Originally posted by Halitose
[b]Evil is human.
How would you reconcile this with your claim that the Word is found everywhere -- even in human evil? Or is the Word not necessarily from God?
We bring it all upon ourselves in our striving to become, not like God, but equal and indepenent to God.
So you define evil as a form of idolatry, perhaps? By what criteria do we ...[text shortened]... ve to match it.[/b]
True, although it needs to exist in concept; hypothetically if you wish.[/b]
You enjoy the word "reconcile," don't you? Human evil is based in our
percieved seperation from God. We simultaneously see ourselves as lesser than and potentially equal to God. There is only idol worship if we ourselves are the idols--or, if you prefer, if humanity itself is the idol.
The Word is certainly always from God, only we lack the capacity to understand it. We make up our own songs and pretend, very convincingly, that our songs are the songs of angels. We're also very easily distracted. Sort of like spiritual ADD.
I certainly believe that we can "inherently discern Truth from truth" as you put it, if for no other reason that otherwise it would all be pointless. If we could not tell what was holy, then any nut job with a Council (see crack about Nicene made by someone earlier in the thread) and decide for us what was holy and what wasn't, what was the Word and what was merely, the word. After all, if we can't tell the difference, anything that we are told to be holy could go either way. If this was the case, we might as well believe the prettiest senario, because we're all doomed anyway and we might as well go down smiling.
I typed this all out very fast, so it will probably need clarifying. I will try my best to answer any points later on in the day when I actually have time.