Teaching Series by John Musselman

James W. Sire, PhD, author, former college professor of literature, philosophy, and theology and, later, chief editor of InterVarsity Press, offers his readers “an unusual insider’s view of learning to think well for the glory of God and for the sake of His kingdom.” Along with Os Guinness, who warned us that anti-intellectualism is “a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind” (Fit Bodies, Fat Minds), Sire “challenges us as Christians to accept the responsibility to think well and in so doing to seek first the kingdom of God and to glorify God.” In his seminal work, Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling, he notes that we can “pursue truth regardless of its implications for one’s life or the life of one’s community or country.”

As you will observe throughout this website, a disciple of Jesus Christ is a learner (which is foundational to being His committed follower). In his book, Your Mind Matters, the late John R.W. Stott cited former President of Princeton Seminary, John Mackay, who understood that “commitment without reflection is fanaticism in action. But reflection without commitment is the paralysis of all action.” Ultimately, Stott was pleading for “a warm devotion (to God) set on fire by truth.”

The question is, what steps might we take to develop and use our minds for the glory of God? How can we be, as Sire suggests, Christian intellectuals? As a starting point, consider his definition of an intellectual:

An intellectual is one who loves ideas, is dedicated to clarifying them, developing them, criticizing them, turning them over and over, seeing their implications, stacking them atop one another, arranging them, sitting silent while new ideas pop up and old ones seem to rearrange themselves, playing with them, punning with their terminology, laughing at them, watching them clash, picking up the pieces, starting over, judging them, withholding judgment about them, changing them, bringing them into contact with their counterparts in other systems of thought, inviting them to dine and have a ball but also suiting them for service in workaday life. A Christian intellectual is all of the above to the glory of God.

It is our desire that the following series of lectures (notes only, or notes and audio in some) will encourage you to develop a Christian worldview and to be driven by a passion for truth, so that you combine both truth and obedience to the truth as you live for the glory of our risen Lord Jesus Christ.