For the New Christian Intellectual (FTNCI) is a podcast and worldview project aimed at restoring the life of the mind in Christianity. The New Athens Statement summarizes our intellectual commitments.
This document was prepared by Jacob Brunton, Ryan Graber, and Cody Libolt. It serves as a way to identify intellectual allies for the New Athens Certification. It can be used more broadly for identifying intellectual commitments. Anyone who can understand and affirm this statement is a New Christian Intellectual.
Introduction
Today many Christians and churches are not correctly oriented toward objective truth. The problem is philosophical.
The New Athens Statement identifies four ideals that qualify a Christian leader as having a basic understanding of moral reasoning and sound philosophy. This understanding is important for intellectual and spiritual leadership.
The four ideals are:
1) Individualism
2) Reason
3) Rational Self-interest
4) Individual Rights
Background:
Man being in the image of God translates into a high view of the individual mind. We esteem man’s rationality as being essential to his own life.
Specifically, we esteem the way we utilize the mind in practical life. Man is the integrated being of mind and matter. As the crown jewel of God’s material creation, he is to use his mind to cultivate and dominate the material world, to the glory of God.
Scripture envisions man as a rational, productive being. For that reason, we must prize and defend the ideals of individualism, rationality, rational self-interest, and individual rights.
These ideals once implicitly formed the foundation of Christian society. They will be needed if Christian voices are to confidently defend Western Civilization against all ideologies that oppose human flourishing on earth.
Individualism:
Each man is created individually in the image of God as a rational creature. His unique means of surviving and thriving is the application of his own reasoning mind to the facts of reality.
Only the individual mind can reason about reality in order to understand it accurately. There are no collective minds.
When the individual mind is respected in essential spheres of life, from epistemology to ethics to political theory, the result will be a set of individualistic ideals, which follow.
Reason:
To fully realize his God-given nature (and thus to fully glorify God), man must choose to use his rational faculty.
Being rational means:
-Holding the truth as one’s ultimate goal and standard in belief formation
-Seeking intellectual integration
-Holding reason as supreme in our pursuit of truth and our processing of it
We must uphold respect for the individual mind in the reasoning process. Each person must think for himself. Indeed, there is no other form of thinking than to “think for oneself.”
Each individual person has a method of determining truth from falsehood. The method is to apply observation and logic. All human knowledge has its foundation in observation and logic.
Christians should reject arbitrary authority as a means to knowledge. Faith comes as an effect of thinking, not as its cause. Christians should reject blind faith and any view that implies it.
Rational Self-interest:
Ethics asks what values should motivate a man. In ethics, respect for the role of the individual mind leads to a moral code of rational self-interest. Values are values to individual minds. The individual person is properly the recipient of the values he achieves by following a moral code.
Individuals have minds; groups do not. To respect man’s nature as a rational being, we must treat each person as having a mind that is capable of identifying its values and seeking them.
A man is not a means to the ends of other men. A man has no unchosen obligation to a group. It is right that a man loves himself. He should follow the path of greatest values for his own life. These ideas are both consistent with, and taught by, Scripture.
Christians should reject the moral code of self-sacrifice for its own sake—the code that claims man’s motive ought not be for his own joy or prosperity. Such a code sets up “death to self” as an ideal. That approach is not found in Scripture, nor supported by logic.
Individual Rights:
Political theory asks how man should exist in community. To respect the role of the individual mind in politics is to affirm that the individual person is the primary unit of consideration; the individual has rights, while the group does not.
All earthly goods come from the productive work of individual minds. In order for there to be earthly goods, it is right that those individual minds be left free to produce.
The greatest danger to an individual mind is physical force. The initiation of physical force is a great evil in society. Force violates individual ownership and individual rights.
Civil governments should uphold each person’s individual rights. Government leaders should prohibit rights violations between members of the society while carefully avoiding committing any violations themselves. This is the only proper purpose of a civil government. Proper governments respect and protect individual rights. They do nothing else.
A government that initiates force against its own people (for social programs, for education, for helping, or for regulating) is an inversion of justice. It eventually becomes the greatest threat to human flourishing.
The above-stated ideals are necessary in order to reorient Christians toward sound philosophy, objective truth, skillful moral reasoning, and the preservation of Western Civilization.
We pray that the New Athens Statement will help create a foundation for cultural reform.
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For reactions or feedback on this statement, please email us here.
For further steps, please visit New Athens.
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