5 guide them as they work out their own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). It is our understanding that a genuine critical thinker is one who first thinks biblically, and then reasons from this scriptural foundation; we do not start with rational autonomy and then reason our way to God’s Word. As with any core body of knowledge, there is a unifying principle structuring our understanding of what is the right way to live and learn. At Cedarville University, we vigorously study all intellectual thought and culture. Given that the etymology of the word philosopher means one who “loves the truth,” and according to Scripture, Christ is the Truth (John 14:6; Col. 2:3), all Christians must be philosophers in addition to being theologians, which means we are expected by our Creator to know good philosophy from bad philosophy. To take seriously Paul’s injunction to avoid “the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge’” (1 Tim. 6:20), it is necessary to be fluent in secular wisdom in order to promote a Christian theory of knowledge against the false knowledge of the unbelieving world. We must know good philosophy in order to refute the vain reasoning of the pseudo-philosopher. How else can we avoid answering “a fool according to his folly” (Prov. 26:4), unless we have the intellectual wherewithal to expose and refute the specious reasoning of our worldly opponent “lest he be wise in his own eyes” (Prov. 26:5)? Therefore, we study unbelieving thought and culture for critical discernment so that we will not be robbed of our treasure of knowledge in Christ (Col. 2:3); to preserve this knowledge, we intellectually engage our secular peers, exposing their hidden faith commitments, challenging their most basic premises while modeling for them a unified field of knowledge. We study their philosophy in order to “contend for the faith” (Jude 3), to hold more firmly to God by confuting those who “contradict sound doctrine” (Titus 1:9) and to be an effective witness both to the philosophical and the nonphilosophical unbelievers among us (1 Pet. 3:15). Finally, we must be ever vigilant, distinguishing and identifying true, biblical reasoning from autonomous reasoning — lest we too in our academics employ the same rational method of the fool “who said in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps. 14:1). Since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7), Christians must be “renewed in knowledge” (Col. 3:10) — not held “captive by philosophy and empty deceit” (Col. 2:8). As such, Cedarville students routinely study ideas that challenge their belief systems. We find that a great way to illustrate the sufficiency of Scripture is to expose them
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