Anti-intellectualism

Every now and again, the critique is raised of evangelicalism that it is anti-intellectual.  I think that critique is in some ways fair, and in others not so much.  Here is a little exploration of anti-intellectualism with some thoughts on how we can renew a Christian intellectual culture in our churches.

Firstly, I want to point out that there is a good, justified, and theologically well-founded anti-intellectualism which rests on two distinct grounds.  The first is that God's wisdom is not the wisdom of the world.  "Since, in God's wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached."  The message of the cross contradicts the wisdom of this age; the deep-thinkers of the world stumble over the apparent foolishness on display in the crucified God.  When the Apostle tells us that Christ Jesus "became wisdom from God for us", he is not only establishing where wisdom is, but also telling us where it is not.  Christ became wisdom for us by going to the cross, by demolishing everything that the human intellect would naturally think about God.  This demolition job goes to the foundations of natural thinking about God.  It is not that we mostly had God right, but were surprised by this one thing that he has done.  Christ who becomes wisdom for us in the incarnation and supremely at the cross is in himself and from eternity the Wisdom of God.  The apparent foolishness of the cross goes to the heart of who God is, and the fact that the cross appears foolish to us when in fact it is wisdom which reflects the eternal Life and Being of God is a sound rebuke to human intellect.

The second ground for anti-intellectualism is grace.  I think this is where a lot of evangelical anti-intellectualism comes from.  God doesn't expect us to climb up to him, either morally or intellectually; he comes down to us.  The message of the cross is devastatingly simple.  An infant can begin to understand it.  There are no theology exams for salvation; simply, child-like trust is all that is required.  Wherever an intellectual barrier is erected which seems to threaten the simplicity of the gospel, a certain amount of anti-intellectualism is justified and indeed required.

However, anti-intellectualism is not itself a good thing.  From the fact that God has created us with brains and the ability to engage in more or less complex reasoning, we really ought to assume that he wants us to use them - and why, if we are called to use them in life generally, would we not be expected to use them in understanding God and his works?  In fact already in the Scriptures and then in the Tradition of the church we see plenty of rigorous intellectual work, grappling with the reality of God's revelation, seeking to describe it and trace out its implications.  What puts people off that sort of work in the church?

To an extent in evangelicalism I think it is, as already mentioned, the desire to keep the simple gospel simple.  Fair enough, as far as it goes.  But we do our own faith, and our appeal to outsiders, no favours if we decline to engage in thought about what we believe.  The danger looms of a purely subjective faith - I believe it because I believe it - with so little intellectual content, so little concern to explain what we believe and why, and so little effort to connect this faith to a general view of the world, that it becomes unassailable but also inexplicable.  The gospel is simple, but it is also huge in its claims and its implications, and really the church does need to take up the task of exploring and explaining these.

There is also, if I read things correctly, an unhelpful biblicism at work.  Of course evangelicals are Bible people; that's the whole big idea.  But when the Bible is used as if answers can just be read off the surface of the text, and as if any attempt to reflect more deeply on how those answers join up, whether certain parts of the text might be key for interpreting and applying other parts, whether the text might imply a metaphysical hinterland (and perhaps foreground) - well, then I think we're in trouble.  Holy Scripture doesn't work that way.  If we insist on just sticking to the words and formulations of the Bible, we may well end up in heresy - many heretics have been very keen on the text of Scripture! - but at the least we will miss the depths of what is being portrayed in Scripture.

If we want to avoid anti-intellectualism in our churches and foster a thoughtful theological culture, I think we need to consider a few points.  Firstly, those of us who like theology and read big books for fun need to rein it in.  It is very easy for theology enthusiasts to give the impression that they have graduated from the simple gospel to something more profound.  In reality, there is nothing more profound.  Those who have done the most intellectual work need to be able to speak the language of simple faith in church, even as they hope to guide people deeper into that simple gospel.  Even as we go deeper, it should be very evident that we are going deeper into the same message, and certainly not moving on from it.  And this should be clear not only in what gets said, but where the focus and the enthusiasm are.  I get nervous when people seem more excited about metaphysics than they are about Christ crucified.

Second, the links between the Bible and theology need to be clearly spelt out, and it needs to be absolutely clear that the Bible is in the driving seat.  I have no time for that approach that says you need the Nicene Creed or whatever in order to properly understand the Bible.  Rather, I want to show that the Bible itself teaches Nicene Trinitarianism, because that is how God has revealed himself.  There is a temptation for theologians to scorn those who just want to stick to the Bible; instead, why not help people to see that sticking with the Bible is exactly what we want to do, and that the way to do it is to think through the nature and identity of the God revealed in the Bible?

Finally, we need to be clear that the intellectual work of the church is not intended to make the message of the cross appear wise to the world.  Clever folk who are converted to Christ will need to keep on putting to death their natural wisdom in order to start thinking on the basis of God's wisdom - in order to have the mind of Christ, to think on the basis of Christ in the wisdom which the Spirit displays.  Thinking that starts from Jesus and returns to Jesus, making much of him - that is what we need.