tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2189327215170683542.post3961672219860357181..comments2023-08-25T01:25:04.976-07:00Comments on Blog of the Good Shepherd: Four Important News Items from Good ShepherdMatt Kennedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10975005135486296368noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2189327215170683542.post-21092672061136207372009-04-29T07:32:00.000-07:002009-04-29T07:32:00.000-07:00Hi Susan, needless to say, I think you are misunde...Hi Susan, needless to say, I think you are misunderstanding his point about science. I think it was a lot less complicated than you seem to suggest. God reveals himself in nature and in the bible. We learn about God through observation and study of both revelations. This does not mean that science is always right nor does it mean that observation is always correct nor does it say anything at all about the role of grace in the process...<br /><br />2. as I explained when I passed these sheets this text was handed out just to warm up people's minds. Our txtbook by Wayne Grudem has just come in. The handouts were from a common Systematic Theology textbook used at Wheaton and one that is fairly easy to read and introduces some concepts that I think are important. I do not agree with everything contained therein but I do think its a good basic way to get minds revved up for the task.<br /><br />3. Where you "start" in Systematic theology is, indeed, a good question. Aquinas started, as you suggest, with God. Barth started with special Revelation. Evangelicals tend to vacillate between the two. It is by no means a settled question. <br /><br />Hope that helpsMatt Kennedyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10975005135486296368noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2189327215170683542.post-87226725575064567142009-04-29T07:19:00.000-07:002009-04-29T07:19:00.000-07:00I also noticed that the language for the descripti...I also noticed that the language for the description of the way theological truth is contained in the scriptures, parallels Francis Bacon's description of the way God has hidden truth in nature, choosing to set puzzles for us. <br /><br />When I mentioned this, Chris said that the author of the Scandal of the Evangelical mind says that Evangelicals are stuck with a Baconian model of science. <br /><br />I hope they aren't likewise stuck with a Baconian conception of what the scriptures are. He wrote a little story-made up and meant to be some kind of parable - about how God gave His revelation to an isolated island tribe; they saw a pillar of light out in the water, rowed out to it, and found a Bible, complete and entire, on a rock projection out of the ocean. <br />This is so unlike the reality of how we have received the Scriptures that it seems to me it must indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of what sort of thing they are. <br /><br />You really have to get back behind Bacon and the whole modern project to have a philosophical framework in which Christianity can rest with intellectual integrity. <br /><br />Susaneulogoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05307036781446427993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2189327215170683542.post-45565435834405137682009-04-28T19:01:00.000-07:002009-04-28T19:01:00.000-07:00The writer, whoever he is, it doesn't say in the h...The writer, whoever he is, it doesn't say in the handout itself, makes a mistake to concede the natural world to "science," and to say that the subject of theology is analogously, the Bible. Theology is the "Queen of the Sciences" in the older, and proper, sense of science. Its field is first of all, God the Creator, and second, the entire Creation. <br />I would say that a systematic theology ought to start with first, The existence of God, the attributes of God, that He existed from all time, that He is omnipotent and so on. And one starts first from natural reason, saying that the creation bears witness to the creator, and going through all the logical proofs of the existence of God. Then one discusses that since we cannot know everything we need to know by natural reason, and since all men are not capable of engaging in logical discourse to the same degree, that God has revealed to us what we need to know about Himself. Then you deal with revelation, how God revealed Himself and how the Scriptures bear witness to this. <br />The subject is always God, God's creation, God's self revelation in the history of His people,-which in a sense is all the truth, or all the important truths, about the world-and the scriptures bear witness to this, they tell us about it. The subject of theology is not a set of writings, even a set of divinely inspired writings. It is God and His entire creation and His action in history, both what we know by natural reason and what we know by divine revelation. <br /><br />Susan Petersoneulogoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05307036781446427993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2189327215170683542.post-45249518874142863982009-04-28T18:37:00.000-07:002009-04-28T18:37:00.000-07:00Matt, Chris read to me from the handout and based...Matt, Chris read to me from the handout and based just on what he read to me, I have some comments. (You would expect me to, wouldn't you?) <br /><br />I think that it is a mistake to start with "science" as in the modern enterprise of inductive reasoning from observations, as a model to explain theology. That model is at root antithetical to Christianity. I don't refer to its finding of facts which seem to contradict Christian truth, but to its very premises about how we come to know anything, about what constitutes knowing, and about what the intellectual virtues are. (For modern science the prime intellectual virtue is to demand proof and to be suspicious lest one be deceived. In the world view of Aristotle which Aquinas carried into the middle ages, the prime intellectual virtue is a positive love of the truth, combined with a trust that the universe is so ordered that if man desires the truth this is because the truth exists. <br />"Thought is drawn by the objects of thought, as love by the objects of love." Aristotle, Metaphysics. This is expressed in Christian terms by Augustine when he says, "You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless til we rest in You." <br />The intellectual virtue for ancient and medieval man is a love of truth which rushes out to embrace it, not one which regards it with suspicion as a possible deceit. <br /><br />That is point one, and not even what I most wanted to address here. To be continued in the next post.eulogoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05307036781446427993noreply@blogger.com