Comments ( 2 )

1. DadPosted on 10:41 pm December 5, 2005

   But can you so compartmentalize reason, emotions, and relationships? Can one even "concieve" of emotion,let alone "experience" or "interpret their meaning", or "understand" an I-thou encounter without reason? There seems to be a missing primacy to reason in the discussion. But if reason plays a major key in what it means to be in the "image of God" who is eternal logos, i.e., a thinking-speaking being who sustains feeling and relationships by that very being, and if that reason-in-divine-image is made in congruence to the divine nature itself, then one cannot so limit it to one aspect of human life and pit it against the others. Reason, or the rational nature appears to be the queen mother of the other faculties, eliminate her and you've lost her children. As to her limits, it appears that they are not so much related to an idea of a limit of quantity or place as pertains to other faculties, but rather to a time-space fall. She's just like the ole grey mare: she ain't what she used to be. If we think and act like she is, we slip into pride and sin, setting our crippled faculty up as absolute. Thus the need for revelation, which thus passing through reason (can you read without linear logic?) restores an equilibrium to emotion and relation.I feel that the reason/relation dichotomy just may be a false one at that and lead (as others have so contended) to irrationalism and a denial of the ability to state revelation in terms of propositional truth (as in creeds, dogmatic discussion, etc.). You simply can't recieve a word of communication and respond orally or in any way to it (thus "relate" to anything) without mother reason. Though revelation establishes relationship: it is not irrational, but simply supra-rational at times: it can tell us the "what" to reality but not always the "how" of explanation. Luther's opposition to "reason" was not that as such, in terms of a human faculty -- which he held in high esteem -- but to the abuses it recieved at the hands of Aristotelian philosophy when in intruded into the "how" questions of heavenly matters. I am blessed to have a son who even 'thinks' about these issues, thus letting such rational discourse shape and direct his emotional and relational life.
2. NathanaelPosted on 5:57 pm December 7, 2005

   Amen and Amen!
   
   There is a difference between a religion founded on reason, and a reasonable religion. In this post I am arguing against the former, though, perhaps I was not unequivocal enough in affirming the latter.
   
   Also admittedly: The title may not be entirely apt.
   
   Certainly if I did not believe reason to be central to one's religious experience I wouldn't bother writing these things for others to read. I thoroughly agree that one cannot compartmentalize human mental and emotional qualities (see Fideism). However I believe that this is what is done when one basis his religion on what can be proven rationally. The point being, that if one sets out to 'prove' one's God or religion, then one will only get as far as a rational, objective God--one which is inaccesible to humans who are less than rationally and objectively perfect.
   
   Nevertheless, the possibility of having a religion which is acquired and experienced by every aspect of human expression, of which reason and rational communication are central, remains very good.
   
   :)