From: Don Winterstein (dfwinterstein@msn.com)
Date: Sat Apr 26 2003 - 01:30:46 EDT
Jason wrote:
"The cannon of scripture is the foundation, not personal experience. If theology were derived only from personal experience, then true theology for me would be different from true theology for you, as you and I have had different experiences. Obviously, the truth of who God is and how He relates to and saves us is absolutely true, apart from either of our opinions. Consequently, there must be an absolutely true theology. The only foundation for a common, shared theology is scripture. Not personal experience."
You're getting exercised over the wrong thing here. What is Scripture but a witness to personal experiences of one sort or another? The personal experience doesn't have to be mine or yours, although it can include that as well. To be valuable for the Christian community the experience must only be one that the community accepts as valid and useful.
What is not personal experience is all the philosophical deductions you were referring to before, including those of the form, "If God is this, then he must also be that." Example from your previous post: "If God is the greatest entity in existence., then He must. be fully knowledgeable about the future and fully aware of all time simultaneously. Otherwise, there could be something greater." All such deductions are based on assumptions that may not be valid.
In this case, what if no entity is able to be "fully aware of all time simultaneously," as is perhaps the case? Then God with a lesser degree of awareness could still be "the greatest entity in existence." To be greatest, God doesn't have to be greater than anything our wild minds can imagine.
As for your remark that "true theology for me would be different from true theology for you," I side with Jim: "True theology" really is different for everyone who thinks about it. The only people who don't have their own theology are presumably those who give it no thought and just accept what someone else tells them. A Bible class I attend is interesting partly because most attendees are very conservative Christians (YECs all), but there's wide-open discussion with no pastor present, and from the discussions we learn that no two attendees have the same views on many theological topics, despite the fact that they all hold to biblical inerrancy, and the denomination they belong to has been trying forever to tell them what to think.
Don
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