Scripture has much to say about thinking, the mind, and human reason. Most of us probably know some of the main verses in Scripture about these topics: …lean not on your own understanding (Prov. 3:5), …be transformed by the renewal of your mind… (Rom 12:2), ...take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), etc. The Bible teaches much about epistemology! Kevin Vanhoozer did a nice job discussing some aspects of reason, thinking, and the mind in The Drama of Doctrine. Here’s a paragraph that stuck out to me:
Getting knowledge is more like plotting one’s position with a set of maps than it is building a house on a foundation or catching fish in a net. Theological cartography is a dramatic exercise of holy reason. Reason is holy not in the sense that many moderns might think it – namely, as our noblest and most sublime faculty, a sacrament of universal truth – but rather because it is set apart and transformed for the purpose of serving the truth of the gospel. The drama of reason consists precisely in this: Will we use it to serve or to subvert the gospel? Will we respond to our vocation as knowers to follow the argument, and the testimony, where it leads? Will we reason to the glory of God? Theological thinking is responsible to revelation, to just those forms of testimony that God has taken up into his own communicative action and that now constitute the [biblical] canon. There is nothing more dramatic than coming to know God. The question is: will our minds participate fittingly in the drama of redemption?
Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine, p. 301.
Shane Lems
Hammond, WI, 54015
The Reformed Reader Blog 