The Gospel And The Mind Summary

Humans have a very complex mind that God designed for us. Through the course of this last semester, I read through the book The Gospel and The Mind, written by Bradley G. Green. In this book, Green argues that the gospel has a lot to do with our minds. When talking about our minds, the topic of knowledge will almost always come up. Knowledge is something that the gospel can enhance and allow us to gain better knowledge and truth. On page 19 it says, “when the gospel ceases to permeate and influence a given culture, we often see a confused understanding of the possibility of knowledge and the meaning of our thoughts.” The gospel allows us to see a larger possibility of knowledge and gives us more meaningful thoughts and insights. As Christians,

There are five main points, or ideas, that Green highlights in his book to support his central arguments. The first point Green makes is that the principal of creation allows us to have the necessary groundwork that we need in order to gain any kind of intellectual knowledge. On page 50, he says that “without a full-orbed understanding of creation and history, any sort of meaningful intellectual life cannot be made or affirmed.” Secondly, he argues that a drive for intellectual life is having a vision or “telos” as Green calls it. The vision that could drive us, as Christians, is knowing that someday we will be in heaven with God. At this time, we will have more knowledge of Christ than we ever will on earth. To prove his third point, green states on page 100 that “to become more heavenly creatures, and not hellish, is to be about the task of embracing the lordship of Christ over the life of the mind at every turn.” We live in a fallen world where sin is all around us and affects us every day. Since sin affects us, this means that it also can affect our intellectual life. However, because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we are able to overcome sin and grow our knowledge in understanding God at a deeper level. Therefore, Greens third point is that the cross is very important and basically the main focus when looking at the mind and our knowing. The fourth point deals with words and communication. He makes the argument that words have meanings that are somewhat open-minded because their meanings come from something outside themselves. We have given words their meaning and without those meanings, words would be nothing. Communication and language isn’t something that has been around ever since the beginning of time. Humans have developed our languages and ways of communication through words. As green puts it on page 146 in his book, “we should recognize language as a gift of