The mentality of the early Christians was a never-ending mystery to the first century world. It was without dispute utterly unlike the perspective of the surrounding pagans. Abolishing class distinctions, it brought slaves and masters together around the common table. Disregarding the canons of common sense connected with material wealth, it spawned and orgy of mutual helpfulness and giving which turned accepted concepts of economics upside-down. Centering upon the worship of Jesus, the enfleshment of God himself, it led to a consideration for women, children, and neighbors which was unheard of – because they too bore the image of God. In politics, which was recognized then for the thoroughly religious thing it has always been, the softness turned to steel and the Christian mentality proved tougher than lion’s teeth. Altogether, it was a world-disturbing element – this mind set of the Christians.
There was, of course, nothing to be surprised at in this. Jesus had demonstrated a worldview that baffled the Pharisees and drove them to the most unprincipled violence. His answers to Pilate so unnerved the Governor as to force from him the admission that he, who occupied the judge’s chair, had no idea what truth was. Festus, unable to comprehend what had changed Paul from a violent persecutor to a slavish follower of Jesus, accused him of learned madness. (Acts 26:24).
These illustrations remind us, who have grown up within the moralithic mentality of the modern Western world, that something can look very different depending upon the mind set from which one approaches them. Historically, there have been times when existence and "facts" were regarded so differently from our modern way as to be incomprehensible to us. Even in contemporary society, it is virtually impossible for an educated American to enter sympathetically into the mentality of an African, a citizen of India, a Moslem, or a Russian unless he has already adopted the philosophical perspective of his opposite.
All of which leads to the questions: is it possible to describe a Christian mind and to identify important ways in which it diverges from the secular mind of the modern West? Is there, indeed, such a thing as a Christian mind, and, if so, what is it like?
This article is an attempt to give to that question an affirmative answer. Not the only answer, mind you; not an infallible and inspired answer, except to the extent to which it touches the core of the Biblical revelation. It is one paradigm of the Christian mind. It attempts to sketch, from the writer’s perspective, the marks of a Christian mind.
It will do so in two ways. First, it will suggest some of the characteristics if a Christian mind as it shows itself in the life of the person who has it. Then it will sketch some of the most important aspects, or components, of a Christian mind itself. Both approaches are needed, for a Christian mind is not merely an intellectual mechanism, a living computer program; it is the lived-out expression of certain convictions held at so fundamental a level within the human heart that they give form and direction to understanding, feeling, and action alike. Indeed, the idea of the mind as a detached, value free, analytical mechanism at the service of its owner for the investigation of the environment is a mythical by-way named "Cul de Sac Descartes." Ever since the father of modern philosophy split apart the inner world of the mind and the outer world of reality, no one in the arena of secular philosophy has ever been able to put them back together again. The Christian mind is not that sort of philosophical monstrosity.

Perhaps the most basic and, to the modern mind, most perturbing characteristic of a Christian mind is its quiet, immovable conviction that wisdom is a gift of God. And, since God does not give gifts in the autonomous, independent, private-ownership manner that sin has accustomed us to, the gift is always associated with the presence of God. God doesn’t give things away; He gives Himself to us through things. A Christian mind is not something one can take from God’s hand, put in his pocket (or his brain), and walk away with. We have a Christian mind only to the extent that we "have" God, or better, to the extent to which God "has" us.
The testimony of Scripture is abundant and widespread on this point. Joseph in Genesis and Bezalel in Exodus were said to have their wisdom from the Lord. Nor was this "spiritual" wisdom in terms of the present-day, dualistic evangelical Christianity. It was wisdom to run a food conservation program which carried Egypt and the surrounding countries through a seven year famine, and it was artistic, crafting skill which built the remarkable curtained shrine if the Israelites in the desert. Solomon asked for wisdom from God and got it, only to abandon it in the later years as he wandered from the worship of the living God to serve the idols of his foreign wives. Job said, "The fear of Jehovah, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding." (Job 28:28) Isaiah described the coming Servant of Jehovah as one upon whom would rest "the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Jehovah." (Isaiah 11:2-3) Of Daniel and his friend it was said, "God gave them the knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom." (Daniel 1:17) That is why Daniel graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Babylon! And the New Testament witness is no different, Jesus promised to give his followers wisdom in speech which their detractors would be powerless to contravene (Luke 21:15) The "word of wisdom" is spoken of in I Cor. 12:8 as a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Were our minds not so thoroughly befuddled by the oft-repeated insistence of the age of science that knowledge is strictly an empirical, logical product, it would not be necessary to belabor this point. The fact remains that a Biblical definition of a Christian mind makes it directly related, indeed proportioned to, the level of personal intimacy between the person whose mind it is and the God who is the giver of wisdom and through His indwelling presence with his people. A Christian mind is not something one has; it is something which one is as he abides, to use our Lord’s incomparable metaphor of the branch and the vine, in Christ. So that’s the first characteristic; a Christian mind is a function of walking in fellowship with God. That doesn’t make it any less perceptive, sharp, logical, or penetrating than some other mind. No one could accuse Moses or Paul of being uneducated or illogical, and the intellectual rapier with which our Lord repeatedly pinked his Pharisaical opponents has never been approached by the most brilliant secular debater. Fellowship with God simply defines the context of a Christian’s analytical, logical keenness.
A second characteristic of a Christian mind is that it acknowledges a Biblical foundation. This follows inevitably from the first characteristic. If wisdom is a gift from God, and God has revealed Himself in the Bible, then a Christian mind will lay its foundation on the rock of the teaching of Scripture. It will seek humbly and earnestly to understand the message of the two testaments, to see the New as the flowering of the Old, and to see in both the lineaments of the incarnate Son of God. It will prize the testimony of the prophets and the apostles. It will regard highly the long-standing convictions of the church in history. It will move hesitantly to assert some new interpretation of its own. It will be, in short, a Biblical mind, well stored with the understandings of God’s people down through the ages, and well grounded in the Biblical account of God’s redemptive invasion of a lost world in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Again, a Christian mind is one that is unapologetically, consciously rooted in faith in Jesus Christ.
The relation of faith to knowledge is so misunderstood today that it is worth digressing momentarily to touch on it. All knowledge is rooted in faith of one sort or another. To talk, therefore, of the integration of faith and learning as though that were something we do to two otherwise discrete activities, is to misunderstand the nature of both faith and learning. Humans, made in God’s image, are bounded by their very creation to fix on some focus of faith in terms of which they understand their world and everything in it. No single scrap of knowledge is ever independent of a faith-root-system. There are always people’s facts, and people all live by some faith or other. The idea that our rational minds are able to grasp "objective" truth about the world, ourselves, and even about God, without the admixture of any religious factor is one of most deep seated and pervasive misunderstandings of the modern mind. It is one of the deepest spells which modernity has cast on us. And it is one that is diametrically opposite to the way things really are. All knowing has faith roots.
Those roots, in the Christian mind, are trust in Jesus Christ. This is just as true of our knowledge of arithmetic, language, and logic, of our understanding of marriage, business, and politics, as it is of our spiritual experience and understanding. The Bible is clear in asserting that nothing exists that has not been created and is not maintained by Jesus Christ. (John 1:3 and Colossians 1:17, among many similar passages). He, and He alone, is the one who gives meaning to all that exists. Without Him, life is meaningless because none of the things by which and in which we live has any significance apart form Him. Man’s original misunderstanding of the world occurred in the Garden of Eden when he ceased to trust God, and a Christian mind forges again a meaningful understanding of the world through a restored trust in Christ.

Editor: Al Greene