Mark Noll keeps the Canadian connection alive, as all of our authors so far this semester have strong ties to Jenn\u2019s motherland.\u00a0 Mark Noll, former Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, is current Professor of History at Regent College in Vancouver.\u00a0 A prolific author, and high achieving academic, perhaps his most impressive claim to fame (though I am sure this goes highly unnoticed) is the fact that he earned a master\u2019s degree from the University of Iowa in English.\u00a0 Iowa\u2019s English Department is world renown, and I wonder if his time there helped catalyze his career in writing.<\/p>\n
Most famously known for his work, The Scandal of the American Mind<\/em>, in which Noll writes about anti-intellectual tendencies within the American evangelical movement,[1]<\/a> our reading this week pairs Scandal <\/em>with an \u201cupdate\u201d to this formidable text.\u00a0 In what some have referred to as a \u201csequel\u201d to Scandal, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind<\/em> \u201cseeks to offer something of an update on the current status of the evangelical mind and to suggest how the evangelical faith might inform the life of the mind.\u201d[2]<\/a> A reader can see this shift as Noll quotes Os Guiness in Scandal<\/em>, \u201cEvangelicals need to repent of their refusal to think Christianly and develop the mind of Christ’[3]<\/a>.\u00a0 Fifteen years later, Noll follows this up in Life of the Mind<\/em> with, \u201cMy contention in this book is that coming to know Christ provides the most basic possible motive for pursuing the tasks of human learning.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 From lamenting the lack of Universities, periodicals, and public discourse, to charting a new way to think about learning, Noll strives to move the conversation into a different plane.<\/p>\n My favorite part of these two books is when Noll references Peter Enns work Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. <\/em>This is mainly because Peter Enns is speaking to Westminster Presbyterian Church, the church I currently serve in March.\u00a0 We are doing a collective book read, where large parts of the congregation will read his book How the Bible Actually Works: In Which I Explain How An Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Book Leads Us to Wisdom Rather Than Answers\u2015and Why That’s Great News<\/em>, then have small group discussions about the book, and then Enns himself will come for a brief lecture and \u201cQ & A\u201d MC\u2019d by yours truly.\u00a0 I look forward to asking Enns his thoughts on Mark Noll\u2019s work in a very public setting.<\/p>\n All of this reminds me that I come from a denominational background in which some have argued that far too much of our faith journey comes from \u201cthe mind.\u201d\u00a0 I have made the joke during our Zoom chats that Presbyterians are the \u201cFrozen Chosen.\u201d Yes, this moniker comes from our unique concept of double predestination, but also the fact that Presbyterians in general are more \u201chead\u201d and less \u201cheart.\u201d\u00a0 Most Presbyterians would argue that there is nothing wrong with this.\u00a0 \u00a0Scot-Presbyterians have historically been at the forefront of Public Education movements (even offering free public lectures at the University of Glasgow according to Arthur Herman in How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It) <\/em>and the \u201cSunday School Movement\u201d teaching Bible basics to both children and adults.<\/p>\n And yet there is a clear, public, bold, vocal, naming of one\u2019s Presbyterian faith that falls short of that demonstrated by many of my non-Presbyterian cohort peers.\u00a0 I shared some of this with everyone following our first Advance in Hong Kong.\u00a0 Not only was I not as used to praying during class in seminary (yes, I went to one!) but that your fervent and personal prayer life was richer than any I had experienced in the Presbyterian realm.\u00a0 It took me aback, honestly it still takes me aback, in ways that have improved the way I pray publicly and privately.\u00a0 In ways that I lead worship.\u00a0 In ways that I pray with my family.<\/p>\n I am grateful to Noll for lifting up the importance of education.\u00a0 But I too am grateful for the evangelical world from which he comes, for the passionate, Spirit filled proclamation of the power of Christ.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Alan Wolfe, \u201cThe Opening of the Evangelical Mind: Of all America’s religious traditions, the author writes, evangelical Protestantism, at least in the twentieth-century conservative forms, has long ranked “dead last in intellectual stature.” Now evangelical thinkers are trying to revitalize their tradition. Can they turn an intellectual backwater into an intellectual beacon?\u201d The Atlantic<\/em>, October 2000, https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2000\/10\/the-opening-of-the-evangelical-mind\/378388\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Bradley G. Green, \u201cJesus Christ and the Life of the Mind,\u201d Themelios<\/em>, Vol 37-Issue 2, https:\/\/themelios.thegospelcoalition.org\/review\/jesus-christ-and-the-life-of-the-mind\/.<\/a><\/p>\n