Fides Quaerens Intellectum

IMPACT 360′s (www.impact360.net) guest professor this week is Mr. John Stonestreet.  Stonestreet is Associate Professor in the Bible Department at Bryan College (www.bryan.edu)– teaching courses on worldview, apologetics and cultural exegesis–and is the Director of Summit Ministries, Eastern Region (www.summit.org).  He’s teaching on how Christian worldview ought to impact our understanding of bioethical challenges in this day and age, and I must say is doing an impressive job.  One of the discussions that came up during one of the breaks had to do with how we as Christians must deal with the pernicious and pervasive cultural assumptions of industrialism and consumerism, both of which are grounded in the modernist/Enlightenment understanding of the human person as the autonomous and finally-authoritative individual.  Stonestreet’s reply was insightful and instructive:  if we understand industry and consumer goods to be means to an Ultimate Purpose, namely God’s glory, then we flourish.  But we get ourselves into trouble by turning these means into ends in themselves, especially with respect to human persons at the beginning and end of life.  Secularized American culture, of course just wants to say that we evangelical “fundamentalists” are abandoning academic freedom and “open-mindedness” when we talk this way, but as C.S. Lewis once pointed out,

An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful.  But an open mind about ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or Practical Reason is idiocy.  If a man’s mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut.[1]

[1] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, ch. 2, p. 60.