Brief response to CSI

I am not a Roman Catholic, nor an apologist for the Roman Catholic Church.

CSI was and is a fine program, in reruns, which I enjoy watching at times. I viewed this episode featured yesterday.

How I would have replied to Grissom and the Priest from the above You Tube clip?

Paraphrased: Grissom

I believe in God, I do not believe in religion.

As humanity is finite, fallen (Genesis) and sinful (or at least corrupt and imperfect by secular standards), there is a fracture and separation between humanity and God. The human capacity for belief in God, stand alone is based on speculation (and often uses sentimental theology, see archives in Dr. Russell Norman Murray).

Humanity is not in the direct supernatural presence of God as are the finite angels that stayed in obedience to God and have certain access to God, that humanity does not. (Revelation). Even as humanity is made in the image and likeness of God, alone. (Genesis 1-26-27).

As much as I embrace philosophy of religion, and examining religious philosophy (my British PhD was in philosophical theology and philosophy of religion), as an academic discipline outside of Scripture which can be used to reason God's truth, it does not provide the information required to know about God personally. It does not provide the theology required for salvation.

Paraphrased: Priest

What if the Bible is handed down by God.

Grissom does not reply and ignoring revelation is a fatal intellectual mistake.

The response from the priest is key. It is Biblical revelation, biblical theology via Scripture which provides not only information about God, but information on who God is, so that God can actually be known, via the Holy Spirit, and through  the atoning and resurrection work of Christ, for salvation. This in contrast to speculating on God alone, with philosophy of religion, which would be Grissom's approach when he states that he believes in God and believes in science.

Paraphrased: Priest

There is a difference between fanaticism and religion.

Paraphrased: Grissom

That is semantics.

No, not true.

Jesus Christ in John 18: New American Standard Bible

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm."

There is a significant, distinct difference between following the New Testament in reasonable, accurate obedience through grace through faith (Romans, Ephesians, Galatians) and in contrast, instead following a politicized church-state model in disobedience to God the Son, Jesus Christ.

Church-state connections meant the politicization of the church in many contexts starting with favour for the church from Constantine (ca. 274-337) and eventually the development of the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Greek Orthodox Church in the East, and the Schism of 1054. Cairns (1981: 205).

In this context of church-state, the crusades existed.

Politicization of the church may have protected it from persecution but there was the danger of State influence in church matters with a church-state union and this often effects the integrity of the Biblical and New Testament message and theology. Cairns states between 313 and 590 the Old Catholic church became the Roman Catholic Church in which the bishop of Rome won primacy over other bishops. Cairns (1981: 157). At the same time church ritual also became more elaborate. Cairns (1981: 157).

CAIRNS, EARLE E. (1981) Christianity Through The Centuries, Grand Rapids, Zondervan Publishing House.

Snipping Tool image, not You Tube link