“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” – Philippians 2:5 (AV)

The secular ideal the academic mind is the ideal of complete freedom. It is an ideal which gives the student the right to question all propositions whatsoever. The student must be completely free in every area of thought. He must weigh the evidence by calling on inductive and rational procedures. When all the evidence is in, the student must take the conclusion which seems the most scientific and the most reasonable. He must embrace the conclusion which is least exposed to contradiction.

The goal of secular academic life is to get the student to think critically. He must learn to dispense with subjective prejudices and irrelevancies. He must learn to turn his back on authoritarianism and he must be critical of authority. He must cast suspicion on the deliverances of tradition. He must be free to consider truth as relative and changing. In this way, presumably, the student will cultivate objectivity and open-mindedness.

The secular goal of academic freedom has been a hard-won privilege. It has been the privilege of the student, even in the Western world, only intermittently. In the era of the ancients, the minds of men were controlled mostly by a state absolutism or by a monopolizing priestcraft. The most ancient were bound by the superstitions of primitive animisms. The later polytheisms were only slightly more sophisticated as they cast their gods in the form of man but tied men’s minds just as securely to superstitious practice and belief.

Then came the Greeks. The Greeks freed men’s minds from the domination of religion. Protagoras sounded a new note for a better day of intellectual freedom when he said, Man is the measure of all things. The minds of men were now to be freed from all control be it that of priest, politician, or pedagogue. The Greek became the ideal free spirit and the secular historian will cite the Greek as the only one of the ancients who is worthy of emulation by modern man. The Greek enjoyed freedom of thought as did none of his contemporaries and as have few of his successors.

The era of Greek intellectual freedom was of short duration. Soon came the Christian era and man fell under the bondage of the church. The church not only prescribed ways of acting but also the ways of thinking. Priestcraft and tradition again lay claim to the minds of men and channelized them into a set course. The springs of invention, innovation and heterodoxy were again dried up.

To some this era of church domination looms as a long Dark Age. However, this dark age came to an end when in quick succession there came the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. When these had passed over the Western world, it was no longer possible for a universal church to hold complete and pervasive control over the mind of men. It was particularly the intellectual revolution of the Enlightenment which seemed to convince men that the way of truth was to be found by way of science. Many followed the lead of Newton with an enthusiasm for the discovery of physical laws. These felt that man could learn to adjust to physical laws for his own benefit.

Science brought utopia nearer but, sadly, it could only be gained by a great threat to man’s freedom. If all of nature was subject to laws which moved mechanically, then law threatened to reduce man to a mechanism as well. Man would not brook so great a threat to his freedom, so he abandoned the ideal of science for the ideal of a completely free personality. Twentieth century existentialism is just such a reaction. It is a nihilism which asserts for man the right of freedom to be nothing or to revert to nothingness rather than to submit to laws and ordinances which would make something out of man and his life.

So much for a short resume of the secular approach to academic freedom and the ideal academic mind. But what does the Christian say about all this? What is to be his attitude in the development of a critical mind? At what point is the admonition of Paul to the Philippians applicable in the development of the Christian academic mind? Perhaps we might begin by investigating the conclusions of others who have expressed themselves on this subject.

There have been those in the Christian tradition who would insist that we begin our intellectual development by sharing the broad mind of secular thinking and then bring in revelation to correct its errors. The foundation is found in the secular mind while the mind of Christ furnishes a capstone for the structure. Or to put it another way, the Christian mind adds a gloss here and there to the secular text. This has generally been the approach of the Thomists, those who follow the lead of Thomas Aquinas, the great thirteenth century Roman Catholic scholar. From time to time there are also those in the Reformed community who are tempted to go down the Thomistic way.

In criticism of Thomism, we must insist that there is no universally acceptable mind that is common to the Christian and the pagan, a mind that can have its common basis in a common natural religion. There is no mind that is common to the pagan and the Christian, to the believer and the unbeliever. So when the freshman comes to college, he comes already as a covenant-keeper or as a covenant-breaker. It is not as though we move by stages until we have attained unto the mind of Christ but we begin with that attitude of mind. We must so begin if we are to be correctly oriented in our learning. We have been emphasizing the Christian’s intellectual foundations but the words of Paul in Philippians 2:5 do not demand an emphasis on the intellectual. Perhaps the text could as well read, Let this disposition be in you. Or we might read, Be ye Christ-minded. In order to learn what the Christ-like disposition is, we must look to the context. There we find that two essentials of Christ-mindedness are humility and obedience. Verse eight reads, “He humbled himself, and became obedient, even to the death of the cross.” On the cross Christ became our exemplar of humility and obedience as well as our Saviour, Humility and obedience are two prime requirements for the Christian life. They are therefore also prerequisites for the Christian academic mind. If the Christian is to be humble and obedient in his living he must also be humble and obedient in his thinking. He must be willing to think God’s thoughts after him. So college is not for the attainment of the mind of Christ. It is for the exercise of that kind of mind.

Needless to say, the exercise of the Christ-like mind will often be in marked contrast to the kind of exercise which the secular mind considers his prerogative, that is, completely free and untrammeled thought. The modern critical thinker wants to return to the ancient ideal of Adam when Adam set himself to the task of critically assessing the evidence presented by God and by Satan with respect to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is the pride of the first man which lurks in the heart of modern man and gives him the urge to complete freedom.

By contrast, the Christian must do critical thinking under the guidance of obedient thinking. He docs not abandon reason but lays the foundation of reason in faith. He does not submit to authoritarianism but does bind himself by the authority of divine revelation. The Christian honors the facts of creation because he honors the Creator of facts.

Let me go on to assert that the Christian student, unlike his non-Christian counterpart, is not free to entertain any and all possible hypotheses. There are several such hypotheses current in secular thought. For example, the Christian cannot entertain the possibility of the nonexistence of God because he knows the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Christian cannot entertain the possibility of the eternity of matter because be knows it comes from the hand of the Creator. The Christian cannot hold to any notion of the inviolability of natural law because he knows of the miracles of the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. The Christian does not look for the indefinite continuation of the present temporal order because beholds to an eschatology which obviates that possibility. The Christian does not repudiate these secular hypotheses on the basis of scientific investigation and rational proof but by a humble and obedient faith which reflects the mind of Christ.

Sometimes in emphasizing the intellectual aspects of student life there is the danger that we lose perspective. The ideal student may then be caricatured as one who has a large head but a small heart and a weak will. This can hardly be the case with the Christian student. His will has been broken but he emerges with strong convictions because his will has been broken to the will of Christ. He is large of heart because in humble obedience be has left the rule of self-love to love God above all and his neighbor as himself. The Christ like disposition is found in the whole Christian man. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus—that ye may attain unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.