Confessing the Faith: Reasoning in Tradition
Nicholas Adams
Signs are not isolate things. There are many signs of God, but we have to know how to interpret them. And, we need to be taught to signs of God for other people.
Tradition and Reasoning. These two things have been seen as incompatible, even opposites. However, they are not. [Vocabulary: anomie—lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group]
Knowing. Knowing about God is hard, because God is unlike anything else. Since knowing about something involves reasoning, Christian reasoning might sounds a bit odd to strangers.
Trinitarian Reasoning. There are 2 errors to avoid: thinking one knows God and thinking one does not know God. God is both too from us to see, and too close for us to see. The Creed is a way of articulating that.
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Prayerful Reasoning. The Creed is a pattern of rules for interpreting God's signs. The Creed is a summary and it contains criteria on how to measure reasoning. Christians argue and the Creed sets limit in order for debate to be possible. How to do that without disenfranchising the weak is an issue. The council of Nicaea as an example.
Living Signs.