Biblical Logic: In Theory and In Practice review by Mike Robinson
Don’t care if you’re an apologetic enthusiast or an indolent irrationalist. Don’t care if you’re just a semester away from a degree in epistemology. Don’t care if you’re William Lane Craig and have won every public debate against atheism you have participated in. Don’t care if you have towering IQ and can read Plato in classical Greek. All communication presupposes and requires the utilization of the laws of logic (Law of Identity: LOI; Law of Non-contradiction: LNC). Thus:
You’re stuck
You’re bond
You’re tethered
You’re fixed, connected, attached to and You’re epistemologically glued to the Laws of Logic (LL).
As a nominalist, relativist, anti-realist, irrationalist, or a strict materialistic atheist try as you may, but there’s no escape.
And in his innovative fresh book, Biblical Logic: In Theory and In Practice, Joel McDurmon builds a strong case that real logic must be built upon and spring from the nature of God and His revealed Word. The author rightly notes that “Logic, being part of creation, cannot act as the standard for judging all of reality, especially not truth about God Himself. Logic has limits. Does this mean it has no place in the Christian life? Certainly not. In fact, only the nature (including the omniscience and omnipotence) of the Creator God can guarantee that logic works and correlates with reality… Logical laws are necessary tools…” (p. 32).
The author encourages Christians to study logic, informal and formal fallacies, and critical thinking as the reader is trained to resist the anti-rational and non-biblical notions of truth displayed in our culture.
“The `laws of logic’ determine the forms which valid or invalid arguments can take” (p. 14).
In Biblical Logic the reader learns about:
• Critical thinking
• The Theological Foundations for Logic
• Fallacies of Worldview
• Fallacies of Representation
• Hidden Presumptions
• Fallacies of Property
• Fallacies of Relevance
• Fallacies of Time
• And much more within the pages of this instructive, yet alluring volume.
The author summarizes the ontic necessity of God to account for the Laws of Logic: “From the biblical point of view we learn that God makes orderly experience possible because of His own self-consistent, self-authoritative, and faithful nature… Man must think God’s thoughts after Him…” (p. 30).
This page-turner educates the reader with powerful concepts made simple as the author calls Christians to base their worldview, philosophy, and method of logic on God’s infallible word; by this standard one can know and account for logic and truth. Following Van Til’s lead the author recognizes that “the God of the Bible … alone makes truth and logic possible” (p. 33).
Logic … presupposes that our thoughts correspond to reality and this requires that reality be objective… Reality, in other words, must stand true independently of man and cannot depend on man for meaning… This in turn requires some Source of objectively, which we find in the self-consistency of the Creator who upholds all things by the word of His power (Heb. 1:3), who Himself does not change (James 1:12, 17; Numbers 23:19), and who creates and orderly creation (p. 27).
McDurmon adds that “the proper understanding of logic requires a proper understanding of theology” (p. 21). Inasmuch as “reasoning will show that only the Christian Trinity fills all of the requirements of human experience, and thus this Trinitarian God must exist before human experience can mean anything… Given this, the ultimate source of human knowledge abides in God’s Revelation to mankind—a revelation of Himself found generally in nature and man himself, and specially in Scripture” (p. 396).
Furthermore McDurmon discusses the views and methods of logic from thinkers such as:
• Aristotle
• Gordon Clark
• John Frame
• Cornelius Van Til
• Vern Poythress (McDurmon quotes Poythress: “Human reason and the use of logic are dependent on knowledge of God and are guided by it. … This dependence becomes more obvious when we root logic in the Trinitarian character of God” (p. 38).
This is a fine book for the busy minister, scholar, seminary student, and budding apologist.
NOTE: The author discusses the Laws of Logic (LOI & LNC) in some detail but not exhaustively.
For a more thorough treatment of the Christian view of the Laws of Logic pick up at my site: www.thelordgodexists.com/books_2.html
Presuppositional Apologetics Examines Aristotle’s and Frege’s Logic by Mike A Robinson HERE. In that book I systematically and thoroughly discuss the ontic necessities that the triune God alone furnishes to account for the Laws of Logic and the necessity therein.
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or additionally see the dynamic new book on apologetics that refutes false religions:
One Way to God: Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics Examine World Religions HERE
