Our knowledge of the world is constrained and formed by the world around us, which God made. Our brains also have a similar structure, which implies that all humans, to some extent, have a similar view of reality. A Christian might say that God designed it to have a generally accurate sense of the world. Evolution would say that the brain evolved in a way that makes it function successfully in the world. These two viewpoints do not seem to be mutually exclusive.
Within these external constraints, a good deal of our view of the world is a function of culture and individuality. Our cultural inheritance assigns meaning to many objects, events, and actions that is not universal or timeless. Similarly, our individual genetics, environment, and choices shape individual aspects to our view of the world.
The universe gives us most of the content of what we might call our knowledge through our senses. But our minds, consisting of our brains, cultural and individual constructions, organize that data.
The Bible does not make an end round all this. The Bible is processed in our brains and our interpretations are impacted by our culture and individuality. Indeed, its original moments of writing involved the biblical authors' culture and individuality in the midst of inspiration. God does tell us about the world in the Bible, but he does so in an incarnated way rather than an objective way.
Some thoughts...
5 comments:
Where does the indwelled Spirit fit into your diagram?
Susan
The Spirit guides our thoughts in an incarnated way, so mostly in the personal part, although the Spirit can certainly steer cultures too. The Spirit can give us direct understanding, but the machinery God has created stays the same.
But as a nurse over the years I have seen every part of a Christian's human body inside and out. I have never seen the Spirit because He is invisible. But if I were to be able to see Him, where does He reside in the human body?
Susan
I assume he likes to trip wires in the brain and other places. :-)
Yea, that's it. Good answer (I was poised) :-)
In a trauma center where I had worked I befriended a neuro-surgeon and told him of my interest in observing a brain surgery, so he invited me to watch. The patient was positioned and draped, and in that process I lost my bearings at what part of the brain I was looking at when the bone and all was removed and the brain was finally exposed. I pointed to a part of the brain that looked different than the adjoining part and asked, "What's that?" He answered, "That's the mind."
The lesson was: the mind and the brain are both in the skull, and are inseparable from one another. And the brain is part of the body. So when the body dies, the brain and the mind die. So, where is the soul?
When I was still mentally ill that is one of the things that I liked to muse over, since I couldn't do much else but think about things. Mental illness doesn't generally effect one's intelligence. And focusing on my thoughts helped distract me from the hallucinations, particularly if my thoughts were about God.
The Bible tells us our indwelled Spirit is with each of us for eternity. I have helped with the process of determining if a person has become brain dead, and therefore their organs can be harvested for donation and possibly save another's life. But that person has a soul, and if a Christian, then they have a permanently indwelled Spirit. I know at the time of physical death the soul and Spirit leave the person. But regardless of when a person went unconscious, or when one's heart stopped beating, up until that last blip on the EEG the soul and Spirit are just as alive as when the person was born-again, a new creation. When the body dies, then they leave, unchanged from when they began their joyful love affair: A match made in heaven.
Susan
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