Christians, effects of the Fall paradox?

Question

If our minds became fallible at the moment of the Fall, how can we trust the conclusions of our minds?
(including the conclusion that the Bible is divinely inspired)

or is it "affects"...I always mix those up...

Machaira: How can you trust you can know the difference between your intuition and the Spirit?

Answer 1

If you want to tthrow a fundamentalist, this is a good place to start.

There are in fact two main modes of fundamentalist thought concerning the fall. The hard-core theory is called Infralapsarianism, and the conclusion it leads to is that God created the world and everything that came after was fixed and predetermined, including the Fall and all its consequences. The other school of thought is that God changes her mind.

The weird payoff of the former is that evangelicism is a worthless activity, since everyone who will ever make into God's fold is already destined to do so. No one can be converted since God has already decided who rises and falls.

When you see those people from the Watchtower handing out their little comic books, ask them if their religion is Infralapsarian. You will get a blank stare, not unexpected. But their own religion declares that the number of the saved is fixed and predetermined, those seats are reserved and have been since the beginning of time.

Still, the sheep hand out their pamphlets, unaware of the theory of their own chosen faith...

A perfect example of what's wrong with unthinking religion, in my opinion.

Answer 2

The human mind is certainly capable of being deceived. That is why so many believe error.

The Bible is a Book from outside our knowledge and experience. It proves it is written by God Himelf - for those who bother to take some real time to investigate it - and not parrot what others have said about it.

The evidence supporting the accuracy of the Bible is validated constantly by many shovelfuls of dirt turned over in Bible lands every day. Much of the accuracy and trustworthiness of the Bible has been examined carefully and proven true in books such as "Evidence That Demands A Verdict" (by Josh McDowell), and similar books.

God has also put into the Bible enough things that man could not have known at the time, to show that the things that have not happened - will happen just as He said. One example of this would be that the Bible declares the earth is round - this could not have been known in around 700 BC (see Isaiah 40:22).

Answer 3

Effects. You got it right the first time. :-)

I, for one, don't believe that our minds became fallible with the fall. I think they were always fallible, which is why they picked the apple in the first place. Here is the thing, though: even if you don't believe in the Bible, how can you trust the conclusions of your mind? Everything is subject to bias, perceptions problems, and context. You sort it out the best you can. It is no different for people who believe in the Bible. They sort it out the best they can. The benefit to believing in the Bible, however, is that you believe that God helps you! You are not trusting in your mind. You are trusting in God.

Answer 4

Possible. Trusting your conclusions on any topic is problematic. The mind is faulty in its work, no matter the topic.

But this doesn't change the possibility that there is an objective, absolute truth. The question is if we, with faulty minds, can every understand or see this truth. I don't believe we can, on our own.

God's word is said to be 'revealed', which is a possible fix to the paradox. The absolute arbiter of an absolute truth, operating outside of a fallen world, but extending incite into absolute truth when and where seen fit.

Answer 5

I am not a Christian, but I think this is an interesting question, that is valid for christians, believers and not believers. We simply can't trust our senses, and in some degree we can't trust our minds too. We can only pretend how things are, but never know for sure how things really are.

We can only be sure of who we are, and the choices we make in the time we are given. The rest...I wonder. I think that we can take things as they are to make things easier for our minds.

Answer 6

Christ's message is one founded on faith - not on the artificial but useful construct of scientific analysis. All scientific propositions, including mathematical ones, rest on unprovable assumptions - in the first instance - for instance, that lines constructed as parallel will not meet, and so faith is the key. So we cannot trust the conclusions of our minds on the Fall.

However, even if one does not embrace Biblical literalism - at least in the narrow sense - the experience of the world is completely consistent with the lessons of the Fall.

Where people are permitted choice, where right and wrong are seen as courses that may be chosen, there is morality, as opposed to the unconscious following of rules. Where there is moral knowledge, there will inevitably be good and evil.

Anyone who knows anything about human nature and for instance, the experience of communism, for instance East Germany's Stasi's raping female dissidents and causing them to stand in water, nude up to their breasts for more than 12 hours per day, in a prison camp just down the road from the Brandenburg Gate, as recently as 1989, would think hard and long before embracing the perfectability of Man as a platform and in rejecting the Christian teaching that the good is admixed with the evil, in human endeavor, albeit, there is precious little good reflected in theStasi.

The task of social theory is not to liberate the inner animal ala Freud, but to ensure that the exercise of freedom within appropriate general rules conduces to the good of all. This is reflective of the outcome in a free market economy. Our marriage markets have long since yielded to the law of the jungle and so they are strikingly pitiless so far as children are concerned.

So you are right to be concerned about the falsification of our judgments by our desires, but that is merely to recognize that reason is the servant of our desires, albeit a neutral servant, and so the proper course is not to concern oneself with reason relative to God, but embrace faith and its fruits.

Answer 7

It's "effects" and we don't trust JUST the conclusions of our mind. We also trust the leading of the Spirit.

Answer 8

Many assume we Christians just read the Bible and follow it blindly without also seeking guidance from the Guy that inspired it to begin with.

Answer 9

I think that we have a lot more information about how God operates and we can learn from the mistakes people have been making in the past.

I trust that the Bible is reliable.

Answer 10

We can not
We can not trust the conclusions of our mind.

Jesus said: You must be born again! The born again believer can trust the Spirit of God to lead and guide him in all his way . . . after he is born again, not before. This is done through faith. (so you can't boast about it later!)