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.