ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM AND THE BIBLE COLLEGE * Terris Neuman * Assistant Professor of Bible Southeastern College Bible college faculty face a problem that colleagues in Christian Liberal Arts colleges may not have to the same degree, although it would certainly be present in the latter. The problem is that of anti-intellectualism. It is held by many ministerial and Bible majors and manifests itself in certain ways. This attitude is seen in the contention of some that a person should listen to the heart and not the head. The mind is believed to be evil and the intellect will lead one astray if it is followed. Of course the same standard is not applied to one's emotions and feelings. While Paul warns the Corinthians not to let their minds be led astray from the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Corinthians 11:3), it is Jeremiah who states that the heart is more deceitful than all else, being desperately sick and beyond understanding (Jeremiah 17:9). The basic problem here is an unbiblical dichotomy between the mind and the heart since the Hebrew concept of a person is one entity. The mind, the spirit, the emotions and the body are all man, not parts to be separated and put in opposition to each other. It is the way God has created people. Another way this attitude can be observed is the contempt some students have for "secular" courses. Subjects like sociology and accounting are deemed irrelevant while 1 psychology is seen as downright evil. It is the contention of this writer that the prevalent anti-intellectual attitude observed in some students tells of a much larger problem of the American culture and the American church, at least in some evangelical and pentecostal churches. Apathy, individualism and an overemphasis on relevance lies behind the problem of anti-intellectualism. Since many Bible colleges have attained regional and state certified accreditation and have added education, psychology and counseling majors, the problem of anti-intellectualism has become acute on some campuses. Students want to know why they have to take certain courses and how Christianity relates to it. They have a right to know. The following two challenges are offered as first steps toward addressing the issue by faculty members. I. Faculty members outside the religion division should integrate the subject with Christianity where it is possible and show its relevance. Faculty members must challenge the disdain some students have for subjects outside Bible and theology courses. The place to begin is in the introductory courses. Once a rationale for the discipline has been given, the student may begin to understand its relevance. Faculty must instill a Christian worldview-that all of life is sacred for the Christian. God as the Creator provides the theological reason for this. Subjects such as English composition, 2 economics, biology, algebra, American history, psychology and American and English literature all address issues of the "real" world. They teach one how to think, to understand and communicate with one's culture. There are implications for the church also. In fact, the Christian student or church that rejects these disciplines as irrelevant leaves itself no other course of action but to withdraw into a Christian bubble and shout at a world that desperately needs to be listened to. A Christian education should prepare students to interact with the world, not to be kept safely from it. The incarnation provides the theological model for this. There are examples in the New Testament of using the knowledge of the culture to reach the culture. Paul quoted Greek poets in Athens in his evangelistic efforts among the intellectuals of his day (Acts 17:27-29). In writing to Titus, Paul quotes one of the Cretan's prophets and amazingly states that this prophet's testimony is true concerning the nature of the Cretans (Titus 1:10-13). Of course, one did not have to be inspired to discern the lying nature of the Cretans. Jude quotes the book of Enoch as containing prophecy concerning the coming of the Lord (Jude 14, 15) and refers to a story found in the pseudepigraphical Assumption of Moses (Jude 9). The Spirit-inspired writers of the New Testament then were not only aware of but so thoroughly acquainted with literature outside the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus that they could quote 3 it! They also felt free to use these sources in identifying with their hearers/readers and communicating the gospel to them. This should speak volumes to the Christian student and the church today. Students must learn to interact with the real world; otherwise, they will look back on their education as being unreal or irrelevant. Or worse, they may retreat from the world under the guise of holiness, never entering the world and relating to it in a meaningful way for Christ and His Kingdom. On the Bible college level, the following suggestions could serve as correctives to the situation. Faculty members could prepare an inter-divisional statement espousing a Christian worldview and incorporate it into the college catalog. Faculty could also explain in their introductory lectures how Christians should view their disciplines. Perhaps the best course of action would be to have a required freshman course dealing with "Christ and Culture." Possible textbooks for the class could be The Pattern of God's Truth by Frank Gabelein and All Truth is God's Truth by Arthur Holmes. This course could be team taught by the faculty members from various disciplines. Such a course would provide the rationale for the rest of the student's undergraduate education and show the relevance of certain subjects to future ministry. II. All faculty members should challenge students to see the importance of the intellect for the Christian life. 4 The faculty will need to make their appeal in two areas. First, the challenge is to convince students that the mind matters. We live in a culture of relativism and anti-intellectualism. Allan Bloom, in his best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind, has demonstrated how relativism has permeated university education. He states, sarcastically, that openness is the great insight of our times. He further gives a penetrating analysis of the results of such a system when he says, "The danger they [students] have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance . . . The point is not to correct mistakes [of the past] and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all" (pp. 25, 26). Our culture, Bloom contends, has substituted "opinion" for reason, and "feeling" for thinking. E. D. Hirsch, in his best-seller, Cultural Literacy-What Every American Needs to Know, demonstrates that students lack the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. He relates that some students do not know when World War II was fought or where Chicago is on a map. "It's now clear that not only our disadvantaged but also our best educated and most talented young people are showing diminished verbal skills" (p. 5). These authors are not writing books for the sake of simply being published. Both Bloom and Hirsch warn of the effects of a relativistic and anti-intellectual culture. Bloom says that "What each generation is can be discovered 5 in its relation to the permanent concerns of mankind" (p. 19). Hirsch, quoting Benjamin J. Stein, further amplifies the consequences to which Bloom points: "The kids I saw . . . are not mentally prepared to continue the society because they basically do not understand the society well enough to value it" (p. 7). These writers then are warning ultimately of the breakdown of society. In the college classroom, one may be dealing with underprepared students who live as individual entities and view most information as irrelevant. What matters most is what's happening to them and how does it make them feel. They perhaps do not want to think because thinking has become irrelevant. College faculty cannot assume that freshmen have learned to think and to value thinking. The cultural climate has affected the church and has several implications. For example, anti-intellectualism adversely affects the evangelistic efforts of the church. An uninformed church cannot reach a culture it does not know. It is interesting that missionaries are taught how to communicate cross-culturally but local pastors have not been trained to "read" the culture in which they live. A Christian who sees the intellect as evil cannot go head-to-head with a Muslim, agnostic or atheist in an evangelistic encounter. One problem is that Christians rarely put themselves in situations where their beliefs are genuinely challenged. The result is that they are never forced to think about what they believe and when they find 6 themselves in an evangelistic encounter, they find out how much they do not know. The college classroom should force students to think about their beliefs and the culture in which they live. A pastor who has a disdain for the intellect will not evangelize his community; he will simply condemn it. Furthermore, there may be some who do not properly prepare "to feed the flock of God" but simply "wing it." In the pulpit the pastor may keep talking until he can think of something to say and claim the Spirit's inspiration for what he has said. This is much easier than studying, thinking and praying. Study habits developed in college tend to be carried over into one's vocation. An anti-intellectual church will not disciple converts, as Jesus commanded, but will be satisfied to "get a decision" at the altar. Pentecostals have taken pride in their attempt to recover some of the elements of the early church, but Acts 2:42 says that the early Christians continued first of all in the "apostles' doctrine." Paul's evangelistic efforts required intense intellectual effort as he "reasoned, explained" and entered into dialogue with Jews, Gentiles and pagans in the Book of Acts (17:2, 3, 17). The result of these encounters is that many believed. In other words, students must see that the Holy Spirit uses one's intellect in evangelism as well as prayer. One of the major tasks of the Bible college teacher is to demonstrate to the student that anti-intellectualism is 7 unspiritual. The basic reason for this is theological: God created the mind, not Satan. Further, Christians are to love God with their minds (Matthew 22:37) which implies that a mindless love is not good enough. Paul says not to be children "in your thinking; yet in evil be babes, but in your thinking be mature" (1 Corinthians 14:20). Israel had a zeal for God but not "in accordance with knowledge" (Romans 10:2). It is simply not enough to be excited or enthused about Christianity. The emotions must be guided by truth. Proverbs states that "the naive believe everything, but the prudent man considers his steps" (14:15). Paul tells the Ephesians "to no longer be children, tossed by the waves and whirled about by every fresh gust of teaching . . . ." (4:14 NEB). Paul's statement particularly shows the necessity of thinking and evaluating what one hears in light of the truth. Chuck Swindoll, in a devotional entitled, "Think With Discernment," admonishes Christians to Stop believing everything you hear. Quit being so easily convinced. Be selective. Think. Discern! Undiscerning love spawns and invites more heresy than any of us are ready to believe . . . A Christian without discernment is like a submarine in a harbor plowing full speed ahead without radar or periscope. Or a loaded 747 trying to land in a dense fog without instruments or radio. Lots of noise, a good deal of power, good intentions . . . . (Come Before Winter, pp. 20, 21) Students must understand that spiritual discernment is a mark of maturity, not immaturity. It is not wrong to throw the flag or blow the whistle on that which is doctrinally deviant. Evaluating what one hears or reads is a necessity 8 for the spiritual life of the church. Christians must be taught to think in order to do this. This leads to the second appeal Bible college faculty need to make to their students. The challenge is not only to convince them that the mind matters, but that truth must be their ultimate concern. Experience, including "spiritual" experience, must be evaluated by the truth. Christianity has to be more than one experience among many in our relativistic culture. People need to come to Christ not to be happy or peaceful or healthy and wealthy. Appeals to non-Christians in Acts never contain these elements and people in the cults and some Eastern religions give testimonies of the peace, happiness and purpose they have found. People need to come to Christ because he is the Truth (John 14:6). The church is in danger of losing its perspective on the person of Jesus Christ. Indeed, the kind of Jesus that is presented today by some within the church is sub-biblical, one formed in the image of a materialistic twentieth-century culture. People need to come to Christ because of who he is (Truth) and because of who they are (sinful, apart from God). The quagmire of beliefs and experiences this writer has observed in freshmen survey classes over the past five years shouts that something has gone awry in the church. While there is much concern for feeling good, getting blessed, and receiving what one wants from God, there is little concern for the truth about who God is! When one perceives God as 9 an "It" or as a "Force" or "Power" instead of a Person, God becomes an object to be used. Augustine stated it succinctly when he said, "Idolatry is worshipping anything that was meant to be used, or using anything that was meant to be worshipped." Much pentecostal and charismatic practice is centered on "me and my needs." When that becomes primary, God becomes secondary-and so does the Truth. The result is religious humanism-when the church is concerned more with itself than with God. In conclusion, Elton Trueblood, in an article entitled, "Intellectual Integrity," shows the relevance of the intellect for Christianity: One of the most surprising weaknesses of the Christian ministry in the recent past has been the neglect of rigorous theology. Preachers, assuming what they had no right to assume, have dealt in their sermons with peripheral topics, without realizing that many of the members are lacking in the fundamentals. . . . The Christian faith cannot perform a redemptive role in the modern world unless it gives strong leadership on the central issues of faith." [Quoted in Faculty Dialogue 2 (Winter 1984/85), pp. 50, 51, 54.] The desire of the Bible college faculty should be to see a student body in pursuit of and possessed by the Truth. That cannot happen apart from the intellect. Teachers should realize the extreme importance of what they are doing: shaping how students think about Jesus Christ and the world and their place in both of these. 10