Systems and Truth

[Dimmesdale]

I am beginning to be more and more wary of systems. Philosophical and theological systems. They may be beautiful, they may be complete and thorough. Yet, can we not become too attached to them, and become egotistically involved in priding ourselves over them?

This has really occurred to me over the past few months. I take Christianity to be a fully complete system. It is after all God's Truth, and God is self-consistent, coherent, and without any semblance of contradiction. Yet is it in this that God's truth ought to consist? That is, should we take shelter of this systematic truth, and think we are taking shelter in God? Perhaps we are not really taking shelter in God but taking shelter in reasons FOR God. We are not basking in the light of God's truth so much as reassuring ourselves by diving and immersing ourselves in a system of thought that often just buttresses our ego and gives us a false sense of security.

When I pray now, I pray to be delivered from my need for a system. I still respect the system par excellence (Christianity) and I am not ashamed of it as a system, but when I pray I try my best to take shelter of GOD ALONE, not merely propositional truth. I am neither a relativistic existentialist who disbelieves in truth and its consistency AS a system, nor do CLING like a baby to a stuffed animal to the System of Christianity, no matter how truth. I instead very soberly distinguish between God's Truth and God AS Truth.....

[Dimmesdale]

I am beginning to be more and more wary of systems. Philosophical and theological systems. They may be beautiful, they may be complete and thorough. Yet, can we not become too attached to them, and become egotistically involved in priding ourselves over them?

This has really occurred to me over the past few months. I take Christianity to be a fully complete system. It is after all God's Truth, and God is self-consistent, coherent, and without any semblance of contradiction. Yet is it in this that God's truth ought to consist (when going TO God, intimately)? That is, should we take shelter of this systematic truth, and think we are taking shelter in God? Perhaps we are not really taking shelter in God but taking shelter in reasons FOR God. We are not basking in the light of God's truth so much as reassuring ourselves by diving and immersing ourselves in a system of thought that often just buttresses our ego and gives us a false sense of security.

When I pray now, I pray to be delivered from my need for a system. I still respect the system par excellence (Christianity) and I am not ashamed of it as a system, but when I pray I try my best to take shelter of GOD ALONE, not merely propositional truth. I am neither a relativistic existentialist who disbelieves in truth and its consistency AS a system, nor do CLING like a baby to a stuffed animal to the System of Christianity, no matter how truth. I instead very soberly distinguish between God's Truth and God AS Truth.....