Iâm not sure what is entailed in this question⌠obviously this, just like anything and everything else in scripture, I try to accept by faith and trust in what God has revealed, and I try to _understand it.
Iâm not sure how youâre using the word, it asking if someone is willing to accept something by âfideismâ seems a bit of a loaded term?
But if i am reading you rightly, and please forgive me if i am misreading ⌠by âunderstandingâ something in Scripture I mean âunderstandingâ it, or âelucidating itâ or âcomprehending itâ, not âredefiningâ it or âreimaginingâ it or âexplaining it awayâ or any variation thereof?
Again, forgive me if i am misunderstanding youâŚ
But are you seriously suggesting that the standard by which we should judge God himself, his actions, and anything and everything else he has revealed in Scripture would be as to whether or not an unbeliever would believe it to be just and find it acceptable?
God can only be defined as just if unbelievers approve of what he does? they have become âthe judge of all the earthâ, and Godâs actions are now on trial? I would think it axiomatic that I ought to weigh unbelievers (and believers) fallible views of goodness, rightness, and justice by what the infallible God says is right and just, not the other way around?
To invoke Lewisâs famous observation⌠The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in Godâs acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.
Again, I struggle to understand this approach. I can recognize myself as corrupt, a sinner, I know the things i have done, i know the ways i have justified behaviors in sinful manners⌠in short, i know without a doubt that my sense of justice is corrupt.
and add to that the evidence of world history⌠are humans truly unerring and infallibly trustworthy judges of what is right and good and just? every age seems to pass judgment on their predecessors⌠humans across ages have justified, and codified into laws, all manner of sin, evil, and atrocity, and called it âmoralâ.
So I simply struggle to understand how anyone can affirm their own personal views of justice, and/or that of their own limited culture, as so absolute, authoritative, and/or unerring that that can affirm with such confidence that a view expressed in Scripture is undoubtedly âmistakenâ.
If, when Scripture and I (or my culture) disagree about some aspect of justice⌠if my default position is always that it is Scripture that must either be mistaken or is understood⌠and donât acknowledge the possibility that, perhaps, I am the one whose ideas of rightness and justice need modification⌠then the ultimate authority for what is or is not just, right, and holy in the universe is me, not God, and not Scripture. Please correct me if I misunderstand?
otherwise, again to borrow Lewisâs insightâŚ
scrupulous care to preserve the Christian message as something distinct from oneâs own ideas, has one very good effect upon the apologist himself. It forces him, again and again, to face up to those elements in original Christianity which he personally finds obscure or repulsive. He is saved from the temptation to skip or slur or ignore what he finds disagreeable. And the man who yields to that temptation will, of course, never progress in Christian knowledge. For obviously the doctrines which one finds easy are the doctrines which give Christian sanction to truths you already knew. The new truth which you do not know and which you need must, in the very nature of things, be hidden precisely in the doctrines you least like and least understand. It is just the same here as in science. The phenomenon which is troublesome, which doesnât fit in with the current scientific theories, is the phenomenon which compels reconsideration and thus leads to new knowledge. Science progresses because scientists, instead of running away from such troublesome phenomena or hushing them up, are constantly seeking them out. In the same way, there will be progress in Christian knowledge only as long as we accept the challenge of the difficult or repellent doctrines. A âliberalâ Christianity which considers itself free to alter the Faith whenever the Faith looks perplexing or repellent must be completely stagnant. Progress is made only into a resisting material.