by James Nuechterlein

About the author: James Nuechterlein is the editor of First Things,a monthly journal published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life.

You get to a certain age and you know—or ought to know—what you think about important issues. Open-mindedness, when understood as a willingness to change one’s mind if presented with new information or deeper insight, is a considerable virtue. But open-mindedness understood as perpetual indecision, a principled refusal to make up one’s mind in the first place, is no virtue at all. It is evidence rather of intellectual and moral slack.

Ihave never had much trouble deciding what I think about things, or in being willing to share with others the views I hold. (Ask my wife and children.) But sometimes I waffle—and...