The Kingship of Christ and the Life of the Mind

From the Desk of Dr. Jon Thompson, Executive Director

We have entered Holy Week in the Western Christian calendar, and many marked this through the recent celebrations of Palm Sunday. This is the commemoration of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, in which crowds lay down palm branches and shouts of Hosanna! echoed through the ancient streets of Jerusalem. The scene is one of joy but also of paradox: the King comes riding not a magnificent horse but a donkey’s colt. Israel’s leader embraces the path of humility. The King Jesus comes to rescue his people, but he does so knowing that redemption will only come through suffering, apparent defeat, and death. The very people who shout his praises on Sunday will be calling for Jesus’s crucifixion by the end of the week. Their allegiance is shallow, and the King is ultimately left all alone on a cruel cross.

While the events of Holy Week may not seem to have much to say to the modern University, in fact the Kingship of Jesus teaches us much about the intellectual life. First, it is only the path of humiliation and humility that leads to victory and honor. As every student of mathematics or languages or philosophy knows, one cannot learn when one is proud. In order to learn anything, one must take the first and crucial step of acknowledging one’s ignorance and one’s need of instruction. Even our King, being fully human, takes the path of glory through humility and even humiliation. This demands a profound break from the academic temptation to careerism and self-congratulation. As one of my favorite authors writes, ‘The jingling bells of publicity tempt only frivolous minds. Ambition offends eternal truth by subordinating truth to itself.’ (Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life, p. 6)

Second, it is clear that Christ the King demands precisely the allegiance that his early followers (and we) so often fail to give. This allegiance, in the language of the Bible, is called the commitment of ‘the heart’ to Jesus the King. But it includes the application of Jesus’s Kingship even to the life of the mind. That is, Scripture commands us to ‘be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ (Romans 12:2) What you attend to, what you think, matters deeply as a function of discipleship. Our Holy Week celebrations remind us that no less than submission of the entire self (one’s soul, emotions, will, and intellect—see Luke 10:27) constitutes obedience to the King. May the King show each of us grace and give us strength as we seek to learn his path of obedience this Holy Week.