By John Carr.

The traditional Irish tune ‘Slane’ is a very popular hymn setting and there are four hymns in Australia’s Together in Song that use it.

Singing one of these recently, “Lord of Creation” (TIS 626; words by Jack Copley Winslow, 1882-1974), I was really annoyed by the words of Verse 3:

Lord of all wisdom, I give you my mind:

Rich truth that surpasses our knowledge to find,

What eye has not seen and what ear has not heard

Is taught by your Spirit and shines from your word.

Whatever knowledge we gain by reason, it seems, it is nothing compared with the wisdom that God can give. And how do we access this? Through the Spirit and the Christian scriptures, “God’s Word”.

To me, this is the basic problem with religion – that knowledge gained from evidence can be trumped by what the devout believe God is saying to them. Very often, no proof of its truth is available or possible.

Disclaimer: views represented in SOFiA blog posts are entirely the view of the respective authors and in no way represent an official SOFiA position.

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