Discipline in Christian Virtues

"The conscience is privy to all our secret thoughts and motives. It is therefore a more accurate and more formidable witness in the soul's courtroom than any external observer." [John MacArthur, The Vanishing Conscience]

"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable." [Paul, Romans 12:2, NASB]

The concept of discipline carries with it the notion of self-control, restraint, and focus. I think of self-management. Virtue, on the other hand concerns moral excellence, honor, purity and worth. The third component, Christian, means something far more specific than contemporary culture acknowledges or even understands. The word Christian is first used in Acts 11:26 to describe the disciples of Christ. Hence, seeing that the word disciple and Christian refer to the same person according to Luke's record, the best way to understand what it means to be a Christian is to understand what it means to be a disciple. Louw Nida defines a Christian as "one who is identified as a believer in and follower of Christ." BDAG says that a Christian is one who is associated with Christ. But this NT interpreter must understand "associated with" in the same way the ancient Mediterranean culture would have understood association. For contemporary western audiences, it simply means a very light or loose connection with someone. For the ancient mindset, to be associated with someone was to be included in that group. And to belong to "any group" in NT culture was far more significant than most of us in contemporary times can understand. Suffice it to say that to be associated with Christ was an extremely significant status when Luke recorded his history of Acts.

In the ancient Church, to be a Christian was to be a disciple (in the ancient sense of disciple) of Jesus Christ. If C, then D. D, therefore C. It is a very straightforward Modus Ponens syllogism. The Modus Tollens form would look like: if C, then D. ~D, therefore ~C. In other words, if you are a Christian, you are a disciple of Christ. If you are not a disciple of Christ, you are not a Christian. Indeed, the argument is as forceful, logically speaking, as any argument can be. Using De Morgan's theorem we would say if a person is a Christian, then he is a disciple of Christ. One is either, a Christian and disciple of Christ or she is not a Christian, nor a disciple of Christ. The idea that there is a difference between being a Christian and being a disciple of Christ is entirely foreign to Scripture and to ancient, authentic Christianity. I say all that to say this: to describe virtues as Christian is to say something very specific.

What, then are some of the more basic virtues that Christians should exhibit? One of the more basic and most neglected of Christian virtues in the modern, visible Church is intellectual virtue. The intellectual sloth of a predominantly hedonistic and secular culture has had an embarrassing influence in the Christian community. The lack of introspection and self-examination, coupled with the lack of interest in the intellectual renovation commanded by Paul in his letter to the Roman Church is simply staggering.

I often wonder how many Christians actually devote serious consideration to thinking about their own salvation, their sanctification, their knowledge of Christian doctrine, and their ability to hold a conversation in a way that challenges unbelieving thought.

This brings me to the discipline of intellectual virtue. The Christian is to be transformed into the image of Christ daily. But this transformation is the distinct work of the Holy Spirit in application of God's word to the human mind, or, entire person. This is precisely Paul's point in Romans 12:2. The Greek word used in this instance is where we get our English word metamorphous. The Christian life is a life of radical transformation. When we think about the change from a caterpillar to a butterfly we begin to understand the radical nature of Christian transformation. If we understand Paul correctly, we understand that Christian transformation is dependent on the human intellect. Christians have no choice, if we are going to grow into the kind of servants that God intends, but to be heavily involved in renovating the intellect. The fact is that transformation into the image of Christ proceeds upon a transformed intellect. We are to be transformed by the renewed mind. The concept is that the renewed mind is new. In fact, the implication is that the new mind of the believer is superior. This new mind is to serve as through the transformation process by which we grow in knowledge, grace, and sanctification. What does this look like in the life of the believer, away from Sunday morning service, during the week, when we are living our lives out there, or here, in the world of darkness, in the world that offers us so much access, not only to sinful passions and pleasures, but to idle entertainment as well?

The transformation of the Christian life begins with a new emphasis upon training the Christian intellect. The discipline of intellectual virtue with the Christian involves, first and foremost, a passionate desire to know and love God with your entire being. This places the Christian in a position of needing to understand God's revelation of Himself to His Church. The Psalmist tells us that he has treasured God's word in his heart so that he might not sin against him. (Ps. 119:11) The KJV leads one to believe this means memorizing Scripture. It does not. The Psalmist is elevating God's word to a place of highest treasure and deepest regard. God's Word must be the most precious thing for the Christian because it is the only key to understanding the one God we are supposed to know and love. Jesus Christ is the Word made Flesh. (Jn. 1:14) To know God is to know Scripture and to know Scripture is to know God. A lack of enthusiasm for bible study is a sure sign that one's heart is not interested in God at all. How many Christians show amazing interest in programs at their respective Church, but very little interest in personal bible study? It is a sad state of affairs when Christians are more informed on the personal lives of modern celebrities than they are of Christ, of Paul, of Moses and others in the sacred text.

We are ending the second month of 2014. We have ten months remaining. Where are you in your study of Scripture? Most of us established goals when the year began. We established new goals at work, goals for the gym, goals for our diet, goals for many things that we consider important in our lives. As a Christian, what kind of goals did you set for 2014? Have you examined your heart and the sin that still plagues you and established goals for how you will mortify those deeds of the body in 2014? Have you enlisted an accountability partner who is not afraid to call you out when they see you slipping (and you will slip)? We all slip. I slip every day in one way, or another. The battle to mortify the deeds of the flesh is the most intense battle you will ever fight. It is exhausting! Unless you give the discipline of intellectual virtue more attention, you are destined never to make much, if any progress in sanctification. Christians are called to live a holy life. We are called to be different. Christ does not redeem us to wanton pleasure. He calls us away from the hedonism we see in most cultures around this globe.

Now is the time for you to examine your week in light of your Christian walk. Do you spend more time with modern entertainment than you do in Scripture? Do you invest more money in soccer or hunting or fishing or golf than you do knowing Christ? I once told a young man that he needed to invest in a Bible program that, at the time, ran around $200. He was amazed that I would make such a recommendation. However, I already knew this young man was an avid golfer. I knew he was about to purchase a set of clubs than would cost nearly five times that amount. What does it say about us when we are willing to spend large amounts of money on hobbies on the one hand and on the other, we recoil at making similar investments in our ability to know and understand the God we claim to love?

Not only must we be diligent and willing to make investments in tools that can help us understand God better, we must be willing to do the really hard part: deliberate. We must spend more time attempting to understand Scripture than anything else we do. The desire to understand God's word so that it will change us has to be our greatest desire. Paul tells us that word of God performs its work in those of us who believe. (1 Thess. 2:13) The word of God is on a mission. The purpose for knowing Scripture is not knowledge. It is not to formulate arguments. It isn't even so that we can teach and preach. The purpose for knowing Scripture is sanctification. The reason we desire to know Scripture is because we desire to be like Christ. The only way we can ever have the mind of Christ is by understanding the divine revelation that is Scripture.

The virtue of the Christian intellect involves having the mind of or thinking like Christ. The Christian intellect must cast off the propensity to think only in temporal terms. It must be disciplined to equip itself with the thoughts of God Himself. Christians must discipline their lives and minds to turn from entertainment, from selfish ambition, from pride, from intellectual lust, to having the mind that was in Christ. We must put away intellectual sloth. We must avoid the foolishness of secular philosophy with its unrestrained speculations and idolatry of mind as well as the laziness that is fostered in the concept of cheap grace. The Christian intellect should be exercised daily, should be familiar with critical thinking, know and understand how to use logic for God's glory, and it should be intimately familiar with the history, background, and content of Scripture. What do you know about Scripture? Do you know the books of the Bible? What do you know about the history of the Bible, the languages of the Bible, the people of the Bible? If God means anything to you at all, you need to know these things and much more. Christians are commanded to love the Lord with our entire being and that includes the intellect.

A Manual for Creating Atheists: A Reliable Epistemology

Chapter three of “A Manual for Creating Atheists” is truly a very difficult chapter for intelligent people of faith to read. This is not because it offers some profound intellectual challenge to faith. Rather, it is because  Boghossian waxes extremely insulting in the chapter. However, the Christian must resist the temptation to be drawn into Boghossian's unkind ad hominem. Instead, we must critically examine the truthfulness of his propositions, all the while pointing out his philosophical bias, his wild conjectures, and his unproven philosophical assumptions.

Boghossian begins this chapter by setting a priori knowledge and analytic statements over against synthetic statements and a posteriori knowledge. This is an old argument between rationalists and empiricists and one that will likely never be settled. Specifically, he attacks certainty. He writes, “Certainty is an enemy of truth: examination and reexamination are allies of truth.” One cannot help but wonder how knowledge advances or progresses if it has no foundation upon which to advance. I shall return to this criticism later in the post.

Boghossian asserts that, “Faith taints or at worse removes our curiosity about the world.” Seemingly, faith leads to certainty about facts of the world and such certainty allays curiosity. Boghossian thinks, “Faith immutably alters the starting conditions for inquiry by uprooting a hunger to know and sowing a warrantless confidence.” The author of this project speaks with the strangest level of confidence for a man that thinks such confidence is the enemy of knowledge and truth. It is odd to read someone criticize the idea of certainty with such a high degree of, well, certainty.

Boghossian then makes this very puzzling statement, “Once we understand that we don’t possess knowledge, we have a basis to go forward in a life of examination, wonder, and critical reflection.” This statement would be humorous if it wasn’t so disturbing. The critical thinker has to wonder what the basis of our examination and critical thinking might be if we are all ignorant of it. How can one know that we have any basis at all for the pursuit of knowledge? How can one understand that they are knowledge-less? To understand implies a degree of knowledge. And to have adequate understanding to know that exploration is needed and desirable seems like a healthy degree of knowledge. Apparently Boghossian hasn’t the foggiest notion that knowledge depends upon knowledge, and so too does the very notion of examination, wonder, and critical reflection. The necessary precondition for knowledge is knowledge. I must confess that I find Boghossian’s line of reasoning here utterly absurd. At a minimum, knowing that one does not know is knowing. What then is the basis for that knowledge? Boghossian will eventually be forced to disclose his own foundation of beliefs and it is there that we shall find his faith.

From here, the author makes an ethical statement, which is also quite puzzling given his epistemological proclivity: “Wonder, curiosity, honest self-reflection, sincerity, and the desire to know are a solid basis for a life worth living.” I cannot help but ask how Boghossian knows that there is such a thing as “a life worth living.” What does “a life worth living actually look like?” Additionally, is there only one “life worth living” or are there more? Furthermore, what justification can he provide for such a sweeping and universal claim? I wonder if there isn’t an element of faith somewhere in Boghossian’s own worldview. Indeed, if it can be shown that such is the case, the implications for Boghossian’s project could turn out to more than just a little hysterical. After all, his entire thesis, the unreliability of faith as an epistemological method, would rest upon the very thing he so desperately wants to avoid: faith.

The goal of the Street Epistemologist is to “help people destroy foundational beliefs, flimsy assumptions, faulty epistemologies, and ultimately faith.” We cannot tell if Boghossian is speaking of the notion of foundationalism or if he means specific beliefs. As far as it goes, everyone enters this discussion with foundational beliefs. They are impossible to destroy. They can only be replaced with competing foundational beliefs. In addition, I intend to show that every epistemological position is, at bottom, a faith position. The only different is the object in which the faith is placed.

As we move through this particularly offensive, closed-minded, and arrogant chapter, the author once against makes one more outlandish statement about faith: “After all, faith is by definition the belief in something regardless or even in spite of the evidence.” The idea is that Christian faith has absolutely no evidence to offer and in fact, it exists in spite of the evidence against it. Boghossian then points to the Gervais & Norenzyan 2012 study that supposedly concludes that analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. What Boghossian does not tell us is that most of the subjects in that study came from a liberal Canadian university, hence, highly underrepresenting the typical North American population. Suffice it to say that the study to which Boghossian refers is a real howler.

Boghossian spends a lot of time on what he calls “Doxastic Closure.” This is what happens when a person holds to a belief that is resistant to revision, supposedly regardless of the evidence. Boghossian says, “This puts people in a type of bubble that filters out ideologically disagreeable data and opinions.” I wonder if “doxastic closure” is the same thing as dismissing the reliability of faith as an epistemology from the start, because it does not meet one’s ideas of their criteria for justification.

Boghossian tell us that doxastic openness is a willingness and ability to revise beliefs. One has to wonder what sort of evidence Boghossian would need in order to justify a belief. Suppose someone asks him to be open to changing his criteria for justification, how do we think he might respond? Boghossian’s view of his ability to be purely objective about these matters seems more than a little naive.

I could continue my review of chapter three, but I will stop with one more Boghossian assertion that is nothing short of outrageous. He writes, “This section will unpack two primary reasons for this appearance of failure: either (1) an interlocutor’s brain is neurologically damaged, or (2) you’re actually succeeding.” He continues, “In Short, if someone is suffering from a brain-based faith delusion your work will be futile.” If Boghossian means for people to take his project serious, then he should leave aside such insulting conjectures and ad hominem and explain to his atheist colleagues that it could be due to the fact that their arguments rest upon a hopeless irrationalism, are not supported by the evidence, and most of all, contradict the truth of God revealed in Scripture, which is actually why intelligent Christians reject them. One has to do more than link together a bunch of ad hominem statements if they hope to persuade others of the validity concerning their point of view.  

The Christian response to Boghossian then is to ask him to justify the certainty with which he condemns certainty. Boghossian claims that certainty is an enemy of the truth and about this he seems to be quite certain. Boghossian’s whole enterprise seems to be that faith aims for certainty. His argument goes something like this: examination and reexamination are allies of truth. Certainty endangers examination. Without examination truth is endangered. Faith produces certainty. Therefore, faith endangers truth. But one has to ask why truth ceases to be truth once we become certain of it. I am certain that 2+2 = 4. I do not need to examine the equation again. I do not need to reexamine the equation again. I am certain it is true. Boghossian tells us that truth is threatened by certainty, but he fails to illustrate for us just why he thinks this is the case.

Boghossian’s claim that faith removes our curiosity about the world is manifestly misleading. The fact that Christian theism asserts that there are some things, about which we can be certain, does nothing to quell intellectual adventure or curiosity about the many things we do not and even cannot be certain about. It does not follow that certainty about the existence of God leads to certainty about all of reality. The fact of God’s existence does nothing to eliminate mystery, adventure, or curiosity of all of the facts of God’s universe and of the revelation of Himself both in nature and in Scripture. Apparently Boghossian is unfamiliar with the voluminous materials and documents produced by theologians over the centuries, all designed to inform, to question, to wonder, and to search for the truth.

Boghossian implies that he believes there is a life worth living. This implies that life has value, worth, and meaning. It also implies that not just any life has value, worth, and meaning, but rather, a specific kind of life. Moreover, without saying so, it implies that there is at least one kind of life that is not worth living. Now, apparently, the life worth living is a life filled with wonder, curiosity, honest self-reflection, sincerity, and the desire to know. But why isn’t a life filled with certainty, apathy, insensitive selfishness, insincerity, and epistemological disinterest? In addition, why isn’t the life that mixes these traits worth living? Are there more than one lives worth living? Why this life and not that life? Boghossian opens Pandora’s Box and closing it is not a task I would desire.

Over and over again Boghossian claims that faith is based on a lack of evidence. Or he tells us that faith is unreliable and unreasonable all because of its apparent lack of evidence. What Boghossian has not done so far is tell us what type of evidence he means. One man is convicted for murder because there were two credible eyewitnesses that saw him do it. Another man is convicted of murder because of the forensic evidence gathered at the scene and his inability to provide a legitimate alibi. What exactly constitutes evidence? This is the problem of the criterion. If Boghossian is going to assert that faith is not rational, then the burden of proof is on him. And such proof must begin with what he means when he uses such terms as evidence, reasonable, justification, warrant, and rational. We know that self-evident propositions exist. They do not require evidence to be rational. We do not require justification in order to believe them. And we know that other propositions are not self-evident. Boghossian needs to explain to us sooner rather than later, precisely what is the nature of these propositions that require warrant and exactly what that warrant must look like in order to be rational.

The problem so far with Boghossian’s epistemology is that it is guilty of epistemic circularity. Epistemic circularity is a malady from which an argument for the reliability of a faculty or source of belief suffers when one of its premises is such that my acceptance of that premise originates in the operation of the very faculty or source of belief in question. [Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 119] When Boghossian asks us to accept his standard for what is rational in order to determine what is rationally justifiable, he is asking us to accept what is essentially an epistemologically circular argument. Epistemic circularity is only curable in Christian theism where the source of all knowledge is transcendent. On to chapter four.

The Christian and the Intellect: Biblically Positioned Critical Thinking

This post will disrupt my series on “A Manual to Create Atheists” ever so briefly, in an attempt to address the area of intellectual ethics in the Christian worldview. Since the Christian worldview encompasses every part of the human person, and since the intellect is central to the human person, it follows that Christian ethics has much to say about how Christians use or, unfortunately, neglect intellectual activities. There are two extreme states of the intellect that every believer must avoid. The first state that we must avoid is the state of an undisciplined, uncontrolled insatiable intellectual curiosity where speculation reigns supreme. The second state is no better, and perhaps may be worse, namely, the state of a radical intellectual lethargy, which I also call intellectual sloth. This latter state is just as undisciplined as the former.

The purpose of this post is to demonstrate that the Scripture takes a high view of intellectual perseverance and discipline within the Christian community. That is to say, Scripture encourages and praises the principle of a disciplined approach to intellectual performance on the part of God’s people and it proportionately condemns the idea of intellectual lethargy. The perlocutionary goal of this post is to persuade the reader to “give themselves” more fully to intellectual excellence. I hope to convince you that the reward is worth the effort by showing you first and foremost that the immediate reward is actually pleasing God.

My aim is to goad you, as a Christian, to either take up the goal of becoming a critical thinker, or if you are already progressing in that skill, to encourage you in your quest. However, it is no easy task to become a biblically positioned critical thinker. It is not something that just comes to you. Like philosophy, or logic, critical thinking is not a skill that you can acquire through rote memorization. It is a skill that requires tremendous focus, methodical study, and intense discipline. Critical thinking is not something a person just does once in a while. It is something you become. How does this relate to Christianity? What is the relationship between critical thinking and Christianity?

I believe Scripture has a lot to say about relationship between Christianity and critical thinking. 1 John 4:1 says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. The Greek word dokimadzete (δοκιμάζετε) carries the sense of scrutiny. The act here is primarily mental in nature. In this case it means to examine, to give to intellectual scrutiny. The idea is to attempt to learn the genuineness of something (Louw-Nida). In addition, the word is an imperative, which means it is a command. The word is employed once by John and Peter, and twice by Luke. The other 18 occurrences are in Paul. In fact, Paul informs us that the unregenerate scrutinized God and after their own evaluation considered the acknowledgement of God unworthy of their approval.

Paul uses the word in Rom. 12:2 to inform the Roman Christians that the renewal of the mind is precisely how we engage in the process of intellectually scrutinizing the will of God. This involves exegesis, logic, and questions. Lots of questions. Paul tells the Corinthians that they are to scrutinize themselves. (1 Cor. 11:28) He repeats this command in 2 Cor. 13:5. In Gal. 6:4, each man is told to scrutinize his own work. Phil. 1:10 tells us that it is through this intellectual scrutiny that we are able to identify those things that are excellent. Paul tells the Thessalonian Church to scrutinize all things carefully. (1 Thess. 5:21)

Paul informs the Corinthian Church that he is “Destroying speculations” and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. This word, logismos (λογισμός) has the sense of a statement containing a logical conclusion. It is intimately related to the idea of an argument, a logical argument. Those of us in American culture typically think of an argument in incredibly differently ways from how the ancient Greeks thought about it. One has to bear in mind that Corinth was situated just beside Greece, the birthplace of western logic. Therefore, we have to understand the meaning of this word in its more technical sense. It was much more technical than the American idea of a mere disagreement. It was a disagreement but far more intellectual than we might imagine. The point here is that Paul viewed the use of the Christian intellect as central in spiritual warfare, in refuting the false teachings of the enemy, which are viewed as intellectual and spiritual weapons designed to spoil and thwart the spiritual growth of Christians. We battle these intellectual weapons with our own sanctified intellectual weapons, but intellectual nonetheless.

Paul prays that the Philippian Christians’ love would abound in real knowledge. To the Colossians his prayer was that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. In the next verse, Paul links “walking in a manner worthy of the Lord” with “increasing in the knowledge of God.” Peter informs his audience that they are to add to their moral excellence, knowledge. Peter words were literally to supply or to furnish knowledge. The idea is that we are insure that we also furnish knowledge along with our moral excellence. Knowledge is something that is both given and acquired. We add to the knowledge imparted to us at salvation, knowledge of other spiritual truths. Genuine acquisition of knowledge is an intellectual enterprise that is wrought with troubles, and one that requires more energy than most people in our culture are willing to expend. The sad fact is that this state of affairs is at times even more truthful of Christians than it is of unbelievers.

The Proverbs inform us that we are to make our ears attentive to wisdom, to incline our heart to understanding, to cry out for discernment. The idea is that effort is clearly being made to gain understanding. Understanding is an intellectual constituent. Praying is not enough. If you pray for understanding and never tackle Scripture, listen to a sermon or lecture, read a book, it is likely that your understanding will be quite limited. Prayer helps, but it alone will not produce much by way of understanding. God has chosen specific methods for how Christians are to acquire knowledge. Christians are supposed to love understanding, to love knowledge. The one who loves instruction loves knowledge, but the one that hates correction is stupid. Every time you put forth the effort to learn, you are engaging in the practice of correcting yourself. You are correcting your understanding. And this correction should also produce a change in your conduct. You conduct yourself according to how you understand moral principles. Intellectual performance is the self-correcting behavior designed to produce spiritual growth in the knowledge of Christ. Those who hate intellectual discipline hate knowledge. Knowledge should be pleasant to our soul (Pr. 2:10). Wise men store up knowledge (Pr. 10:4). Prudent men act with knowledge (Pr. 13:16). The sensible are crowned with knowledge (Pr. 14:18). The lips of the wise spread knowledge (Pr. 15:7). The mind of the prudent acquires knowledge, And the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. (Pr. 18:15) It is not good for a person to be without knowledge (Pr. 19:2).

For too long now Christians have been satisfied not to spend energy on intellectual acumen. We have neglected genuine Bible-study, in preference for shallow talk about nearly anything that doesn’t require laborious thought. We would rather rehearse how the game went or will go or how the vacation was or what is the goings on at work than we would anything remotely resembling intellectual labor. We prefer to spend our free time watching American reality TV. Who needs all this abstract theological talk? Christianity, we hear from nearly every quarter, is about a relationship, not about doctrine. This kind of witless and mindless thinking has robbed Christianity of almost all its intellectual acumen, and stripped away nearly every shred of critical thinking that it had remaining over the last thirty years or so. It is dishonoring to God for the Christian to neglect the wonderful mind He gave us. We should endeavor to explore the vast potential of the human intellect in a way that seeks to express the spectacles of His grace and saving redemption. This requires that we devote lots of vigor, being diligent to achieve a level of intellectual acumen that makes us skilled discerners of truth claims so that we can spread God’s truth on the one hand and effectively refute detractors of God’s truth on the other. In short, it makes us biblically positioned critical thinker.

The Mind of the Christian

Διὸ ἀναζωσάμενοι τὰς ὀσφύας τῆς διανοίας ὑμῶν νήφοντες τελείως ἐλπίσατε ἐπὶ τὴν φερομένην ὑμῖν χάριν ἐν ἀποκαλύψει Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. (1 Peter 1:13)

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, be self-controlled, fix your hope on the grace being brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (My translation)

The letter of the Apostle Peter is one of the most fascinating works among the NT documents. IT garnered serious attention among early church fathers but did not quite receive the same attention as the Pauline corpus. “In the sixteenth century, however, the letter of 1 Peter as a whole suddenly rose to special prominence among the NT writings under the power influence of Martin Luther. In his “Preface to the New Testament” 1522, Luther ranked 1 Peter among “the true and noblest books of the New Testament” containing “the true kernel and marrow of all the books.” [Elliot, 1 Peter]

The letter, which contains more OT relative to its size than any other NT document, except perhaps Revelation, may have much to contribute at a time of renewed interest in the theological interpretation of Scripture. [Peter R. Rogers, Theological Interpretation of the New Testament, Vanhoozer] Indeed, Peter’s prolific use of the OT should, at a minimum cause one to pause and contemplate how and why he uses it as often as he does. Clearly he is employing a pinpointed and strategic approach in his project of edification and encouragement to the Asian Christians.

Persecution was not an abstract notion for believers in Asia Minor; they were undergoing fierce repercussions for their faith. Peter encouraged believers to endure in the face of difficult times. He did this by promoting a biblical worldview among the believers. [Kostenberger, Kellum, Quarles: The Cradle, The Cross, And The Crown] Foreign, but becoming more a little familiar to those of us in the West and especially in the Americas, is the concept of being persecuted for Christian beliefs. Peter’s audience was all too familiar with a culture that was clearly hostile to the gospel and to the Christian community specifically. The worldly group among which the Christians lived was constantly pressing the believers to abandon their faith, their newfound value system, their new group of Christian brothers and sisters, and return to the group of their tradition, of their childhood, of their culture. This pressure was constant and it was evidently in the process of increasing. It was to Christians living in this environment that Peter addresses in his letter.

Peter addresses his audience as aliens, scatter about, who are chosen by God. He gives God glory that He has caused both himself and these Christians to be born again to a living hope, to an inheritance which is imperishable. He reassures them that they are being kept, not by their own power or their own will, but by the power of God. He points out that their various trials are nothing more than God working in them to strengthen and further purify their faith. He rejoices that God sent the Holy Spirit into those by whom the gospel has reached these Asian Christians. It is because of everything I just mentioned that Peter makes the statement I quoted at the top of this post.

Therefore, or for this reason, gird up the loins of your mind, says Peter. The NAS translates this phrase as the common Greek idiom that it is: prepare your minds for action. The undefined aspect of the participle with the present tense of the controlling verb is why I translate the participle as preparing rather than having prepared. The idea is that since your mind has now entered a state or preparation for action, you must be self-controlled. That is, not controlled by contrary forces or competitors. These forces come from within and without. The internal sins of lust and anger are examples. The external force of persecution and pressure are also good examples. These two are not neatly disconnected in this letter however. After all, it is the external pressure to pursue the internal lusts that is creating the hostile environment for the Christians to begin with.

The phrase ἀναζωσάμενοι τὰς ὀσφύας τῆς διανοίας, according to Lowe-Nida means, (an idiom, literally ‘to bind up the loins of the mind’) to prepare oneself for learning and thinking—‘to get one’s mind ready for action, to be ready to learn and to think, to be alert.’ The word was used to facilitate the lifting of long garments and binding their tails so that one could walk. The girding up of the robe is a sign that one is ready for departure. It is interesting that Peter uses it so close to the coming of Christ and in the context of referring to these Christians as aliens scattered about. A coming departure from the way things are certainly seems to be in the air.

Sociologist Richard Arum released a study a couple of years ago that found that large numbers (of college students) didn’t learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education. In fact, Forty-five percent of students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during the first two years of college, according to the study. After four years, 36 percent showed no significant gains in these so-called “higher order” thinking skills. Link here: Critical Thinking Study

The practice of exercising one’s critical thinking skills is no less problematic among Christians than it is among secular society. However, the problem for Christians is that it is an egregious sin for us to engage in the cultural behavior of intellectual slothfulness. The proclivity to avoid deep, serious, thought-provoking ideas and discussion is foreign to Christian praxis and detrimental to Christian discipleship. It violates God’s design for Christian behavior.

Peter tells us to prepare our minds for action. But to what kind of action does Peter allude? He tells the Asian believers that they are to not be conformed to the former lusts, which were in ignorance. The human mind is an interesting thing. Jonathan Edwards believed “That the Will is always determined by the strongest motive,” or by that view of the mind which has the greatest degree of previous tendency to excite volition.” [Edwards, On Freedom of The Will] Our minds determine our behavior. Whatever controls the human mind controls human behavior. Is it any wonder that Peter told the Asian Christians to prepare their minds for action? The Christian husband that sees a beautiful young woman taking an interest in him first runs the scenario through his mind. Is his mind prepared for the battle that is about to be thrust upon it? Paul told the Romans they were to be transformed by the renewing of their mind. He told the Corinthians that Christians are continuously engaged in destroying speculations. These weapons of our warfare are evidently intellectual as well as spiritual in nature. The battle seems to be, to a large degree, a battle of the mind. A sanctified and holy mind produces a sanctified and holy will. Observe the acts of sin in our own lives and we are sure to see the connection those acts have with how we think about such behavior. The mind is indeed an extremely significant part of the human being.

Later in his letter, Peter points another area where the mind plays a significant role. Specifically, he informs us that we are to set Christ apart as Lord in our hearts and prepare to give an answer for the reason of the hope that is in us. While modern westerners make a sharp distinction between the heart and the mind, this is not the case in Scripture. The two can be and often are interchanged and serve as a reference to the whole person as opposed to distinct parts. To set Christ apart as Lord in one’s heart is to set Christ apart as Lord in one’s mind. To say that Christ is Lord of my mind is to say that you have fully surrendered your entire intellect to think the thoughts of God after Him. That is to say, your pattern of thinking is modelled after God’s pattern of thinking. Paul said, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” We are to be of the same mind that Christ was. That is an astounding truth: one that is not easy to get grasp.

This has significant implications on the enterprise of Christian apologetics. There are a number of web sites claiming to be Christian apologetic sites. There are more books than one could possibly imagine talking about the subject. Some of these books are well written, and serve the body of Christ very well. Unfortunately, most apologetic ministries focus on Peter’s command in 1 Peter 3:15 and twist that text to say that Christians are commanded to provide a reasoned or rational defense of theism. This is not at all what Peter commanded the Asian believers to do. Peter’s language specifically tells us to be prepared to give an answer for the reason that we have hope. What is the reason for our hope, or the cause for our hope? It is exegetical folly to contend that ‘reason’ in this text means human logic, or rational thought, or formal argumentation. We could just as well exchange the word ‘reason’ with ‘cause’ in this text. That is the simple meaning of what Peter commands.

In addition, Peter nowhere commands the Asian Christians to defend a ‘general theism.’ His order is really quite specific. In commanding us to give an answer for the reason of cause of our hope, he is commanding us to share the gospel. Moreover, the gospel is not the gospel unless the triune God, as described in Scripture, is the God that Christians set out specifically to proclaim. If we are to defend the hope that is in us, we must defend Christian theism. We must defend that God revealed in Scripture. In addition, we must defend Scripture and all that it reveals about the person and work of Jesus Christ who is Himself the very center of God’s plan of redemption. It is through Christ that we catch our clearest glimpse of the glory of God revealed to us in all of God’s revelation.

The life of the believer is a life that seeks humble obedience before the God who created us. If we accomplish the intellectual ability to construct the most sound, forceful arguments the world over and fail to show love and respect to the outsiders, we have accomplished nothing. Without love, the best apologetic in the world is nothing more than an impotent argument produced by a godless and empty shell of a false Christian. On the other hand, love dictates that we bring our intellect and other skills to bear in service of our great King. Jesus said we are to love the Lord our God with all our minds. That means we purify our thought process, purging worldly lusts and shallow, vain pursuits. It also means that we exercise our ability to discern and make judgments about claims that refute or serve to contradict Christian truth. This requires serious effort. We are commanded to refute those who contradict. The Christian apologist is one who balances his rebuke and correction of the godless with a sincere and humble heart that is apparent in the words he uses and the way in which he treats his opponents. To ask which one is most important is a false disjunctive. It’s like asking if oxygen to the brain is more important than blood to the brain. The answer is both!