In the end it is simply trust. I have friends within many denominations, Bible believing, that get along with one another. We have realized God asks us to trust in Him and that the real enemy is not our denominations; its the devil and our egos that fill a denomination’s name or our own.

Hopefully this is as consistent to God word, lol, I don’t have a Phd.

I feel his criticism of Christianity is about half right. I feel he was utterly correct to want to see a revaluation of values and to denote that as the most creative f pursuits.

Ironically his greatest claim to being influentiial may be his Antichrist which is actually a skewering of Pauline orthodoxy and an argument for a reappropriation of Jesus.

Jesus is said by Mark to have proclaimed a very different good news or gospel than that proclaimed by the creeds. His own good news is of a kingdom at hand, the primacy of repentance and belief that this is so. That is a good deal simpler than what theology infers.But it is what I with a lovely theological education and decades of thinking about this have concluded.

I think the argument that Christian liberalism is the product of the enlightenment is silly. If it coincided hermeneutically fine. My own hermeneutic is to read scripture through the prism of who Jesus is if we lift up the blanket of creedal messianism that emerged from seeking to make certainties of suppositions. I draw from Mark not the enlightenment.

“if God FORCED us to believe everything, if all knowledge had to come via direct illumination, then the purpose of the mind is simply useless.” > Not at all. Knowing the facts is not the same as putting the facts together and deciding what to do with the facts. The devil (supposing that he exists) knows apparently many facts about God, and yet he does not “believe” in the sense of surrendering to God. He is still allowed to use his mind. He still has the power of choice. In fact, the power of choice ONLY makes sense when the facts are clearly established. As long as the facts are debatable, choice is a joke, as it is reduced choice to mere guesswork. If I don’t have CLEAR EVIDENCE which of two glasses contains poison and which water, a reasonable choice cannot be demanded from me.

“True Christians, however, can always agree on the basics, regardless of academic level. This, to me, shows the uniformity in Christian thinking.” > Well, if they measure up to YOUR understanding of what a “true” Christian is, then perhaps – because then everyone who disagrees with your basics is, by definition, excluded from being a “true” Christian. A foolproof, circular argument. The problem is: From the first century on, there have been many, many opinions on what a true Christian comprises, and even the main dominations that have won the battle over the centuries do not agree on many basics.

Take such a basic issue as the canon of the Bible, for instance. According to the Catholic Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, every Christian who goes to church carrying a Protestant Bible (meaning one with sixty-six books rather than with more than seventy) is by that token “anathema,” which is to say, “deprived of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, … separated from the society of all Christian,” excluded “from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth,” excommunicated and anathematized and judged as “condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate.”

Such, at least, was the not quite ecumenical standard pronouncement of anathematizing Christians who held gravely wrong doctrines, a criterion which, according to traditional Catholicism, all Protestants fulfill simply by bringing the wrong Bible to church.

Protestants have returned the kindness. Starting with the Reformation, we have a long tradition of seeing the Antichrist in the robes of the Pontiff and trying to “save” people from the demonic deceptions of Catholicism.

Not to mention issues such as how many gods there are, the Trinity, how to understand faith and works, salvation, and pretty much every Christian doctrine that there is. There is MUCH less uniformity on those issues – and much more shoking alternatives proposed – than living within the fold of modern Evangelicalism would make one believe.

I ought to end my rant now, before I spend too much time on this .

Thanks for the exchange!

For instance – because man is fallen, though God is perfect in His communication, man can sometimes misunderstand it. God gave man a mind for a reason.

I generally take Calvin’s view on this issue – the mind is very helpful in natural revelation, but because man chose to sin God has to specially reveal Himself as well. In other words, God is not an insufficient communicator, man is simply a bad listener.

The alternative to your theory puts God in a bind as well – if God FORCED us to believe everything, if all knowledge had to come via direct illumination, then the purpose of the mind is simply useless. However, since God gave man a mind (and subsequently free will), man can choose to ignore the commands of God.

Finally, since we are fallen we won’t always understand what God has to say on smaller issues, such as tongues. True Christians, however, can always agree on the basics, regardless of academic level. This, to me, shows the uniformity in Christian thinking.

As for the book of John, no, Jesus never did say the Holy Spirit would reveal all things to us. Jesus said the Spirit would help the disciples recall the words of Jesus after Jesus had left.

But when it comes to epistemology, isn’t the most fundamental question what LEVEL of certainty the evidence permits? Applied to Christianity, how much evidence is there for a very powerful God who is not silent about His existence? Is your article itself not testimony enough of the myriad divisions within Christianity and therefore of God’s LACK of activity in regard to self-revelation? If God was such a powerful communicator, why would your admirable blog be necessary to set the many misunderstandings about His communication right? Isn’t a good communicator someone who anticipates possible misunderstandings and adresses them before they take root? Where has God done this, either in the Bible or church history?

According to the Gospel of John, God’s Spirit was supposed to lead believers into all truth. Well, did He? And if Christianity – perhaps the most divided body in the world – is NOT evidence enough that He has done so, should we as Christians not show a little sympathy for Nietzsche’s remark about God’s inability to make Himself clearly understood? Do not most Christians, in an honest moment, also feel Nietzsche’s frustration about God’s confusing communication? Can one, for example, really delve into the Christian controversy about the Book of Revelation and not feel a twinge of Nietzschean pessimism?

By the way, I am speaking as someone who has read all of Francis Schaeffer’s books and has a Bible degree from a conservative Christian university.

Take care!