I am here to recommend Piper's sermon "The Supremacy of God in the Life of the Mind." It is online for purchase (www.desiringgod.org) or you can follow this address to get the article version and read it. Please do!
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TopicIndex/25/
1465_The_Supremacy_of_God_in_the_Life_of_the_Mind/
2 comments:
Read this sermon the past Sunday; had to chaw on it for a while before writing about it, and I had finals going nuts, so I couldn't take too much time to reflect.
I like it quite a lot. I completely agree with his premise, and it is a very challenging concept. He is right to assault to the "unspoken foundation," but I wonder whether we'd agree on what it always looks like to really express the centrality of Christ in the life of the mind. I *think* we'd still agree, but I'm not certain. I'll explain later.
That's a sort of taste I get with many Hillsdale professors. "Oh, my Christianity's the foundation" except that it seems more like a compartment.
I've wrestled quite a bit with this idea the entire semester in Birzer. My first paper basically attacked Kirk as a compartment Christian or an "unspoken foundation" guy. Birzer was none-too-pleased (I wasn't the only one asserting that opinion, and he took an entire class period basically to address and refute it).
I think I was dead wrong about that, and this is where I'm not certain Piper and I would agree. You'd know better than me, and I might ask Robbie C too. I think there's a difference between a "foundational Christian" mind (or a compartmental Christian) and the pervasively Christian mind that isn't necessarily explicit in expression of that centrality.
I am now (fairly) certain that Kirk was nothing if not a wholly Christian man, and (though I don't always agree with him) I think his work reflects the all-encompassing nature of his Christianity. However, he did not explicate Christ all the time, and I don't think he needed to. Another example would be Flannery O'Connor's short stories, dramatic assertions of a harsh Grace that generally fail to mention God. Would Piper accept that Christ can be central in a work or even in education without needing explicit mention? I suspect he would, but I'm not certain.
On another note, the sermon did inspire me today on my last final, an in-class essay. I was planning to write about how utopian fiction is worthwhile because it reveals truth and beauty and leave it at that. I think that would have been acceptable, because all truth and beauty is God's whether acknowledged or not. But I changed my mind and went on a Logos "rant", if you will, basically that saying all is meaningless without Christ, and truth and beauty are only true and beautiful if God is a God of redemptive Grace. Definitely spurred by the Piper sermon :)
haha. whoa. I didn't expect to find this comment here. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I think you and Piper do agree... I think. It's a little hard to tell. You both confuse me sometimes :)
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