Fuller President Mouw Encourages Community to Cultivate a ‘Loving Knowledge’

All-Seminary Chapel features a Philippians-based sermon by Dr. Mouw :: 01/12/12

President Richard J. Mouw delivered a sermon entitled “The Wonderful Words of Life” in the second All-Seminary Chapel of the winter quarter on Wednesday, January 11, in Travis Auditorium. Continuing in the chapel’s quarter-long series on Philippians, Dr. Mouw focused on Philippians 1:9, where the apostle Paul prays that the church’s “love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight.”

Mouw pointed out that through Paul, God speaks to us at Fuller, as well as to other Christians in the academy. “Paul is calling us to cultivate an overflowing knowledge that is guided by love,” he remarked. Acknowledging the history of anti-intellectualism in some Evangelical circles, Mouw agreed that there is a danger in worldly learning. However, it may be remedied by an alternative kind of learning—that “overflowing knowledge stemming from love of Jesus Christ.”

We must not throw out scholarship altogether, he said, for in this passage we see that “the apostle is certainly concerned with the life of the mind.” It is important for some of us to engage in serious scholarship, while also avoiding the danger of loveless knowledge.

In that regard, “Fuller is a unique place,” stated Mouw, because here we produce the highest level of scholarship while staying connected to the grassroot principles of the Kingdom. “We are blessed at Fuller Theological Seminary,” he said, “with a generation of students who love Jesus and love his kingdom, and love this world he came to save.”

Recalling the old hymn “The Wonderful Words of Life,” Mouw concluded, “We need a loving knowledge that loves the words of life and seeks to know more of their beauty.”