{"id":852,"date":"2010-06-03T12:21:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-03T19:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=852"},"modified":"2010-06-03T19:33:30","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T02:33:30","slug":"we-have-to-give-god-a-leg-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=852","title":{"rendered":"We have to give God a leg up"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Since Adam was sent away from paradise we are always looking for back doors<\/strong>, as it were, in order to realize our aim to be able to boast of participating in God himself and his thinking! I’d prefer Adam, for he was honest and did not try to hide his aim! What answers the question: What does this have to do with me? We know and confess<\/strong> two things: first<\/strong>, that God, the real God, became human, really human, according to <\/em>Constantinople<\/em> and <\/em>Chalcedon<\/em>. This is true and is a fact independent<\/strong> of any philosophical answers, principles, axioms, or whatever, and second<\/strong>, that nobody<\/strong> in the whole world would be as bold as to fancy, state, or wish that our salvation and lives are dependent on this very child, born in a manger, brought to death on the cross, and resurrected the third day. This is the topic, at least of theology \u2014 and we are busy enough to tell this and to spell out the meaning of it! Mr. Hinlicky, however, is two centuries late in rehashing a position of idealistic philosophy. What confusion to transform into terms of philosophy what God has done, and then ask questions God has already answered, and then try to solve the questions we raise as if there were any necessity of asking them.<\/strong> On a meta-level this means to subdue theology and theological questions under the leadership and control of our brains. Wow, aren’t we shrewd and smart?”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hinlicky is part of a new Lutheran school of thought which claims that, before we can preach the gospel, we have to give God a leg up by showing that His existence is philosophically plausible.<\/p>\n

Once we demonstrate to hearers that it\u2019s rational to believe that God exists, then we can preach to them.<\/p>\n

The problem is that reason is caught in sin, too.<\/p>\n

Intellectual \u201cgood works\u201d are just as broken and fallen as moral \u201cgood works.\u201d<\/p>\n

The claims of this \u201cnew\u201d school are not new at all. Luther met them in Erasmus, and his answer is The Bondage of the Will<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Klaus Schwarzw\u00e4ller excerpt above is footnote #67 in Mark Mattes\u2019 \u201cResponse to Hinlicky\u2019s \u2018Paths Not Taken<\/em>\u2019\u201d (emphasis added), available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Since Adam was sent away from paradise we are always looking for back doors, as it were, in order to realize our aim to be able to boast of participating in God himself and his thinking! I’d prefer Adam, for he was honest and did not try to hide his aim! What answers the question: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":855,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions\/855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}