Think! by John Piper and The Passionate Intellect by Alister McGrath
I approached these two books with some caution in my heart. I suspect that both authors have written for a wider audience who are tempted to rest on faith and emotionalism rather than on the intellectual; but generally I would not see that as an issue for Sydney Christians. Indeed, I think that often our problem is intellectual arrogance.
However, both authors deal with these issues in their introduction: the need to balance thinking with heart and soul and will; and they also warn about intellectual pride, with a differentiation between human wisdom and God’s wisdom.
In the end both books are useful contributions for the issues that impact on our thinking and living as Christians today.
John Piper is in town, and this book will be a popular pick-up. It is the easier to digest of the two books. Piper writes for easy communication, and his book is set out with helpful headings and small chunks of text. His thesis is that the way we glorify Christ is by knowing him truly and treasuring him above all things (Philippians 1:20-23, 3:8).
The journey of knowing God truly is then mapped out through autobiography, reference to Jonathan Edwards, thinking and reading truly, the link between thinking and faith, loving God with all our mind, combating the modern scourges of relativism and anti-intellectualism, and finally the link between thinking and loving.
In chapter 3 he gives a helpful outline of his approach to reading the Bible intelligently:
• Understand that God has chosen to reveal himself through the Bible
• Think about what you read (don’t making random choices)
• Work hard to understand what you read
• Try and figure out what the author intended
• Pay attention to the grammar of what you are reading
• Make the obvious connections (read plainly)
• Persevere
• Ask questions of the text to deepen understanding
• Especially pay attention to “therefore” and “because”!
Piper concludes the book with advice to those who don’t love to think: be thankful for thinkers, respect those who serve you with thinking, pray for the vulnerable thinkers, and read your Bible with joy. He also has advice for those who love to think: think consciously for the glory of Christ, become like children, enjoy the Word of God like gold and honey, and think for the sake of love.
While Piper battles with relativism and anti-intellectualism, McGrath takes on the New Atheists, a movement largely originating in his home country of England. He writes about Darwinism and science and asks whether religion does poison everything, as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have claimed.
However, before he enters those frays, McGrath begins with a positive message about the intellectual robustness of theology, or even the process of knowing God. Doing this he takes a magical trip through the minds and works of George Herbert and CS Lewis and Martin Luther. He talks about the Theatre of the Glory of God (nature), and the Tapestry of Faith (theology and apologetics).
He uses some wonderful quotes, such as CS Lewis’: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen – not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.”
McGrath affirms worship as a balance for too much emphasis on the intellectual, but is also firm that “We must see ourselves as standard-bearers for the spiritual, ethical, imaginative and intellectual vitality of the Christian faith, working out why we believe certain things are true and what difference they make to the way we live our lives and we engage with he world around us.”
For me, McGrath’s book is richer in wisdom, but Piper’s book is richer in easy tools to apply. Both are reassuring that the Christian faith is rational and secure, and that God wishes to engage with our mind as well as our heart and will, that we may love truly and live right.
