Glenn Morton wrote:
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: george murphy [mailto:gmurphy@raex.com]
> >Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 1:09 AM
>
> > 1) I did not start this as "another round at this" as I
> >have already
> >explained. It is you who have turned it into a reset of the same
> >old thing. I
> >won't say it's been a waste of time, however, because it's made it
> >much clearer
> >why you're so fixated on the flood.
>
> I will accept all blame for this discourse I am confident that you had no
> part in this discourse. I will respond to this note and let you have the
> last word. However, since I seem to offend you every time we speak, in the
> future, I will do what I can to avoid such conversations up to and including
> not responding to you when you ask for clarification. It is not my intention
> to offend you every time we talk. And I seem to be unable to avoid such
> offense to you. We have different views which start with different
> assumptions and have very different epistemologies. I am very tired of
> ending these discussions having made you very mad or angry with me. For that
> I apologise. I am not sorry for the position I advocate. I believe that it
> is essential for Christianity to cease making the historical reality of the
> biblical events, what should I say--- how about, jello-like. We can't have
> a jello like history that is only real in a very loose way. People do want
> reality, not make-believe.
I never play the "I am deeply offended card" & am not "offended" by
you. I am sometimes annoyed by what seems your persistently wrong theological
approach, including your tendency to collapse everything that you see as more
"liberal" than your view of the historicity of scripture into the sort of
description you use above.
> > 2) What I have said is "strange" about your arguments
> >concerning the
> >flood is not that it might be verified but that you think it
> >provides a better
> >way of supporting belief in the resurrection than does examination
> >of evidence
> >which might actually be connected with the resurrection.
> > 3) You ask "for ... evidence supporting [my] claim that
> >we don't have
> >fideism." Actually I've never used the word "fideism."
>
> I won't let this one pass. I agree, not in this go-round you didn't. But you
> have in previous go-rounds. see
> http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200003/0179.html and I used the word
> because you claimed that we didn't have fideism on that occasion. You
> wrote:
>
> >What is the point of the above criticism? Your previous arguments have
> >suggested that my view is mere fideism while your's is testable by
> historical standards.
> >It ain't so.
>
> I will say, that given the fact that I asked anyone for any item which would
> verify the central claims of Christianity and no one, not even you who
> denies that we have fideism, could present a single case of substantiation
> for the central claim of the Judeo-Christian tradition of God intervening in
> history. Without that verification (and I agree that there is none to be
> had) what we have IS fideism.
You got me! Yes, I've written the word "fideism" before in response to
your use of it as a label. I don't use the word by my own choice partly because
of its ambiguity between technical theological uses and popular & often
pejorative ones. In your last paragraph you seem to be conceding the basic
point I've been trying to make in this exchange & saying that Christians must be
"fideists" because there is no verifiability of the sort you want.
> What I've
> >said is that
> >there is evidence supportive of basic Christian claims about the
> >life, death,
> >and resurrection of Jesus, and that the Christian teaching that
> >Jesus is God
> >Incarnate is best able to make sense of this evidence together
> >with basic facts
> >of human experience and our knowledge of the world. Evidence and
> >reason are
> >involved in these claims so it is not "fideism" in the sense in
> >which you use
> >the word.
>
> The Mormons believe in spite of evidence against their view, YECs believe in
> spite of evidence against their view
>
> But there is in a sense a "leap of faith" since it is
> >impossible to
> >_prove_ that Jesus is God Incarnate simply by reasoning from historical or
> >scientific evidence. Nor to my knowledge has any competent
> >theologian ever said
> >that it is possible to prove the divinity of Christ in that way.
>
> Agreed, but that is fideism. That leap must be made and it is not
> supportable; it is not verifiable. So the only things we can verify are
> events spoken of in the Bible--be it Christ living as a person or Romans
> existing, or the Exodus or the Flood. The only things we can use to soften
> the fideism I see is to verify an improbable event.
If you want to label what this as fideism I can't stop you. I can only
reply that it isn't
simply "faith in faith" or "faith without any supporting evidence or arguments."
> > 4) When I asked if you were with me I was not
> >condescendingly enquiring
> >if you understood what I had said, but trying to see if there was enough
> >agreement to make it worthwhile for me to continue. But it's obvious that
> >there's no point in continuing.
>
> With this I cease, and you can have the last word.
As I said, there's no point in continuing.
Shalom,
George
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