Select an item by clicking its checkbox
"Spirituality and Higher Learning: Thinking and Loving"
Additional Info:
What is the relationship between the life of the intellect and the life of the spirit? This is complex and painful question. In this paper I would like to approach the problem, not by jumping into the middle to answer the whole of it, but by pondering with you only one part of it having to do with what it means for a Christian to think rationally. As members of our own culture, all of us have been reared to believe at some level that even for the Christian, intellect and spirit are and need to be kept separate. A good deal of my education, even my Christian education, over the years, and yours too, I suspect, was based in the conviction that our human minds are only really trustworthy, that is, "objective," when we are able to discard from our thought processes in own particular, individual perceptions of the world, our own particular experiences, our own particular points of view, and our own values. In short, in order to meet the criteria of acceptable thought we have not only tried to make a division between intellect and the spiritual. We have actually tried to throw out of our definition of what it means to think a good deal of what we know and who we are as human beings and as Christians. In order to help us think about this, I would like to tell a story. It is my story, but I tell it because I suspect large parts of it are your story as well.
What is the relationship between the life of the intellect and the life of the spirit? This is complex and painful question. In this paper I would like to approach the problem, not by jumping into the middle to answer the whole of it, but by pondering with you only one part of it having to do with what it means for a Christian to think rationally. As members of our own culture, all of us have been reared to believe at some level that even for the Christian, intellect and spirit are and need to be kept separate. A good deal of my education, even my Christian education, over the years, and yours too, I suspect, was based in the conviction that our human minds are only really trustworthy, that is, "objective," when we are able to discard from our thought processes in own particular, individual perceptions of the world, our own particular experiences, our own particular points of view, and our own values. In short, in order to meet the criteria of acceptable thought we have not only tried to make a division between intellect and the spiritual. We have actually tried to throw out of our definition of what it means to think a good deal of what we know and who we are as human beings and as Christians. In order to help us think about this, I would like to tell a story. It is my story, but I tell it because I suspect large parts of it are your story as well.