The Vifl

I don’t think my argument is necessarily secular. I believe I can be a devout Christian and still believe that people use the Bible as a crutch. If a skeptic asks me a big spiritual question, I typically don’t respond by saying, “My answer is *this* because the Bible says *this.*” Instead, I’ll have studied the teachings of the Bible, tested them in my life and understood them thoroughly (personally and intellectually), and therefore the truths of the Bible will naturally occur in my response. Sure, this approach may be perceived as dangerous to some, but so is taking passages of the Bible at face value and spouting them off to argue a point. I’ll restate my point like this: it is immoral and treacherous to use arguments from the Bible if you do not have a thorough understanding of the passage you’re using and if you have not tested the truth of that passage in your thoughts and in your life. Now, I understand that Oliphint most likely has tested all of these truths, but the way he writes his article–by hinging many of his major points on the restating and simple explaining of Bible passages–turns me off to his central argument. He should use the Bible passage, but not in a way which communicates that he achieves his apologetical argument simply by using the Bible passage.

I understand you may be uncomfortable with this idea of “testing” the truths of the Bible before defending them, but I’m avidly for it. I feel dishonest to the skeptic and to myself when I use a Bible passage to completely explain away a tough question concerning spiritual truth.

I have lots of thoughts and questions concerning the article, but I’ll just mention a couple:
First off, I feel a desire to resist his arguments a bit simply because of some of his language. Sometimes it sounds like he’s spouting out pieces of Bible verses, which communicates to me that he’s not looking at the world, at his arguments and theology with a fresh mind. It shows me that he’s kind of stuck on ideas that he’ll simply presuppose without question, and he uses these ideas as arguments for his larger points. I’m not a big fan of people who memorize scripture verses and pull those out to argue. It reveals inflexibility of reason and intellectual laziness (lazyness? ah heck). I understand that his article is geared towards people who already presuppose Christian doctrine, but I still want to understand his arguments in their purity, and not as arguments leaning upon the Word as a crutch.

Also, I’m trying to pinpoint his idea of finding God in nature, finding God innately. He refers to this evidence of God, the evidence in nature and life (with which he uses Paul passage), as a “subconscious” exercise, yet in the end of that paragraph he states that to live suppressing such evidence is “to live and think irrationally.” Does he understand what he means by “subconscious”? The subconscious is not a rational function, it’s irrational by nature. That’s why so many skeptics reject God and Christianity–for rational or at least seemingly rational reasons. Yet it’s the subconscious part of themselves, that part which knows God and yearns for God, that exists in them and nags at them–that beach ball which they are trying to keep under the water, yet they can’t justify it by reason. They want to join their nature and their logic but they can’t find a way. Even we Christians struggle with that–even we can’t always make our beliefs and our thinking completely coincide. But we must accept the truth of God because it is often more real than logic, if you understand me. The irrational is a part of us as well as the rational.

Hope I’m not going too Kierkegaard on you. Just wanting to throw a curve ball. It’s what I do.

I’m also going to read the article again because I didn’t find it terribly accessible. Why do I sound like an old British man when I try to reason theology?