The Biblical Worldview (Against All Others)

Since we have been without power for several days and it probably won’t come back on for a day or two, I thought I would repost this piece from a talk I gave few years back. It’s quite long, but I hope it is profitable.

Introduction.

Let me begin with a few lines from T. S. Eliot:

“Endless invention, endless experiment,

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowledge of words, but ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. 

Where is the Life we have lost in living?  Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?  Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” – Choruses from ‘The Rock’ 

I want to add to this the words of Jesus in John 8:12:

“I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

We live in a world suffused with the information of which the poet speaks, and much of it trivial.  If we don’t prioritize correctly we will never be wise.  But what information we prioritize depends much on how we view our lives and our world.  Some questions are bigger and more solemn than others.  It is a shame when men and women settle for explanations which do not explain; answers which do not answer.  The ‘choice’ of worldview is a determining choice.

Before I launch fully into my talk I want to make 2 clarifications:

• No Neutrality: Everyone has an angle (Dawkins, Krauss, etc., are classic examples of no neutrality). All assertions about reality and ethics are to a large extent controlled by prior beliefs.  These beliefs emanate from the picture of the world which a person holds in their heart.  So for someone to claim that their outlook is neutral while that of those who disagree with him is biased is both naïve and absurd.  We all have our biases, and these must be declared so that they can be compared.  To ignore them or to forget about them is a form of self-deception.

Many atheists I’ve dealt with seem to hold the attitude, “Let the Xtian give up his biases; I’ll stick with mine.”  (By bias I mean “an opinion or inclination towards something.”)  Not all biases are bad.  E.g., a bias for an umbrella over a paper bag when it’s raining outside.

• A Proper definition of ‘Faith’ – “persuasion of Divine truth” (J. Frame). It is common for New Atheists to wrongly define faith as “belief in something without evidence.” (The multiverse hypothesis would exemplify this definition).

This definition of faith is nonsense.  In the Bible, “through faith we understand…” (Heb. 11:3).  Though there is such a thing as blind faith, this is not the biblical understanding.  Faith is not credulity.  Scripture tells us to “prove all things.” (1 Thess. 5:21).  Faith is never blind, it is always reasonable, and, indeed evidence based.  Blind faith can be coerced.  True biblical faith cannot be coerced.  Faith properly defined is essential to all knowledge.

You don’t have to be a Christian to see this.  Renowned physicist Max Planck said,

“Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith.  It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.” – Science, Faith and Revelation, 350.

This is because, as physical chemist and philosopher of science Michael Polanyi noted, “all acts of knowing include an appraisal by the knower.” (Personal Knowledge, 17).  And as Polanyi said further on in his book ,

“No intelligence, however critical or original, can operate outside [of] a fiduciary framework.”  – Personal Knowledge, 266.

The Puritan William Gouge wrote, “Faith is in the understanding.” – Faith is implicit in all understanding!  Faith is thinking God’s thoughts after Him.  Any view of biblical faith which opposes it to reason and evidence is a red herring.

The Bible says and Polanyi explains, faith is necessary to know.  Faith in God anchors both mind and soul.

What if we try to exclude God from our attempt to explain the world?

Just here let me introduce a quotation from the French post-modern critic Roland Barthes, from his The Death of the Author: “to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God.”  Barthes said there is no such thing as a fixed meaning of a text (or the world).  Meaning is assigned, not by the author (or God as Author), but by the reader.

Of course, in order to believe what he said what have you got to do? – believe Barthes, the author!

1. A Place To Stand: We all have a perspective  

So I am here to talk about the biblical worldview, and in doing that I shall be commenting on other outlooks.  A worldview is the lens through which a person views reality.  It is a commitment or inclination of the heart.  To qualify as a worldview, any picture of life should be able to comment on and offer explanations of our varied experience, and then to put the pieces together.  In other words a worldview must tackle the array of data to do with ourselves, our environment, and our beliefs: it must deal with God, Man and the World.

A worldview must confront the big questions about purpose and significance.  E.g., Is the world an illusion?  Are my experiences unreal?  Or is the world uncaused, unguided and therefore purposeless.  Or is it created?  And if so, by Whom?  And why is there is nagging sense that things are not the way they ought to be?  The contemporary artist John Mayer caught some of this when he wrote, “Stop this train.  I wanna get off and go home again.  I can’t take the speed it’s movin’ in.  Honestly, won’t someone stop this train?”

The biblical worldview makes sense of our experience as humans in a multifarious environment, and it all starts with the biblical God.  The God of the Bible is the great Fact underlying every other fact.  All goodness, truth, knowledge, power, justice, beauty, purity, and love comes from Him.  The Bible declares “God is love.”  He is referred to as “the God of all Truth,” as “the Almighty,” “all [Whose] ways are justice,” etc.  As the Psalmist puts it, “all our springs are in Him.”  We see ourselves and life rightly when we ourselves in relation to Him.  In His light we see light (cf. Psa. 36:9).

God transcends His creation but He acts within it.  He is both transcendent and immanent, He is Lord above and within the world.  (“Know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.” – Deut. 4:39).  Creation has been made with its own integrity.  Yet all our abilities are derived, just as all our knowledge is derived.  Knowledge itself, in the biblical worldview, is that which corresponds to the reality which God has made.  Complete objectivity, therefore, is only possible to God, yet objectivity is attainable to humans.  Further, God has made the extended world for us and made it amenable to us: we are told to investigate the world analytically and ethically; to do science and to treat other creatures with care as custodians of the earth, under God’s eye.

2. The Place We All Stand: Everyone Stands within the Biblical Worldview

When I say that we all stand within the biblical worldview, I know that I have some explaining to do. I want to say right away that I am not claiming that we all acknowledge this. In fact, the Bible says we act to suppress the knowledge of God. But it protrudes here and there since it must. For God must be already there in order for anything else to be there. Cornelius Van Til called God “the precondition of intelligibility.” He meant that the existence of the God of the Bible was necessary in order for us to assert anything about anything – even if that assertion is false. Hence, the Christian-biblical worldview is the environment in which we all live, even though many of us wish it were otherwise, and try to construct other “explanations” for things like love, truth, justice, logic, number, information, good & evil, the external world, consciousness & personhood, etc., or even if that means throwing up our hands and saying (in something akin to blind faith) “it’s just there.”

Let me give a few examples of this suppression of truth:

• A solipsist is someone who denies the reality of anyone or anything but their own existence. As such they are exceedingly rare creatures! I once spoke with someone who told me he thought that solipsism was the most rational philosophical position to take. I asked him who he thought he was talking to?
• So, many Hindus believe the external world isn’t real. They believe all is one. Yet in propagating it and its central doctrine of reincarnation Hindus actually presuppose the objective reality of an external world to be re-born in to (e.g there is the cycle of samsara and there is the transcending of it). They believe their views are reasonable, although they must hold that the laws of reason are essentially unreal since these laws of logic make distinctions between things, which is a denial of the monism that undergirds much Hindu belief.
• A church member called me last week after she had been talking with a friend who held Panthesitic New Age beliefs which deny the existence of evil. She told me she had asked her friend about the Holocaust and was told that it wasn’t evil, just necessary. I think a worldview which denies evil is obstinately myopic. It is a denial of the world.
• Naturalistic materialists may tell us that we are mere bio-chemical machines with no freewill, just dancing to the music of our DNA, but they will take those “machines” to a graveside, to a Shakespeare play, or to the coffee house, or to the university (where they got this stuff from), or even to events like this; and they believe they are free to agree or disagree with other people’s viewpoints. They believe that their views are rational, despite the fact that they must hold that the non-physical laws of thought evolved as our brains evolved, and point towards, not truth, but merely pragmatic ‘aids’ to survival. Laws of thought require a mind to think them. The brain is not the same as the mind.  Intentionality and consciousness are not reducible to the laws of physics. As one of my favorite writers, David Bentley Hart, observes in showing up the obvious difference: “Software no more “thinks” than a minute hand knows the time or the printed word ‘pelican’ knows what a pelican is.” – The Experience of God, 219.

These are accounts of the world.  But as G. K. Chesterton put it, these worldviews are, “complete in theory and crippling in practice.”

I say that there is a cognitive dissonance here. Many worldviews just cannot be lived out in the real world. But this dissonance too is explained by the biblical worldview, namely, the sinful suppression of the knowledge of the Creator, and the replacement of the biblical-Theistic picture with another picture (an idolatrous one).

God is necessary:

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, you take God out of all this and all these things cry out for an explanation. They hang like half-inflated balloons, untethered from a central hub which lends them value and coherence (recall my quotation of Barthes earlier!). They are needing to be related to each other, and to us!
Therefore, it is not the case that deciding to disbelieve in God leaves a person with nothing to prove.
It is rather the case that there is an immense about of work to do to make sense of oneself and the world without the biblical God (a job which I say is impossible to complete – see Rom. 1:18-22).  The canvass must be completed, but how?

In Scripture Creation leads to purpose and order. I teach the Bible Story as “the Creation Project” – a project to be consummated; a project full of hope. There is a Creation Mandate for us to explore the world and to analyze it – to do science. All the founders of modern science believed this creation mandate. It is simply wrong to think you can exclude God and not pay the price.  For example, if you were walking down a dark alley and you saw a group of young guys coming towards you, wouldn’t you be relieved to see them carrying Bibles in their hands?

Listen to these words by atheist philosopher Jurgen Habermas:

“For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical re-appropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance,… everything else is idle postmodern talk.”

We have built on a Theistic foundation.  But the Bible Story records the entrance of sin and death which mark our independence from God and the misuse of God’s gifts, from love and reason to community, and the natural world itself. You cannot make sense of things without the God of Scripture. Logic, consciousness, the necessity of a second and third person perspective, number, truth – these cannot be traced back to nothing. Neither can they be grounded in a capricious or absentee deity. Neither can they be explained in terms of illusion.

We live in the west in an age of scientism – the naive belief that science can answer every question and that any question it can’t answer isn’t a proper question. Today’s intellectual climate is like a sitting room where only the naturalists are allowed to sit in the chairs, then anyone who is not sitting in a chair is told (in the name of tolerance) to leave. MIT Nuclear Physicist Ian Hutchinson calls the belief that all knowledge comes from the natural sciences “a ghastly intellectual mistake” – Monopolizing Knowledge, ch. 1.  It again is self-evidently false, since the dictum “all true knowledge comes from the natural sciences” is not a statement testable by the natural sciences.  Scientism is the cultural imperialism of the Western academic world.

And what about our inability to live up to even our principles? What about all the thoughts we have had which we knew were wrong and harmful? Envy, lust, ingratitude, pride, dishonesty, partiality, anger, cowardice, malice, greed, etc., we’ve all felt them. These things come from within us and express themselves in our lives – in some more blatantly then others. We are part of the problem. How then are we to be the cure? No, we “suppress the truth in unrighteousness,” and on our best days we know we do. And in all this there is a message. It concerns the sacrificial love of God.

In closing I want to refer to the 8th chapter of the Gospel of Mark.
– Jesus encounters Pharisees who disingenuously ask for a sign (Jesus is exasperated)
– Then Jesus gets a little frustrated with His disciples because they don’t grasp His true identity
– And then Jesus is asked to heal a blind man; and at first He only half-heals him. He asks the man, “What do you see?” The answer was “I see men as trees walking.” That’s how we often see others. But the Bible tells us that we are made in the image of God! The story goes on to relate how Jesus completely healed the man, and it says, “and he saw all things clearly.”

Religion opposed and killed Jesus.  His followers sometimes don’t have their heads in the game.  The biblical worldview corrects both of them.

They say “love is blind.” But love is not blind. Loves knows! Love sacrifices. It is sight-producing! God is love. So we look unto Jesus. Jesus says in John 8:12, 

“I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

Renewing Dispensational Theology – Revised (Pt. 2)

Part One

This completes the thoughts offered previously.

4. Systematic Theology

Coming now to Systematic Theology the first thing that must be said is that the pretended stand for a partial system must be summarily dropped. Dispensational Theology cannot be switched out for the term Dispensational Premillennialism. In point of fact, I make bold to say that the notion of Dispensational Premillennialism is a bit of an odd bird without a full-orbed system to back it up. Most Dispensationalists have been blithely content to append their eschatology on to the end of another system – most often the Reformed position. But this is a dubious, and, let us admit it, halfsighted maneuver.

When DT is tagged onto an already developed system of theology it can only present itself as a correction to certain aspects of that system of theology. In so doing it tangles with the methodological presuppositions of that theology. But because it allies itself so often to say, Reformed theology, it must act deferentially towards Reformed formulations in areas other than ecclesiology and eschatology. For if it failed to acknowledge Reformed theology’s right to assert itself in these other areas – the doctrine of God, the doctrine of man and sin, the doctrine of salvation, for example – it could not think of itself as Reformed. This is because in claiming its right to question Reformed assumptions in any theological corpora, save in regard to the Last Things (and perhaps the Church), Dispensational theology would be asserting its right to formulate ALL its own doctrines independently of other theologies – just as Reformed Covenant Theology does! It would grow to dislike its assumed role as a beneficial parasite, cleaning up areas of another theological system, and would wish to be “Dispensational” in every area! Ergo, even if its formulations of all the theological corpora were closely aligned with Reformed theology here and there, they would be Dispensational formulations! This is precisely what I am pleading for!

Every knowledgeable person knows that Systematic Theology ought to be an outgrowth of Biblical Theology. The fact that most Dispensationalists are content to tack their views on to an already existing whole system doesn’t speak well for their Biblical Theology. For if Dispensational Biblical Theology cannot produce the impetus to formulate a distinctive and whole Systematic Theology of its own, perhaps the trouble goes deeper? I believe it does, and that reformulating Dispensational Theology from a Biblical Covenantalist viewpoint gives you all the main points of traditional Dispensational Eschatology and Ecclesiology, but it also gives you enough material from which to formulate clear and distinctive versions of Prolegomena, Theology Proper, Bibliology, Anthropology, Christology, and Pneumatology as well.

As I have said elsewhere, I do not think that tracking the “dispensations” produces enough usable doctrine to work up a solid systematics or worldview. If one is going to follow the standard definitions of Dispensationalism as a “system of theology” there will be slim pickings when it comes to forging a Dispensational Systematic Theology.

The irony should not be lost on us. Dispensationalists are forceful in their claims for “a Dispensational hermeneutic”, but they fail to understand what they mean by it, and even if they do, they often fail to give it the theological sponsorship it deserves. The main problem here is one of methodology – a study of which is dearly wanting in Dispensational circles. Let me give an example: if a certain universally applied hermeneutic is necessary to have Dispensational eschatology, then one cannot cease applying it in all other areas. Our of a consistently applied reading of the Bible a full Systematic Theology will inevitable come!

5. Method

In the last part of my series Christ at the Center I tried to sum up the strong Christological emphasis of Biblical Covenantalism with some of the solid by-product from which robust doctrines in Systematic Theology could be constructed. Although I have recorded over two hundred lectures in Systematic Theology along conventional lines, I think if I were to try to write a volume I would use the triad God, Man and the World. Why? Because that triad is what we are confronted with as creatures in God’s image every day of our lives.

Beginning with the title “God Has Spoken” and introducing epistemological and ontological concerns, which in turn require ethical responses, I would ask questions about the knowability of God and (following Calvin) the knowability of ourselves in Creation. This introduces the doctrine of Revelation. Here I would want to press the joint reliance of the Sufficiency and Clarity of Scripture for the job ahead. That would open the door to hermeneutical questions.

Even so, dealing with Christ I would take up the same rubric: God, Man and the World. In this way I would attempt to discuss the pre-existence of Christ along with the incarnation and cross and resurrection. I would want to ‘lace’ the whole Systematics with Eschatological (and teleological) concerns, being careful to converge these themes in the section called “Eschatology” at the end of the work. This way one would hopefully see the inevitability of the convergence rather than now turning to “The Last Things.” The covenants of Scripture, dealing as they do with the same triad of God, Man and the World, could help accomplish this.

6. Worldview

Contrary to some views, Systematic Theology sets out the Bible’s teaching on reality (viz. God, Man and the World). It does not go cap-in-hand to worldly science and unbelieving philosophy because it knows that the Biblical Worldview is the only workable worldview.

A Review of J. P. Moreland, “Scientism and Secularism”

A Review of J. P. Moreland, Scientism and Secularism, Wheaton: Crossway, 2019, 222 pages, pbk

J. P. Moreland is a seasoned Christian philosopher who has provided the Church with some very good tools in defense of the Faith and the Christian Worldview.  He has been Professor of Philosophy at Biola for many years.  This timely book is most welcome as it engages one of the most pernicious false ideas that has arisen from man’s innate hatred of God (Rom. 1:18-25).

Scientism is essentially the belief that only science, especially the hard sciences, can give us solid knowledge of the world.  Although many of its advocates do not come right out and say it in such blunt terms, that is their faith.

Moreland refers to  “hard scientism” and “soft scientism”, the difference between them being that the softer variety allows that other fields of study may have something to say, but nothing as authoritative as the pronouncements of “science.” (29-30).  This belief in the magisterium of the lab coat has come about because of a shift in the “plausibility structure” in the society (32-33).  The organized and heavily guarded groupthink that permeates school and university curricula and the media.  Behind this is the ever-potent force of people not wanting God to be there. (191-194).

In the third chapter the writer relates how the universities were transformed into bastions of secularism, and this was chiefly done by the acceptance of scientism.  This shift did not occur because of evidence.  “Rather, it was merely a pragmatic sociological shift.” (48. Italics are the author’s).

The short fourth chapter is entitled “Scientism Is Self-Refuting.”  This little chapter is important because it not only shows that self-refuting stahttps://drreluctant.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/further-thoughts-on-the-call-to-the-ministry/tements are necessarily false (51), but that scientism is ironically not even a scientific position.  Scientism is “an epistemological viewpoint about science; it is not a statement of science.” (52, cf. 57).  From this position Moreland shows that philosophical presuppositions (say, about the nature of truth) are necessary before any science can get underway (ch. 5).

Unsurprisingly, Moreland spends time on the matter of consciousness and mental states.  Consciousness is and always will be a first-person phenomenon.  Neurologists depend upon the honest reports from the subject to gather their data (86-90).  But of course many neuroscientists have bought into physicalism, wherein the human being is viewed simply as the accumulation of active molecular parts – a machine (90-105).

Further chapters engage the Hawking/Mlodinow thesis that everthing came from nothing (ch. 10).  He takes several shots at methodological naturalism (121, ch. 13), includes a fine section on Fine-Tuning (143-149), and near-death experiences (92-94), and useful chapters on the integration of Christianity and Science (chs. 14 & 15).

The book does not analyze secularism as such.  It’s main aim is against the rampant scientism in our culture and to help Christians understand and critique it.  He rightly inveighs against “using watered-down, intellectually vacuous, simplistic preaching that is always applied to a parishioner’s private life while failing to deal from the pulpit with the broad cultural, intellectual, and moral issues facing us all” (39-40).  There is a helpful bibliography of recommended books at the end.

Scientism and Secularism sometimes seems to lack the cut and thrust of more polemical works, but it is recommended reading for anyone who wants to be conversant with a culture saturated with the canons of irrational scientism.

General Revelation (Pt.1)

Revelation, be it in nature, within ourselves, or inscripturated in a book, is always God’s prerogative.  It always comes from God, and man is designed to receive it.  Man is not the one who starts with himself and discovers God in the universe, rather God discloses himself, and man ought to take immediate notice of God’s self-revelation.

Let me start with a basic definition of general revelation:

General Revelation is God’s self-disclosure in nature and in the psychological aspects of man.

The Range of the Revealed

I am not saying that the physical aspects of man are not revelatory, they are, but I include those within the general heading of nature. So material nature and also our psychology are both revelatory of the Triune God, the God who reveals himself in the Scriptures.  They are not revelatory of any other god for the simple reason that there is no other god who can reveal himself, and therefore the revelation that we see is the revelation that we ought to ascribe to our Creator.

Because of the connections between the human psyche and nature, the material world (what God has made) is revelational, not the other way round.  This brings together the fact of divine revelation with the expectancy for divine revelation. We know that God has revealed Himself because He has told as in His Scriptures and He’s put it all around us. We expect that God reveals Himself in the world because of what He’s told us about Himself.

The Second Person is the revealing Logos of God, the Word of God.  As He is the par excellence verbal revelation of God, then we should fully expect to receive a verbal announcement from Him as His creatures. Therefore, the necessity of Scripture and the rationale for Scripture are brought together in the Logos.  The necessity of Scripture comes about because of the discordance between God and sinners.  The rationale for Scripture stems from the need for a permanent record of God’s word about Himself and creation to fallen humanity.  These can be viewed in the Person of Christ.

Moving from the Logos Doctrine to general revelation helps us to keep ourselves on the right path regarding the latter.  As we will see, there are many evangelicals who have taken wrong paths, the paths congregating around natural theology.  But personal revelation, wrapped up in the Triune God, is built into what He has made, and His reason also for making it, and this personal element is woven into the ongoing plan of God we see in history.  Carl Henry wrote,

While nature has no will of its own, no capacity for moral choice, its forms and structures are nonetheless given and sustained by the Logos of God. Pervaded by God’s divine presence and power, it is an intelligible order serving moral purposes and a realm of providential fulfillment. – Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority – Vol. 2, 97

We ought to expect this if we have our doctrine right, because God is personal and has made earth as an environment suitable for us; not just suitable to live and breathe in, but an environment that is suitable for us to investigate and to marvel in.

Therefore, when we look at a tree, a flower, or a summer sky, we’re seeing something that is personally given to us, personally fashioned for our delight. Therefore, when we look at the movement of history, the God who made the tree and the sunset is the God who guides history.  ‘Yes’ in a fallen world, ‘yes’ in a world that is full of evil, and yet there is goodness in it and this God can be seen even in the darkness by those of us who have been given light by the Holy Spirit, on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ, the Light of the world.

Still Biblical Revelation

The thing that we need to realize straightaway is that general, or if you like “natural” revelation, has got to be incorporated within a biblical viewpoint; it is not something that we have discovered and named. “General Revelation”, although we give it that name, is revealed to us through the Word of God.  It is revealed to us for what it is.

Because of the Fall, the sinfulness of man, and the noetic effects of sin upon our minds, we cannot see nature for what it really is; neither can we look within ourselves and see ourselves for what we are, and when we try to do that without reference to God’s revelation in Scripture, then we come away with idolatry and with an illusion.

The Primacy of Revelation (2)

Part One

The Importance of a Prolegomena, and the Importance of Having a Christian Philosophy

There are all kinds of philosophies which the Christian should avoid.  The Apostle warns,

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. – Colossians 2:8

The reference here is probably generic, referring to the various ideas floating around in Asia Minor in the day: eclecticism, syncretism, idolatry, superstition, and neo-platonic moralism.  In the midst of it all there was and is a true Christian philosophy.  In fact, anyone who is a lover of real sophia (wisdom), is going to love the philosophy of Jesus Christ, the Logos of God, the one who discloses God par excellence.  Mature Christians become such, in part, by thinking biblically.

In one of his earlier books Francis Schaeffer made this pertinent remark about the reticence of Christians to think with their theology:

Christians have tended to despise the concept of philosophy; this has been one of the weaknesses of evangelical orthodox Christianity. We have been proud in despising philosophy and we have been exceedingly proud in despising the intellect. Our theological seminaries hardly ever relate their theology to philosophy and specifically to the current philosophy. Thus, students go out from theological seminaries not knowing how to relate Christianity to the surrounding worldview. – Francis A. Schaeffer, He is There and He is not Silent, 297

Schaeffer was certainly not recommending philosophy above theology.  What he was drawing attention to was the serious lack of critical reflection by evangelicals and fundamentalists on a whole host of important intellectual matters to which theology ought to deliver the answers. The problem, as he saw it, was that theologians – and evangelical theologians more than most – were just not equipped to address these weighty matters, nor in many cases, were they even interested in them. Philosophy needs theology for its basic justification and proper direction.  And theology depends upon revelation.

Theology also needs a collaborative philosophy to unearth the kinds of questions that theology should meet. Otherwise theology becomes an exclusive discipline cordoned off from the rest of intellectual life, when it should in fact be guiding it. Theology needs a philosophy; therefore, theology needs to study first principles (prolegomena).

Schaeffer also mentions that in many seminaries the current philosophies of the day are not studied, or not related to theology. But we have to relate the truths that we are espousing in our statements of faith to the real world.  We have to use revelation to its full extent to cover all truths.

If Jesus Christ has indeed come into this world and died on the Cross in real time for fallen man, and if the Cross of Christ and the Resurrection of Christ indicate that Christ is coming back to rule the world, then there is a big story to be embraced.  It leaves nothing untouched.  This world will be transformed, and God’s people will be transformed and glorified to live in it.  So Cross and Crown impact a Christian view of history, the meaning of history, and therefore the meaning of human life.  And the content is revealed.

If God has created this world then we’re not here by cosmic accident, we’re here by divine purpose, and there is a teleology, a purpose or an aim, that is built into this world and into its forward trajectory.

Therefore, as saved human beings we need to find out what that purpose is and we need to be pursuing it in this fallen world. We can hardly shine like lights in this world if we do not think in a different way than this world, and our lives do not even slightly remind the world to a different way of thinking.

When New Testament Christianity met the non-Christian world, whether Jewish or Gentile, its characteristic response was not to collaborate but to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Lord and thereby to see a change in its hearer’s allegiance. – Peter Jensen, The Revelation of God, 33

Revelation, Theology and the Christian Mind

This really is what theology and the theological mind enables us to do. It doesn’t just do to preach the Gospel as an independent truth, just some other piece of information that we’re to add on to what we already know.  If we do that then the Gospel just doesn’t fit. Because the Gospel demands the transformation of our thinking about the world and our thinking about ourselves, and our thinking about our dependence upon the Sovereign God.  For most of the thinking of the people in the world it’s been built on an independent foundation, not one that depends on Scripture.  Therefore, this whole message, which demands humility and repentance and dependence….just doesn’t fit in with that framework.

So, there needs to be a theological setting, a theological framework or explanation, in which the Gospel is set, as a painting is set in a good frame, enhancing and deepening the encounter.

Now, from one point of view that is Systematic Theology come to its own, but using other language, but sticking to the truths of theology, it is really a Christian philosophy or worldview.  Therefore we have to be aware of the fact that the revelation of God demands that kind of treatment.

Unless Christian education publicly expounds its way of knowing God, strenuously proclaims universally valid truths, and clearly identifies the criteria for testing and verifying the knowledge claims we make, then the Christian view of God and the world will survive as but a fading oddity in an academic world that questions its legitimacy and appropriateness. – Carl F. H. Henry, Gods of this Age or God of the Ages, 93

When Henry talks about testing and verifying the knowledge claims that we make, he’s using language that goes back to a kind of verifiability criterion of his mentor Gordon Clark and people like E.J. Carnell.  I would disagree with that approach because it tends to be too rationalistic.

But from another point of view there are proper ways of testing and verifying our knowledge claims as long as the appeal is to our ultimate authority (the Bible), and that ultimate authority is demonstrated to be the only public authority that can actually make sense of any universally valid truth claim; this is where the great work of Cornelius Van Til and others comes in.

 

Now Complete: Twelve Videos on Apologetics & Worldview

Here are the 12 video presentations on Apologetics & Worldview: An Introduction I recorded last year before a group of lay Christians who ranged from ages 15 to 70+.  I cite quite a few authorities, and I hope to place these in readable form in the future.  The average running time for each video is around one hour and thirty minutes.  

1. The Field of Vision
2. The Background of Creation
3. The Creator – Creature Distinction
4. Dependent Reasoning
5. Stressing the Antithesis
6. Science and Personal Knowledge
7. The Myth of Naturalistic Science
8. Scientism and Circularity
9. Faith, Reason and Truth
10. Preconditions, Facts, and the Historical Christ
11. Evidence in Real Time
12. Concluding Thoughts – A Cohesive Worldview

I pray that this teaching is a help to many.

“Leaving Mormonism” – A Review

I was sent this book (and another that I must review soon) before Christmas and the publisher, quite understandably wishes me to review it.  I am very happy to do so since this is a fine resource

A Review of Leaving Mormonism: Why Four Scholars Changed Their Minds, edited by Corey Miller & Lynn K. Wilder, Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 311 pages, paperback, 2017

This book is an great idea.  Four former Mormons with academic credentials and a passion for the truth write about why they left Mormonism and add a critique of it from their own perspectives.  Each writer communicates clearly.  None is mean spirited in their criticism of their former belief, though all are keen to inform readers not only of the errors of the Latter-Day Saints; errors which lead to a particular worldview, but also of the chameleonic nature of Mormon teaching as it seeks to adapt to criticism and exposure.

Corey Miller’s chapter, “In Search of the Good Life” asks whether experiencing the good is objectively possible under Mormon teaching.  His answer begins with his personal testimony of being a Mormon with descendants reaching all the way back to acquaintances of Joseph Smith himself.  His essay deals with the nature of Mormon testimony and the difficulty of achieving “salvation.”  Miller is a philosopher and has provided excellent notes to go with his essay, even briefly outlining Alvin Plantinga’s response to de jure objections to Christian faith in his Warranted Christian Belief (70 n.41).

The next chapter is by LaTayne Scott, “I Was There, I Believed.”  She has been given enough room to write a long but interesting chapter consisting, as all the contributions do, of her testimony and an analysis.  Scott’s testimony is eloquently written and of real help for someone trying to understand the grip that Mormon culture exerts upon its members.  Of particular help in this chapter is the way the author persuades the reader to look upon Mormonism as a worldview with its distinctive (and false) approach to truth.

Lynn Wilder’s piece includes her discomfort at encountering many contradictions concerning things like racism and polygamy.  There is also her son’s story, wherein he was challenged while on mission to read the New Testament.  Upon returning to testify he got up and confessed that a person needed Jesus and Him alone (163).  This son, Micah, begged his parents to simply read the NT like a child would.  Wilder read John’s Gospel and her eyes began to be opened, though not for some time did she and her husband leave the fold (in 2008).  The “reasons” part of her article details numerous social problems with Mormonism, again focusing on racism and polygamy, but expanding on each.

The last of the four writers is the scientist Vince Eccles.  He became a rebel against religion after learning about his divorced mother’s being judged for some of her choices.  He writes about his fascination with parts of the Bible (e.g. Matthew and Exodus) and his investigations into the reliability of the Scriptures, but he does hold to a non-literal reading of the early chapters of Genesis, and to theistic evolution, and there are certainly one or two liberal-critical influences upon him.  He records crises of faith which even had him contemplating becoming an orthodox Jew.  He also seems to have universalist leanings.  Of the four authors in the book I felt Eccles was the least satisfying.  In fact, even though his essay is of interest, I think it was a mistake to include him in the book.

Miller and Wilder complete the book with a chapter on the New Atheism.  They inserted this chapter because many ex-Mormons become disillusioned and fall pray to the arguments of these people.  It’s a nice bonus at the end of the book.

This is an absorbing book, written with head and heart.  I liked the first two contributions to be the most helpful; the one by Eccles was a disappointment.  I think the book, Eccles’ chapter apart, is a very good buy.

Three Videos on Science & Christianity

I have been putting my introductory lectures for Telos on Apologetics & Worldview up on YouTube.  There are several more to come, but I thought it would be useful to place the three classes dealing with Science together in a post.  Throughout the classes I quote from quite a number of authorities.  I hope this is more helpful than it is distracting.

The first, “Science and Personal Knowledge” includes a study of Michael Polanyi’s theory of knowledge, which is important for dispelling the false notion of dispassionate objectivity in science.

The second lesson, “The Myth of Naturalistic Science” tries to demonstrate how belief in scientific materialism or naturalism is unsustainable:

The last video is entitled “Scientism and Circularity” and attempts to show that the facts are stacking up to overwhelm the classic rhetoric of naturalistic evolutionary ‘science’, although adherence to scientism and its circular reasoning (based on the dogma that ‘naturalism must be true’) still makes it impervious to the facts:

Creation, Fall, Redemption: A Motif of Scripture (revised)

The Theological-Historical Motif of the Bible

The God of the Bible is a God who is intimately connected with what He has made.  This world is personal in a very genuine way.  This personal dimension to reality is what makes the cross of Christ comprehensible.  This is because the “Sin Problem” – what is wrong with this world – must be resolved by a personal God from above, on behalf of sinful persons.  The cross is also interpretative of history, since it is God’s “marker”  testifying to His ongoing concern for what He has made and intends to put right.  The resurrection is another historical “marker” that guarantees the way it will be put right.

Reality

A Biblical picture of God as personally active for us, therefore, will lead us to see reality in the following outline:

1. The Universe is an ex nihilo creation not a product of chance (Gen.1:1ff.; Heb. 1:12; 11:3). 

This excellent definition is given by Torrance:

The creation of the universe out of nothing does not mean the creation of the universe out of something that is nothing, but out of nothing at all.  It is not created out of anything – it came into being by the absolute fiat of God’s Word in such a way that whereas previously there was nothing, the whole universe came into being.[1]

This is a statement at once about the creation of the universe by God’s power and will, but it is also a statement about  the personal underpinnings of our reality.  The clarification on the meaning of the word “nothing” is necessary because many atheists (most recently Lawrence Krauss) define “nothing” as having properties – even if they are of quantum mechanics.

2. The creation is under a curse (Gen. 3:17-18; Rom. 8:20-22).

Creation is subject to vanity, futility and frustration because of mankind’s fall and its consequences due to the natural world’s connection with us.  The world’s continual cycle of birth, growth, death and decay demonstrates this subjection.  The universe is in a process of deterioration…and it appears to be running down.  Nature, like mankind, is in a state of decay, deterioration, pain and futility.[2]

3. This reveals a linear view of history.[3] History is going somewhere (Acts 17:26-27; 15:18).

The telos of creation is bound to its being personal rather than impersonal.

In this great metanarrative, the chaos of violence, injustice, ignorance, natural disasters, and corruption are dissonant screeches that will be resolved in a coming Age of Peace and Unity.  Hendrikus Berkhof noted,

Although the Reformers were afraid of sectarian interpretations, they, like the Middle Ages, were convinced that history moves between the Fall and completion, that Christ is the centre of this, that we are involved in the struggle between him and evil, and that he will gain the victory in that struggle.  This view of history has for centuries been typical for Europe; indeed, it made Europe, and gave seriousness and direction to the actions of Europeans.[4]

4.  Men will be judged by God at an appointed day in the future (Acts 17:30-31; Rom. 3:19). 

As a theological theme final judgment needs to be more visible than it currently is.  We need to get back to the realism of the Puritans and the first evangelicals, who made “Judgment Day” a driving force in their preaching and teaching.  Any theology worth its salt must face the practical necessity of proclaiming God’s judgment.  True Christians are mainly distinguished from non-Christians by their acceptance of God’s judgment against their sins in the willing Substitute.  Here, for example,  is John Brown of Haddington with advice to students of Divinity:

See that ye be real Christians yourselves.  I now more and more see, that nothing less than real, real Christianity, is fit to die with, and make an appearance before God.[5]

5.  God has provided salvation through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, who lived and died as a man, and who will return to Earth to rule as unchallenged Lord (Acts 2:36; 3:13-21; 1 Cor. 15:3-4). 

The crucifixion and resurrection, seen as one event (Jn. 10:17), thus becomes the lens through which all existence must be viewed if it is to correspond to reality as it will turn out to be.

The horizon of creation is at the same time the horizon of sin and of salvation.  This world is not what it is supposed to be.  A reclamation and reconciliation are ahead of us; achieved but not yet consummated in Christ.  This hope is covenantally predicted and fixed, especially through the New Covenant made and mediated by Christ.  To conceive of either the fall, or of Christ’s deliverance as encompassing less than the whole of creation is to compromise the biblical teaching of the radical nature of the fall and the cosmic scope of redemption.[6]

Ethics

It is no surprise to find that what is found above as a basic description of reality is also the Gospel blueprint.  However, the Christian worldview also covers the realm of Ethics.

a. The Bible teaches that there are moral absolutes of right and wrong, good and evil (Isa. 5:20; Jn. 14:6).  This is a corollary of the personal nature of God and creation as a gift.

b. Because God has made man a moral agent he is required to choose to do the good and avoid the evil (Rom. 2:4-16).

c. Because we are created in God’s image God requires us to “do unto others what you would have them do unto you.”  Human government is expected to punish the guilty and exonerate the innocent (Matt.7:12; Gen.9:6).

d. There exist standards of conduct and propriety which men ought to follow (though these are not to be confused with Victorian prudery).  These standards are supposed to bind all human institutions.

e. Life does not consist of stuff to make us feel either cozy or superior.  “It is better to give than to receive.” (Lk.12:15; Acts 20:35).

f. Nevertheless, Christianity is not a religion of constraint (as Islam).  It allows people to demur, though it warns of the dread consequences, both temporal and eternal, of rejecting the personal Creator’s declared intentions (Matt. 7:21-27).

---

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons, (Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1996), 207.

[2] John D. Currid, A Study Commentary on Genesis, vol. 1, (Darlington, UK: Evangelical Press, 2003), 135-136.

[3] For a good discussion of historiography see John Warwick Montgomery, The Shape of the Past, (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, Inc., 1975), especially pages 6-182.

[4] Hendrikus Berkhof, Christ the Meaning of History, (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1966), 23-24.

[5] The Systematic Theology of John Brown of Haddington, Introduced by Joel R. Beeke & Randall J. Pederson, (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, [1782] 2002), iv.

[6] Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained, 86.

Review – Darwin’s House of Cards

A review of Tom Bethell, Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through The Creation Debates, Seattle: Discovery Press International, 2017, 293 pages, pbk.

The widespread public acceptance of biological evolution in Darwin’s day was probably a product of the simultaneous faith in Progress.  Darwin’s theory was accepted as readily as it was because it shared in the general belief that things were getting better.  It’s not that the organisms themselves were being swept along, but that European and then American intellectuals believed that everything was improving. – 256

This is the way Tom Bethell ends his entertaining book attacking the reigning scientistic consensus of evolution.  Darwin’s House of Cards is a fully up-to-date survey of the mechanics and effects of evolutionary theory; a theory which Karl Popper concluded was “not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program” (14).

As to the general optimism which provided the conditions for the enthusiastic acceptance of Darwinism in the middle of the nineteenth century, Bethell writes,

[A]s I hope to show in the following chapters, the science of neo-Darwinism was poor all along, and supported by very few facts.  I have become ever more convinced that, although Darwinism has been promoted as science, its unstated role has been to prop up a philosophy – the philosophy of materialism – and atheism along with it. (20).

In the nineteen chapters which follow the author reports on and dismantles numerous evolutionary claims and “evidences”, showing among other things that common descent, natural selection, and random mutations are either pure fiction, tautological, or terribly over-plugged.  He challenges the dogma of the tree of life, noticing along the way biochemist Craig Venter’s denial of it (53-54), and paleontologist Colin Patterson’s frank admission that the nodes in the tree of life diagrams are always empty (55-56).  Why?  Because there is no real evidence for it.

Speaking of Patterson, who was chief paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London until his death in 1998, Bethell interviewed him several times, and chapter 12 reviews those conversations.  Although Patterson remained a thoroughgoing evolutionist, he came to the opinion that it conveyed no scientific information at all.  As Bethell reports it, he said that scientists could do very well without it (149).

In the same chapter we are told about two world-renowned experts in their fields who admit that the funding for their respective fields is minimal compared with digging up fossils.  Nevertheless, both said that “you don’t find out much from fossils”, and that they could find out much more by studying living things (146-148).

This book’s short chapters are so well written that the author is able to cover a great deal of territory in a relatively short space.  This means that along with the usual problematical areas for evolution; natural selection (chapters 5 & 6), the fossil record (chapter 11), homology (chapter 9), DNA and Epigenetics (chapter 15), etc., he also tackles less well documented issues like extinction (chapter 7), and convergence (chapter 10).  There is also a useful chapter about Richard Lenski’s long-term experiments with E-coli (chapter 16).

As to homology, for example, he notes, the propensity of naturalists to invoke design while supposedly trying to explain it away.  Homologists, or those who rely on them, often write of the relative similarities in structures from different organisms without being forthright enough to declare that these similar features often are derived from different sets of genes! (109-112).

To take a few more examples, despite the recent demonizing of humanity and our deleterious influence on nature by many progressives on the left, no one knows why extinctions happen (86-92).  As for “convergence”, the belief that differing species evolve similar traits due to their experiencing the same kinds of environmental and ecological pressures, evolutionists again beg the question.  Evolutionists have tended to substitute their imaginations for proof, and nearly always simplify extremely difficult matters in the process.  So on page 119 Stephen Jay Gould is quoted as saying that in certain flying creatures, “highly adaptive forms that are easy to evolve arise again and again.”  Bethell responds that if flight is so easy to evolve, “Someone should tell Boeing engineers how that was achieved.”

As we’re on the subject of engineering, chapter 13 is given over to “Intelligent Design and Information Theory.”  At the start of the chapter Bethell mentions the work of Michael Behe, William Dembski, and Douglas Axe (155-161).  He deftly dispatches theistic evolutionist Kenneth Brown’s attempt to oppose Michael Behe’s “irreducible complexity” findings (155-156), and then states the obvious truth that, contrary to creationism, “Intelligent design theory… does not identify a designer, any more than we can identify the designer of Stonehenge.” (157).  Why then the resistance to ID?  For instance, citing Wikipedia’s slanted presentation:

Numerous attempts have been made to change…derogatory comments, but all such changes are promptly reversed on Wikipedia – sometimes within minutes. (161)

The thought-police are very active.  But of course the reason has already been given.  The reigning view of the intellectuals is naturalistic atheism.  Therefore, the facts will always be made to comport with the theory, however vicious the contortions have to be.  Chapter 14 describes the link between “Darwinism and the Philosophy of Naturalism.”  This chapter includes a good discussion of freewill, or the denial thereof by many of these “Freethinkers”, although the irony of their calling themselves by this term seems to be totally lost on most of them!  Bethell’s responses to this are effectively structured around the work of Michael Egnor and Thomas Nagel.