Despite Niall's critique, I think that there may be life in the old saw yet (ie. "faith must be reasonable"). Clearly (for those who assent to its principles), postmodernism has put paid to the idea that there is a universal foundation and language of reason which we may all share and by which public ideas ought to be measured. The use of the term 'discourse' suggests that it is perhaps this usage which Niall has in mind in his criticism.
Yet I think that there is another possible understanding of the phrase which is still (IMO) valid, and that is the sense in which faith must be reasonable to me personally, by being workably consonant with the rest of my network of beliefs and worldview. To put it another way, *my* faith ought not to cause cognitive dissonance for *me*. Tellingly, it is this personal application which Allan actually evinces in the rest of his message, referring to the division he felt personally between what he felt he was being taught in SS and what he felt his brain was telling him. ISTM that reasonableness in this sense is indeed necessary to human thought, and thus to faith. Which brings me to my last comment. Niall comments that there is no reason why God must be reasonable. I suspect that if reason is seen as suggested above as similar in tenor to self-consistency, that there *is* an implicit reason why God must be 'reasonable', but for the sake of argument, let us put that aside. The point I wish to make is that the saying was about 'faith', not God. And 'faith' being at least to some extent a human process can be subject to human constraints that God may not be - and I would suggest that 'reasonableness' is one of them. Cheers Linz Psssst! Did you hear that Niall McKay ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said this: > I don't believe there is any implicit reason why God must > be "reasonable" as "reason" whilst helpful (perhaps even > neccessary) to us humans is only one discourse amongst many... Windows 2000 = Mac 1984! -- Rev. Lindsay Cullen Email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] An old(!) website... www.lindsaycullen.com ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
