Argument is not that easy. It is even harder when there is a lot of disagreement. Although relativism concludes that absoluteness of fact is not achievable, and there is only a ‘most probable truth’, there is no way conclusions can exist unless we agree to one code of operation. Even absolute terms in a fact (what we love calling ‘the dogma’), has to face argument for it to qualify (at least for those supporting it) to be Truth in its infallibility.
World philosophies have upped their game of dialectics. Philosophy has become the common food of the intellectual person. It has put the entire globe on the edge of intellectual anticipation and value systems that are warping towards it. Malcolm Muggarage (one of my favorites) writes and says, “We have educated ourselves into imbecility”. I think that’s why our parents fear that we should go to school and ‘read too much’; and it may be the reason for such a verse as Ecclesiastes 12:12, NET BIBLE
(Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. There is no end to the making of many books, and much study is exhausting to the body).
But men should argue. They should reason. They should argue and reason constructively. Even God reasons… (Isaiah 1:18, NKJV, “...Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD...”). Men and God reason because by reasoning, the mind’s explosive capabilities are either intuitively or exponentially run into… We can say that reason helps in the dialysis of facts. Reason is the best way to abstractly define or defend a belief. It may not be the only way, but by it the values, likes and dislikes of an oral being are thoroughly explored. It helps us define assumptions, state fears, make our inventions understood and… just talk. It may bring strife but that is what communication always breeds – a war or a peace… So, although all men have the freedom of opinion and the right to reasoning, we just have as less freedom to choose the subjects of those opinions (or reasons if to say) as we have on the decisions that are the aftermath of the same – mainly searching through the recipients and gaging their ability to see through each opinion or reason...
I’ll make it simpler for you…
Atheists have their own opinion on the existence of God. They say there is no God. Strong as it may seem, it is their choice. It is their dogma. Their opium of the mind. They believe that in saying so, many can believe in their opinion. They believe that you should believe them and later believe in them because they believe in nothing… And that the nothing they believe IN is the ultimate cause of all belief and thus should be the object of every other belief… including yours and mine…. And there are many more who believe in humanism, naturalism, existentialism, realism... the list of modern philosophies is endless…
Basically (and for the sake of this post) I will slightly address the belief held by Gnostics. Don’t be scared of the many stupid titles here and there… it is philosophy anyway…
The gnostics believe that a person cannot have true knowledge about the existence of God; and that although they acknowledge there being a God, they don’t deny the possibility of His non-existence... To them, God’s existence is not a problem, the problem is them believing that He can become flesh and still be God… They believe that God eternally exists only as a spirit and can never be flesh; and that Jesus was not a man at all but a man-God… bla, bla, bla… It is here where I find a problem with negative philosophy and the Gnostic culture. Ouch! I’ll have to run through the basics of this negative philosophy some other time…
But on the other side of the philosophical-and-spiritual debate, the Apostle John (that great teacher who with strong statements defends the course of his belief in Christ – his Lord, cousin and best friend – says that He saw and TOUCHED HIM [which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – 1 John 1:1] and that [the Word became flesh… John 1:14]) has words to speak about and against Gnostism and all its branches…
The apostle John cooks us through a momentum of mind stirring battles between Truth and a philosophy of his day (which by the way was not called Gnostism then). He openly displays the fallacy that many Gregorian (and together with Jewish) believers had fallen into due to the love of philosophy as opposed to the love of Truth. That’s why you hear him mention truth in both contexts of the scripture quoted above (if you read the whole text)…
And as Christians, we are tempted to improvise Christianity in order to run in line with modernization. We are tempted to topple Christianity into the communization that is globalism. Do you ever wonder where such religions as Mormonism, New Age and Scientology came from? It was out of desire to make Christianity a globally acceptable religion; a desire to conquer over the scam that are the wrangles between Christianity and its immediate environment anywhere…
We find out that maybe through reasoning, we will define to them (the world and the philosophies therein) why we think they should acknowledge the presence of a supernatural power that eternally exists and eternally controls the universe. Gnostics (even from the time of John the Apostle) believe Christ was not fully human, and that He was a spirit being with a body-like form that was not corruptible... and that we mortals are not capable of reaching that perfection in our ‘weakness’... but the basis of reasoning or argument will be as a tool that will enable is to reach a consensus with them. That consensus will not be by compromise but just like John, through exposing Truth. Truth and only Truth will define to them who Christ really is and what He really desires of them… We as independent Christians choose not to accept others’ views on certain matters concerning belief just as we choose to say, ‘Yes’. Having good reason (and good in this case is not relative) is a keystone factor.
C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity talks about The Law of Human Nature. He says that his arguments are not a platform for promoting one denomination within Christianity over another but rather an aid to assist in making rightful choices. And the act of making rightful choices he says, in his introduction, is like a hall where we all enter and ‘reason within ourselves’ as to which door to knock and later open…
Just like we reason over facts with men, let us reason over Truth with God and men… so that as many as there are in world philosophies, so should there be in the Truth of God…
Sincerely,
Morris.
No comments:
Post a Comment