A couple weeks ago I read Ryan Fitzgerald’s blog “Theophilogic”. For those of you who don’t know Ryan, he’s a religion major with me at Campbell University. We have a few classes together, which I think has been a really good thing. I’m pretty confident that we think very differently about the Christian faith, and I’ve had a really good time being a foil to his way of thinking in some of those classes (particularly in theology class). And I’d say he’s probably had fun doing the same to me. So, I was really interested in this blog he’s been posting, and I began thinking that it could be a much better and more useful blog if it wasn’t standing alone. I can’t tell for sure how Ryan will react to this post that I’m writing, but I think one of his main grievances is that Christians just don’t seem to think. So, my hope is that he’ll appreciate my responses and take up the challenge of confronting a truthful response to what I believe to be a wrong way of thinking.
Ryan's Blog:
http://theophilogic.blogspot.com/
Now, there are a couple things I have to make clear at the outset of this response (or, hopefully, this set of responses). I am not going to directly create my own set of grievances or issues to address. A systematic volume would probably be very useful, but I’m definitely not mature enough in my thinking to do that. Instead, I just want to respond to his thoughts and the system that he necessarily creates through them. (If you really want a systematic approach to where I’m coming from, I’ll recommend some other people to look to.)
Also, I can’t possibly respond to all that he’s posted so far, even though there’s a lot of rich truth to dive into through the questions that his previous posts have raised. A lot of his blog posts address specific Christian responses to particular morality issues and biblical criticism issues. I’m really hoping, though, that through reacting to some of the broader issues - issues that I think are really at the root of his thinking - that we’ll establish a way of thinking that will lead to answers for those more specific questions. So, I’m going to stick to some of the basic truths of the Scriptures and specifically address his post “How do we Know?” from February 5 of this year. I think this will be the most fruitful, and maybe we can enter into some of the other issues later.
All right. Now that we’ve got the preliminaries out of the way, let’s dive into the good stuff. First we’ll tackle the issue of the Bible. Ryan says that the Bible is man’s understanding of God (not God’s revelation to man). So, he says, we can’t know anything certain about God from the Bible. But, here’s the deal: if the Bible is not God’s fully true revelation of himself to us, then no one will ever come to salvation. All of mankind has darkened hearts and darkened minds. Therefore we are completely incapable of knowing God apart from his willingness to reveal himself to us. Without God’s word we are left to our own reason and experiences to tell us who God is. The problem is that we are completely subjective, and what’s more our subjectivity is full of sin. So, we will end up looking to ourselves and our own profit rather than to the true God. We end up with a God made in our own image. And this is exactly what Ryan concludes! (Remember, I’m not saying that he’s completely illogical, only that he’s starting from the wrong places.) I think that I’m even more of an agnostic than Ryan if we’re talking about how much we can know about God apart from his revelation to us. Because we can really know nothing.
But, let’s take this another step further. If even parts of the Bible are untrue, then we are left to our reason once again to determine which parts are true and which parts are culturally conditioned, false statements. If we’re left to our own reason, then once again we’re left with no ability to truly know God, because our sinful selves will lead us into untruth. We must, therefore, have a true word from God concerning who He is in order to know Him. I’m not going to get into the greater, even more beautiful truths of just how we come to know God in the scriptures in this post, but let it suffice to say that the Bible is a record of God’s dealings with man. The Bible’s primary purpose then is to show us who God is, who we are, and what God has done for his glory and our good. And this knowledge comes only through the work of the Spirit in us. God’s Word and His Spirit are never separate from one another. They necessarily work together towards our salvation, bringing us to an understanding of God.
And I really ought to say this: Ryan and I have different presuppositional starting points. What I mean by this is that we believe the authority for our knowledge comes from different places. I believe that I receive whatever true knowledge I have from God giving it to me (through the coordinated work of His Spirit and His Word). I won’t try to put words in his mouth, but I don’t think Ryan believes this is the authority for his knowledge. However, I do challenge him to determine where it is his knowledge comes from. If we can flatly be honest about where we’re both coming from, we’ll be a lot better off.
Continuing on, one statement in Ryan’s blog post concerns me...a lot. He says that “What we can say is that God cannot possibly experience anything like what we experience in our finite mortal bodies. Whether or not he knows what it would feel like if he could, the fact remains that in his infinite state he does not feel like we do.” Let me read to you from the book of Hebrews: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) The central message of the Incarnation is that God did become man, and humbled himself to human state and as a human he experienced all of what we experience. You see, God chose to come to us and to make himself known to us. The question is not really whether or not we are capable of knowing anything about God. The question is whether God has caused us to know anything about himself. And the answer to that question for Christians is yes, He has. Our human understandings of God do not make God less. Rather, God’s coming to us and using mediums that we can understand makes us more. The process of redemption is the process of God recreating men and women into beings that are capable of knowing him.
I want to address a lot more of the specifics, like about God’s “emotional experiences” and ours as well as how we can know anything at all. But here’s the central ending point: we can know who God is. Once we accept that we are in need of his revelation to us then we can come to the Scriptures with a readiness to know the God who came to us and speaks to us. Praise God that he has not left us to our own devices, to seek him and find him as we are able. Instead, we know him fully in Jesus the Christ, who, by the Spirit, reveals the Father to us.
Ryan's Blog:
http://theophilogic.blogspot.com/
Now, there are a couple things I have to make clear at the outset of this response (or, hopefully, this set of responses). I am not going to directly create my own set of grievances or issues to address. A systematic volume would probably be very useful, but I’m definitely not mature enough in my thinking to do that. Instead, I just want to respond to his thoughts and the system that he necessarily creates through them. (If you really want a systematic approach to where I’m coming from, I’ll recommend some other people to look to.)
Also, I can’t possibly respond to all that he’s posted so far, even though there’s a lot of rich truth to dive into through the questions that his previous posts have raised. A lot of his blog posts address specific Christian responses to particular morality issues and biblical criticism issues. I’m really hoping, though, that through reacting to some of the broader issues - issues that I think are really at the root of his thinking - that we’ll establish a way of thinking that will lead to answers for those more specific questions. So, I’m going to stick to some of the basic truths of the Scriptures and specifically address his post “How do we Know?” from February 5 of this year. I think this will be the most fruitful, and maybe we can enter into some of the other issues later.
All right. Now that we’ve got the preliminaries out of the way, let’s dive into the good stuff. First we’ll tackle the issue of the Bible. Ryan says that the Bible is man’s understanding of God (not God’s revelation to man). So, he says, we can’t know anything certain about God from the Bible. But, here’s the deal: if the Bible is not God’s fully true revelation of himself to us, then no one will ever come to salvation. All of mankind has darkened hearts and darkened minds. Therefore we are completely incapable of knowing God apart from his willingness to reveal himself to us. Without God’s word we are left to our own reason and experiences to tell us who God is. The problem is that we are completely subjective, and what’s more our subjectivity is full of sin. So, we will end up looking to ourselves and our own profit rather than to the true God. We end up with a God made in our own image. And this is exactly what Ryan concludes! (Remember, I’m not saying that he’s completely illogical, only that he’s starting from the wrong places.) I think that I’m even more of an agnostic than Ryan if we’re talking about how much we can know about God apart from his revelation to us. Because we can really know nothing.
But, let’s take this another step further. If even parts of the Bible are untrue, then we are left to our reason once again to determine which parts are true and which parts are culturally conditioned, false statements. If we’re left to our own reason, then once again we’re left with no ability to truly know God, because our sinful selves will lead us into untruth. We must, therefore, have a true word from God concerning who He is in order to know Him. I’m not going to get into the greater, even more beautiful truths of just how we come to know God in the scriptures in this post, but let it suffice to say that the Bible is a record of God’s dealings with man. The Bible’s primary purpose then is to show us who God is, who we are, and what God has done for his glory and our good. And this knowledge comes only through the work of the Spirit in us. God’s Word and His Spirit are never separate from one another. They necessarily work together towards our salvation, bringing us to an understanding of God.
And I really ought to say this: Ryan and I have different presuppositional starting points. What I mean by this is that we believe the authority for our knowledge comes from different places. I believe that I receive whatever true knowledge I have from God giving it to me (through the coordinated work of His Spirit and His Word). I won’t try to put words in his mouth, but I don’t think Ryan believes this is the authority for his knowledge. However, I do challenge him to determine where it is his knowledge comes from. If we can flatly be honest about where we’re both coming from, we’ll be a lot better off.
Continuing on, one statement in Ryan’s blog post concerns me...a lot. He says that “What we can say is that God cannot possibly experience anything like what we experience in our finite mortal bodies. Whether or not he knows what it would feel like if he could, the fact remains that in his infinite state he does not feel like we do.” Let me read to you from the book of Hebrews: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) The central message of the Incarnation is that God did become man, and humbled himself to human state and as a human he experienced all of what we experience. You see, God chose to come to us and to make himself known to us. The question is not really whether or not we are capable of knowing anything about God. The question is whether God has caused us to know anything about himself. And the answer to that question for Christians is yes, He has. Our human understandings of God do not make God less. Rather, God’s coming to us and using mediums that we can understand makes us more. The process of redemption is the process of God recreating men and women into beings that are capable of knowing him.
I want to address a lot more of the specifics, like about God’s “emotional experiences” and ours as well as how we can know anything at all. But here’s the central ending point: we can know who God is. Once we accept that we are in need of his revelation to us then we can come to the Scriptures with a readiness to know the God who came to us and speaks to us. Praise God that he has not left us to our own devices, to seek him and find him as we are able. Instead, we know him fully in Jesus the Christ, who, by the Spirit, reveals the Father to us.
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