THE WISDOM OF THE SPIRIT AND THE MIND OF CHRIST BRINGS US TOGETHER IN UNITY

Aim:

·      Exploring God’s wisdom revealed by the Holy Spirit in relation to our studies.

·      Examining how and why Paul describes the wisdom of God this way.

·      Developing and encouraging "the mind of Christ" together in our lives as students.

Looking at the bible 1 Corinthians 2

1) Paul is actually a learned Pharisee....

“And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[a] 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power”.

Why verse 1-5 interesting in the light of Paul’s past?

2) “ However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
    what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[b]—
    the things God has prepared for those who love him—

10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.”

This passage is from Is 64:4 What does it mean? How is it used here? This verse ties the Old Testament and New Testament together. How is the past, present and future tied together in this?

3) “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.¹⁴ The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. ¹⁵ The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, ¹⁶ for, so as to instruct him?”

“Who has known the mind of the Lord

But we have the mind of Christ.”

Colour the repeated words. Underline the reversals. What does v 10-16 tell you about the Holy Spirit?

4) What does having a mind of Christ mean to you? How does the personality of the Holy Spirit make you think, feel, do and become? What is the connection between these two and how do they lead to Christian unity?

What does it mean to have the mind of Christ?

Here are some tensions to discuss as you unpack this theme.

Having both a disciplined, well-regulated study of scripture and a disciplined, and well-regulated study of our academic field is our vocation as a Christian student who has an undivided life.

A Christian Tertiary Student affirms that faith does not mean feelings/ heart alone. The Holy Spirit transforms how we think about things and sometimes that means questioning what is culturally acceptable or uncovering what is previously unknown.

Ideally, Christian fellowships focus on helping Christian students from a variety of church backgrounds to unite on campus enough to discover ways to speak the mysteries of God in academic terms with rigorous scholarship in the marketplace of ideas, we call the university.

Going deeper

1. The difference between a pastor and a Christian academic

Christ and the Life of the Mind: Q & A with John Piper (Pastor) and Mark Nol (Christian Academic). Does your studies distract you from God’s presence? Does your academic study/ discourse embed the notion that any religious belief invalids serious research?

http://www.desiringgod.org/conference-messages/jesus-christ-and-the-life-of-the-mind-q-a-with-john-piper-and-mark-noll

2. How to develop a Christian mind by Nicholas Wolterstorff

He is from the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology Emeritus at Yale University, was asked to unpack for students at Tertiary Institutions how to develop a Christian mind and a Christian voice. This is an extract.

So how do you arrive at the point where you can think with a Christian mind and speak with a Christian voice?

First, be patient. The Christian scholar may feel in his bones that some part of his discipline rubs against the grain of his Christian conviction, but for years, and even decades, he may not be able to identify precisely the point of conflict; or, if he has identified it, he may not know for years or decades how to work out an alternative. Once he does spy the outlines of an alternative, the Christian scholar has to look for the points on which, as it were, he can pry, those points where he can get his partners in the discipline to say, “Hmm, you have a point there; I’m going to have to go home and think about that.” He doesn’t just preach. He engages in a dialogue – or tries to do so. And that presupposes, once again, that he has found a voice.

Second, to arrive at this point, the Christian scholar will have to be immersed in the discipline and be really good at it. Grenades lobbed by those who don’t know what they are talking about will have no effect. Only those who are learned in the discipline can see the fundamental issues.

Third, to be able to think with a Christian mind about the issues in your discipline, you have to have a Christian mind. 

As I see it, three things are necessary for the acquisition of such a mind.

First, you have to be well acquainted with Scripture – not little tidbits, not golden nuggets, but the pattern of biblical thought. Let me add here: beware of the currently popular fad of reducing acquaintance with scripture to worldview summaries.

Second, you need some knowledge of the Christian theological tradition.

And third, you have to become acquainted with the riches of the Christian intellectual tradition generally, especially those parts of it that pertain to your own field. You and I are the inheritors of an enormously rich tradition of Christian reflection on politics, on economics, on psychology, an enormously rich tradition of art, of music, of poetry, of architecture – on and on it goes. We impoverish ourselves if we ignore this. Part of our responsibility as Christian scholars is to keep those traditions alive.

Fourth, Christian learning needs the nourishment of communal worship.  Otherwise it becomes dry and brittle, easily susceptible to skepticism.

For his whole article click here. 

3. Who can I turn to for help to I develop a mind of Christ?

The Art of Learning Wisdom from Mentors by Hannah Eagleson

“Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out.” – Proverbs 20:5, KJV

Even if you have good mentors, learning wisdom from them is a skill. It’s an art that takes a lifetime, and I certainly haven’t mastered it. But the wisest people I know do several things. They ask good questions, they observe carefully, and they follow up with those from whom they’ve learned.

Here are some thoughts on developing a Christian mind with help from those who are ahead in the journey you are on:

Finding and asking good questions. What kinds of questions have you found it helpful to ask?

1.     Finding good questions.

Over time I found that it was helpful to ask questions raised by a specific project, questions raised by my own life, and questions raised by things a mentor does particularly well. I also found it helpful to have a general question or two that I asked a wide variety of people.

How would you approach this question?

2. Observing

Some of the best things you can learn from a mentor may come not so much from what they say in conversation but from what they do. If a professor has a knack for making new students feel welcome, or a way of making course material profoundly engaging, or a talent for organizing a paper, it’s possible that he won’t even know he’s doing it. Even if he does, he may not feel it necessary to explain how he does it. But you may learn it from him just by watching.

3. Following up

I often look at mentoring through the lens of narrative: a mentor is listening to my stories and helping me to make sense of them. He or she is also helping to shape them by helping me understand the other characters involved and suggesting courses of action. I want my mentors to see the ways that their input has shaped my story, so I try to keep them posted.

For more detail: click here.

Application:

·      How can we learn from each other in order to foster “the mind of Christ.”

·      How can we invite “mentors” from our group who are Christian academics, in the workplace or parts of  other TSCF groups in NZ to help us grow in “the mind of Christ.”

·      Catalyst is the TSCF online bookstore and resources for faculty based material for use in your faculty groups.

Leader's Guide

Waikato University's Mission, as stated in its Charter, is ‘To combine the creation of knowledge through research, scholarship and creative works with the dissemination of knowledge through teaching, publication and performance’. The University’s motto, Ko Te Tangata, symbolises our commitment to our role under the Treaty of Waitangi. It also emphasises the role of collegiality and the importance that we place on people. We apply the following values in all our activities and operations:  

Partnership with Māori/Tū ngātahi me te Māori 

Acting with integrity/Mahi pono 

Celebrating diversity/Whakanui i ngā huarahi hou

Promoting creativity/Whakarewa i te hiringa i te mahara

How does what you learnt today contribute to the University?