Commentary on First Peter (25)

Peter says that his readers had "lived in ignorance" before they became Christians. "Ignorance" is just one of the words used in the New Testament to signify the intellectual incompetence of non-Christians, both Jews and Gentiles. Unbelief does not arise from superior rationality and knowledge, but it is invariably associated with irrationality and ignorance. Scripture regards all non-Christians as defective in their minds.

A person who is born with mental retardation cannot function like other people when it comes to learning and reasoning, and one who has suffered severe brain damage would have a difficult time performing the tasks that others regard as ordinary. Likewise, sin has inflicted such a blow to the mind that non-Christians are born with a severe intellectual impediment that only God can cure. This is not obvious to the non-Christians themselves, just as one mentally retarded person might not recognize the condition in himself or in another person. But their condition is clear to God, and it ought to be obvious to Christians as well.

Some Christian scholars try to relegate the mental defect that Scripture attributes to unbelievers to a mere "moral" ignorance, or foolishness in a moral sense. But I have never really come across a coherent biblical explanation of what it means for a person to be morally stupid and not intellectually stupid. In any case, Scripture is careful to distinguish between the moral and the intellectual issues in the unbelievers. It distinctively refers to them both, often as two related but distinguishable problems with the non-Christians.

It is true that when Scripture speaks this way about the unbelievers, it is not referring to only a lack of information on their part, but also the fact that they lack a relational knowledge of God. But the way that Christians scholars point this out is often a little suspicious. It is as if they want to preserve the perception that unbelievers can be very intelligent in all things except when it comes to spiritual matters. However, since God is the creator and ruler of all things, and all things are intelligible and truly understood only when considered in relation to him, this means that unbelievers are necessarily incompetent in all intellectual matters and on all subjects.

God is not just the crown of knowledge, but he is also the foundation. One cannot have a true view of physics, biology, psychology, or any other subject, unless he first affirms the one true God and his revelation. And contrary to what some Christians teach, once we affirm God and Scripture, we still cannot reason apart from them and arrive at knowledge. We cannot just pretend to embrace the Bible as the foundation of all our thinking, but then proceed to reason without it, and declare by force and without reason that sensations are reliable, that induction is valid, that the scientific method is logical and yields knowledge, and so on. Just as the unbeliever cannot arrive at truth apart from God, neither can a believer arrive at truth if he departs from God in his thinking.

So to point out that Scripture does not refer to only an ignorance of information but also a lack of relational knowledge does not paint a better picture of the unbelievers in any way; rather, it paints a much worse picture of them. It does not make them appear more competent but much less competent. A Christian might lack information, but that is easy to fix – he can simply be told the truth. But a non-Christian cannot change just because you tell him the right information. He is too foolish to rightly process truth or to reason validly from correct premises.

You can tell a mentally retarded person the right information, but he cannot grasp it. He might just stare at you and drool. In some cases, for the person to be able to repeat something that is said to him or to follow some simple instructions would be considered an astounding breakthrough. This is similar to the non-Christian's condition – not just when it comes to spiritual things, but when it comes to all intellectual matters. The difference is that his handicap is, to some people, not as obvious as staring and drooling.

What can be done? Just as it is humanly impossible to help someone with severe mental retardation to make beyond the most superficial improvements, mere men cannot help the non-Christian – God must perform a miracle. Thus Scripture refers to the new birth, and to an enlightening of the mind when the sinner is converted and given faith in Jesus Christ.

This is one of the plainest teachings in the Bible, that non-Christians are both sinful and stupid, not just sinful. They are not intelligent, and none of them remain in unbelief because they are too smart for the Christian faith. This is important on several important levels. It is pivotal to a proper understanding of the depravity of man and the grace of God, as well as to the correct approach to apologetics and evangelism. However, it is also one of the hardest teachings for Christians to accept, since it appears that many of them have a perverted admiration for non-Christian scholarship. Because this arises from a denial of Scripture and a distortion of reality, it is both ungodly and unhealthy.