So what is a Christian?

I suppose in all the talk about "Christian Thinking", one has to answer the question, What is a Christian? This is an answer that is never complete, but let me begin here. To be a Christian is to be committed to Christ. It means that my motivations, ambitions, beliefs, values, and behavior must be influenced primarily by what I believe to be the claims of Christ.

So what are those claims? Christ came to "save his people from their sins". That seems to imply that I am sinful. A recognition of that fact has implications that I will explore later. Suffice it to say that hubris is excluded. Knowing that I am not only fallible, but fallen, makes it impossible for me to boast of any personal virtue. But since Christ has saved me, I can rejoice in that fact and in gratitude seek to live in a way that celebrates that reality. Yet, I cannot do it of myself. Christ said "without me you can do nothing". So I must rely on him for the resources to live the life worthy of his salvation.

Lord help me to let you do in me what is your greatest desire for me to do.

More later.

A Sabbath Seminar discussion

This is the transcript of a presentation I made recently at Sabbath Seminar at WWU as a means of introducing a discussion on Christian Thinking.

Thinking Christianly – a conversation with colleagues

Sabbath Seminar

January 12, 2008

A year ago, I initiated a discussion among a few of our colleagues on the notion of Christian Thinking. I did so because for some time I have become more and more convinced that being Christian should be a more conscious component of what we do as members of a university community beyond worship services. If we are a Christian University, that should mean something. So I hoped that I could find some like-minded colleagues who were willing to go along with me on a journey of exploration, of inquiry into what it might mean to engage in Christian thinking, and what difference that would make in our teaching, our research, our social action and, coming full circle, in our worship as well.

So I want to continue this exploration today with the help of three colleagues. I want to begin by asking the basic question, what is Christian Thinking? Next I want to point to one example that might be helpful in visualizing what it can look like. Then I want to ask my three colleagues to give us some of their insights out of their own disciplines. Finally, I want to engage you in dialog with us about what it all means, and where we might go from here.

What is Christian thinking?

1. It is thinking. That is, it is rational activity. It is not emotional irrationality, yet it recognizes the role of emotions in human rationality. It is holistic.
2. It is Christian. That is, it is thinking that is engaged in by Christians and easily identifiable as such.
3. It is Christian in that it is characterized by humility rather than hubris. It recognizes human limitations. We are not God.
4. It is Christian in that it allows, even adopts, Christian assumptions. It is friendly to the supernatural, not dismissive of it. It is accepting of Christian values, not hostile to them. It takes seriously the reality of sin and is skeptical of human perfectibility without Christ.

What Christian Thinking is not.

1. Theology, only, or even mostly.
2. Doctrinaire. It a way of thinking, not a result.
3. Certainty

In summary, Thinking Christianly is making our Christian commitment the ground of our thinking and inquiry as Christian Scholars. If we are Christians, that fact should be recognizable in our thinking – and the products of our thinking -- in the same way that a historian influenced by Karl Marx might be recognizably Marxian or a psychologist enamored by Karl Rogers might be clearly Rogerian. That does not mean that we are closed-minded or that we do not continue to be self-critical. But Christianity brings with it, I think, unique assumptions, values, and sensibilities, some of which overlap with persons of other persuasions, but some of which are necessarily peculiar to Christians.

A recent example of Christian Thinking.

On November 9, David Neff of Christianity Today came to town, and gave a talk about the Christian response to the environment, and it occurred to me that here was an excellent example of Christian thinking. What Neff did was make a case for the care of the earth using the Christian message as the basic foundation. Not only was it Christian, it was Adventist to the core. And thus provided me with a good example of what I mean by "Thinking Christianly".

What impressed me even more than the basic Christian stance from which he spoke, was how he, a person out of the Adventist tradition, but not currently a part of it, used his Adventist understanding to show how an eschatological sensibility places an even greater burden on us to take care of the earth. His analogy of the desire of an engaged person to take care of the promise (the engagement ring) because of the hope for the fulfillment of the promise (the wedding ring) was particularly helpful. So we, as Christians looking forward to a New Earth must be even more inclined to take care of the earth we have, because of the promise. There was much to think about in that. As a practicing Sabbath-keeper, I might have added one thing. It seems that we who keep the Sabbath could see it as a perfect way of tying the two ideas together. For the Sabbath is a celebration of Creation, and a celebration of the promise of the New Creation. We who are Sabbath keepers cannot but be environmentalists if we take the Sabbath seriously.

So what made it Christian Thinking? Neff began his discourse by drawing a clear distinction between a Buddhist worldview and a Christian one, showing the uniqueness of a Judeo-Christian view of matter and how Christ's coming makes that view of matter even more profound - Christ sanctifying matter by becoming part of it. This is a contrast to the view of matter as evil. In doing so, he also showed how the Gnostic view, as well as some modern pagan views also fail to capture the way we as Christians view the earth. Thus, he showed how this Christian view of the earth gives us a mandate to care for it. Buddhists, Satanists, and Atheists can all be environmentalists. Yet the way in which we as Christians justify it and persuade others is rooted in our Christian worldview and a Christian understanding of our place on this earth and our destiny beyond it.

So my questions to my colleagues, and to the rest of you, ultimately, would be:

1. Is this notion of Thinking Christianly, one with which you can identify, and if not why not?

2. If you can, what would those peculiar characteristics look like in your own discipline? For example,

a. How would you, because you take your Christian commitment seriously, approach your research or practice differently?

b. Is a Christian biologist, writer, literary critic or social scientist necessarily different from a non-Christian biologist, writer, literary critic, or social scientist?

c. Would a scholar or clinician be recognizable as such, even when she or he is working on a non-religious problem? How so?

3. What are the difficulties that you face in this arena?

4. Are there contemporary examples that we can point to of successful scholarship in these areas?