Re: Rationale Method for identifying supernatural
Moorad Alexanian (alexanian@uncwil.edu)
Tue, 12 Jan 1999 15:58:03 -0500 (EST)
At 03:50 PM 1/12/99 -0500, George Murphy wrote:
>David Campbell wrote:
> .............................
>> However,
>> although everyone should be aware of God from both the evidence of creation
>> (not gaps) and conscience (Rm. 1:18ff), trying to reach useful conclusions
>> about God apart from His self-revelation in Scripture is unlikely to be
>> very productive.
>
> What Paul says here is indeed that people "should" be able to know God from
>creation, but they don't. _Everybody_ doesn't. Paul makes it clear that
the problem
>isn't atheism but idolatries. People make up their own deities (such as
The Intelligent
>Designer). This attempt to know about God from nature & reason alone is not
only
>"unlikely to be very productive" but is very likely to be
counterproductive. This is
>NOT a text promoting natural theology. After Paul has stated in detail the
universal
>problem of Sin, the refusal to acknowledge the true God and its
consequences, he does
>not say, "OK, now let's do natural theology correctly." Instead, he begins
to speak
>(3:20 ff) about what God has done in Christ.
>
>George L. Murphy
>gmurphy@raex.com
>http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
I recall reading somewhere that Christianity is not a religion. A religion
is man seeking God. Christianity is God seeking man. We use words like God,
Creator so readily that we do not comprehend the depth that such terms
convey. If one were to sit in a quiet room for several hours trying to truly
comprehend the meaning of those terms, I can assure you that the result will
be humility, fear, and a desire to know more about God the Creator.
Moorad