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To: bdeaner

“In closing: True faith implies reason. Reason implies faith.”

This is where we differ.

“19For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” - 1 Corinthians 1

Human logic is great for figuring out how to build a better mouse trap, or the genetics of a horse.

But for approaching God? Worthless as tits on a boar hog.


170 posted on 07/20/2009 3:36:57 PM PDT by Mr Rogers (I loathe the ground he slithers on!)
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To: Mr Rogers
God IS Reason, the Logos, the basis of all order in the universe. If God is Logos, it means that a norm of reason follows from what God is. Things are, because they have natures and are intended to be the way they are because God is what he is: He has his own inner order.

To reject God as the Logos, is to reject an essential distinction between Christianity and Islam. In Islam, God is not Logos, but "Will," as most Muslum thinkers hold Allah to be. For them, Logos places a "limit" on Allah. He cannot do everything because he cannot do both evil and good. He cannot do contradictionaries.

Thus, if we want to "worship" Allah, it means we must be able to make what is evil good or what is good evil. That is, we can do whatever is said to be the "will" of Allah, even if it means doing violence as if it were "reasonable."

Otherwise, we would "limit" the "power" of Allah -- an attempt to make violence "reasonable." This different conception of the Godhead constitutes the essential difference between Christianity and Islam, both in their concept of worship and of science. It's the reason why science as we know it emerged in a Catholic Culture rather than in the Muslim world, or any pagan world, for that matter.

Truth is the conformity of the mind with reality. This means that a reality exists that we do not ourselves make. It is a reality that cannot be "otherwise" by our own will. It also means that God established what is, not we ourselves.

Thus, if we are to know the "truth," which is what makes us "free," it means that we know what God created, is what it is. We rejoice to know the truth that we did not make. The wonder of what is, elates us.

If Allah is pure will, then anything that is, can be the opposite of what it is, so that nothing really is what it is. It can always be otherwise.

Faith directs itself to reason and that reason is a reality that is not invented by the human mind. We did not fabricate the mind we have that thinks. We are to use it. We invent neither it nor reality.

There can be no "dialogue" about anything until the basic principles of reason are granted both in theory and practice. Chesterton remarked on the fact that those who begin to attack the Church for this or that reason, mostly end up attacking it for any reason.

What is behind the attack on reason or the refusal to admit that God is Logos already a suspicion that the Church is right about intellect and its conditions. We have no guarantee that reason will freely be accepted.

Von Balthasar said that we are warned that we are sent among wolves. We are naive to think that Christ was wrong when he warned us that the world would hate us for upholding Logos and the order of things it implies -- the actual implication of your reference to St. Paul's Letter to the Corinthians. The wisdom of this world is founded on a false premise -- a premise that is lacking in the proper grounds for reason, the Logos that is God, discovered within the intrinsic order and goodness of His creation.
174 posted on 07/20/2009 4:28:55 PM PDT by bdeaner (The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16))
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To: Mr Rogers
Human logic is great for figuring out how to build a better mouse trap, or the genetics of a horse.

But for approaching God? Worthless as tits on a boar hog.

Bears repeating...

182 posted on 07/20/2009 4:58:34 PM PDT by Iscool (I don't understand all that I know...)
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