The Season for Reason

Quote Forum on the Importance of Engaging the Mind In a takeoff on the sometimes overworked and wearied Advent aphorism, JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON, this month we present another in a series of AIIA Quote Forums, focusing here on a theme that should serve to remind us that every season-including Advent-is certainly a season for reasonable thought when it comes to matters of faith. "We don't realize how the world has sapped our ability to think. We move impulsively, and more by feeling, desire, and ambition. The simple art of working an argument out from premise to conclusion has been lost. And unless we in the Church go back and teach our junior highers, for example, to think again, we will lose them before they are in senior high. They may be cultural Christians, but they will not have a true allegiance of mind to a belief." -Ravi Zacharias in Servant, January 1995. "The next best thing besides godliness for a Christian is logic." -Howard Schoof, Norman L. Geisler's first logic teacher, quoted by Geisler in Come, let Us Reason, ©1990 Baker Books "The Imago Dei (image of God) is what distinguishes humankind from the animals, and it is that same image that makes the life of the mind so important." -Kenneth R. Samples, To Think or Not to Think?, in Facts & Faith, Volume 11, Number 3, Q3 1997. "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." -Romans 12:2 _______________________________________________ "Reason points toward the reality of God." -McGrath _______________________________________________ "Though fallen, reason still possesses the ability to grasp and point, however darkly, toward the reality of God." -Alister E. McGrath in Intellectuals Don't Need God & Other Modern Myths, ©1993 Zondervan. "The point of Christian scholarship is...to praise God with the mind." -Mark Noll in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, ©1994 William B. Eerdmans "...and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." -Jesus of Nazareth, circa 32 A.D., Gospel According to Mark (12:30.) Don't Check Your Brains at the Door -title of book on Christian evidences, by Josh McDowell, ©1992 Word "The main thing Christian parents and teachers can do is to teach young thinkers to understand the techniques of good thinking and help them tune up their baloney detectors so they aren't fooled by the stock answers the authorities give to the tough questions." -Phillip E. Johnson in Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, ©1997 Inter-Varsity Press, p116. _______________________________________________ "Let My People Think" -Ravi Zacharias Christian radio program. _______________________________________________ "It is man's glory to be the only intellectual animal on earth. That imposes upon human beings the moral obligation to lead intellectual lives." -Mortimer J. Adler in Intellect: Mind Over Matter. Fit Bodies, Fat Minds -book title, Os Guinness, ©1994. "Where Christian truth is established with credibility, it has a salutary effect on culture." -R.C. Sproul in  An Apology for Apologetics, TableTalk, July 1991. "Christianity...provides a unified answer to the whole of life. It is true that (modern) man will have to renounce his rationalism, but then...he has the possibility of recovering his rationality." -Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer in Escape From Reason. "God is the source from which all your reasoning power comes... When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on." -C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. "It shall be the duty of the Trustees, Directors, and Teachers of the College to impress upon the minds of the students, the principles of morality and justice, and a sacred regard for truth..." -from the 1865 Charter of the Maine Agricultural College, University of Maine, quoted in The Key Reporter (Phi Beta Kappa), Summer 1997 issue: The Disappearing Moral Curriculum, by Dennis O'Brien. -Submitted by Robert M. Tatem.