Following up on the first post I wrote on Dr. Mark Noll’s book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, some wondered what is meant for regarding the mind. Noll rolls out some definitions, and one that is particularly helpful is his definition of the “life of the mind.”
By an evangelical “life of the mind” I mean more the effort to think like a Christian – to think within a specifically Christian framework – across the whole spectrum of modern learning, including economics and political science, literary criticism and imaginative writing, historical inquiry and philosophical studies, linguistics and the history of science, social theory and the arts. Academics disciplines provide modern categories for the life of the mind, but the point is not simply whether evangelicals can learn how to succeed in the modern academy. The much more important matter is what it means to think like a Christian about the nature and workings of the physical world, the character of human social structures like government and the economy, the meaning of the past, the nature of artistic creation, and the circumstances attending our perception of the world outside ourselves. Failure to exercise the mind for Christ in these areas has become acute in the twentieth century. That failure is the scandal of the evangelical mind. (emphasis mine).
Picking up this book and considering this topic I am drawn to the first and greatest commandment given to us by Jesus.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, (Matthew 22:37, ESV, emphasis mine).
Is this neglected, are we still failing to exercise the mind of Christ in the areas that Noll mentions? Do we collectively demonstrate loving God with all of our mind, and what does that mean?