Good People Think Better

To understand why you believe what you believe or know what you know is perhaps more important now, given that the marketplace of ideas has become globalised, democratised, and monetised. That’s to say that ideas from all across the world are accessible to you near instantly. The voices you hear are not necessarily those of an elite education per se, but simply the ordinary voices of people like ourselves. But people like ourselves, when given the opportunity—or when they see the opportunity—will do all sorts of things for money, namely promoting all sorts of ideas and selling them (or being paid to sell them). I hate to go there, but by way of illustration I’m basically talking about social media. But at a lesser scale I’m really just talking about the Internet. On the Internet, all sorts of wonderfully thoughtful people exist right next to thoughtless people. And on the Internet it’s simply a marketplace of ideas. How do we sift through them and determine those which are good from those which are bad? That question is simply the question of epistemology (how we know what we know—determining truth).

Looking for truth will require excellence in your intellectual life. But not only excellence in logic (which is probably what you’re thinking about right now when I say that), but excellence in character (something less often considered). You will need wisdom, caution, intellectual humility, love (of truth and people), along with other virtues. That’s to say that the intellectual life is not merely intellectual. It is also formed and informed by character and virtue.

By way of illustration, we know that physical health plays a part in intellectual ability. Some physical disabilities will mean that your senses won’t work properly and your judgements will be in error. Likewise, there is an interplay between emotions and perception and truth, and again between pain and suffering, and emotion, and judgement or perception. Consider Alzheimer’s, or anxiety, or depression, or hearing loss. In the same way, moral character can undermine good thinking. There is an interplay between good thinking and good morality—between the intellectual life and the moral life. This is absolutely nothing new in a religious sphere or to the religiously minded. But I have a feeling that it is very much something that religious and secular people alike are neglecting. So it is that those who are arrogant or dishonest or lazy will have an impeded ability to think well and pursue truth.

“And he [Christ] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians 4:11–14)

Do you know immature thinkers (regardless of their age) who are tossed about? And do you know those who are using their cunning and craftiness to do so?

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3–4)

There is a moral, self-centred, and self-pleasing aspect which repudiates sound teaching because of its own passions.

These two passages clearly speak of the overlap between moral fortitude and intellectual aptitude. So clearly the Christian is called to develop both in tandem—cultivating virtue by the sanctifying power of the Spirit, and cultivating knowledge by the enlightening work of the Spirit. In this sense we might say that, similar to how having a physical deficit in sight or hearing will inhibit your ability to understand truth (something we are completely aware of), having a moral deficit will also inhibit your ability, when provided with evidence, to understand truth. So the arrogant intellectual dismisses the lived experience and ideas of the pleb, and the greedy producer dismisses the evidence of the safety advisor.

And those two little illustrations also demonstrate something more. It’s not just that the arrogant intellectual or greedy producer should be judged on the one bad decision—to dismiss the evidence of ordinary people or to produce dangerous goods in that moment. That’s because we understand that their character isn’t something that simply exists in that moment but is who they are. Many and various decisions by these two characters will be tainted by greed or arrogance over the course of time unless something changes morally. And character is judged over time. In the same way (though again this is not how we naturally think, in my opinion) we don’t simply judge one snapshot or narrow idea held by a person or propagated by a person. Sound reasoning or sound beliefs are best determined or judged over time, which would reflect the virtue of patience in one sense.

So it is that epistemology—or the judging of someone’s epistemology—is the concern of a lifetime. Attention is not merely to the end product but also to the formation of the belief framework, and even its maintenance and revision. It’s not just what you believe but how you came to believe that, though obviously it is very important what you believe.

Clearly we wouldn’t judge someone’s faith simply by their Sunday attendance and everything pertaining to it. No, there are six other days which will be accruing evidence of their faith and its quality. Likewise, with one’s beliefs. They are not merely a matter of that moment but are a product of many factors leading up to that moment, including the character that individual exercised in discerning their beliefs.

So should everyone find it necessary to explain why they believe what they believe? I don’t think so (though I think it would be helpful for everyone). But that’s a different question from whether every person ought to pursue truth in good character—for which the answer is absolutely yes. And this is why character is important in the intellectual life. Intellectualism isn’t required of all people, but moral character is.

Consider Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 8:1–3:

“Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ This ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” (1 Corinthians 8:1–3)

It’s not that knowledge is wrong or inherently problematic. In the very next verse Paul speaks of some fundamental truths which we would love everyone to know: “Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one.’” (1 Corinthians 8:4)

The problem is that loveless knowledge is of no benefit. So a knowledge of what is true must be coupled with love. Love is by nature personal. So it is that knowledge is not going to be merely abstract but will—even if circuitously—affect one’s life (ethics). A clear link and bond between character and knowledge is given in 1 Corinthians 8.

So although not all people are required to have great knowledge or to be capable of sophisticated understandings, all people are required to love truth and apply truth to their life. All people are to seek truth because all truth will impact their actions. And the way that they are to seek truth is through good virtues—discretion and patience, love and discernment, integrity and teachability, circumspection and humility enough to admit error.

And if we’re thinking about moral transformation, then certainly we must be dependent on the Lord. Without the work of his Spirit of regeneration and sanctification through faith in Christ, we would be left to the devices of our own sin (and its outworking being deception or self-deception, or wilful ignorance). These vices are only kept in check by the common grace of God.

And so the Christian is equipped with the sanctifying Spirit to pursue maturity in the faith by pursuing a growing knowledge and love of God and others.

As the apostle Peter puts it:

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.” (2 Peter 1:3–9)

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Wood, W. J. (1998). Epistemology: Becoming intellectually virtuous. InterVarsity Press. Pages 1-32