{"id":3844,"date":"2015-01-31T04:19:46","date_gmt":"2015-01-31T04:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=3844"},"modified":"2015-01-31T04:19:46","modified_gmt":"2015-01-31T04:19:46","slug":"incarnate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/incarnate\/","title":{"rendered":"Incarnate"},"content":{"rendered":"

I will never forget a talk I heard while at a summer camp when I was in junior high. The speaker\u2019s name was Ron; I don\u2019t remember his last name. He was teaching about who Jesus Christ was. \u201cJesus was God in a Bod<\/em>.\u201d Although I had heard that before in different terms, being raised in a Conservative Baptist church, yet, this statement by Ron really made me think. If Jesus was \u201cGod in a Bod,\u201d what did that mean to me? And what did that mean for Him? I have never stopped thinking about this. I probably think about it every day.<\/p>\n

In our double-duty readings for the week, Mark A. Noll speaks loudly to evangelicals to get their acts together in regards to how they think. In The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind<\/em>, Noll punches hard at what he perceives to be a major problem with evangelical (particularly American) thinking. \u201cThe scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.\u201d[1]<\/a> He punches again, \u201c\u2026 American evangelicals are not exemplary for their thinking, and they have not been so for several generations.\u201d[2]<\/a> Needless to say, these are strong claims. According to Noll, this \u201cscandal\u201d has at least three dimensions: a cultural dimension, an institutional dimension, and a theological dimension. For Noll, evangelicalism in America is far too utilitarian and far too shallow. I found this book to be both fascinating and frustrating. Part of me was fascinated with Noll\u2019s courage, but part of me kept saying, \u201cAren\u2019t there not bigger fish to fry than these?\u201d However, most of me liked the work Noll did here, particularly in his comments to fundamentalists.<\/p>\n

Noll calls Chapter 5 \u201cThe Intellectual Disaster of Fundamentalism.\u201d He traces both the history and the theology of the fundamentalist movement, seeing it as a fearful overreaction to a massive immigration of Roman Catholics, Jews, and the \u201cunchurched.\u201d[3]<\/a> Fundamentalism was indeed a Protestant response to the many changes going on in the late 19th<\/sup> century and early 20th<\/sup> century. Noll sees this movement as being at its core anti-intellectual, especially for those who espoused a pugnacious Biblical literalism, particularly dispensational theology. Having come out of a very fundamentalist background myself, I was grateful that someone was taking on some of this thinking. The movement I was a part of for many of my early ministry years was staunchly anti-intellectual. It was also firmly and unapologetically literal in its interpretation of Scripture, particularly of those passages that dealt with eschatology. Above all, this movement had all the answers and was not only non-denominational but anti-denominational. It was also anti-Catholic and pro-Israel. And it was not at all welcoming of higher education. In fact, it prided itself on having uneducated clergy. I was one of the few pastors who even had a college degree. I clearly remember the day I decided to go to seminary for a master\u2019s degree when my pastor handed me a book (that itself was an irony) called The Handbook of Pentecostal Theology<\/em> and admonished me, \u201cKeep this book handy. Don\u2019t let those guys dry you up. Don\u2019t let them mess with your mind.\u201d Strangely, what seminary (and a stint of living in the Middle-East) actually did to me was to open my mind, not destroy it. I began to realize that it was OK to not have all the answers and that it was OK to have unanswered questions. This education revealed my ignorance and increased my stature both as a human being and a person of faith.<\/p>\n

Noll is a thorough researcher. I learned a lot from his book and will read it more thoroughly another time. I am glad it was assigned. It is an important read. But I was even more pleased with Noll\u2019s second book, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind<\/em>. I do not know about Noll\u2019s life, but on the back of the first book it indicates that he was a professor at Wheaton College. I found it interesting that he is now at the University of Notre Dame. Some people might call this backsliding; I call it growth. I find it refreshing that a leading evangelical scholar would find himself at a Catholic university.<\/p>\n

This second book has a single focus, the person and the work of Christ. I like that Noll says the Trinity is the \u201cdeeply mysterious starting point\u201d for the study of Christianity.[4]<\/a> Noll\u2019s central argument here is that those who know Christ should be among the best of thinkers, for it is in Christ that all that matters comes together. In the historical development of the Creeds, we see Jesus Christ more clearly, more honestly. In Chapter Two of the text, which Noll titles \u201cJesus Christ: Motives for Serious Learning,\u201d the author spotlights several Scriptures that pour light onto the Person of Christ:<\/p>\n