The Evangelical Universalist Forum

The theological thoughts of Lotharson

"The true foundation of my faith is an event: God’s ultimate revelation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. "

…as reported by who?? Could THEY have been mistaken, errant, fallible? Are we following cunningly designed fables and myths when it comes to the resurrection?

And really, comparing Saul’s Damascus road experience, and then a couple of years in the desert being taught by the Holy spirit, with Lewis’s experience seems like an unequal comparison to say the least.

I realize these things are a matter of choice, but that does not mean that the choice we make is right.

Sorry for the plain talk.

If an event can only be known if we dispose of an allegedly inerrant writing reporting of it, then we don’t know if Napoleon existed, if the Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis and so on and so forth.

Viewing the Gospels as normal historical documents does not necessarily lead to the view that they are fables.
Many Christian books written from the fourth century onward report of God’s miraculous working in the Church, and they were certainly not meant to be inerrant.
Are we to conclude that all these miracles necessarily did not occur?

But in the end the evidence does not suffice, this is why I view faith as hoping in the face of insufficient evidence.
I have read almost all possible apologetic and anti-apologetic stuff and I find neither of those compelling.

Cheers.

A defense of C.S. Lewis trilemma:

lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/the-trilemna-of-c-s-lewis-das-trilemna-von-c-s-lewis-unten/

While extra-biblical books are profitable for aiding in understanding scripture, I think great caution should be observed before deciding that these books rate the same level of inspiration as the traditional biblical canon. Having said that, I’m not opposed to the idea that books *within *the biblical canon rate different levels of inspiration either. For instance, I believe that the words of Jesus would carry more weight that say, Paul, only because of the nature of who He was. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Jesus contradicts Paul, but it seems that the Gospel writers emphasized Jesus words to have great significant import in such phrases as, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” and other such statements. Paul was a teacher of the Word, a teacher of the *established *Word. And that meant the Hebrew Scriptures (OT). So the nature of Paul’s written letters to the churches in the NT doesn’t appear to exert itself explicitly as scripture. But the canon was formulated and established with specific criteria in order to limit the chance of error or heretical teachings from creeping in. Paul, himself, stated the importance of sound doctrine in his first pastorial letter to Timothy no less that 9 times.

Without trying to sound dogmatic about it, “doctrine” simply means “the explication and officially acceptable version of a religious teaching” (Encyclopedia Britannica). The key word here is “acceptable”. What does a body of religious faith believe to be true?

Inasfar as “canon” goes, a very good treatment from The Jewish Encyclopedia is helpful in illustrating my point. From a discussion of Ecclesciates 12:12:

If one doesn’t draw the line somewhere, then one is never going to be on firm ground. One will always be “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” as Paul exhorts Timothy in his second letter.

I understand the exaperation of those who cannot swallow that genocide of the type claimed happened in the Bible. But I don’t know if it is wise to dismissed such episodes merely because it isn’t palatable. I struggle as well to understand these hard passages, nor do I easily dismiss them. Nor should I, if it means keeping the integrity of belief on a solid standing. Once I start picking and choosing which parts of the bible to believe based on my tastes and distastes, then I might as well write my own “inspired” book.

Hello, thank you very much for your deep engagement with my ideas :slight_smile:

The early fathers of the Church did not limit the Canon to its current Protestant version, and if the Church was dead wrong in its early beliefs concerning Baptism and prayers to the saints, there is no warrant they might have not been wrong about Canonization as well.

To my mind, you cannot believe in inerrancy without rejecting God’s moral perfection or accepting cognitive dissonance.

Yes, it is true that if you reject the concept, there are many doctrines you become unsure of.
But there are quite a few teachings which logically follow from God’s perfect moral character as revealed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

“Canon” means “rule” or “measuring stick”.

The Office of Weights and Measures “promotes uniformity in U.S. weights and measures laws, regulations, and standards to achieve equity between buyers and sellers in the marketplace.”

You cannot have a canon if everyone has their own measuring stick. There has to be equity among the body of believers in Christ in order for there to be any kind of unity. There has to be a standard by which to measure truth. Else it’s all subjective.

What is your canon?

"But in the end the evidence does not suffice, this is why I view faith as hoping in the face of insufficient evidence. "

Your opinion??
Or do you mean to say that in fact the evidence does not suffice, for you or for anybody else, and the rest of us should just follow you in your knowledgeable unknowing?

Daindo: I already gave my Canon.

“But there are quite a few teachings which logically follow from God’s perfect moral character as revealed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.”

Dave: being a fallible being, I am open to the possibility that:

  1. there is cogent evidence I am not aware of
  2. I did not properly process the evidence I know
  3. both of these hold.

But I have read a huge number of Christian and atheist debates and remain unconvinced.

On what grounds are you intellectually convinced that the Christian faith is true?

Lotharson,

I’m with you on this one man. I’ve studied all that stuff and came to the conclusion that I neither side was convincing. I drove myself nuts trying to prove God exists.

Thanks for your testimony.

I wished you were wrong and there were compelling ways to prove God’s existence.

Proving God’s existence is not a one-time massive exercise of the human intellect, working with the tools of logic alone. It is proved over time, by obedience, by constant seeking, by the use of reason, by observing those closest to God, and other ‘roots’ of the tree called Proof.

Many of use are convinced that God exists and is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. How can this be? We’ve all read the same books and studied the same arguments, and our IQ’s are probably all normal or above. I guess you’re saying that FOR YOU the arguments are not compelling??

If you are saying: “We will allow you to use only x,y, z to prove God” - (in other words, logic and rhetoric) then, since you’ve stacked the deck already, it might be impossible UNDER THOSE TERMS. And that’s why some atheists seem to get an advantage - they choose the playing field and the make the rules, then beat us at their game. But their game is not necessarily the one that should be played.

Will there always be doubt? Yep. In fact, those closest to God seem to have the most profound doubts. To have faith at all is to have room for doubt. Orthodoxy tries to remove doubt by insistence on a revelation that cannot be doubted; pietism tries to remove doubt by somehow inculcating a direct experience of God, so direct that there can be no doubting of anything.

Proof is a much larger city than the little alleyways of our intellect. There are degrees of proof in the larger life of faith, IMO.

Ok, but you get those teachings primarily from the Gospels, I take it. But, of course, there are some who have doubts about the accuracy of those accounts. Certainly, no one can dispute that Gospels cannot be reconciled to each other as we have conflicting witness reports on the birth, and the Passion stories, for starters. If i were a stringent inerrantist, then I would have a problem explaining how God could inspire the Gospels yet have these inconsistencies present.

On the other side of the equation, taking the liberal view, I could dismiss the accounts as being only humanistically inspired, without any Divine interaction involved. Then I would have to view the Gospel accounts purely from a historical perspective and attempt to determine just how much of it, if any, presents actual historical data. With that, on purely humanistic terms, any or all mentions of miracles would be disregarded, including the Resurrection, for it simply cannot happen within the naturalistic laws as we know them. And if that’s the case, then Christianity has no feet to stand on. There is no way to prove that the death, burial, and resurrection of Chirst actually happened. I would have a better time trying to prove the existance of Cthulhu.

And even if I did allow miracles, there is still no absolute way of proving those events actually took place, except for what is written, assuming it is accurate (and perhaps bolstered by archeological evidence). But you could say the same for any ancient historical account.

But if I take the middle ground, and take the Gospels as a human source inspired by God, despite the flaws, then I’m regarded them through the eyes of faith. The beginning to believing in God starts with the presumption that God is in something written long ago. But it is not the accounts themselves that produces faith. The Gospels only assert the possibilites that there is a God that wants to interact in the lives of His creation. Belief in God must come from experience in that relationship. It doesn’t come from any empirical data in a systematic study of the biblical text (though that is helpful for understandimg what the text’s meaning).

That sounds quite a bit like blind faith, I know. But it is not entirely baseless. It is built upon baby steps we take in allowing God to be in our lives and trust that that Something will show Himself to us in ways that cannot be communicated in any other way. The best I can describe it is that God is a relational God, showing Himself to those who are willing take a chance on discovering Him. And I think He keeps Himself hidden for that reason.

Dondi: if you cannot show that the NT is reliable, [you cannot have knowledge](you cannot have knowledge) it is the case.
Now it would be perfectly fine for you to **hope **it is true.

Actually I do as well.

To my mind, if God exists, it makes excellent sense to believe He revealed Himself through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

But I think that a leap of faith is necessary.

By the way I do not dismiss the supernatural at all as I explained here.

I believe we have **normal, decent **evidence for the existence of weird deceitful beings who have appeared to humans under many faces during the course of history, last of which being the UFO phenomenon (I mean the small number of really unexplained cases bearing all the marks of an intelligent involvement).

Lotharson,

While the evidence doesn’t prove Christianity it does make it rational. I think what is needed here is experience of Christ’s transforming power. Once this happens one can be said to have knowledge. Faith is a confident assurance or trust. It’s reason and heart. It’s like in the past when we had evidence that the earth was round but we couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t until we experienced the earth being round that we had knowledge. Knowledge doesn’t require absolute certainty but significantly likely. We could be wrong but until it has been shown we are wrong we are within our rights in accepting it.

What would be proof? What could we say, what miracles could God do, in fact, even if God Himself appeared to a person, would that be enough proof?
What are we looking for?
There is nothing that can prove the existence of God if your only criterion of proof is mathematics. Or mathematical logic. To reduce ‘proof’ to that level, means that nothing important can be proved. To reduce human knowing to only the clear and distinct givens of logical reasoning - is to reduce humans to something less than fully human.
The knowledge of God is for full humans beings, that are addressed in their fullness, and in that fullness we have many ways of knowing and proving things.
If we want something beyond doubt, we will never have any knowledge. We can always ask, “How do we know, that 2+2=4?” Can you prove that 2x2=4??

Really, what would be sufficient for you, whoever you are? What would you accept?

I may have sounded harsh in that last post; that was not my intention, at all - I was trying to engage in a discussion of what, exactly, proof is - a subject that has been touched on many times in the Forum.

It is acceptable, I think, to ask of a doubter - and most of us have been doubters at some time or another - exactly WHAT would satisfy that doubt. My contention is that nothing can satisfy a determined doubter.
In one of my philosophy classes, the theme of radical philosophical doubt was being discussed, and of course we got around to Descartes, who supposedly came up with a bedrock statement along the lines of ‘even if a demon is deceiving me into thinking I exist, well, I cannot doubt that is is I being deceived.’ I may be wrong in my thinking that I am feeling, or sensing, or thinking, or anything for that matter - except that, I do think (or feel, or am deceived or etc.) therefore I do exist.
A guy in the class said - “I can doubt that I exist”.
Really? How? To give words any meaning, there must be actions that show that the words have any sense. Just to say the words “I doubt” - there really is no meaning there, unless one can explain what that doubt means, how it expresses itself.

Descartes’ biggest mistake was reductionism - reducing the essence of being human to the ability to think, to be self-aware. To consciousness.
That is a severe limiting of how humans know things, or prove things. Tacit knowledge, a la Polanyi, is a huge part of our ‘knowing’ and our ‘proving’.

All this to say - to say ‘You cannot prove the existence of God to me’ - that may be true IF - IF - you won’t accept any proof.

Or, if the only proof you will accept is in that little dark alleyway in the middle of a vast a lively city - in other words, only mathematical or rhetorical logic, as compared to the City of God.

That is a poor exposition on my part - I left out vast areas of the subject, but for those interested, there are many books that will stretch your thinking and bring focus to this issue.

Hi Dave,
I was thinking the same thing the other day when I read this:

The need for empirical evidence seems to have been present back then as well, but what Jesus offers is experiential evidence here.

I just wrote my review of the greatest flood (oopos, I meant “debacle”) of the entire history: that of Ken Ham :slight_smile:

Nowadays “faith” is being view as a delusion by a growing number of people called the New Atheists.

In this post, I went into this accusation and dealt with knowledge, beliefs and pragmatic resons for hoping in God.

I would be extremely glad to get feedbacks from you.