Christian Mind conference
Sproul: ‘Your life will tell me what you think in your heart’
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman, March 16, 2012
R.C. Sproul, founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries, kicked off the ministry’s 2012 National Conference on “The Christian Mind,” by asking “Have you lost your mind?”
“It’s been said many times that we are living in the most anti-intellectual climate in the history of the Christian church,” Sproul said. Anti-intellectual does not mean anti-technical or anti-knowledge, Sproul said, but it is being “anti-“ the intellect – “anti-” the mind.
“There’s an avalanche of criticism resulting in the wholesale rejection of the mind in Christian living and, God forbid, in the church,” he said.
In his opening address, Sproul spoke of the:
- relationship of the mind to the body;
- relationship the mind to the will;
- and the relationship between the mind and the heart.
To demonstrate the relationship between the mind and body, Sproul asked members of the audience to raise their right hand, then look and see how many people responded to his request.
“What just happened? The last few seconds demonstrates and illustrates one of the most mysterious phenomenons that we ever encounter as thinkers and inquirers into reality,” he said. “I asked you a question … I was hoping you would respond to my request. Many of you responded by raising your right hand, so many of you had a basic understanding of what I asked you to do. And having understood my request in your minds, you responded with a physical, bodily reaction.”
“Now I know what you are thinking, ‘Has he lost his mind that he would give significance to that?’ But that question involves the question of the mind to the body: How an idea which is non-physical or mental can give rise to a physical action,” Sproul said.
“In our day, it has been said that the last frontier of scientific research and investigation is into the phenomenon of the mind – how the mind functions, how the mind works, where its power comes from.”
Sproul mentioned B.F. Skinner’s book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, in which Skinner argued that “our idea of freedom is really illusion, as is our concept of dignity, because we are simply determined masses of matter who have no freedom whatsoever but must believe what we believe according to what we have eaten.”
Critics of the Skinner’s arguments, Sproul said, put it this way, “the only thing beyond freedom and dignity is slavery and indignity, so that the idea that we are more than materially-determined objects, and there is such a reality as thought that is not materialistically-controlled is an idea that is absolutely critical and essential to our Christian existence and our lives.”
The mind, he said is not material. “We associate the mind with the function of the brain. The brain is material. The brain can be weighed and measured. The brain does take up space,” he said. However, Christians “must distinguish between the thoughts we have and the organ that is related to them.”
Sproul said that it’s critical for Christians –at heart of their faith – to know that when they die and when the organs deteriorate, that they will continue to have a conscious, personal identity that goes forever.
“If you really want to know who I am and want to know who you are,” Sproul said, a person has to have more than a police sketch of physical characteristics or even health records. “To know who you are requires getting into the mind … The chief place where we live is in our mind, in our thoughts, in our thinking.”
Sproul spoke of various philosophers and philosophies that have been discussed throughout the years that “all arguing the same question … I’m trying to tell you there’s a long-term question between thought and action.”
But from a Biblical perspective, Sproul said, “We know we are responsible for our actions and we are told that our actions are determined – within God’s providence … by how we think. The Bible says ‘That as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.’ [Proverbs 23:7] Now the Bible is aware that the heart is not the organ of thought … but if I want to know what you really think, if I want to know what you really believe – not what you say you believe, but what makes you tick, I have to look at your life. Your life will tell me what you think in your heart.”
The relationship between the mind and the will
“Where is the will located? Is it like three inches behind your liver? Where is the will? Or what is the will and how does the will function and operate? What is its role in our lives?” Sproul asked.
His answer came from Freedom of the Will by Jonathan Edwards. In simple terms, Edwards defined it as “the will is the mind choosing.”
According to Sproul, Edwards believed that in the final analysis, if a choice is to be made – especially a moral choice – “it must involve a voluntary conscious choice, and when I consider my options, I will choose what my mind deems to be best for me at the particular moment. In fact he defines the act of choice as doing that which you are most inclined to do at a given moment – but we must choose what we are inclined to do at a given moment or we wouldn’t choose it at all.”
Sproul said that “You can’t make a decision to change your inclination, but the inclination must change to change the decision. … if you want to change what you mean to do somehow your mind has to be changed.”
Relationship between minds and hearts
Sproul said that when he wrote the book Classical Apologetics along with John H. Gerstner and Arthur W. Lindsley, it contained a line that sounded like a contradiction: “In the Christian life we have the primacy of the mind and in the Christian life we have the primacy of the heart.”
He explained the primacy of the heart by saying, “When stand before God, it is not what we say or affirm in creeds that will get us into heaven. … God will look at the heart and ask, ‘Is that heart on fire for me?’ … So the heart is greater than the mind.”
As for the primacy of the mind, he said, “There can’t be anything in the heart that’s not first in the mind. If you want to get your heart changed, you have to get you mind changed. … That’s what Christian sanctification is all about: The renewing of the mind.”
Held in Orlando, Fla., and streamed live on the Internet, “The Christian Mind” conference was designed to help attendees “learn how better to think like Christians in order that we might live like Christians.”
Topics included the importance of building a Christian worldview, the role of education in the Christian life, science and God’s natural revelation and defending the faith.
R.C. Sproul, founder and chairman ofLigonier Ministries, is known for helping Christians to understand what they believe, why they believe and how they can defend both. His teaching can be heard on the program Renewing Your Mind, which is available on hundreds of radio outlets in the United States and worldwide. Sproul serves as chancellor of Ligonier Academy of Biblical and Theological Studies, and he is the senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s in Sanford, Fla. His prolific writing ministry includes nearly 70 books. p>