{"id":16550,"date":"2018-02-23T16:00:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-24T00:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=16550"},"modified":"2018-02-23T16:00:32","modified_gmt":"2018-02-24T00:00:32","slug":"pieces-in-a-jigsaw-puzzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/pieces-in-a-jigsaw-puzzle\/","title":{"rendered":"Pieces in a Jigsaw Puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cFundamentalist naivet\u00e9 concerning science was matched by nineteenth century traits that undercut the possibility for a responsible intellectual life\u2026included a weakness for treating the verses of the Bible as pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that needed only to be sorted and then fit together to possess a finished picture of divine truth; an overwhelming tendency to \u201cessentialism,\u201d or the conviction that a specific formula could capture for all times and places the essence of biblical truth for any specific issue concerning God, the human condition, or the fate of the world;\u201d[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be nice if all of the world\u2019s problems could be solved by applying a specific formula or looking at a finished picture of divine truth? What happens when you don\u2019t have all of the jigsaw puzzle pieces? Or the ones you have do not connect together? While as Christians we want to acknowledge that Jesus is the answer, I assert that the real importance lies in how we engage with Jesus in the questions and not so much the inevitable finite answer. In my experience, our faith journey reveals more questions than direct answers. We wrestle with the questions together and allow the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us as we continue to move along in our journey. So that being said, our lives as Christians are made up of a complex interrelationship between human life, nature and scripture. \u00a0God\u2019s creation combined with life experience teaches us things about human existence that is not bound up in one book. \u00a0Throughout Christian history there has been tension between how we learn about this interrelationship and the tools\/methods we use as we seek out to discover the answers to the questions that surface in light of these connections.<\/p>\n

Within his two books, one being a post script for the other, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind<\/em> and The Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind <\/em>Mark Noll explores the historical framework behind evangelicalism and how it relates to culture and scholarship. He writes \u201cif what we claim about Jesus Christ is true, then evangelicals should be among the most active, most serious, and most open minded advocates of general human learning. Evangelical hesitation about scholarship in general or about pursuing learning wholeheartedly is, in other words, antithetical to the Christ-centered basis of evangelical faith<\/em>.\u201d[2]<\/a> Over the course of history, evangelicals have shunned the emergence of enlightenment, science and even at times technological advancements. \u00a0The divide between faith and science was clear. It was as if science was the antithesis to solid doctrine and faithful practice. Science was seen as other. It was the secular threat brought in by the emergence of enlightenment to disrupt the evangelical fundamentalist way of life. The unfortunate result to this way of thinking and practice was a greater rejection for scholarship as a whole. As universities and places of learning formed, it was not funded or attended by those in the evangelical community. The lack of engagement in scholarship and critical thinking lead to a poor and lack luster theological framework that created a naive and narrow worldview. \u00a0Noll asserts that \u201c[f]or Christian thinking about the world, the key question is what happens to a community when it tries to work out a Christian orientation\u2026 [i]f that community\u2019s habits of mind concerning those things to which the community pays most diligent attention and accords highest authority \u2014 that is, to the Bible and Christian theology \u2014 are defined by naive and uncritical assumptions about the way to study or think about anything, so will its efforts to promote Christian thinking about the world be marked by na\u00efvet\u00e9 and an absence of rigorous criticism\u2026<\/em> it means that fruitful evangelical thinking at the end of the twentieth century must come to grips not only with the excesses of the fundamentalist past but with the compounded damage done when those excesses were grafted on to even longer-lived intellectual weaknesses.[3]<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>Some could say that we have progressed since the 19th century fundamentalist way of thinking but I would not be so quick to say that we are far from it. The point Noll\u2019s is making is a strong one. In order to truly understand the impact of this disastrous way of thinking we must first understand its effect on our history in order to recognize how we have brought our past into our present. So then how do we move beyond this way of thinking and living? Noll\u2019s exhorts us to consider Christ in everything that we do. Placing Him at the center means that a Christian life ultimately at its basic core requires a life of Christian scholarship. \u00a0There is no separation in the way in which we learn and engage in all aspects of our life. Noll\u2019s asserts \u201c[t]he specific requirements for Christian scholarship all grow naturally from Christian worship inspired by such love: confidence in the ability to gain knowledge about the world because the world was brought into being through Jesus Christ; commitment to careful examination of the objects of study through “coming and seeing”; trust that good scholarship and faithful discipleship cannot ultimately conflict; humility from realizing that learning depends at every step on a merciful God; and gratitude in acknowledging that all good gifts come from above.[4]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> Mark A. Noll, The scandal of the Evangelical mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 127.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Mark Noll, The Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011, Location 27.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Mark A. Noll, The scandal of the Evangelical mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 129.<\/p>\n

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[4]<\/a> Mark Noll, The Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011, Location 1656.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFundamentalist naivet\u00e9 concerning science was matched by nineteenth century traits that undercut the possibility for a responsible intellectual life\u2026included a weakness for treating the verses of the Bible as pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that needed only to be sorted and then fit together to possess a finished picture of divine truth; an overwhelming tendency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[147],"class_list":["post-16550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-noll","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16550"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16731,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550\/revisions\/16731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}