Re: Glenn's dilemma

GRM: What you appear to be saying is that the book (say, the gospels) can be errant in all sorts of ways, yet the recorded history found in those errant books, is trustworthy to be a grounding for Christianity, which is ridiculous.

DFW: According to the Bible, the way God expects to promote himself is through the personal witnessing of human beings. Occasionally the witness is accompanied by miracles, but the miracles are not standard or to be expected. Miracles themselves are of questionable value, because whether they are miracles or coincidences or illusions or tricks will always be a question in some minds. God's miracles have rarely won him the desired effect, except in the minds of later generations as they contemplated them after hearing the witness of their parents.

So personal witness it is. It is obvious from even cursory observation that humans are flawed creatures. They make mistakes all the time, they have limited perspectives, they're just basically ignorant on a multitude of levels. So what does this say about their witness? Can you get perfection from flawed creatures? No, their witness will be flawed just as they themselves are flawed. So did God blow it when he decided to promote himself through human witnesses? No. History has shown that method to be effective. But you often need to apply a high-cut filter to be able to see what is important and get rid of the flaws.

Perhaps a particular person's witness offends you. Then don't listen to him or her. Perhaps God will eventually send someone who appeals to you and who can effectively convey the message that God intends.

To expect to find the spiritual God in some cast-iron, objective "truth" somewhere, or even through some wholly verifiable miracle, is futile. The spiritual God comes to us effectively only through spiritual people. The message they convey is not fact but personal relationship.

GRM: ...Why is it that so many think God doesn't care what we believe? Any ole belief is good enough for God, aye?

DFW: I suppose God might prefer that we all knew all facts about everything. We don't. Given our human limitations, knowledge of an abundance of facts may be of no spiritual benefit. For God to convey even a small subset of all facts is of far less importance to him than to establish personal relationships, so he concentrates on what is important.

GRM: If the history has no bearing on reality, then there is no grounding. And if one can't trust the recorded history in the Scripture, concerning the resurrection, then there is simply no grounding for Christianity at all.

DFW: I'm puzzled by these comments, because much of history at least in broad outline is highly verifiable and hence as real as anything in our collective experience. Furthermore, I assert that a major reason we can trust the history in Scripture concerning the resurrection is that it had such major, verifiable consequences in the world, as world history IMO implies. If Jesus had not risen, would his once-cowering disciples have gone out boldly to spread the word and set the stage for Christianity to dominate the Western world? As I've said before, you're not going to get any better objective verification for the validity of Christianity than this impact it had on world history.

Yes, there were all kinds of messiness involved, all kinds of heresy, conflicts of all kinds--but the overriding effect historically was obvious. A high-cut filter is useful to clarify the overriding effect and damp down the details of the conflicts.

GRM: As a former seismologist, you should know doggone good and well that low frequencies give poor images. So I find the analogy highly flawed.... Thus, this line of approach is not only bad theology, it is bad science.

DFW: The kind of image that's good in science is not necessarily the kind that's good in theology. God wants a relationship, which is a very low-frequency kind of thing, rather than a list of attributes or facts, which is a high-frequency kind of thing. Many of the facts are, spiritually speaking, just noise; and if you focus on them, you're more likely to miss the underlying message.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Glenn Morton<mailto:glennmorton@entouch.net>
  To: Don Winterstein<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com> ; asa@lists.calvin.edu<mailto:asa@lists.calvin.edu>
  Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2004 12:21 PM
  Subject: RE: Glenn's dilemma

>Recorded history--not the presumed inerrancy of a book--provides Christianity's grounding in actual fact. At all times
>in that history the people of God have had very fuzzy portraits of him, but God has nevertheless succeeded in
>interacting with them.

  What you appear to be saying is that the book (say, the gospels) can be errant in all sorts of ways, yet the recorded history found in those errant books, is trustworthy to be a grounding for Christianity, which is ridiculous.

  As to portraits, which seems to be a very popular word here, it depends upon which fuzzy portrait you are allowing into this argument. If you were to include the fuzzy portraits of animists, shamanists, islamacists, Parsees, etc etc etc, it would appear that God has no standards whatsoever for what one must believe about him. Why is it that so many think God doesn't care what we beleive? Any ole belief is good enough for God, aye?

  If the history has no bearing on reality, then there is no grounding. And if one can't trust the recorded history in the Scripture, concerning the resurrection, then there is simply no grounding for Christianity at all.

>Scientists want the high frequencies to resolve fine details; but for spiritual phenomena the low frequency range
>gives a clearer image.

  As a former seismologist, you should know doggone good and well that low frequencies give poor images. So I find the analogy highly flawed. Low frequencies can give such bad pictures that one can see in them whatsoever one wishes to see. Indeed, if you don't even have a 2 octave frequency range, the reverberations overwhelm the signal. Thus, this line of approach is not only bad theology, it is bad science.
Received on Fri Oct 22 10:49:03 2004