Don't Waste Your Seminary

[@goofball9292]

Thanks a lot to Jesus for this, Amen !

[@goofball9292]

9:57 - 10:17 Amen ! Thanks to Jesus for this ! Truely Amen !

[@joelcook311]

Thank you for sharing this message. I have been greatly helped by the insight offered by Dr. Piper.

[@vladimirsednev5677]

Is this message possible to translate into Russian somehow? I find it very helpful in my surroundings to hear. Probably I could do that but don’t know how.

[@Marmit42424]

I would love to hear from Piper on this. 8:00 - 8:20: Either the logic is faulty or the explanation is faulty. Saying all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God does not limit sin to ones feelings. The next 10 minutes of your sermon are predicated upon this interpretation and I would assume the next 50 are as well. I don't think it follows that the mind exists to serve the heart either. I also don't believe the Word necessarily exists for the purpose of giving my mind knowledge so that I will want God more. That isn't its purpose. That's something that it does. At least, that is all that the verse says. God's ultimate purpose is to be lifted up. Secondarily to save and redeem. What would your response be?

[@TheJpep2424]

His response would be he has a track record of over 40 years of preaching the gospel and proclaiming the purpose of man is to glorify God and God's purpose in creation is to save and redeem. Amazing people will spend time listening to one sermon and knit picking a single sentence or point when John Piper has 40 years of sermons answering the question you asked.

[@Marmit42424]

I'm curious as to what moral you're trying to uphold here? How dare I ask a question, use the mind God gave me? Why not try to give a logical answer? All your efforts accomplished was to make me more sour against Christians, push me further away from God, and give more credence to my questions. If I hadn't found a mentor in the past two years who actually lived biblically in this regard, I wouldn't be a Christian today because of answers like that. Is that the impact you want to have?

[@petethompson9315]

Steven, a couple of thoughts for you: 1. Piper isn't saying that sin is merely at the level of feelings. He saying that sin, which is a deeper issue of the will (heart and mind), certainly and necessarily affects the feelings. I can see how his remarks would have been confusing. 2. You may not agree that the mind serves the heart, but the idea that the Word exists to serve the mind if the the mind exists to serve the heart is cogent. In terms of whether or not the mind serves the heart, Romans 12:1-2 might be of some help. Transformation, the heart's renewal, comes by the renewing of the mind, according to the divinely inspired author of Romans. Your thoughts?

[@samdg1234]

@Steven Buri - Are you still around? Would you still like to engage on these issues? I have been very greatly helped by John Piper's teaching. Doesn't he answer part of your question if you listen just a bit further? He states at 8:32 that "All sin outwardly is an expression of the inward preference of anything above God." Might Matthew 15: 18-19 help shed some light on the this? And your question that the mind exists to serve the heart - I remember when I first heard him say this - I was greatly impressed with the logic of this and was grateful for the clarity with which he presented it. You seem to be much less impressed. I'd like to dialog about these with you. Blessings, Sam

[@spyben3]

1 person is wasting their seminary education. :/

[@MyContext]

Given the absence of evidence for any deity, theological claims of such are necessarily arguments from ignorance making all such arguments/claims worthless with regard to having any rationally claimable point of truth.

[@Ambrose2351]

Whoever said there was no evidence for a deity?

[@MyContext]

Rational - using knowledge to make claims and/or perform actions. Reality entails knowledge about what is observed (evidence-demonstrable cause/effect linkage). Rational does not entail that a given action/understanding is correct, only that there was a basis for such. "And then further to that: if there is a God should He make Himself rational "to you"? Why should He have to??" If there were an all-powerful all-knowing entity that is not perceivable except by its actions, which wants belief in it, it is necessarily the case that it MUST present itself to realize the intended goal of having belief in it. Claims create expectations and various deity claims are necessarily failures due to reality being necessarily different if the claim were in fact true. Here are a few expectations that the above claim demands: 1) There should be no confusion of deity claims. REALITY: We have a parade of different claims. 2) There should be no inability to believe. REALITY: We have people who are so cognitively impaired that such concepts are inaccessible. The claim creates the assumption of competence which assuming that there is a deity would necessarily require that the deity be incompetent given the state of reality. I grant that one could create a notion that is coherent and conforms to reality, however, unless there is evidence FOR that notion there would still be no basis to accept such as being true. If I said that every fifth second, everything stops for a year and then starts up again.

[@Ambrose2351]

MyContext Hey Brother Context, thanks for your reply it is very comprehensive. I will have to try a more complete answer after a sleep (have been working most of today). But out of interest why the interest in spiritual things in the first place? I mean if spirituality may not really be considered rational in the first place why try and engage with it, why bother. Cheers man, have a good weekend.

[@MyContext]

Paul Munro For the purpose of my response I am using the concept of an omnipotent omniscient entity which is not incompetent and is not intrinsically perceivable which wants belief. If you would prefer a different notion used just present it and I will respond to the concept being presented. There are many who would claim that the concept presented is false due to incoherence, but for the moment I will put that aside. "I think in the first instance you might need to consider the fact the we are rational beings. On your rules for demands on any claim they are your constructs and so subjective." I grant that everyone (assuming the cognitive capacity to do so) creates their own constructs. Which depending one whatever claim of deity being presented would determine whether such a claim is reasonable within the frame of that person. The deity is clearly a failure for me, which given the claim should NOT be the case. However, it is the case therefore the claim is false. I suppose you could claim that my logic of reality does not entail that such is true. Agreed. However, are you saying that in your frame of logic that it is reasonable to claim anything existent wherein there is no evidence? Or put another way, does our ignorance allow for any claims of existence? Should the perceived inability of an omniscient omnipotent entity be grounds for dismissal for the idea of such? "They are also incoherent." What is incoherent about requiring evidence by which to make and/or evaluate a claim? "The fact of a single deity would not necessarily preclude there being no others that rational beings invent for themselves (especially in this case when you consider the Biblical assessment of idolatry and its causes); your second point is worrying because it seems to suggest (as per (1)) that "inability to believe" is evidence of the non-existence of the one we are called to believe in. " The claim DEMANDS that if the entity desired something that circumstances (since, it has the power to address circumstances - by definition of the claim - omnipotent) would be such that such could be achieved. This necessarily makes the claim false if circumstances do not allow the demands to be achieved. "You mentioned in fact a cognitively impaired individual who may in fact be unable to grasp concepts such as a deity. But that does not itself force one to believe that there is no deity to believe in- simply that in this case it is difficult (for any number of reasons)." I agree that people do believe, however, given the claim it is not logical to do so given the requirements of the claim. It is unfortunate, but it seems that many can't or don't reviewed what claims entail. There is a passage in the bible that claims man is made in the image of god (this can be taken to mean form) which would be a contradiction to the idea of omnipresence. I grant that one could make up a notion that would address this, but the lack of evidence for deity claims still remains which makes the claims intrinsically vacuous. But unreasonableness does NOT stop belief except for those where reasonableness is important - in which case absurdities are rejected. " For the majority of people this is not the case- we have the evidence (creation and God's Word) and those speak to us; I mentioned in fact our ability to reason itself." Correct me if any of the following points are in error: 1) Your claim of evidence is purely attribution to the idea that an entity did something as opposed to a shred of knowledge to support such a notion. 2) Your claim of [God's Word] speaking to you is about YOUR notions of what the material means as opposed to something in reality. 3) You equate the idea of reason in itself to the idea of a god. Why do you not equate the inability to reason as dismissal or at least a point which leaves the notion unclaimable? There are lots of other god notions which could claim the same that you claim for your notion, however, in the absence of a cause/effect linkage to whatever you claim, all of your notion fall to conjecture and attribution. Which are not claims of truth, but belief notions - and belief notions are not necessarily true. Claims of truth about reality require interlinkages that your claims simply do not possess. " The Bible itself is pretty clear on "inability" to believe in God, and at the root of this is sin. Suppression of the truth of God's existence is given in the Bible as a reason for denial of the evidence- so the Bible assumes that God exists and anything that does not run with that is in itself cognitively suppressive of the truth. Incompatibility with reality? Only if you are the one defining what could be considered incompatible- in which case you are becoming your own deity (which ironically is what the Bible says about those who refuse, through suppression of the truth because of personal sin, in Roman 1 and other places)." The Quran is pretty clear on "inability" to believe. Allah is depicted as making it impossible for some to belief so he can torture them.

[@Marmit42424]

Evidence is defined as a body of facts or information indicating a belief or proposition is true or valid. Claiming that there is no fact or piece of information that goes to support any theological claim is a very large claim. You could spend the rest of your life trying to prove a claim like that. Proving the absence of something is virtually impossible. If you desire to dismiss any theological claim, you're going to have to deal with the claims themselves. If you want to stick with atheism, you're going to have to deal with the fact that somehow, in some unprovable way, for no reason, the universe started to exist. What caused it? The Big Bang? What caused that? What caused that? If matter is neither created nor destroyed how is this possible? You may say this is a God of the gaps argument, but atheists are scientists of the gaps. Everyone has questions they cannot answer and things they don't want to be accountable for in their beliefs.