Wednesday, April 22
Read 2 Corinthians 10:5, 6; Proverbs 1:7; and Proverbs 9:10. Why is obedience to Christ in our thoughts so important? Why is the fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom?
God has given us the ability to think and to reason. Every human activity and every theological argument assumes our ability to think and to draw conclusions. We do not endorse an unreasonable faith. In the wake of the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, however, human reason assumed a new and dominant role, especially in Western society, that goes far beyond our ability to think and to arrive at correct conclusions.
In contrast to the idea that all our knowledge is based on sensory experience, another view regards human reason as the chief source of knowledge. This view, called rationalism, is the idea that truth is not sensory but intellectual and is derived from reason. In other words, certain truths exist, and our reason alone can directly grasp them. This makes human reason the test and norm for truth. Reason became the new authority before which everything else had to bow, including the authority of the church and, more dramatically, even the authority of the Bible as God’s Word. Everything that was not self-evident to human reason was discarded and its legitimacy questioned. This attitude affected large parts of Scripture. All miracles and supernatural acts of God, such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the virgin birth, or the six-day Creation, to name but a few, were no longer considered true and trustworthy.
The truth is, we should remember the fact that even our reasoning power is affected by sin and needs to be brought under the reign of Christ. Human beings are darkened in their understanding and alienated from God (Ephesians 4:18). We need to be enlightened by God’s Word. Furthermore, the fact that God is our Creator indicates that, biblically speaking, our human reason is not created as something that functions independently or autonomously of God. Rather, “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10; compare with Proverbs 1:7). It is only when we accept God’s revelation, embodied in the Written Word of God, as supreme in our lives, and are willing to follow what is written in the Bible, that we can reason correctly.
Centuries ago, American President Thomas Jefferson made his own version of the New Testament by cutting out anything that, in his view, went against reason. Gone were almost all of the miracles of Jesus, including His resurrection. What should this alone teach us about the limits of human reason for understanding truth?
