Christ at the Center: The Fulcrum of Biblical Covenantalism (Pt.1b)

Continued from last time on Colossians 1:15b

There is a great deal which might be said about the term “firstborn.”  Primarily of course it concerns right of inheritance and prominence among brethren.  As the examples of Isaac and Jacob and Judah and Solomon show, the first to be born is not the main idea in “firstborn” (prototokos).  The primary idea involves status, not physical birth.  Notice how this is true in Psalm 89:27, ” I also shall make him My first-born, The highest of the kings of the earth.”  The verb translated “make” in the verse carries with it the idea of  placing or constituting, but not generating.  The Psalm also portrays the promise to the firstborn as earning the very highest status among the “kings of the earth,” further underlining this understanding of the word.

So it is here.  Certainly, some primordial creation of the Son as per the Arian heresy is not at all in the Apostle’s mind.  There is a Time in Paul’s thoughts: though not the time of the original creation, but rather that of the second creation heralded by the Resurrection which he is thinking about.  Just compare “the firstborn from [among] the dead” in v18, where this is made more clear.

Verse 15 also states that Christ is “over all creation.”  He is over the creation because:

The World depends on Christ for its being created and its continued existence.

• all creation was made through Him – (v. 16).  Jesus is the ever-living Word through Whom the Father spoke the world into being (Jn. 1:3; Heb. 1:2).

• all creation was made for Him – (v. 16).  Jesus is the One for Whom the Father made the world. This staggering fact calls us all to prayerful meditation.  “For Him.”  This world.  You and I.  Creation is a Gift from the Father to the Son.  And while we may despise God’s gifts, the Son does not.  The created realm is valuable to Jesus first of all because it is His from God the Father!  And it is for that reason He redeems it.  Yes, and for that reason He will beautify it (cf. Rom. 8:20).  This world will not be discarded like an old car when He comes, like some teach.   It will be regenerated by the One who saved it.  Jesus will be enthroned within it (Matt. 19:28).  That is the only fit place for Him to be in it (cf. Lk. 1:33; Zech. 14:6; Rev. 19:16).  As James Fergusson (The Epistles of Paul) put it so quaintly, “The setting forth of his glory is a rent due by all creatures.”  And there will come a day when it will be payed before Him in person in His creation.      
  

• all creation is held together by Him – (v. 17)  Christ’s Lordship over the elements of bread and water and life and death is a logical outcome of what Paul speaks of in this verse.  Everything that is – that possesses being – whether it be visible or invisible (v.16), exists providentially under His hand.  The writer of Hebrews expresses a similar thought:

And He is the radiance of His [God's] glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. – Heb 1:3a

Among the many similarities of thought between the two passages is that of the whole disposing of the history of the Cosmos devolves upon Christ.  John Owen, in his magisterial Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 3.105, writes,

      And from these last words we learn: -

I. Our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, hath the weight of the whole creation upon his hand, and disposeth of it by his power and wisdom.

II. Such is the nature and condition of the universe, that it could not subsist a moment, nor could any thing in it act regularly unto its appointed end, without the continual supportment, guidance, influence, and disposal of the Son of God.

It is this “by Him, for Him, subsisting because of Him” teaching which situates the Son unquestionably at the center of the unfolding revelation of God to men.  It may be explored in several promising ways. 

Christ at the Center: The Fulcrum of Biblical Covenantalism (Pt.1a)

Introduction To The Series

There are all sorts of places one can launch out from when writing about the grand scheme of things in the Bible.  Certain passages are just packed with theology!  This has been seen and utilized by many writers down through the ages.  From John Calvin to John Stott men have built solid arguments from expounding a few verses and establishing connections with the Biblical worldview.  For all his faults Karl Barth is often a master at this.  Theology as exegesis as meditation!

While I cannot hold a candle to such men I would like to follow suit.  I’m going to do a series of posts showing how the perspective I call “Biblical Covenantalism” is radically Christocentric.  This is in contrast with most Dispensationalism which, although certainly not obscuring Christ, nonetheless does not place Him at the center of their systems (I believe this is another handicap of defining oneself by “dispensations”).

Two Presuppositions

Biblical Covenantalism hinges on two main presuppositions.  The first is that God means what He says.  The Bible is a revelation to Everyman and therefore communicates its meaning in a straightforward manner.  This is in contrast to what tends to be put across by covenant theology where often the Bible is portrayed as a revelation to the elect only.

True, genres and figures of speech and structure must be appreciated, but they must never be made into the preserve of the scholars to argue over people’s heads about.

The second assumption is that the covenants we come across in the Bible are essential to a correct understanding of the Bible story; including its conclusion.  This is something I shall bring out more in a future series on Teleology and Eschatology.  I shall only say that neither presupposition is blind.

1. A Place To Begin: Colossians 1:13-20

He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. 18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. 19 For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, 20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. – (Col 1:13-20)

Now that I’ve said this about the centrality of revelation and the biblical covenants someone might ask themselves why I don’t begin the set of posts with John’s Prologue, which addresses somewhat both issues (the covenants indirectly as will be shown).  I shall be going there in time, but I think this passage in Colossians gives me the grist I want to kick the thing off with.

Exposition:

Verse 13. In the thirteenth verse it is God the Father who has “delivered us.”  So we see that the Father is the Deliverer and can be properly called the Savior (as in 1 Tim. 1:1; 4:10).  Notice also that just as a human father requires a son or daughter in order to be a father, so God the Father requires a Son to be who He is.  Therefore, we should understand that the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Christ supports the doctrine of the eternal Fatherhood of God.  God’s “paternity” is part of his eternal function in the Trinity, so Christ’s Sonship must be viewed as eternal in consequence.  I don’t say that is all one can point to in support of the eternal Sonship of Christ; just that this text assumes the doctrine.

Now notice where the Father has “conveyed” us.  It is into the Son’s kingdom.  This kingdom is viewed by Paul in context as being both with us but ahead of us (cf. the “inheritance” language of v.12 and the “reconciliation” language of v.19).  It is, as they say, both “already” but “not yet.”  (This is not the same thing as allowing the “already/not yet” to determine our hermeneutics!  The hermeneutics produce the idea).  The “already” part is what makes us “strangers and pilgrims,” (Heb. 11:13), while being “citizens of heaven” (Phil. 3:20).  The “not yet” is what makes us look up and gain perspective from our futures instead of the present (as in Col. 3:1-2).

Evolutionary “Adam” and “Evangelical” Scholarship

I like John Byl’s stuff.  He doesn’t post often, but he is worth following.

Here is an informative post about the spread of evolutionism in the PCA in the form of two books about Adam; one by Peter Enns, the other by C. John Collins.

As someone who “naively” believes what the Bible says, I want to say, “Are you guys kidding?”

PCA Divided On Biblical Adam

 

While not as good as Byl’s piece, a while back I wrote something about Tremper Longman’s errant views:

Tremper Longman, “Adam,” and Teaching the Truth (1)

Tremper Longman, “Adam,” and Teaching the Truth (2)

Twenty Theses Concerning Creation (4)

This is the last set of my “Theses” about Creation.  I hope they have stirred some thought.  You can read the previous posts here: part 1; part 2; part 3.

16. This doctrine leaves room for man, as he comes from the hand of the Creator, to be responsible to believe God and to obey God.  Whatever the effects of sin, this is man as God created him to be.  The obedience of man to the good dictates of God requires that man is constructed to perceive and respond to God.  In the same way, the phenomenal world is to be thought about in terms of the perceptual capability of the one for whom it was made as his home.

17. Creation is a past event.  It is not occurring today.  Those theologians who believed that creation is a continuous thing (e.g. Jonathan Edwards), were in grave error on this point.  This confounds Creation and Providence and we must not do that.  God “rested” from His creative work (Exod. 20:11).

18. Creation was not arbitrary, but displayed God’s thought, care, and love, as well as God’s beauty.  God made things that were pleasant to the eye; orderly, textured, colorful, varying in their functions and contributions to the whole.  Man was created to be Creation’s spokesman, as well as its supervisor.  This entails the conceiving of the togetherness of the seemingly disparate parts of the world, both material and immaterial; sentient and mindless, into the harmony which it has as part of God’s realized (or better, ‘to be realized’) conception.

19. God’s relationship with the world is to be seen in terms of the Creator – creature distinction and relation.  This dichotomy starts with a true understanding of God as He has revealed Himself to us.  Thus, God as Revealer lies behind God the Creator.  As Colin Gunton says, “Creation ex nihilo prevents us from projecting God’s eternity on the world so that it is thereby deprived of its temporality, or from projecting the world’s time into God so that he is in some way limited by its temporal structures.”  

20. All meaningful discussion of Creation has to take man into account. The doctrine of Creation involves both the doctrine of God and the doctrine of man.  This is because we are the ones who are considering it.  We are the ones who are thinking through it.  Therefore, because we are the focus of its theological intent, we must relate it to ourselves. We stand within a created environment from which there is no exit.  We think and do theology from within the environment of God’s Creation.

 

On Seeing The World As God Sees It

I have been discussing the importance of “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”  Here are some thoughts which pertain to this important subject:

Some Christians allow contemporary thinking to push out the Biblical Worldview.  For example, someone recently wrote that rainbows are not objective realities.  Now we grant that no one can find the end of a rainbow.  but that is not the same as asserting that rainbows aren’t there.  The colors of a rainbow are “there” just as much as the colors on our shirts are there.  They may be accidents – to use the scholastic verbiage – but they exist objectively.  The rainbow was “put” there by God as a sign of the Noahic Covenant.  It is, therefore, of great revelatory significance.

What is often overlooked in these sorts of discussions is man’s position as God’s image-bearer and interpreter of God’s created order.  For man to do this task God has to give him language which can accurately verbalize God’s wonders back to Him in worship, and correct faculties of perception which perceive the creation as God made it to be perceived.  When man sees a rainbow he sees it as God wants him to see it.  A rainbow is not an illusion constructed by our minds, but something God has placed in the extended world which we see and which tells us of Him.  From a biblical perspective, that is objective revelation.  Further, although there is always a subjective or personal element involved, objective revelation which originates outside of him, and that is all there is.

We are not free as Christians to indulge ourselves in the speculations of immanentistic philosophies (to use Dooyeweerd’s term).  Our descriptions of the world must comport with the new man (cf. Rom. 12:2; 1 Cor. 10:31).  Because we don’t begin with man but with God the Revealer, our comprehension and description of the world differs from the worldly description.  The worldly descriptions all suffer under the cosh of Hume’s critique of induction and causation.  They eventually have to appeal to the pragmatic for verification.  For example, Kant saved science and ethics by subjectivizing it.

Psalm 19 is instructive here.  In what way do the heavens “declare” God’s glory, or the daily cycle “pour forth speech”?  How does natural revelation “display knowledge”?  It would seem that they have a revelatory clarity which can be compared to speech.  This is because God Himself has already provided men with the perceptual tools to receive and understand this revelation (hence Paul’s “without excuse” argument in Rom. 1:18-22).  Verse 3 is most instructive: “There is no language or speech where their voice is not heard.”  This verse sets up a connection between non-verbal revelation and human language, or expression of the data of that revelation.  Man communicates with himself, his fellow man, and [normatively] with his Creator about the world God has put him in.  This means that our speech about the world is itself revelational!  But in this world that revelation is obstructed and distorted by sin, so the Word of God (vv.7-11) is needed to correct the impediment.  Through the joint contemplation of natural or general revelation (a la vv.4c-6), and verbal revelation, we see our proclivity to distort truth and live sinfully in God’s world (vv.12-13).  Thus, the aim of the one who sees this is to line his thoughts up with God’s intentions for the revelation He surrounds us with and confronts us with (v.14).

Thus, we see here man as image-bearer and recipient of revelation (which is for him), responding correctly as a sinner (in the form of the psalmist) to revelation and regulating his wandering self to the purpose of the Creator.

Now, this is what he should do.  Romans 1:18-32 is what he usually does do!  But for all that, he is without excuse, because the revelation is clearly seen.

Twenty Theses Concerning Creation (3)

Here are five more of my 20 Theses on the importance of the Christian doctrine of Creation.  Parts One and Two can be read here and here.

11. The Doctrine of a Creation to be explored and understood encouraged the modern scientific process, which was begun in the Renaissance and made explicit in the Reformation, with its insistence that daily work, however menial, was to be done to God’s glory.  This dignified and legitimated many areas including many scientific pursuits.  It followed from this that man’s significance is wrapped up in this teaching of creation.  All of the fundamental questions of man; Who am I?  Why am I here?  What is my purpose in life? Where am I going after I die? Why is there something rather than nothing? are given concrete answers within a creational worldview.

12. Creation ex nihilo (as opposed from Creation ex materia) is unique to the biblical-Christian tradition and is consonant with the doctrine of God’s aseity, or Self-sufficiency.  Even Unitarian versions of this teaching falter because a Unitarian “God” needs something beyond himself to display or actualize his attributes and communicate with.  Biblical Trinitarianism teaches that God is perfectly “Self-actualized” through the mutual bond of love of each of the three Persons of the Godhead.

13. Because all things were made by and for God only God can tell us about the world as it really is.  He has to tell us about first things and about last things.  God has to tell us who we are and why we are not what we ought to be.  Therefore, revelation is necessary to a creational worldview, but because of man’s waywardness it can only be understood by faith in that revelation.

14. Any other cosmogony, whether it be materialistic or pantheistic, always runs into open contradictions. Whereas the Doctrine of Creation ex nihilo is surefooted, comprehensive, coherent, and contains great explanatory power, a philosophical, naturalistic view of the world has to posit the eternity of matter and then has to reify that matter in order to make it do anything.  It also has to go against established laws of science such as, something cannot come from nothing; life cannot arise from non-life; matter’s tendency toward entropy not evolution; the necessity for complex, specified information, etc. The pantheistic viewpoint is just a more outwardly mystical expression of former.

15. Non-creational models cannot explain the existence and prevalence of evil, let alone properly define it.  Evil did not inhere within the original creation. God is not the author of evil.  God, for His own reasons, allowed evil to enter and pervade this world, but not forever.  Evil and sin are truly definable as, “a contradiction of the divine will and perfection.” (J. Murray).  From this we can say that evil is not a part of the fabric of reality in the way that goodness and righteousness is.  Evil is not eternal and will one day be no more.  Within the biblical world-picture it makes sense that God would send His Son into the world to redeem it and point it toward its Telos.

Twenty Theses Concerning Creation (2)

This group of five ‘theses’ continue five in a previous post.  They derive from a lecture of mine included in a course, “Doctrine of God (2): The Works of God in Creation & Providence.”

6. God certainly works in this world, and makes things according to the laws of thought, the laws of physics, and so on, of which He is the Source.  Man’s works must follow these laws, but whatever he does is not a creation but a re-creation; that is, a re-conceiving of facts which lay with God that He already has put into existence, either within the actual physical realm or within the mind of man. This also implies an epistemology of realism; yet “revelatory realism,” not a critical realism (although they share much in common) with its source in the mind of man.  What we see in this world does correspond, generally speaking, to what is there.

7.  Not only is there a metaphysic and an epistemology that is implied by the Doctrine of Creation, but these also establish an ethic too. Biblical ethics follows from the teaching that God made man in His own image.  Hence the greatest fact confronting man, the primary fact, is the fact that there is a Creator to whom we are responsible and who we must acknowledge and try to sincerely imitate.

8. Although God pronounced the creation very good on the seventh day, we must be careful not to conceive of the world as having attained its maximum potential right at the outset. Indeed, Genesis Chapters 1 and 2 encourage us to suppose that there was much to be done within the world so that it would eventually reach its potential. This was man’s role in what is sometimes referred to as the Creation Mandate, which is still in effect today. Christians must search the word of God, and think through the implications of the Doctrine of Creation to work out a proper creational worldview and way of working in the created order in every generation.

9. Creation needs to be viewed as a Project.  It has a telos or goal.  Even the fact of the Fall implies a purpose and eschatology.  The original Creation Mandate needs to be fulfilled and needs to be corrected, and thus we are driven to a linear view of history because of the Doctrine of Creation. This eschatological note is also underscored because of the necessity of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is the Agent of Creation in the first place.  He takes the place of sinful man, and is the cause of the salvation not only of man, but of man’s environment in the future.

10. The presupposition of biblical Creation is essential to a comprehensive, coherent, and scientific worldview.  God created the world ‘good’. This means that God likes the physical order and man’s sensible interaction in it, and this encourages science.  Creation properly understood was the catalyst for modern science; because of the mandate to go out and explore, to expect things, to expect to find God’s wonders there, to learn and think God thoughts after Him.

Twenty Theses Concerning Creation (1)

The Doctrine of Creation is essential to coming to terms with “the mind of Christ” and to being able to interpret the world Christianly.  Sadly, most Christians do not incorporate their view of life within a Creation framework.  This leads them to see reality as splintered and only occasionally God-embossed.  Here a some “theses” which stem from a lecture from the course “Doctrine of God (2): The Works of God in Creation & Providence” at Veritas School of Theology.  They are given by way of a corrective to the trend of poor Christian thinking:

1. In the biblical doctrine of Creation ex nihilo we are taught that prior to the divine act of making the world there was just God: God, self-contained and all sufficient, who needed nothing, being perfect in Himself. There was no coercion, no compulsion whatsoever within God to force Him to create the universe.  He did not have to create.  God made us and our world because He wished to do so.  This means that the world is contingent not necessary.  The only thing that is necessary is the existence of the Triune God.

2. God upholds and sustains and guides the world, but it is not a part of Him.  In utter opposition to pagan cosmogonies, the earth is not created from the material of a god or gods; nor from eternal matter.  Neither is it an emanation of God.  The creation is not divine in itself.  It has its own existence, which is separate and distinct from God the Creator.  Thus the earth is not divine and does not share any sparks of divinity. Hence, when we read about the heavens and earth in Genesis 1:1, we understand that the universe is dependent on the independent Triune God.

3. God created the world wisely and carefully, and because of this He has placed both physical and spiritual laws within it, which stem from His original creative intent. God decreed both material, physical, and spiritual ways that the world should interact and operate, and it operates the way it does because of the implementation of His all-conditioning Plan or Decree. Some operations are spiritual and some physical laws.  They obtain in this present time, but they do not function in a perfect way due to the effects of the Fall and its curse. The fact that everything was originally created good shows us that the Fall was a calamitous event which continues to affected both man and his environment.  This truth must never be passed over in our worldview.

4. This means that the Doctrine of Creation and Fall is the ground for a true philosophy. It is because God has made things the way He has made them, and they run the way that they run, that our philosophies of life must match up with the connected doctrines of creation and providence.

5. Hence, in metaphysics, the theory of reality, we must first and foremost understand the Creator/ creature relationship. In epistemology, the theory of knowledge, we must understand that because God had a comprehensive plan for this world, which included every fact within the world and within time, plus the relationships of each fact to every other fact, it means that the framework for knowing anything, and knowing it properly, is to see it as God intended it to be understood.  Facts are to be understood primarily in their relationship to the plan of God as revealed in His Word.  We therefore think God’s thoughts after Him in a ‘revelatory’ world.  God’s knowledge of all things is original and so prior to ours; prior to anything that we may find out. Our knowledge on the other hand, is derivative of God’s knowledge.  We can only know something that is true if it aligns with God’s decree, God’s plan.  Another way of putting this is to say, as Van Til used to say, that God’s knowledge is creative knowledge.  He creates and establishes the facts of existence, while man’s knowledge is re-creative.

The Rise of the Revisionists: Positivism in O.T. Studies

While I iron out my priorities I thought I would give this article another turn.  This is a rerun for an old post which speaks to the radical atheistic reinventing of OT Israel by what has come to be known as “the Copenhagen School.”

Rewriting The History of Israel

Since about the beginning of the 1970’s a group of radical “revisionist” historians of Israel have been producing ever more virulent books and journal articles claiming to debunk the historical picture as set out in the Old Testament. Building upon the work of German scholars (one thinks especially of Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth), and utilizing a leftist sociologist brand of historiography, these scholars are now making pronouncements that, if even half-true, would destroy both the credibility of the Bible, and threaten the national identity of the nation of Israel. To quote two recent liberal writers:

“There is no more “ancient Israel.” History no longer has room for it. This we do know. And now, as one of the first conclusions of this new knowledge, “biblical Israel” was in its origin a Jewish concept.”

“Biblical historiography is not a product built on facts. It reflects the narrator’s outlook and ideology rather than known facts.”

These are the sorts of cocksure assertions that are routinely made by non-evangelicals today. In this study our aim is to rebut the types of brash claims as the ones just quoted. This survey can only scratch the surface of the present state of Old Testament historiography in the broader Church. We shall, however, be taking a look at the critical assumptions that drive the work of these individuals, and sampling some of their main contentions. To help us to gain a feel for the situation we shall be quoting two slightly more moderate revisionist books; both of which have been published in the last couple of years. Along the way, we shall also be making corrective observations from some of the latest evangelical literature. Our purpose is twofold: 1. By citing the liberal scholars themselves we hope to alert Bible-believers to adopt a less complacent attitude toward the “consensus of the results of contemporary scholarship” that we sometimes hear about from some evangelical sources. 2. We also want to give reassuring and faith-building responses to these revisionists in order that those interested can turn to their Bibles with renewed trust in God’s infallible Book.

Inspecting The Assertions.

Let us take another look at the two quotations from Thompson and Ahlstrom. I want to ask whether we can see behind these over-confident avowals to the prior commitments of their authors.

“There is no more “ancient Israel.” History no longer has room for it. This we do know. And now, as one of the first conclusions of this new knowledge, “biblical Israel” was in its origin a Jewish concept.”

“Biblical historiography is not a product built on facts. It reflects the narrator’s outlook and ideology rather than known facts.”

The first part of Thompson’s declaration is mere bravado. The second part, though, claims that “History no longer has room for it.” By “History” we take him to mean the study of history (or “Historiography”). Thompson implies that this statement is not just his own opinion. It is, rather, the certain conclusion at which any intelligent person who has “the facts” will arrive. We may not know everything, but “This we do know.” So Thompson thinks that scholarship has come to this assured resolution. Anyone who would attempt to gainsay him is obviously not sufficiently apprised of the facts, or, he is simply in error (perhaps because he/she is not a competent historian?).
Well, Thompson and his fellow revisionists have spoken, who then can make trouble? So having built on such a solid foundation of historical certitude, Thompson feels it his duty to announce, “And now,” being, as he is a custodian of what he calls “this new knowledge,” he must tell his audience that the whole edifice that is “biblical Israel” was all made up by the Jews and has no claim on the words “history” and “fact.” That is quite a thing to say! If he is to be believed, there is no confirmatory evidence, historical, archaeological, literary, or otherwise, that the Old Testament has got its facts right in any part.

Now on to Ahlstrom’s assertion. He is sure that the Bible’s relating of Israel’s ancient history is the product of individuals whose interests were quite other than to record factual information about the events that they wrote about. Ahlstrom assures his readers that the “known facts” reveal an altogether different scenario than that found in the Old Testament. The reason for this is simple. The stories of the Old Testament reflect “the narrator’s outlook and ideology.” The “known facts” can be paraded before us all by these experts, and can be proven to be at variance with the idealized tales of the Jewish authors. After all, intimates Ahlstrom, “the narrator’s outlook and ideology” makes him far from a neutral observer. By “outlook” he probably means the post-exilic world of someone trying to write past history as though he were actually there observing the events; a ridiculous idea given that these men are convinced that the Bible was not composed until then. The other word, “ideology,” is one of those loaded expressions that are intended to lull the “informed” (read, “misled”) reader into assuming that having any set of beliefs (especially religious ones) automatically disqualifies a person from being a reliable reporter of historical circumstances.

The Biblical God: The Precondition of Intelligibility

This post, while being very relevant to the context of my previous post and the one coming fast on its heels, is a “stand-alone.” I apologize for the formatting.

When the Christian sets forth his outlook he will stress the kind of God to whom he is committed, the nature of the world in relation to God, and the nature of man as God’s creature.  The Christian God is totally self-sufficient, and in Him there is an equal ultimacy of unity and diversity (being Triune).  Everything outside of Him derives its existence, character, meaning, and purpose in light of Him and His sovereign counsel. – Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, 16.

 

Logic/Reason…..precondition ……. God who is immaterial perfect rationality

Morality…………..precondition ……..God who is righteous

Truth……………….precondition ……..God who is unchanging Truth

Uniformity……….precondition ……..God who upholds regularity (providence)

Order………………..precondition ……..God who imprints His order on creation

Subject-Object….precondition ……..God creates us (body/soul), the world for us

Love………………….precondition ……..God who is Love and demonstrates it

Beauty………………precondition ……..God who is artistic & gives us aesthetic abilities

Language…………..precondition ……..God who speaks

Good………………….precondition ……..God who is perfectly Good

Evil…………………….precondition ……..God who permits declension from Himself

False Beliefs………..precondition ……..God who (for now) allows rebellion

Personality………….precondition ……..God who is Personal

Relationship………..precondition ……..God who is social

One & Many…………precondition ……..God who is both One and Many (Trinitarian)

Science………………..precondition ……..God who gives skills & conditions for analysis

History………………..precondition ……..God who created & guides with a telos in view

Number……………….precondition ……..God who is Triune and infinite

Ecology………………..precondition ……..God who gives us oversight of His creation

Salvation………………precondition ……..God who reconciles humanity in His Son

Worship………………..precondition ……..God who evokes praise in the saints

Hope……………………..precondition ……..God who raises Christ from the dead

Meaning………………..precondition ……..God who made us in His image

 

Glory to God alone!