For Reformational Thinking: Developing an Undivided Heart: Developing an Undivided Heart

By Joseph Boot

For several generations, Christians have bought into a worldview that radically separates the realms of natural and supernatural. But this is not a biblical way of seeing the world, and such a view leads to unwanted, unorthodox, and even pagan conclusions: locating the root of sin in the physical, created world; a belief in the supremacy of huma

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ezra Press
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781989169230

Joseph Boot

JOE BOOT is the founder of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity and the senior pastor of Westminster Chapel, Toronto. In the U.K. he is director of the Wilberforce Academy and head of public theology for Christian Concern. In the U.S.A. he is a senior fellow at both the think-tank truthXchange and the Center for Cultural Leadership. Dr. Boot holds a Master's degree in Mission Theology (University of Manchester U.K), and a Ph.D. in Christian Intellectual Thought (Whitefield Theological Seminary, U.S.A.). His other books include Why I Still Believe (2005), How Then Shall We Answer? (2008) and The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society (2016).

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For Reformational Thinking:

Developing an

Undivided Heart

Published by Ezra Press, a ministry of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity, PO Box 9, Stn. Main, Grimsby, ON L3M 1M0

By Joseph Boot. Copyright of the author, 2023. All rights reserved. Material in this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publishers

Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are from the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB). Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville Tennessee.

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For Reformational Thinking: Developing an Undivided Heart

ISBN: 978-1-989169-23-0

Contents

Chapter One

The Christian Mind

Chapter Two

The Value of Reformational Thinking

Chapter Three

An Undivided Mind:

Scholasticism or Reformational Thinking

Chapter One

The Christian Mind

A Grateful mind

If you see a turtle perched on top of a fencepost, you know immediately it didn’t get there on its own; this human terrapin certainly did not reach his conclusions about Christian thinking by unaided mental acrobatics, so the message of this small volume is not a veiled conceit. True, I have thought a lot about thinking over the years and the implications of that thought for human life, which is why I am writing this book – though too much of a good thing is liable to be bad for your health according to the wisest (Eccl. 12:12), so no one should think too much!

Admittedly there is more of others in my thought than there is of me; at least of last month’s me as I suppose, once incorporated, their thoughts become part of me as I continue to wend my way through the cloud of witnesses. All of which suggests we can only become our true selves with the help of others who have submitted their minds to Christ – from apostles, parents, pastors, teachers, friends and colleagues, not to mention the pages we leaf through. I am grateful to the many living and dead believers who have helped me think – the dead through their books as opposed to the illegitimate ingenuity of Saul in Endor.

The Life of the Mind

In reference to that cloud of witnesses, it has been observed by thinkers far more penetrating than I, that what our own deceived and disillusioned time doesn’t know, or more accurately has forgotten, is currently killing it. Christ has faded from view – we no longer think of Him and so we languish in the stifling embrace of our own presumptuous errors. This neglect of remembrance is not for a lack of seers claiming to be the oracles of wisdom for the moment. A long tradition stretching back to the 6th century BC, when an intellectual movement arose in Miletus with a man later called Thales, has given the West what it came to call philosophy (lit. love of wisdom). The story of Western philosophy – a discipline looking to search out the boundaries of human experience – is a fascinating one, with many heroes and villains, plots and subplots, but without Christ it is a tragic story. Godless philosophy, for all its purported love of wisdom, has neglected the beginning of wisdom – the fear of the Lord. This faulty start has led to one dead end after another, producing intellectual and spiritual exhaustion. St. Paul understood very well the pitfalls of an autonomous search for wisdom and so placed Christ at the fulcrum of all true wisdom and knowledge:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is God’s power to us who are being saved. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the understanding of the experts. Where is the philosopher? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish? For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of the message preached. For the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. Yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom, because