Friday, December 29, 2006

Subject/object dichotomy and Christian Faith

Recently on a Message board I defended Keirkegaard's idea of fiath as subjective. A fellow Christian said to me:

I think you have fallen into the trap of letting the
>atheists set the agenda fort the meaning of the word
>"subjective."
>
>I answered:
>
That's so very irnonic. Becasue by embracing the subject Object dichotomy you are doing nothing more than affirming the atheist world view. There is no way to be a Christian and affirm the subject/object dichotomy in the strict "good/bad" framework, with subject = bad, object = good that atheists impose.

That is empirically and Biblically the case. When God speaks thorugh Jerimaiah and describe the new covenant (ch 31) he says "the new covmenat will not be like the old one, for the broke the old one. NO longer will a man say to his neighbor "know the lord" for they will alll know me from the least to the greatest."

Now laws are objective. Rules are objective. He's saying they broke the objective covenant the one based upon rule keeping. They new one will be subjective (they will all know me--knowing is a jubjective matter because it depends upon the indivuaul's percetions).

so he's saying the objective coveneant will be overturned in favor of the subjective covmenat, the one based upon personal experince.

You have fallen into the trap of not being up to date on Heidegger and not being well versed int he thierkers of the tradition, such as Kierkegaard.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep. It's amazing to me that "written on their hearts" is so missed. I think most athiests don't understand what subjective means when it comes to moral law either. They think the objective is what goverments and people inflict on their people. But that is a moral code that is still based on subjective. The fact is, the OT shows us that objective laws (that is ones that originate outside of oneself) do NOT work. They simply ignore. I could go on.... and on.. about the subjective... maybe for my own blog. ;)

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

excellent comments Matrix, thanks. come to my boards man.