dizerner wrote: ↑Thu Oct 27, 2022 4:34 pm
The pride of man lodges deep within our instincts that God gave us our own mental ability to rely on.
But all throughout Scripture this is condemned, and the opposite is declared.
That one could take "the Father revealed" and make it to mean "my mind will reveal" just shows how faulty and inaccurate relying on our intellect can be.
A few posts about logic in a massively old and long thread will not derail anything.
The point has been made, and even illustrated right here in front of us.
Dwight - I see that Darin and I agree on this point. That doesn't happen too often. Dizerner, if nobody relied on their own mental ability, including Christians, then we would be living in the stone age right now. We would not have cars, computers, trains, ships, airplanes, ships - basically no modern inventions or conveniences. Nor would we have Christian theologians and teachers, and even the rest of us believers, who must rely on our brains to understand scripture and accurately handle the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15 As Christians, however, we recognize what Jesus said, "...apart from Me, you can do nothing." Paul said " ... for in Him we live and move and exist, ..."
As we use, and even rely on our brains, we are constantly aware that God has not only made our brains, but He also made them work! Everything we do or say or think, must go through our brains before anything happens. If that didn't happen, we would be dead. Isn't it our brain that tells our heart to beat and our lungs to breathe and our mouth to speak, and our hands and feet to do this or that? When we get out of bed, don't we rely on our brain to assure us that our feet will hold us up?
But we do not consciously think, or say "I must put my full trust in God that when I step out of bed, He will hold me up." We do it, usually without even thinking about it. If God required us to consciously think or say that (and of course, believe it, which we do) before we did anything, we would basically be a "vegetable", because that would be impossible.
God meant for us to trust in our feet to hold us up, and to walk. He meant for us to trust in our arms and hands to open doors, feed ourselves, and even write posts on the Bible Forum.
It wouldn't matter what the Father revealed, if Peter couldn't understand it with his logic and his reasoning, it would have been useless. Nobody here, except you, said that we were interpreting "the Father revealed" to mean "my mind revealed". I believe the Father ALONE revealed, but Peter understood what was revealed using his brain. Not only that, but Peter had been with Jesus long enough to KNOW that he could expect supernatural things to happen, when he followed Him. This revelation was one of those supernatural things.
Dizerner, if you had not relied on your logic and your brain, you could not have even posted what you said. So you are doing the very thing that you say the Scripture condemns.