Stripe, while I've quoted your post, you should know that my post isn't directed at you in particular. I'm just using your post as a jumping off point...
Good logic is good. It is required in a sensible approach to any topic.
It is required in any approach to any topic. Not one meaningful syllable can be communicated without logic. Even if those syllables add up to the most ridiculous, slobber mouthed stupidity, if it was even the least bit intelligible, which is to say that if it was anything other than totally meaningless gibberish, then logic was there to make it so.
Of course, as I said, I know that you knew this already! I'm just taking your comment as opportunity to drive home a particular point that I don't think even 1% of people on this planet, and an even smaller percentage of Christians, understand. That point being, specifically, that logic is what is called a "first principle". You cannot get around it, there is no epistemological foundation underneath it because it is the foundation of all epistemology. It is not possible to NOT use logic if one is conveying any information. Even if no one can understand you, even if no one has the intelligence to comprehend your speech, even if your mind is the only mind in all existence that knows what you're saying, you not only used logic to speak it, you had already used logic to cogitate the concept prior to ever having opened your mouth to utter it.
Some Christians might object to calling logic a first principle thinking that doing so elevates it above God. This, however is not so because God is Logic, or more accurately stated, God is Reason. In English, the words "logic" and "reason" are very often used interchangeably and this is totally fine and acceptable but if we desire to be more technical, "logic" refers to the fundamental, abstract rules that sound reason follows, while the word "reason" refers to the act of rational thought itself.
The Greek term "logos", while a cognate of the English word "logic", is very much closer in actual meaning to the English word "reason" which, as I said, has to do with the act of proper thinking. The only relationship "logos" has with the English word "word" is that words are the things we use to articulate thoughts but the Greek word for this is "rhema" not "logos", thus the common English translation of "logos" to the English "word" fails almost completely to convey anything close to what ancient reader would have understood John to be saying and is, in fact, an incorrect translation.
The English word "logo" is also a cognate of "logos" and I've seen (although rarely) people try to suggest that Jesus Christ was sort of God's human logo as though He were some sort of avatar. That is a weird and rather strained interpretation but the reason I bring it up is merely to say that "logo" would be a better translation of "logos" than is "word". It would at least have some sort of intuitively understandable meaning. It still wouldn't come close to what ancient readers would have understood John to be saying but it would at least make sense in the English language.
Having said that, the word "logic" is more similar to "logos" in form but "reason" is closer in terms of it's actual definition but since the two words really are used as quite interchangeable synonyms in English, I think there are good arguments that would allow the use of either "logic" or "reason" as a good translation of the Greek word "logos" in John chapter one. Thus we would therefore rightly render the Johannine passage as follows...
“In the beginning was Logic, and Logic was with God, and Logic was God. He (Logic) was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him (Logic), and without Him (Logic) nothing was made that was made. In Him (Logic) was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light (Logic) shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.... Logic became flesh and dwelt among us.”
And, as Gordon Clark rightly observed....
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" This paraphrase-in fact, this translation-may not only sound strange to devout ears, it may even sound obnoxious and offensive. But the shock only measures the devout person’s distance from the language and thought of the Greek New Testament. Why it is offensive to call Christ Logic, when it does not offend to call him a word, is hard to explain. But such is often the case. Even Augustine, because he insisted that God is truth, has been subjected to the anti-intellectualistic accusation of “reducing” God to a proposition. At any rate, the strong intellectualism of the word Logos is seen in its several possible translations: to wit, computation, (financial) accounts, esteem, proportion and (mathematical) ratio, explanation, theory or argument, principle or law, reason, formula, debate, narrative, speech, deliberation, discussion, oracle, sentence, and wisdom.
Any translation of John 1:1 that obscures this emphasis on mind or reason is a bad translation. And if anyone complains that the idea of ratio or debate obscures the personality of the second person of the Trinity, he should alter his concept of personality. In the beginning, then, was Logic." - God and Logic - Gordon H. Clark
So, no, acknowledging logic as a first principle in no way undermines God's preeminent position as THE first principle of first principles because God is Logic and Jesus is Logic incarnate. Indeed, when this idea is fully accepted and it's implications start to become clear, you start to hear God's truth being uttered from the mouths of many of His most strident enemies. As an example, read this quote from Ayn Rand, perhaps the most widely read philosopher in the 20th century (at least here in America) and a woman who HATED God and anything having to do with Christianity. See if what she says here doesn't ring in your ear as being perfectly consistent with not only an overtly Christian worldview but specifically with John's phrase, "In Him (Reason) was life and the life was the light of men"...
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“Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch – or build a cyclotron – without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think.
“But to think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs, or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival – so that for you, who are a human being, the question ‘to be or not to be’ is the question ‘to think or not to think.’ . . .
“Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. . . Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.” ― Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged (emphasis added)
Well, I could go on and on and on but posts that get much longer than this tend to go unread so I'll leave it there for now.
Unfortunately, though I know none of you who read this will make any attempt to refute it, I also know that being right about something is almost never sufficient to convince anyone of it. Nevertheless, if anyone thinks that they can refute a single word of what I've said here, I'll be glad to read it. Here's me not holding my breath.
Resting in Him,
Clete
