Evangelical Review of Theology 46, 1 (February 2022)

The latest Evangelical Review of Theology, published by The World Evangelical Alliance, is now online and available in its entirety as a pdf here.

Johannes Reimer

The Erosion of Church Growth through Patriarchal Leadership in Russia

Authoritarian patriarchal leadership has spawned abuse, scandal and controversy caused tragedies in churches and Christian ministries all over the world. This article highlights the pervasive problem of autocratic leadership among Russian evangelicals – explaining the historical reasons for the development of this pattern, analysing its components and urging a healthier way forward.

Elmer John Thiessen

In Pursuit of Intellectual Virtue

This article rigorously and insightfully examines three intellectual virtues – love of knowledge and truth, intellectual humility, and open-mindedness – that are essential to Christian maturity and powerful in overcoming strife, contention and polarization.

Richard L. Smith

Such a Heart as This: The Intellectual Implications of Deuteronomy 5:29

Contrary to the frequent Christian tendency to devalue intellectual pursuits, Richard L. Smith finds an emphasis on loving God with the mind throughout the Old Testament. This excerpt from his new book shows how God communicates this message through Deuteronomy.

Dennis P. Petri and Ronald R. Boyd-MacMillan

What Persecution To Endure, To Resist, or To Flee?

How to respond to persecution is a complex decision involving both principled and strategic considerations. In this article, two of the world’s leading experts on religious persecution draw on both Scripture and their considerable experience to discuss the options comprehensively.

Francis Jr. S. Samdao

On the Idea of Contextualization: Cultural Sensitivity and Catholic Sensibility

How do we present the Christian faith so as to be sensitive and accommodating to local cultures while not obscuring the non-negotiable truths of the gospel? This article, authored in an Asian context but with worldwide relevance, offers guidance on fulfilling both of those imperatives.

Israel Oluwole Olofinjana

Jesus’ Discipleship Model of Suffering and Sacrifice: Discipleship and Racial Justice

How to pursue racial justice has been a contentious issue in many places, particularly because of the allegedly radical views of some pro-justice organizations. This article takes a different approach, depicting racial justice as an implication of whole-life discipleship and proposing practical actions for Christians.

David A. Clark

Evangelical Identity Formation in Post-colonial Britain

Modern cultural changes have divided evangelicals in many parts of the world, with some urging progressive agendas and other resisting what they consider radical ideas. Using racial justice issues as an example, this article warns against both extremes and charts a course of sensitivity toward the aggrieved as part of building a more unified church.

Leah Farish

The ‘Sins of Equals’ and Racial Justice

Evangelicals believe that Scripture and the great confessions of faith remain relevant to our modern lives. This short essay demonstrates that relevance by applying a little- known passage from the Westminster Larger Catechism of 1648 to race relations.

Book Reviews

Romans 12: God’s New People #4 – Changing Our Minds

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:1-2

‘There is no longer a Christian mind’, wrote Harry Blamires in his classic book, The Christian Mind, first published in 1963. The high number of publications on the topic since then suggests it’s an ongoing issue. Perhaps that’s a good thing, as each generation seeks to discover afresh what it means to love God with all our mind.

For Paul too, the ‘true and proper worship’ to which we are called involves not just the offering of our bodies but the renewing of our minds. The two go together. It’s possible, though admittedly not easy, to be disciplined with one’s body – to control it, to exercise it, to curb its appetites. But what’s in view here is not merely an outward rule over the body without also an inward renewal of the mind.

Negatively, it means not being conformed to the pattern of ‘this world’ where (as Paul describes in Romans 1:18-32) our minds and hearts are turned away from God. Positively, it involves being ‘transformed’, a verb Paul uses elsewhere only in 2 Corinthians 3:18, where he writes about believers being progressively transformed into Christ’s image. In both places, what’s in view is nothing less than a fundamental makeover at the deepest level of our humanity – a new creation!

So, being renewed in our mind is not first and foremost about being clever. It’s a whole new mindset, a radical shift where everything is viewed differently because of who we are in Christ. That in turn involves a whole new desire to live a different way, which may well go against the prevailing current, and a whole new set of habits.

To be sure, the old habits are still around, and I may well spot some of them at work in me today: preserving the ongoing rift in the family because of my pride; jealousy and insecurity with the more-talented colleague; self-pity; chronic ingratitude. But where the mind’s habits and dispositions used to go one way, following the pattern of this present age, they can now be reshaped according to the new age which has broken in with the events of the gospel.

Such a transformation – a change of mind – comes about not by screwing up our effort or focusing ever inward, but by drawing on God’s mercy shown in Jesus, who makes it possible to live a renewed life from the inside-out.

Changing Our Minds

I contributed today’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:1-2

‘There is no longer a Christian mind’, wrote Harry Blamires in his classic book, The Christian Mind, first published in 1963. The proliferation of publications on the topic since then suggests it’s an ongoing issue. Perhaps that’s a good thing, as each generation seeks to discover afresh what it means to love God with all our mind.

For Paul too, the ‘true and proper worship’ to which we are called involves not just the offering of our bodies but the renewing of our minds. The two go together. It’s possible, though admittedly not easy, to be disciplined with one’s body – to control it, to exercise it, to curb its appetites. But what’s in view here is not merely an outward rule over the body without also an inward renewal of the mind.

Negatively, it means not being conformed to the pattern of ‘this world’ where (as Paul describes in Romans 1:18-32) our minds and hearts are turned away from God. Positively, it involves being ‘transformed’, a verb Paul uses elsewhere only in 2 Corinthians 3:18, where he writes about believers being progressively transformed into Christ’s image. In both places, what’s in view is nothing less than a fundamental makeover at the deepest level of our humanity, a new creation.

So, being renewed in our mind is not first and foremost about being clever. It’s a whole new mindset, a radical perceptual shift where everything is viewed differently because of who we are in Christ. That in turn involves a whole new desire to live a different way, which may well go against the prevailing current, and a whole new set of habits.

To be sure, the old habits are still around, and I may well spot some of them at work in me today: preserving the ongoing rift in the family because of my pride; jealousy and insecurity with the more-talented colleague; self-pity; chronic ingratitude. But where the mind’s habits and dispositions used to go one way following the pattern of this present age, they can now be reshaped according to the new age which has broken in with the events of the gospel.

Such a transformation – a change of mind – comes about not by screwing up our effort or focusing ever inward, but by drawing on God’s mercy shown in Jesus, who makes it possible to live a renewed life from the inside-out.

L’Abri Papers from Jerram Barrs

The Learning Resources page at L’Abri Fellowship England contains a number of useful pieces, including the following from Jerram Barrs:

• Christianity True to the Way Things Are

• The Christian and Society

• The Christian Mind

These are transcripts of lectures; there’s some overlap in the material, but I think the one on the mind is the best of the three.

Mark Noll on the Foundation of the Evangelical Mind

Interview with David Neff, ‘Mark Noll on the Foundation of the Evangelical Mind’, Christianity Today (26 August 2011).

Having already posted on Mark Noll’s latest book, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), I thought I’d link to this conversation between him and David Neff around some of the subject-matter of the book.

Mark A. Noll on Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind

Mark A. Noll, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 196pp., ISBN ISBN 9780802866370.

Having benefited from reading Mark Noll’s seminal The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994) when it first came out, I was interested to see this follow-up of sorts. Eerdmans make available the table of contents and introduction here.

Noll writes: ‘My contention in this book is that coming to know Christ provides the most basic possible motive for pursuing the tasks of human learning’ (ix-x).

More fully:

‘The message in this book for my fellow evangelicals can be put simply: if what we claim about Jesus Christ is true, then evangelicals should be among the most active, most serious, and most open-minded advocates of general human learning. Evangelical hesitation about scholarship in general or about pursuing learning wholeheartedly is, in other words, antithetical to the Christ-centered basis of evangelical faith’ (x).

I’ll be interested to see how Noll plays out these contentions...

Some 2009 lectures on the book’s material are available for download from ‘Thinking Matters’ here.

Marilynne Robinson on Absence of Mind

Christianity Today has an interview with Marilynne Robinson around her recent book, Absence of Mind, a polemic against some current contributions to popular science which ‘tend to reduce the person to brains, explaining away the strangeness and mystery of human experience’.

Books & Culture reviewed the book back in June here.