A Solid Footing

Augustine of Hippo was a very well respected theologian of the 5th century. He wrote a lot of good stuff, but even Augustine had some problems. One glaring problem was that Augustine was schooled in Platonic thinking and was taught that the material world was evil. Therefore, sex was evil. So Augustine had a problem. God commanded Adam and Eve to ... have sex, to "be fruitful and multiply." There was no way around it. So did God command them to sin? He struggled with it. He concluded that the sin would be sexual desire, so the goal, in essence, would be for Adam and Eve to have sexual relations without enjoying it. That solved his problem. Of course, it was manifest nonsense. But Augustine's problem was not with Scripture. His problem was in trying to align Scripture with pagan philosophy.

Augustine wasn't alone in that, was he? I mean, we see that all the time today. We see Christians -- even genuine Christians -- who try to align modern LGBT beliefs with biblical principles. They don't do it by carefully adhering to Scripture; they do it by carefully adhering to the current belief. We have honest Bible-believing Christians who have spent a long time correcting the idea that God created the heavens and the earth. Of course He didn't! That was Evolution! So they come up with "day-age" timelines and "guided Evolution" concepts that were never a problem when Christians thought, "Well, God's Word says He did, so I will believe He did." Some of these might not be secular notions. A large number of believers, for instance, are absolutely convinced of the notion of a pre-Tribulation Rapture. Mind you, that notion didn't exist prior to the 19th century. No one before that was equally convinced. But this new idea, relatively speaking, has become the only possibility for many because, well, that's what we've been told. Pulling it out of Scripture, on the other hand, isn't quite so certain. One I've been dealing with lately is the concept of God's will versus Free Will. It turns out the problem lies in the Free Will idea. Clearly Scripture teaches that we make choices and Scripture says we are held responsible for such choices -- free will does exist -- but that doesn't require some of these notions of Free Will that require that God has no input to our choices. The problem, then, isn't Scripture on the topic. (Find "free will" in your concordance.) The problem is the philosophical footing that causes the objection ... to self-evident Scripture.

The problem, then, appears to be an improper basis. We start with what we think we know rather than what God's Word says. We don't even know we're doing it. Enough people have trod these paths and laid down plausible reasons why it is true, so we don't even think about it anymore. And we build these structures, as it turns out, on human philosphies and notions rather than biblical ones. And then they become sacrosanct, "true," and we will not abide other ideas, even when they come dressed in clear and present Scripture. But God's Word is clear. The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jer 17:9). The world is blinded by Satan (2 Cor 4:4). So relying on our own philosophies is a foolish place to start. While we must think things over, we must also rely on the Holy Spirit to enlighten us (2 Tim 2:7) rather than relying on our fine philosophies built on sand.