> On Tue, 19 Mar 1996 ken.w.smith@cmich.edu wrote:
>
> > I don't like leaps of faith. I don't understand them, either...
>
> The point, I thought, was that one doesn't understand them.
>
> > > We can't prove Christianity, if we could, then it would be a
> > >philosophy and not a journey. One of the important things in this to me is
> > >that we often apply the epistomology of our fields of study/work to the
> > >living God, and I'm afraid its a very bad fit.
> >
> > On your first sentence in the previous paragraph -- I'm not sure
> > what you mean by proof but the evidence for Christianity is quite strong,
> > frankly. Not a mathematical proof... but then what is?
> > I'm not sure about your second sentence ("epistomology of our
> > fields").
>
> I almost used the word paradigm instead of epistomology, but
> paradigm is such a catch phrase today that I try to avoid it.
> Epistomology, for those of you who don't know, is the study of how we
> know things. What binds science together more than anything else is that
> we all use the same epistomological paradigm (aka the Scientific
> Method).
> What I see happening too often is that we, as 20th century western
> creatures apply scientific paradigms to revealed truth. That is that
> God's revelation is true because.....
I would say that this is comes from the methodology of good reasoning, not
the "scientific method" (it has been shown that there is no such thing as THE
scientific method, and many think that the different areas of science use
different modes of reasoning and are a disunity rather than a unity of
method).
> It is true that God became incarnate in Jesus, but that fact IMO is
> secondary to what was revelaed in Jesus the man and also in the Christ as
> a whole. (I think I'm being vague.)
How can God incarnating as a man which was necessary for our salvation
secondary to what was revealed in the humanity of Jesus?
> Knowing about the "historical Jesus" helps us read the scriptures
> and listen to the traditions with more pertinent point of view (know the
> target audience), but we aren't Jesusites, we're Christians.
Since "Christ" is just a title, like "king" (it means the "anointed
one"), how is a title more important than the person to whom it belongs?
I am a Christian and a "Jesusite" because Jesus and "Christ" are
identical, and "Christian" is just a term for one who has trusted in the
death on the cross of Jesus and his ressurection for their salvation.
> In other words, God has revaled himself in the whole of Christ, and
> we therefore have additional refrences throughout the history of his
> revelation to us. All of these revelations happened, yes, but it should
> be important to note that God spent no effort revealing any kind of
> scientific fact anyone anywhere recorded in the Cannon. (Any cannon.)
I don't understand the the second clause in the first sentence in the above
paragaph. Could you explain what "we therefore have additional refrences
throughout the history of his revelation to us" means? Secondly how can
you say that there are no scientific facts in the canon of Scripture. I
would think that there are some observations of nature, and these would
at least be scientific facts, even if of a very rudimentary kind.
> The reason is that these kinds of facts are not eternal. Why then
> do we concentrate on them when trying to find what truths God wants to
> reveal to us?
Yes, it is true that God is more interested in communicating how to come into
a right relationship to Him than in scientific facts in the Scriptures,
however, the way to come into a salvific relationship to God is based
upon objective facts of history such as the fall of Adam into sin, the
incarnation of God as a man, the crucifixion of Jesus, and his bodily
resurrection.
In Christ=Jesus,
Jeff