My ultimate authority is scripture and the plain reading of it. Yours seems to be human reason. In other words, *I use scripture to judge human reason, while you use human reason to judge scripture. Your take s extremely Liberal Progressive, while mine is conservative. That's judging based on the little I have seen, but I'm too old to waste time on debates that are likely to be unproductive, so I have learned when to engage and when not to by the evidence before me.
* yes. of course I use my reason while doing this, but it's a matter of authority. I don't avoid or disregard things which I don't like which are contained in scripture. I allow scripture to change my worldview rather than impose my worldview upon it. Of course this can happen only by God's grace.
Forgive me if I don't reply further.
You replied plenty well, thanks.
Scripture doesn't by itself judge human reason; it needs to be interpreted. A necessary part of this interpretation is reasoning, theorizing, exegesis, things like that. Every single one of us reads scripture and puts it in our memories and tries to integrate different parts of scripture into a way of making sense, which we can call theory. Part of this claim, and I'm sure Calvinists would agree, is that scripture isn't easy to put together or even understand in an immediate context. Think of Romans 7 (or heck, even the entire book of Romans) or other passages that are just, well, difficult. Then you have the added difficulty of putting all this stuff together into a coherent theology. I think the very proof of the amount of ink any great Christian thinker (Calvin, Arminius, Luther, Erasmus, etc.) spent on articulating his theology indicates the complexity of understanding God's word, or else they wouldn't need to spend this much ink putting together God's word into a coherent system.
Now, I don't think the stuff needed for salvation is really that hard, but it's the stuff that surrounds this basic practical scripture that theology is all about.
So scripture by itself doesn't judge human reason; it must be interpreted, which implies reasoning, so you're ultimately saying that your reason applied to scripture judges human reasoning. This makes sense if "human reasoning" means reason bereft of God (i.e., the world and its worldliness). I don't think you're making that claim about me. Holding that reason "applies" to scripture really also means that you're using your reason in a judgmental sense to determine which parts of your interpretation of scripture make sense and which don't. So I don't think it's true that you're just using scripture to judge reason. Instead, I think the best route is both/and: we use reason to help interpret scripture (which helps us evaluate human reasoning, i.e., worldliness), and part of this is obviously scripture that we draw on in making conclusions about human reasoning.
I don't think it's possible -- or what it would look like -- to "reason too hard" with regard to scripture, to place it at a higher authority in this sense. Again, this is because scripture doesn't just speak for itself, but must be interpreted and integrated into a theology by which we understand the message of all of scripture. Reason can be used in secular ways to resist God, but it can also be used
for the purpose of making sense of God through interpreting scripture. Hence:
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” -- Luke 10:27 (ESV)
And:
"
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool." -- Is. 1:18 (ESV)
Notice how that second passage integrates reason as a means to salvation. Likewise with how reason stands in relation to scripture. Reason's contents (its premises) should be
guided by scripture, but scripture interpretation itself by definition implies reasoning. So the two are both inextricably linked in coming up with an understanding of God.
