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To: Mad Dawg
We agree that syllogisms themselves are okay. It’s their misuse that is the problem.
Bierce’s fencepost is hardly syllogism though ...

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." God said it.
That settles it.
By complete total faith I believe it.
By syllogism, angels dance on the head of a pin.
I do not believe in that.

"Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural (psuchikos) man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolish unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually (pneumatikos) discerned. ...
But we have the mind of Christ." (1 Cor. 2:12-14,16b)

The word "therefore" does not appear in this passage. The 'psuchikos' man who attempts psychological logic to attain dominance, and needs it to stabilize.

The spiritual man leans not on his own understanding, but trusts in the inerrant, infallible, plenary inspired, and preserved Word of The God, which spoken, conquers.

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. ..." (Phil. 2:5)

Did it make any sense by humanistic reasonings (logismoi) for Him to come down from His Glory, and be slain as a though a disobedient slave of Satan?

23 posted on 09/01/2012 11:07:29 AM PDT by imardmd1 (Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them NOT!)
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To: imardmd1
Oh my. Here we go.

First: To defend logismoi in some circumstances is not to say that syllogism provide ALL truth. So to concede that some perception of truth comes through means other than logismoi is not to abandon syllogisms entirely.

Now, syllogisms are about the relationship between assertions. Reasoning in general is pretty much the same. For example:

What God said is reliable.
"In the beginning ...." is a thing God said.
Therefore it is reliable.
That there is a syllogism. Your "God said it... That settles it..." conceals a syllogism.

I would hold that the primary assertions of the Faith are given by the Spirit.
The necessary insight and disposition to see their implication clearly and justly are given by the same Spirit.

I think the difference is that in our view the Spirit usually works with what we have. For example, He doesn't take the sex out of marriage, he sanctifies it and the relationship.

He doesn't take, in our view, the "syllogism" (and here we are using a kind of synedoche) out of faith; he sanctifies and directs it.

In Romans 2:15

οἵτινες ἐνδείκνυνται τὸ ἔργον τοῦ νόμου γραπτὸν ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις αὐτῶν, συμμαρτυρούσης αὐτῶν τῆς συνειδήσεως καὶ μεταξὺ ἀλλήλων τῶν λογισμῶν κατηγορούντων ἢ καὶ ἀπολογουμένων, ...
Paul does not seem to condemn logismoi, though elsewhere he certainly makes an opposition.

It seems to me to deny the goodness of creation to say that reason is useless. And arguments in favor of the proposition will fail because they appeal to reason, whether they admit it or not.

29 posted on 09/01/2012 12:39:00 PM PDT by Mad Dawg (Depone serpentem et ab veneno gradere.)
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To: imardmd1
The spiritual man leans not on his own understanding, but trusts in the inerrant, infallible, plenary inspired, and preserved Word of The God.....

"Contradiction" anyone?

43 posted on 09/02/2012 5:02:22 AM PDT by papertyger ("And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if..."))
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