Hi, Chris and Stephen!

John 14:6! Before truth can be propositional there has to be relational
innforming of the one who utters propositions that are true,
by the truth of things, the truth of events, and for believers, the Holy Spiirt
that guides us into all truth. We have here in "truth"
a many sided concept with many meanings other than the propositional but also
including the propositional!

Not only that, propositional truth can lead to knowing Him who is truth and
sets free! "If you continue in My word, then you are
truly disciples of Mine, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make
you free." John 8:31-32

I hope to write a long essay on truth, probably a short book, dealing with
postmodern concerns about propositional truth and also
showing the different types of truth that there are. My main source of data is
our daily existence. Not books or isms. I will be
doing this during the fall semester. When it is done, probably by October, I
will share it.

I think this is absolutely an important topic. Our Lord calls us to become
transparent with Him. As I share my thoughts with the dear
people that have fellowship with, I share how important it is to go the Lord
naming all of our sin that we are most ashamed of and lift
it out into the space where we talk to him, no matter how humiliating it is
because He knows it allready but we are still hiding it
from him which is silly because hiding does not work! When we come clean, as it
were, and face our disgusting sins and humilated go to
Him, it is my experience that he really responds with power to enable us to deal
with these problems from His resources. Now I come
clean to Him in propositions and He answers with movenments of His spirit that
begin to kill the stuff, the cancer of sin by starving
it and lifting me out of ruts of sinful behavior patterns etc. far more then
when I confessed my sins, generically and vaguely.. The
dear ones under my care reprt similar experiences. This is truth of oneself,
truth in Him, Truth in the work of the Holy Spirit
enabling us tro utter true propositions about ourselves that are distasteful to
our flesh and then of course there is truth and
transparency with others. Our fellowship experiences the truth of the
proposition utterred by John in 1 John 1:7. We understand light
here to mean truth as well as the moral purity of God and His awesome glory and
loving tenderness to us as we experience Him vertically
one on one and horizontally, experience Him together as we are cleansed by His
blood....Yikes, incredible!

Love often has to be tough love. And so sometimes, I have to give God's truth
when a person wants to pretend thay do not need it...but
done in a way where they know I am a sinner and that I am not building myself up
at their expense but just simply bringing the Lord's
teaching to bear on a problem, by owning up immediately If I have done a wrong
to anyone and not trying to hide it. My atheist parents
taught me to be truthful to people and told me I would suffer for it but that it
would be worth it. They were right, I just wish they
had met Him who is the Way, the Life, and the Truth and received Him into their
lives before these dear ones died!

Truth cannot be surrendered when in the first place, God is truth and all truth
of every other kind is provided by Him for us! More on
all of this later if and when there is response to this and also later when I
get my long paper done.

Blessings Chris!!!! Thanks for all your thoughts and challenges! Stephen too!

Jon
sshields@... wrote:

> Pushing back is welcome!
>
> Chris wrote:
>
> "I say this because you seem overly concerned that if you let go
> absolute truth and certainty, that some how this will irreparably harm
> the Christian faith. I will only parrot what Brian has already said
> that the early church and Christians worked for centuries just fine
> without these kind of categories and modern concepts."
>
> I think that our discerning whether you and I actually disagree or
> not while hinge on how we define
>
> Absolute Truth
>
> and
>
> Certainty.
>
> Though I felt that his book Truth Decay was lopsided, I nevertheless
> thought that Groothius did a good job pointing out that truth is not
> a modern concept - that it predates Descartes.
>
> So when the NT talks about the church being "the pillar and
> foundation of the truth" we err if we equate this with a Descartesque
> foundationalism because that kind of classical foundationalism is
> dependent on starting from man.
>
> So what I'm saying is that if I start rather from God, if I include
> personal relationship and trust in the equation, then I can talk
> about certainty and truth, but now it's so much larger and richer and
> more robust than the pretension of certainty that's merely
> anthropocentric (e.g. man-centered, man as the criterion of truth,
> etc.).
>
> I guess what I'm saying, Chris, is that this kind of truth and
> certainty blows modern truth and certainty out of the water. I guess
> my warm and fuzzy doesn't come from how smart or thorough I might
> pretend to be but how awesome He is.
>
> Whattya think? (Others, feel free to chime in!)
>
> Stephen Shields
> sshields@...
> http://www.faithmaps.org
>
>
> You can visit the faithmaps Yahoo groups web site to modify your
> delivery settings and review former messages @
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/faithmaps
>
> Delivery Options: individual emails, 1 digest email a day, or no email (all
emails can be read and responded to at the site above)
>
> Want to unsubscribe? Just send a blank note to
faithmaps-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/