Rationalist : Human reason & experience is the Origin of Truth instead of the God of the Bible. Unwittingly making man the judge of God instead of God the judge of man.
Thus the difference between Deductive vs Inductive "reasoning" as a method for Theology.
Christian Thelogy comes from "Above" rather than below. God is the basic axiom.
This is not in favor with the crowd that is more properly labeled ANTHROpologetic or PSYCHOlogic.
If you define "rationalist" in the more esoteric sense of the idea that
reason is the source of truth, then I do not believe the Holy Spirit is a
rationalist. By this definition, I am not a rationalist either. However, I
do believe that the Holy Spirit is rational. He also does not lie or employ
deception to mislead others. The Holy Spirit uses rational thought to speak
to us, and he expects us to include rationality as a basis of belief and
action. ---------- DMTorrance might give caution with these words:".............. we should seek to understand Christ, not by way of observational deductions from his appearances, but in the light of what he is in himself in his internal relations with God, that is, in terms of his intrinsic significance disclosed through his self-witness and self-communication to us in word and deed and reflected through the evangelical tradition of the Gospel in the medium which he created for this purpose in the apostolic foundation of the Church ...... When we adopt this kind of approach, whether in natural science or in theology, we find that progress in understanding is necessarily circular. We develop a form of inquiry in which we allow some field of reality to disclose itself to us in the complex of its internal relations or its latent structure, and thus seek to understand it in the light of its own intrinsic intelligibility or logos ..............Thus we seek to understand something, not by schematising it to an external or alien framework of thought, but by operating wit h a framework of thought appropriate to it" -------The Mediation of Christ pp 4,5
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