In a recent Facebook discussion, a friend posted some quotes from “Jesus Calling” and asked whether there was any Biblical defense of the supposed statements from “Jesus.” No scriptural defense was given but there were a few lively responses that if people were “touched” and “helped”, the end justifies the means. However, the question remains, if someone was “helped”, were they given greater and more accurate understanding of the One True God as attested to in the Bible or a figment of someone’s imagination? The figment may evoke very nice feelings and still be false.

The Romantic period is typified by an uncontested embrace of personal experience, not merely as self-expression or self-representation, but also as epistemology and personal identity (who I am, ontologically)…

Romanticism claimed that you know truth through the lens of your personal experience, and that no overriding or objective opposition can challenge the primal wisdom of someones subjective frame of intelligibility. In romanticism, this knowing and being known is identity-rooted and identity-expressive. Romanticism went beyond a solipsistic, me-centered understanding of selfhood. Solipsism is the belief that only one’s own mind and its properties are sure to exist. Romanticism took this one step further to declare personal feelings and experience the most reliable measure and means of discerning truth.¹

The foundation of all true knowledge of God must be a clear mental apprehension of His perfections as revealed in Holy Scripture. An unknown God can neither be trusted, served, nor worshipped.³

1. Openness Unhindered, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Crown and Covenant Publications, 2015, pg. 95. (italics mine)
2. The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy L. Sayers, HarperCollins, 1987, pg. 17
3. The Attributes of God, A.W. Pink, Baker Book House, 1975, pg. 7.

Persis Lorenti is an ordinary Christian. You can find her at Tried With Fire and Out of the Ordinary. This article appeared at her blog and is used with permission.