The believer's paradox

[McCulloch]

Conscience, will, mind, logic, purity, righteousness, motives, presuppositions, sanity, intellectual ability, moral faculty, and senses are all being subsumed under the heading "Reason." Reason--by which I mean logic and intellectual ability, and to a certain extent, the senses--is useful and kinda works, but it's corrupted by sin.

This type of argument has been made often by Christian apologists. You cannot trust your own thinking. You a cannot trust your own intellectual ability. You cannot trust human morality. It has all been corrupted by sin. You must abandon your self-centered life and embrace God's will only.

But here is the hitch. In order to come to the conclusion that there even is a God, I must resort to using my own tainted reasoning processes. Then, once convinced in my corrupted mind that God exists, I have to again use my own blighted cogitation to determine which alleged revelations are really from God and which ones are not (Torah, New Testament, Qur'an, Mormon, Urantia ...). Having reached some conclusions on that issue, I must again rely on my own depraved dialectics to choose among competing interpretations.

Pray to God for a sign, they sometimes answer, pray to God for wisdom. Yet, even there, I must interpret the signs and test the spirits, according to my own perverted human wisdom.

Question for debate, If not our own intellectual abilities, what could we possibly turn to, to assess TRUTH?

[Scotracer]

Indeed. The only way we can know anything about reality is to use our own internal reasoning skills.

To make the judgement that our senses/reasoning is tainted requires use of said damaged senses making the statement useless.

[GospelJohn]

McCulloch: "This type of argument has been made often by Christian apologists. You cannot trust your own thinking. You a cannot trust your own intellectual ability."

GJ: I consider myself a Christian and I believe we can trust our own thinking, if we set goals without selfishness and follow the Golden Rule. If we were indeed created in God's image, then His spiritual DNA is within each of us to be called forth and we too can "Be ye therefore perfect."

McCulloch: "You cannot trust human morality. It has all been corrupted by sin."

GJ: I guess that really depends on which human we are basing the morality standard upon doesn't it? Christians most often go with the standard set by Jesus, but good morals have been demonstrated by other religious leaders too.

McCulloch: "You must abandon your self-centered life and embrace God's will only."

GJ: The above is a negative approach to self-improvement IMO. Perhaps wording it in a more positive light would help? How about, "Christians prefer to align their choices with the Golden Rule." That way everyone wins and achieves ever-higher potential in themselves and others.

[GospelJohn]

Scotracer: "To make the judgement that our senses/reasoning is tainted requires use of said damaged senses making the statement useless."

GJ: And where does that logic lead us when evaluating the evidence of personal experiences with God or other metaphysical occurrences? If we do not trust those saying that because such personal experiences are not universal for each person, isn't that just another way of saying we can't trust our own senses/reasoning? Is it only the people who don't have such experiences who have the better perspective?

Where do we draw the line on what we can trust from our own faculties and what is to be discarded? It's a slippery slope either way, is it not?

[McCulloch]

I consider myself a Christian and I believe we can trust our own thinking, if we set goals without selfishness and follow the Golden Rule.

Forms of Christianity like yours and like many other followers of various religions are not the target of this debate. As a Humanist, I agree and honor all who believe that we can and must trust our own thinking. The target is that subset of Christianity, which, as I pointed out, claim that we cannot trust our own thinking.

I guess that really depends on which human we are basing the morality standard upon doesn't it? Christians most often go with the standard set by Jesus, but good morals have been demonstrated by other religious leaders too.

Thus, you and I both agree that morality can be independent from religious faith. That is quite a reasonable position, but not unfortunately one that is shared by all.

You must abandon your self-centered life and embrace God's will only.

The above is a negative approach to self-improvement IMO. Perhaps wording it in a more positive light would help? How about, "Christians prefer to align their choices with the Golden Rule." That way everyone wins and achieves ever-higher potential in themselves and others.

Yes, the Golden Rule is central to many ethical systems. However the eponymous founder of Christianity outlined that there were two critical laws, not just the Golden Rule.

One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"

And He said to him, " 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' This is the great and foremost commandment.

"The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."

The second corresponds to the Golden Rule; our relationships should be based on our common humanity. The first, which according to Jesus supersedes it, is the one which troubles me.

[BwhoUR]

okay, i moved this. I hope we didn't lose gentledove.

[quote="GentleDove"] God Himself chose to sacrifice Himself for our sins. I'm not sure what you mean by "sacrifice in reverse," but maybe (hopefully) I inadvertently answered it?

You didn't answer it so I'll give it another go:
Okay, so god sacrificed himself. But he's still around, right? Who did he sacrifice himself to? A sacrifice is the act of offering the life of a person, animal or object in propitiation of or homage to a deity. Who was the deity god sacrificed himself to? I know you say it was FOR us, but to WHOM was the sacrifice made? And what was the sacrifice? What did god give up if he's still here?

[Cathar1950]

Then I suppose I posted this in the wrong place.

The use of the word “sacrifice� seems to play an emotional role attached to all kinds of ideas. If I were an apologist for Pauline Christianity I might defend the traditional ideas of sacrifice, ransom and such notions as non-Pauline and a later development as we might see in the Gospel of John where Jesus is being purposely depicted as the sacrificial lamb at Passover in opposition to the other gospels. The unknown author of John used an ancient metaphor used for the sun at dusk, The lamb that takes away the sins of the world�.

Part if not much of sacrifice was celebration and where the participants sacrificed and ate with the gods they became part of the life of the gods and they became part of your life. It was an at one-ment and union with the gods.
I think this is more in line with Paul and seems to make perfect sense in a mystery religion and even Jesus cults. Sacrifice here is more focused on celebration and union.
But that hardly seems what Evangelical Bible Believers and others seem to mean.
Sacrifice here is more ransom, price paid, magic blood (questionable as to what to who) and so on.

The history of child sacrifice is interesting and the motifs are all through both the Christian OT and NT. Yet they didn't seem to draw upon them until later where before Jesus seems to be more of a Maccabean Martyr. Later Jesus becomes some literal sacrifice to God or Satan.
I find this idea as repugnant as I do child sacrifice which believers think is somehow required by God just like those that sacrificed their children to Yahweh.

[Cathar1950]

Conscience, will, mind, logic, purity, righteousness, motives, presuppositions, sanity, intellectual ability, moral faculty, and senses are all being subsumed under the heading "Reason." Reason--by which I mean logic and intellectual ability, and to a certain extent, the senses--is useful and kinda works, but it's corrupted by sin.

Having reached some conclusions on that issue, I must again rely on my own depraved dialectics to choose among competing interpretations.

Pray to God for a sign, they sometimes answer, pray to God for wisdom. Yet, even there, I must interpret the signs and test the spirits, according to my own perverted human wisdom.

Question for debate, If not our own intellectual abilities, what could we possibly turn to, to assess TRUTH?

It seems from their logic they can't help but be wrong yet they are right because God lets them know the Bible is right.

Yet none of them have failed to follow some teaching of men.
I believe much of the writings and teaching are to keep people from having the "Spirit" lead them all over the place and keep them in line.

But it still seems they are forced to take their own concepts of God for God and that seem almost idolatrous.

[GentleDove]

Conscience, will, mind, logic, purity, righteousness, motives, presuppositions, sanity, intellectual ability, moral faculty, and senses are all being subsumed under the heading "Reason." Reason--by which I mean logic and intellectual ability, and to a certain extent, the senses--is useful and kinda works, but it's corrupted by sin.

This type of argument has been made often by Christian apologists. You cannot trust your own thinking. You a cannot trust your own intellectual ability. You cannot trust human morality. It has all been corrupted by sin. You must abandon your self-centered life and embrace God's will only.

But here is the hitch. In order to come to the conclusion that there even is a God, I must resort to using my own tainted reasoning processes. Then, once convinced in my corrupted mind that God exists, I have to again use my own blighted cogitation to determine which alleged revelations are really from God and which ones are not (Torah, New Testament, Qur'an, Mormon, Urantia ...). Having reached some conclusions on that issue, I must again rely on my own depraved dialectics to choose among competing interpretations.

Pray to God for a sign, they sometimes answer, pray to God for wisdom. Yet, even there, I must interpret the signs and test the spirits, according to my own perverted human wisdom.

Question for debate, If not our own intellectual abilities, what could we possibly turn to, to assess TRUTH?

I don't think--and I don't believe it's a Biblical proposition--that a person comes to faith in Christ by exercising his supposedly-autonomous intellectual abilities to assess the evidence for God from his fallen state and fallen presuppositions about himself and God, and then deciding to have faith in God.

The OP quote of mine was taken from a discussion thread in which I was simply explaining how I came to faith in Christ. On that thread, a few people tried to tell me I decided to have faith so that I could go to heaven; or that I decided it despite my self-avowed fallen intellectual abilities, and that therefore my "decision for Christ" must be suspect.

Once again, I state: God chose me; I did not choose Him.

I was attempting to argue against unduly exalting one's own reason or intellectual abilities, which even a humanist must acknowledge is limited and not exhaustive and not perfect. One's presuppositional belief that his reason is all he has to assess truth does not prove that his reason is reliable in that assessment.

And if someone asks me about the Christian faith, then I have to answer as a Christian from the Christian perspective, which is grounded in propositional terms and concepts from the Bible. I don't believe that reason is all a person has to assess TRUTH, so I can't argue that way. On to what else we have besides reason.

Faith in Christ is a matter of the heart, which definitely includes the mind, fallen though it be in my worldview. However, the "heart" in Christianity does not mean only the mind. It also means the will, the spirit, the emotions, and all the immaterial being of the person (who is also, of course, material or body).

In the Christian worldview, a person who does not have Christ is spiritually dead. The person must be spiritually regenerated by God in order to be able to live spiritually (or physically for that matter). Therefore, a person cannot "decide" using his "dead" reason to have faith in Christ, no matter how "smart" he is (or how "stupid," for those who are sure Christians are stupid and that's why we believe in Jesus Christ. LOL)

To answer the thread question for debate to the best of my ability (though that ability falls far, far short of perfection), I would have to say something you will not like: Jesus Christ is Truth and His Spirit, which is also Truth, testifies with the believer's spirit (Jn. 15:26; Rom. 8:16; 1 John 5:6) that Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the world, and of the believer personally, by the shedding of His blood. Suddenly, he has a different presupposition about Truth. It is not mystical (for the Bible is public and not gnostic or esoteric); he simply believes the Bible now, and he sees it as the very words of God.

If the Holy Spirit does not regenerate and testify with his spirit, then he will not/cannot believe in Christ as his Savior, and he will continue to believe that reason is all he has to assess truth.

From the human side, this is how someone becomes a believer:

Give ear and come to me;
hear me, that your soul may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David. (Isaiah 55:3)

Repent and believe the good news! (Mark 1:15)

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)

IOW, read the Bible and assess the truth of yourself and God in light of it. And yes, use what you have--your fallen reason. That fallen reason will not be what saves you, and it will not stop you from being saved, if that's God's goal with you.

That is what I mean when I say one's reason is useful, but not reliable. I am not saying and will never say, "Your reason is corrupted, therefore abandon it and believe in God instead."

[GentleDove]

okay, i moved this. I hope we didn't lose gentledove.

God Himself chose to sacrifice Himself for our sins. I'm not sure what you mean by "sacrifice in reverse," but maybe (hopefully) I inadvertently answered it?

You didn't answer it so I'll give it another go:
Okay, so god sacrificed himself. But he's still around, right? Who did he sacrifice himself to? A sacrifice is the act of offering the life of a person, animal or object in propitiation of or homage to a deity. Who was the deity god sacrificed himself to? I know you say it was FOR us, but to WHOM was the sacrifice made? And what was the sacrifice? What did god give up if he's still here?

According to the Bible, He sacrificed Himself to Himself. But it wasn't in propitiation for a deity, it was propitiation for human sinners, who without that sacrifice would be justly condemned forever to being outside a loving relationship with Him.

Jesus Christ, in Christian theology, is fully God (the second person of the Triune God) and fully human. One person Who is both man and God. He possesses a fully human nature and yet is sinless and possesses all the attributes of God.

Jesus Christ, an eternal being who had no need to die, being sinless ("the wages of sin is death") became our curse, suffered the full wrath of God in our place (propitiation), and died on the cross so that others who deserved to die eternally would not die eternally.

What did He give up if He's still here? He gave up His life. He was truly dead. Although He took up His life again (proof His sacrifice was acceptable to the Father for the justification of sinners), being eternal God Himself, He suffered eternally for that which He didn't deserve, yet willingly took on anyway out of love for His Father and love for His people. I think this view is consistent with Biblical teaching, but I don't know of a Bible verse that says He suffered eternally.

In any case, the Bible is clear that Jesus' perfect obedience to His father and his suffering and death satisfied God's justice, procured reconciliation (hence He is called the Prince of Peace), and purchased an everlasting inheritance for all those He came to save.