Charles Malik's "Two Tasks" address (1980)

NB The following quotes may NOT be in the right order!

Charles Malik, the late Lebanese statesman, in his address at the inauguration of the Billy Graham centre at Wheaton College in 1980, warned American Christians of the danger of neglecting the mind.

"I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. But intellectual nurture cannot take place apart from profound immersion for a period of years in the history of thought and the spirit. People who are in a hurry to get out of the university and start earning money or serving the church or preaching the gospel have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is vacated and abdicated to the enemy. Who among evangelicals can stand up to the great secular scholars on their own terms of scholarship? Who among evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics? Does the evangelical mode of thinking have the slightest chance of becoming the dominant mode in the great universities of Europe and America that stamp our entire civilization with their spirit and ideas? For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence."


"It will take a different spirit altogether to overcome this great danger. . . . For example, I say this different spirit, so far as philosophy alone--the most important domain for thought and intellect--is concerned, must see the tremendous value of spending an entire year doing nothing but poring intensely over the Republic or the Sophist of Plato, or two years over the Metaphysics or the Ethics of Aristotle, or three years over the City of God of Augustine. But if a start is made now on a crash program in this and other domains, it will take at least a century to catch up with the Harvards and Tübingens and the Sorbonnes—and by then where will these universities be? For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence."

Charles Malik, “The Other Side of Evangelism” Christianity Today (November 7, 1980), p. 40.

For Malik’s entire original address see "The Two Tasks" (Wheaton, Ill.: Billy Graham Center, 2000).

Found originally in: "Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview" by J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, IVP, 2003

See also:

* For a longer extract see here.

* The Two Tasks of the Christian Scholar: Redeeming the Soul, Redeeming the Mind
William Lane Craig (Editor), Paul M. Gould (Editor) - This is a collection of essays based on Malik's address.

* 1 page extract (pdf)