The Church, the Schools and Evolution

by J. E. Conant

[p 48] Yet, although this classification is theoretically recognized by science, and although it is absolutely demanded if we are to proceed scientifically in our researches in the spiritual realm, it is little less than amazing how many there are who utterly fail to distinguish these faculties when they start out to investigate spiritual truth. Indeed, this is the first place where the Church and the Schools part company. For the whole attitude of our Schools today, including most of the institutions founded and fostered by the Church, seems to be one that entirely misses the scientific necessity of distinguishing between these essentially different faculties when working in these two utterly divergent realms of truth. And so it comes to pass that while the Church is using one sort of faculties, the Schools are using another kind on the same class of truth.

It needs scarcely to be argued that the intellect, with its capacity to reason, is the proper faculty of apprehension in the scientific realm. But it is equally true that the heart, with its capacity to believe, is the one faculty of apprehension in the spiritual realm. That is, the inquirer reasons his way to knowledge in the natural realm, and believes his way to knowledge in the spiritual realm. He uses his mind in order to understand what God has done in His creation, and he exercises faith in order to come into the knowledge of what He is in His character. In natural things he believes because he understands, and in spiritual things he understands because he believes.

In drawing this contrast between mind and heart, however, it is fully recognized that the term “heart,” in much if not all of Scripture, stands for the whole [p 49] personality, including intellect, emotion and will. But it is also a fact that this term stands for that certain attitude of the whole personality toward God through His Word in which one believes and receives His Word without question, even though it may not be understood, rather than insisting on understanding it in order to believe it.

Paul says by inspiration in [First Corinthians] 1:17 to 2:16 that mental capacity, even of the highest excellence, when exercised by itself, is utterly incapable of apprehending spiritual truth in any degree whatever. And Christ says that it is with the heart that man believes unto righteousness. This defines that attitude of the whole personality which accepts the Word of God on faith without necessarily understanding it, and which gives evidence of acceptance by such a whole-hearted surrender to it as will eventuate in a life of righteousness.

Then in other Scriptures we find that a life of righteousness, according to the divine standard, is based on right relations with God in Christ through faith in His shed blood, through whose incoming and indwelling life, in response to such a faith, the one who receives it will normally live in right relations with his fellow men. That is, it is a righteousness that is obtained by believing, not attained by working. It is received, not achieved.

The use of the term “heart,” therefore, in Scripture, means that certain attitude of the whole personality toward God through His Word which the exercise of the intellect apart from, and unfounded on, faith makes impossible.

It is precisely this distinction in faculties that [p 50] Christ's formula requires. For it was spiritual truth, not natural, of which He spoke when He said, “If any man wills to do, he shall know.” To work by this formula requires the exercise of faith. For faith is that attitude of the heart toward the doing of God's will which is evidenced in willing to do that will, no matter what it costs nor where it leads. This is the first step of faith. For faith is both an attitude and an act, the genuineness of which is proven by an activity. That is, it is an attitude of willingness toward the will of God, an act of surrender to the will of God, eventuating in an activity in continuing in the will of God. Therefore complete surrender of the heart and life to God’s will as revealed in the Word, trusting the outcome to Him, is where faith begins.

And so let no man imagine that he has any real faith either in God or His Word who has not begun by willing to do, that he may enter upon the doing of, the will of God. Indeed, this is not simply the place where faith begins, it is also the only place where the presence of faith can be demonstrated. For this is the only possible way of distinguishing that intellectual attitude which simply assents to the truthfulness of the Word, from that genuine heart faith which actively reckons the Word to be true by surrendering the life to its requirements. This formula of Christ’s, therefore, not only requires that the spiritual and natural faculties be distinguished, but it is the one scientific test by which they can be distinguished.

Then there is Paul’s classification of these faculties just referred to. It is passing strange that so many even in our denominational schools have missed it. [p 51] He devotes a whole section of [First Corinthians], from 1:17 to 2:16, as noted above, to a scientific statement of the natural and total incapacity of the intellect to discern spiritual truth. Consider it a little more in detail. He says that natural human wisdom, “sophia,” which Aristotle defines as “mental excellence in its highest and fullest sense,” is utterly incapable of operating in the realm of spiritual investigation. For after “the world by mental excellence knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness (to the natural mental capacities) of the thing preached to save those that believe.” Not those that understand, for “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God (that is, spiritual things), for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know (or understand) them, for they are spiritually discerned (or understood).” The essential difference between natural and spiritual faculties, as well as the utter incapacity of the natural faculties in the spiritual realm, are so clearly brought out in this passage that it is impossible to miss it.

By this it is not at all meant, however, that mental training and intellectual capacity have no place in certain branches of Bible study. Every believer in the Book welcomes the keenest minds and the most expert scholarship in that branch of Bible study, for example, which seeks, by the investigation of the manuscripts and the variant readings, to arrive at the very words that were written by the inspired writers; or, for example, in that other branch of study which seeks to discover the history and origins of the various books of the Bible. But it is meant that when men seek to know the spiritual truths of the Bible, [p 52] they are utterly unscientific if they fail to use that faculty in their investigation which the Textbook itself prescribes.