Tag Archives: Presuppositional apologetics

Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Chapter 2.1 (Discipleship and Therapy)

21 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Apologetics, Biblical Counseling, Freud, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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Chapter Two

The Impoverishment of Western Culture

There is an implicit claim here that symbols function as a mechanism by which a culture gains ascent over the various individuals in the culture: the means by which the superego functions. A curious question which is left unanswered is “Why symbols?”

We could argue that symbols point to the transcendent, but a proposition of Freud must be that there is no real transcendent. Why then any sort of desire or inclination in that direction? That is left unanswered. We simply learn that Freud provides us a mechanism to strip out the symbols.

We then learn that essentially Western Culture developed by means of suppressing sexual desire. (40) The control over sexual desire was the high water mark of character.

Since there is no objective morality, only pragmatics, there is no particular need for such suppression except in and so far as it is functional for the culture.

On an aside, I have noticed that the treatment for “sexual addiction” is distinction amoral in this regard. The problem is not whatever inclination, but rather whether there are negative consequences for following such an inclination.

There is an unstated morality which is present in this: Desires are inherently good. That is a moral equation in the guise of amorality. But if it were truly amoral there would be nothing better about indulging or refraining. Moreover, personal happiness could not be relevant, because anyone else’s concern for your well-being is also irrelevant.  In short, the moral question is really not as absent as some pretend. It is always there; the difference is where does not draw a line?

But back to Freud: The “analytic attitude”, the aim of “therapy” is always at the distinct individual. There is no reason to “cure” any sort of desire; because what makes Mr. X happy is necessarily good.  “Well-being is a delicate personal achievement”. (41)

This is taken as an ethical demand upon “therapy”. We start with the idiosyncratic evaluation of the patient and seek to assist in achieving that end.

That is fundamentally antithetical to the Christian demand. In Matthew 28, Christ places a solitary command upon the Church: “make disciples”. The process of disciple making is “teach the to observe all that I have commanded.”

Now one can reject the proposition that Christ spoke or that Christ spoke these words. That is an honest position, and the position of Freud, for instance. But for one to claim to be a “Christian” and also take a position that Freud has a contribution on this issue is perplexing.

The position of the Scripture is not terribly confusing. Yes, there can be knotty issues, but those are not the main. The center of the road is abundantly clear.

What is confusing is when someone proposes that there is any sort of integration possible at this key point. No one is contesting the ability of anyone to make observations about the relative frequency of X behavior. But when it comes to this question of the fundamental presuppositions, What is a human being, What is the purpose of a human being, What is necessary for human beings to change: those issues are beyond compromise or “integration”. When we get to presuppositions, those are questions of grammar.

In the English and German language, the sound “gift” has a fundamentally different meaning. In English you get one at Christmas. In German, it is “poison”.

Discipleship and therapy are similar in that both involve words and directions and people who know something is wrong. “Gift” sounds the same in English and German. But O the difference!

As a final note, if you are at all curious about the matter of the importance of “presupposition”, I must direct you to my brothers at:

Domain for Truth: https://veritasdomain.wordpress.com

 

A bit about brute facts

25 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in Apologetics, Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized, Van Til

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(I am working on an essay about the relationship between biblical soul care (biblical counseling) and those who advocate for an integrationist position. I wrote upon a couple of paragraphs on “brute facts” which I cannot keep due to space constraints. But I also wanted to keep these those notes around for use later)

Van Til famously rejected the notion of “brute facts”.[1] ; and thus our understanding of the world — when it is not properly anchored in a right relationship to God is problematic:

But then sin enters. By virtue of it, man seeks to interpret experience independently of God; indeed he is left to himself so that he must seek to interpret all things without God. Hence, all his interpretation will basically be wrong. He will set up a new and false standard of objectivity. Man will think that though he interprets alone, he nevertheless interprets correctly. He thinks that his idea of God is still correct, though there is no longer any foundation for his ideas about anything.[2]

This concept is not purely a belief of Van Til, but is now considered a factor of all scientific inquiry. As Frame explains of Thomas Kuhn’s understanding of the philosophy of science, “When two people differ on interpretation of something, they share agreement on the existence of the thing they are trying to interpret. But in a paradigm conflict [between one system of understanding and interpretation and another], even that agreement can be lost.”[3]

This problem of interpretation is acute when it comes to understanding “psychological” facts:

All such evidence, in the end, is interpreted evidence. There is no such thing as brute uninterpreted fact. Data are collected and related and presented by men, all of whom are sinners and subject to the noetic effects of their sin. In God’s world, all men are related to him as covenant breakers or covenant keepers (in Christ). The judgments of unbelievers, therefore, are arrived at and presented from a point of view which attempts to divorce itself from God. Such judgments must be understood, weighed and examined in this light.[4]

It is at this point, that those who advocate biblical soul care and those who advocate for some form integration[5] between Scripture and “secular” psychology can easily misunderstand one-another.

[1] “Since the natural man assumes the idea of brute fact in metaphysics and the idea of the autonomy of the human mind in epistemology, the Reformed apologist realizes that he should first challenge these notions.”  Cornelius Van Til and William Edgar, Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed. (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ, 2003).

[2] Cornelius Van Til, Psychology of Religion (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ, 1971), no pg.

[3] John M. Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P & R Publishing, 2015), 486.

[4] Jay Edward Adams, Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling (Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resources Library, 1986), 269.

[5] “In his analysis of current state of integration, Brian Eck identified twenty-seven models of integration.” David N. Entwistle, Integrative Approaches to Psychology and Christianity: An Introduction to Worldview Issues, Philosophical Foundations, and Models of Integration (Eugene, Or.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2004), 163.

Van Til: There is no Third Possibility

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

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An interesting aspect of post-modernism is the acute realization that everyone is reading the world through a grid. This is precisely the point of presuppositional apologetics: Everyone “reads” the world through some means (there is no naive, uninterpreted world for the human being).  As Van Til writes, we either read the world as God’s world, or we read it in rebellion:

The Christian principle of interpretation is based upon the assumption of God as the final and self-contained reference point. The non-Christian principle of interpretation is that man as self-contained is the final reference point. It is this basic difference that has to be kept in mind all the time. It will be difficult at times to see that such is actually the case. The very fact that by God’s common grace fallen man is “not as bad as he could be” and is able to do that which is “morally good” will make the distinction between two mutually exclusive principles seem an extreme oversimplification to many.

In fact, it is in spite of appearances that the distinction between the two principles must be maintained. The point is that the “facts of experience” must actually be interpreted in terms of Scripture if they are to be intelligible at all. In the last analysis the “facts of experience” must be interpreted either in terms of man taken as autonomous, or they must be interpreted in terms of God. There is no third “possibility.”

Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge. (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ, 1969).

“Miracles” and Presuppositions

06 Friday Nov 2015

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As Dr. Keener explains, the argument that miracles violate the laws of nature is based upon a presupposition as to the nature and actions of God:

Even when it appears that God works otherwise, one would speak of violation technically only if one viewed God as subject to such laws, or “interfering” as if nature were autonomous and God did not normally act there. If one defines miracles as involving the supernatural, this aspect of the definition must be taken into account when defining what is naturally “impossible,” since on theistic grounds it could remain supernaturally possible (cf. Mark 10:27; Luke 1:37; 18:27). One could allow (with deists) that God established natural activity as a norm. Yet one could without any inconsistency also allow (against deists) that God can also act in nature in ways that differ from the norm without articulating this discretion as if it must be subject to the norm. One could view God as an agent modifying causal conditions (as agents by definition can) without “violating” natural law.”

Craig Keener, Miracles

Book Review (Part Four): Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible, Vern Poythress

12 Friday Apr 2013

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Part Four: The Impersonalist Misreading of Scripture

          Poythress identifies two basic worldviews.  On one hand, he identifies the biblical worldview of a personal God who “upholds all things by the word his power” (Hebrews 1:3): “The laws derive from God’s speech, which is the speech of a personal God. But our modern culture has moved away from this kind of regularity” (52).

          The opposing worldview sees such regularity not as the kind action of a loving God, but rather as the blind action of an enormous machine, “[O]ur modern culture has moved away from this kind of conception of regularity. The nineteenth century saw the triumph of natural science in interpreting the physical aspect of the cosmos. Nineteenth-century natural science produced a kind of mechanistic model of the universe, which could be easily interpreted as implying a kind of mechanistic model of the universe …a universe governed by impersonal law” (52). He calls this worldview “impersonalism” (30).

          Drawing out the theological implications, Poythress notes that the impersonal view begins without God’s existence: “[I]t substitutes the God of the Bible for a kind of god of its own invention, in the form of impersonal laws. The god is the substitute for the real thing, and that sense, an idol” (53).

          But what of polytheism? Poythress notes that if all things are ultimately and only physical matter, human beings and trees really are the same. The natural human desire for some spirituality combined with a materialism has a tendency to invest the physical world with spirits. 

          Such a thing is seen in ancient polytheism, where physical things: winds, ocean, rivers, stars, et cetera are understood to be gods worthy of reverence.  In modern times, a full-fledged religion is rare as with respect to physical items (although it is not completely absent). More often it takes a more diffuse superstition, “Everyday people within advanced industrial societies are looking into astrology and fortune-telling and spirits ….That direction may seem paradoxical. But ….If a materialist viewpoint is correct, all is one” (31).

          I spoke recently with a scientist and professor from one of the most prestigious universities in the world.  He casually mentioned that his materialist science colleagues were “very superstitious”. When I questioned him, he thought the matter beyond quibble.

          Poythress goes onto draw out the religious commitment of such pantheism: When a viewpoint includes spirits and gods, it may in a sense appear to be personalist. But ultimately it is impersonalist, because the “one” dissolves what is distinctive in persons” (31).

          In the book, Poythress demonstrates and works out the impersonalist convictions which underlie modern disciplines of science, history, linguistics, history, sociology, anthropology and psychology. In particular, he shows how such presuppositions necessarily will undermine any value for the Bible, but assuming at the outset that the Bible is cannot be true:  What he means is that the Bible describes a personal God uphold the world. The impersonalist presuppositions which underscore modern study assume such a God cannot and does not exist.

          To demonstrate the nature of such misreading of Scripture, Poythress interacts with the biblical texts in light of various disciples. By drawing out the impersonalist presuppositions in such disciplines, he exposes the manner in which such disciplines create conflict and confusion – not because it exists in the text, but rather because the presuppositions cannot account for or incorporate the claims of Scripture.

          I remember my anthropology professor in college discussing his works among pygmies in Africa. The pygmies lived in the forest and rarely saw anything more than thirty feet away (I don’t remember the precise distance, but it was not far – due to the extremely dense vegetation). When he took some people out to the plains and showed them large animals at a great distance, they thought the animals were very small – not far away. Their understanding of the world did not include the fact that things far away would look small.

          The impersonalist cannot rightly see the universe or Scripture, because he cannot admit to the evidence of God’s personhood – even though such denial comes at the cost of one’s own humanity.[1]

[1] Poythress does note that the regularity – but not utter and absolute uniformity – of God’s interaction with creation permits impersonalist “laws” to approximate some aspects of reality. For the good and value of God’s consistent regulation of the natural world, see God in the Shadows, by Dr. Brian Morley.

Book Review (Part Three): Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible, Vern Poythress

11 Thursday Apr 2013

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Part Three: Religious Gullibility and Dehumanizing Idolatry

          Poythress works out the trouble of the materialism in a section on religious gullibility.  The skeptic will appreciate that Poythress does not rule skepticism out-of-court, “Skepticism about religious belief should not be dismissed too quickly. It is a counterfeit, which means that it is close to the truth. It has seen some things to which we do well to pay attention” (221).

          Some questioning of religious claims is necessary, because human beings have a built-in vulnerability: Due the Fall (Genesis 3), human beings have a deep seated need for God: this is expressed in longing for significance, safety, assurance. The extraordinary desire for such things leads human beings to accept counterfeits: sort of like the young lover who overlooks extraordinary faults solely because the lover’s desire is so great. “I don’t care if he steals and lies, he is wonderful!”

          Gullibility is the cost of trying to remedy the damage of the Fall without seeking the remedy of God in Jesus Christ.  

          The things desired by the human being supersede any other commitment to truth or life: such things become one’s ultimate commitments and thus control all understanding in one’s life. Ultimate commitments which do not terminate in God are by nature extremely dangerous, because they will destroy the human being seeking them.

Such desires are in fact gods:

When we forsake the true God, we make commitments to ultimates that become substitutes for the true God. In other words, we commit ourselves to counterfeits. We worship them. Worship is an expression of ultimate commitment. The Greeks had their gods whom they worshipped. Modern people may worship money, or sex, or power (223).

This is the real trouble with our desire for satisfaction when de-coupled from God:

This is how idolatry functioned in Old Testament. The fundamental problem with the Israelites in the Old Testament was that they reserved for themselves the prerogative to determine what they needed and when they needed it, instead of trusting the Lord. The self-oriented hearts of the Israelites then looked to the world (the neighbors in their midst) and followed their lead in blowing to gods that were not God in order to satisfy the lusts of their self-exalting hearts. When this is comprehended, it portrays the terrible irony of Israelite false worship. When the Israelites followed the lead of their neighbors and bowed before blocks of wood, that act of false worship underlined their desire for autonomy and, in an ironic way, was an exultation of themselves even more than of the idol. The idol itself was incidental; (in our world it could be a pornographic picture, a spouse as the particular object of codependency, or an overprotective mother’s controlling fear attached specifically to her children) the self-exalting heart was the problems, which remains the problem today.

The main problem sinful people have is not idols of the heart per se. The main problem certainly involves idols and is rooted in the heart, but the idols are manifestations of the deeper problem. The heart problems is self-exultation, and idols are two or three steps removed. A self-exalting heart that grasps after autonomy is the Grand Unifying Theory (GUT) that unites all idols. Even though idols change from culture to culture and from individual to individual within a culture, the fundamental problem of humanity has not changed since Genesis 3: sinful people want – more than anything in the whole world – to be God.[1]

          Such an idolatrous heart necessarily seeks for some manner to escape from God (Romans 1:18). While those who reject God are rarely as expressive as Huxley, Huxley does make the confession of impersonalism plain:

For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries,  the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an  instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was  simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.

Aldus Huxley, Ends and Means (1946), 272. A copy of the work may be found here: http://www.archive.org/stream/endsandmeans035237mbp/endsandmeans035237mbp_djvu.txt As Poythress writes of such a one, “His ultimate commitment is to himself as ultimate. That commitment has been labeled autonomy….In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, … this desire for autonomy, the rule of the self by the self, and alleged infinite freedom that might go with it have been overlaid by materialism or impersonalism” (229).

          And here is the real terror and sorrow of such idolatry: The desire for some satisfaction without God requires one to abandon a personal God – and thus requires one to rejection themselves as a person. Idolatry comes at the cost of dehumanizing oneself.

          Yet, the lure of idols is so great that we human beings will ruin our lives rather than leave off the chase, “It is hopeless, for I have loved foreigners [idols] and after them I will go” (Jeremiah 2:25).

          The only solution for such deception is the redemptive work of God in Jesus Christ.

Poythress exposes the impersonalism presupposed by the various disciplines which interact with the Bible. – That will be discussed in part four.

[1] Heath Lambert, The Biblical Counseling Movement After Adams (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 148.

Book Review (Part Two): Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible, Vern Poythress

11 Thursday Apr 2013

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Part Two: The Self-Destruction of Impersonalism.

          From the title, one might expect to read of the 40 “hardest” challenges to the Bible: the sort of book where one explains Cain’s wife and the genealogies of Jesus.  Yet, rather than consider isolated “problems” Poythress confronts the basic worldview which confronts the Bible: impersonalism.

          Any thorough, consistent worldview must come to grips with the fact that human beings are personal.  Yes, theists must answer the question of “If God is real, then why he is invisible?”[1]

          But, materialist must answer the question of person:  the materialist must say that he does not actually exist as a person. His thoughts are solely the result of physical processes — just like water boiling or freezing. Indeed, the experience of the thought is ultimately an illusion.

          Now this leads to all sort of nonsense: If my thoughts are merely complex mechanical processes, then the thoughts are compelled. My thinking that the world is merely material/impersonal is compelled by materialism.  I cannot “know” the truth of the process, because I have no choice in the process. My knowledge of materialism is as compelled by physics as it water freezing or boiling.

          If that is true then nothing is true or false, good or evil: these are and are not (although I could not know that – I actually can only point to other physical processes responding to previous physical processes – and even that may not be a real pointing, because  it is only a physical process itself: just like the turtles holding up the world, there are only previous physical processes all the way down – which itself cannot be known to be true: it’s like a hall of mirrors, except that there is not “real” object reflected in the mirrors, here there is only mirrors).

          The materialist – or as Poythress calls him, an impersonalist (he actually uses the word “impersonalism”, (30) must answer the question of why he has a mind, why he can think. The impersonalist must explain why he would hate one who would injury his family – and why he has love for his family.  The impersonalist must give an account for the fact of persons at all.

          Now the proposition that person arises from matter in motion is nonsense.[2]  This is usually obscured by philosophical jargon and complex arguments. But in the end, the fact of the passion and the arguments undercuts the entire proposition. I find it far more sensible to start with the fact that you and I are persons, and answer the question of God’s invisibility; than to start with plasma (the almost gas stuff, not the blood stuff) and end up with Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

          Poythress notes this trouble in the discussion of religious gullibility. While he will go on to express some admiration for skepticism of religious claims (see part two), he notes the trouble with such materialist rejection of God.
He notes the greatest strength of the materialist/impersonalist mindset does not derive from the strength of the argument, but rather from its commonality in the culture, “This kind of materialist explanation of religious belief has a considerable plausibility in our time because materialism itself is widespread and lends its support. In addition … materialism carries with it some of the prestige of natural science” (220).

          However, as noted above, skeptical materialism ends up as eating its tail, “When this principle is followed consistently, it leads to the conclusion that beliefs in general must be debunked. And that includes the belief in materials, belief in evolution, and belief in brain structures. The debunker ends up with no grounds on which to stand to do his debunking” (220).

[1] It is a trick question: it is sort of like “Do you still engage in illegal activities?” The trouble comes from combining two (or more) questions into one sentence: Have you ever engaged in an illegal activity? If you have, do you still do so?  Lawyers would object that he question assumes facts not in evidence. Debate coaches would call it the fallacy of many questions.

 

The question about God being invisible first assumes as true the proposition; Everything which is real is visible (or otherwise subject to physical measurement). Let us ask that question first: Is everything real/true subject to physical measurement? The answer is “No.” The very act of thinking about the question is a thing not subject to physical measurement.

 

Even if it is true that every thought must correlate to brain activity (that is itself a problematic proposition), it does not further mean that every thought is brain activity. The thought, the subjective reflection is not physical.  A player runs all the bases and comes Home in a baseball game. The player touching home plate corresponds to a score, but touching the home plate is not the score. You get a point for touching home plate, but the point is not the act of touching home plate.

 

Interestingly the most certainly “real” knowledge we possess is knowledge of things which are not physical.  You may misperceive the physical world (poor light, hallucination, et cetera). You may have a mistaken or confused thought about some aspect of the external world. But, you can never be confused as to the fact of your own perception or thought. The mental state may not correspond correctly (another rabbit trail) to the physical world, but the fact of the thought is certain to you.

 

The question asked of God corresponds to a non-physical reality: true or false. Neither the truth nor falsity are physical, although both are real.

 

God is by nature incorporeal – as our all our thoughts, emotions, hopes – as is truth, beauty, goodness, faith, hope & love. Such is made of that which is most certain and most real.  In short, it’s a trick question.

[2] Poythress notes, “Materialists conveniently ignore the evidence that does not fit, just as the person who consults fortune tellers ignores the cases where the alleged fortune does not pan out” (229).

This Side of Truth

05 Saturday Jan 2013

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This is an example of a how a Christian may read and think through the matter of art. I use a poem by Dylan Thomas, This Side of Truth, because I find Thomas one of the most extraordinary of English speaking poets.

First, the poem. Read it aloud – Thomas loves words, their sound and rhythm – the way in which thoughts trip upon another, and cadence (a near confusion of sound and meter, like a great driver racing along a mountain cliff) which suggests something more dread and dark than can be said otherwise. In Thomas, even blue eye, a six year old, the wind and sea, the sun, moon and stars are dusted with death and judgment.

(for Llewelyn)

This side of the truth,
You may not see, my son,
King of your blue eyes
In the blinding country of youth,
That all is undone,
Under the unminding skies,
Of innocence and guilt
Before you move to make
One gesture of the heart or head,
Is gathered and spilt
Into the winding dark
Like the dust of the dead.

Good and bad, two ways
Of moving about your death
By the grinding sea,
King of your heart in the blind days,
Blow away like breath,
Go crying through you and me
And the souls of all men
Into the innocent
Dark, and the guilty dark, and good
Death, and bad death, and then
In the last element
Fly like the stars’ blood

Like the sun’s tears,
Like the moon’s seed, rubbish
And fire, the flying rant
Of the sky, king of your six years.
And the wicked wish,
Down the beginning of plants
And animals and birds,
Water and Light, the earth and sky,
Is cast before you move,
And all your deeds and words,
Each truth, each lie,
Die in unjudging love.

Now, some brief considerations:

Paul, in his epistle to the Romans, launches into his presentation of the problem of life and its solution with the words,

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Romans 1:18-25

Paul, among other points, argues that human beings lie under judgment (“the wrath of God”) and thus seek to still their conscience by suppressing that truth. Having been built to worship, human beings turn that worship rightly owed to God to that which God creates. In such an explanation, even the most over materialist “worships” the creature by giving hydrogen atoms the capacity to create — if left alone long enough.

Thomas in this poem seeks nothing more than to suppress the thought of judgment. Now one could argue that Thomas is merely seeking to suppress a culturally manufactured dread (Thomas grew up in an at least nominally “Christian” world). But to do this, Thomas must first presume the God he rejects.

He begins with “truth” and ends the poem with “love”. Now, “truth” cannot had yet — “This side of truth”, since truth is future. Love at the end does not judge (“unjudging love”). Such ideas fall apart when he attempts to tie them to “good” and “bad” — indeed, the poem in the middle is an argument that both hands are mere illusion. The things which appear to be good and bad will be “undone”. That the skies are “unminding”.

There is the silly level of tension — plainly the argument of the poem, that all will resolve into a unjudging “truth” undermines the concept of truth itself. Truth is not necessarily not “false”. And yes, there is the claim that there is a higher register where such things resolve.

No one actually believes this.

Even in Hindu India, the people rightly are in arms about a crisis of rape. Yet, if there were no truth, no judgment, then shouldn’t they celebrate the evil? Shouldn’t we ignore maniacs who murder children or barbarians who enslave the weak of sex slaves?

Thomas presuppose a moral universe — love, truth, good, evil, love, hate before he can seek away around judgment. Thomas does not want to reject meaning, only his own judgment.

Thomas write the poem in a tone that plainly evinces love — and yet he seeks to reject the existence of love by rejecting the fact of truth. As a Christian I must admit to the horror of evil, but I hold that in tension with the fact of judgment and reward.

3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” 5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Revelation 21:3-8.

Were Thomas’s son to be murdered, Thomas’s poem would acquit the villain – yet Thomas would know the murder to be evil.

What then lies behind the poem? Death. The fear of death. Thomas touches upon the inability to stand before the Judge. Thomas prays for the nonsense of an “unjudging love” when what he needs is a Merciful Love. There are two ways to avoid judgment — lawlessness, anarchy and evil unchecked, or (2) mercy. Thomas does not want the first, but needs his own sin to pass unjudged. What Thomas truly needs is mercy.

I cannot promise a blue eyes six year old boy that the world has no meaning and that love will ignore evil. I can promise him that the Father gave his Son so that my son could be redeemed from wrath and made a son:

11 And he said, “There was a man who had two sons.12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. 13 Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. 14 And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.16 And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.
17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”‘ 20 And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. 23 And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.

Luke 15:11-24. I love Thomas’s poetry. My heart breaks for his son as I think of my own. But the promise of mercy from the Father in the Son overwhelms all:

But Jesus wants to show us that this is not the case and that we shall be given a complete liberation. “You are right,” he says, “you are lost, if you look only to yourselves. Who is there who has not lied, murdered, committed adultery? Who does not have this possibility lurking in his heart? You are right when you give yourself up as lost. But look, now something has happened that has nothing to do with your attitudes at all, something that is simply given to you. Now the kingdom of God is among you, now the father’s house is wide open. And I-I am the door, I am the way, I am the life, I am the hand of the Father. He who sees me sees the Father. And what do you see when you see me? You see one who came to you down in the depths where you could never rise to the heights. You see that God ‘so’ loved the world that he delivered me, his Son, to these depths, that it cost him something to help you, that it cost the very agony of God, that God had to do something contrary to his own being to deal with your sin, to recognize the chasm between you and himself and yet bridge it over. All this you see when you look at me!”

From The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus, by Helmut Thielicke, translated by John W. Doberstein (Harper & Row, ©1957)

Elemental Religion.3 James Denney (Known by God)

23 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Apologetics, James Denney, Preaching

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I suppose most of us have wrestled with arguments intended to prove the existence or personality of God. Well, I am not going to raise any philosophical questions about the powers are in capacities of human reasoning in this matter. No religion ever took its origin in such reasoning, however it may have succeeded or been baffled and trying to justify itself at reason’s bar. The being and the personality of God, so far as there is any religious interest in them, are not to be proved by arguments; they are to be experienced in a kind of experienced here described. The man who can say, O  Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me, does not need any arguments to prove that God is, and that he is a person, and that he has an intimate and importunate interest in his life. If that is a real experience — and who will deny that it is? — And if it is not a morbid phenomenon, but one which is sane and normal, then the thou  in it is just as real as the me. The psalmist is as certain of God as he is of his own existence; and indeed it is not too much to say that it is only as he is conscious of being searched and known by God — only as he is overwhelmed by contact with the spirit which knows him better than he knows himself — that he rises to any adequate sense of what his own being and personality mean. He is revealed to himself by God’s search; he knows himself through God. Speaking practically — and in religion everything is practical — God alone can overcome atheism, and this is how he overcomes it. He does not put arguments within our reach which point to theistic conclusion; he gives us the experience which makes this song intelligible, and forces us to cry, oh Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. “After that he have known God,” says St. Paul to the Galatians, “or rather” — correcting himself — “have been known by God.” Yes, it is the overpowering sense that we are known through and through by another which seals upon our hearts that knowledge of God on which religion rests.

Here is the cure for atheism: it is the answer to the question of whether one should use presuppositional or evidential apologetics. There are evidences and arguments in favor of Chrsitianity. Arguments from reason, from experience, from history exist and are good and valid. But in the end, one does not believe in the existence of their wife or husband, child or friend, on the basis of argument, but on the basis of knowing. This is the reason why the atheist will not be converted by argument: an argument of the existence of a person whom one has never met cannot convince. But one who has known God – or better, has been known by God – doubts not God