So I’ve been thinking about this all day and here’s my best attempt at a response right now:

First, I’m not quite grasping how you’re using the term “reasonable” when you say that, “when one is converted, one’s eyes are opened to “see the kingdom of God”. In light of this glorious sight, it is fully reasonable to put one’s trust in God, above all other persons or things.”

Are you saying that God’s opening of a person’s eyes is equal to giving them a cognitive reason to believe? Because I would not look at God’s regeneration that way at all. It seems to me that one could know all the truths of Christianity without being converted, and conversion would only happen if their heart were changed to make them delight in those truths. In other words, after one has put his faith in God, he may or may not have any more reason to do so than before his faith was in God.

Second, I do not quite understand what you mean by, “in light of what we see and know, God is the most reasonable thing to believe or put our trust in, over all things.” This is not clear to me at all. In light of what we see and know, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to put one’s faith in one’s own ability (be a Donald Trump, Bill Gates), or perhaps in worldly lifestyles (who was ever disappointed by crazy parties?). Who on earth would want to put their faith in God and be fed to the lions or burned alive? That would seem to be the opposite of reason.

Third, you say, “Yes, we all live by faith, and I would argue, we all put our faith in the thing we reason is the most trustworthy.” But it seems to me that you are putting the cart before the horse in this statement. It is actually precisely the other way around – we don’t put our faith in what we think is most trustworthy; we think something is trustworthy because we have put our faith in it. Again, I would say that, were you “put your faith” into something that you reasoned was trustworthy, that would not be “putting your faith” in that thing at all. Your faith is still wholly in your reasons and not in what your reason has led you to.

For example. I trust most chairs. I trust them because they have four legs and I’ve almost never had a chair collapse under me. However, I have much more trust in my reasoning powers than I do a chair. Therefore, were I to look at a chair and notice that it only has three legs, then I would not trust it because I trust my reason more than I trust the chair. So you see, I do not actually trust chairs, I trust my qualifications for chairs and therefore the chairs that meet those qualifications.

This same thinking can be applied to God. You may say that you trust in God when you have weighed the evidence and reasoned that he is trustworthy. But then what happens when something, or many things, contrary to your initial evidence occur? If your are trusting in your reason then you are obligated to either change your view of God or forsake God and you thereby prove that you don’t trust God, but your reason. Alternatively, God may change your heart and you may hold fast to him regardless of what conflicting evidence comes your way and despite all reason, thereby proving that your faith is in God and not in your reason.

I think I’ll leave it there for now. I hope I have made my position more clear in light of yours.

Thanks for the dialogue.

Julius, I look forward to great interactions with you in December, perhaps even over the phone, or even better in person! Bob, I plan to look into Frame’s work on this topic, thanks for the tip. Robert, you are stretching me, and I love your interaction here. Let’s think through this…

It seems to me, that when one is converted, one’s eyes are opened to “see the kingdom of God” (a la John 3). In light of this glorious sight, It is fully reasonable to put one’s trust in God, above all other persons or things. Even if we undergo temporary cloudiness later on, our former clarity still makes God out to be the most reasonable person to trust, beyond other worldview systems and their corollary logic. This is the supernatural work of persevering faith, as a believer is sustained by God amidst trial. Yet, like many of God’s glorious providences, this supernatural sustaining work of God often plays out in an extremely natural looking way.

By using the term “reasoned faith” I am simply saying that in light of what we see and know, God is the most reasonable thing to believe or put our trust in, over all other things. Yes, we all live by faith, and I would argue, we all put our faith in the thing we reason is most trustworthy. So, it is possible to admit that my “reason” is not a helpful enough tool, and I need something else. But even that conclusion, on a very base level, is reason. Perhaps, it would be better to say, that “the building blocks of philosophical propositions” are not a helpful tool, so on the bases level of reason I find the bible to be more trustworthy than my ability to try and formulate a worldview based on naked philosophical propositions. This is, in my view, a “reasoned faith”. It exalts the bible as true above and beyond human reason, even though it took enlightened human reason to come to this conclusion.

You are right in thinking that the core of this issue is the interplay between the supernatural impartation of faith and human reason. What I am hoping and praying, is that in the midst of my friend’s study, the eyes of his heart would be illumined to see the Kingdom of God accurately portrayed in the scriptures. I am praying that he would see the God of an inerrant bible, versus the god of an errant bible, to be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

While I have not read Frame’s doctrine of the knowledge of God or word of God, both of which I am sure would be more helpful than my feeble comment here, I would like to push you on one point Jeff, if for no other reason than the sake of my own learning.

Initially, you refer to a “reasoned faith,” and at the end you state, “I am not saying you should grasp on to the trustworthiness of scripture simply because you need a consistent absolute. Rather, I am hoping and praying that at the end of all your tests and theories, you will find the scriptures to be a gloriously reasonable source of truth in all respects…”

I would propose that a “reasoned faith” (in the way your are using it here) is an oxymoron and that in your latter comment, you are supporting idolatry (trust that I have a smile on my face while I type this).

Explanation: In the categories that we are talking about here, “faith” in God is a type of trust that says that God is supreme in every aspect. To say that one has a “reasoned” faith, in the sense you are using it, seems to me to be saying that one has a trust in the supremacy of God, based upon his trust in the clarity of his own reason. I do not see how these two things can coexist. Either one trusts God entirely, or one is finally trusting in his own logical proofs and conclusions. To trust in God as a result of logical proofs is to say: “my reason is supreme, not God.” (I.e. If I were to find a flaw in my argumentation later on, I would drop God entirely.)

I hope this illumines why I would say that your latter comment is idolatrous. When you say that one should find Scripture reliable after “all your tests and theories,” you are again saying that there is a final arbiter of right and wrong, correct and incorrect, other than the word of God. (And what if Scripture wasn’t reliable at the end of tests and theories? It seems that he would then be justified in rejecting it!)

Where I think this issue probably comes to its root is in your statement: “I am not saying you should grasp on to the trustworthiness of scripture simply because you need a consistent absolute.” Whereas I would say that it’s not a question of a mere “need” for a consistent absolute. Rather, everyone already HAS a consistent absolute – and it is either the Bible or some competing god – such as rationality. In other words, whatever is one’s “consistent absolute” IS their God, and that is therefore the BEST reason to accept Scripture as infallible. In the words of Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Overall, however, I do want to encourage you because your comment to him was very clear. Your mention of the fact that Scripture is inerrant only in what it affirms is one of the clearest statements of that principle that I have ever read. Furthermore, as is certainly clear, your comment to him was much more gentle than the position that I am outlining to you. And since I have not read your friend’s posts nor know of your relationship, I certainly am not saying that perhaps in context your comment was a very timely word that I would not seek to change.

Thanks for posting this Jeff!

Here’s more background information on my position if you want it. As I am writing this now I am thinking things through and would like to write out a clearer statement of my position and so will just try to go ahead and do so here in a few words.

The issue of faith and reason is a difficult one because both faith and reason are indispensable. It is impossible to have faith without reason (one must understand the content of one’s faith otherwise it is no faith), and it is equally impossible (although many today try to deny this) to have reason without faith. It is IMPOSSIBLE, ask any philosopher, to come up with a world-picture based entirely on reason alone without any assumptions. These assumptions are what I would refer to as faith – it is something you take for granted, and not only take for granted, but use as the fundamental building blocks of the rest of your system.

Hence, everyone has faith undergirding their reason, and not in the sense that they have faith IN reason (that’s a whole other topic), but in the sense that they have assumptions that are then taken as fundamental propositions to extrapolate from. At this level, people must realize, it is literally impossible to rationally critique another person’s perspective since your own critique is based on equally baseless assumptions. Hence we have a word for “conversion” rather than merely “persuaded.”

If what I have just stated is true, and if God is indeed a jealous God, that is, God seeks to change us fundamentally and not just superficially, then it follows that Christians need no logical defense of our trust in the Bible. We have been convicted by the Holy Spirit that the Bible is the word of God, and who can say we are wrong? By what measure? On the authority of what god? Indeed, were we to seek a logical defense of Scripture, we would in effect be saying: “here, let me take this piddly twig and set this anvil of Scripture on top of it and thus build my life on the twig rather than the anvil.” In Biblical language: let me hew out broken cisterns in order that I may seek to fill them with living water.

I’ve already written too much, I’m sure, but in case you are still reading, let me apply my paradigm to your doubting friend, albeit with my limited knowledge of the situation. He had built his faith in Scripture on his more sure faith in the comprehensiveness of his own reason. When the comprehensiveness of his reason increased, the space for Scripture shrunk. Perhaps (and only perhaps because I really don’t know what’s going on), it might be better to try to pop holes in the thin-skinned balloon of his own understanding rather than appealing to him to stretch that skin even a little tighter to fit in the inerrancy of Scripture.

This is a dilemma that I have thought about, and I think that there is a common sense answer to it. The question becomes, as we go further into the spiral of our interpretive system, are we having to obscure texts, or is our study bringing about a rich theological unity. If we are having to obscure (or ignore) texts, we should re-examine the foundations of our spiral to see if it is really leading downward rather than upward!

I know I have been absent from our former discussion concerning Romans 1-4. I have not forgotten, and I plan to get to it. Transparently though, I may not be able to spend time on it until mid December. Thank you for your patience and understanding. I wish we could interact more in person!

I’m not sure whether you are asking me to further critique Luther, or give further infromation about my view of the idea of a “hierarchy of scripture.” So I will do both.

My take on Luther’s hierarchical approach: Obviously, because I disagree with him on this matter, I think that his contribution as it concerns hierarchy is not helpful. Mind you, I do not believe that this discounts the majority of his doctrinal conclusions, even the ones to which he applied a hierarchy. It is simply that I (and many others) have arrived at similar conclusions in a different way. So perhaps we can say that Luther’s contributions to true doctrine far outweigh his contributions to good hermeneutics. Overall, we have greatly benefited from Luther’s “reopening” of the ancient scroll.

My take on a hierarchy of scripture: Ultimately, I don’t think there is one. This being said, there are scriptures that are easier to understand than others. By necessity, we give the meaning of the scripture that we understand greater weight than the meaning of the scripture we have less clarity on. Our understanding demands it.

This brings us into a kind of “interpretive spiral.” As we gain a better grasp on certain parts of the bible, that clarity deepens our understanding of the whole. As our understanding of the whole deepens, we will have more clarity on the parts, creating a spiral of growing understanding. In this way, I believe there is no true hierarchy, but only a “working hierarchy.”

I am still very much in progress in thinking this through, and this is the first time I have articulated some of these thoughts.

I would not prescribe to all that is entailed in what you have called “Luther’s hierarchical categorization of the canon,” especially as it concerns giving greater weight to certain New Testament books than others. When we have a contradiction, like what we see in James and Romans concerning works, I would argue that it is not a genuine contradiction, but only apparent. In reality, while they use very similar language, in their larger contexts, James and Paul are talking about two different aspects of justification.

Where the “hierarchical categorization of the canon” gets tricky, is with the interactions between the New and Old Testaments.

I would say that the New Testament authors understood the ultimate intention of the completed Old Testament, with its implications and significance. With this in mind, the New Testament authors are our greatest tool in discerning the meaning of the Old Testament. They are doing “good exegesis” of the Old Testament, and not abusing it to promote their “new” doctrines. Therefore, if we do good exegesis, we can study the Old Testament to reap eternally absolute insights into the majesty and person of God and His plans.

So, we can preach from any part of the bible. I would give this caveat: we should always preach everything in light of the whole canon.

The bible was not given to us as individual books or documents, or even as a one work with multiple volumes. The bible was given to us as as a completed canon, and was divinely constructed to be a whole. To judge Homer’s intended message, we would not pick up the Iliad and the Oddesy, expounding only from one chapter while ignoring the rest of the book. It would be just as foolish to judge the message of God from a single book (or group of books) within the bible, rather than studying the bible as a unified work.