bible and theology on Intelligence

There’s a difference between intelligence and wisdom, as illustrated by the old story of the favorite course at the University. The favorite course? A survey of the New Testament. It was a favorite be...

Gracious God, you love us deeply yet we take your love for granted. Rather than trusting you, we trust the gifts you have given us. We confess that our misplaced hope and reliance is on money, intelli...

It is, after all, not intellect that is a threat to spirituality, but pride of intellect, a reliance on, a trust in, a worship of intellect.

Everything we do proceeds from a decision of will, involves our intelligence and perception, leads to emotional reactions or experiences, is approved or disapproved by the conscience, and is registere...

One way to learn the mind of the Creator is to study His creation. We must pay God the compliment of studying His work of art and this should apply to all realms of human thought. A refusal to use our...

“All thinking men are atheists.”

The current understanding of the physical sciences, which contrasts sharply with the strictly mechanical perspectives prevalent in earlier centuries, aligns closely with the New Testament’s portrayal ...

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...

Christianity taught men that love is worth more than intelligence.

If cosmic geography is culturally descriptive rather than revealed truth, it takes its place among many other biblical examples of culturally relative notions. For example, in the ancient world, peopl...

To those who only know it outwardly, Christianity seems desperately intricate. In reality, taken in its main lines, it contains an extremely simple and astonishingly bold solution of the world. In the...

Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so amazingly know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it them...

A group of researchers sought to study the nuances of self-control. They conducted a study with a few dozen kindergarten students and gave them a painfully boring, repetitive task designed to test how...

I’ll never forget sitting in the guidance counselor’s office my freshman year in high school in the Lehigh Valley area between Philadelphia and Allentown, where I grew up. The purpose of our meeting w...

In his 2008 book, Just Courage, Gary Haugen, a lawyer by training, describes an interesting legal precedent known as “void for vaugeness.” Haugen used the precedent to illustrate how vague ideas of Bi...

In Elmer Bendiner’s book, The Fall of the Fortresses , he describes one bombing run over the German city of Kassel: Our B-17 ( The Tondelayo ) was barraged by flack from Nazi antiaircraft guns....

Norman Malcolm was an American philosopher who became close friends with Ludwig Wittgenstein (the founder of Analytic Philosophy, one of the most popular schools of philosophy up through today). In 19...

There was once a court case that was lost because of the silence of an attorney. The distinguished lawyer Samuel Hoar (1778-1856) was representing the defendant. When it was time to present his case, ...

A belligerent samurai . . . once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. But the monk replied with scorn, “You’re nothing but a lout—I can’t waste my time with the likes of ...

Most men and women fall in love with individuals of the same ethnic, social, religious, educational and economic background, those of similar physical attractiveness, a comparable intelligence, simila...

The world, in fact, is not as it had been represented to us. Things are not all right as they are, and they are not getting any better. We have been told the lie ever since we can remember: human bein...

The Christian’s self-understanding is that she is precious before God—however much a sinner, however much a failure (or success) she may be by the standards of worldly comparisons—and that every other...

Wisdom is the power to see and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.

Discernment is an increasing capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and activity of God—both in the ordinary moments of our lives and in the decisions we face.

True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.

The habit of discernment is a quality of attentiveness to God that is so intimate that over time we develop an intuitive sense of God’s heart and purpose in any given moment.

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

We have immense difficulty practicing God’s presence and keeping God’s reality before our mind’s eye because we have dismissed or denigrated our capacity to intuitively and imaginatively apprehend and...

Attitude is an accurate monitor of where we fall on the spectrum of pride and humility.