Friday, November 23, 2007

The intellectual

Kyl, in a comment on this post by the Constructive Curmudgeon, writes:
In the book Habits of the Mind Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling James W. Sire offers an initial definition of what an intellectual is. Sire writes,
“An intellectual is one who loves ideas, is dedicated to clarifying them, developing them, criticizing them, turning them over and over, seeing their implications, stacking them atop one another, arranging them, sitting silent while new ideas pop up and old ones seem to rearrange themselves, playing with them, punning with their terminology, laughing at them, watching them clash, picking up the pieces, starting over, judging them, withholding judgment about them, changing them, bringing them into contact with their counterparts in other systems of thought, inviting them to dine and have a ball but also suiting them for service in workaday life.

A Christian intellectual is all of the above to the glory of God.”
Sorry about nested quotes.