Thursday, February 28, 2019

Revelation vs Reason

Revelation: The divine or supernatural disclosure to humans of something relating to human existence or the world.

Reason: Think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.

Is revelation and reason at odds? is it one or the other?

I don't believe so. I believe that they are both tools in our tool chest. So often we like to lift a tool up and worship it instead of using it as a tool as designed.

Most Christians will agree that we shouldn't worship reason because it is very human.  I think we forget that reason is as much a gift from God as revelation.

The problem of worshiping reason is we forget how limited we humans are and how limited reason is. Personally I think that we are ending the age of reason. Why? Scientifically we are taught the uncertainty principle, observer effect ... etc. We are also learning how much the human is controlled by emotions even though we "think" they are from reason. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

I believe as Christians we have to watch we don't worship a revelation. There are tons of stories of people following a revelation that turns out to be false (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events). Can we worship the revelation but forget the reveler himself? I think worshiping a revelation (and not the reveler God himself) can be just as bad as worshiping reason.

Personally I think they need to work together just as two tools can work together. I think the below passage is a good example.

1 Samuel 17 (NIV)
"34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.”"

You see how David is using reason and revelation. Because God rescued me from ... will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine"

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