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Contra Stavrinides
by Frank Nelte

PART IV: THE USE OF HUMAN REASON

One major smoke-screen all the way through his presentation is the claim that we have in the past been against the use of human reasoning.

1. That is simply not true! The Church of God during Mr. Armstrong's time was NEVER against the right use of sound, logical reasoning! What the Church was against was the wrong USE of reasoning ... reasoning carnally, selfishly and illogically.
2. A major emphasis in the public speaking classes at A.C. was to teach the students to reason CORRECTLY ... but never to reject all reasoning out of hand. We taught students to examine all premises very carefully. It was Mr. Armstrong who said that wrong ideas and beliefs are often the result of carelessly assuming a wrong premise to be true. Those of us who came into the Church of God through contact with the broadcast, did so because we were CHALLENGED TO REASON CORRECTLY on the facts. And so Dr. Stavrinides himself admits on tape #2:

   "The Church has ALWAYS reasoned."

   To pick on someone who supposedly said something to the effect that ... "we shouldn't be using reasoning" is totally uncalled for. It is just a device to gain support for his ideas.

3. The diagram about ...
   • "above the line" = explicit statements;
   • "below the line" = reasoning; what we infer;

   ... is very artificial. It is intended to justify that his ENTIRE PRESENTATION is "below the line"! Dr. Stavrinides' claim:

   "If we remain above the line, who could preach the gospel? We'd be committed to silence." (Tape #2)

   ... is not logical. For a start, we have about one thousand and five hundred pages of inspired text "ABOVE THE LINE". Secondly, his division is very artificial ... of course, we accept logical reasoning.

4. THE REAL ISSUE REGARDING REASONING IS THIS:

   Dr. Stavrinides' ideas depend totally on reasoning "BELOW THE LINE" to the point of contradicting literally DOZENS of clear scriptures "ABOVE THE LINE". What he does is attach greater importance to what he reasons out "below the line" ... to the point where he uses things reasoned out "below the line" TO DO AWAY WITH clear scriptural statements "above the line".

   THAT kind of carnal reasoning is not acceptable!

5. He does not start with "an open mind", as we are exhorted to do on tape #1. Instead, he starts out with a number of assumed premises, which he then attempts to prove true through his reasoning. The wrong premises he starts with include:
   1. God can't have any shape;
   2. There can't be TWO God-beings;
   3. God exists outside of space;
   4. God exists outside of time;
   5. The Bible doesn't tell us enough about God's nature;
   6. God's nature can be reasoned out by the human mind;

   These premises all go back to the Catholic scholar Origen and through him back to the Greek philosopher Plato. Let's take a closer look at some of these premises.

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