Are Seminaries Putting Their Blue Days Behind Them?

The American Interest ^ | March 30. 2013 | Walter Russell Mead

[Kevmo]

Thanks for the ping, sister-in-Christ.

Cicero characterized it as aspernatio rationis, or the contempt of reason. The Old Testament refers to the sufferer as nabal, or the man who says in his heart, “There is no God.”
***I recall that we have discussed this before. In the past, I was an atheist. I don’t think this is an un-reasoned position, a contempt of reason. It is a position arrived at through the reasoning available to the person at the time, and in particular with the given thought tools and circumstances generated for that individual. When I was there, I considered it the spiritual default setting of the universe, and my teachers seemed to be (mostly) pushing that line of thinking.

I was only disrupted from such thinking by being steered to the book “Late Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsay when I was 14 years old. I only had a small door left for the reality of God, and when my sister-in-law said that I wouldn’t say that “God is an invention of man” if I read that book, I decided to read that book and dispense with christianity.

It kicked my ass. Not only was christianity no longer just a myth in my mind, but Jesus was coming and boy, was he pissed. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of love in that message.

The rational approach was to examine the historical evidence. The bible is historically accurate in the non-controversial aspects such as the names, titles, dates, places of historical events. It only gets controversial when it mentions miracles, so the rational thing to do is examine it in the light of historically noncontroversial things. In that respect, it is utterly reliable as history.

It turns out that Jesus’s claim to be God Himself is one of those historically noncontroversial claims, because his enemies acknowledge it, his friends acknowledge it, even contemporary indifferent sources such as archaeology verify the claim. I call this the rule of COIN — Concurrent sources, Opposing sources, Indifferent sources, and No (or little) evidence against it. Or maybe it should be called COINEA, like the greek spoken at the time.

It is up to each of us to weigh the (historically verifiable) claim that Jesus is God. The beauty of christianity is that even people who aren’t so bright are capable of drawing near to God, and some bright people are incapable of it. Grace, the true grace of God, confounds the wise (1 Corinthians 1:26-27

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your testimony, dear brother in Christ!

If you haven't done so yet, I strongly recommend reading Hal Lindsey's "Combat Faith" - it's one of my favorites.

[spirited irish]

“.....what I’ve seen in local churches that I’ve been attending is actually a move towards getting BACK to solid Scriptural teachings.”

Spirited: And thank the Lord that my family attends one of them!