God_Is_Truth said:
You can't understand anything without using logic! You can't know that something is right and that something else is wrong without using logic. It's inescapable.
This isn't true. When "every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth" and when "every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord" this is a time when logic will go right out the window. When God enters the scene our entire understanding of the world is turned on its head. Logic is excapable. God is inexcapable.
God_Is_Truth said:
You presented it in a way that suggested one could use different forms of logic that were in some way competing with one another. My point is that logic is logic.
And this is a modern position. Only a Modernist would think that logic is what unites humanity, that we are somehow similar by our reason. Wars aren't fought because there is a singular logic. Wars are fought when one person's logic comes into conflict with another. And even the most logical person can be found fighting a war. Tell me how logical it is for a nation to spend billions in arming itself to such an extent that it could anhilate the world over again?
God doesn't come to us in a logical way (for that assumes too much about our own ability). We are not grounded in logic, we are grounded in God, and God can only come to us because God is our Maker, and God can only love us because he is the Creator.
God_Is_Truth said:
I really have no idea what you mean about "a singular neutral stance on the world" or how you would define "Modernity" as it relates to logic.
A singular, rational approach to the world is given to us by Descartes in the 17th century. This culminates in the Enlightenment, where it is embodied among the nations of Europe and the United States in the Imperialism that riddled those centuries (and even to some extent into the 20th century). It is not that I am against logic, I am against logic as presented in this hegemony. When logic becomes a singular, defining and unifying ideology it is at that point when logic has become our god. It is why one person in a war can state, "I am in the right and my enemy is entirely in the wrong"; it is why people can treat their enemy as less than human.
When Jesus speaks to us about logic it is not the way things are in the world. Logic for Christ is wisdom, which can't be generalized into an overarching approach to the world. Wisdom is about the contingencies of the world, and it must be altered according to those contingencies if one is to be truly wise. Christ is not the abstract
logos pervading the universe; Christ is Jesus of Nazareth in all the contingencies of the flesh, a Word who must be reincarnated to those around us if they are to receive this Word as Christ. Paul must become as a Jew to Jews, a Gentile to Gentiles, a non-Torah person to a non-Torah persons, and a Torah follower to those who follow Torah.
Logic is not just logic; logic is unique to each person, and must be ascertained in wisdom.
God_Is_Truth said:
I don't mean to say that Logic is itself truth, only that logic leads to truth and is always the means to that end. Truth is indeed found in God, and Logic is the only way to arrive at it. You will never find that truth through illogical and irrational means because truth itself is rational and logical. Does that make more sense?
No. The only way to the truth is Christ. It is not logic. Tell me how logical it is for God to be made manifest as a man? Please tell me how you seem to be so good at understanding the nature of Christ, when the early church for centuries had to wrestle with the idea of Jesus as both fully man and fully God? Tell me how it is that the full image of God is revealed in the face (physical manifestation) of Christ? The early church didn't seem to think that it was logical, and yet you in your wisdom would rise above them as if it were just a matter of fact. Logic is not the grounding for truth; the grounding for truth is God, not a set of abstract and impersonal posits about the world. Truth is a person, and is grounded in the very personhood of God, not in logic. Revelation is the source of truth, and I'm sorry but revelation does not just "make sense". Revelation is about God's entrance on the scene and it is received in faithfulness, as we simply submit ourselves to the God who is God (not because we must first logically understand God). When God shows up, so does the truth, and it will have nothing to do with logic.
God_Is_Truth said:
I don't disagree with any of that. My point is that we discover that truth through logic.
You don't disagree, and yet you have overturned what I have said. We discover the truth not in logic (an abstract and impersonal set of principles that can be applied to the world around us). Truth comes in the very person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. Truth is flesh and blood, and by nature cannot be understood in rational abstractions about the world. Truth is about a revelation, when God enters the scene in contrast to the "normalcy" of the world that we had come to know. It is not something that is reasonable; it comes in defiance of reason, in a grating way, so that when truth comes it clashes with the world as we know it. When God's spirit enters into the
tohu vavohu, it does not reveal the nothingness, it casts it out. When God's Spirit comes among us, it drives out sin and all the ways of normalcy that we have learned by the logic of the world. Truth is not logical; truth is Christ in the flesh.
God_Is_Truth said:
I have no idea why you think rationality and logic are liberal ideas.
Because you are absolutely ignorant about the modern period. Just look at how rationality and logic have become central only in the last 500 years. Logic as a singular rational approach to the world, and as an overarching hegemony of contol is the very grounding for the Enlightenment (which is what defines "liberal"). This is the grounding for democracy, capitalism, communism, socialism and facism, and all the other secular movements of our world.
God_Is_Truth said:
I don't get it. So, no it's not funny.
And you didn't hear the irony in what I was saying. I don't think it's funny at all that you are not aware of your sources. I would challenge you to read Paul Tillich and tell me if you do not agree with what he says (I don't). Just find a sermon or two written by him and see if he is not foundational for your thinking. Kant would be a bit more devisive, but I would not doubt that their are key influences of Kant running through your understanding of religion.
God_Is_Truth said:
I don't see how you are talking about rationality itself but only the ground upon which it stands.
So the foundation of your thinking is not important to your thinking? The foundation of rationality does not affect your rational approach to the world? Do the words of Christ mean anything here, where the foundation is imperative for the house you build, and if your foundation is not sound than your entire house will crumble?
The very reason you approach the world through logic is because you have accepted the secularism of our world. Philosophy only turns to logic because it no longer accepts the truths of theology (and that has to do with the wars of the church). People no longer accept that there is a God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, nor do they accept that this God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and they most certainly will not receive this revelation from a feuding church. The dogmas and doctrines of the protestants and the catholics (nominalist theology) drove the world away from God.
But this is not the culmination of secularism, it is just the linch-pin. When people turned to rationality they only changed the way in which they understood God. Before God had been known through revelation (by God revealing himself to us). Now the world would understand God through logic and empirical study. It is no longer taken for granted that there is a greater world or that there is a God; now the only thing that is certain is the self, and everything else will have to be proven to that self. You see this logical grounding for "religion" is the very reason that secularism arises in the world. There would be no atheists were it not for us Christians.
God_Is_Truth said:
Are you sure you understand logic? How can you let go of logic when you find God? If you let go of logic, you couldn't embrace anything God said! Because without logic contradictions are allowed free reign and just because God said something wouldn't mean the opposite might be just as true (so to speak). Everything would be true which is the same as saying nothing is true. Hence, without logic there is no truth.
Try without God there is no truth. Are you trying to equate God to logic? Logic isn't enough. I'm not saying that we do away with logic; I'm saying that we do away with your view that their is but one logic. There are many who use logic to do away with God. Logic requires empirical study, where God cannot be empirically observed. God is other, and by nature does not fit within the logic of the universe. You can't go searching through the Creation and say, "There's God." Even secondary causes cannot be pinned to God without a certain doubt. The ancients saw earthquakes as divine punishments; now most people of our day will blame them on plate techtonics. Both positions are logical (i.e. they take observations and order those observations through a narrative), but as you can see are contradictory. You can no more prove that God is working through plate techtonics than could anyone rule out God's activity in such events. The divine is a mystery which cannot be understood logically.
God does not fit into our world. God's nature is other. God has no body, so how are we to observe God through our senses, when our senses are not made to discern God. Even Christ's body is a mystery, because when Christ died on the cross, did God die with him? Did God come to destruction? And if God did not, than how do we understand the mystery of Christ's divinity? Clearly something of the divine is revealed in Christ's body, otherwise the incarnation is a farse. But how does that work? It confounds the limitations of our mind. Clearly God resides outside of our logic (as the potter is distinct from the clay).
Peace,
Michael
