It was 25 years ago that historian Mark Noll wrote a book entitled The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.
The scandal, he said, was that in fact ‘there is not much of an evangelical mind’. According to Noll, evangelicals had failed to develop ‘attitudes that treat the worlds of science, the arts, politics, and social analysis with the seriousness that God intends’.
While writing particularly with a North American context in mind, it was clear that much of Noll’s criticisms could have been applied to the UK and Ireland also. And a quarter of a century on, we do well to ask ourselves whether much has changed.
There are many current issues – for example Artificial Intelligence, and the ethics of Covid vaccinations based on the cells of aborted foetuses, both covered elsewhere in this issue – that require clear, measured, Biblical thinking. Often, perhaps, we find it too easy to react with fear and knee-jerk negativity.
en will always cover issues such as these in a way that seeks to provoke us to think deeply and Scripturally. Professor John Lennox gives us a good example of this in the interview he has given us on the centre pages. And leading theologian Garry Williams begins a new series entitled ‘Thinking More Deeply’ in the second half of this paper.
It’s worth remembering that Jesus, in His ministry, asked a lot of unsettling questions. Indeed it was a well-known Rabbinic style of teaching. (There is a story that when a Rabbi was once asked why he responded to questions with his own questions in turn, he responded:‘Why not?’)
Some theologians who have counted say Jesus is asked 183 questions in the Gospels, but answers fewer than ten. At the same time, they say, He asks 307.
Why might that be?
