Can intellectuals be Christians?
Scripture
Acts 17:16-27,30-31
16While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed when he saw that the city was full of idols. 17So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with those who worshiped God, as well as in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also debated with him. Some said, “What is this ignorant show-off trying to say?”
Others replied, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign deities” — because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
19They took him and brought him to the Areopagus, and said, “May we learn about this new teaching you are presenting?20Because what you say sounds strange to us, and we want to know what these things mean.” 21Now all the Athenians and the foreigners residing there spent their time on nothing else but telling or hearing something new.
22Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that you are extremely religious in every respect. 23For as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed: ‘To an Unknown God.’ Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.
24The God who made the world and everything in it — he is Lord of heaven and earth — does not live in shrines made by hands. 25Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. 26From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. 27He did this so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
30“Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
Quotes and References
Flannery O’Connor
“[skepticism] will keep you free — not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects of those around you”
Luc Ferry – A brief History of Thought
The combination of mortality with our awareness of mortality contains all the questions of philosophy.
David Dark – The Sacredness of Questioning Everything
I believe deliverance begins with questions. It begins with people who love questions, people who live with questions and by questions, people who feel a deep joy when good questions are asked