seebs said:
I think the word "know" is ambiguous; in the sense in which most people use it, of course we can know things. I'm a little cautious about the assertion.
Skepticism in and of itself is not Christian, but then, most epistemologies aren't. Skepticism does not, it turns out, provide an insurmountable barrier to Christianity.
You're right that "most epistemologies" aren't Christian. The only Christian epistemology is that which starts with the revelation of God as the unassailable premise, and reasons from there. All other epistemologies presuppose man's ability to reason autonomously and are rooted in rebellion against the Creator. Even those who've submitted to the Lordship of Christ are generally not conscious of the ingrained habits of autonomous reason, and often rely upon it as an unexamined premise in their thought processes. Phillip Johnson, the founder of the "intelligent design" movement, which has made such inroads in bringing to light the unquestioned philosophical premises behind evolutionary dogma, relates in his book,
The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning, and Public Debate, how it took a catastrophic event in his life, a stroke, to have realized the false foundation of intellectual self-reliance he'd been building upon.
Kate's song was asking the right questions! What was the solid rock on which I stood? I had always prided myself on being self-reliant, and my brain was what I relied on. Now the self with its brain was exposed as the shaky instrument it had always been. I was a Christian, even an ardent one after my worldy fashion, but now all the smoke was blown away and I saw Truth close up. I knew myself to be not so much a believer in Christ as a skeptic about everything else, a recovering rationalist who had lost his faith in the world's definition of reason, but who knew only the world's Jesus. That Jesus seemed too sentimental a thing to bear the full weight of life at its most desperate moment . . .
In Greek the "Word" is the Logos, the root of logic. That word encompasses both the human activity of reasoning and the divine foundation from which logic must begin. Our logic cannot supply its own beginning. Logic is merely a way of reasoning correctly from premises to conclusions. The premises must come from elsewhere. Rationalism is inherently self-defeating, because the rationalist must pretend to derive his first premises by logical reasoning which always rests on other premises. Empiricism faces the same dilemma when it becomes a total system because the empiricist always needs to know more than he can observe. Premise-evading philosophies like logical positivism or scientific materialism last only until the dilemma becomes too evident to be concealed, and then they wither." (pp. 87 and 89)
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
I mean that, once you conclude that Scripture is fallible, you render it in your own mind as unreliable. You then subject the Word of God to your own judgment as to which parts are truly of God and which parts aren't.
Well, then we have a problem, because His people don't agree on the limits of the canon.
Even in light of any disagreements about the canon at any given time in history, it isn't a genuine problem, since the extra books accepted by some don't have any bearing on Christian doctrine. The apocryphal books accepted as canonical by what's arguably one branch of the church, are historical narratives (which, incidentally, by known errors are proven fallible, and hence non-canonical). Despite what Roman Catholics see as support for purgatory in the book of II Maccabees, this narrative doesn't offer the support they want it to, because according to their interpretation of the narrative, it would have men who've died as a result of God's direct and immediate judgment for what Roman Catholics would classify as mortal sin (idolatry) being regarded as undergoing purgatorial cleansing. This is inconsistent with the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory.
And they say, if memory serves, "just because some people had political reasons to remove some books doesn't mean God didn't reveal the full canon".
Apparently some of your confusion is a result of uncritically accepting the historical arguments of Roman Catholics. It is demonstrably proven that there were two distinct traditions within the church from the fourth to the sixteenth century whereby the popular tradition was to regard the apocrypha as canonical, while the scholarly tradition was to disregard these books as such. The reasons for disregarding the apocrypha are unassailable, and it was the theologians (the ones who actually made a serious study of Scripture) who did disregard it. If you're interested in pursuing this,
this well-documented article would be an excellent place to start.
Interestingly, people on both sides of that debate have clearly shown the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
Indeed, certainly someone can misidentify some writing as part of the Word of God and still be justified by God through faith and, hence, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. But this has no bearing on my point.
For 1500 years, it was generally agreed that "Scripture" included those extra books you reject. You reject them. In 1600, everyone agreed that those books were God-breathed Scripture. You now reject it... But you say it's the persuasion of God.
It was "generally agreed" by some and roundly rejected by others--by those who had greater knowledge on the matter. But since the issue is that of discerning truth from Scripture, and since no significant doctrinal truth claims are made from these books, even those who accept them wouldn't be led seriously astray by the writings alone.
It seems to me that there is a great deal of disagreement over what God has revealed, and to whom, and when. This is, in the end, why I'm not Catholic; because I don't believe that any earthly authority is infallible.
Neither do I.
However, I reject your authority to tell me what God has revealed for the same reason I reject the Pope's authority to tell me what God has revealed. I'm still looking, and still learning.
I don't speak with any presumed authority, except the authority of the Word of God when I rightly represent what it says. I don't expect you to take anything I say on blind faith.
This issue obviously isn't settled, given that a majority of Christians worldwide disagree with you on how many books the Bible has.
Your "majority" comment alone could lead to a whole debate about how one defines a Christian, etc., but again--even accepting the statement that the larger community of those who profess Christian faith accepts a larger canon than the community I'm a part of (Roman Catholic vs. evangelical), I've addressed why that's not a signficant point. I can confidently and reasonably say that a) they're wrong in accepting those books, and b) those books have little to no bearing on the interpretation of those writings that all church communities accept as canonical Scripture.
Anyway, I'm hardly alone in this; my position, while not very common, is certainly not unique.
If you're referring to your position that Scripture is merely "the words of God" and not the infallible Word of God as He chose to reveal Himself to the post-apostolic church, then it may not be entirely unique, but it's contradicted by Scripture, itself, as Jason1646 already demonstrated to you in a thread in the IDD a couple of months ago.
Could you articulate more specifically your presuppositions about ultimate truth? I would be very interested in seeing what they are.
Okay. They're partially summarized in the prologue to the Gospel of John:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not *comprehend it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. 8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9 That *was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His *own, and His *own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
This account of man rejecting the light, of course, is made more clear throughout Scripture which teaches us that, as a result of the rebellion of our first forefathers, every part of man's nature is depraved by sin, and that apart from spiritual regeneration, man is engaged in a moral rebellion against his Creator. We suppress the truth God has made manifest to all men through nature and conscience because we're at enmity with God; we desire moral autonomy from Him.
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