Thank-you to InterVarsity colleague Tom Trevethan for giving the Emerging Scholars Network the permission to republish his review of Mark Noll’s Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, originally in the Faculty Ministry’s Lamp Post. Note: Mark Noll was the featured speaker at the 2012 Midwest Faculty Conference.Â
Many thought of Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind as a sequel to The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994), which began with the biting observation and lament, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” But aside from an appendix that updates his view of the current state of the evangelical mind, this work has little direct connection to Scandal. Rather, what we are given is a review of the Christian convictions that have shaped Professor Noll’s distinguished work and four decade long academic career. What we are given above all is an account of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ as the foundation for the life of learning. In Him, Professor Noll insists with clarity and forcefulness and evident devotion and joy, “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
Jesus Christ as Our Foundation
Noll draws on both Scripture (the theme of “glory” in Old and New Testaments, pp. 3-8; the vision of “the Lamb that was slain” in Revelation, pp.8-11; and especially the three great Christological passages in John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1) and the ecumenical creeds as our profoundest exposition and meditation on Scripture. We are given a profound picture of the greatness of our Lord Jesus Christ. All things are from him, and through him, and for him. He holds all things together. All things are shaped by and resound to the glory of Jesus. This being the case, our desire to know is among the things grounded and shaped by the Master. Discipleship to him entails and enables the life of the mind to the praise of his glory. [Read more…] about Review: Mark Noll’s Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind