A listener recently asked how to respond to the accusation that Christians are not free thinkers. One way is to go over the list of novelists, artists, scientists, and philosophers from the last two millennia and see how many of them were Christians or worked from a broadly Christian framework.  

Consider also how much art over the past 20 centuries can be called “sacred.” Read Augustine of Hippo or Jonathan Edwards and see if they qualify as free thinkers. Learn about the lives of scientists like Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Galileo and others. And then look up how much science advanced before Christian civilization. 

Christians believe the world is knowable and that, made in God’s image, we are knowers. There is no thinking without that basis. And then you need to be clear about the word “free.” Historically, that meant the freedom to do whatever he or she wanted to do. Those people rarely made the world better.