Dualism
1. The thinking mind and the external world (in Latin res cogitans and res extensa) This had led to the popular idea that God who belongs to the thinking or spiritual world cannot influence the material world. The early church had to overcome this dualism when it asserted that the logos became Jesus Christ, a physical man. God is the creator of both the visible and the invisible.
2. Second closely related is the dualism of the objective and the subjective. We think that everyone can have his own truth. Yet God's view is the objective one. Is beauty or goodness only in the eye of the beholder. Or is there a truth objective goodness and/or beauty. They are not totally subjective. On the other hand the findings of science are often held out to be totally objective facts the same in any society.
3. The third duality is that between theory and practice. These words are based on two Greek words, theoria and praxis. Interestingly neither of these two words is in the Bible because their way of describing the world is foreign to the writers of the Bible. In the Bible the operative contrast is between believing and obeying on the one hand and refusal to believe and obey on the other hand (p.39). He uses the example I quoted in another post, when Jesus said to Simon "Follow me." Simon's response is one. There is no gap between mental action of believing and physical action of following. The person is not a mind connected to a body but a single being.
Newbigin states that the most important dualism to look at is the second one if we are to become confident in a certainty of our faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment