Love God With All Your Mind part 2


How did this come about?


1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

German

Higher

CriticismHume

Kant

On the

Origin of

Species

Revivalist movements of the

1730s-1750s and the 1800s

Puritans

Edwards

Mather

Harvard


“Thou shalt love the Lord

thy God with all thy

heart, and with all thy

soul, and with all thy

strength, and with all thy

mind”

Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27

Heart

Mind

Soul


1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

German

Higher

CriticismHume

Kant

On the

Origin of

Species


1730s-1750s and the 1800s

Puritans

Literacy Rate

89%-95%

Edwards

Mather

Harvard

Puritans focus on

intellect, spiritual

and emotional

Puritans

build some

of the finest

colleges

Newton

Jonathan

Edwards


1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

German

Higher

CriticismHume

Kant

On the

Origin of

Species


1730s-1750s and the 1800s

Puritans

Focus on

Experience

Edwards

Mather

Harvard

Education started to focus on

specific disciples – science

divorced from theology

Theology separated form other

disciplines and intellectual pursuits

were abandoned

Newton

Great Awakening

George Whitefield


Legacy of the 1800’s revivals“But their overall effect was to overemphasize immediate personal

conversion to Christ instead of a studied period of reflection and

conviction; emotional, simple, popular preaching instead of

intellectually careful and doctrinally precise sermons; and personal

feelings and relationship to Christ instead of a deep grasp of the

nature of Christian teachings and ideas.”

J. P. Moreland, Love God With All Your Mind, pg 23

“Anti-intellectualism was a feature of American Revivalism.”

George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 1980

pg. 212


1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

German

Higher

CriticismHume

Kant

On the

Origin of

Species


1730s-1750s and the 1800s

Puritans

Edwards

Mather

Harvard

Secular subculture

in academics

Science and

Religion seen at

odds

Draper &

White

A History of the Warfare of

Science with Theology in

Christendom (1869-96)

A History of the Conflict

between Religion and

Science (1874)

Newton

Draper

White

Darwin


1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

German

Higher

CriticismHume

Kant

On the

Origin of

Species


1730s-1750s and the 1800s

Puritans

Focus on

Experience

Edwards

Mather

Harvard Draper &

White

Jehovah's Witnesses

Mormonism

Newton


1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

German

Higher

CriticismHume

Kant

On the

Origin of

Species


1730s-1750s and the 1800s

Puritans

Edwards

Mather

Harvard Draper &

White

Newton

Today

??????????


1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

German

Higher

CriticismHume

Kant

On the

Origin of

Species


1730s-1750s and the 1800s

Puritans

Edwards

Mather

Harvard Draper &

White

Newton

Today’s Cultural

Perception

Science = Fact

Religion = Myth

People look to science

for issues of morality.

Example: Darwinism

plays a strategic part in

rationalizing eugenics,

euthanasia, infanticide,

abortion, Marxism,

relativism, and genocide.


Impact

• Intellectually shallow, theologically illiterate form of Christianity. (Anti-intellectualism)

• Believers grew suspicious of intellectual issues altogether.

• Birth of Mormonism (1830).

• Birth of Jehovah’s Witnesses (1884).

• Philosophies critical of religious thought, especially from Europe (Immanuel Kant & David Hume) went unanswered.

• Darwinian Evolution made the world safe for Atheists.

• Growth of scientism.


Secularization’s Influence On Culture

• Darwinism plays a strategic part in rationalizing eugenics, euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, Marxism, relativism, and genocide.

• "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


Influence on culture

• America is secularized politically and intellectually.

• Not all the way down to the level of the guy on the street.

• Secular subculture in American education system, mass media and upper echelons of legal system.

• "they are very influential, as they control the institutions that provide the 'official' definitions of reality.“ Peter Berger


Influence in the Church

1. A misunderstanding of faith's relationship to reason.

2. The separation of the secular and the sacred.

3. Weakened world missions.

4. Anti-intellectualism has spawned an irrelevant gospel.

5. A loss of boldness in confronting the idea structures in our culture with effective Christian witness.


If salt loses its saltiness

• Church’s impact on society is diminished

• No understanding of a Christian way of seeing the world

• Christian worldview not see as important/relevant

• Church is marginalize and silence

• Separation of faith from reason

• Authoritative foundation for knowledge and morality lost

• Science filled the void

• Society has to rely on political coercion


If salt loses its saltiness

• Human rights shift

• Was base on Creator

• Minimalistic ethics

• Replaced with do no harm

• For Christians rights come for intrinsic value, now granted by the state

• The Church is supposed to an instrument of reason for society


Resulting Worldviews

• Moral relativism

• Autonomous individualism

• Narcissistic Hedonism

• Reductive Naturalism


Where are we today in the Church?Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

• A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

• God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

• God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

• Good people go to heaven when they die.


Where are we today?

“…it is not so much that U.S. Christianity is being secularized. Rather more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith."


Summary

• Modern evangelicals emphasize experience and activism at the expense of theology

• Their minds go fuzzy as they downplay doctrine

• Christian are neither prepared nor inclined to enter intellectual debates

• Moral confusion


Resources


Recommended Books to start with


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Love God With All Your Mind part 2

Spiritual

Transcript of Love God With All Your Mind part 2