Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 22:2 (Fall 2025)
Article: Wisdom, Worldview, And Critical Thinking
Author: Andrew Jennings

Wisdom, Worldview, And Critical Thinking

Andrew Jennings

Andrew Jennings serve as Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The state of the contemporary Christian mind has been subjected to several critical treatments over the past few decades. Mark Noll sounded the alarm on what he saw as a steep decline in evangelical mental activity when he claimed that “the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”1 J. P. Moreland wrote his now-standard text, Love Your God with All Your Mind, on the necessity for Christians to individually and collectively cultivate minds that engage reason as they deal with the world and with the Bible.2 Many other works can be cited as well, all of which push Christians to practice an active mental life as part of discipleship and Christlikeness.3

The Christian mind is the connection between a biblical worldview and biblical wisdom. Scripture begins with humanity created in God’s image and meant to follow God’s wisdom. The serpent then offers a test, an alternative source from which Adam and Eve can supposedly derive the wisdom necessary to carry out their tasks of dominion and fruitfulness. The couple’s failure to pass the test by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree introduces noetic problems that the scriptural theme of wisdom cultivation is designed to help correct. How does one gain biblical wisdom? The answer appears to be by the application of critical thinking skills to a biblical worldview. This paper will argue, using the tree of life metaphors in Psalm 1 and Proverbs 3, that the development of discernment through critical thinking methods is a primary biblical means for achieving human flourishing.

JBTM 22:2 (Fall 2025) 290

Proverbs 3 – Wisdom Is A Tree Of Life

The study of metaphor, both in Scripture and in language more generally, has experienced a rich treatment in recent scholarship. Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By seeks to create a linguistic theory based on metaphors, which the authors claim is better than other, propositionally based theories in semantics (i.e., the formal study of meaning in language).4 They claim, “it is because we understand situations in terms of our conceptual systems that we can understand statements using that system of concepts as being true, that is, as fitting or not fitting the situati...