We only know/believe what we obey. Or, we are responsible for living based on what we know.
Thus, Christian intellectuals bear a great deal of responsibility.
Here is the great dichotomy that I found on this reread:
We fail in our responsibility as Christian intellectuals, and so Christian intellectualism needs the gospel. But living out the gospel (the actions he describes as aspiration--setting our minds on what is good--and mortification--denying our flesh) requires Christian thinking (and therefore Christian intellectualism). Each necessitates the other.
In general, in fact, the only way to respond to the gospel is in obedience, and the only way to obey is to believe the gospel.
But what does all of this have to do with being a Christian physicist? I came up with a few answers...
- I need to connect physics to worship.
- I am a teacher, and not just a physicist. (This thought also led me to consider the differences between the terms "physics teacher," "physicist teacher," and "teacher physicist." I'll tease out those differences in another post some day...) I need to value my students, their learning, and their future.
- Physics is applied to help creation. (I normally say, "help humanity," but with all the thoughts of the oil spill floating around in my head, and my multi-year-long fascination with the Cultural Mandate in Genesis 1, it occurred to me that I needed to expand my understanding of my own sphere of responsibility. Again, probably more about this in a future post...)
