Recovering Our Christian Mind and Nerve

• 
  Article

Click to see HTML preview

Click to hide HTML preview

Tom Trevethan, "Recovering Our Christian Mind and Nerve: Graduate Student
Ministry," RTSF Bulletin 12 (Sep/Oct 1996): 3-9.*
For though we live in the world we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons
we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine
power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets
itself against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it
obedient to Christ. --2 Cor 10:3-5
Every call to ministry, to the service of the Lord Christ, is a call to war. We live
in a ferocious battle zone. This is no less true for us as we consider ministry within
the university world to graduate students than it was for Paul in his tortuous, even
physically dangerous ministry to the wayward Corinthians. Unless we come to our
situation with a good soldier's zeal, willingness to suffer, and discipline, we will
deceive ourselves about the realities we seek to understand and change.
However, this talk of spiritual conflict and use of military metaphors is
thoroughly repugnant to many who love the university. Some will read no further
than this first paragraph and turn aside in distaste and even disgust. So let me
suggest some grounds for viewing spiritual and intellectual warfare as a fruitful
foundation for thinking about Christian engagement with the university.
I begin by observing that spiritual struggle and warfare are basic Biblical
categories for understanding our place as followers of Jesus in a fallen world. Both
Testaments make this plain, from the conflict in Exodus to the war of the Lamb in
the Apocalypse. Our Lord himself clearly was locked in a great spiritual struggle,
and his life, death, and resurrection make deepest sense when seen in this light.
Equally clearly, as Biblical revelation proceeds, the struggle becomes less a flesh-
and-blood military encounter. "Love for enemy" is clarified as our calling as
followers of the suffering Servant. And the conflict is located in the realm of the
spirit, involving "principalities, powers, and rulers of this present darkness" [Eph
6:12]. But that makes the conflict no less real or present. No amount of misuse of
this persistent Biblical motif (and there has been considerable misuse) should cause
us to ignore it. Indeed, we ignore it to our spiritual peril.
Further, the intellectual life is inherently filled with conflict, with the struggle
Who or what are your
to understand truly. Consider these wise words of Paul Griffiths, professor of
spiritual and intellectual
divinity and South Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago:
opponents in the
academic world?
The intellectual life is essentially and constitutively agonistic. It
progresses almost entirely by struggle, by challenge and response, by

* In addition to the insertion of discussion questions in the margin and some footnotes (as
indicated), some minor revisions and omissions have been made to this reprint of Trevethan's
article. Except for the correction of typographical errors, all changes have been indicated in the
text. --Jon Boyd, ed.
Article text © Tom Trevethan 1996; discussion questions © InterVarsity Christian
Fellowship/USATM Graduate & Faculty Ministries, 1996­2001.
"Christian Mind and Nerve" · page 1

---

thesis and antithesis, by getting it wrong and then moving, always
asymptotically, toward getting it right.... This sort of thing is what is
meant by the word "polemics." I take it to denote an intellectual
virtue. Perhaps more precisely, I take it to denote a mode of
intellectual engagement that flows directly from a proper and clear
realization of what serious intellectual work is for and how it should
best proceed. If you properly engage in this work, you will be
interested in arriving at a position on [your subject] that is preferable
to any other that you know of on that question, and you will
concomitantly want to be clear as to what th[at] position...is, what it
excludes, how best to show that its competitors are less adequate...,
and in what sense [it] is true. "Polemics," as I use it here, does not
denote or connote simple hostility, or opposition for its own sake --
even though the term has come to mean something like this in
ordinary English usage. It points, rather, to the kind of engagement
that does and should occur when those who take what they believe
seriously encounter others equally serious about, and committed to,
their beliefs.1
If the university is to be an institution that exalts and deepens the life of the mind,
it must be a place of struggle and conflict. To avoid this conflict is to avoid truth
altogether.
Finally, the sense of being engaged in a furious intellectual and spiritual battle
Which risk is greater:
does not preclude a posture of genuine respect and even love for the university and
verging into "anti-
its people. [M]any fear that those who use [military] metaphors are engaged in a
intellectual" opposition
red-necked, superstitious crusade against elite culture in general and the university
to the university, or into
in particular. Indeed, we must acknowledge that American popular culture and
being co-opted by the
fundamentalist religion, in particular, do harbor deeply and destructively anti-
status quo?
intellectual sentiments and forces.2 So the concern about folk who talk in terms of
"spiritual warfare" [against academia] is not completely misplaced. But it ought to
also be obvious that not all who think in these terms ought to be tarred with the
same brush. It is possible to genuinely love and honor the life of the mind and the
university and still believe that spiritual and cultural warfare are central to our calling
in the university under God.
...As we consider our place in the line of battle, the university world and
If this is a "war of
graduate students in particular, we need to be informed by all three of these realities: liberation," who or what
The university is fallen, and incapable of realizing its true and wonderful promise as needs liberating? How
a result. In many ways it is one of the "principalities and powers," infested as it is
can study, research,
with evil and the evil ones. But equally the university, in its calling as an institution
teaching be
committed to truth and knowledge, has a continuing nobility and achieves
"liberated"?
wonderful results by God's sovereign, persevering, and redeeming grace. Our call to

1Paul Griffiths, "Why We Need Interreligious Polemics," First Things 44 (June/July 1994):
31.
2See George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-
Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); and perhaps
Richard Hofstadter's classic, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: 1962). --Ed.
"Christian Mind and Nerve" · page 2

---

war is not to join the enemy in the rebellion (a mindless and unfaithful total
acceptance of the current state of life in the university) nor to "nuke the whole
mess" (an equally mindless and unfaithful total rejection). We are called to a war of
liberation, of restoration and transformation. Indeed Paul's description of the battle
as demolishing strongholds of false argument and proud pretension and bringing
every thought -- not just private religious thought -- captive to make it obedient to
Christ has special relevance to the university world.
Looking at graduate students as a part of the university world, we need to be
reminded of their importance. In the major centers of the academic world the sheer
number of graduate students makes them important. At the University of
Michigan, graduate students [make up] slightly more than 40% of the student
population, for example. There are two further, more significant reasons for our
concern for ministry among graduates. These are folks who tend to be involved and
committed to the university as more than a vocational institution and party scene,
and as a result, the future university faculty, administrators, and leaders are found
among this group. In short, they have a large present influence and future, decisive
effect on the life of the university.
In seeking to understand graduate students, I find it helpful to look at them
from both a personal and professional perspective. Obviously graduate students are
people with the same range of sorrows and joys, weaknesses and gifts, as any other
[group]. The gospel of the Lord Jesus speaks to all sinners. Still, there are some
unique personal qualities and situations we need to consider. One that has
been...fruitful for me is to seek to understand the unique blend of insecurity and
pride that characterizes most graduate students.
Consider first the insecurity generated by the situation of most graduate
How much of a problem
students. They enter a higher (perhaps in many cases the highest) level of academic is this insecurity? Where
work and competition. They are conscious that the stakes in this competition are
does it come from?
higher; certainly they are very high on the vocational level. Furthermore, most find
themselves in a new, unknown setting. The place is unfamiliar and so are the
people. They need to construct a new social circle, and it is fair to note that
[despite] their exceptional intellectual skills, graduate students display no discernibly
greater social skills than the rest of the people in the world. Add to these real
financial insecurities and the fact that many are newly married..., and you have a
recipe for profound insecurity. "Will I make it?" is a very important question, which
has no necessarily [affirmative] answer. Its corollary is the assertion, "You must be
single-minded and even ruthless in your pursuit of academic success. No time for
distractions like Christian gatherings and service. That was maybe OK for
undergraduate days, but this is the real thing now!"
On the other hand..., it is very easy for graduate students to be proud people.
And pride? Whom do we
Some of this comes from the wider university environment. Already winners in the look down upon? How
game of academic competition, now they are doing advanced work at the most
can we avoid and
prestigious and progressive institutions. Associating daily with the best and the
repent of these two
brightest can easily go to your head. Add to this the spiritual reality that knowledge, "personal" errors?
necessary and foundational as it is, puffs up (1 Cor 8:1). Knowledge slips into proud
achievement, and graduate students are all knowledgeable folk. So pride stalks the
existence of even Christian graduate students and shows itself in an arrogant
"Christian Mind and Nerve" · page 3

---

superiority to undergrads, in an independent and individualistic spirit, and in the
avoidance of foundational spiritual matters. Yet Christian graduate students as a
group do not strike me as having any...obvious advantage over other groups in the
life of prayer, or Scripture study, or fruitful community involvement, or witness, or
obedience and vision related to the lordship of Christ.
Here, then, are places where the battle is joined on a personal level. We must
encourage the timid and help the weak without producing pride. And we must
[simultaneously] confront pride without devastating the weak. Proper and
appropriate balance is no easy matter....
On the professional level, two observations seem crucial. First, the academic
How crucial are depart-
department or school is the central or basic social unit for graduate-student life and
ments and schools to
ministry. The first person a new graduate student is apt to meet is not a roommate
our lives? Should we
(as in undergraduate years), but a faculty member from her department -- or more
have separate
likely, the department secretary. And a graduate student's social circle will draw very fellowships for separate
heavily, if not exclusively, on the academic setting where his work is done. So the
areas of study?
department must be the central location for basic discipleship (both personal and
corporate) and witness. This social reality, however, needs to be complemented by
interaction and Christian fellowship with people from outside our academic
specialties, lest we fall prey to the university's... fragmentation and loss of over-
arching vision.
Secondly, we should note that the characteristic activities of graduate students
How are we specifically
are study, research and writing, teaching, and some administration. Each of these
Christians in studying?
spheres of activity presents a unique challenge and opportunity to bring every
in research? in writing?
thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. For example, what is our distinctive in teaching? in
responsibility and opportunity as Christian teachers? Is this an opportunity for
administration? Can a
witness, and if so, how should I proceed in a way that is fair to my students and
graduate fellowship help
supervisors? Or again, what demands do the justice and peace of the gospel make
us in this?
on my involvement in administration? ...How ...do we propose to educate ourselves
[on such problems]? Beyond foundational spiritual realities, I am convinced that
these four characteristic spheres of action should be the focus of our formation of
Christian graduate students.
If these comments at least begin to describe our place in the great battle, what
will be required of us? Paul's statement in 2 Corinthians 10 emphasizes two
[requirements]: making every thought obedient to Christ and wielding divinely
powerful and divinely appointed weapons. For this to happen we must see among
us a cultivation and recovery of the Christian mind, and a corresponding cultivation
and recovery of Christian nerve. [T]hese statements require some considerable
unpacking.
"Christian Mind and Nerve" · page 4

---

First, consider the cultivation and recovery of the Christian mind. Paul speaks
What would such
of making every thought captive to Christ. All of our thinking (which is the
"Christian thought"
wellspring of activity) must be submitted to Christ's lordship, with no areas or
look like in your
concerns exempt. But it is clear that this Christ-honoring [ideal] is far from reality
discipline? Are you
for us in the university. Many have lamented exactly the loss of a Christian mind, a
aware of your field's
Christ-honoring view of all of life.3 Almost our whole formal education [system]
key issues for this
has proceeded with the assumption at best of the irrelevance of Christ to learning.
problem? How can a
At worst, the secular mind sneers at this idea as mindless superstition. Our vision,
graduate fellowship help
however, must be of the recovery of the Christian mind to the extent that in every
us address these
academic discipline there exist a body of explicitly Christian thought of such high
discipline-specific
quality and relevance that it demands to be considered even by unbelieving students
questions?
and faculty.
What this body of Christian thought will look like in a given discipline is
largely beyond my competence to suggest. That it must exist, however, seems to be
demanded by the gracious realities of creation and redemption. I would like to
venture some [general] observations on how the Christian mind can be recovered.
Consider these five elements which I believe would cultivate and renew the mind
of the Maker in us.
1. A passion for truth. We live in a day when the norm in academic work seems
to be a studied and ironic indifference to ultimate questions. Listen to how one
faculty member from a state university characterizes the situation:
[W]e must be "truth-people." Our rejection of relativism in the
What about fields where
name of our Maker and Lord must cause us to see the eternal
truth is especially
significance of what happens in the lab or the library and lead us to
unclear? Does
the worship of the Lord, not just in the church, but in the midst of
subjectivism have any
our learning and research.
place?
Such a passion for truth involves at least two dimensions. The first and
How much do we read
foundational, more focused, and intensive dimension involves a commitment on
the Bible, individually
our part to a robust practice of Biblical authority. It is a basic Biblical and Christian
and as a group? Should
conviction that God has spoken, using his created gift of human language to tell us we increase this, and
the truth about himself, ourselves, and his will for our lives. Our duty and wisdom,
how can we encourage
indeed our joy and bless[ing], arise from adopting a posture of active and teachable
one another?
listening to what he has said. And this posture leads us to a lifetime of learning and
laboring to grasp the message of Scripture, to submit and adjust our thinking to
what God has told us,4 to apply its wisdom to the whole range of our lives as

3See, for starters, Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1994); Mark Noll, Alister McGrath, Richard Mouw, and Darrell Bock, "What
Scandal? A Forum on the Evangelical Mind," Christianity Today 39, 9 (Aug 14, 1995): 21-27; and
George M. Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (New York: Oxford, 1997).
--Ed.
4"The hallmark of an authentic evangelicalism is not the uncritical repetition of old
traditions but the willingness to submit every tradition, however ancient, to fresh biblical
scrutiny and, if necessary, reform" (John Stott, quoted by Roy McCloughry, in "Basic Stott,"
Christianity Today 40, 1 (Jan 8, 1996): 28. --Ed.
"Christian Mind and Nerve" · page 5

---

redeemed creatures living in God's creation, and to share its truth with our
neighbors.
The conception that God actually tells us things...is usually dismissed out of
hand in our times. Even among professing Christians it is often caricatured and
decried in favor of a more "personal" and "love-centered" version of the faith. Some
argue that Biblical authority remains a reality even when revealed truth has been
dismissed or relegated to a secondary, peripheral place. James Packer artfully analyzes
the failure of these proposals:
...To represent biblical authority in this way, as being functional
without being informational, is to turn God into a warm fuzzy.
...This burns the promise of a personal relationship with Him to
ashes. Denial of the reality of revealed truth thus destroys that
knowledge of God to which the Bible invites us. Paul found the
Athenians worshipping an unknown God. The knowledge of God
offered by much twentieth-century theology is in principle a return
to Paul's Athens. We need a theology that receives all Bible teaching
as God-given information to guide our steps through the dark mazes
of confusion, subjectivist, relativist, and sometimes syncretist, which
are created for us by theologies that do otherwise.5
So, like the Lord Jesus we must allow [the statement] "it stands written" to direct us
in controversy, in temptation, in determining our life's direction and vocation. Like
our Lord we must say, first and most frequently to ourselves, "You are in error
because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God" (Matt 22:29), for "the
Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35).
The second, wider and more extensive dimension in a "passion for truth"
How have you
recognizes that our Redeemer God is the creator and sustainer of the world. By his
experienced this lately?
common grace that "sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" to sustain
What beauty or truth
life, we expect to encounter much of great truth and beauty in every culture. "All
have you seen from
truth is God's truth," in that he is its Maker and the one who equips and enables
outside Christian circles
human creatures to perceive and discover it. So we rejoice in truth wherever it is
and culture (in
found and value the contributions of all to the quest for understanding and
academics, in art &
wisdom....
literature, in public life)?
2. An ability to read and study Scripture in a visionary fashion. What I intend
by this phrase can be expressed by taking up Calvin's metaphor of Scripture as
spectacles. Under sin, we are myopic and astigmatic, so that we cannot correctly
perceive the truth of God. Scripture is like a corrective lens which focuses the
knowledge of God for us, says Calvin.6 Now extending the metaphor just a bit,

5James Packer, "Theology and Bible Reading," in The Act of Bible Reading, ed. Elmer Dyck
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 85.
6"Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a
most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be some sort of writing, yet can scarcely
construe two words, but with the aid of spectacles will begin to read distinctly; so Scripture,
gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our
dullness, clearly shows us the true God. This, therefore, is a special gift, where God, to instruct
"Christian Mind and Nerve" · page 6

---

Scripture also focuses all of truth for us not because it speaks directly to all concerns,
but because it gives us a true stance for viewing all things. Alas, our habit is to
restrict its applicability to churchly or private concerns. Much, if not most,
preaching we hear suffers at just this point. ...But if Scripture is the Maker's
spectacles, all of life can be focused properly.
Perhaps we need [in Bible study] steps like formulation ("What truth does this
Where and how should
passage teach and how is it related to other relevant passages?") and integration
we implement these
("How does that truth fit in with other ideas and issues I am thinking about?").
steps of Bible study?
These steps would lead us beyond a narrowly pietistic use of Holy Scripture and
begin to appropriate its reality-focusing quality as the word of our Creator and
King.
3. A commitment to comprehensive obedience. Because all reality springs from
Is this a "character
the Lord's will and plan, we cannot pursue the Christian mind in our academic
test" for academics?
work and refuse obedience elsewhere. All of life is interconnected. My worship life, How does our need for
my sexual life, my willingness to identify with the weak and needy, my witness to
obedience differ from
friends and colleagues, are all tied together with my academic life. Disobedience
other people's?
anywhere leads progressively to distortion everywhere.
4. When Scripture speaks of the mind of Christ, it associates it with humility. I
can only suggest meditating on a passage like Philippians 2 or Romans 12 to get the
force of this aspect of the mind of Christ. Humility has always been a difficult
virtue. Ancient and modern paganisms regard it as a vice. It has numerous
counterfeits that are destructive. But these factors only make its recovery more
pressing, not least in our setting [of graduate student ministry].
5. Scripture also associates active involvement in a Christian community with
Where and how should
the mind of Christ. Knowing, like almost every other characteristically human
we carry on such
function, is socially conditioned.7 The give-and-take of informal and thoughtful
discussion?
discussion is one of life's true pleasures and most certain paths to truth and holiness.
"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens the wits of another" (Prov 27:17,
nrsv).
Recovery and cultivation of Christian nerve is no less important. Soldiers need
Are Christian student
courage and a willingness to suffer ([literally,] patience). So also do we. ...I will
fellowships such illusory
comment on just two matters. First, Paul says, "we live in the world." Obvious! you
"enclaves"? How can
say. But is it? Safe enclaves behind the line of battle are more comfortable, so many
we avoid this?
seek them out in one way or another. Of course such enclaves are largely an illusion.
But the impulse to withdraw unthinkingly may cause us to ask whether we have

his church, not merely uses mute teachers [of nature and conscience] but also opens his own
most hallowed lips" (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.6.1; cf. also 1.14.1). --Ed.
7For a particularly helpful discussion of this idea from a Christian viewpoint, see Mark R.
Schwehn, Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993), esp. chaps. 2 and 3, "Communities of Learning" and "Spirited Inquiry."
--Ed.
"Christian Mind and Nerve" · page 7

---

the nerve to stand in the reality of the struggle.
Are we called to work and mission in the university, or is it just a place to earn a Do you agree that
living or to [prepare] to earn a living? My observation of most Christian faculty on
Christian faculty lack a
secular campuses suggests exactly this lack of calling. They are fine Christian
sense of calling? Do you
women and men in many cases who serve actively in their churches. But they do
think we, the next
not see the university as their God-appointed arena of service and battle. [With
generation, will too?
God's help, we pray that] ministry to graduate students may bear fruit in raising up
men and women with a calling from the Lord Christ to serve the Kingdom of God
in their work lives and in increasing numbers in the university.
Secondly, we must lay hold of God's weapons for the battle. This entails
Can't "wisdom, power,
rejecting mere worldly weapons, for "we do not wage war as the world does."
and goodness"
Indeed, our wisdom, power, and goodness are a recipe for defeat and disaster. Yet
sometimes be useful
this seems to be so little understood. The temptation is ever-present to meet the
tools, even though
challenge of the world with the world's own weapons -- with human
they're "worldly"?
entertainment, with massive displays of organization. Such weapons fail to make
any dent in the stronghold of evil. But worse, having adopted the standards of the
world, a secularized church has ceased to fight and is herself over-shadowed by the
powers of darkness. Woe be unto us...if all we can lay hold of are worldly weapons.
So the challenge to us on the level of Christian nerve comes in whether we are
What are the answers
prepared to trust in God-empowered weapons and, finally, in the God who
to the many questions
empowers. It would be fruitful for all of us to take the fuller account of the
raised in these next 4
weapons of the Christian soldier in Ephesians 6 and to think on them deeply.
paragraphs? How can
Consider how each answers to the need of the university and how different it is to
we go about answering
embrace and advocate them in open public view. We spoke of truth [Eph 6:14] in
them?
discussing the Christian mind [above], so now consider righteousness [Eph 6:14]:
What would Amos, the Old Testament prophet of righteousness par excellence,
have to say to our universities, to our boards of regents, to our administrators, to our
department chairs? What might he say to our relativism, amorality, greed, sensuality
and sexual perversion, elitism, racism, to our client status that makes us hopelessly
beholden to the powers of business and government? What would a university look
like where justice rolled down like a river [Amos 5:24]? Then how might we,
powerless as we are to be agents of this sort of righteousness, act to be agents of
change in the university world?
Mention must also be made of the "gospel of peace" as a weapon of God [Eph
6:15]. All of us ought to ponder why it is that so relatively few graduate students are
converted to Christ. True, they are a harder, more sophisticated audience, more
settled in their convictions than undergraduates. So we need to sharpen our
weapons with a more thoughtful apologetic and a more academically relevant
exposition of the Christian mind. But when all is said and done, my fear is that
graduate students are not being converted because they are simply not hearing the
gospel from us. Here is a topic worthy of investigation. How do we proclaim the
gospel to graduate students, and how do we train graduate students to
communicate to their peers?
Further, this is the gospel of peace, of a reconciliation with our Maker that
reconciles us to one another. Absence of the horizontal dimension sheds doubts on
"Christian Mind and Nerve" · page 8

---

the vertical. So what have we to say to issues of social class and race within our
universities? What action can we take? [T]hese are the questions, I believe, we
must begin to ask if we are to wield the Lord's weapons in the power of the Spirit.
I conclude by noting that prayer is the last weapon mentioned, not because it is
least but because it is the means by which we cast ourselves on the grace and power
of the Lord to activate all the other weapons. Says Paul to the Ephesians [6:18]:
"And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers an requests. With
this [the battle and our weapons] in mind, be on the alert and always keep on
praying for all the saints." So I must ask how we are doing, as fellowships of
graduate students, faculty, and InterVarsity staff, in the life of persistent, alert,
comprehensive, Spirit-led prayer? May God give us the grace so to pray for the
recovery of the Christian mind and Christian nerve in our universities.
"Christian Mind and Nerve" · page 9

---