What Paul wrote about unbelieving Jews in his day could be said, I fear, of some believing Christians in ours: “I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened.”ⁱ Many have zeal without knowledge, enthusiasm without enlightenment. In more modern jargon, they are keen but clueless.

Now I thank God for zeal. Heaven forbid that knowledge without zeal should replace zeal without knowledge! God’s purpose is both, zeal directed by knowledge, knowledge fired with zeal. As I once heard Dr. John Mackay say, when he was president of Princeton Seminary, “Commitment without reflection is fanaticism in action. But reflection without commitment is the paralysis of all action.”

The spirit of anti-intellectualism is prevalent today. The modern world breeds pragmatists, whose first question about any idea is not “Is it true?” but “Does it work?” Young people tend to be activists, dedicated supporters of a cause, though without always inquiring too closely either whether their cause is a good end to pursue it. An undergraduate from Melbourne, Australia, while attending a conference in Sweden, heard that a student protest had started in his own university/He wrung his hands in dismay. “I wish I were back home,” he cried. “I’d have been it it. What’s it all about?” He had zeal without knowledge.

Mordecai Richler, the Canadian commentator, has been very outspoken on this issue: “What scares me about this generation is the extent to which ignorance is their armour. If know-nothingness goes on much longer, somebody will yet emerge from a commune having discovered . . . the wheel.”ⁱⁱ

This same specter of anti-intellectualism rises regularly to haunt the Christian church. It regards theology with distaste and distrust.

- John Stott, Your Mind Matters (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1972), 1-3.

Footnotes

1. Romans 10:2 [↩]
2. From Mordecai Richler’s review of Richard Neville’s Play Power (New York: Random House, 1970) in the Guardian Weekly on February 28, 1970. [↩]