Preconceived notions are powerful!
Preconceived notions are powerful!
One of the things I learned in Theology classes was that preconceived notions are very powerful. What a person thinks ahead of time affects how they interpret something. If I think a particular person is a liar, whether I am right or wrong, I will seriously be questioning the things he says than if I knew nothing about him.
The same holds true with Theology. What we think about God and the Bible can strongly impact how we interpret the things we read. This is why it is so critical to interpret Scripture in light of Scripture and in light of what the original audiences would have believed was meant by what was said. This is one of the many critical aspects to practicing sound hermeneutics.
This truth also carries over into other areas of life. If I have a preconceived notion that there is no God, I will interpret all scientific data to my thinking that there is no God. No matter what someone shows me, until my preconceived notion is changed, my thinking is corrupted by it. My objectiveness is gone! It is virtually impossible to be objective about something a person has already gained strong preconceived ideas about. You can scream all you want that you are being objective but you're not.
When we approach this subject of the Lake of Fire and whether or not it is eternal, there will be people on both sides of the fence who have preconceived notions. Those ideas will affect who they agree with during the debate and who they think is winning the debate. This will include Logos and I both. We will both be strongly affected by our preconceived notions. My encouragement to everyone who reads the debate is to make every attempt possible to do away with preconceived notions and read it with an open mind.
God bless!
