There Is No Academic Support for the Claim that Christianity Is Purely Emotional, Not Intellectual

Without this discussion, I would not have had the opportunity to defend Christians who seek salvation through Christ, because of the sinful condition of their heart and their need for emotional liberation. In this conclusion, I will address several topics of relevance that my opponent brought to this discussion. The title of this debate, "There is No Academic Support for the Claim that Christianity is Purely Emotional, Not Intellectual," hasn't been specifically addressed by me. It's because the burden of proof, that there is academic to support the claim that Christianity is purely intellectual, rests on my opponent. I may lose this debate, due to the fact that I didn't even look for "academic support," that validates my position but I thought it was more imperative to engage in discourse with my opponent over the validity of Christians, who DO in fact choose to become Christians for purely emotions reasons. So while I haven't cited any academic support for my claim, I have in fact cited enough evidence from the Gospels themselves, to show how Christ assured his followers that they'd receive emotional blessings; and that these emotional blessings were the inspiration that motivated early followers of Christ, to endure persecution in order to preserve and circulate Christ's teachings. John 15:11-13, John 16:22-24, to . https://www.biblegateway.com...; Now, I will reiterate what I think my opponent is trying to convey. GiftOfSanity seems to be claiming that emotion, originates in the heart, and evil originates in the heart, so therefore emotions should not be trusted because they originate from the same place that evil ideas do. He is claiming that intellect is needed, to be certain that emotions are balanced with reason. With this concept I can and do agree to an extent. My claim is that having one's heart cleansed from the sins that brings one to repentance in the first place, causes a change in the motives of the heart,(emotional liberation) No intellectual reasoning is needed to know that one's heart has sinned and is in need of redemption through forgiveness that Christ offers. It is the entire purpose for Christ's teachings, healings, and forgiveness: to redeem mankind from the sins of our hearts and offer "New Life. " When one experiences that forgiveness of the heart, one is cleansed from previous desires and motivations of the heart and one's heart is transformed from it's former tendency toward sinful desires and motivations to being capable of the love of one's neighbor as one's self. This debate became of personal importance to me when my opponent stated in his first sentence that, (paraphrasing) Christians who are Christians because they derive emotional satisfaction from feeling religious are not real Christians. He still hasn't addressed what it means to feel religious. Most of his rhetoric has revolved around defining what Christianity ought to be composed of, based on intelligent application of the scriptural concordance of the entire Bible. He then dismissed the very use of the application of intelligence, by admonishing my position of using my intelligence to discern which books of the Bible are more relevant, as far as offering solutions to the sinful nature of my heart. This is a contradiction of his own claim for the validity for using intellect in conjunction with Christian faith. The Gospels, and Jesus Christ's teachings within those books of the Bible, in my intellectual reasoning, are what I base my faith in as a Christian. It is from within the content of those Gospels that I find solutions to my emotional need for clemency. It should make sense to anyone who claims to value intellectual appropriation, that a person who identifies as Christian would value the Scriptures that directly describe and contain quotations of the founder of that particular belief that a religion itself is based on, and that within those Books contain details of the conditions that lead to the salvation that the faith offers. The fundamental difference of my approach to defining the Christian experience and the emotional liberation that it offers, is that I do not dismiss other Christians and claim that they are less genuine in their faith, if they approach Christianity from an intellectual frame work that differs from my intellectual perspective. I'd again like to thank GiftOfSanity for the opportunity to have a very deep discussion about the emotional and intellectual implementation as it applies to the Christian experience. I know that I've grown in my personal understanding of the topics that were debated during the discourse that we exchanged, and I hope that GiftOfSanity has gained new insights into his personal perspective on what it means to be a Christian.