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God Supplies the Indispensable Truth Conditions

December 5, 2011 By 11 Comments

Rational Pre-essentials and Truth

Evolution, akin to religion, involves making certain a priori or metaphysical assumptions, which at some level cannot be proven empirically (Atheist Michael Ruse).

Conflicts between science and religion result from misinterpretations of the Bible (Maimonides).

“We shall now have a full definition of faith if we say that it is a firm and sure knowledge of the divine favor toward us, founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our minds, and sealed on our hearts, by the Holy Spirit” (John Calvin).

 

Jesus declared, “I am the truth” (John 14:6) and in Scripture, the Lord Jesus said to the Father, “Your word is truth” (John 14:17). Lawson comments: “What is truth? It is defined as that which conforms with fact or reality. It is genuineness, veracity, or actuality. In a word, truth is reality. It is how things really are. Theologically, truth is that which is consistent with the mind, character, glory, and being of God. Truth is the self-disclosure of God Himself… All truth must be defined in terms of God, whose very nature is truth” (Steven J. Lawson: Tabletalk Magazine). God’s existence is essential for the discovery of truth because He is the springhead for truth.

 

Gerald Schroeder cogitates, “God chose from the infinite realm of the Divine, ten dimensions or aspects and relegated them to be held within the universe. These dimensions are hinted at in the ten repetitions of the statements, ‘and God said…’ used in the opening chapter of Genesis. With an amazing congruity, particle physicists now talk of the String Theory, a unified description of our universe in ten dimensions.” So many underlining ideas within theoretical science baffle men and often draw humanity toward God and His majesty. Nevertheless, it’s not so much that science can prove theism but that it requires theism. Science utilizes changeless necessities that only theism can account for. The latest scientific theory (whether it endures the test of time or not) rests on the absolute changeless truths that only theism can deliver.

 

There is true truth. Every scientist or philosopher who is searching for truth must begin the epistemic process with God and His revelation in Christ if he desires to maintain a legitimate epistemic status. Science is involved with more than rocks, slime, and stars. The concepts of truth, justice, ethics, and reason lay beyond the world of concrete nature, yet, they are essential elements of scientific endeavors. Moreover, these abstractions cannot be explained in terms of the material world alone. Even the material dynamic within our world cannot be explained solely by physical terms.

Since the material reality is not completely intelligible in itself it has to be grounded in something which has an intelligibility that is at once complete and real. This is … identified with the unrestricted act of understanding that possesses the property of God and accounts for everything else (Bernard Lonergan: Insight).

 

The physical world is selectively composed of organized energy. The strict materialist cannot explain what energy is and why (teleologically)  it “self-organized.” The believer can declare God’s thoughts after Him, and He has revealed that all power comes from Him. He organized it for His glory, beauty, and the delight of mankind. The pure materialist is going to be at a loss for words when you ask him for foundational answers. His rational paradigm is self-defeating, backward, and destructive to science.

 

Whenever materialists discover something that will benefit the world, they have breached their worldview, and in that discovery they have borrowed from the CWV (the foundation for truth). Jesus is “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14); the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of Truth” (John 15:26) and the Bible is “the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Ultimate and full-fledged materialism denies the source of truth and thus contradicts true science and inhibits the motivation for progress.

 

If a worldview, such as naturalism, gives us no reason to think that our belief-forming mechanisms are generally trustworthy, then we have no reason to believe that worldview is true (Spiegel: The Making of an Atheist).

 

The argumentative skeptic Voltaire once said to a friend, “It took twelve ignorant fishermen to establish Christianity; I will show the world how one Frenchman can destroy it.” Setting to his task, he openly mocked Isaac Newton. One day Newton made a prediction based on Daniel 12:4 and Nahum 2:4: “Man will someday be able to travel at the tremendous speed of 40 miles an hour.” Voltaire responded: “See what a fool Christianity makes of an otherwise brilliant man, such as Sir Isaac Newton! Doesn’t he know that if a man traveled 40 miles an hour, he would suffocate and his heart would stop?” A few years after Voltaire died, his house was purchased by the Geneva Bible Society and became a Bible storeroom, and his printing press was used to print Bibles. In the modern era, the Bibles were delivered by trucks going faster than 40 miles an hour (without mass heart stoppages). CT does not make men fools; it confers the only changeless ground for knowledge, including scientific knowledge.

In contrast to man engineered science, God has the ontic attributes (immutability, aseity, etc.) to sufficiently account for the a priori conditions required for immutable truth. Additionally,  God is necessary in our actual world, and thus is necessary in all possible worlds.

New apologetic E-book for Kindle and E-readers here

see my apologetic book God Does Exist! Here

 

 

Filed Under: Apologetics, Christian Philosophy, Classical Apologetics, Reformed Philosophy Tagged With: , , ,

Horton’s New Systematic Theology: Book Review

November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Book Review: The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Hardcover).

 

Review by Mike Robinson.

Michael Horton is like technology; he’s been improving our lives for decades now.
Ponder all his fine work on the White Horse Inn, ACE, and his numerous books. And what did he get for it all?
A professorship at a small Reformed seminary complete with some listless students (and some sharp and eager ones too!).
Mostly Dr. Horton toils for the glory of God–and that is just one powerful reason his work has made such a significant impact.
And in The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way the good professor offers an interesting and modern work of Systematic Theology. This volume is large, but breezy; yes a ST that is a smooth and engaging read!
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The Fondation of the Covenants 
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Horton is always covenantally focused and notes that “we were created by God as inherently covenantal creatures–in relationship with God and each other, and redemption restores this extroverted identity…” (p. 27). He reveals his main objective: “There is one faith–the Christian faith–and this volume is an attempt to explore that faith as it is summarized in the confession of Reformed Christianity” (p. 30).
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Dr. Horton does not attempt to avoid theological, philosophical, or epistemological concepts as he posits: “The widest horizon for theology–indeed for all of our knowledge–is the question of ontology: what is reality?” (p. 36). And that “Western atheism rejects any transcendent reality beyond the world of sense experience” (p. 39). He presses the need to understand the most essential antithesis for his “model assumes that God and the world are distinct–Creator and creation. The world is dependent on God, but God is independent of the world” (p. 41). Yet the “triune God created us to share in His drama, not in His essence” (p. 44). Horton takes knowledge to depend on the triune God for “epistemology depends on ontology” (p. 47). What one knows, can know, and warrant depend on God’s ontic status and not the other way around. Men must “recognize there is no such thing as a neutral epistemological method. We always presuppose a certain view of reality before we ask how to investigate it” (p. 49). Epistemic and ontic issues can be very complicated and tricky, and although the author may offer some hazy distinctions, he provides a respectable account for most of his positions (he is a professor of apologetics at WTS).
This modest presuppositionally-leaning ST includes:
I. Knowing God: The Presupposition of Theology Dissonant Dramas: Paradigms for Knowing God and the World The Character of Theology The Source of Theology: Scripture Scripture as Covenant Canon
II. The God Who Lives God: The Incommunicable Attributes God: The Communicable Attributes The Trinity
III. God Who Creates The Decree: Trinity and Predestination Creation Providence The Fall
IV. The God Who Rescues
V. God Who Reigns in Grace Called to be Saints Union with Christ Forensic Aspects of Union with Christ: Justification and Adoption Sanctification and Perseverance The Kingdom of Grace and the New Covenant Church Word and Sacrament Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

VI. God Who Reigns in Glory

VII. and plenty more.

Systematic Theology and the Christian Worldview

 

The author adds that central to a “biblical worldview, over against its rivals, is the qualitative distinction between God and the world. This distinction holds with respect not only to ontology, but epistemology. In His existence and knowledge, God transcends us. … Only the triune God is eternal, infinite, and omniscient. And yet, God is not only transcendent in majesty, but immanent in loving in his covenantal condensation” (p. 77).

Language and Theology

 

Horton discusses language in relation to the Word of God: speech involves assertives, directives, expressives, declarations, and other illocutionary acts (p. 121). And he offers a fine exposition of that which he is famous for: the basic distinction within God’s Word of “Law and Gospel” pp. 135-154) with quotes to that end from Calvin, Bavinck, Murray, etc. Regarding Scripture “the Trinitarian character of divine communication is crucial” in “general and special revelation” (p. 158).

Also included:

  • Horton discusses approaches, models and, methodology in undertaking Christian theology
  • The author’s theological approach is Reformed Redemptive-historical
  • He concentrates on various facets of modern theology
  • Horton contrasts Christian orthodoxy with several heterodox theological views
  • He utilizes a covenantal framework (influenced by Meredith Kline)
  • The professor rebuts sundry facets of liberal and postmodern theology.

He goes on to define Verbal-Plenary Inspiration as well as the relationship between divine and human agency in God’s revelation (pp. 160-163). Forasmuch as the source of VPI is “in the triune God.” Later he discusses various views of inerrancy including the Princeton formulation (pp. 176-178). The study of scripture is essential, however “the methodological assumptions of textual criticism are quite different from those of higher criticism, which as an apparatus of theological liberalism follows naturalistic presuppositions” (p. 180). We must always remember that whatever “the holy, unerring, and faithful Father speaks is–simply by virtue of having come from him–holy, unerring, and faithful” (p. 184). As Anthanasius wrote, “holy Scripture is of all things most sufficient for us” (p. 194).

Professor Horton discusses the incommunicable attributes of God:
  •  Simplicity: As infinite spirit, God is not made up of different parts; His attributes are identical with his being.
  • Aseity: Self-existence (from-himself-ness, a-se, absolute); independence from the creation (Isaiah 40:8-18); I Am Who I Am (Exodus 3:14); god is life; he gives life (Psalm 115:3). He adds Bavinck’s words that God is “unbounded, limitless, and absolutely undetermined.”
  • Immutability: Unchangeableness.
  • Impassibility: Incapacity for being overwhelmed by suffering (James 1:17; Psalm 102:25-27; Mal. 3:6).
  • Eternity (Psalm 90:2, 102:12; Eph. 3:21): God’s transcendence of time (pp. 226-258) for God is omnitemporal in the way He is omnipresent.

 

This large ST covers aspects of the work of:
  • Calvin
  • Duns Scotus
  • Aquinas
  • Turretin (theology “treats God not like metaphysics … but as the Creator and Redeemer”). Augustine
  • Beza
  • Rahner (Rahner advocates for some SV Council doctrines).
  • Plato (Dr. Horton asserts that “the biblical faith is opposed to any notion of a world emanating from God’s essence, with divine souls thrown mercilessly into bodies and the realm of appearances” along with a separate “world of forms”).
  • Berkhof
  • N.T. Wright’s (he refutes Wright’s novel view of Justification (pp. 639-641).
  • Bavinck
  • Vos (“the concept of knowledge is not Hellenistic” but covenantal).
  • Polanyi (like Augustine “faith seeking understanding” p. 102-106).
  • Grudem
  • Hodge
  • Kant
  • Hume
  • Van Til (Creator-creature distinction; i.e., archetypal-ectypal).
  • Descartes
  • Hegel (for him “everything that exists in reality is rational”).
  • Torrence
  • Some Puritans
  • And many others including interacting with and critiquing the work of unorthodox theologians.

 

The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way is practical, yet almost devotional as Horton outlines “doctrine, doxology, discipleship, and redemptive drama”; perfect for busy pastors, seminary students, and even most laypeople.
Recommended by:
  • Kevin Vanhoozer
  • David Wells
  • Bryan Chapell
  • R.C. Sproul
  • And other erudite scholars.
                                                                
Conclusion
 
 
In The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way one discovers an exceedingly useful and valuable tool for appraising an extensive range of Christian doctrinal and life matters, with an opportunity to evaluate various viewpoints in the process and to ascertain the supporting biblical data for each. I appreciate Dr. Horton’s depth of understanding, simplicity, and lucidity. This large volume has aided my research and devotional life. You may not be Reformed, nonetheless don’t let that deter you from buying this extremely well documented and annotated educational and spiritual storehouse. You may not agree with all of Horton’s positions, but the understanding you gain will be of prodigious profit.
also see my New Apologetic new Ebook or Paperback:
                                                                                                        ————————–

Dr. Horton has won the 2012 Christianity Today book award for best theology/ethics text for this volume.

The award states, “averting his gaze from the kind of popular evangelicalism that is nondenominational in style and never quite confessional in ethos, Horton delivers the Reformed goods to a new generation.”

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Cornelius Van Til, Reformed Philosophy, Theological Philosophy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Francis Turretin Quotes

November 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Quotes from Swiss scholar Francis Turretin:

“And since new revelations are not to be expected after God has committed his whole will concerning the doctrine of salvation to the books of Scripture, what could be more derogatory to God, who has promised always to be with his church, than to assert that the books in which this doctrine is preserved have been corrupted so that they cannot be the canon of faith?”

 

“We deny that any supreme and infallible judge except Scripture need be sought with regard to external proof of the object, much less that the pope, who assumes such a task, is to be accepted. We believe that Scripture alone, or God speaking in it, is enough.”

More from Francis Turretin on the Sinfulness of Sin:

“Sin is desire, word, deed, contrary to the Law of God… As the sin of Adam was most heinous, so it could not but draw after itself the most dire effects both in himself and in his posterity.”

 

Francis Turretin the Rule of Duty

 

“God’s commands are not the measure of strength, but a rule of duty.  They do not teach what we are now able, but what we are bound to do; what we could formerly do and from how great a height of righteousness we have been precipitated by Adam’s fall.  Nor is it always true that precepts which cannot be fulfilled are unjust.  The intemperate man who has rendered himself callous by habit and cannot restrain himself from lust or drunkenness (habit being turned into nature) is still bound by the laws of sobriety and temperance.  So from the debtor (who has lost by gambling a large sum of money borrowed on interest) not in vain nor unjustly is the debt demanded nor has the creditor lost his right by the crime of the debtor. Since, then, man by his own fault has contracted an inability to obey God, not in vain nor unjustly does God demand from his the obedience which he owes.  It is not just that sin should be an advantage to man and he be irresponsible because he has corrupted himself by his own crime.”

 

Francis Turretin on Christ’s Voluntary Work

 

” …it was not unjust for Christ to substitute himself in our room, while lie is righteous and we unrighteous. By this act no injury is done to any one. Not to Christ, for he voluntarily took the punishment upon himself, and had the right to decide concerning his own life and death, and also power to raise himself from the dead. Not to God the judge, for he willed and commanded it; nor to his natural justice, for the Surety satisfied this by suffering the punishment which demanded it. Not to the empire of the universe, by depriving an innocent person of life, for Christ, freed from death, lives for evermore; or by the life of the surviving sinner injuring the kingdom of God, for he is converted and made holy by Christ. Not to the divine law, for its honour has been maintained by the perfect fulfillment of all its demands, through the righteousness of the Mediator; and, by our legal and mystical union, he becomes one with us, and we one with him. Hence he may justly take upon him our sin and sorrows, and impart to us his righteousness and blessings. So there is no abrogation of the law, no derogation from its claims; as what we owed is transferred to the account of Christ, to be paid by him.”

 

 

Turretin on the Justification of the Wicked

 

“The justification of the wicked, of which Paul speaks, Rom. 4:5, ought not to be referred to an infusion or increase of habitual righteousness, but belongs to the remission of sins, as it is explained by the Apostle from David. Nay, it would not be a justification of the wicked, if it were used in any other sense than for a judicial absolution at the throne of grace. I confess that God in declaring just, ought also for that very reason to make just, that his judgment may be according to truth. But man can be made just in two ways, either in himself, or in another, either from the law, or from the gospel. God therefore makes him just whom he justifies, not in himself as if from a sight of his inherent righteousness he declared him just, but from the view of the righteousness, imputed, of Christ. It is indeed an abomination to Jehovah to justify the wicked without a due satisfaction, but God in this sense justifies no wicked one, Christ having been given to us as a Surety, who received upon himself the punishment we deserved.”

See new Apologetic E-Book for all E-Readers including Nook and Kindle Here:

or Paperback: Truth, Knowledge and the Reason for God HERE

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Christian Theology, Reformed Philosophy, Theology Tagged With: , ,

James Stein’s Constant Numbers: WSJ Review & My Exposition on the Problem of Induction

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

BRIAN CLEGG on James Stein’s Constant Numbers: Full WSJ Article HERE

“Without a consistent universe, science is pointless. If the fundamental constants varied randomly with time or position in space, nothing could be explained or predicted. Without a fixed speed of light, force of gravity or atomic masses, measurement would be meaningless, experiments worthless. If intelligent beings existed in such a universe they would never move beyond magic as an explanation for reality.”

“Praise the heavens, then, that we live in a sane universe. It’s true that some scientists think the speed of light may have been slightly different billions of years ago, or that the force of gravity experienced on Earth is subtly different from the attractive force on the scale of a galaxy. But our understanding of the universe depends on assuming that constants stay constant. Which is why the slew of digits discussed in James D. Stein’s Cosmic Numbers are so important. These numerical values define reality.”

“Although Mr. Stein suggests that his numbers are organized to provide a sequential history of science, there is no particular connection or flow between the chapters, which read as separate articles. However, each constant is more than a numerical value. It unpacks to provide a story, giving historical context to what might otherwise be a dry piece of physics.”

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My exposition relating to the Problem of Induction:

 

Empiricism: All knowledge and all ideas derive from sense.

 

Naturalism: In a broad sense the view that only natural things of matter and motion exist.

 

God’s Sovereign control over nature delivers the only reliable foundation for induction as well as science that rests upon induction.  God’s providence also supplies confidence that numerical constants displayed in the cosmos will remain steady. Since God created and upholds the cosmos men can know that the future will be like the past inasmuch as God has revealed that the natural world will function in a predictable and constant manner. This includes the faithful God creating and sustaining mathematical constants displayed throughout the universe. God’s providential care provides the reason one can depend on Induction and numerical constants. Without God’s providence, one lacks any logical confidence that a mathematical measurement or a scientific test that yielded a particular outcome yesterday that it will yield the same numerical or observational result in the future.

David Hume’s epistemic discoveries led to the far-reaching conclusion that, upon a naturalistic foundation, some of the basic components of science, including numerical constants, have no epistemic justification. Naturalism built on empiricism commits its adherents to the idea that one can know very little about any natural constant for that knowledge depends on Induction which Hume points out Naturalism fails to justify.

 

Strict Naturalism, as  Hume’s demonstrated, delivers two categories that exhaust all knowledge:

  1.  The knowledge of relation of ideas
  2. The knowledge of matter of fact

 

Relations of ideas: What relations one idea bears to another in my thoughts; this means that they are logically connected; they are made true logically by those relations.

An example would be the relation between the subject to predicate in a sentence.

  1. “All bachelors are unmarried.”

 

This statement is true, it must be true. When one knows the meaning of the word: “bachelors” and when one also knows what the definition of a married man is; one then knows that bachelors must be unmarried. The statement is made true by the relations of the ideas in the statement. The contrary of the statement would be a contradiction.

 

Any knowledge gained by science relies on a presupposition: the future will be like the past. All scientific pursuits hold that presupposition. If it did not hold that presupposition then science could not justifiably state: the sun will rise tomorrow since it rose in the past. Nonetheless, under Naturalism, men don’t know if it will rise tomorrow.

Under Naturalism, how can one know that the future will be like the past? How can I know that numerical constants will remain the same tomorrow or in the next decade within pure naturalistic thought?

 

Under strict Naturalism for something to be true it must be one of only two possibilities:

  1. Relation of ideas: Nothing about the statement: whatever has happen in the past will be like the future is true by a relation of ideas. It’s not like the statement 2 +2 = 4 or all bachelors are unmarried. So if the future doesn’t resemble the past it’s not true by definition or by relation of ides.

 

2.   By matters of fact?

Is it true by 1 or 2?

No. Induction and Numerical constants are not such.

The idea that the future resembles the past is unknowable since one has not experienced the future. Moreover, one cannot possibly know that the future will be like the past; it is not yet a fact. All claims that the future resembles the past presuppose they are true. This is the case because the concept of Induction is not a matter of factual observation nor is it true by relation of ideas.

 

All purely naturalistic claims of science, that things must necessarily happen, cannot be true. So the general knowledge men gain from observation and experience (the idea that sun will rise tomorrow) is simply a presupposition that the future will be like the past. This concept presupposes a necessary connection: If event A happens then another event B must happen. This is a presupposition and not a matter of fact or a relation of ideas; furthermore experience cannot validate it.

The future as well as necessity cannot be known by past experience.

Since one cannot experience the future, until it happens, one cannot experience necessity (including the necessity of numerical constants), thus consistent Naturalists should cease employing such notions. When one epistemically rests upon God’s sovereign control one can account for necessity and Induction.

 

Naturalistic Empiricism, to be consistent, should not employ such concepts and this leaves men with mere constant conjunction (in the past); it offers no necessity or future facts. It only can posit a limited number of pasts facts (many facts which depend on human memory which opens Naturalism up for another avenue of attack).

 

Under Naturalism, knowledge of the future is indeterminate; additionally it is not simply probable. Under strict naturalistic empiricism men lack even probable knowledge of the future. Hence naturalists lack any justified reason to believe that a coin will hit the ground when dropped or that fire will burn or that the sun will rise tomorrow. Finally, they have no reason of any kind, no rational justification for such beliefs about the future. This is the consistent outplay of naturalistic empiricism.

 

Induction is one of the methods by which science functions and intelligibly works; it is the specific method by which men make inferences. Induction is the method by in which we infer a probable truth based on the observation of a population of events by means of observing an assortment of events. Deny God’s providential control, and in principle, men have no rational justification for this notion within the naturalistic worldview.

also see New Apologetic E-book for all E-readers and Kindle: The True and Reasonable Faith: Defending Christianity with Truth and Reason HERE

 

Filed Under: Christian Philosophy, Presuppositional Epistemology, Reformed Philosophy Tagged With: , , ,

Atheism Built upon Empiricism Cannot Supply the Foundation for Knowledge

September 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Empiricism Fails to Deliver the Ground for Knowledge
by Mike Robinson


Many people say that they cannot believe anything unless they can see it for themselves; this is one usage of empiricism. Many atheists (atheism as their metaphysical position) hold to empiricism as their epistemic base (position on knowledge) for their worldview. They declare that unless something can be tested empirically, using the five senses, it is not true. The main problem with such an assertion is that this assertion cannot itself be tested by any of the senses. Thus it is a self-conflagrating assertion.

Another problem is that our senses are not one-hundred-percent accurate. They are mostly reliable, but cannot be completely trusted. St. Augustine pointed out that a straight oar appears bent when it is in the water. Many of us, as we drive our cars during a hot day, see mirages on the road. If an elephant is a quarter mile up the road and I put my thumb in front of my eyes, the beast seems to be no larger than my thumb.

The Hand is Quicker than the Eye

In Las Vegas there are dozens of magicians who make a good living by fooling the empirical senses of their audiences; the hand is quicker than the eye. Our eyes and our other senses can deceive us. We cannot base our world and life view on these senses unaided; nobody can.

Skeptics who claim that they only believe in what they see do not and cannot follow that philosophy consistently. Their use of logic, induction, and mathematics is not intelligible by the senses alone; these are immaterial entities that the materialist uses every day. To understand this world, God must be presupposed—whether the materialist realizes it or not. The notion that truth may be ascertained merely through the senses cannot even justify that two plus two will always be four in all places or that all animals will die; for the reason that no human can be simultaneously in all places where two plus two occur, nor can any human witness the death of all animals. The believer can trust the basic reliability of the senses only because an infallible God, who knows all things, has revealed that we can. The reason that scientists often repeat their tests and experiments hundreds of times is because the senses are occasionally unreliable. Men of science and industry have built instruments as well as machines to help bypass the inconsistency and unreliability of the senses. The five senses are not always reliable because human beings are not infallible and absent the divine ability to possess universal knowledge. Definite knowledge requires a man to depend on a God who is perfect, infallible, and omniscient.

Can One Really See an Object?

The five senses can provide awareness of and information about only some attributes of an object. This truth, conjoined with the practicality that numerous people claim that they only believe in what they can see, makes for an interesting discovery. Considering that in a way, under their non-Christian worldview, men cannot see any object. Human eyesight cannot give direct and immediate awareness and understanding of any object. Eyesight can provide information on some aspects and attributes of a given object. But only God can see all atoms, and only He can fully understand all protons and electrons. He has exact and exhaustive knowledge of the color, texture, size, weight, density, and complete physical makeup of all objects in the universe from a perfect perspective. No human can have exhaustive and perfect knowledge of even one of the attributes of a material article; hitherto some want to trust their eyesight and senses above the God who understands all things.

The senses are generally reliable; however we have justified knowledge because of God’s revelation. We must have a transcendent source that “sees” everything and reveals to us that the senses are basically reliable. The problem comes when people reject God’s word and construct a worldview based on their senses alone. Senses can routinely deceive. Professional illusionists get paid large salaries to fool our eyesight. Conversations between husbands and wives can quickly reveal how unreliable the sense of hearing can be. Many taste-test studies have demonstrated that the sense of taste is not always reliable. The Associated Press reported that surgical teams leave clamps, sponges, and other tools inside 1,500 patients nationwide each year (http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/archive/index.php/t-1969.html). These are highly trained teams with large potential lawsuits looming over them, and yet their senses fail them at times. One cannot construct a reliable worldview based exclusively on the senses, as many scientists attempt to do. It is epistemically unmanageable for them to avoid the truth of God in view of the fact that all their theories, notes, and scientific conclusions utilize the laws of logic. Logic is immaterial, universal, and invariant; it presupposes God.

Empiricism Flops

Empiricism fails as a worldview every time you stub your toe or trip over a rock since this helps demonstrate the sometimes unreliability of our sight; our senses are normally reliable, but we cannot build a worldview on their untrustworthiness. God alone is the necessary truth condition for an intelligible worldview which includes the basic trustworthiness of our five senses.

Atheists can be rational because they borrow rational essentials from the Christian Worldview (CWV); the atheistic WV fails to account for the laws of logic that the CWV underwrites all the while borrowing them out of necessity.

Analysis of anti-theistic materialism demonstrates that it is self-nullifying inasmuch as it fails to give what it does not possess. The material cosmos, as a particular thing, is devoid of a foundation for eternal invariant universals; one cannot hang one’s house on one’s paintings, but one hangs one’s paintings on one’s house. God is the immovable truth required to hang knowledge claims, including atheistic claims.

The Rational Pre-essentials for Knowledge

I will employ a transcendental analysis by determining what the rational pre-essentials are for knowledge and understanding human experience; what must be true to be able to account for intelligibility. The triune God is the transcendental necessity who provides the preconditions for knowledge of reality. Mere men, devoid of immutability and universal rational attainment, cannot supply the transcendental conditions that are needed for the Law of Non-contradiction (LNC), love, and knowledge.

To rightly understand reality one must have universals to generalize the particulars. This implies that the sheer anthropology of atheism cannot supply the general and universal realities that must be present for the necessary and unavoidable transcendental conditions listed beforehand.

Some people claim that knowledge is impossible. Nonetheless if knowledge is impossible, one could not know that knowledge is impossible because that is a knowledge claim. The intelligibility of human experience requires God. Christianity is a WV that provides human reason an unchanging foundation for knowledge. Atheism, naturalism, and skepticism all fail to furnish a foundation for the LNC; thus they cannot provide the permanent footing for knowledge. They can only offer an irrational and incongruous WV.

Unless one believes in God, one cannot account for anything in the universe. God is the underlying and infinite ground for all knowledge, proof, evidence, and logic. It is impossible for God not to exist. He is the truth condition for all knowledge because all human knowledge requires the use of unchanging universals. The omniscient, immaterial, and unchanging God alone provides the a priori essentials for the use of nonphysical, universal, and unchanging universals. Non-believing thought cannot supply the necessary pre-environment for knowledge, thus they fall into futility.

“Of all the offspring of time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome” (Charles Mackay).

The Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary. The contrary of the CWV implies a contradiction inasmuch as the denial of the CWV leaves one without the ontic (ontic: relating to ontology; relating to existence, being) foundation to ground immutable universals such as the laws of thought and moral laws, which are required for knowledge. The denial of knowledge (or its ground) is a self-contradicting endeavor.
For More see my Innovative book that refutes Atheism: Truth, Knowledge, and the Reason for God

Filed Under: Covenantal Apologetics, Presuppositional Epistemology, Reformed Philosophy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Herman Bavinck: Pastor, Churchman, Statesman, and Theologian: a Review

September 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A Mike Robinson Review.

In Ron Gleason’s Herman Bavinck: Pastor, Churchman, Statesman, and Theologian, the late Roger Nicole wrote in the Forward: “Bavinck has been for me an inspiration and a challenge. His grasp of theology in all its dimensions, his thoroughness and fairness in dealing with those with whom he did not agree, his soundness in accepting and reflecting the witness of Scripture, his architectural gift in perceiving each doctrine in its correlation with the Christian view as a whole; these are some of the excellencies that characterize his work throughout” (p. xiii; Gleason also dedicates this book to Nicole). And in this hefty (511 pages) and likable volume the reader finds much to learn and admire regarding the grand Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (HB).
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Chapters include:
  • A Short history of past generations of the Bavinck’s family (pp. 1-27)
  • Birth and youth of Bavinck (pp. 28-44)
  • The Separatists Controversy (pp. 45-68)
  • HB’s pastorate (pp. 69-96)
  • HB as Professor at Kampen (additional chapters discuss his professorship)
  • HB as Kuyper’s Confidant (other chapters also cover HB and Kuyper’s [AK] relationship)
  • His years at Amsterdam
  • HB the politician
  • Did HB change his theology later in life?
  • HB and the truth of the Christian Worldview (pp. 475-484)
  • Much of this volume is influenced by Dutch biographies of Bavinck
  • How studying at a liberal University helped equip Bavinck to contest theological liberalism
  • And much more.
Bavinck declared: Nevertheless, this same sublime and exalted God stands in intimate relationship with all His creatures, even the meanest and smallest. What the Scriptures gives us is not an abstract concept of God, such as the philosopher gives us, but puts the very living God before us and lets us see Him in the works of His hands. We have but to lift up our eyes and see who has made all things. All things were made by His hands, brought forth by His will and His deed. And they are all sustained by his strength. Hence everything bears the stamp of His excellences and the mark of His goodness, wisdom, and power. And among creatures only man was created in His image and likeness. Only man is called the offspring of God (Acts 17:28).
On the importance of fencing the Lord’s Table: “To our minds, this (fencing) might seem like a small insignificant item, but to the CRC the fencing of the Table in the aftermath of the Separation was quite strict. So strict that it was the practice not to allow those to attend the celebration of the Lord’s Supper who were not members of that individual congregation, even though they might be members in good standing in the CRC” (unless they had a letter from their own congregation regarding their good standing; p. 47).
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This well-researched book discusses the influence that Tiele, Rauwenoff, Land, Scholten, and many others had on HB. The author demonstrates how theological liberals are intolerant while covering HB’s life at Leiden (p. 53-57). Gleason comments on HB and AK’s relationship: “AK’s appreciation of HB did nothing to harm HB’s reputation as an accomplished theologian, and HB, in his turn, was pleased to have AK’s support. The net result of their respective ages and positions was that HB stood in the shadow of his elder theologian and statesman” (p. 229).

On the very first page of the Bible the absolute transcendence of God above his creatures comes to our attention. Without strain or fatigue He called the whole world into existence by His word alone. By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, all the host of them by the breath of His mouth (Ps. 33:6). He speaks and it is done; He commands and it stands fast (Ps. 33:9). He does according to his will in the army of heavens, and among the inhabitants of the earth. And none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, what doest Thou (Dan, 4:35)? The nations are as a drop of bucket and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, He takes up the isles as a very little thing. … All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted to Him as less than nothing, and vanity (Herman Bavinck).

One significant criticism: this large volume has very few quotations from Bavinck. I am one who takes great delight in Bavinck’s works, especially “Our Reasonable Faith” and “The Doctrine of God” and I would have enjoyed reading more of HB’s words within this volume. In “Herman Bavinck” Gleason smoothly takes the reader through the victories, difficulties, influence of HB as well as covering his Stone Lectures, HB’s interaction with Vos, HB’s criticisms of the Presbyterian church located in America, his interface with B.B. Warfield, and the impact of AK’s death on HB.
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Gleason notes: “HB profoundly impacted first the theological world within the borders of the Netherlands, but then his biblical scholarship and exceptional mind was recognized and acknowledged outside of Holland. … Without pushing himself to the forefront, the Lord moved him, through the mystery of providence, to a prominent place in the ecclesiastical and political arenas in Holland and to recognition in the theological world” (p. 315).
Bavinck on learning from scholarship of the past:

The study of antiquity is not only of formal and practical value: for the development of thinking, understanding Greek and Latin terms in our scholarship, understanding citations and allusions in our literature, and so fourth. Its lasting value also lies in the fact that the foundations of modern culture were laid in antiquity. The roots of all our arts and learning — and also, though in lesser degree, the sciences that study nature — are to be found in the soil of antiquity.

It is amazing how the Greeks created all those forms of beauty in which our aesthetic feeling still finds expression and satisfaction today; in their learning they realized and posited all the problems of the world and of life with which we still wrestle in our heads and hearts. They were able to achieve all that, on the one hand, because they rose above folk religion and struggled for the independence of art and learning; but on the other hand, they did not loosen art and learning from those religious and ethical factors that belong to man’s essence. In the midst of distressing reality, they kept the faith in a world of ideas and norms. And that idealism is also indispensable for us today; it cannot be replaced or compensated for by the history of civilization or new literature.

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An outstanding biography that will inform the Bavinck admirer as the faithful life of HB edifies one’s character. Published in an insubstantial Paperback edition only.—-
See the new apologetic book that contends for the truth of the Christian worldview with interaction with scholars influenced by HB and various ideas of Bavinck HERE
Gleason’s volume is endorsed by:
  • David Wells
  • Michael Horton
  • Derek Thomas
  • Richard Gaffin.
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Reformed Philosophy Tagged With: , , , , , ,