Credo ut Intelligam

This inaugural entry serves to further elucidate the succinctly stated purpose of this blog as located under the heading. I do this because I originally crafted a purpose statement that consisted of approximately 2500 characters prior to realizing that the maximum number of characters allowed for the purpose statement is 500. So I was forced to cut and carve the original purpose statement against every fiber of my being. I did so with much pain of cognition. And it is not within my intrinsic quality to leave it at that (my wife might describe this as obsessive though). I must achieve what John M. Frame has referred to as cognitive rest.

Moving on. Anselm's (Bishop of Canterbury;1033-1109A.D.) epistemological maxim "credo ut intelligam" was adopted from Augustine's (Bishop of Hippo; 354-430 A.D.) slogan, "I believe in order that I might understand," (crede, ut intelligas). For Anselm, faith precedes sound reasoning in matters divine. This undoubtedly inheres with biblical precedent for, "...no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God," and again, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are spiritually discerned," (I Cor. 2:11,14; cf. I Cor. 2:11-13, John 3:2-6, 12, 6:45, 60-65). One cannot and will not truly apprehend divine truth/s without the antecedent work of God viz a viz regeneration. Such truths will fall on deaf ears thus being rendered ineffectual and spiritually void.

In recognizing this Anselm maintains that the christian life, a life indelibly marked by faith, will be feverishly spent in pursuit of God's thoughts considering that the christian's reasoning capacity has been enlivened to grasp divine matters aright. Necessarily then the christian is duty bound to exercise his/her mind to think God's thoughts after Him and to do so holistically. The christian mind must and ought to be given over to the pursuit of God's thoughts and remain intrepid in such a divine endeavor. An insatiable appetite for His thoughts should characterize the mind that has been renewed. Augustine's cerebral posture captures this perspective when he opined, "God and the soul, that is what I desire to know. Nothing more? Nothing whatever." Such an outlook should resonate within the believer's conscious self. In the words of Christ, "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind," (Matt. 22:37). This of course has to be cultivated and nurtured.

This is no menial exercise nor are such endeavors reserved for the intelligentsia of the Church alone. [The later scenario was commonplace during the medieval church as the Romanish Papal monarchy reserved the right/s exclusively to interpret and handle biblical nomenclature. The Scriptures were, as you might recall, a matter for the clergy. Subsequently, the laity were far removed from regularly drinking from the well-spring of God's thoughts as revealed in Holy Writ. Of course this precipitated clerical abuse of the layman, manipulation, and the like.] Conversely, every christian mind is to undergo this veritable process of cerebral transformation. Paul enjoined the community of faith to,"be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect," and, "to think with sober judgment each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned," (Rom. 12:2, 3; see also Eph. 4:23). This sanctifying exercise belongs to the province of the christian community en toto.

This "mind commitment" is to be an engagement throughout the entirety of the christian life regardless of age, stature or standing in the church. This of course befits a life of meekness and humility.  The eminent Apostle Paul even acknowledged that he had not obtained perfection (see I Cor.13:9-12, Phil.3:12). No person will ever arrive at a place of perfection in this life thereby possessing unadulterated wisdom and an unexpurgated knowledge of divine matters. (Of course there is historical doctrinal formulae that is beyond question and necessarily demands a certain dogmatism; that is not my focus here). To think so or act in such a manner is more or less indicative of what Paul described as being "puffed up."

Ministers (i.e the ordained ilk) especially have to guard against placing themselves in an elitist position whereby they are not subject to the interjections of others appertaining to the divinely inspired scriptures. Especially considering that such nuanced commentary may (or may not; regardless, occasion should be allowed for such discourse) perhaps enrich or augment their understanding of God's thoughts.

Ignatius (a.d. 30-107) the Bishop of Antioch exemplifies the posture of a mature believer, thinker and church statesman when he pens, "To Philo the deacon...who still ministers to me in the word of God," (Ignatius to the Philadelphians). The Bishop was receptive to the commentary of a deacon germane to Scripture. He arguably welcomed and valued such "ministry." The Ignatian correspondences are resplendently replete with expressions of this mature christian thinker and officer who quintessentially espoused Anselm's two maxims (credo ut intelligam, fides quaerens intellectum; noted above and under the blog heading). He valued the biblical ministry and insight of a deacon while himself occupying a place of ministerial primacy. He did not adopt an attitude of cerebral superiority whereby he was occupying an entirely different plane of religious or mental existence.

Whenever a minister is unreceptive to the thoughts of others or exudes a laissez-faire attitude he effectively kisses the Papal ring of infallibility; to be sure he bares the insignia and has invariably seated himself upon a throne of pride. Every christian thinker needs to be willing to hear the voice of an Elihu, "'Therefore, I say, 'listen to me; let me also declare my opinion,'" (Job 32:10; see Job 32:1-22). Much to often do ministers of stature or tenure rise above question in their own eyes and eschew the voices of who they might deem lesser messengers or inferior harbingers of truth. Again they are seated on a throne of pride. What is more they truncate the thoughts of God that are perhaps better grasped by such a person as Elihu. The pursuit of every christian thinker should not be to "justify himself rather than God" in his or her thought life, as Elihu charged Job of doing but to be always inclined to listen and hear the voice of Biblical reason; for Biblical reasoning is Godly reasoning. We should not allow ourselves to be reduced to the intransigence embodied by the hometown of Jesus who rejected His wisdom because He was just a carpenter, the son of Mary (this is ostensibly derogatory for it was customary among Jews to describe a man as the son of the father even after he was deceased) and so forth, (Mark 6:1-6). This is an example of a negative circumstantial ad hominem argument (a logical fallacy). Such measures are taken in order to negate what is being said. They deprived themselves of God's thoughts, His truth by way of absurdity. This ineluctable unreasonableness was also evident when the Pharisees asserted that Jesus cast out demons through the agency of Beelzebul (Matt. 12:22-32). They were content in rejecting the divine reality Christ was palpably manifesting because of their unpenetrable religious mental construct. Whether they were intimidated by Jesus' wisdom, fearful of power loss, so forth and so on are inconsequential matters in juxtaposition to the effect that they were willing to ignore God's truth, God's thoughts and divine reality. In so doing they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and resignated themselves to an anthropocentrism that evinces a dwarfed perception as well as an alienation from the thoughts of God.

Scripture, tradition and experience evince that the quest of a healthy Christian mind is to unabatedly pursue knowing God's thoughts in order to understand them and thus think them in order to practice them. Ignatius' words to the Trallians should be the mental posture of a mature Christian thinker, "I am still but a learner."

Again this blog will be committed to the pursuit of knowing God's thoughts with the aim to understand them while recognizing that the christian's faith and reasoning are under the authority of sacred Scripture. Credo ut Intelligam will be primarily interested in handling subject matter pertaining to the landscape of evangelical theology both historical and contemporary while delving into the philosophical milieu in order to think God's thoughts after Him with understanding.

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