quote for the day

quote for the day January 26, 2008

[Question:]

“…isn’t that [postmodernism] where all of this leads if our knowing is rooted in faith without any court of appeal beyond it?”

[Answer:]

“Well, if there is any court of appeal, it is God who sits as the judge. the deep blasphemy of modernity is that it made “reason” the judge. Now if you submit your faith claims to the adjudication of reason an dyou justify your belief in the sovereignty of God or the authority of the bible on the basis of reason, take a close look to see what is really sovereign and where real authority lies. Reason ends up being the sovereign authority. The Bible has a word for this kind of thing: idolatry. We have taken a good dimension of human life – cognitive reasoning abilities – and made a god our of it, subjecting all else to its authority.”

[Question:]

“What is the alternative?”

[Answer:]

“Recognize that all reasoning is rooted in what Nicholas Wolterstorff calls ‘control beliefs.’ In a revolutionary work in Christian epistemology, Wolterstorff took Immanuel Kant’s enlightenment belief that religion should always be within the bounds of reason and put it on its head by claiming that the opposite was the case and reason was always within the bounds of religion. Reasoning is an activity done by real, honest-to-goodness alive human beings, not detached brains objectively cruching data like a computer.”

-Colossians Remixed p.126


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