Debate. A modernist idea. Pre-modernism was a Greek creation where they worshiped the idols created with their own hands, being both anti-God and anti-Bible. The Renaissance ls essentially a revival of Greek thought and this is the modernism that has crept into the Western mind. This period of Enlightenment, is an elevation of human reasoning over revelation and we are seeing the fruits of it as we depart from our foundation of Christianity....we are in a post-Christian era in this nation. People claim they are Christian without ever darkening a church door or cracking open a bible, but they know they are Christian because they reason in their minds what God is (which is idolatry, creating a god by their own reasoning, desires, ideas and not a discussion of an interpretation as is so often claimed).
How is it, when denying divinity of the Bible or portions thereof, that one would say he is a Christian? If a Christian's namesake, Jesus Christ, said there is but one path, one Godhead, how can one who claims to be a Christian deny his Namesake's truth when Jesus says that he is the way? According to Christ, there are not many paths "to the great river", but only the straight and narrow. Denial of Christ's truth disqualifies one from calling oneself a Christian, i.e. you are His antithesis.
The cardinal concept of modernism is that man's reasoning is supreme; it trumps the Bible and says there are no absolutes. Certainly modernism says there are no absolutes from God. When in mondernist thinking it becomes time for the enlightened to say, "Let us reason", their agreement of a "standard" is but temporal and worthless based upon the whims of a man or woman's reason. Reason brought us Hitler, Communism and other plaques.
There are absolutes, but they are not manmade.
Hence, I fall to : Timothy and Titus
1 Timothy 1:6
1 Timothy 1:7
2 Timothy 2:16 and finally,
Titus 3:9
Geoff, you had this on your heart, eh?
Rasutus and Pathfinder
I thank you for you post, because I now understand you. (Amazing what happens when you don't shut off debate and are man enough to actually listen to your opponent eh?

) We are in fundamental disagreement about one of the key debates in western Christianity, and that is the relative emphasis to put on Athens and Jerusalem. I would very much disagree with how you characterize the greek and western view of reason and debate and our inability to understand the divine by just looking at page 460, but your point is clear and valid. You are also far from alone, now and historically. I am assuming that you are a literalist Evangelical. You believe that Scripture is the place to go for all moral quetions (and I agree on this most of the time), but you also take it literrally. I am an Anglican (though with very strong Quaker sympathies). We believe that the Bible is inspired, authoritative and true, but that it was written by authorised witnesses doing their best to record events or revelations as they understood them, not directly by God (like the muslims believe of the Koran). Therefore we believe that we must be guided by the "three legged stool"of scripture, reason and tradition. It doesn't make us any less or more Christian than you, but just very different in our outlook. Now you can say that's WRONG and you're no real Christtian if you don't believe exactly as I do. I would say that I'll let God decide, and that you are suffering from a severe case of the sin of pride. The thing is that we won't know till we're dead, and then He will settle this debate, probably by laughing at both of us.
Fightingquaker13
PS Geoff The reason I didn't respond to your points was that I pretty much agree with you on the stimulus and Holder, everything except the pizza thing. I also know that you've hated Obama since the day he got the nomination, just as I hated W. since he defeated McCain version 1.0 in the GOP primary and that pretty much nothing will change your mind. I disagree, but sometimes you just find a politician you can't stand.