Thanks for stopping by. I have found myself on De-Conversion more than my own blog here lately, as those contributors have a knack for posing some tough and very interesting questions.

In regards to reason vs. the Holy Spirit:
The authors are making some assumptions as to who is viewing this doctrinal statement. One of them is an understanding of where they are in regards to the Holy Spirit. The HS is not just another form of reaching understanding in opposition to reason, but a “person” of God. That said, it is not mutually exclusive with reason. In my personal experience, the HS often uses reason to speak to us or create understanding. Paul is described in the book of Acts as “going to the synagogues and reasoning with the Jews” to “prove that Jesus is the (promised messiah).” Reason is not divorced from the HS.

We are not solely thinking beings. We are reactionary, emotional, and spiritual in varying degrees. The modernist fallacy and struggle I have with it, is that it divorces reason from this holistic perspective. To be “merely” thinking beings is to rob us of great potential as human beings. Even the most rational person can still appreciate art, music, and/or sculpture, yet reason is not the mode of this appreciation. There is more to us than that.

In short, to operate on reason alone will not include the HS, but discerning through the HS most definitely includes reason. As proof of this, you should check out the line up and the brains on the Gospel Coalition. They are very intelligent, rational people.

In regards to reality:
I am a little fuzzy with what you are trying tos ay with this…. Kyle, a regular on here, actually said it best by stating the difference between “human truths” and “the truth.” The way he described “human truths” sounds a lot like your “Real,” in that it is the aspects of life in general that speak to our hearts and impart meaning. My postulation was that the two are not mutually exclusive, and that human truths are sourced in, and cannot be divorced from, the truth. Again, barring a little more explanation from you, that may or may not answer that question. Sorry I couldn’t speak to it more.

You said,
“Should we just admit that the new creedo of scripture should be not be that its inerrancy lays in its absolute correspondence to reality but rather it lays in its absolute correspondence to subjectivity, to its radical incompleteness?”
Hrmm…. in short…. no. See parts 3 and 4 of this series for a slightly better explanation. I think that the following points from the vision for ministry document they lay out will answer those questions more fully. From where I’m sitting I would say that, even though the accounts of scripture are subjective perspectives of the absolute, objective truth, they are this way becuase it is NECESSARY for us to understand them.

If, for example, God had revealed Himself in scripture 100% objectively, there would be some kind of heavenly, trinitarian language involved, using words we would never understand, describing things we can’t even see. Our minds literally would not be able to comprehend it. It is subjective BECAUSE we NEED it to understand what He is trynig to tell us about Himself. Yes, it is incomplete in the sense that reading a biography of your mother does not do anything to help you understand who she is when compared to knowing her personally. (And this is where doctrine concerning the HS plays a key role in having a relationship with God on this side of heaven, but that is a whole other post…)

However, “incomplete” does NOT imply “unsufficient.” That is a KEY distinction that I will stand very firm upon.

Thanks again for taking the time to read and comment. I hope this made my writing a little more clear. Any return thoughts?

As for this creedal statement by the Gospels Coalition, I must say I am very discouraged.

Truth as correspondence to reality, what does that even mean? Arguing for a correspondence theory of truth will always place Christianity at odds with science, and will always lead certain scientists to claim that if God belongs to objective reality then there should be evidence of God. However, Christians moan and complain when scientists say this because they demand special status for divinity, and it is not given, nor should it be.

The problem with the Gospel Coalitions statement is that it replaces the concept of “Reason” with “Holy Spirit.” The function/role of human reason in a modernist worldview is an aid in discovering and understanding objective truth about the world. Truth that is verifiable, again, and again (hence empiricism). The function/role of the Holy Spirit in the words of this creed: “the Holy Spirit…indwells us so that we who have been made in the image of God can receive and understand the words of Scripture revealed by God, and grasp that Scripture’s truths correspond to reality.”

So the function of the HS here is analogous to reason, to help us understand and to grasp (albeit a fragile grasp) that the things we see or experience correspond to reality. I have a problem with this, and I think that as long as “reason” and the “holy spirit” are touted in such a way there will never be a resolution of the deadlock between religion and science that we are now experiencing. They are too similar, they do try to answer the same questions, they are both trying to create meaning, and they are competing worldviews. Science is not syncretistic, Christianity is not syncretistic: Choose your mediator of knowledge, reason or the HS.

But what is reality? That is my main question. I think there needs to be a distinction made between Real and reality. I think reality is a mediator of the Real, and because of that the Real is never fully present yet it continues to exert its efficacy upon us, e.g. the Real of a traumatic experience. So in this view reality is the symbolic network and we can only ever have incomplete access to such a network (subjectivity).

Another way to read this statment by the Gospel Coalition is that the Holy Spirit does not actually give us access to truth but as it says the HS is there to help us “grasp that Scripture’s truths correspond to reality.” Rather than help us understand truth itself, or give us access to the Absolute the HS is there to help us understand that what scripture is talking about is reality, nothing else. It doesn’t give us access to reality, but it helps us understand that somewhere within the narrative, within the words, and performances of scripture, there is some kind of hard kernel that is linked to reality.

I also find that reading somewhat troublesome.

Should we just admit that the new creedo of scripture should be not be that its inerrancy lays in its absolute correspondence to reality but rather it lays in its absolute correspondence to subjectivity, to its radical incompleteness?

Any thoughts?

Kyle,
Interesting. Is he making a direct critique on scripture? I may have to look that up and check it out myself. It seems there are a few parallels…

So he does account for that.

he is definitely modern chronologically. Arcadia was written in the early 90’s.