Introduction:
(Opening statement)
"This book is a plea to embrace serious thinking as a means of loving God and people. It is a plea to reject either-or thinking when it comes to head a heart, thinking and feeling, reason and faith, theology and doxology, mental labor and the ministry of love. It is a plea to see thinking as a necessary, God-ordained means of knowing God. Thinking is one of the ways that we put the fuel of knowledge on the fires of worship and service to the world."
"But I hate to sound snooty - which every book on thinking does."
Chapter One: My Pilgrimage
"Putting more knowledge in my head about God and his ways was like throwing wood in the furnace of my worship. For me, seeing has meant savoring. And the clearer the seeing, the sweeter he savoring."
"Thinking is not an end in itself. Nothing but God himself is finally an end in itself. Thinking is not the goal of life. Thinking, like non-thinking, can be the ground for boasting. Thinking, without prayer, without the Holy Spirit, without obedience, without love, will puff up and destroy (1 Cor 8:1)."
"Thinking is essential on the path to understanding. But understanding is a gift of God."
(Regarding an address Benjamin Warfield made)
"Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. 'What!' is the appropriate response, 'than ten hours over your books, on your knees?' - Both-and. Not either-or."
Chapter Two: Deep Help from a Dead Friend
"...if we are to live according to our nature as human beings in the image of God, and if we are to glorify God fully, we must engage our mind in knowing him truly and our hearts in loving him duly."
"...[Jonathan Edwards] made the work of thinking serve the experience of worship and love...strong emotions for the glory of God based on clear biblical views of the truth of God."
"The apex of glorifying God is enjoying him with the heart. But this is an empty emotionalism where that joy is not awakened and sustained by true views of God for who he really is. That is mainly what the mind is for."
"The best reading of the most insightful literature (especially the Bible) involves serious thinking."
Chapter Three: Reading as Thinking
"The Bible is the main place that we come to know God, adn the Bible is a book, and a book requires thinking."
(Quoting Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book)
"Most of us do not know what the limits of our comprehension are. We have never tried our powers to the full. It is my honest belief that almost all the great books in every field are within the grasp of all normally intelligent men."
"It is certainly better to gather a few crumbs which have dropped from the table than to starve in futile adoration of the feast we cannot reach."
"If they construe my sentences in a way that is different from what I intend, then either I have written poorly or they have read poorly. Or both."
"The person who will not embrace the pain and frustration will remain at lower levels of achievement and joy."
"The joy is on the other side of the hard work... If you cannot embrace the pain of learning but must have instant gratification, you forfeit the greatest rewards of life. So it is with reading the Bible. The greater riches are for those who will work hard to understand all that is really there."
"And there is academic gamesmanship and unbelieving cynicism and indifferent dismissal. When I plead for the habit of asking questions, I mean humble questioning that expresses eagerness to grow and to uncover truth."
Chapter Four: Mental Adultery Is No Escape
"This is why the Pharisees are asking for a sign. They want to give the impression that there is not enough evidence that Jesus is the Messiah and so they are justified in not receiving him as their bridegroom. But, in fact, the problem is that they don't want him as their bridegroom. They are dominated by a spirit of adultery. They prefer other sources of satisfaction."
"...at the bottom of human irrationality and at the bottom of spiritual ignorance is hardness of heart."
"...unrighteousness disorders our capacity to think. The corruption of our hearts is the deepest root of our irrationality."
"...your mind functions just fine when seeking out partners in adultery (like comfort and safety on the sea as more precious than Christ), but it cannot see the signs of Christ-exalting truth."
"[Paul] emphatically makes God's gift the ground of our effort. He makes God's giving light the reason for our pursuing light."
"There is no way to awaken faith or strengthen faith that evades thinking."
Chapter Five: Rational Gospel, Spiritual Light
(Regarding people who say the receive Christ but give little evidence that they are spiritually alive). "...when these people 'receive Christ,' they do not receive him as supremely valuable. They receive him simply as sin-forgiver (because they love being guilt-free), and as rescuer-from-hell (because they love being pain-free), and as healer (because they love being disease-free), and as protector (because they love being safe), and as prosperity-giver (because the love being wealthy), and as creator (because they want a personal universe), and as Lord of history (because they want order and purpose). But they don't receive him as supremely and personally valuable for who he is."
"All natural men without any spiritual life love these things. But to embrace Jesus as your supreme treasure requires a new nature."
"Therefore, the ground of such faith must be the spiritual sight of such glory and beauty and value."
"We must hear the story and get the gospel facts and the doctrine right. But the decisive ground of saving faith is the glory of Christ seen in the gospel."
"No amount of reasoning or historical argument alone can produce spiritual sight in the blind. This is the limit of thinking."
"So I conclude that we must use our minds and we must know that the use of our minds is not enough."
Chapter Six: Love for God: Treasuring God with All Your Mind
"...love for God is not essentially thought or behavior but affection - not ideas or deeds but delight. God is our supreme pleasure. We prefer above all else to know him and see him and be with him and be like him."
"Jesus says that external actions - even religious ones directed toward him - are not the essence of worship. They are not the essence of love. What happens in the heart is essential. The external behaviors will be pleasing to God when they flow from a heart that freely treasures God above all things."
"Jesus does not equate loving God with serving God. He roots serving God in loving God. Loving God is treasuring him the way people do money, only vastly more and for different reasons."
Chapter Seven: Jesus Meets the Relativists
"God is ultimate Truth. And he never changes. Therefore, he is a firm, universal, never-changing foundation for truth about man and the world and life."
"Relativism comes into play when someone says, ' There is no knowable, objective, external standard for right and wrong that is valid for everyone...'"
"But [the mind] was created by God to discover the truth and respond to the truth in trusting God and loving people."
"...language does the tricky work of covering up the corruption."
"Jesus abominates that kind of arrogant, cowardly prostituting of the glorious gifts of human thinking and human language."
"Relativism is not a coherent philosophical system. It is riddled with contradictions - both logical and experiential... But if you are not claiming your defense of relativism is true, why do you expect me to listen?"
"People don't embrace relativism because it is philosophically satisfying. They embrace it because it is physically and emotionally gratifying."
I know that was a lot of quotes, but that just goes to show how excited I am about this read. I'm a couple of pages into chapter eight. This book has moments of significant weightiness. In fact, there's a section that I haven't quoted because I need to go back and really delve deeply into it. I feel like I missed a lot when I read it the first time. I can't wait to finish it.
Here are the chapter titles for the rest of the book:
- Unhelpful Anti-intellectualism Impulses in Our History
- You Have Hidden These Things From the Wise and Understanding
- In the Wisdom of God, the World did not know God Through Wisdom
- The Knowledge That Loves
- All Scholarship is for the Love of God and Man
That first quote you provide from chapter 5 is so true!
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