“What Does It Mean To Be a Thoughtful Christian?” by David S. Dockery
Lexham, 2022
There are very few individuals who have had the breadth of academic influence of David Dockery.
He is the newly installed president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has served as president of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and was also president of Union University. He has been on the faculty of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has been a professor, an administrator and a pastor. A native of Tuscaloosa, Dockery has studied and served at all levels of Southern Baptist academic life. He is also the author or editor of more than 40 books.
One of his newest is “What Does It Mean To Be a Thoughtful Christian?” This is a short book with a strong devotional quality. He encourages believers to be intentional about how they use their minds for Christ.
“Becoming a thoughtful Christian means learning to think well and to think Christianly,” Dockery writes (p. 9). He spends 10 brief chapters addressing what it means to do both. He stresses that we should be rational as well as faithful in the ways we think.
He points to having a clear Christian worldview that undergirds how we think. He sees this as being dependent on God’s Word with a strong commitment to the authority of Scripture. He lays out the foundational truths of God’s creation, humanity’s fall into sin, the saving work of Christ, renewal by the Holy Spirit and how God will bring the ultimate consummation of all things in His eternal reign. This “doctrinal interpretive framework” helps Christians answer important questions about life and value (p. 29).
Dockery celebrates the Christian intellectual tradition and directs the reader to savor the insights of great Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and Edwards along with more contemporary examples like C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers and others. He points out the importance of reading widely from our culture and faithfully living in the culture. He calls on thoughtful Christians to serve the Church, the culture and the world to the glory of God.
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