. I had a chance to ask them some behind-the-scenes questions like how they met and became friends, the history of their relationship, what it was like to work on this book together. And they took the ball and just ran with it. You’re going to love these podcasts. Part 1 and part 2 dropping next week – William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland together. We’ve got a quick bit of news, too. For the first time ever, we’ve had over three million engagements per month on our various platforms over the last quarter here at Reasonable Faith. Millions have read an article, watched one of the videos, or listened to a podcast. It is humbling and exciting that Reasonable Faith is making such an impact on a world that desperately needs the love of Christ and the intellectual sophistication that Reasonable Faith strives for. In March we had more than 3.6 million engagements across our platforms. Last March we had 2.3 million. So that is an increase of more than 55%. If you are supporting us prayerfully or financially, this is a big reason to continue. So, here’s a little gift package for you. We’d like to send you a free book of your choice as a thank you for your support. For just $30 a month in support, we’d like to send you an autographed copy of The Only Wise God – the 35th anniversary edition – and your choice of one of the following: On Guard, A Reasonable Response, or Hard Questions, Real Answers. If I’m going to fast on all this, all this information is at ReasonableFaith.org. $50 a month – an autographed copy of The Only Wise God and your choice of the following: an autographed copy of In Quest of the Historical Adam or an autographed copy of the 40th anniversary of The Kalam Cosmological Argument. And for $75 a month, we want to send you an autographed copy of Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview – it's a big book, too! And your choice of one of the following: God Over All, or an autographed copy of In Quest of the Historical Adam or the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Did you get all that? If not, be sure to go to ReasonableFaith.org – we’ve got the rundown right there. Thank you so much. Now, let’s get to the podcast.

Bill, this is right up your alley. Let’s take a look at an article entitled “Intellectual Discipleship Is Essential for Christian Flourishing” by Annie Brownell Crawford and Melissa Cain Travis.^[1] The first paragraph is about the founding of a women’s group that,

...cast a vision born of a shared longing for Christian intellectual community. They commiserated over the lack of options at their respective home churches, none of which offered opportunities for focused learning in subjects integral to twenty-first-century discipleship and evangelism—areas such as philosophy, apologetics, literature, and the arts. They had encountered still others, particularly women, who lamented this deficiency and desired more than what typical ministries offer.

Thus, over the course of a few days, foundational plans were laid for an organization that would bring together Christian women for collective learning and camaraderie. The founders envisioned a society that would champion the life of the Christian mind by facilitating scholarly collaboration and offering mentorship to women of all ages and educational backgrounds. Perhaps it would also inspire ministry leaders to create and champion opportunities for quality intellectual discipleship in their respective church communities to help men and women alike develop stronger, more integrated minds for the good of the Kingdom.

Bill, you’ve not only sought to provide that intellectual discipleship in your lifelong work, but also to provide it in your local church with the Defenders class.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think every one of us has a spiritual gift that needs to be exercised in the context of the local church, and for me that would be teaching. So for decades now I've been teaching an adult Sunday school class at our home church, and in it we do a survey of Christian doctrine and apologetics. Although it's not the type of class that appeals to a great number of people, there is a small group that is interested in this, and I am delighted to teach them every Sunday. And so I'm excited about this society. I believe the name of this society is The Society for Women of Letters, isn't that correct?

KEVIN HARRIS: That’s correct. The article continues,

Intellectual weakness within the church is not a recent phenomenon. As the modern world developed and presented the church with new challenges, many Christians began to withdraw from academic spheres. Particularly since the Enlightenment, there has been a steady secularization of the academy and marginalization of Christianity in the public square.

Bill, that really started to change with what you called the renaissance of Christian philosophy.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, I think this is a change that has started to occur in the academy but it has not yet deeply affected the public square; that remains to be shaped. But in the academy, in the field of philosophy, the Christian position is once again a respected minority position. I think also in the area of New Testament studies, biblical studies, the Christian belief in Jesus Christ as who he claimed to be and risen from the dead is also a position that is now respected and defended. In physics as well, I believe that a belief in the existence of a creator and designer of the universe is more acceptable than it has been for generations. So in the academy I think we are seeing a pushback against this secularization, and the hope is that this can be filtered down to the man in the street.

KEVIN HARRIS: The article continues,

One ramification of this [withdrawal] has been a tendency for some Christians to compartmentalize—to erect a partition between their professional life and their spiritual life.

Do you have any thoughts on what it means to integrate one's spiritual and professional life? The reason I'm asking – that's what I'm trying to do. What do you think it means to erect a partition between one's spiritual life and professional life?

DR. CRAIG: One of the things that I learned as an undergraduate at Wheaton College is that I need to think Christianly about the subjects that I was studying. The goal of the Christian should be to have a Christian Weltanschauung or a Christian world and life view that includes a Christian perspective on the arts, a Christian perspective on philosophy, a Christian perspective on the sciences, a Christian perspective on history, and not to compartmentalize or to, as they put it, erect a partition where you keep your professional life and studies hermetically sealed against your religious belief. It seems to me that we want to have a synoptic worldview that draws upon all of the sources of knowledge that are available to us, and then constructs a worldview that best makes sense out of what we learn from all of the various disciplines.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next the article says,

The central problem with intellectual withdrawal is that it is impossible; to be human is to think, and thus our options are to think well or think poorly. In his exhortation to Wheaton College at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center, Ambassador Charles Malik, former President of the United Nations, reminded Evangelicals that “We are arguing and reasoning with one another all the time. Indeed every sentence and every discourse is a product of reason.” To be human is to think, and as thinking creatures, we have a God-given hunger for knowledge. As Aristotle observed, “All men desire to know.”

You’ve quoted Charles Malik quite a few times.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. His essay "The Two Tasks" has been an inspiration to me as an academic and to many other Christian scholars. If our listeners have never read this, I would really urge them to read Malik's short essay "The Two Tasks."^[2] The two tasks for Malik were the task of winning the soul and the task of winning the mind. What he meant by that differentiation is not only converting people spiritually with the Gospel but also converting them intellectually by getting them to think Christianly about the various disciplines at the university. Malik's concern was that although we are converting people spiritually, we're not converting them intellectually. Even though they are Christians, they still think like non-Christians. They do not let their theology and their religious faith inform sufficiently their life as a scientist or a historian or a psychologist or a philosopher or an economist. Malik's emphasis was on building that Christian world and lifeview that integrates faith and knowledge.

KEVIN HARRIS: Continuing this article,

When the church fails to intellectually disciple her people, a fundamental human need remains unmet, and this has disastrous consequences. If minds are not nourished with rich, sustaining truth, the resulting vacuum will instead be filled with the flotsam and jetsam of feel-good platitudes and culturally celebrated beliefs antithetical to the Christian worldview. Like the root system of a tree, the mind will grow; the only question is how: toward the nourishing wisdom born of goodness, truth, and beauty or away from it?

I suppose that there are some scary things that will rush in and fill a vacuum.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, that's really true. People can fill their minds with all sorts of terrible things, and one of the results of this has been what's called therapeutic Christianity where the Christian religion is basically a means of making you feel good and dealing with your psychological problems and emotional baggage and the objective truth of the Christian worldview is neglected.

KEVIN HARRIS: This next passage is a little longer, but I just want you to listen to it. I want everyone to listen to it; how well it is written and what it says,

Socrates insisted that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” because the exercise of our rational capacity is as necessary to human happiness as flight is to birds and swimming to fish. We are purpose-driven creatures, and we experience deep happiness by exercising our faculties in accordance with their God-given purpose. This is the joy of running, dancing, feasting, loving, laughing, creating—and thinking. We were made for it, and we enjoy God’s pleasure in it. The cruelty of low expectations in the church and in the school robs people of this divine purpose and pleasure. Year after year as a Great Books teacher, I (Annie) have earned my students’ respect, not by dumbing down philosophy and literature but by believing all of them capable of receiving their cultural inheritance: active participation in the great human conversation about the fundamental questions of life.

Adults also respond eagerly to intellectual engagement. . . . many . . .[are] [f]rustrated by small groups that emphasized emotional and relational support to the neglect of scriptural, theological, and philosophical development . . .

Bill, I’ve always wished that for your church the times that I visited it, and for mine as well. That couples in particular would take an excursion from their Sunday school class – their typical Sunday school class – and spend six months or a year in yours. Couples classes are usually centered around the life and trials and comedy of marriage and family. “I did the dishes last night; she was supposed to do the dishes so I did the laundry.” There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s fun and there's plenty of fellowship. But as the article says, we need more than just emotional support.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, I think that there's no reason to think of these as mutually exclusive. In our Defenders class, one of our goals is to have an incendiary fellowship of mutual encouragement and love. So we pray for one another, we worship together, we have Bible reading together. But then that's also coupled with a lesson that I deliver on Christian doctrine or apologetics. I want to have a marriage of both of these elements – both that social and emotional bonding and connecting but then also with an intellectually challenging aspect that would help us to find these intellectual joys that Annie speaks of.

KEVIN HARRIS: I think that's what I was trying to say as well – that we need that balance and that it's not either-or; it's both-and. You can have really fun fellowship, and you can also get down to business and learn some solid things. Continuing the article,

There is still a tremendous amount of work to be done in terms of intellectual discipleship of both men and women. In our consumer-oriented culture, pastors and teachers are tempted to “keep it simple” so congregants and students will not be put off by challenging material. Such sales-based approaches focus on the immediate feelings of the potential buyer, but churches and schools are called to save and develop the soul, not boost the bottom line. Avoiding intellectual development caters to fear and sloth. It drives away hungry seekers and weakens the faithful. Yes, we want to preach a gospel simple enough for all God’s people to understand, but we also want to preach a gospel great and glorious enough to answer the deepest questions and the highest longings of the human mind and heart.

You’ve scolded us a few times in these podcasts about selling ourselves short in the area of the mind. People claim, “I'm just not smart. Keep the cookies on the bottom shelf.” And, “I don't need intellectual stimulation.”

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I sometimes will respond to people who say "I'm just not smart enough to get this" or "I'm too stupid to understand this." I'll say, "Why are you insulting God? He created you with a mind. You can understand this if you will simply apply yourself" and try to help people to exercise their God-given abilities. Now, having said that, I don't think we can emphasize enough the importance of making this material simple to understand so that the layperson is not simply overwhelmed with a rush of unfamiliar vocabulary and difficult concepts that he just can't take in. We need to gently lead people by trying to put the cookies on the bottom shelf and then put a few more on the upper shelves as well so that you can lead a person to higher levels over time. What that requires is you need a person who's willing to commit the time to doing that, and that is all too rare, I think, in my experience. I found with some people who have been through our Defender series more than once they've told me, "The first time we went through this, I hardly understood anything." But he says now that we're going through it again, "Oh yeah, I get this stuff. I understand this." And they feel that they've grown so much intellectually. I think that's a tremendous encouragement.

KEVIN HARRIS: Several years ago I started the faith and reason class at my church. I brought you in to speak to that class. It grew to be a big, big class. I would listen to the members of the class if they said, "Kevin, you're going over our heads" or "I didn't get that," I would try to be cognizant of that and be a good teacher. I guess that's what it comes down to – just being a good teacher. Here’s how the article wraps up,

Don’t be afraid. All truth is God’s truth. Our faith is not feeble; it doesn’t require the protection of withdrawal or compartmentalization. The need for intellectual engagement in this postmodern era is absolutely critical, and the exhortation of Scripture is clear. Jesus commands us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Paul exhorts us to “ take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Proverbs repeatedly challenges us to “get wisdom,” and even “though it cost you all you have, get understanding.” The rewards of an intellectually developed life of faith are immense and eternal. The people are hungry; let us feed them.

Again, Bill, this is you and Reasonable Faith and Defenders all in a nutshell.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, this is one of the visions that we have for Reasonable Faith. One is to reach out with the Gospel to non-believers to win people to Christ, but then the other is to disciple them and to help them to grow as Christians in their understanding of Christian doctrine and apologetics. And for those who are willing to go that second route, there are great intellectual joys and deep satisfaction to be found if they will simply be patient and diligent in applying themselves to obey the command to love the Lord your God with all your mind.^[3]