The Bible is its own best interpreter. This claim often meets with an initial skepticism, which stems most often from a lack of understanding of the way that communication actually operates. Each speaker or writer proves his own best interpreter in the nature of the case. If I were to make any particular claim not well understood by an audience, I would quite naturally be the one to ask to clarify the intended meaning of the claim in question. When we do not understand, we instinctively ask the original source (whenever possible and convenient) for an expansion on the sense of whatever expression might puzzle us. The Bible is no different in this regard. Any text not well understood at one point can receive illumination by appeal to some other passage in the Bible, if the immediate context of that passage does not drive the point home adequately. Sometimes another author quotes the passage, showing there what we missed at the first. Or some other text may render its main ideas clearer in other ways, perhaps by surrounding it with other terms already familiar to us.
The Bible is so constructed that the earlier parts anticipate the later ones, and the later ones reflect back on the earlier parts. This means that each of the parts has a kind of "prefab" logical relationship to the other parts -- like a blueprint does. The authors of each part deliberately show you how to handle much of its own teachings. This is extremely helpful once you learn how to read the road signs. If you cannot these, what they say -- emblazoned in glorious yellow backgrounds with black pictures -- perhaps "Deer crossing," won't help you much.
So just as you read a syllabus at the outset of a class to grasp its overall structure, so the Bible provides us with "Genesis." The Psalms, Proverbs and other books reflect back upon Genesis much, telling us in summary form what we were supposed to noticed in the first place, but didn't. We are a slow bunch, and an excellent teacher anticipates the errors of his students and provides corrections in the class lessons. So the Bible tells us what it is going to tell us, then it tells us, and and then tell us what it told us. This also follows the pattern of good rhetoric.
In each case, the author of an individual book has specific themes which he announces, pursues and then concludes, showing us at the end, the point he had in mind all along. This means that, given the author's intent and the structure of the books, the first few rules of literary-structural analysis for biblical investigation implies the following approach:
A. Before you start, pray to God for wisdom and understanding. He is the primary Author, and has promised to help his people understand what He has given them. You have to want wisdom to get wisdom. Your dinner will not cook itself for you either. You must make a sincere effort. And that begins with prayer.
1. Read the last few chapters first. This will tell you where the author intends to go -- his literary goal.
2. Then read the first few chapters. Then pick out two middle chapters and read those. This provides an overview "snapshot" of the books themes quickly. You may need to re-read each part three or four times. Go for it. That is how you study.
3. Compare the sections, noting commmon words, and especially common concepts said in different words. These will turn out to be the threads or themes that run throughout the book. These carry what we call "the main points" the author intends to convey. Always ask yourself, "where have I seen this idea or word before?" And what did it mean THERE?
4. Since, like all other speakers and literature, the Bible is its own best interpreter, look for specific reflections in later texts upon earlier ones. From these you get the "lens" by which to view the earlier.
5. Since the primary Author of the Bible remains perfectly wise and orderly, we must study the Bible SYSTEMATICALLY in every case, to determine the sense of any one passage, subsection, section, book, division, testament, or the whole canon.
6. This means that algorithmic tools - tools or people which measure the instances,contexts, and number of occurences of this or that word (or concept) in any-sized literary unit (great or small) - provide the most effective way to study the Bible. This makes the biblcal approach necessarily canonical, a "whole-Bible" approach to studying any one of its parts. You do not understand the "biblical" idea of X, until you know all relevant and representative instances of X in the Bible, and what they have in common.
7. Once you have the whole-Bible overview of an idea or word you wish to study, you can then return to the passage in question, and plug in the larger understanding of the sense obtained from the canon at this or that point. This will illumine the surrounding details, for which you will use the same approach (again) in each case. And from this repeated method the book's themes quickly emerge as more obvious by far than at first blush.
8. Print out a book of the Bible, and leave wide margins for note-taking. Remove the verse markers (But leave the chapters. They don't interfere much, and still give you a good idea of where you are in the book's narrative. Brain-crash the text on paper, filling in all the canonically-informed parts you have studied.
9. Try to determine the social setting of what it is you are studying, from the surrounding text. How did it function and what was the point of it then? (for instance -- start basic -- ask "why did they have priests at all? What was the point?). Some of the most basic questions will yield the most profound answers. But you have to ask them in your head and write them down, even if the answer is not immediately available. Fill them in as you go. This is how one part of the Bible will help you interpret the others.
10. When you find a major theme, write it down, and divide it into its smaller parts; then make its parts the focus of your next analysis. Take them one at a time, asking "How do these parts fit together?" The answers will come quickly if you follow through on the "canonical overview" process described above. I also call this "canonical enlargement." Get the big picture first, for each part, after isolating them one by one; then glue the canonically enlarged pieces back together. Chances are good, you will not be able to write fast enough the insights you obtain.
11. Finally, consult a variety of reference works to help you fill in little blanks, like idioms often used, places and their importance, and the like. When you have a little free time, read up on Bible backgrounds to help you understand the setting of your passage. Then go back to your notes and keep going. The larger picture will fill itself in with your systematic help.
Searchable Bibles online make this work much easier and faster; and so does some software. This obtains for you an immediate "overview" of the concept, word or phrase under scrutiny. http://www.biblegateway.com has such a searchable Bible collection, as do many other places on the internet.
For an example of how the later parts of the Bible illumine the earlier parts, we can note that the wisdom literature reflects on the earliest chapters of Genesis, and uses highly technical "Temple language" to describe chapter 1 in particular. This means that the later author knows that the earlier author wanted us to understand what God was doing in Genesis 1 as building a very large temple called the "cosmos." This is the biblical way of viewing Genesis. For "By wisdom the Lord laid the foundations of the earth." Now how does the earth have foundations? It has foundations because it is a metaphorical temple. And temples have foundations.
The Bible also (I will sum up here without a long presentation of evidence for it) teaches us that the Ark of Noah, the Tabernacle and Temple were constructed as a "mini-cosmos," a miniature representational picture of the whole creation. I learned this in seminary, but remained fairly skeptical until I hunted down the details for myself. My OT biblical theology professor -- Bruce Waltke -- was pretty sharp.
The frameworks the Bible itself imposes upon this or that part, we are to take as "normative" (THE right way to interpret a text) since the primary author, God Himself, conveys all the parts in a rigorously orderly and unfathomably consistent manner. It's authorship is what makes it holy, infallible, universally binding, and the final standard in all matters upon which it pronouces judgments -- explicitly or implicitly.
But an attitude of submission and humility is required to read it properly. Since the Bible teaches its OWN hermenteutical lenses (i.e. the temple framework-picture for understanding Genesis 1), a failure to do this renders one incapable of understanding it properly. This means that only by obeying it in all places, will one learn to grasp the whole of it and the proper relations of its parts.
It's literary facts are "grouped" together in bundles. And then these bundles are themselves bundled as discreet units to form the whole book; and then the books bundle to form the canon as a whole. Each larger bundle, and then "sub-bundle" God has matched together in a very specific fashion.
The larger bundles are obvious. We have the first testament (often called the "Old Testament") and the second ("New") Testament. The First consists of the "Law, Psalms, and Prophets," and the Second, of the Gospels -- and of the journey of their message from Jerusalem to Rome (called the "book of Acts"), together with the ecclesiastical and domestic epistles, and the apocalyptic-prophetic literature of Revelation.
Essentially, the task of the interpreter of the Bible consists in comparing (and contrasting) bundles and sub-bundles to find the major and minor themes, of the chapter, book, division and testament, to see how these are woven together into the larger, seamless fabric and picture of the whole canon.
Usually, the term "exegesis" refers to the more technical side of managing the detais of a smaller subsection of some book, and "hermeneutics" to the handling of relationships of the larger literary units. But the two concepts necessarily overlap. I here maintain that -- though more technical tools may certainly help in many cases, they are not necessary to the understanding of the Bible. The Bible is both necessary and sufficient to enlighten the ordinary believer as to its intended meanings in all places.
The method outlined above may seem a bit simple. It has very little about it that is terribly technical or complex. I derived these principles from the Bible itself, in thinking on its literary structure -- how it looks and they way its parts are shaped. Some of this stuff, I learned in grad school doing history at Cal State Hayward, and then tried out on the Bible, adjusting it to suit the demands of Scripture.
The two important features of it are very direct: these principles are biblical; these principles work to yield the kind of results you want from studying your Bible. Throughout, each step assumes that the Bible is sufficient, and that other tools are not necessary, but they can speed things up or help in other ways; and so we ought to use the ones consistent with the Word.
Remember, you might learn X from the newspaper or historical literature. In fact, I have written biblically-oriented letters-to-the editor before. If you go to your Bible with information from extra-biblical sources, only to find it was there all along (and you did not have eyes to see it until now), this does not make your method of learning improper, so long as you JUSTIFY your claims in terms of the Bible. HOW you learn something is not the same as HOW YOU JUSTIFY what you have learned. They both have to do with knowing. But learning and justifying comprise different kinds of actions. When you learn X, this assumes you did not know X before you performed the action (of learning). When you justify X, this assumes you already know X is true before the action of justifying it.
Extra-biblical tools and ideas then often provide a new way of looking at some text that enables you to see what was there before, and hidden from you in plain sight. This is essentially the biblical view of the Bible. It's meanings at any point, God has put in full view of all - and yet they remain hidden from those who have not eyes to see or ears to hear it.
So, by way of summation, listen prayerfully, listen cautiously (re-read a dozen times if you must), listen intra-librally and thematically - use the book's end to understand the beginning and vice versa, with a middle link (chosen a bit arbitrarily) to nab a thematic "snapshot" of a book. Listen comparatively - compare one book's themes with another's -- to find still larger threads. Listen canonically (fit tiny units and themes together into progressively larger ones), listen systematically (compare textual ideas and words to each other to find their common threads), listen reflectively and retroactively (employ a later author's commanded "lenses" to retrofit his own biblical "grid of understanding" -- to grasp properly an earlier text upon which he comments). Listen personally - take notes and keep a log of insights (with verseless printouts and big margins. Scribble on, Highlight, and underline everything - brain crash it. Listen discreetly - think in terms of literary units with defined "bookends" - parallel passages than open and close discreet and limited sections in a book. Listen analytically -- when you find a theme, chop it up, inform each part with the whole canon, and glue them back together. Listen socially -- find out what this thing did and why people cared originally. Listen "totally" and interrogatively -- when you learn a new idea, look at it from every perspective you can think of - economics, science, politics, etc. Use whatever unique perspective you have. If you are a lawyer, ask how this might function in a court if applied to that context. If you are a dad, ask what does this mean for child-rearing? Brain crash it.
Wisdom demands a systematic approach to studying the Bible that is uniquely fashioned upon the special features of the Bible -- as in the way the secondary author thinks when writing, and how we can reconstruct his outline. We want his notes. And by following this brief guide, you can get them, and apply them to other parts of the Bible for greater insight. Study well.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
Logic and the Question of Canonicity
Rome and Geneva have been debating the question of just which books properly belong in the canon -- the rule of faith and conduct God expects all men to heed -- for some time now. But it isn't as complicated as some would have us believe. In truth, the question was settled almost two thousand years ago. The early Christian Church used some books as the focal point of sermons on the Lord's Day; and because of the rise of many false teachers and prophets -- who also had their writings (Paul even mentioned a pseudonymous letter sent to the Thessalonians (as "a letter as if from us"), they deliberately shunned other books, not allowing them for use in preaching.
By the time of Jesus and the apostles, the Old Testament canon was well fixed. Josephus described the books of the The LXX, as the same as those the Jews accept today - and those affirmed by the council of Jamnia (ca AD 100). The simple fact is, that the Jews never accepted the OT apocryphal books. And the Church followed this lead. This does not, in the ordinary canonical sense, "prove the point," but it does illustrate well what may be proven from the Word.
The New Testament self-refers in a number of places. Peter cites Paul's heavenly wisdom as having some things in his letters hard to understand (meaning that Peter had read ALL of Paul's letters. This was the standard practice of the churches, and Colossians 4 has Paul telling the Colossians to circulate the epistle sent to them. The apostles knew each other (from their earliest acquaintances described in the Gospels, and it was the duty of each to know what the others taught (throughout their ministries), and see to it that each maintained an orthodox position. The earliest church council of Acts 21 makes this all the more obvious.
Paul recounts a visit to Jerusalem he took (in following the rabbinic practice to place one's self under the authority of the "multitude of counselors" (i.e. presbytery)) where he met with two other apostles. Paul wrote to the Galatians, "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother."
This means they all knew and acknowledged the teachings and writings of the others and their compatriots (i.e. Luke wrote under the authority of Paul, recognised as a prophet and "beloved physician."). Paul cites Luke 10:7 as Scripture in 1 Timothy 5, and every indication by statement and inference, suggests that the full body of the canon developed very early under the watchful eye of the apostles, ever on the lookout for false teaching.
This is also implied in that Paul says that all the "churches of God" have the same liturgical "practice." This could not be so unless each of the apostles and prophets responsible for them, conveyed not only the same liturgies, but also the same theology, or pattern of sound words (confession is the modern expression). Each was in submission to the local presbytery, as with the seven churches of Asia Minor mentioned in the johannine Revelation.
The early church already knew what the canon was, and thus, it churches having been developed from it, a conflict between the confession and liturgy or these churches would necessarily arise if any new book were added. Thus, the apostolic structuring of the early Church, in conformity with the dominical deposit entrusted to them, would serve (and did serve) as a limit on the well-known, and well-circulated canon.
The apostles were not above reproving each other, as indicated by Paul's rebuke of Peter, and Barnabbas (the prophet) entering into sharp dispute (which no doubt involved quoting Scripture) over John Mark. Recall that the apostles AND prophets form the foundation of the Church (Eph. 2:20). I do not accept that this reference names only one group as is commonly held. It names rather, the men who were prophets in the NT era (but not apostles, like Agabus and Luke), as well as the twelve. All Evangelists were prophets also (Philip, Timothy, Epaphroditus, and Titus).
The reference of Eph. 2 is to those apostles and prophets responsible for writing what became canon, for the canon still forms the foundation of the Church. And not all the canon was written by the twelve. Timothy most likely wrote Hebrews (which is why it has Paul's theology and a strong show of facility in Koine -- Timothy was raised in a Greek home -- and Luke certainly wrote the Gospel bearing his name and Acts.
The most obvious feature of the canon, its universal rule in the Church, necessarily leaves out all but the 66 books of the present "Protestant canon," because factually the Church has used only those books -- on everyones view -- at least most of the time. If if had been otherwise, there would have been no dispute over it. This means that if the canon contains more than these, that the Lord Jesus has failed to rule well in His Church.
The apocryphal books, moreover at times impugn themselves. Greg Bahnsen notes [I found this humorous] "the insecure tone of the author of II Maccabees: [who wrote] 'if it is poorly done and mediocre, that was the best I could do' (15:38)."
Besides noting the insecure tone, we wish to add that 1 Peter 1, and 2 Peter 1, both indicate that the prophets who wrote Scripture knew what it was which they wrote, and knew it was the Word of God, and thus anything but mediocre.
When a book of the apocrypha tell us, "I am not a canonical book," that may be the one place at which we ought to give it heed. The canon is certain and sure, the Bible tells us. But how could it make an audience "sure" when the author himself is worried?
Moreover, it is manifestly obvious to those who know the theology of the Bible, that the best confessions by far have developed the biblical system of theology without the help of the apocrypha, which shows these books unncessary. And if they are not necessary, they are not canon. Thus, the very existence of the Westminster Confession of Faith, since its theology may be shown from the impossiblity of the contrary, proves also that its list of canonical books derives from the real canon itself.
The tendency to confuse the books of the canon, with the lists of books that developed later (allegedly describing that canon), mistakenly conflates what was practiced early in all the churches, with what was formally acknowledged only much later.
The canon, in the nature of the case, carries its own authority. This means that the books which managed to end up in the canon - preached in Christian Churches having the best doctrine (which can be discerned from logic as well as the Word) -- are in fact those alone which are canonical.
The contrary supposition has Christ (blasphemously) mismanaging both the Church - for it says, "Do not add to the word of the Lord, lest he rebuke you, and prove you a liar." -- and His Word. For the canon is preached in the Church.
The truth is that God superintends both His church and His Word with special, providential care. This means that the canon longest recognized by the Church is actually the canon which the apostles knew. The early Church fathers tell us which those are, and it is no secret. And these books just happen to be the ones, which when exegeted carefully, yield that system of theology for which the contrary turns out to be logically impossible. This proves that the early fathers got it right, and that the Westminster divines were right to follow their lead in this regard.
Concluding non-scientific post-script.
The canon itself contains a systematic theology of logic, and a system of logic within its pages. When worked out in terms of its propositions and rules (where the propositional relationships of each of its major and more minor parts are made clear) -- and sooner or later they will be -- This logical system will yet will show its canonical borders, even more clearly and well-defined, according to the conclusions reached above.
By the time of Jesus and the apostles, the Old Testament canon was well fixed. Josephus described the books of the The LXX, as the same as those the Jews accept today - and those affirmed by the council of Jamnia (ca AD 100). The simple fact is, that the Jews never accepted the OT apocryphal books. And the Church followed this lead. This does not, in the ordinary canonical sense, "prove the point," but it does illustrate well what may be proven from the Word.
The New Testament self-refers in a number of places. Peter cites Paul's heavenly wisdom as having some things in his letters hard to understand (meaning that Peter had read ALL of Paul's letters. This was the standard practice of the churches, and Colossians 4 has Paul telling the Colossians to circulate the epistle sent to them. The apostles knew each other (from their earliest acquaintances described in the Gospels, and it was the duty of each to know what the others taught (throughout their ministries), and see to it that each maintained an orthodox position. The earliest church council of Acts 21 makes this all the more obvious.
Paul recounts a visit to Jerusalem he took (in following the rabbinic practice to place one's self under the authority of the "multitude of counselors" (i.e. presbytery)) where he met with two other apostles. Paul wrote to the Galatians, "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother."
This means they all knew and acknowledged the teachings and writings of the others and their compatriots (i.e. Luke wrote under the authority of Paul, recognised as a prophet and "beloved physician."). Paul cites Luke 10:7 as Scripture in 1 Timothy 5, and every indication by statement and inference, suggests that the full body of the canon developed very early under the watchful eye of the apostles, ever on the lookout for false teaching.
This is also implied in that Paul says that all the "churches of God" have the same liturgical "practice." This could not be so unless each of the apostles and prophets responsible for them, conveyed not only the same liturgies, but also the same theology, or pattern of sound words (confession is the modern expression). Each was in submission to the local presbytery, as with the seven churches of Asia Minor mentioned in the johannine Revelation.
The early church already knew what the canon was, and thus, it churches having been developed from it, a conflict between the confession and liturgy or these churches would necessarily arise if any new book were added. Thus, the apostolic structuring of the early Church, in conformity with the dominical deposit entrusted to them, would serve (and did serve) as a limit on the well-known, and well-circulated canon.
The apostles were not above reproving each other, as indicated by Paul's rebuke of Peter, and Barnabbas (the prophet) entering into sharp dispute (which no doubt involved quoting Scripture) over John Mark. Recall that the apostles AND prophets form the foundation of the Church (Eph. 2:20). I do not accept that this reference names only one group as is commonly held. It names rather, the men who were prophets in the NT era (but not apostles, like Agabus and Luke), as well as the twelve. All Evangelists were prophets also (Philip, Timothy, Epaphroditus, and Titus).
The reference of Eph. 2 is to those apostles and prophets responsible for writing what became canon, for the canon still forms the foundation of the Church. And not all the canon was written by the twelve. Timothy most likely wrote Hebrews (which is why it has Paul's theology and a strong show of facility in Koine -- Timothy was raised in a Greek home -- and Luke certainly wrote the Gospel bearing his name and Acts.
The most obvious feature of the canon, its universal rule in the Church, necessarily leaves out all but the 66 books of the present "Protestant canon," because factually the Church has used only those books -- on everyones view -- at least most of the time. If if had been otherwise, there would have been no dispute over it. This means that if the canon contains more than these, that the Lord Jesus has failed to rule well in His Church.
The apocryphal books, moreover at times impugn themselves. Greg Bahnsen notes [I found this humorous] "the insecure tone of the author of II Maccabees: [who wrote] 'if it is poorly done and mediocre, that was the best I could do' (15:38)."
Besides noting the insecure tone, we wish to add that 1 Peter 1, and 2 Peter 1, both indicate that the prophets who wrote Scripture knew what it was which they wrote, and knew it was the Word of God, and thus anything but mediocre.
When a book of the apocrypha tell us, "I am not a canonical book," that may be the one place at which we ought to give it heed. The canon is certain and sure, the Bible tells us. But how could it make an audience "sure" when the author himself is worried?
Moreover, it is manifestly obvious to those who know the theology of the Bible, that the best confessions by far have developed the biblical system of theology without the help of the apocrypha, which shows these books unncessary. And if they are not necessary, they are not canon. Thus, the very existence of the Westminster Confession of Faith, since its theology may be shown from the impossiblity of the contrary, proves also that its list of canonical books derives from the real canon itself.
The tendency to confuse the books of the canon, with the lists of books that developed later (allegedly describing that canon), mistakenly conflates what was practiced early in all the churches, with what was formally acknowledged only much later.
The canon, in the nature of the case, carries its own authority. This means that the books which managed to end up in the canon - preached in Christian Churches having the best doctrine (which can be discerned from logic as well as the Word) -- are in fact those alone which are canonical.
The contrary supposition has Christ (blasphemously) mismanaging both the Church - for it says, "Do not add to the word of the Lord, lest he rebuke you, and prove you a liar." -- and His Word. For the canon is preached in the Church.
The truth is that God superintends both His church and His Word with special, providential care. This means that the canon longest recognized by the Church is actually the canon which the apostles knew. The early Church fathers tell us which those are, and it is no secret. And these books just happen to be the ones, which when exegeted carefully, yield that system of theology for which the contrary turns out to be logically impossible. This proves that the early fathers got it right, and that the Westminster divines were right to follow their lead in this regard.
Concluding non-scientific post-script.
The canon itself contains a systematic theology of logic, and a system of logic within its pages. When worked out in terms of its propositions and rules (where the propositional relationships of each of its major and more minor parts are made clear) -- and sooner or later they will be -- This logical system will yet will show its canonical borders, even more clearly and well-defined, according to the conclusions reached above.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Modus Ponens, Logic and the Word of God
Modus Ponens names a particular law of logic, said to be "formal." Formal logics differ from informal in the following manner. In formal logics, the "form" of the argument renders it valid, not the particular content plugged into the place of the variables. With informal logic, the particular content of propositions makes an important difference. Here, the fallacies [the rules for reasoning poorly] bear a particular form, not the rules for reasoning correctly.
A valid argument has conclusions which necessarily ensue from its premisses (this is the old spelling; the newer - incorrect but popular - is "premises"), regardless of whether the premisses prove true or false. Put differently, this means that validity concerns itself only with reasoning in straight lines, so that the truth-status of the premisses transfers to the conclusions through a necessary chain. One can never deduce more for the conclusions than is already present in the premisses (by implication) from a valid argument.
An argument with only false premisses, must (in order to be a valid argument) have only false conclusions. Likewise, for true propositions and their corresponding conclusions. If the premisses are mixed -- one or more is true, AND one or more false, then certain combinations, and only those, are possible with valid arguments. This is what "truth tables" demonstrate.
Now MP represents a formally valid argument, regardless of the content used. To get a sound argument, not merely a valid one (which we must, from biblical necesssity), one must employ a valid argument, and then use only true premisses for it. These two conditions entail "only true" conclusions.
Now MP is a very basic (simple, not complex or compound) law of logic, which takes the form of: "If P is true, then Q is true; P is the case; therefore, Q is the case. Sometimes propositions spell out causal relationships (where P is the physical cause of Q) and sometimes, it spells out only intent. I will not go into this at length, but suffice it to say there are different KINDS of applications for MP.
For example, here is the MP of intentionality.
If it is tuesday, I will go to work.
It is tuesday. Therefore, I will go to work today.
Here, the two parts of the conditional clause (most any "if-then" statement is called a "conditional," or a "conditional clause") are linked together to specify a man's typical habit. He goes to work on Tuesdays. Now did this man actually GO to work on the tuesday this affirmation was spoken or written? We don't know. Even if he did not, the argument would still be valid. We only know that he says he INTENDS to go to work if it is tuesday.
This may not even refer to any actual person, but specifies only hypothetical circumstances. It is still valid as an argument, for, given the truth of the premisses, the conclusion must follow.
So then, logic textbooks do not specialize -- you will have gathered from this brief excerpt -- in supplying a list of true premisses. When the do, the list turns out in most every instance either challengable, or else simply erroneous. Here is a typical syllogism, affirming Modus ponens, applied to sets and members.
All men are mortal.
John is a man.
Therefore, John is mortal.
This can be rewritten to illustrate modus ponens, as:
All men are mortal.
If John is a man, then he is mortal.
John is a man. Therefore, John is mortal.
Question -- Is it true that all men are mortal? Of course not. Jesus is a man, and he is immortal. So, not all men are mortal. This also implies knowing that John is a man does not necessarily imply that he is mortal (since this does not work in the case noted above, and many saints in heaven bear the name John -- i.e. Chrysostom, Calvin, Knox, etc).
The term mortal needs defining as well. If this means "one who can die," then all the host of heaven (who have already died, but are quite alive) -- would not qualify. In other words, John (if it refers to John the Baptist) would be false in one sense. The precise defininition of words like "mortal" and "death" as well would need to be known in advance to certify whether or not the premisses are true.
If you suppose this would require a much larger context -- a broader semantic field or network of beliefs - of propositions already known to be true - in order to verify or falsify any particular one claim, then you have hit the proverbial nail on the head. This is why logicians are so squeamish about supplying a list of "true propositions" to start with. They know all too well that one might challenge any claim whatsoever, even laws of logic. And many have.
Do classroom logicians typically stand ready to defend a particular and well-defined worldview (semantic web)? Not on your mortal life. Thus are Christians uniquely suited to the logical task, already possessing (as we do) a coherent worldview found in the canon of Holy Scripture, which provides a list of true propositions, each of which assumes the truth of the others in its own affirmation.
In other words, laws of logic, like Modus Ponens, need the Bible in order to make sense of a truth claim pressed into the variables (usually P and Q)used to illustrate it. Mind your P's and Q's.
How do logicians then teach anything? They often teach the truths of validity without affirming their application (other than hypothetically)in any one instance, or else they use tautological instances no one would care to challenge, since they are true by definition, without pointing to new information in the world outside the classroom.
Here is your trivial example. If dictionaries are opened, they display words.
Dictionaries are opened. Therefore, they disply words right now.
This argument is both valid and utterly worthless. It could be sound and worthless too. But MP can be used in combinations with other laws of logic to construct powerful tools for use in reasoning -- in very controversial ways (my favorite) -- to apply the Holy Scripture to other propositions found in the Word (to learn more from the Bible) or applied to the world around us, to learn more about science and the world (and of general revelation too).
So MP by itself may not seem so impressive. But in valid combination with other laws of logic (and their implicates), it can be used with great effect to the Glory of God.
To be sure, various challenges to MP have availed themselves of philosophers from time to time, and I cannot now rehearse them for time's sake. But suffice it to say, that when one challenges a law of logic (as with MP) his argments in every case will end up either presupposing its veracity, or else implying it. This is the nature of transcendental truths. Their prosecutors undermine their own case.
But when we think about Modus Ponens, we must also remember that true propositions come only KNOWABLY from the Word of God, or from ways of knowing which the Word warrants. For instance, the Bible says, "The eye that sees and the ear that hears, the Lord has made them both." The Bible also says that God made all things very good (sufficient to their intended purpose).
When you combine these propositions, you end up with the conclusion that your senses are generally reliable. If your eyes tell you that your lawn is green, you have the right and duty to assume that this is true unless and until you have countervailing evidence. You might be wrong. It happens now and again. But the reliablity of your senses is warranted by Scripture. Augustine noted that any attempt to get by with the opposite assumption (for any extended period) would be extremely hazardous.
This was his way of noting the transcendental nature of the reliablity of your senses. Any argument for or against their general reliability will necessarily assume that general reliability. This makes the proposition, "Your senses are generally reliable" logically necessary, and mandatory for practical purposes. It must be true for you to know anything.
Deaf people know they are deaf. This is because their other senses are still generally reliable. There are exceptions - drugged out people sometimes do not have reliable senses; sometimes drunk (or badly dehydrated) people have the same problem. The exceptions prove the rule of general reliablity -- which is not the same as indestructible infallibility.
In any event, the difficulty professors often have of supplying true propositions (which philosophers have not attacked with some success) for illustrating non-hypotheical uses of Modus Ponens, teaches us something important about logic courses. It shows how necessary it is to presuppose "canonical soundness" in order to make sense of the idea of logical validity, and in applying logic to the real world.
Changing the subject slightly, we should not that a "causal use" of MP highlights the "antecedent" (that is what they call P) as the cause of Q (the "consequent,") so that Q follows both from physical necessity -- when you drop an apple it necessarily falls -- and from logical necessity too. For an example combining these two ideas, we turn to the topic of cars and keys:
If you turn the key, the ignition system will start the car.
I did turn the key. Therefore, the ignition system started the car.
Now, sometimes P and Q are not related in any way other meaningful way, other than by the fact that they both happen to be filling in the blanks of the same illustration. This always seems weird so professors like teaching it.
If the moon is blue on monday, then cheese will fly.
The moon was blue last monday. Therefore, the cheese was flying.
Rendered as silly as one might make it, this argument still maintains a valid posture because the form follows the modus ponens recipe. Laws of logic do not pay much attention to particular content, but only seek to match truth-values of premisses and conclusions, and manage a logically necessary link between them.
Besides the fact, that MP is a "law" of logic, the fact that its conclusions follow from necessity (because of the argument's FORM) shows that this is actually an aspect of general revelation. Laws are universal, and so is necessity. A contingent truth is true because of historical details, and a necessary truth because of general rules (laws).
This is why MP has a transcendental character (whether you argue for it, or else against it, you will either employ or imply it). Nature's light is not optional, but necessary, since it is inescapable. And one cannot escape it for (primarily) two reasons: 1. God is sovereign (which implies that when he seeks to reveal Himself to ALL men, he cannot fail) and 2. God created a world endowed with wisdom universally (down to the very atomic structures of all things, and at even smaller levels).
If they ever do actually find the subatomic limits of the smallest particle, they will I am sure, encounter a very very tiny sign, which reads, "God is wise and you are not." This wisdom -- structural wisdom and wise integration of all things interacting together -- is necessarily universal.
These two features of the Cosmos -- a wise and soverign Creator as Lord of it, and the universal wisdom with which he endowed his creation -- give rise to MP and the other laws of logic. Logicians can run [classrooms], but they cannot hide. Like everyone else, they must use logic - including MP - to get by and do ordinary sorts of things. They do in fact "plug in" real content into the P's and Q's in their unguarded moments.
This is where Christian logic (logic that CAN actually have knowably true content for use in class), and Christian apologetics, begin. The beginning of logic is the fear of the Lord. For logic is a necessary aspect of Wisdom (one cannot be wise without the use of logic, whether he studies it formally or no). Wisdom is more than mere logic, but it is never less. And those who do not fear the Lord severely limit their ability to teach logic, for the Word of God is the foundation of it.
So let us finish with a MP syllogism of our own.
If the Word of God is the foundation of logic, logic studies will proceed badly without it.
The Word of God is the foundation of logic; therefore, the study of logic proceeds badly without it. How does it proceed badly?
1. Logicians often end up challenging real laws of logic (since they have no canonical limits to tell them which proposed laws of logic really are or are not actual ones).
2. Logicians widely dissent from each other as to just what counts as truthful and useful information one might use to illustrate laws of logic in class, to guarantee not only valid arguments, but sound ones. Christians, who are commanded to be sound in the faith, do not have the luxury of this nearly total indeterminism, regarding true claims. It's really quite funny that logicians, who are supposed to be so wise, have almost no "true proposition" content to offer, which they are willing to defend in class.
3. Logicians often use - in both informal and formal logic texts - examples which turn out to be false, and which can be so demonstrated using their own lesson plans. The classic "bogus example" comes from informal logic texts regarding circular reasoning. They habitually use the citation of 2 Tim. 3:16, used as an example to prove the truthfulness of Scripture, to illustrate this fallacy.
This is in fact, exactly the biblical pattern since, as the highest standard, any appeal to some other standard for proof would imply the denial of just what we seek to prove. This is the case with the final standard of proof in EVERY belief system, Christian, religious or secular -- of any kind whatsoever.
The buck has to stop somewhere. And that final highest appeal if asked for proof of its accuracy will have to cite the final standard chosen FOR THE PROOF. This highlights the necessary and NON-FALLACIOUS nature of cirularity at the level of highest, or finally authoritative standards.
Not all circles are of the same kind. The biblical version CAN provide a coherent account of why things appear as the do, of the preconditions for logic, science and morality, while the other circles cannot. Only at lower levels (not final ones) of authority, does one properly cite circular reasoning as a fallacy.
This was implied by Bertrand Russell's set theoretical development of "meta-classes." But that is another story.
The bottom line is this: If one stubbornly insists that ALL forms of circular reasoning are of the same kind (which is simply counterintutive since examples to the contrary are not hard to show), then he implies that all worldviews are inherently fallacious -- since they all appeal to their highest standard by that standard (or else ARBITRARILY dismiss dissenters out of hand). If they appeal to some other standard, then that one, not the first, is in fact the highest standard. An infinite chain of justifying standards -- which are therefore not justifying at all - follows upon the denial of this claim.
This implies that no knowledge obtains. If it is ultimately arbitrary, it is not justified, and if not justified, it is not knowledge. But no law of logic is properly formulated apart from the whole canon of Scripture, as a system of knowledge, informing that law, in regard to its proper content (what should we assume when reasoning?), its nature (what is a law of logic?), its scope (how broadly does it apply?) and its limits (what is a wrong application of it, and how do you know?).
The Bible has the answer, and biblically-illiterate logicians do not. From the divine viewpoint, they combine logics with ebonics, frustrated in their efforts by unbelief. This means the only rational course of action would be to stop thinking in ways destined to make logic impossible. In Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This means that Christ holds the key to understanding logic properly and accurately -- from its basics to its most technical and formal expressions, as he is offered to us in all the Word of God.
If any lacks wisdom, let Him ask of God, who giveth liberally without finding fault. And study up.
A valid argument has conclusions which necessarily ensue from its premisses (this is the old spelling; the newer - incorrect but popular - is "premises"), regardless of whether the premisses prove true or false. Put differently, this means that validity concerns itself only with reasoning in straight lines, so that the truth-status of the premisses transfers to the conclusions through a necessary chain. One can never deduce more for the conclusions than is already present in the premisses (by implication) from a valid argument.
An argument with only false premisses, must (in order to be a valid argument) have only false conclusions. Likewise, for true propositions and their corresponding conclusions. If the premisses are mixed -- one or more is true, AND one or more false, then certain combinations, and only those, are possible with valid arguments. This is what "truth tables" demonstrate.
Now MP represents a formally valid argument, regardless of the content used. To get a sound argument, not merely a valid one (which we must, from biblical necesssity), one must employ a valid argument, and then use only true premisses for it. These two conditions entail "only true" conclusions.
Now MP is a very basic (simple, not complex or compound) law of logic, which takes the form of: "If P is true, then Q is true; P is the case; therefore, Q is the case. Sometimes propositions spell out causal relationships (where P is the physical cause of Q) and sometimes, it spells out only intent. I will not go into this at length, but suffice it to say there are different KINDS of applications for MP.
For example, here is the MP of intentionality.
If it is tuesday, I will go to work.
It is tuesday. Therefore, I will go to work today.
Here, the two parts of the conditional clause (most any "if-then" statement is called a "conditional," or a "conditional clause") are linked together to specify a man's typical habit. He goes to work on Tuesdays. Now did this man actually GO to work on the tuesday this affirmation was spoken or written? We don't know. Even if he did not, the argument would still be valid. We only know that he says he INTENDS to go to work if it is tuesday.
This may not even refer to any actual person, but specifies only hypothetical circumstances. It is still valid as an argument, for, given the truth of the premisses, the conclusion must follow.
So then, logic textbooks do not specialize -- you will have gathered from this brief excerpt -- in supplying a list of true premisses. When the do, the list turns out in most every instance either challengable, or else simply erroneous. Here is a typical syllogism, affirming Modus ponens, applied to sets and members.
All men are mortal.
John is a man.
Therefore, John is mortal.
This can be rewritten to illustrate modus ponens, as:
All men are mortal.
If John is a man, then he is mortal.
John is a man. Therefore, John is mortal.
Question -- Is it true that all men are mortal? Of course not. Jesus is a man, and he is immortal. So, not all men are mortal. This also implies knowing that John is a man does not necessarily imply that he is mortal (since this does not work in the case noted above, and many saints in heaven bear the name John -- i.e. Chrysostom, Calvin, Knox, etc).
The term mortal needs defining as well. If this means "one who can die," then all the host of heaven (who have already died, but are quite alive) -- would not qualify. In other words, John (if it refers to John the Baptist) would be false in one sense. The precise defininition of words like "mortal" and "death" as well would need to be known in advance to certify whether or not the premisses are true.
If you suppose this would require a much larger context -- a broader semantic field or network of beliefs - of propositions already known to be true - in order to verify or falsify any particular one claim, then you have hit the proverbial nail on the head. This is why logicians are so squeamish about supplying a list of "true propositions" to start with. They know all too well that one might challenge any claim whatsoever, even laws of logic. And many have.
Do classroom logicians typically stand ready to defend a particular and well-defined worldview (semantic web)? Not on your mortal life. Thus are Christians uniquely suited to the logical task, already possessing (as we do) a coherent worldview found in the canon of Holy Scripture, which provides a list of true propositions, each of which assumes the truth of the others in its own affirmation.
In other words, laws of logic, like Modus Ponens, need the Bible in order to make sense of a truth claim pressed into the variables (usually P and Q)used to illustrate it. Mind your P's and Q's.
How do logicians then teach anything? They often teach the truths of validity without affirming their application (other than hypothetically)in any one instance, or else they use tautological instances no one would care to challenge, since they are true by definition, without pointing to new information in the world outside the classroom.
Here is your trivial example. If dictionaries are opened, they display words.
Dictionaries are opened. Therefore, they disply words right now.
This argument is both valid and utterly worthless. It could be sound and worthless too. But MP can be used in combinations with other laws of logic to construct powerful tools for use in reasoning -- in very controversial ways (my favorite) -- to apply the Holy Scripture to other propositions found in the Word (to learn more from the Bible) or applied to the world around us, to learn more about science and the world (and of general revelation too).
So MP by itself may not seem so impressive. But in valid combination with other laws of logic (and their implicates), it can be used with great effect to the Glory of God.
To be sure, various challenges to MP have availed themselves of philosophers from time to time, and I cannot now rehearse them for time's sake. But suffice it to say, that when one challenges a law of logic (as with MP) his argments in every case will end up either presupposing its veracity, or else implying it. This is the nature of transcendental truths. Their prosecutors undermine their own case.
But when we think about Modus Ponens, we must also remember that true propositions come only KNOWABLY from the Word of God, or from ways of knowing which the Word warrants. For instance, the Bible says, "The eye that sees and the ear that hears, the Lord has made them both." The Bible also says that God made all things very good (sufficient to their intended purpose).
When you combine these propositions, you end up with the conclusion that your senses are generally reliable. If your eyes tell you that your lawn is green, you have the right and duty to assume that this is true unless and until you have countervailing evidence. You might be wrong. It happens now and again. But the reliablity of your senses is warranted by Scripture. Augustine noted that any attempt to get by with the opposite assumption (for any extended period) would be extremely hazardous.
This was his way of noting the transcendental nature of the reliablity of your senses. Any argument for or against their general reliability will necessarily assume that general reliability. This makes the proposition, "Your senses are generally reliable" logically necessary, and mandatory for practical purposes. It must be true for you to know anything.
Deaf people know they are deaf. This is because their other senses are still generally reliable. There are exceptions - drugged out people sometimes do not have reliable senses; sometimes drunk (or badly dehydrated) people have the same problem. The exceptions prove the rule of general reliablity -- which is not the same as indestructible infallibility.
In any event, the difficulty professors often have of supplying true propositions (which philosophers have not attacked with some success) for illustrating non-hypotheical uses of Modus Ponens, teaches us something important about logic courses. It shows how necessary it is to presuppose "canonical soundness" in order to make sense of the idea of logical validity, and in applying logic to the real world.
Changing the subject slightly, we should not that a "causal use" of MP highlights the "antecedent" (that is what they call P) as the cause of Q (the "consequent,") so that Q follows both from physical necessity -- when you drop an apple it necessarily falls -- and from logical necessity too. For an example combining these two ideas, we turn to the topic of cars and keys:
If you turn the key, the ignition system will start the car.
I did turn the key. Therefore, the ignition system started the car.
Now, sometimes P and Q are not related in any way other meaningful way, other than by the fact that they both happen to be filling in the blanks of the same illustration. This always seems weird so professors like teaching it.
If the moon is blue on monday, then cheese will fly.
The moon was blue last monday. Therefore, the cheese was flying.
Rendered as silly as one might make it, this argument still maintains a valid posture because the form follows the modus ponens recipe. Laws of logic do not pay much attention to particular content, but only seek to match truth-values of premisses and conclusions, and manage a logically necessary link between them.
Besides the fact, that MP is a "law" of logic, the fact that its conclusions follow from necessity (because of the argument's FORM) shows that this is actually an aspect of general revelation. Laws are universal, and so is necessity. A contingent truth is true because of historical details, and a necessary truth because of general rules (laws).
This is why MP has a transcendental character (whether you argue for it, or else against it, you will either employ or imply it). Nature's light is not optional, but necessary, since it is inescapable. And one cannot escape it for (primarily) two reasons: 1. God is sovereign (which implies that when he seeks to reveal Himself to ALL men, he cannot fail) and 2. God created a world endowed with wisdom universally (down to the very atomic structures of all things, and at even smaller levels).
If they ever do actually find the subatomic limits of the smallest particle, they will I am sure, encounter a very very tiny sign, which reads, "God is wise and you are not." This wisdom -- structural wisdom and wise integration of all things interacting together -- is necessarily universal.
These two features of the Cosmos -- a wise and soverign Creator as Lord of it, and the universal wisdom with which he endowed his creation -- give rise to MP and the other laws of logic. Logicians can run [classrooms], but they cannot hide. Like everyone else, they must use logic - including MP - to get by and do ordinary sorts of things. They do in fact "plug in" real content into the P's and Q's in their unguarded moments.
This is where Christian logic (logic that CAN actually have knowably true content for use in class), and Christian apologetics, begin. The beginning of logic is the fear of the Lord. For logic is a necessary aspect of Wisdom (one cannot be wise without the use of logic, whether he studies it formally or no). Wisdom is more than mere logic, but it is never less. And those who do not fear the Lord severely limit their ability to teach logic, for the Word of God is the foundation of it.
So let us finish with a MP syllogism of our own.
If the Word of God is the foundation of logic, logic studies will proceed badly without it.
The Word of God is the foundation of logic; therefore, the study of logic proceeds badly without it. How does it proceed badly?
1. Logicians often end up challenging real laws of logic (since they have no canonical limits to tell them which proposed laws of logic really are or are not actual ones).
2. Logicians widely dissent from each other as to just what counts as truthful and useful information one might use to illustrate laws of logic in class, to guarantee not only valid arguments, but sound ones. Christians, who are commanded to be sound in the faith, do not have the luxury of this nearly total indeterminism, regarding true claims. It's really quite funny that logicians, who are supposed to be so wise, have almost no "true proposition" content to offer, which they are willing to defend in class.
3. Logicians often use - in both informal and formal logic texts - examples which turn out to be false, and which can be so demonstrated using their own lesson plans. The classic "bogus example" comes from informal logic texts regarding circular reasoning. They habitually use the citation of 2 Tim. 3:16, used as an example to prove the truthfulness of Scripture, to illustrate this fallacy.
This is in fact, exactly the biblical pattern since, as the highest standard, any appeal to some other standard for proof would imply the denial of just what we seek to prove. This is the case with the final standard of proof in EVERY belief system, Christian, religious or secular -- of any kind whatsoever.
The buck has to stop somewhere. And that final highest appeal if asked for proof of its accuracy will have to cite the final standard chosen FOR THE PROOF. This highlights the necessary and NON-FALLACIOUS nature of cirularity at the level of highest, or finally authoritative standards.
Not all circles are of the same kind. The biblical version CAN provide a coherent account of why things appear as the do, of the preconditions for logic, science and morality, while the other circles cannot. Only at lower levels (not final ones) of authority, does one properly cite circular reasoning as a fallacy.
This was implied by Bertrand Russell's set theoretical development of "meta-classes." But that is another story.
The bottom line is this: If one stubbornly insists that ALL forms of circular reasoning are of the same kind (which is simply counterintutive since examples to the contrary are not hard to show), then he implies that all worldviews are inherently fallacious -- since they all appeal to their highest standard by that standard (or else ARBITRARILY dismiss dissenters out of hand). If they appeal to some other standard, then that one, not the first, is in fact the highest standard. An infinite chain of justifying standards -- which are therefore not justifying at all - follows upon the denial of this claim.
This implies that no knowledge obtains. If it is ultimately arbitrary, it is not justified, and if not justified, it is not knowledge. But no law of logic is properly formulated apart from the whole canon of Scripture, as a system of knowledge, informing that law, in regard to its proper content (what should we assume when reasoning?), its nature (what is a law of logic?), its scope (how broadly does it apply?) and its limits (what is a wrong application of it, and how do you know?).
The Bible has the answer, and biblically-illiterate logicians do not. From the divine viewpoint, they combine logics with ebonics, frustrated in their efforts by unbelief. This means the only rational course of action would be to stop thinking in ways destined to make logic impossible. In Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This means that Christ holds the key to understanding logic properly and accurately -- from its basics to its most technical and formal expressions, as he is offered to us in all the Word of God.
If any lacks wisdom, let Him ask of God, who giveth liberally without finding fault. And study up.
General and Special Revelation, and the Building Blocks of Life
Probably the most interesting facet of biology, the field of the sciences now refered to as "genetics," occupies an area of science overlapping the study of biology proper with information theory. DNA, which abbreviates "deoxyribonucleic acid," makes up the discreet units of information responsible for the development and functions of all living organisms.
The wisdom of God revealed in the creatures, which forms the primary focus of wisdom in the so-called "wisdom literature" of the Older Testament, shows up in all manner of creatures because God has put it there. This wisdom, it turns out is a kind of code. Geneticists everywhere compare it to a kind of "blueprint" or set of "blueprints". These few chemicals make up sets of instructions.
Solomon associates wisdom with instruction throughout the Proverbs, and general revelation shows them closely associated as well. However, the notion of blueprints offers a fairly remote analogy, and this shows the sometimes inflexible thinking of well-trained scientists. Blueprints only show you what the house should look like. DNA also does the building, with the help of RNA and a few other chemicals. If DNA is analogous to a blueprint, we must think it a hyperactive schematic, with too many friends.
Language, you might say, does not build things either. But this ignores the obvious point of Genesis about DIVINE language. When God utters, things happen. His original commands, which formed DNA, were all performative utterances (sayings which accomplish the thing they command or say, as when a bride says, "I do." Here the saying IS the doing.) DNA is a set of linguistic instructions which contain and execute performative utterances, which togther work to fulfill God's original command, commonly called the "dominion mandate," when he blessed the creatures.
Ironically, just because they are so well trained, they think according to a specific set of instructions they have received from their professors, textbooks and other members of the scientific community, with whom they work on a regular basis. But this fact should have tipped them off to the better analogy. Their textbooks did not come as blueprints, but as a set of instructions and descriptions, using the syntax of ordinary languages. This fact yields the better analogue. In light of this, they should assume that DNA is carrying out instruction sets, just as they are, in studying it. But this implies creationism (not evolution). Since they were trained (told what to do), this implies DNA was told by someone what to do. Perhaps this is the source of their blind spot.
The principle of efficient causation tells us that the effect will always be like the cause in certain respects. God is wise, so His wisdom shows up in the created order. God called everything into existence from nothing, with the exception of Adam - whom He formed from the dust of the earth, and Eve whom He formed from Adam's side (rib).
This does two things of immediate importance. First, it puts a distinction between humans, and all other living creatures, setting them apart as rulers of the rest (Adam and Eve were created as King and Queen of earth). They have a royal and priestly status the others do not. Second, this shows that the basis of all life stems from language, God's speaking which brought forth each [creature] according to its own kind, with its seed in it. The wise ordering of things proceeded upon God's wise speaking and acting.
This special, and repeated, description of the creation, of course, turns out to be precisely correct. But the ability of each animal to replicate its own kind is due to the genetic information it contains. Genesis thereby implies that the best kind of analogy we should be using for DNA derives from the syntax and use of ordinary human languages.
Recall that Genesis shows a distinction between the way the other animals were created and the way God made mankind. One of the consequences of this difference means that humans use spoken language in ways other animals do not. Language use forms the primary functional difference most obvious between "us" and "them." So we eat THEM, not us.
DNA represents then, according to the Bible, a language-based code, not an architectural blueprint. Notice that the first analogy employs the kind of thing found in the SOURCE (cause) of the DNA (language), and the second the EFFECT of the language-based code, its building and developing a new animal after its own kind.
This difference might seem slight at first, but the distinction carries important implications. When doing scientific research, students encounter all sorts of this for which we need some kind of analogy to use, in order to determine how we should think of it in order to better understand what it is and does.
The more accurate and precise the analogy, the better the results of further study, since they set the pace for how further research will proceed, and what kind of experiments will, or will not, occupy studies in that field. The omissions might be far more important than the experiments that lead nowhere because of assumptions used in research, which stem from unwarranted (faulty) analogies.
Special revelation could have come in a different form that it has. God could have used a single prophet to write a book in a special, technical or scientific language. He chose to use ordinary, human languages, and the Bible compares the general and special revelation repeatedly. If one wishes to think of genetic information as a blueprint, he ought to add, "a blueprint specified according to a syntax which is analogous to human language uses, which scientists call "natural languages."
Consider this. Genesis describes the original creation in terms of a Temple throughout the narratives of Genesis, and those of the Psalms and Proverbs, which reflect back upon the earliest Genesis narrative, and employ Temple-analogy language throughout. Now king David, it turns out, WAS GIVEN A SET OF BLUEPRINTS by God for the development of the Temple. But these came in Hebrew. And the description of these blueprints, and of the Temple itself, come to all God's people in Hebrew. God could have included diagrams and pictures to help us. But He chose not to do this.
DNA is a form of language-based blueprint, responsible for all (created) living things. The Proverbs tell us that the tongue (even human tongues) have the power OF LIFE and death in them, and those who love it will eat its fruit. When Jesus asked Peter if He was considering deserting Him, Peter answered, "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the 'words of life'."
DNA uses various proteins in combinations as a pen, to write out and order the building process by replication of cells -- over and over. But this comes from divine language, the words of life. Geneticists, indeed all men, ought to think God's thoughts after Him, including what the words of Genesis imply for the study of genetics because, not only is this their duty, but it better enables the progress scientists seek in performing their research and work. This enables discoveries not otherwise likely to follow from misguided or inadequate analogs, used as the basis for further study.
Both general and special revelation have a linguistic source. The wisdom of God found in general revelation is non-verbal. But that does not imply that it has no verbal analogue. It simply means that it employs a different kind of pen and paper, where the pen is chemical and mineral (and atomic) structures, and the paper is the entire cosmos interacting as a unit, forming together what we simply call the natural world, or else "reality" (what you experience each morning after the coffee kicks in).
In order words, special revelation comes by the hand of kings and queens (humans), and general revelation comes from all the lower creation. Again, the two kinds of revelation then show that same distinction found originally in Genesis -- by the two different ways these were created - humans one way and the lower creation another.
Thus, by the testimony of three witnesses has God firmly established the matter that Darwin was badly mistaken. His theory, and its modern counterparts (Neo-Darwinism and punctuationism) both imply the denial of a special status in the animal kingdom for humans. They are only different in degree of advancement, not in radically and fundamentally distinguished KINDS -- as with Genesis. These differences in KINDS form the basis for prohibiting bestiality and other like sins of degrading humans by pretending they are nothing more than animals of the same kind -- but only are different in degree from other animals.
General revelation and special revelation distinguish humans as the source of the better form, and the lower creation as the source of the less clear and comprehensive version. Genesis tells us that the original creation proceeded differently (Specially) for humans, and not for the lower creatures.
But in each case, language forms the source -- language which can be expressed in Hebrew and Greek (the first being the language of God's holy people uniquely, and the second being the international Lingua Franca of the Gentiles - "First to the Jew and then to the Gentile" is how special revelation came to all men).
This implies that the sciences should proceed on the basis of what has the syntax of natural languaes in all their studies and reports. For this most closely matches the nature of that which they study, as well as those doing the studying, for a better understanding of the world about us, and for the better progress of the sciences themselves.
A theory need not be true or accurate to work well; but theories which are true will tend to work well in the majority of cases where they are rightly applied (Some theories are trivial and will do anything significant simply for their accuracy, since they do not seek to solve a significant problem). In other words, progress proceeds faster and better with only true theories, even though false theories can also yield scientific progess (where that progress is measured only in terms of technological innovation and usefulness to get stuff done).
This in no way implies that people should not do math, or use symbols to bring about a kind of shorthand, for doing logic or math more efficiently. It simply means that these should always have a counterpart in ordinary language, which one can understand easily when we convert the symbolic tongue back into its natural language form.
The proposition "2 + 2 = 4" is a technical expression meaning "When a person adds two items to two more items, he ends up with four items total." After writing out the natural language version, it waxes immediately evident why we might want to use the symbolic shorthand -- namely because it is MUCH shorter. And, once you know the axioms or rules for counting this way, it is easy to read and clear in its symbolic form.
So technical languages CAN have great value. They can help speed things up, by making it much easier to calcuate and show relationships between ideas (i.e. 4 is twice as big as the number two) in just a few pen strokes. This is the same reason we use computers. Faster is better since it saves time, and shorter is better because it makes ideas clearer to those who know the rules to the technical tongues (longer expressions are harder to follow, unless you put them into a more familiar format).
Natural languages develop by people speaking in communities, who have problems to solve. And they use language to do this. The more uses they find for it, the more it grows. This means that greater dominion requires a greater vocabulary. A vocabulary resulting from one's ability to speak many langauges is much more dominion-friendly than that of the monolingual person.
Both natural and technical languages, however, should share the same structural features, so that translation from one to the other comes easily, and so that the technical langauge remains attached to the real world, by remaining analogous to natural languages. For these grew up by interacting and adapting to the real world, such that they correspond to it -- somewhat, well, "naturally." There, I said it.
DNA is the immediate effect of divine language and work, and which forms a unique, but natural, language that is no exception to this rule. It represents a unique portrayal of God's wisdom in creation. "Wisdom has built her house," said Solomon. And so DNA builds according to God's original sets of instructions (words of life). When the science proceeds, it ought to do so in ways consistent with ordinary languages.
This lesson brought to you by Genesis, special revelation, and the entire cosmos.
To learn more about DNA, see the wikipedia entry at http://wikipedia.org. Just type "DNA" into the search window, and on you go.
The wisdom of God revealed in the creatures, which forms the primary focus of wisdom in the so-called "wisdom literature" of the Older Testament, shows up in all manner of creatures because God has put it there. This wisdom, it turns out is a kind of code. Geneticists everywhere compare it to a kind of "blueprint" or set of "blueprints". These few chemicals make up sets of instructions.
Solomon associates wisdom with instruction throughout the Proverbs, and general revelation shows them closely associated as well. However, the notion of blueprints offers a fairly remote analogy, and this shows the sometimes inflexible thinking of well-trained scientists. Blueprints only show you what the house should look like. DNA also does the building, with the help of RNA and a few other chemicals. If DNA is analogous to a blueprint, we must think it a hyperactive schematic, with too many friends.
Language, you might say, does not build things either. But this ignores the obvious point of Genesis about DIVINE language. When God utters, things happen. His original commands, which formed DNA, were all performative utterances (sayings which accomplish the thing they command or say, as when a bride says, "I do." Here the saying IS the doing.) DNA is a set of linguistic instructions which contain and execute performative utterances, which togther work to fulfill God's original command, commonly called the "dominion mandate," when he blessed the creatures.
Ironically, just because they are so well trained, they think according to a specific set of instructions they have received from their professors, textbooks and other members of the scientific community, with whom they work on a regular basis. But this fact should have tipped them off to the better analogy. Their textbooks did not come as blueprints, but as a set of instructions and descriptions, using the syntax of ordinary languages. This fact yields the better analogue. In light of this, they should assume that DNA is carrying out instruction sets, just as they are, in studying it. But this implies creationism (not evolution). Since they were trained (told what to do), this implies DNA was told by someone what to do. Perhaps this is the source of their blind spot.
The principle of efficient causation tells us that the effect will always be like the cause in certain respects. God is wise, so His wisdom shows up in the created order. God called everything into existence from nothing, with the exception of Adam - whom He formed from the dust of the earth, and Eve whom He formed from Adam's side (rib).
This does two things of immediate importance. First, it puts a distinction between humans, and all other living creatures, setting them apart as rulers of the rest (Adam and Eve were created as King and Queen of earth). They have a royal and priestly status the others do not. Second, this shows that the basis of all life stems from language, God's speaking which brought forth each [creature] according to its own kind, with its seed in it. The wise ordering of things proceeded upon God's wise speaking and acting.
This special, and repeated, description of the creation, of course, turns out to be precisely correct. But the ability of each animal to replicate its own kind is due to the genetic information it contains. Genesis thereby implies that the best kind of analogy we should be using for DNA derives from the syntax and use of ordinary human languages.
Recall that Genesis shows a distinction between the way the other animals were created and the way God made mankind. One of the consequences of this difference means that humans use spoken language in ways other animals do not. Language use forms the primary functional difference most obvious between "us" and "them." So we eat THEM, not us.
DNA represents then, according to the Bible, a language-based code, not an architectural blueprint. Notice that the first analogy employs the kind of thing found in the SOURCE (cause) of the DNA (language), and the second the EFFECT of the language-based code, its building and developing a new animal after its own kind.
This difference might seem slight at first, but the distinction carries important implications. When doing scientific research, students encounter all sorts of this for which we need some kind of analogy to use, in order to determine how we should think of it in order to better understand what it is and does.
The more accurate and precise the analogy, the better the results of further study, since they set the pace for how further research will proceed, and what kind of experiments will, or will not, occupy studies in that field. The omissions might be far more important than the experiments that lead nowhere because of assumptions used in research, which stem from unwarranted (faulty) analogies.
Special revelation could have come in a different form that it has. God could have used a single prophet to write a book in a special, technical or scientific language. He chose to use ordinary, human languages, and the Bible compares the general and special revelation repeatedly. If one wishes to think of genetic information as a blueprint, he ought to add, "a blueprint specified according to a syntax which is analogous to human language uses, which scientists call "natural languages."
Consider this. Genesis describes the original creation in terms of a Temple throughout the narratives of Genesis, and those of the Psalms and Proverbs, which reflect back upon the earliest Genesis narrative, and employ Temple-analogy language throughout. Now king David, it turns out, WAS GIVEN A SET OF BLUEPRINTS by God for the development of the Temple. But these came in Hebrew. And the description of these blueprints, and of the Temple itself, come to all God's people in Hebrew. God could have included diagrams and pictures to help us. But He chose not to do this.
DNA is a form of language-based blueprint, responsible for all (created) living things. The Proverbs tell us that the tongue (even human tongues) have the power OF LIFE and death in them, and those who love it will eat its fruit. When Jesus asked Peter if He was considering deserting Him, Peter answered, "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the 'words of life'."
DNA uses various proteins in combinations as a pen, to write out and order the building process by replication of cells -- over and over. But this comes from divine language, the words of life. Geneticists, indeed all men, ought to think God's thoughts after Him, including what the words of Genesis imply for the study of genetics because, not only is this their duty, but it better enables the progress scientists seek in performing their research and work. This enables discoveries not otherwise likely to follow from misguided or inadequate analogs, used as the basis for further study.
Both general and special revelation have a linguistic source. The wisdom of God found in general revelation is non-verbal. But that does not imply that it has no verbal analogue. It simply means that it employs a different kind of pen and paper, where the pen is chemical and mineral (and atomic) structures, and the paper is the entire cosmos interacting as a unit, forming together what we simply call the natural world, or else "reality" (what you experience each morning after the coffee kicks in).
In order words, special revelation comes by the hand of kings and queens (humans), and general revelation comes from all the lower creation. Again, the two kinds of revelation then show that same distinction found originally in Genesis -- by the two different ways these were created - humans one way and the lower creation another.
Thus, by the testimony of three witnesses has God firmly established the matter that Darwin was badly mistaken. His theory, and its modern counterparts (Neo-Darwinism and punctuationism) both imply the denial of a special status in the animal kingdom for humans. They are only different in degree of advancement, not in radically and fundamentally distinguished KINDS -- as with Genesis. These differences in KINDS form the basis for prohibiting bestiality and other like sins of degrading humans by pretending they are nothing more than animals of the same kind -- but only are different in degree from other animals.
General revelation and special revelation distinguish humans as the source of the better form, and the lower creation as the source of the less clear and comprehensive version. Genesis tells us that the original creation proceeded differently (Specially) for humans, and not for the lower creatures.
But in each case, language forms the source -- language which can be expressed in Hebrew and Greek (the first being the language of God's holy people uniquely, and the second being the international Lingua Franca of the Gentiles - "First to the Jew and then to the Gentile" is how special revelation came to all men).
This implies that the sciences should proceed on the basis of what has the syntax of natural languaes in all their studies and reports. For this most closely matches the nature of that which they study, as well as those doing the studying, for a better understanding of the world about us, and for the better progress of the sciences themselves.
A theory need not be true or accurate to work well; but theories which are true will tend to work well in the majority of cases where they are rightly applied (Some theories are trivial and will do anything significant simply for their accuracy, since they do not seek to solve a significant problem). In other words, progress proceeds faster and better with only true theories, even though false theories can also yield scientific progess (where that progress is measured only in terms of technological innovation and usefulness to get stuff done).
This in no way implies that people should not do math, or use symbols to bring about a kind of shorthand, for doing logic or math more efficiently. It simply means that these should always have a counterpart in ordinary language, which one can understand easily when we convert the symbolic tongue back into its natural language form.
The proposition "2 + 2 = 4" is a technical expression meaning "When a person adds two items to two more items, he ends up with four items total." After writing out the natural language version, it waxes immediately evident why we might want to use the symbolic shorthand -- namely because it is MUCH shorter. And, once you know the axioms or rules for counting this way, it is easy to read and clear in its symbolic form.
So technical languages CAN have great value. They can help speed things up, by making it much easier to calcuate and show relationships between ideas (i.e. 4 is twice as big as the number two) in just a few pen strokes. This is the same reason we use computers. Faster is better since it saves time, and shorter is better because it makes ideas clearer to those who know the rules to the technical tongues (longer expressions are harder to follow, unless you put them into a more familiar format).
Natural languages develop by people speaking in communities, who have problems to solve. And they use language to do this. The more uses they find for it, the more it grows. This means that greater dominion requires a greater vocabulary. A vocabulary resulting from one's ability to speak many langauges is much more dominion-friendly than that of the monolingual person.
Both natural and technical languages, however, should share the same structural features, so that translation from one to the other comes easily, and so that the technical langauge remains attached to the real world, by remaining analogous to natural languages. For these grew up by interacting and adapting to the real world, such that they correspond to it -- somewhat, well, "naturally." There, I said it.
DNA is the immediate effect of divine language and work, and which forms a unique, but natural, language that is no exception to this rule. It represents a unique portrayal of God's wisdom in creation. "Wisdom has built her house," said Solomon. And so DNA builds according to God's original sets of instructions (words of life). When the science proceeds, it ought to do so in ways consistent with ordinary languages.
This lesson brought to you by Genesis, special revelation, and the entire cosmos.
To learn more about DNA, see the wikipedia entry at http://wikipedia.org. Just type "DNA" into the search window, and on you go.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Holding the Line: Of General Revelation and Good and Necessary Consequence
Holding the line represents and old expression, meaning to do what is necessary, even when it proves difficult to do so. In the context of this brief article, it refers to the importance of remaining orthodox, keeping and protecting what God has handed down to us. Learning the skills associated with the basics of logical reasoning form the centerpiece of efforts to retain the prophetic and apostolic tradition (as opposed to the traditions of men).
But the saying is trustworthy, and merits our full acceptance, which says, “The best defense is a good offense.” Preserving the biblical teaching intact necessarily means fending off contenders. This in turn – doing biblical apologetics to refute bad ideas and practices – forms the basis for expanding by logical inference, the good repository of sound doctrine left to us from our fathers. This, by the way of the talents of the saints, and the good providence of God, then has a very odd consequence. Bad ideas, rightly reproved, give rise to new and better ideas, ones which stand on the shoulders of what we have received, and enable to look down the road just a bit further, to see more of the logical implicates of just what we have believed. This is our best, confessionally-expressed understanding of the faith of Jesus, revised and expanded. We do the same thing with our Bible translations (while carefully neither adding our own ideas, nor subtracting any of what God originally said).
In this way, God turns what is evil (challenges to the Gospel, in this of that fashion) into something good, by the hands of His people. This is His specialty – to make what is bad good, to restore what was lost, and turn what is worthless into something priceless. And each time He restores or repairs in the Scripture, He goes beyond what existed earlier that was then tainted. His work excels the best available in every case. God advances, and never retreats. In every case, He invariably does this by wisdom. He even outwits those who are used to outwitting others. Just as it says, “The Lord deals craftily with the crafty.”
Wisdom, a particular kind of orderly thinking and behaving, requires the use of logic, what our confessions have called “good and necessary consequence.” But what exactly does this mean? The phrase means – in today’s vocabulary of logic – the logical consequences that follow upon reasons given which are necessary and sufficient. A particular fallacy, common to men, can help us illustrate this. It is called, “confusing a necessary with a sufficient condition.” Let us suppose you own a plant – a very nice, green, happy plant. So you will want to keep it alive. To do this, you learn by stealth and all secret methods, that you will need to water it from time to time. So you do this, but unfortunately, it withers up in a few weeks, because you have put it in the shade, and it needs light to thrive too.
Here you have confused a necessary condition for the survival of mister green (he needs water) with a sufficient condition (water is enough to ensure the survival of mister green by itself). Water is a necesssary, but not a sufficient condition, for the survival of plants. They need other things like fresh air, light and soil nutrients. And for some reason no one really knows, it helps if you talk to them.
So we can say of a necessary condition that “B needs A” in order to accomplish X. But this does not imply that if only A, then we get B in order to accomplish X. X may require far more than just A and B. The kind of reasoning the westminster divines have in mind, is a set of propositions which necessarily and sufficiently (no missing premisses) lead to a particular conclusion.
The truth of propositions used in a sound argument – which is the only kind the Bible permits us to offer – may come either from general, or else from special, revelation. So the two parts of the argument we wish to offer, the first soundness and the second validity, treat different aspects of the argument at hand. The first consider the truthfulness and adequacy of the premisses of the argument; and the second considers just HOW the steps taken from those premisses lead us to our conclusion(s) in the arguing process. The argument’s premisses must suffice to imply the alleged conclusion, and the alleged conclusion must follow by logical NECESSITY from the premisses offered. The first part makes the argument “good” or sufficient, and the second part makes its conclusion(s) “necessary.”
Now let us consider these attributes from the Word – goodness and necessity. In cases, a careful study of the relevant passages of the Bible shows that these are aspects (rather necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of) the creation around us. More specifically, God created all this “very good,” meaning that the cosmos was at the first, sufficient by itself to provide all things needful for men to thrive in their relationship with God and with one another. This is no longer the case, since the Fall of man, and that more recent change fosters the need for, and the arrival of, special revelation from God to make up the difference (and much more).
What does this mean for us as budding Christian logicians? It means that general revelation, which shows the goodness of God, and the necessity of His revealing Himself to us for our benefit and His glory, form the basis for “good and necessary” consequence in reasoning properly. What is logically “good” and what is logically “necessary” are both aspects of general revelation.
Laws of logic – like Modus Ponens – are universal. They follow from the orderliness of God as He is revealed to us in the created order. This is the source of logical “necessity.” General revelation necessarily follows from the nature of God and the fact of creation. He did not need to create THIS particular world - and could freely have done otherwise – but consequent upon His choice to make a world with men and deer and bugs and the like, general revelation was not an option, but a “consequent absolute necessity,” because the creation will necessarily reflect what the Creator is like. God cannot do what is foolish or sinful, because He is wise and righteous altogether by nature – not by choice. He cannot be or do otherwise.
The necessity of being the way He is, leads automatically and necessarily to some other conclusions and facts of life that could not be otherwise. One of these is that He has invested His creation with wisdom – the wisdom which automatically and instinctively flows from Him, so that by wisdom the Lord laid the foundations of the earth. This divine wisdom, portrayed then by all the different little appointed media running about – ants, bees, sunlight, stars, and even people - therefore CANNOT HELP but show forth his Wisdom.
Here is our syllogism for the day. God is inherently and infinitely wise. God is a Creator by nature (or we might say is creative by nature); therefore, God NECESSARILY creates wisely. And this wisdom will then show up in the things created, and even in the rules and relations which follow from all the parts of the creation interacting with each other. The interact in “rule-governed” ways – as with the rate at which apples fall from trees and accelerate toward the earth. This is always the same rate no matter which country in which you sit under and apple tree. The “thump” on your head will hurt no less in Japan, than it would if you ate Washington apples.
Likewise, ideas can only relate to each other in certain ways, and only certain of those ways are described in the Bible as “good” and “necessary.” Some ideas are not necessary to - they do not follow from and are not in every case associated with – other ideas. These have a “contingent” relationship. They are mere acquaintances which happen to be at the same place at the same time, now and again. But ideas which follow from good and necessary relations with other ideas, of these two ideas we should say, they are not just friendly passers-by; they are married.
So if B is an idea which follows from good and nec, consequence from A, we should say that A and B are hitched. When A is present, B always says, “I do.” But if B is contingent in its relationship to A, we should say that at the very most, they are just dating (not an item). This may ruin it for the hollywood gossip section of the newspapers at the check out counter in the grocery store, but contingent ideas are just friends.
The take-home for profit propositions expressed here then – please allow me to sum up – are that God is wise, and has created a good cosmos of order and wisdom. This gives rise to the fact that certain objects (in the case of apples and earth) and certain ideas (like just dating versus being married in our analogy for “contingency v. necessity”) can only sit this or that way across from other ideas or things. Not every combination is possible.
There is no such thing as a number of apples in your basket equal to the sum of the square root of X, when X is a negative number. This is logically impossible, but it is not impossible to express the idea in numbers. This shows that some ideas, even though arranged orderly, do not correspond to the wisdom by which God created, and which is reflected in the natural order.
General revelation sets the limits and rules for proper and improper reasoning. This makes God the Lord – and source – of Wisdom and logic. This renders the Bible the final judge in all matters pertaining to what is or is not sound or valid reasoning. And both general and special revelation provide the rules we must follow to live and think profitably and skillfully in this world. But Special revelation finally judges. Said just a bit differently for our beloved home-schooled children, general and special revelation are married, but special revelation is the papa in the house, and has the final say-so. It says the same thing as general revelation where the topic is the same; but it covers a much wider range of topics, and speaks a bit more clearly. So it has the final Word, when the two “seem” to conflict (they do not, but this shows why we need WRITTEN revelation that comes in a book), or a question arises about what it means.
What then are laws of logic anyway. These are relationships between ideas, which show that some ideas are related to others by logical necessity. They are a reflection in the created order of God’s goodness and wisdom, by which he laid the foundations of the earth. They show the way that God thinks, and the way He expect us to think, that we may be like Him – good and wise, faithful in our reasoning.
If the idea of “relationships between ideas” sounds too complicated, think of it this way. Some ideas are just friends; others are cousins; some ideas give birth to other ideas, these are “related ideas” like fathers and sons relate to each other. Some ideas are enemies – or opposites. Sets of ideas that exclude other sets, are called “complementary sets” in logic – the set of all Hatfields versus the set of all McCoys. They relate to each other primarily with guns. This is called “redneck set theory,” where you find a set you do not particularly enjoy, and shoot it out to the last man (last member of the set).
Logic is important because it shows us how to think faithfully to God – to think accurately and reach true conclusions from only true premisses. For logic requires us to believe what God has said; the contrary is logically impossible. And, even worse, it is unfaithful. For God has commanded us, saying, “Wisdom is the prinicpal thing; therefore get wisdom.” This amounts to a command to reason wisely, logically, and faithfully at all times. Therefore, get logic. Solomon would do it.
Next, we will move on to consider some of these laws, and look at them (so to speak) under a microscope, to see what makes them tick. In other words, we are going to spy on Modus Tollens, and his friends.
But the saying is trustworthy, and merits our full acceptance, which says, “The best defense is a good offense.” Preserving the biblical teaching intact necessarily means fending off contenders. This in turn – doing biblical apologetics to refute bad ideas and practices – forms the basis for expanding by logical inference, the good repository of sound doctrine left to us from our fathers. This, by the way of the talents of the saints, and the good providence of God, then has a very odd consequence. Bad ideas, rightly reproved, give rise to new and better ideas, ones which stand on the shoulders of what we have received, and enable to look down the road just a bit further, to see more of the logical implicates of just what we have believed. This is our best, confessionally-expressed understanding of the faith of Jesus, revised and expanded. We do the same thing with our Bible translations (while carefully neither adding our own ideas, nor subtracting any of what God originally said).
In this way, God turns what is evil (challenges to the Gospel, in this of that fashion) into something good, by the hands of His people. This is His specialty – to make what is bad good, to restore what was lost, and turn what is worthless into something priceless. And each time He restores or repairs in the Scripture, He goes beyond what existed earlier that was then tainted. His work excels the best available in every case. God advances, and never retreats. In every case, He invariably does this by wisdom. He even outwits those who are used to outwitting others. Just as it says, “The Lord deals craftily with the crafty.”
Wisdom, a particular kind of orderly thinking and behaving, requires the use of logic, what our confessions have called “good and necessary consequence.” But what exactly does this mean? The phrase means – in today’s vocabulary of logic – the logical consequences that follow upon reasons given which are necessary and sufficient. A particular fallacy, common to men, can help us illustrate this. It is called, “confusing a necessary with a sufficient condition.” Let us suppose you own a plant – a very nice, green, happy plant. So you will want to keep it alive. To do this, you learn by stealth and all secret methods, that you will need to water it from time to time. So you do this, but unfortunately, it withers up in a few weeks, because you have put it in the shade, and it needs light to thrive too.
Here you have confused a necessary condition for the survival of mister green (he needs water) with a sufficient condition (water is enough to ensure the survival of mister green by itself). Water is a necesssary, but not a sufficient condition, for the survival of plants. They need other things like fresh air, light and soil nutrients. And for some reason no one really knows, it helps if you talk to them.
So we can say of a necessary condition that “B needs A” in order to accomplish X. But this does not imply that if only A, then we get B in order to accomplish X. X may require far more than just A and B. The kind of reasoning the westminster divines have in mind, is a set of propositions which necessarily and sufficiently (no missing premisses) lead to a particular conclusion.
The truth of propositions used in a sound argument – which is the only kind the Bible permits us to offer – may come either from general, or else from special, revelation. So the two parts of the argument we wish to offer, the first soundness and the second validity, treat different aspects of the argument at hand. The first consider the truthfulness and adequacy of the premisses of the argument; and the second considers just HOW the steps taken from those premisses lead us to our conclusion(s) in the arguing process. The argument’s premisses must suffice to imply the alleged conclusion, and the alleged conclusion must follow by logical NECESSITY from the premisses offered. The first part makes the argument “good” or sufficient, and the second part makes its conclusion(s) “necessary.”
Now let us consider these attributes from the Word – goodness and necessity. In cases, a careful study of the relevant passages of the Bible shows that these are aspects (rather necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of) the creation around us. More specifically, God created all this “very good,” meaning that the cosmos was at the first, sufficient by itself to provide all things needful for men to thrive in their relationship with God and with one another. This is no longer the case, since the Fall of man, and that more recent change fosters the need for, and the arrival of, special revelation from God to make up the difference (and much more).
What does this mean for us as budding Christian logicians? It means that general revelation, which shows the goodness of God, and the necessity of His revealing Himself to us for our benefit and His glory, form the basis for “good and necessary” consequence in reasoning properly. What is logically “good” and what is logically “necessary” are both aspects of general revelation.
Laws of logic – like Modus Ponens – are universal. They follow from the orderliness of God as He is revealed to us in the created order. This is the source of logical “necessity.” General revelation necessarily follows from the nature of God and the fact of creation. He did not need to create THIS particular world - and could freely have done otherwise – but consequent upon His choice to make a world with men and deer and bugs and the like, general revelation was not an option, but a “consequent absolute necessity,” because the creation will necessarily reflect what the Creator is like. God cannot do what is foolish or sinful, because He is wise and righteous altogether by nature – not by choice. He cannot be or do otherwise.
The necessity of being the way He is, leads automatically and necessarily to some other conclusions and facts of life that could not be otherwise. One of these is that He has invested His creation with wisdom – the wisdom which automatically and instinctively flows from Him, so that by wisdom the Lord laid the foundations of the earth. This divine wisdom, portrayed then by all the different little appointed media running about – ants, bees, sunlight, stars, and even people - therefore CANNOT HELP but show forth his Wisdom.
Here is our syllogism for the day. God is inherently and infinitely wise. God is a Creator by nature (or we might say is creative by nature); therefore, God NECESSARILY creates wisely. And this wisdom will then show up in the things created, and even in the rules and relations which follow from all the parts of the creation interacting with each other. The interact in “rule-governed” ways – as with the rate at which apples fall from trees and accelerate toward the earth. This is always the same rate no matter which country in which you sit under and apple tree. The “thump” on your head will hurt no less in Japan, than it would if you ate Washington apples.
Likewise, ideas can only relate to each other in certain ways, and only certain of those ways are described in the Bible as “good” and “necessary.” Some ideas are not necessary to - they do not follow from and are not in every case associated with – other ideas. These have a “contingent” relationship. They are mere acquaintances which happen to be at the same place at the same time, now and again. But ideas which follow from good and necessary relations with other ideas, of these two ideas we should say, they are not just friendly passers-by; they are married.
So if B is an idea which follows from good and nec, consequence from A, we should say that A and B are hitched. When A is present, B always says, “I do.” But if B is contingent in its relationship to A, we should say that at the very most, they are just dating (not an item). This may ruin it for the hollywood gossip section of the newspapers at the check out counter in the grocery store, but contingent ideas are just friends.
The take-home for profit propositions expressed here then – please allow me to sum up – are that God is wise, and has created a good cosmos of order and wisdom. This gives rise to the fact that certain objects (in the case of apples and earth) and certain ideas (like just dating versus being married in our analogy for “contingency v. necessity”) can only sit this or that way across from other ideas or things. Not every combination is possible.
There is no such thing as a number of apples in your basket equal to the sum of the square root of X, when X is a negative number. This is logically impossible, but it is not impossible to express the idea in numbers. This shows that some ideas, even though arranged orderly, do not correspond to the wisdom by which God created, and which is reflected in the natural order.
General revelation sets the limits and rules for proper and improper reasoning. This makes God the Lord – and source – of Wisdom and logic. This renders the Bible the final judge in all matters pertaining to what is or is not sound or valid reasoning. And both general and special revelation provide the rules we must follow to live and think profitably and skillfully in this world. But Special revelation finally judges. Said just a bit differently for our beloved home-schooled children, general and special revelation are married, but special revelation is the papa in the house, and has the final say-so. It says the same thing as general revelation where the topic is the same; but it covers a much wider range of topics, and speaks a bit more clearly. So it has the final Word, when the two “seem” to conflict (they do not, but this shows why we need WRITTEN revelation that comes in a book), or a question arises about what it means.
What then are laws of logic anyway. These are relationships between ideas, which show that some ideas are related to others by logical necessity. They are a reflection in the created order of God’s goodness and wisdom, by which he laid the foundations of the earth. They show the way that God thinks, and the way He expect us to think, that we may be like Him – good and wise, faithful in our reasoning.
If the idea of “relationships between ideas” sounds too complicated, think of it this way. Some ideas are just friends; others are cousins; some ideas give birth to other ideas, these are “related ideas” like fathers and sons relate to each other. Some ideas are enemies – or opposites. Sets of ideas that exclude other sets, are called “complementary sets” in logic – the set of all Hatfields versus the set of all McCoys. They relate to each other primarily with guns. This is called “redneck set theory,” where you find a set you do not particularly enjoy, and shoot it out to the last man (last member of the set).
Logic is important because it shows us how to think faithfully to God – to think accurately and reach true conclusions from only true premisses. For logic requires us to believe what God has said; the contrary is logically impossible. And, even worse, it is unfaithful. For God has commanded us, saying, “Wisdom is the prinicpal thing; therefore get wisdom.” This amounts to a command to reason wisely, logically, and faithfully at all times. Therefore, get logic. Solomon would do it.
Next, we will move on to consider some of these laws, and look at them (so to speak) under a microscope, to see what makes them tick. In other words, we are going to spy on Modus Tollens, and his friends.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
HLAP and The Development of An Academic Curriculum
One of the primary goals of the HLA project aims to produce a thoroughly biblical and systematic, academic curriculum, based upon the classical educational model, and modified according to the philosophy of education found in the Word of God. This specifically seeks to help home-school groups, and private Christian educational institutions, and would be made downloadable from the internet at zero price.
The curriculum shall be fairly comprehensive, covering the educational needs from the earliest years of childhood development, through the collegiate level. This will cover as well every area of study warranted by the holy Scripture – from economics, skilled writing and critical reading, logic and the various sciences, to ancient, medieval and modern history. In every case, the diachronic approach forms as much as is practical the preferred approach to the study of the particular subject at hand.
All children should learn to work around the home, and education should supplement, not replace, this work -- as is customary in the public school system. So the educational model this project follows will center upon work (very "hands-on") and offer a discipleship-based, and biblical approach to education.
The basic, early structure for academic development will focus on:
1. Greek and Latin Basic word studies – vocabulary development – is all you need for the youngest. Have them learn Greek and Latin, words, stems, prefixes and suffixes. This will greatly expand their working knowledge of the English language. Have younger students work on memorizing these, using 3 x 5 index cards. Have them write the English on one side, and the Latin (or Greek) on the other. Then play the "who can guess it game" for a prize. Make up a Latin bee. Older students can -- by the same method -- begin memorizing the conjugations, declensions and other grammatical parts of speech. The students should have to make -- pen clearly with their own fingers -- their own card sets by hand, with the advice of the teacher as needed.
2. Catechism and Logic. Always teach this pair together, as the one provides the propositions for the other; one must learn to reason in biblical context at all times, and this will help children (and adults) learn to do this. Basic guides (primers) to logic are available, and the project will likely create one uniquely for the homeschool curriculum, which primer shall use Biblical examples only, for the logical principles taught in it.
3. Skilled writing. This will center on the practice and application of ten principles of good writing, already well-known from writers like George Orwell and others. These represent, the principles of nature’s light applied to the art of writing (i.e. re-writing) most able to produce a skilled and clear work of literary art, a resume, a clear and concise memo, or any other clear and distinct writing piece.
The three elements sought for good writing in each case are:
A. Express yourself clearly
B. Communicate efficiently (say only what you mean precisely, and nothing more)
C. Elegance in style
4. Critical reading. This course will teach a particular method of reading, skimming, and examining, to grasp clearly the main points of any work, and reap the greater benefit from it – for cross-disciplinary purposes. The literary-critical analysis consists of elements of study (i.e. reading the end chapters first, then the first ones), how to identify and apply themes to their surrounding contexts, and in using some elements of speed reading.
It also highlights aspects of reading-for-research adaptable to the reading of any book, such as finding the topic of the book, and then skimming an online library to see similar titles. This yields a fast overview of the entire subject area, introduces the student quickly to the special vocabulary used in that field, and accelerates reading comprehension by providing an overall context for reading the book.
The teacher should require them to read in front of the others, to read naturally and after the tone of the piece being read, and to project confidence. Over time they will develop oratory skills from the practice of it, and then the study of rhetoric and its attending practices can accompany this unit of study later.
5. Practical experiments in the sciences. These consist of fun and didactic experiments one can make from ordinary household materials or other easily obtainable items. They each teach important fundamental principles, laws, or other aspects of physics, astronomy, chemistry, optics and the like. This will be the part of the day the younger ones most look forward to viewing and creating. For good ideas on these, you can either search the internet or read the backs of cereal boxes next time you go to the store.
6. Art and Aesthetics. This is the study of all things bright and beautiful. It finds its justification in the glory of God and the apostolic command to consider and dwell upon whatsoever is noble, lovely, and the like. It aims to show the children the goodness and glory of the Creator and Redeemer from the light of nature. This includes all manner of outdoor activities (field trips) to study rocks and gemstones, precious metals, animals and insects (bugs rule), the mountains and oceans, the starry skies above, classical music, fine goods of all sorts, and all other things whatsoever the teacher deems useful and profitable for children to learn that God loves them, and that he has created a beautiful world, which the Bible calls "good." Some aspects of it are downright delicious. Try the blueberries and pineapple.
7. Money and Management of Resources. This introduces the students at the most basic levels to the study of economics. Here the students learn what money is, why things have value, how to make change for a given amount of money handed to them, the value of work, the nature of work and compensated reward, scarcity and the effect of the fall on limiting resources, and other like principles from the Word of God. This is essentially applied math, using money, to teach the study of numbers and quantities, while providing the biblical context for understanding what money is and does, and what God requires (or else forbids) us to do with it. This is how young children are supposed to learn math. The formal study of math as a separate discipline need not be introduced until 4th or 5th grade.
8. Physical education. This need not be formal - only the children should be shown how to play sports, introducing them to three or four, and then simply have the play fun games. The teacher should play whatever the children play, and laugh when the children laugh. This is an opportunity for the children to see that adults still play, and that they are not really made of wood (as most children secretly suppose). Sometimes, you simply let out a yell (AHA! works well enough) and chase them all. When they squeal run after them.
A few guidelines for teachers. When you talk to a child (individually), bend down so that your face is directly across from theirs. Lower your voice to what is almost a whisper. They will smile and listen intently to whatever you say (because – shhh - it’s a secret; and secrets – as we all know, are VERY important, or they wouldn’t BE top secret). When they do well, hug them or pat them on the head and compliment them. Ask them a gazillion questions, and actually listen to their answers, no matter their quality.
Do these three things and you will have excellent students. Thats it. You would be AMAZED how far this will get you, if you try it consistently.
Most students will only need about three years of formal math – to algebra or pre-alegebra – depending on the aspirations of the student and in consultation with the parents expectations for their children. This requires in a private school context, curriculum adaption to the particular child. Unlike the false assumptions of the public schools – cookie cutter education, one size fits all – the biblical model requires the study of the unique gifts and talents God has given each child, and a formulation of their academic program that matches the results of this study.
Younger students learn math much more slowly than older ones, since they cannot think abstractly until about age 12 or 13. This means if taught logic, catechism and money-math as suggested herein, by the time the child reach this age, he will learn quickly, easily making up for "lost time" by this calculated delay, and far surpass his publicly-schooled counterparts.
Logic and math are directly related, and logic is the more important by far. Children will be learning logic by relating the parts of their catechisms to each other, self-consciously learning the mutual consent of the parts of the biblical worldview, and from each one of the other studies (mentioned above), which will be taught systematically in every case.
This purposefully EXCLUDES the falsely so-called "human sciences" – sociology, psychology and other areas not only NOT WARRANTED by the Word of God, but which do much to harm the Church, and encroach upon the lawful authority of its elders. The high school and collegiate parts of the curriculum will also exclude – for obvious practical and legal reasons – areas such as the practice of medicine and law requiring licensing from the state or other accreditation from non-Christian bodies. Instead, a diachronic and historical study will take their place – i.e. the history of the medical sciences, history of law, etc.
9. Ancient and Church History. This study aims to promote a covenantal-historical awareness on the part of students, who as a consequence of it, see themselves as part of a generation serving God alongside the saints of God of old, as well as with those of today.
They learn here Bible backgrounds, and how the Biblical history fits with the records of other nations and events described by them. Highlighted features include the Creation events in the beginning, the Noahic Flood, the Babel event, the Exodus from Egypt, the rule of the Judges, the United Monarchy in Israel (with special attention to the reigns, practices and teachings of David and Solomon – not merely the historical or sociological conditions prevalent then in Israel), the Babylonian Exile and Return, and the Birth and ministry of Jesus Christ the Lord, and that of his apostles, the Fall of Rome, and the Rise of Christian civilization.
Church History continues with a study of Heresy and Orthodoxy, the major events surrounding all ecclesiastical councils, and the major developments influencing Christian culture from the arts and sciences, including technological innovations and economic developments.
10. Cross-Disciplinary Bible Reading. This study aims to have students read from selected books of the canonical Bible, and apply what they have learned from other areas of study to its reading, for maximum benefit to student and teacher alike. The cross-disciplinary approach to asking questions of the biblical text yields surprising results many times. The fruit of these labors, and their great value, will become obvious, and show their own merit. WIsdom is its own reward – and is sweet to the soul. The better part of Bible study is asking the right – or at least many – questions. Ask enough questions of the text, and some will turn a hefty profit for you.
Contrary to coventional "wisdom," some questions are better to ask than others; some are well asked, but poorly stated, and some are just lousy questions. Questions both relevant to the immediate context, but which originate from a study not native to the text at hand, are the best kind. So for instance, a great one might be, "What were the economic effects in Israel of using only silver and gold for money?" or "How would things have changed if they had done what we do in the West today (print paper money with no gold or silver to back it)?"
Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a right answer given timely. But these begin with good (skillful) questions. Ask well and ask often.
You can view my HLA Manager Resume online (site under construction) at http://hlaprojectmanager.blogspot.com/
If you are unable to link to the resume, just copy the address, by highlighting it with your mouse, and the hit the "control key" and the "C" key simultaneously. This copies the link to your computers temporary memory notepad; then hit "control V" to paste it into the window at the top of your screen. This will paste the URL destination address in the window above (at the top of your browser screen). Then just hit "enter," and you will find the resume. Thank you.
The curriculum shall be fairly comprehensive, covering the educational needs from the earliest years of childhood development, through the collegiate level. This will cover as well every area of study warranted by the holy Scripture – from economics, skilled writing and critical reading, logic and the various sciences, to ancient, medieval and modern history. In every case, the diachronic approach forms as much as is practical the preferred approach to the study of the particular subject at hand.
All children should learn to work around the home, and education should supplement, not replace, this work -- as is customary in the public school system. So the educational model this project follows will center upon work (very "hands-on") and offer a discipleship-based, and biblical approach to education.
The basic, early structure for academic development will focus on:
1. Greek and Latin Basic word studies – vocabulary development – is all you need for the youngest. Have them learn Greek and Latin, words, stems, prefixes and suffixes. This will greatly expand their working knowledge of the English language. Have younger students work on memorizing these, using 3 x 5 index cards. Have them write the English on one side, and the Latin (or Greek) on the other. Then play the "who can guess it game" for a prize. Make up a Latin bee. Older students can -- by the same method -- begin memorizing the conjugations, declensions and other grammatical parts of speech. The students should have to make -- pen clearly with their own fingers -- their own card sets by hand, with the advice of the teacher as needed.
2. Catechism and Logic. Always teach this pair together, as the one provides the propositions for the other; one must learn to reason in biblical context at all times, and this will help children (and adults) learn to do this. Basic guides (primers) to logic are available, and the project will likely create one uniquely for the homeschool curriculum, which primer shall use Biblical examples only, for the logical principles taught in it.
3. Skilled writing. This will center on the practice and application of ten principles of good writing, already well-known from writers like George Orwell and others. These represent, the principles of nature’s light applied to the art of writing (i.e. re-writing) most able to produce a skilled and clear work of literary art, a resume, a clear and concise memo, or any other clear and distinct writing piece.
The three elements sought for good writing in each case are:
A. Express yourself clearly
B. Communicate efficiently (say only what you mean precisely, and nothing more)
C. Elegance in style
4. Critical reading. This course will teach a particular method of reading, skimming, and examining, to grasp clearly the main points of any work, and reap the greater benefit from it – for cross-disciplinary purposes. The literary-critical analysis consists of elements of study (i.e. reading the end chapters first, then the first ones), how to identify and apply themes to their surrounding contexts, and in using some elements of speed reading.
It also highlights aspects of reading-for-research adaptable to the reading of any book, such as finding the topic of the book, and then skimming an online library to see similar titles. This yields a fast overview of the entire subject area, introduces the student quickly to the special vocabulary used in that field, and accelerates reading comprehension by providing an overall context for reading the book.
The teacher should require them to read in front of the others, to read naturally and after the tone of the piece being read, and to project confidence. Over time they will develop oratory skills from the practice of it, and then the study of rhetoric and its attending practices can accompany this unit of study later.
5. Practical experiments in the sciences. These consist of fun and didactic experiments one can make from ordinary household materials or other easily obtainable items. They each teach important fundamental principles, laws, or other aspects of physics, astronomy, chemistry, optics and the like. This will be the part of the day the younger ones most look forward to viewing and creating. For good ideas on these, you can either search the internet or read the backs of cereal boxes next time you go to the store.
6. Art and Aesthetics. This is the study of all things bright and beautiful. It finds its justification in the glory of God and the apostolic command to consider and dwell upon whatsoever is noble, lovely, and the like. It aims to show the children the goodness and glory of the Creator and Redeemer from the light of nature. This includes all manner of outdoor activities (field trips) to study rocks and gemstones, precious metals, animals and insects (bugs rule), the mountains and oceans, the starry skies above, classical music, fine goods of all sorts, and all other things whatsoever the teacher deems useful and profitable for children to learn that God loves them, and that he has created a beautiful world, which the Bible calls "good." Some aspects of it are downright delicious. Try the blueberries and pineapple.
7. Money and Management of Resources. This introduces the students at the most basic levels to the study of economics. Here the students learn what money is, why things have value, how to make change for a given amount of money handed to them, the value of work, the nature of work and compensated reward, scarcity and the effect of the fall on limiting resources, and other like principles from the Word of God. This is essentially applied math, using money, to teach the study of numbers and quantities, while providing the biblical context for understanding what money is and does, and what God requires (or else forbids) us to do with it. This is how young children are supposed to learn math. The formal study of math as a separate discipline need not be introduced until 4th or 5th grade.
8. Physical education. This need not be formal - only the children should be shown how to play sports, introducing them to three or four, and then simply have the play fun games. The teacher should play whatever the children play, and laugh when the children laugh. This is an opportunity for the children to see that adults still play, and that they are not really made of wood (as most children secretly suppose). Sometimes, you simply let out a yell (AHA! works well enough) and chase them all. When they squeal run after them.
A few guidelines for teachers. When you talk to a child (individually), bend down so that your face is directly across from theirs. Lower your voice to what is almost a whisper. They will smile and listen intently to whatever you say (because – shhh - it’s a secret; and secrets – as we all know, are VERY important, or they wouldn’t BE top secret). When they do well, hug them or pat them on the head and compliment them. Ask them a gazillion questions, and actually listen to their answers, no matter their quality.
Do these three things and you will have excellent students. Thats it. You would be AMAZED how far this will get you, if you try it consistently.
Most students will only need about three years of formal math – to algebra or pre-alegebra – depending on the aspirations of the student and in consultation with the parents expectations for their children. This requires in a private school context, curriculum adaption to the particular child. Unlike the false assumptions of the public schools – cookie cutter education, one size fits all – the biblical model requires the study of the unique gifts and talents God has given each child, and a formulation of their academic program that matches the results of this study.
Younger students learn math much more slowly than older ones, since they cannot think abstractly until about age 12 or 13. This means if taught logic, catechism and money-math as suggested herein, by the time the child reach this age, he will learn quickly, easily making up for "lost time" by this calculated delay, and far surpass his publicly-schooled counterparts.
Logic and math are directly related, and logic is the more important by far. Children will be learning logic by relating the parts of their catechisms to each other, self-consciously learning the mutual consent of the parts of the biblical worldview, and from each one of the other studies (mentioned above), which will be taught systematically in every case.
This purposefully EXCLUDES the falsely so-called "human sciences" – sociology, psychology and other areas not only NOT WARRANTED by the Word of God, but which do much to harm the Church, and encroach upon the lawful authority of its elders. The high school and collegiate parts of the curriculum will also exclude – for obvious practical and legal reasons – areas such as the practice of medicine and law requiring licensing from the state or other accreditation from non-Christian bodies. Instead, a diachronic and historical study will take their place – i.e. the history of the medical sciences, history of law, etc.
9. Ancient and Church History. This study aims to promote a covenantal-historical awareness on the part of students, who as a consequence of it, see themselves as part of a generation serving God alongside the saints of God of old, as well as with those of today.
They learn here Bible backgrounds, and how the Biblical history fits with the records of other nations and events described by them. Highlighted features include the Creation events in the beginning, the Noahic Flood, the Babel event, the Exodus from Egypt, the rule of the Judges, the United Monarchy in Israel (with special attention to the reigns, practices and teachings of David and Solomon – not merely the historical or sociological conditions prevalent then in Israel), the Babylonian Exile and Return, and the Birth and ministry of Jesus Christ the Lord, and that of his apostles, the Fall of Rome, and the Rise of Christian civilization.
Church History continues with a study of Heresy and Orthodoxy, the major events surrounding all ecclesiastical councils, and the major developments influencing Christian culture from the arts and sciences, including technological innovations and economic developments.
10. Cross-Disciplinary Bible Reading. This study aims to have students read from selected books of the canonical Bible, and apply what they have learned from other areas of study to its reading, for maximum benefit to student and teacher alike. The cross-disciplinary approach to asking questions of the biblical text yields surprising results many times. The fruit of these labors, and their great value, will become obvious, and show their own merit. WIsdom is its own reward – and is sweet to the soul. The better part of Bible study is asking the right – or at least many – questions. Ask enough questions of the text, and some will turn a hefty profit for you.
Contrary to coventional "wisdom," some questions are better to ask than others; some are well asked, but poorly stated, and some are just lousy questions. Questions both relevant to the immediate context, but which originate from a study not native to the text at hand, are the best kind. So for instance, a great one might be, "What were the economic effects in Israel of using only silver and gold for money?" or "How would things have changed if they had done what we do in the West today (print paper money with no gold or silver to back it)?"
Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a right answer given timely. But these begin with good (skillful) questions. Ask well and ask often.
You can view my HLA Manager Resume online (site under construction) at http://hlaprojectmanager.blogspot.com/
If you are unable to link to the resume, just copy the address, by highlighting it with your mouse, and the hit the "control key" and the "C" key simultaneously. This copies the link to your computers temporary memory notepad; then hit "control V" to paste it into the window at the top of your screen. This will paste the URL destination address in the window above (at the top of your browser screen). Then just hit "enter," and you will find the resume. Thank you.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Basic Priniciples Behind the HLA Project: The Practical Stuff
This project may seem a little elaborate, but that is only for the organizational aspects of doing anything that requires coordinating the actions of people. To work against the "friction" (which inevitably arises from priority conflicts and time constraints) when people work at the same task, one only needs two things:
1. Enthusiasm for the common goals at which the project aims
2. Efficient management, to direct people what to do in order to reduce drag on the project by ensuring that each part works together SELF-CONSCIOUSLY with the others.
This is what the coordination team is all about, and what most organizations LACK in their effiency efforts. I obtained this idea from studying bugs. Some kinds have coordination team players, whose job it is to bring the actions of everyone else in line with the collective goals. IN our setting this is done only by directing -- not the imposition of negative sanctions -- other than simply -- if the volunteer no longer wishes to be a part of it -- letting them go and seeking a replacement. I expect that number 1 (above) will be the primary impetus for participation in the project, and would not have it any other way.
But the basic priniples giving rise to this project are actually very simple.
1. God wants and expects PROGRESS from His people. He wants (rightly demands) PROFITABLE servants. Every good manager does this.
2. Believing the truth, and doing it charitably, form the two-fold way of expressing all that the Bible commands. Even the right worship of God is based on His Spirit and Truth.
3. To do what God requires first implies that one KNOWS what He requires. This gives confessions a certain kind of practical priority. You cannot do better than you know, except by accident. Therefore, if we are to make progress, we must start with the confessional Truth of God's Word, to improve both what we believe and what we do.
4. Teams are better than individuals at almost any and every task, and almost all the time. This is because they have more collective assets -- intellectual and economic -- to work with. More tools and hands for the same job. Moreover, teams permit the next step, which is a crucial work-related biblical prinicple.
5. Divide and conquer. By dividing up one goal or set of goals into its more basic constituent parts -- and then by distributing responsibility for completing these smaller tasks to others -- a managment team can make short work of an otherwise daunting (perhaps impossible) task for just one individual.
6. Specialization and giftedness. By breaking down the larger goal into smaller doable (bite-sized) tasks, and appointing teams as open-ended task referents (i.e. the adminstrative team will handle this kind of task, and the recruiting team that kind of task, etc), this enables us to simply ask people what they are good at, and appoint them to the appropriate team. This saves a great deal of time, and sees to it that each person's giftedness enables us to specialize in advance to get the job done with maximum efficiency. The teams already exist, they just need indivdual members of the set.
7. Real-time dynamics. As an project effort unfolds in the real world, problems arise you did not and could not have anticipated. This means every project will have to ADAPT as the demands of each task change. This is where most projects (even corporate teams) fail -- they are not able to adapt to change or its demands. History consistently shows that those which adapt best to new economic conditions grow wealthy faster and stay wealthy longer. For instance, had we all bought stock in cell phone companies when the trend was just starting a few years back, we would all have proven the wiser for it by now (with our bank accounts shouting the "amen.").
This is the purpose of the coordination team -- maximum adaptability in steering the groups to stay together while adapting to new demands. They will be crucial to the project, and among its greater assets. The "grazing team" -- internet surfers and the recruiters -- will take the lead in providing the information which points to the ways in which we must adapt to developing circumstances.
8. Publish (produce quality goods). Of the making of many books, there is no end. Just skim Barnes and Noble online or amazon.com if you doubt this. This means we need to publish, not merely quantity, but a very high quality of what no one else is doing, or can do. Team publishing has extreme advantages here. And this need to produce and disseminate the findings of the group in writing will easily take flight with the help of a skilled research team -- guided by their own findings, and by those of the surfers -- will be sent to the apologetics team for critical evaluation -- these guys will pick the logic of the arguments in the research with a fine-toothed comb. It is their job to refute everything in our literature before someone else does.
Then the logically clean version is sent onto the writing team. They will put finesse to the print.
9. Seek and You shall find.
This promise (and command) amounts to a command to study and research, looking for wisdom where it may be found. Wisdom comes in two forms, natural revelation from God, and special revelation. These says the same things, but communicate their message by different media - and obviously special revelation says more of it, and speaks more clearly. But we must study the media and message of both, to see what greater clarity of the One message may be gained by paying special attention to how the two are designed by God to interact. In other words, GenRev will help us understand SpRev better, and vice-versa.
10. So research teams will be divided into 3 overlapping groups (divide and conquer).
The first studies the Bible generally, and also the confessional standards of the Church -- and any auxiliary literature deemed helpful to this task (i.e. ancient history, etc).
The second studies the individual books of the Bible to indentify (and eventually apply) the major and minor themes of each book of the Bible.
The third group will use the information from the first two, and from their own pre-existing knowledge of Scripture, to construct conceptual frameworks for the development of technological applications that might be patented by the group.
Each research group will have the help of the internet grazers, the coordination team (who will keep them and everyone else up-to-date on all advances related to the needs of each R & D group. And the recruiting team -- when not recruiting - will be actively acquiring consultant contacts for each research group. This effort aims to develop a network of professors, scientists and other "egghead types," who can and will interact with them to assist their efforts on a consulting basis.
Proceeds from the project will be used to reward efforts of the team, and to advance the cause of the group. It will also be put into a charitable trust, which can be used to extend the group's ability to gain more volunteers by offering acacdemic scholarships, and also for simply feeding the poor because the Lord Jesus likes this (and because people like to eat once in a while).
The administrative team will help with the logistics of any effort requiring their help -- which means they will be a busy lot. This will include, record-keeping (esp. AP/AR stuff, tax payment, possible incorporation, research contacts (chat with publishers about formats required for our publications, what software we need, help finding out about trust development options, etc. All these tasks will be shared - admin. guy can delegate to grazer guy -- find me "this." No one person in the task group will fail to have assistants when needed.
We will also establish a hierarchy of priority, so that when task or time conflicts arise, the higher priority always has the right of way or claim on another member's time. If the conflict proves significant, we simply have the recruiting guys get another volunteer (interns will help with these tasks, who receive payment in the form of academic credit and specialized training to improve their academic performance wildly). All team members will be recieving A's only because they have all the assistance they need to make it happen. Resistance is futile, and their research will be assimilated by our group.
In short, inter-team synergy - each team strengthening and empowering the others -- will drive the success of the group as a whole. This is what makes "systems" work. People acting systemically (as teams) divide and conquer each task working together in a pre-designated function. In a logical system, this is called "the mutual consent of all the parts." In a dynamic group this is called "team synergy." The principle is identical (or at least closely analogous) in both cases. In research, this specifies analysis used to aid synthesis of new ideas.
The same principle in each case is the mutual affirmation of each of the parts to improve the whole (of which each part is a member). The mutual affirming of each part by the others results in great good for everyone involved. This is how the creation was ordered in the beginning, and explains why each part is called only "good," but the fully-integrated creation (as a whole) is called "very good."
So wisdom has to do with how something is well ordered to secure maximum benefit for the aim of one's charitable efforts. Love by itself is not enough. It must be "WISE love," or love "governed and ordered" by the Truth. Not all love is of the same quality, and not all love is acceptable in the Word. Wisdom is not optional. Neither is charity.
Put these two togther, and you have a biblically-defined "winner."
This is what the HLA project promises, wise charity, speaking the truth in love, for the people of God -- not only of this generation -- but of many to come. I suppose this could have been called "Project Legacy." I estimate this could easily be accomplished with 70 people working on the effort.
The basic rule is the more people included, the more governing is needed. The basic effort could proceed (slowly) with as few as three people and one computer, and would be markedly increased in efficacy with a total of 12 people and 4 computers. Each group of 3 could do a great deal of useful work offline with printouts -- scribblilng on hardcopy. We are going to have to plant at least 10 new trees by the time our paper quota is complete. There will be much scribbling and highlighting. 1 computer for no more than each unit of 4 people is desirable for maximum efficiency in their literary and conceptual labors.
70 is not an absolute maximum, but reaches that point of diminishing returns on effort expended. Yes, this is the reason behind the council of 70 chosen by Moses (and Jesus who sent out 70 missionaries). The efficacy of still a larger group will continue to increase (I estimate), though not as sharply, up to about 120 members.
We will need old-fashioned filing cabinets for the hardcopy research notes and printouts, and scads of pens, paper and highlighters. Libraries will work well at the outset -- public or school libraries. The location makes little difference except in travel time. Printouts are more expensive at libraries. Books are free to check out (on the upside).
Phones will be crucial since commication (sharing) is the better part of information (knowledge). We ought always to prefer wise groups rather than just wise individuals, if all other things are even close to equal.
At first, the researchers, etc may not be able to work in the same location -- which is important but not critical, especially not at first. Meetings will be necessary eventually, but much of this can transpire by phone. The trainging parts need personal meetings since visual aspects of learning inform and reinforce many of the concepts taught.
Recruiting, training and fundraising are the three elements which take priority at the beginning. Collecting the sources most necessary for the effort comes next. This will include the following:
1. Obtaining several Bibles (three is good enough to start) -- These are online - but a hardcopy is better.
2. Obtaining a copy of the Westminster and Heidelberg standards -- these are online -- but a hardcopy is better.
3. Obtaining a computer with printout capability, and many pens and highlighters, to work over various printed out sections of the Bible with all the verse indicators removed.
4. Tables for groups to sit at, scribble at the same time, and argue loudly - libraries do not like this. Note comparing is a must. When each person identifies the least pattern in the text, he tells the others, and they fill it in. Make BIG margins on the printouts and write small notes there.
When these accumulate, the themes of the text begin to unfold. And the process is aided by each asking questions of the text out loud which arise from his or her study of it. The others must try to answer the questions.
5. This is the "book research" that begins to identify the themes of each book. Each person after swapping notes at a head-knocking session, goes and reads commentaries on the book - skim them since many offer only one or two insights for many pages. By comparing many -- dont take the advice of any one of them -- you will see what the consensus is and then can compare your notes to their. This means more heads to knock. Argue with any text you read when you think it is wrong -- write down your apologetic on scratch paper and refute the gainsaying piece of yesterday. Then study your arguments asking what they imply. If these are true what would that mean for this or that doctrine I know of -- maybe sola scriptura or some other well known and believed doctrine. This will yield insights.
6. At your next meeting, everyone swaps insights. And then you knock heads some more. Repeat this process and a system of theology will begin to emerge in your notes. Compare this system to the WCF of heidelberg standards. Isolate any difference for further study. Assume operationally that you are mistaken and need to know where you went wrong and why. Why is the most important point -- this will yield further insights, and enable self-correction.
Learn by trial and error, using the Bible to generate your ideas and the Church's standards to spot your errors (these men already did a great deal of sanctified head-knocking). This will produce a synergy between the original source of your theology - what justifies the Church's standards -- and those sources which express the personally and theologically mature believing consensus of the saints of the past.
Each of these sources will produce insights into the other [This is like asking the husband to tell you about the wife, and the wife about the husband]. Interview both of them, and then ask the neighbors what they think [commentaries, etc]. Then go back to your next session and talk to the kids some more. Compare notes.
This time, you compare one book's theology to another book's theology. Use each of the theme's by reducing it to a set of simply stated propositions. And put them all together to see what each of them combined with the others implies. Ask what the confessional standards say about this, and compare your findings with theirs. If they say nothing about some topic about which you are asking, and you believe your answers are biblically correct -- you are becoming theologically mature. Now your group will want to knock heads with other like groups, and hash out the implicates in the form of a new chapter not the subject of which is not discussed in the earlier confessional standards.
If God says it, it is true -- even if the Church has not yet formulated it in some formal expression. So far as I know, no confession has touched upon the doctrine of punctuated equilibrium, or the philosophy of science (explicitly). But you can show from the implicates of the theology of the WCF that it teaches theoretical instrumentalism, and not scientific realism, as it is popularly construed today.
What does this mean PRACTICALLY?
This should give the reader some idea - there is much more - of how this work is to proceed. And what sorts of tasks are involved on a practical level. Someone will make phone calls to pastors and explain the project, asking if we might have someone present the topic at a college group Bible study. Others will spend time just surfing the net and reporting what manner of cool things they found that might help the project at any stage of its development. Someone else will be studying the Bible looking for clues to a topic others are working on at the same time. Then they meet and knock heads. Everyone gets copies of anything discovered that we recognize as a helpful insight. Remember, start at the end of the book first and reread the ending many times before you read the first chapter. This will jumpstart your studies.
The only problem with this sort of exercise is that someone who has been doing it a long time will tend to come up with many more insights than the others. But instead of being discouraged, the beginners can use all his notes to play catch up fast, and then begin having their own remarkable insights -- and believe me -- when you begin to get insights that shock even you (and they will I assure you), you then start realizing -- whoa -- I could go on doing this as long as I have my Bible to study. Now imagine everyone else having insights like yours at the same rate (and they come faster with time as your knowledge accumulates -- since you have more truths to cross reference with others in your head and heart) -- with many people generating many insights -- and everyone kept up to date on all of them -- everyone helps everyone else get smart very fast.
Pastors may well wish to join the group. The more the merrier. The congregations are going to want to know what happened to this guy because his sermons totally rock. When he tells them why there is a good chance they will want to subsidize the effort. We can publish our textual insights online and send links to pastors in the email, to aid and abet their sermons. They are always on the lookout for exegetically and theologically sound tidbits.
This is not difficult and should be fun. If a person does not find some part of the project fun, I will do it instead, and put them on some other task more fun for them.
--------To be continued -------
1. Enthusiasm for the common goals at which the project aims
2. Efficient management, to direct people what to do in order to reduce drag on the project by ensuring that each part works together SELF-CONSCIOUSLY with the others.
This is what the coordination team is all about, and what most organizations LACK in their effiency efforts. I obtained this idea from studying bugs. Some kinds have coordination team players, whose job it is to bring the actions of everyone else in line with the collective goals. IN our setting this is done only by directing -- not the imposition of negative sanctions -- other than simply -- if the volunteer no longer wishes to be a part of it -- letting them go and seeking a replacement. I expect that number 1 (above) will be the primary impetus for participation in the project, and would not have it any other way.
But the basic priniples giving rise to this project are actually very simple.
1. God wants and expects PROGRESS from His people. He wants (rightly demands) PROFITABLE servants. Every good manager does this.
2. Believing the truth, and doing it charitably, form the two-fold way of expressing all that the Bible commands. Even the right worship of God is based on His Spirit and Truth.
3. To do what God requires first implies that one KNOWS what He requires. This gives confessions a certain kind of practical priority. You cannot do better than you know, except by accident. Therefore, if we are to make progress, we must start with the confessional Truth of God's Word, to improve both what we believe and what we do.
4. Teams are better than individuals at almost any and every task, and almost all the time. This is because they have more collective assets -- intellectual and economic -- to work with. More tools and hands for the same job. Moreover, teams permit the next step, which is a crucial work-related biblical prinicple.
5. Divide and conquer. By dividing up one goal or set of goals into its more basic constituent parts -- and then by distributing responsibility for completing these smaller tasks to others -- a managment team can make short work of an otherwise daunting (perhaps impossible) task for just one individual.
6. Specialization and giftedness. By breaking down the larger goal into smaller doable (bite-sized) tasks, and appointing teams as open-ended task referents (i.e. the adminstrative team will handle this kind of task, and the recruiting team that kind of task, etc), this enables us to simply ask people what they are good at, and appoint them to the appropriate team. This saves a great deal of time, and sees to it that each person's giftedness enables us to specialize in advance to get the job done with maximum efficiency. The teams already exist, they just need indivdual members of the set.
7. Real-time dynamics. As an project effort unfolds in the real world, problems arise you did not and could not have anticipated. This means every project will have to ADAPT as the demands of each task change. This is where most projects (even corporate teams) fail -- they are not able to adapt to change or its demands. History consistently shows that those which adapt best to new economic conditions grow wealthy faster and stay wealthy longer. For instance, had we all bought stock in cell phone companies when the trend was just starting a few years back, we would all have proven the wiser for it by now (with our bank accounts shouting the "amen.").
This is the purpose of the coordination team -- maximum adaptability in steering the groups to stay together while adapting to new demands. They will be crucial to the project, and among its greater assets. The "grazing team" -- internet surfers and the recruiters -- will take the lead in providing the information which points to the ways in which we must adapt to developing circumstances.
8. Publish (produce quality goods). Of the making of many books, there is no end. Just skim Barnes and Noble online or amazon.com if you doubt this. This means we need to publish, not merely quantity, but a very high quality of what no one else is doing, or can do. Team publishing has extreme advantages here. And this need to produce and disseminate the findings of the group in writing will easily take flight with the help of a skilled research team -- guided by their own findings, and by those of the surfers -- will be sent to the apologetics team for critical evaluation -- these guys will pick the logic of the arguments in the research with a fine-toothed comb. It is their job to refute everything in our literature before someone else does.
Then the logically clean version is sent onto the writing team. They will put finesse to the print.
9. Seek and You shall find.
This promise (and command) amounts to a command to study and research, looking for wisdom where it may be found. Wisdom comes in two forms, natural revelation from God, and special revelation. These says the same things, but communicate their message by different media - and obviously special revelation says more of it, and speaks more clearly. But we must study the media and message of both, to see what greater clarity of the One message may be gained by paying special attention to how the two are designed by God to interact. In other words, GenRev will help us understand SpRev better, and vice-versa.
10. So research teams will be divided into 3 overlapping groups (divide and conquer).
The first studies the Bible generally, and also the confessional standards of the Church -- and any auxiliary literature deemed helpful to this task (i.e. ancient history, etc).
The second studies the individual books of the Bible to indentify (and eventually apply) the major and minor themes of each book of the Bible.
The third group will use the information from the first two, and from their own pre-existing knowledge of Scripture, to construct conceptual frameworks for the development of technological applications that might be patented by the group.
Each research group will have the help of the internet grazers, the coordination team (who will keep them and everyone else up-to-date on all advances related to the needs of each R & D group. And the recruiting team -- when not recruiting - will be actively acquiring consultant contacts for each research group. This effort aims to develop a network of professors, scientists and other "egghead types," who can and will interact with them to assist their efforts on a consulting basis.
Proceeds from the project will be used to reward efforts of the team, and to advance the cause of the group. It will also be put into a charitable trust, which can be used to extend the group's ability to gain more volunteers by offering acacdemic scholarships, and also for simply feeding the poor because the Lord Jesus likes this (and because people like to eat once in a while).
The administrative team will help with the logistics of any effort requiring their help -- which means they will be a busy lot. This will include, record-keeping (esp. AP/AR stuff, tax payment, possible incorporation, research contacts (chat with publishers about formats required for our publications, what software we need, help finding out about trust development options, etc. All these tasks will be shared - admin. guy can delegate to grazer guy -- find me "this." No one person in the task group will fail to have assistants when needed.
We will also establish a hierarchy of priority, so that when task or time conflicts arise, the higher priority always has the right of way or claim on another member's time. If the conflict proves significant, we simply have the recruiting guys get another volunteer (interns will help with these tasks, who receive payment in the form of academic credit and specialized training to improve their academic performance wildly). All team members will be recieving A's only because they have all the assistance they need to make it happen. Resistance is futile, and their research will be assimilated by our group.
In short, inter-team synergy - each team strengthening and empowering the others -- will drive the success of the group as a whole. This is what makes "systems" work. People acting systemically (as teams) divide and conquer each task working together in a pre-designated function. In a logical system, this is called "the mutual consent of all the parts." In a dynamic group this is called "team synergy." The principle is identical (or at least closely analogous) in both cases. In research, this specifies analysis used to aid synthesis of new ideas.
The same principle in each case is the mutual affirmation of each of the parts to improve the whole (of which each part is a member). The mutual affirming of each part by the others results in great good for everyone involved. This is how the creation was ordered in the beginning, and explains why each part is called only "good," but the fully-integrated creation (as a whole) is called "very good."
So wisdom has to do with how something is well ordered to secure maximum benefit for the aim of one's charitable efforts. Love by itself is not enough. It must be "WISE love," or love "governed and ordered" by the Truth. Not all love is of the same quality, and not all love is acceptable in the Word. Wisdom is not optional. Neither is charity.
Put these two togther, and you have a biblically-defined "winner."
This is what the HLA project promises, wise charity, speaking the truth in love, for the people of God -- not only of this generation -- but of many to come. I suppose this could have been called "Project Legacy." I estimate this could easily be accomplished with 70 people working on the effort.
The basic rule is the more people included, the more governing is needed. The basic effort could proceed (slowly) with as few as three people and one computer, and would be markedly increased in efficacy with a total of 12 people and 4 computers. Each group of 3 could do a great deal of useful work offline with printouts -- scribblilng on hardcopy. We are going to have to plant at least 10 new trees by the time our paper quota is complete. There will be much scribbling and highlighting. 1 computer for no more than each unit of 4 people is desirable for maximum efficiency in their literary and conceptual labors.
70 is not an absolute maximum, but reaches that point of diminishing returns on effort expended. Yes, this is the reason behind the council of 70 chosen by Moses (and Jesus who sent out 70 missionaries). The efficacy of still a larger group will continue to increase (I estimate), though not as sharply, up to about 120 members.
We will need old-fashioned filing cabinets for the hardcopy research notes and printouts, and scads of pens, paper and highlighters. Libraries will work well at the outset -- public or school libraries. The location makes little difference except in travel time. Printouts are more expensive at libraries. Books are free to check out (on the upside).
Phones will be crucial since commication (sharing) is the better part of information (knowledge). We ought always to prefer wise groups rather than just wise individuals, if all other things are even close to equal.
At first, the researchers, etc may not be able to work in the same location -- which is important but not critical, especially not at first. Meetings will be necessary eventually, but much of this can transpire by phone. The trainging parts need personal meetings since visual aspects of learning inform and reinforce many of the concepts taught.
Recruiting, training and fundraising are the three elements which take priority at the beginning. Collecting the sources most necessary for the effort comes next. This will include the following:
1. Obtaining several Bibles (three is good enough to start) -- These are online - but a hardcopy is better.
2. Obtaining a copy of the Westminster and Heidelberg standards -- these are online -- but a hardcopy is better.
3. Obtaining a computer with printout capability, and many pens and highlighters, to work over various printed out sections of the Bible with all the verse indicators removed.
4. Tables for groups to sit at, scribble at the same time, and argue loudly - libraries do not like this. Note comparing is a must. When each person identifies the least pattern in the text, he tells the others, and they fill it in. Make BIG margins on the printouts and write small notes there.
When these accumulate, the themes of the text begin to unfold. And the process is aided by each asking questions of the text out loud which arise from his or her study of it. The others must try to answer the questions.
5. This is the "book research" that begins to identify the themes of each book. Each person after swapping notes at a head-knocking session, goes and reads commentaries on the book - skim them since many offer only one or two insights for many pages. By comparing many -- dont take the advice of any one of them -- you will see what the consensus is and then can compare your notes to their. This means more heads to knock. Argue with any text you read when you think it is wrong -- write down your apologetic on scratch paper and refute the gainsaying piece of yesterday. Then study your arguments asking what they imply. If these are true what would that mean for this or that doctrine I know of -- maybe sola scriptura or some other well known and believed doctrine. This will yield insights.
6. At your next meeting, everyone swaps insights. And then you knock heads some more. Repeat this process and a system of theology will begin to emerge in your notes. Compare this system to the WCF of heidelberg standards. Isolate any difference for further study. Assume operationally that you are mistaken and need to know where you went wrong and why. Why is the most important point -- this will yield further insights, and enable self-correction.
Learn by trial and error, using the Bible to generate your ideas and the Church's standards to spot your errors (these men already did a great deal of sanctified head-knocking). This will produce a synergy between the original source of your theology - what justifies the Church's standards -- and those sources which express the personally and theologically mature believing consensus of the saints of the past.
Each of these sources will produce insights into the other [This is like asking the husband to tell you about the wife, and the wife about the husband]. Interview both of them, and then ask the neighbors what they think [commentaries, etc]. Then go back to your next session and talk to the kids some more. Compare notes.
This time, you compare one book's theology to another book's theology. Use each of the theme's by reducing it to a set of simply stated propositions. And put them all together to see what each of them combined with the others implies. Ask what the confessional standards say about this, and compare your findings with theirs. If they say nothing about some topic about which you are asking, and you believe your answers are biblically correct -- you are becoming theologically mature. Now your group will want to knock heads with other like groups, and hash out the implicates in the form of a new chapter not the subject of which is not discussed in the earlier confessional standards.
If God says it, it is true -- even if the Church has not yet formulated it in some formal expression. So far as I know, no confession has touched upon the doctrine of punctuated equilibrium, or the philosophy of science (explicitly). But you can show from the implicates of the theology of the WCF that it teaches theoretical instrumentalism, and not scientific realism, as it is popularly construed today.
What does this mean PRACTICALLY?
This should give the reader some idea - there is much more - of how this work is to proceed. And what sorts of tasks are involved on a practical level. Someone will make phone calls to pastors and explain the project, asking if we might have someone present the topic at a college group Bible study. Others will spend time just surfing the net and reporting what manner of cool things they found that might help the project at any stage of its development. Someone else will be studying the Bible looking for clues to a topic others are working on at the same time. Then they meet and knock heads. Everyone gets copies of anything discovered that we recognize as a helpful insight. Remember, start at the end of the book first and reread the ending many times before you read the first chapter. This will jumpstart your studies.
The only problem with this sort of exercise is that someone who has been doing it a long time will tend to come up with many more insights than the others. But instead of being discouraged, the beginners can use all his notes to play catch up fast, and then begin having their own remarkable insights -- and believe me -- when you begin to get insights that shock even you (and they will I assure you), you then start realizing -- whoa -- I could go on doing this as long as I have my Bible to study. Now imagine everyone else having insights like yours at the same rate (and they come faster with time as your knowledge accumulates -- since you have more truths to cross reference with others in your head and heart) -- with many people generating many insights -- and everyone kept up to date on all of them -- everyone helps everyone else get smart very fast.
Pastors may well wish to join the group. The more the merrier. The congregations are going to want to know what happened to this guy because his sermons totally rock. When he tells them why there is a good chance they will want to subsidize the effort. We can publish our textual insights online and send links to pastors in the email, to aid and abet their sermons. They are always on the lookout for exegetically and theologically sound tidbits.
This is not difficult and should be fun. If a person does not find some part of the project fun, I will do it instead, and put them on some other task more fun for them.
--------To be continued -------
Sunday, July 15, 2007
The Historical Literature Algorithmic Project (HLAP)
Every generation produces its own set of problems for the Church -- new teachings, new fads, and new ideas which seek to undermine the confidence of the saints, or to draw away Christians from the faith, once for all delivered to the saints. In response to this, the Church has produced confessions and catechisms, espousing the biblical view on the subject treated by the challenges at hand. These are often heresises. Sometimes they are simply heterodox practices, and sometimes erroneous beliefs not dangerous enough to merit the title "heresy."
But over the last 350 years, ecclesiastical bodies have met few of these gross offenders head on, with the kind of firm soundness we should like to have seen, as in the days of the Westminster Confession's development and affirmation. This proposed project seeks to make up for lost time. The goals of the project remain five. All baptized persons, indeed all men, have an obligation, warrant and command from Scripture to speak the truth in love. And nothing hinders them from putting it in confessional format and presenting it to others for their use, so long at it remains sound according to the Word and the Church (for she is appointed the pillar and ground of truth in the Word itself).
First, it aims to expand and revise the WCF and subordinate standards, applying their more advanced counterpart to all aspects of human experience. This way it seeks more comprehensive and accurate, more advanced confessional standards. Revising the WCF is justified by the Word and the WCF itself.
It openly notes that Church councils have erred and do err, and its own confession and catechisms contain a system of theology, which system takes precedence as a rule over the exceptional and occasional errors found in these standards. For these remain slight and relatively insignificant compared to all that more central to the Christian faith, which the ecclesiastical standards have conveyed correctly at every major point. So the clear statements on major doctrines, and implicates of the WCF therefrom (as well its subordinate standards) actually DO THE CORRECTING of its more minor, and very few, errors.
Because the WCF et al contains that system found in the Word, it is capable of self-correction with the help of a few people dedicated to speaking the truth for charitable purposes in accordance with the Word. Good confessions at their core imply clearly the rebuttal of their own errors at the fringes of the web of belief which they convey. Such is the case with the Westminster Standards. Moreover, other sound confessional standards (Heidelberg, etc) can be used in the self-correction and expansion efforts. These are two confessinal standards derived from the same Word of God, expressed in ways differing from other standards as from a different national Church. The more of these we have, the better able are we to reconstruct the more perfect amalgamation and expansion of these standards in a better formulation of that system of theology common to both (and the Word itself).
Second, the HLAP purports to refute all non-christian worldviews, in an effort called "total apologetics." The first purpose (mentioned above) more clearly defines just what it is we are defending. This part will make the job of the apologist much easier – by showing him and the world -- the seamless character (internal self-consistency) and majesty of the Christian worldview.
Third, it endeavors the development of a thoroughgoing and biblical "classical education" curriculum, for home-schooling and private schools made up of Christian families. This effort then could yield the next crop of apologists, teachers, and as we shall see – scientists who are also biblicists. We wish no one-time defense, but an ongoing and mounting cultural (total) defense of the biblical outlook. This part aims to help raise up those who will inherit and apply on a far broader scale the biblical standards we pass on to them. Applying and appropriating them takes time.
Fourth, this effort aims to cultivate from the word of God (exegetically and systematically) theoretical constructions – whether they are accurate or no – capable of yielding technological innovations of a wide variety in all fields, for the elevation of the standard of living, and the improvement of (both the quality and quantity) of human life, for all men, but especially for those of the household of faith. This the project also aims for.
By way of explanation, the Word of God does not require a theory to be held as "true" in order for one to think of it simply as a tool and use it for the profitability and utility which we expect from "true theories." True theories may or may not be trivial ones; and so the question of which is more profitable is not directly related to the veridical nature of any particular theory. Unless, it has proof rooted in the observation of many witnesses, or has exegetical proof from the Word -- by citation or implication -- we cannot know if is a true theory anyway.
Although Christians should make an effort at truth in all things, they need not ever say this or that theory is true (but if useful, we should say only that it works well in some contexts). The history of science shows that many false theories have yielded great technological advances. And Christians must also strive for charity in all things. Many among the pagan scientist themselves have self-consciously noted they aimed to produce USEFUL theories, knowing they were probably false at the time of their "production" (texts always call them "discoveries," but this rather begs the question).
This part of the effort will involve both innovation of new biblically-generated (de novo) theoretical constructions, as well as a biblical review and revision of current promising concepts developed by pagans, with an eye to properly recasting their own useful theories in light of biblical teachings.
Fifth, this project seeks to study and show the proper relationship – both from general revelation and special – what is the proper relationship between these two forms of the divine revelation to all men everywhere.
A brief glance at these objectives indicates that a team effort will be necessary to accomplish them, and that the project will not end in a week or two. I intend to create several teams that work together closely to achieve these goals over time. This will involve teams that raise funds, recruit volunteers, research, do apologetics, publish books and articles, and likewise perform a host of related academic and administrative tasks. I envision (eventually) something like the atmosphere of a small call center for the work environment in which to accomplish them. But much more meager environs will do for the beginning.
The historical literature forming the primary focal points of this project are the Bible, and its many constituent parts and translations. They will also consist of the decrees, confessions and cathechisms of church councils, and of the writings of both the early and later church fathers (reformation studies included).
The term "algorithmic" means that in each case, the sources examined will be studied both contextually, and in a rigorously logical fashion -- by studying the text whole, and then also by systematically comparing its many parts one with another. This effort will employ all kinds of conceptual and cyber-tools to accomplish this. Some of them will arise from work in the various fields this comprehensive approach to worldview studies will undertake. Some already exist online and are downloadable. Some exist out there already, but we will have to search hard to find them.
To do this, I have divided the teams ahead of time into 1o particular squads, each taking on a specific set of tasks it engages, and then contributes its results to the others, who in turn bolster the efforts of the rest with their studies. A special coordination team will keep each team in time with the work of the others. A writing team (which I will specially train) will edit all works and results of these teams for final formation and presentation.
In each case, the new chapters developed will take the form of confession chapters, similar to those found here online and in the Westminster Confession of Faith. These will be posted online individually on a website, and will be complied and readied for publication in book form. The proceeds of all materials sold will be re-invested in the for-profit project, or put into a trust to provide salaries and benefits for the senior staff members, and for charitable contributions to very needy families.
The ten teams to be developed come from the following areas:
1. Adminstrative
2. Recruiting
3. Biblical and Confessional Research
4. Internet Scouts
5. Homeschool Curriculum Development
6. Writers, Books research
7. Apologetics
8. Coordination
9. Technical research
10. Science research and theory development
As each new chapter emerges from the study, an increasingly large number of parts to compare with the (new) confession's other parts, will form the focus of still further advances. This is at its heart a project of systematic theology, developed from the biblical (canonical) literature, and edited with the help of other historical literature already mentioned. Computer software and the internet will form the primary mode for speeding the efficiency of this project along.
One of the chief aims for the development of new conceptual tools will be a Bible-specific search tool called a Semantic-related algorithmic program. This will search several biblical words, phrases or topics simultaneously, and yield results showing what they have in common for further study in systematic theology. Teams can do this already online, and this will form one of their major functions for the project.
This post will continue in a series to better explain just what it is I am proposing.
But over the last 350 years, ecclesiastical bodies have met few of these gross offenders head on, with the kind of firm soundness we should like to have seen, as in the days of the Westminster Confession's development and affirmation. This proposed project seeks to make up for lost time. The goals of the project remain five. All baptized persons, indeed all men, have an obligation, warrant and command from Scripture to speak the truth in love. And nothing hinders them from putting it in confessional format and presenting it to others for their use, so long at it remains sound according to the Word and the Church (for she is appointed the pillar and ground of truth in the Word itself).
First, it aims to expand and revise the WCF and subordinate standards, applying their more advanced counterpart to all aspects of human experience. This way it seeks more comprehensive and accurate, more advanced confessional standards. Revising the WCF is justified by the Word and the WCF itself.
It openly notes that Church councils have erred and do err, and its own confession and catechisms contain a system of theology, which system takes precedence as a rule over the exceptional and occasional errors found in these standards. For these remain slight and relatively insignificant compared to all that more central to the Christian faith, which the ecclesiastical standards have conveyed correctly at every major point. So the clear statements on major doctrines, and implicates of the WCF therefrom (as well its subordinate standards) actually DO THE CORRECTING of its more minor, and very few, errors.
Because the WCF et al contains that system found in the Word, it is capable of self-correction with the help of a few people dedicated to speaking the truth for charitable purposes in accordance with the Word. Good confessions at their core imply clearly the rebuttal of their own errors at the fringes of the web of belief which they convey. Such is the case with the Westminster Standards. Moreover, other sound confessional standards (Heidelberg, etc) can be used in the self-correction and expansion efforts. These are two confessinal standards derived from the same Word of God, expressed in ways differing from other standards as from a different national Church. The more of these we have, the better able are we to reconstruct the more perfect amalgamation and expansion of these standards in a better formulation of that system of theology common to both (and the Word itself).
Second, the HLAP purports to refute all non-christian worldviews, in an effort called "total apologetics." The first purpose (mentioned above) more clearly defines just what it is we are defending. This part will make the job of the apologist much easier – by showing him and the world -- the seamless character (internal self-consistency) and majesty of the Christian worldview.
Third, it endeavors the development of a thoroughgoing and biblical "classical education" curriculum, for home-schooling and private schools made up of Christian families. This effort then could yield the next crop of apologists, teachers, and as we shall see – scientists who are also biblicists. We wish no one-time defense, but an ongoing and mounting cultural (total) defense of the biblical outlook. This part aims to help raise up those who will inherit and apply on a far broader scale the biblical standards we pass on to them. Applying and appropriating them takes time.
Fourth, this effort aims to cultivate from the word of God (exegetically and systematically) theoretical constructions – whether they are accurate or no – capable of yielding technological innovations of a wide variety in all fields, for the elevation of the standard of living, and the improvement of (both the quality and quantity) of human life, for all men, but especially for those of the household of faith. This the project also aims for.
By way of explanation, the Word of God does not require a theory to be held as "true" in order for one to think of it simply as a tool and use it for the profitability and utility which we expect from "true theories." True theories may or may not be trivial ones; and so the question of which is more profitable is not directly related to the veridical nature of any particular theory. Unless, it has proof rooted in the observation of many witnesses, or has exegetical proof from the Word -- by citation or implication -- we cannot know if is a true theory anyway.
Although Christians should make an effort at truth in all things, they need not ever say this or that theory is true (but if useful, we should say only that it works well in some contexts). The history of science shows that many false theories have yielded great technological advances. And Christians must also strive for charity in all things. Many among the pagan scientist themselves have self-consciously noted they aimed to produce USEFUL theories, knowing they were probably false at the time of their "production" (texts always call them "discoveries," but this rather begs the question).
This part of the effort will involve both innovation of new biblically-generated (de novo) theoretical constructions, as well as a biblical review and revision of current promising concepts developed by pagans, with an eye to properly recasting their own useful theories in light of biblical teachings.
Fifth, this project seeks to study and show the proper relationship – both from general revelation and special – what is the proper relationship between these two forms of the divine revelation to all men everywhere.
A brief glance at these objectives indicates that a team effort will be necessary to accomplish them, and that the project will not end in a week or two. I intend to create several teams that work together closely to achieve these goals over time. This will involve teams that raise funds, recruit volunteers, research, do apologetics, publish books and articles, and likewise perform a host of related academic and administrative tasks. I envision (eventually) something like the atmosphere of a small call center for the work environment in which to accomplish them. But much more meager environs will do for the beginning.
The historical literature forming the primary focal points of this project are the Bible, and its many constituent parts and translations. They will also consist of the decrees, confessions and cathechisms of church councils, and of the writings of both the early and later church fathers (reformation studies included).
The term "algorithmic" means that in each case, the sources examined will be studied both contextually, and in a rigorously logical fashion -- by studying the text whole, and then also by systematically comparing its many parts one with another. This effort will employ all kinds of conceptual and cyber-tools to accomplish this. Some of them will arise from work in the various fields this comprehensive approach to worldview studies will undertake. Some already exist online and are downloadable. Some exist out there already, but we will have to search hard to find them.
To do this, I have divided the teams ahead of time into 1o particular squads, each taking on a specific set of tasks it engages, and then contributes its results to the others, who in turn bolster the efforts of the rest with their studies. A special coordination team will keep each team in time with the work of the others. A writing team (which I will specially train) will edit all works and results of these teams for final formation and presentation.
In each case, the new chapters developed will take the form of confession chapters, similar to those found here online and in the Westminster Confession of Faith. These will be posted online individually on a website, and will be complied and readied for publication in book form. The proceeds of all materials sold will be re-invested in the for-profit project, or put into a trust to provide salaries and benefits for the senior staff members, and for charitable contributions to very needy families.
The ten teams to be developed come from the following areas:
1. Adminstrative
2. Recruiting
3. Biblical and Confessional Research
4. Internet Scouts
5. Homeschool Curriculum Development
6. Writers, Books research
7. Apologetics
8. Coordination
9. Technical research
10. Science research and theory development
As each new chapter emerges from the study, an increasingly large number of parts to compare with the (new) confession's other parts, will form the focus of still further advances. This is at its heart a project of systematic theology, developed from the biblical (canonical) literature, and edited with the help of other historical literature already mentioned. Computer software and the internet will form the primary mode for speeding the efficiency of this project along.
One of the chief aims for the development of new conceptual tools will be a Bible-specific search tool called a Semantic-related algorithmic program. This will search several biblical words, phrases or topics simultaneously, and yield results showing what they have in common for further study in systematic theology. Teams can do this already online, and this will form one of their major functions for the project.
This post will continue in a series to better explain just what it is I am proposing.
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