Anytime you get into a dispute or an argument it seems that if you are not on the same premise that you will find yourself talking past each other. The same goes when you get a group of people together to talk about things like religion and spirituality all to often the people come from to many viewpoints and cultures and so on and when one speaks the words seem to go right past the others.
That being said allow me to introduce who is writing here so that with some understanding the conversation can always continue. First off, allow me to say that this blog is not some misguided attempt to persuade you to be a Christian, I firmly believe in the power of the Word of God, I do not believe I have to persuade anyone. Even beyond that, I don't think I could persuade anyone if I wanted to. This stems from my belief that all faith, all true Faith in Christ comes from the working of the Holy Spirit, not by me or my apologetics text book, or anyone else for that matter. I do believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins and that He rose on the third day. I do believe that in Baptism my Old Sinful self has been drowned, has been buried with Christ and that God has created a New Creature in me which desires His Will but that I daily muck up only to return to the promise of my Baptism, so daily my sinful self is drowned and daily God does this work. This is my Faith, This faith is based on the Word of God written in scripture and understood with reason.
Of course not everyone sees that, some choose to reject God's Word, and in a way it is the only choice we can make, because Grace is a gift of God and Faith is a work of the Holy Spirit which means only non-faith, or the rejection of faith is OUR work. However, I think to understand me you need to understand this, you need to understand that I have faith in the Word of God, I have faith in the inerrancy of Scripture. However, I don't believe that all of this was done simply for me or for my sake, actually, I also believe it was done for you as well.
One might ask the question started in the last blog, "where does reason come into play" reason comes into play in all kinds of areas even in the reading and understanding of Scriptures themselves. The core Gospel message of what Christ has done for you is something that is not hard to understand. However, other parts of the scriptures without sound study and reason become impossible to grasp.
Allow me to explain further. A person can understand the Scriptures to some capacity without faith, it is true, one could understand the words on the page, even do some historical investigation. On the other hand one with very little reason but a lot of faith could very well understand sections of Scripture and know them very well. However, again I move to the title of the Blog, it is at the corner of using both a persons faith in God and His Word, along with reason which will open up the scriptures even further than either one without the other. This is not to say they will somehow have a full understanding, I am not sure if anyone outside of Christ has ever been able to FULLY understand everything scripture has to offer, it depth is of the deepest caliber.
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