God talk

There certainly is a negativity about different religions in certain Christian histories and theologies, and I think football can teach us something here! The problem in football has been that when supporting a team, it means that in someway the opposition can be demonized and this has caused rioting and I assume it will in the future.    With religion one has basic universal beliefs and then we move on to particular beliefs and this can cause a ring fence.   When two sets of contrary beliefs touch there is friction. Out of friction can also come respect.   Manchester United playing Liverpool in a Derby… They are both good football teams… They can leave and one day one team will win the football cup and its trimmings. At times Christianity and Islam can be like that. Who is telling the truth?   This is when mythologizing can start, and misconstrued accusations can fly.    Some modern ideas for example attack certain aspects of God in another religion without actually taking notice

I have problems with this idea.   We are going back through the back door to Schleiermacher, internalizing knowledge of God and from my point of view this brings us back to mythologizing.   Barth is correct…   Let God be God… He is the Creator God and we are the creatures… Let the Bible speak for itself.   Let other religions speak for themselves and let us have a discussion.   Let us not forget where this Liberal theology took us.   From my perspective two World Wars, the death of countless millions of people, the rise of communism and Fascism, and the attempted annihilation of the Jewish people.   If God is replaced by some other belief, ideology or something then the vacuum will be filled by something else…   

Pannenberg obviously has started to critique the Reformers here as it seems to be the case he wants to move to rationality. Later on, he looks at conscience and how it has been understood by various philosophers through the ages such as Descartes. By page 117 Pannenberg uses Romans 1:20 and 2:15 that knowledge of God isn’t just innate but also room for acquired he then goes on to say that this was a mistake (page 117) and this is why natural theology of the philosophers contributed to a one-sided negativity of other religions. Tomorrow you will hear why I don’t agree here. Pannenberg says in his natural knowledge of God (scanned); This early emphasis of Luther and Melanchthon on inborn rather than acquired knowledge of God was closely bound up with their distrust of reason, which was enslaved and blinded after the fall (capta occae cataque, CR, 21, 116; LCC, XIX, 50). According to Luther the turning to idolatry goes hand in hand with the false conclusions which reason draws