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Original airdate: Saturday, September 7, 2019
*** SHOW NOTES (not a transcript) ***
Lead:
Is Christianity reason-able?
Intro:
Antony Flew, in case you don’t know the name, was an English philosopher who was famously and staunchly atheist…until the end of his life when, a couple years before his death in 2010, he wrote a whole book called There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changes His Mind. And since today’s word of the day is “reason,” I thought I’d share with you a quote from that book:
Nor do I claim to have had any personal experience of God or any experience that may be called supernatural or miraculous. In short, my discovery of the divine has been a pilgrimage of reason and not of faith. ~ Antony Flew, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changes His Mind
That said, today’s Bible passage is a little longer, so let’s get to it. A couple days ago we pointed out how the way the Bible uses the concept of mystery — it’s connected to God’s revelation, not something hidden or unknowable like we often use the term. And part of that revelation was how Jesus revealed things through parables.
Today, to connect our reading to the idea of reason, let me lead with this question:
If God could bring something out of nothing, creating the cosmos, then wouldn’t it be reasonable to think that he could intervene in natural law and perform a miracle like, oh, sending His son, a God-Man, reveal Himself through other miracles, and ultimately raise Him from the dead?
Uh, yeah. Duh.
Sponsor:
Bible segment (read along with The Bible Project):
Passage: Mark 5-6
Translation: HCSB (Holman Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 99
Words: ~2019
Thinking/reflection segment:
Defining Reason
Here again we must distinguish the subjective, personal act of reason from the object of reason.
The object of reason means all that reason can know. This means all the truths that can be (a) understood by human reason, (b) discovered by human reason and (c) proved by reason without any premises assumed by faith in divine revelation.
Reason is relative to truth; it is a way of knowing truth: understanding it, discovering it or proving it. Faith is also relative to truth; it too is a way of discovering truth. No human being ever existed without some faith. We all know most of what we know by faith; that is, by belief in what others—parents, teachers, friends, writers, society—tell us. Outside religion as well as inside it, faith and reason are roads to truth. (1)
Wisdom segment:
Passage:
Translation:
Verses:
Words:
Love you!
-R
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
(1) Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics, The IVP Pocket Reference Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), 14–15.