What the Word Implies: Of Systematic Theology and The Reformation

The French historically were one of the three most zealous of Roman Catholic countries, together with Italy and Spain (though Italy quizzically at times has hated Rome, as during some regions in the later Renaissance). Machievelli was not big on Rome, for instance. Nevertheless, Rome has attacked the Protestant faithful on numerous occasions, even anathematizing the gospel of Christ in 1543 at the Council of Trent, a moment in history thereafter debated hotly even among Rome's own, for its sweeping and virulent curses imposed against what are in some cases clearly biblical teachings -- like Salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Todays' wikipedia entry concerns the Edict of Nantes, an historical decree with which Protestants should be familiar.

Here is the wiki entry regard Henry IV and the bloody circumstances surrounding his savagery and political failure.

"The Edict of Compiègne (French: Édit de Compiègne), issued from his Château de Compiègne by Henri II of France, 24 July 1557, applied the death penalty for all convictions of relapsed and obstinate "sacramentarians", for those who went to Geneva or published books there, for iconoclast blasphemers against images [The very fact that one could be thought a "blasphemer against images" shows how steeped in idolatry France was at the time], and even for illegal preaching or participation in religious gatherings, whether public or private.

[Even biblical law -- which requires the death penalty for evangelizing for false gods -- permits the alien to worship whichever god(s) he chooses, so long as it remains private, and never public (except in cases of religions which swear to the death of God's people like Islam's Quran requires; God's sworn enemies cannot be permitted in any Christian nation. But a Christian king could exile them, rather than simply attack them. In no case, would the Protestant view of the Word require what Henry IV did to the Protestants. So this charge is not reversible, except in ignorance by people who know not of what they speak].

"It was the third in a series of increasingly severe punishments for expressions of Protestantism in France, which had for an aim the extirpation of the Reformation. By raising the stakes, which now literally became matters of life and death, the Edict had the result of precipitating the long religious crisis in France and hastening the onset of armed civil war between armies mustered on the basis of religion, the series of French Wars of Religion, which were not settled until Henri IV's edict of toleration, the Edict of Nantes (1598)."

"The source of the "contagion", as court pamphleteers put it, was ever Geneva, where the former Frenchman John Calvin achieved undisputed religious supremacy in 1555, the very year that the French Reformed Church organized itself at a synod under the king's nose, as it were, in Paris."

[The Scripture says, "By the blessing of the upright is the city exalted..."]

"At the Peace of Augsburg signed that same year in Germany, the essential concept was cuius regio eius religio, "for each region its religion." The petty princes of Germany were enabled to dictate the religion of their subjects, and it came to be sensed as a mark of weakness that the King of France could not do so: "One King, One Faith" would become the rallying cry of the ultra-Catholic party of the Guise faction."

The "One king, one faith" variation of "cuius regio eius religio" had other variants of similar kind. One version, "Whose state, whose church," signified what became the standard model in Europe post-Nantes.


By the time of 1620, when the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock, MA in the New World, something of a scramble was on. Colonizing the New World prefigured (after a fashion) the space race of a much later time, with many nations hurrying to cut out its own real estate, not only for the growth of the respective monarch's territorial holdings, but for the growth of the religion of each nation-state.

Thus, colonization of the New World took place with a kind of religious zeal modern readers find very difficult to understand, or place within its proper historical perspective. Maryland became a Roman Catholic colony, while Virgina was overtly Anglican. In the South, eventually Baptists and Presbyterians became predominant (for the most part), and in the North, such groups as the Friends (Quakers) and other groups settled alongside the more rigorous Puritans -- who founded Harvard and Yale universities.

This impluse to land grab in the name of one's faith becomes much more readily understandable against the European backdrop of the Edict of Nantes, and Henry VI's bloody campaign against the faithful in Jesus Christ -- men like Calvin, and many of his contemporaries.

Calvin systematized many of the cardinal doctrines of the biblical and reformed faith in a seminal (and developing over the years) work which came to be known as the Institutes of the Christian Religion. This monumental work actually began as a series of pamplets. This is how much of the Reformation proceeded across Europe, by the grace of God and with a strong and zesty renewal of the singing of the canonical Psalter in Reformed Churches everywhere. For here, more clearly than most places in the Word do we find the classic doctrines which came to be called "Calvinism," taken as a set, especially by the time of the Synod of Dordt, which set about to refute utterly (and did handsome work upon) the heretical teachings of one James Arminius. I call them "heretical," since they form a simple variant on the teachings one "Pelagius," long ago excommunicated by the Christian Church.

Wiki sums the Dordrecht work neatly thus:

"After the death of Jacob Arminius ("James" is also "Jacobus," taken from the Greek "Iakobos" into Latin; thus he is alternatively "James" or "Jacob" or "Jacobus" Arminius) his followers presented objections to the Belgic Confession and the teaching of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and their followers. These objections were published in a document called The Remonstrance of 1610, and his proponents were therefore also known as Remonstrants. The opposing Calvinists, led by professor Franciscus Gomarus of the University of Leiden, became known as the Contra-Remonstrants.

It is notable that the "predestined" defeat of Arminius' teachings at this council paved the way for further inroads against the teachings of Rome, whose foolish and stupid pseudo-gospel -- which is no good news at all -- requires men to merit their way to God's favor, with all manner of superstition and "works of supererogation" -- from the sign of the cross, genuflecting, multiplying words in repetitious prayers, the use of beads in prayer and other iconic (man-made) "helps," confessions to a priest (who utters heresy as part of a blasphemous ritual called the "Mass") and other like works -- which are in no way meritorious, and so far from being works "over and above what God requires," that they are rather sinful additions to the Word of God, which God never required of any man, and which never entered His mind.

Thus, Dordt exemplified something a bit unique, a self-concsciously apologetic [Fr. Grk. apologia, meaning "legal defense"] application of the fruit of systematic theology. Systematic theologies at the hands of councils -- which grew over time from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Scotland (lands where the Reformation took hold with some force), increasingly bore a greater scope in content, covering a wider range of topics, and especially those topics considered most theologically controversial.

This represents a renewal of similar confessional works in the early Church, wherein councils like Nicaea and Chalcedon ousted a host of heretical teachings and practices to protect the faith of Jesus from the many counterfeits common in their day.

The influence of the works of Luther and Calvin made its way to Scotland, where the Reformed doctrines resulted in a flourishing of confessions and covenants designed to secure the inegrity of bibical truth and fidelity to future generations in that kingdom, and to further the cause and kingdom of Jesus Christ. Here, the preahing of John Knox and George Wishart had done their work. The wiki entry on topic says,

"A Reformed confession of faith was adopted by Parliament in 1560, while the young Mary Queen of Scots was still in France. The most influential figure was John Knox, who had been a disciple of both John Calvin and George Wishart."

Only a few years later (1563), what are called the "Three Forms of Unity" -- The canons of Dordt, Belgic Confession, and Heidelberg Catechism were offically approved in Heidelberg.

The three kingdoms of Scotland, England and Ireland sought greater unity, forging a Solemn League and Covenant, which also yielded ground-breaking confessional territory in the forms of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, and in a "Directory for the Publick Worship of God" (1646), which carefully follows the regulative principle of worship Calvin had sought to impose for the reformation of the Christian religion also.

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The Reformation, which made such glorious inroads and advances in Europe seems somewhat -- and for various reasons -- simply to fizzle somewhat shortly thereafter, as the known world began to expand rapidly, and new innovations in science and technology continued to astonish the West. But the intellectual capital left behind has extraordinary potential. By cross-referencing the various confessional statements, both between themselves, and with the many insights into the Holy Scriptures gained since that time, we have it within our grasp to glean all the good from the many smaller confessional statements and creeds into a much more comprehensive one, covering much new territory, than at any time before.

We also have many new heresies, false religions (of which we are both aware and which have come into existence since 1648), against which we could put the further developed systematic theology of the Word of God to use in preserving to our posterity the good things of God's Word, and in laying the foundations for a future reformation, more successful still than the first two in scope and cultural transformation.

Many churches today have lost track to this Reformed heritage which historically formed the spiritual backbone of Evangelical Christianity, both in America and abroad. This is well worth recalling then as the underground Protestant celebration of "Reformation Day" approaches again. This is something of a grassroots movement involving meetings of some of the more intellectual brethren among the saints -- Reformed people are notoriously bookworms -- in fact it has been said that there is a secret link between one's degree of sanctification and the size of his library (whether this is a tongue in cheek reference depends on the man you speak with and the size of his library).

This seems to be a day uniquely set aside for recalling the reformed heritage and historical development of sound doctrines, and to encourage one another in the faith among the people. It also often involves good beer and hospitality, along with the sound refutation of many bad ideas. And, of course, there must be Psalms. This gives us 150 chances to improve our theology, and fortunately (we can give thanks to God for this), so far, no one wants to kill us for teaching and learning good things from the Word of God -- which activities happen a good deal on Nov. 1

The codifying, and precisely declaring, of the implicates of the Word of God forms a tradition going back to the apostles themselves, who regularly refer to a "pattern of sound words," and when citing these catechetical directives affirm, "This saying is true and worthy of full acceptance."

Such are the creeds and confessions of the Church. For it is written:

"Faithful instruction is upon her lips."

I, for one, take it to be that this very apostolic and ecclesiastical tradition amount to a command from God to pursue the implicates of the Word, aggressively comparing them, one with another, in all sound documents of the Faith, both in the Word itself, and in its faithful replication and declaration by the holy Church, the pillar and ground of Truth.

"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore, get wisdom. In all your getting, get understanding."

How is this NOT a command to pursue relentlessly, without turning to the right or to the left, the full counsel of God revealed in His Word -- maximal confessional integrity? And we also know from the previous reformation, that the more Christian groups which engage in this task, the better off we are, for each may study areas only partially or loosely covered by the others. This leaves a greater confessional scope covered for later generations, who can benefit from a more diversely applied biblical legacy.

This effort should be encouraged, if not engaged, by all God's house. And one way to do this, is, of course, by seeing to it that the foundation of Christian homeschooling includes an introduction to the content of the Bible, the confessionaly legacy of the Church, history, logic, and by a solid education in the liberal arts (classically construed).

But you already knew that.

A logic (and history) project for homeschoolers:

Pick an important section of one of the traditional confessional standards mentioned here. Ask how one might -- from the Bible -- arrive at such conclusions as penned by those responsible for the confessional section in question. This is an exercise in the reading of a confession -- and tracing backward -- which texts they might have had in mind when penning the read section.

This requires students to attempt to think like the authors, a skill which comes in very handy when handling any historical text (the author's intent determines the meaning of a passage), and in sympathizing with an author you do not personally know. This better enables both reading comprehension, and logical rigor. And it's fun.

Presuppositional Apologetics and Other Religions: Toward a More Refined Approach

This brief post will recall the apologetic encounter of the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen in Orange County with the two alleged (by the debate title) "Sister Faiths" -- Islam and Contemporary Judaism -- offering a critique of his own presuppositional evaluation in light of the Word of God, and in terms of successful strategies for refuting the gainsayers, who oppose themselves.

A brief summary of the interactive panel - between Bahnsen, a Jewish Rabbi, and a Muslim apologist - can be found on the Covenant Media Foundation website under "Free Articles," which (for the sake of brevity) I will here use for the genesis of my evaluation. It is designated "PA123."

First, we must ask (from the end of the evening backward) Did Greg Bahnsen follow his own excellent advice offered in his several courses on VanTillian (presuppositional) apologetics, and were his rejoinders adequate to the task at hand?

To this two part question, I will in the perennial Bahnsen-like fashion, "Yes and No." Here is the CMF summary of the event with my own comments added [in brackets like this]. The article reads:

..... On October 16 a panel comprised of two professors and a L.A. Times religion writer cross-examined the three religious scholars for two more hours. Dr. Bahnsen's strategy was to observe that both Judaism and Islam recognize the divine inspiration of the Torah and most of the Old Testament. (In witnessing to Muslims, Christians need to realize that the Koran honors the writings of Moses, David, etc. as previous revelation.) Therefore, on that common basis, the three religions can objectively judge which theological perspective is divinely authorized.

[Unfortunately, here I must begin with the "No," part. Bahnsen has repeatedly uttered (and written at length) of Dr. Van Til's biblical dictum that belief and unbelief relate to each in an entirely and only 'antithetical' fashion. Given the respective beginnings of differing worldview with wholly different first principles of what kind of world this is (metaphysics), how we know what we know (epistemology) and how we should live our lives (ethics), no two systems so constructed can ever have more than "formal agreement" at any one point.]

[Even when they say the same things (word for word), as in "Jesus was a prophet," they cannot possibly mean the same thing by the utterance. For the Christian, this sentence means, "According to the word of God, as it was originally given in the NT autographs and preserved purely and entirely by the special Providence of the Almighty through the ages and passed down to His church, the Lord Jesus Christ was the final prophet God gave to men, to restore and establish the right meaning of all the law and prophets before him, in his teachings and life, and as their prophesied fulfillment, as the Christ who must first suffer and then enter his [resurrection] glory. For what Jesus prophesied -- his death and resurrection as king of kings with all authority in heaven and earth -- forms the very heart of his ministry as a prophet.].

[This cannot be what the Muslim or Jewish protagonist means by "prophet." This antithesis extends from the fact that Christians believe all propositions, and only each proposition, in the contextual light of all other propositions in the canon of the Holy Scripture. Thus, we must deny the opening approach stated in the article here evaluted since there simply is no "common ground" between belief and unbelief in the interaction of worldviews. And the common citation of this or that text as authoritative from the First Testament, can never amount to a common understanding between such ideologies unless and until each understands the Person and work of the Lord Jesus as the primary referent and controlling hermeneutical feature of each and every text of that text. For all the law and the prophets speak of Him.]

No text handled -- without the goodness of God in Jesus Christ as its defined (and redemptive-historically developed) target, imported into the sense of any text -- can ever mean the same thing as one understood within some other hermeneutical framework. No, not one. We must here deny what Dr. Van Tiil so aptly dubbed "the myth of neutrality." This means that the Word of God requires us to say that Bahnsen failed at this point to uphold the requisite antithesis necessary for the total victory God has in mind for his people in overcoming the lies of the evil one.]

This is not to say that Bahnsen's defense has little of value to offer. Quite the contrary. Even in its more blunted form -- which could have much been sharpened by a greater sense of a purer antithesis in his methodology (of the kind he regularly taught) -- he offered some extraordinarily telling blows against both Islam and contemporary Judaism, which we would be wise to seize upon where accurate (and fully antithetical), and to re-orient and develop at those points where his teaching proved better than his practice at this particular juncture. Here we will follow the parental dictum, "Do not do as I do, do as I say." In this sense, since his teaching was so good on this topic, we can still say he was right, even when his practice did not always match his didactic insights.].

It turned out that the other two scholars shied away from doing exegetical theology and from arguing with Dr. Bahnsen on the basis of the Biblical text. Many in the audience observed this.

[I have heard the tapes more than once. This is entirely accurate. Bahnsen was intimidating in speech to put it mildly].

Many in the audience also heard a clear presentation of the Christian gospel in Dr. Bahnsen's apologetic - Jesus is the promised Messiah, and salvation is not by good works, but rather by faith in the redemptive work of the Messiah.

[Dr. Bahnsen's presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was -- well -- Solomonic. Every minister should have to memorize it. This is simply the best I have ever heard it declared. The cost of either attending (or in my case buying the tapes later) for the debate was more than worth the hearing of the Christian kerygma so skillfully attended. I can only imagine the rest of the audience was likewise stunned].

In his response to the Muslim scholar, Dr. Bahnsen argued that the Koran claims to be the inscription of an eternal book in heaven, and yet later portions of the Koran "abrogate" earlier ones.

[This is true, and well worth exploring; but the studied Muslim is also ready with his "error" passages, and "points of conflict" he believes he can find in the Older and Newer Testaments as they currently read. Because this lacks the presuppositional force of Dr. Bahnsen's more rigorous critiques (of internal, dialectial tensions within the Muslim worldview), a charge WHICH IS NOT REVERSIBLE because of its transcendental nature; thus, this particular challenge, we would have to classify as an evidentiary (non-presuppositional, i.e. unbiblical) approach to apologetics. It may be both instructive and correct, but is better suited to teaching situations -- where Christians are the audience and not unbelievers -- after the transcendental challenge has utterly undermined the Islamic and Judaic worldviews, showing just where they fail to provide the necessary preconditions -- for logic, science and morality -- and for their own particular, central theological claims. Thus, I regard this as an error given the context in which it was applied, though not with respect to the truth-value of the claims in question.].

He argued that the Bible - which Muslims say they accept - teaches that later revelations from God must conform with previous revelations. Moreover, the Koran claims to be continuous with the Bible and a confirmation of it. Yet there are clearly contradictions between the two books (for instance, regarding Christ's deity, His dying on the cross, etc.).

[This brings us back to the myth of neutrality. When Muslims say "Bible," they mean the original one, which on their view, looked just like the Quran. They do not mean, the 66 books of the canon of Scripture as they presently read, say in the KJV or RSV. Again, I would suggest that Dr. Bahnsen has targeted the right teaching to the wrong audience. The presuppositions of the Muslim (and Rabbi) are such that we must show the folly of them ON THEIR OWN TERMS, before adding the kind of confirmatory evidence one finds acceptable upon adopting the true Christian faith, found in the Word of God itself, and in the classic Reformed confessions, and historic Christian creeds.].

Likewise, there are numerous conflicts between Biblical stories and the Koranic versions of them. [A point of curiosity to both Christians and Muslims, but the differences will be explained in terms of one's ultimate pre-commitments, which will obviously differ one from another for reasons already given].

There are also embarrassing historical errors in the Koran (for instance, the mother of Jesus is called the sister of Aaron: "Mary" becomes "Miriam").

[Muslims wishing to remain faithful to their first principles will simply deny that this is an error, and that the error lies instead with the corrupted NT. But we can fix this problem, once the Muslim goes on the offensive, employing the canons of western historiography common to secular universities to attempt to undo the historicity or authenticity of any passage in the New Testament. And they WILL do this.

The Muslim apologist who does this tacitly admits the criteria behind the alleged authority invoked for such criticisms -- by simply offering them. He has thus confirmed their testimony as well regarding the historical errors in the Quran itself -- as those same secular historians and others like them will be happy enough to admit. This way, we find that the presupposed authority of secular western scholars - which the MUSLIM has so foolishly affirmed - undermine his own basis for believing anything theological about Jesus, the prophets or the apostles. He has claimed the NT is corrupt (no good source for him there) and then accidentally also eliminated the Quran as well). This happens when Muslims rush in where angels fear to tread.

But Dr. Bahnsen has not entered this second half of the equation to render the more effective reductio adabsurdum charge. Here, we can help him along a bit, and should.].

Further, there are contradictions right within the Koran itself (for instance, all of Noah's family is said to be saved through the flood, but one of Noah's sons is elsewhere said to have drowned in the flood).

[When the Rabbi or Muslim antes up by trying to show contradictions in the NT, we can first point out that unless they can show that their own worldviews can provide the transcendentals as can the Christian worldview, this only amounts to a Tu Quo Que challenge; this fallacy consists in failing to answer the charges against your own position, and instead simply attacking your opponent's, as if to say, "We don't have the goods, but you don't either." This does not help his position in the least. He has in fact admitted defeat by finding it necessary NOT to defend his worldview and simply substitute an attack for it. Punching holes in your boat won't fix the ones in mine.

The contradictions within not only the Qu'ran, but also the Ahadith (Islam offers two targets to the Christian apologist, not one only; and the second makes his job far easier when added to the first). The Christian must eventually, however, come to that point where he offers a blow-by-blow transcendental comparison of worldviews, highlighting the transcendental strengths of the Christian outlook over against the corresponding weaknesses of Islam and contemporary Judaism, which is easy enough, but only if Christians stick to the apologetic program outlined in the Word of God.].

Dr. Bahnsen argued that the Islamic doctrine of "tanzih" (or transcendence) - which says that no human language can positively describe Allah because he is allegedly "incomparable" (Surah 42:11) - would render it logically impossible for the Koran to be what it claims to be, a positive revelation and description of Allah.

[This is a real and problematic dialectical tension for Islam. It never has -- even in Kalam, wherein Islamic scholars sought to engage in a kind of systematic theology -- been able to reconcile its claims regarding God's complete transcendence with His utter nearness or immanence in the created order. The Quran declares both, but defines them in incompatible ways, such that (given the Quranic definitions) both cannot be the case.

This is well worth exploring. On the one hand Allah is "altogether unlike any creature," when the Quran affirms his majesty above the creation, but then, on the other hand, man is created in God's image. This shows -- on any definition of Imago Dei -- that God is NOT altogether unlike creature, but must be similar to men in some respects. As Dr. Bahnsen so often said, "You simply cannot have it BOTH ways."

Many other dialectical tensions plague the Muslim outlook, and Dr. Bahnsen needed to expound and declare these at length. This comprises the most serious set of omissions in his presentation. The absoluteness Oneness of the Muslim "deity" leaves the Muslim with no analogy between the many-faceted creation -- we see all manner of different kinds of things around us (animal, vegetable, mineral, phenomena, processes, and the like), and the God who (allegedly) made them. Here, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity shines as a philosophical beacon, in that, where it holds the one-ness and many-ness of God as equally ultimate, it alone adequately answers the perennial philosophical problem of the "one and the many."

The world appears as it does, because it reflects the eternal power and divine nature of the God of creation, who subsists eternally as one God in three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the same in substance, equal in power and glory. Thus do we see the unity (uniformity of nature) of all the many-splendored variety about us. In fact, curiously, light has three primary colors. The creation affords many other excellent analogies to the Triune God as well. But the contrary to this high and holy doctrine can be shown plainly as logically impossible, which many wrest to their own undoing as with the Scriptures.

Only the Christian worldview adequately accounts for this uni-diversity; not the Jewish outlook, nor the Muslim, nor that of any non-Trinitarian faith -- the Arianism of the "Jehovah's Witness" -- or any other form of religion, which maintains the appearance of piety, but denies its power. The Word of God provides the victory the apologist needs will he only stick to its basic message regarding God and His created order, as manifested in all the canon of the Holy Scripture. Where we go, they cannot follow.

Countless other objections to the Christian worldview by Muslim and Jew alike provide the very basis for cross-referencing these with the logical mandates of their own worldview, such that their CHALLENGES are their rhetorical undoing. The Jewish apologist who wants the Older Testament without the New is forced to account for a God who demands an atoning sacrifice and high holy days as absolutely essential, and then Who destroys the Temple -- the only place where those sacrifices can be accepted - for over 2,000 years. This "God" thus forbids and requires the same thing for the salvation of the souls of men. No wonder embarrassed Judaism has shifted its emphasis for reconciliation with "God" to their own prayers, gifts, and well-doing. The Older Testament openly affirms that this will never save them in countless ways. The very initial demand for a substitutionary sacrifice in the first place -- from the days when God clothed our first forefathers to the days of the Mosaic tabernacle-Temple (For it became a Temple under Solomon which was on a tabernacle, which came to rest at Gibeon under Moses).

Psalm 40 declares straightway the inherent inefficacy of even the commanded levitical sacrifice. It did not, of its own accord ever, at any time, please God. For it is an abomination to think that an animal by itself could atone for a man's sins (as though the animal were the equal of man, and also made in God's image; for this is what is implied by the supposed adequacy of the original levitical sacrifice if taken to be efficacious of its own. Therefore the Lord Jesus said, "Here I am; it is written of me in the scroll; I have come to do your will, O God."

Therefore, according to this Psalm, on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus prayed according to this song, saying, "NOT my will, but your will be done."

Thus, the Providence of God stands against the Jew, which the Older Testament declares is always from the Lord. If they are His people, then all that happens to them is by his command. Where then is the sacrifice which He demands? And where are the priests of Levi, whose genealogical records fell in the AD 70 catastrophe, never to be recovered. Without a priesthood, Temple or sacrifice for this sins, if the Jews of the Older Testament knew anything, they knew they were doomed for eternity. Moreover, the auxiliary books of the contemporary Jewish faith, Midrash and Mishnah, provide additional problems of major -- dare I say "biblical" proportions?
Each of these sources provides several other dialectical tensions in the Jewish, and the Ahadith and Koran many more for the Muslim to wrestle with. These include fundamental tangles between their notions of priesthood and creation, faith and the priesthood (we have seen between Providence and salvation), and the several other transcendental failures in their inabilities to answer the basic philosophical questions -- the one and the many, the problem of permanence and change (identity through time, the problems of induction and perception, etc), and the like.

If Allah is the absolute One God Muslims claim He is, then no variation should show up in a world which reflects his attributes. But the God of the Bible changes in one respect that is vital; He changes in his relationship to His people as his redemptive-historical plans unfolds because of their maturity to which he tends via sanctification of the Holy Spirit. Thus, God changes relationally, but not essentially, with one exception. By way of addition, the Second Person of the Trinity took on humanity, adding -- in time -- to Himself the nature of humanity.

"He had to be made like his brothers in every respect, save that He was without sin." And Thus in redeeming for Himself a people, God fundamentally changes his relationship to both His people -- who went from darkness to the Kingdom of the Son -- and all men, who are represented by His people pre-eminently as priests and kings over the earth (the Church). Surely, there is no greater change than redemption. Behold all things become new, if any man is in Christ Jesus.

The biblical world-view cannot be defeated but in the nature of the case, if held forward resolutely and without flinching, cannot be touched by any man who speaks against it; for to speak against the law, James says, is to be JUDGED BY THAT LAW (in like manner), which Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword - not too mention a two-edged tongue which speaks against the Lord and against His anointed One.

For the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. And the statutes of the Lord are altogether righteous. Taken then as a whole, and applied rigorously in debate, the outcome is foregone. Just as it says, "He shall dash them to pieces like pottery." And again, "A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand." But of the Scripture is says, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God [The God of the Bible] is ONE (Mark 12:20): therefore, "The Scripture cannot be broken," (John 10:30) but will "accomplish all that for which I sent it forth" (Isaiah 55:11)].

The following text comes from the concluding section of Dr. Bahnsen's major presentation delivered during the first evening of dialogue:

"Neither Judaism nor Islam have an anointed one or Messiah who fulfills the anticipation of the Old Testament scriptures, even though they acknowledge them to be God's inspired self-revelation. For this reason the theologies of Judaism and Islam lack material adequacy: they do not do justice to the message of God's revealed word.

[By referring to them as lacking material adequacy, Dr. Bahnsen has pointed out that they have no authoritative message to declare which confidently promises salvation as an absolute guarantee because it is based on what GOD has done and not on the deeds of men. In Judaism and Islam, for all their chanting to the contrary, God is not finally sovereign in salvation. Only in the Christian faith of the Reformed tradition is it said plainly, "Salvation is of the Lord" who is the "Author and finisher of our faith."]

That is why we look upon them as heretical versions of the Biblical faith, versions which do not deliver good news to mankind.

Following upon their failure to affirm the promised Messiah, Judaism and Islam cannot proclaim an assured word of salvation to those who know that they stand guilty before a holy and just God. Christianity is uniquely the religion of salvation by grace through faith in the finished work of the Christ.

Paul puts it in these words: "For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Christianity teaches that Christ paid the price of sin, and that through faith in Him and His saving work, men may be forgiven by God. They cannot earn this forgiveness by good works, nor can they take any credit before God. Salvation comes as a gift, appropriated by faith, rather than meritorious good deeds.

Judaism and Islam cannot and do not teach such good news about grace and salvation. By not trusting in the work of God's Messianic Son for redemption, both Judaism and Islam are in their own distinctive ways committed to some form of works-righteousness or legalism. They are left to seek a right standing before God through imperfectly good works performed in human wisdom and strength.

[Human wisdom and strength, plus $2.50, can buy you a cup of coffee and a bagel with cream cheese these days].

The Apostle Paul knew the burden and bondage of such a futile approach unto God. Those who attempt such do not properly comprehend the high demands of God's personal holiness, as set forth in His perfect law. Paul says that before the law of God "every mouth may be stopped" (Romans 3:19), for all are condemned by it. God does not judge on a curve or by moral averages. He judges according to His own flawless character, and as the prophet Habakkuk declared, His eyes are too pure than to look upon iniquity (1:13) - whether it be the iniquity of idolatry and murder, or the iniquity of selfishness, lust or gossip. Thus, as Paul wrote in Romans, "by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight" (3:20). As the Psalmist said, "If you Yahweh should mark iniquities, who could stand?" (130:3).

[I call this "Smokin' aces."]

We flatter ourselves if we believe that our moral goodness somehow outweighs the many ways in which we sin and fall short of God's glory. But even worse, we insult the unchanging and holy character of God if we believe that anything good done by ourselves could take away the offense and offensiveness of our unrighteous attitudes and actions which we have admittedly done before God. God cannot deny Himself and simply pretend that we have not sinned, even if we wish to add to the balances a few kind deeds or decent attitudes (as humans might judge them).

[The greater sins of most people will be found in what their duties were, and in which they failed -- sins of omission. Almost always, when speaking of sin, people think immediately and self-justifyingly of sins of transgression only. This is because they have no idea of how extremely holy God is, and what He requires of them, for a lack of attending the reading of the Holy Scripture with all due diligence, which in itself constitutes a gross negligence subject to the condemnatory verdict of the Almighty. To treat lightly that which is holy, is in the Word, a most noxious sin. But it is not one you will ever see anyone commit. You cannot see what people do NOT DO. Nevertheless, the neglect of God's Word is extremely culpable before the Lord; and He is no respecter of persons. Moreover, we are to meditate on his law at all times -- as king David says, "Day and night" (Psalm 1) as it were like to us breakfast, lunch and dinner].

Good works simply do not eliminate the fact of our past sins or atone for them. And as long as those sins stand in our record before God, we have no hope of forgiveness and communion with Him. This is clearly the message of the Torah, as well as the rest of God's inspired word. The penalty of sin must be paid by another, if we would personally hope to escape that penalty ourselves.

Christianity uniquely proclaims the coming of the Messiah, in accordance with God's inscripturated promises, to pay the price of sin and make atonement. Through faith in Him, God's people may be justified before the Lord without sacrificing His unchanging justice. This is at the heart of the Christian message. Without this heart of the gospel, neither Judaism nor Islam present an alternative which is both formally and materially adequate to the nature of God, the human condition, or the truths of God's word in Scripture."

[This represents a flourishing presentation of the truth of God's holy Word adroitly adapted to the spiritual needs of Dr. Bahnsen's audience. And I would not change a word. In fact, I wish I had said that. With the aforementioned adjustments given to Dr. Bahnsen's fine presentation -- and a few left unmentioned but hinted at (with some like samples provided), the Christian apologist can, with great confidence in the soundness and fidelity of what he has been taught from the Word and confessions of the Christian faith, approach the subject of comparative religions.].

[The presuppositional guide to this question, though these will involve some unique comparisons at points in the Christian worldview to their counterparts in others, the method remains the same. Identify the crucial points of difference between the worldviews, isolate the points of difference in the non-Christian worldview as it weaknesses, and there begin comparing and contrasting one such weakness with another such error. These cannot -- for their deviation from the divine pattern, ever cohere, but much entangle themselves with folly as a net entangles ones feet, who would run a race, as it were, set before him.].

[But he has been ensnared by the cords of his sin, and cannot move against his opponent's position, save that he entangle himself further, each objection providing new assumptions the quick Christian apologist can add to the pool of "wayward propositions affirmed godlessly and without proper fear." These will then begin cancelling each other out at a more furious rate at the hands of the skilled advocate of the Holy Word.].

That is the strength of presuppositional apologetics, for which Dr. Bahnsen was so well noted, as well his Christian testimony, which often took a rather elegant form. I hope these few emendations might likewise serve to strengthen the hearts of God's people, both in knowing the certainty of the things we have been taught from the first, and in sharing the good news with your neighbors, no matter which faith he or she might affirm.

The Bible has the answer.

Greg Bahnsen On Logic, Science and Hermeneutics: The Inadequate Critique of Traditional VanTillianism Analytics

Greg Bahnsen, without hesitation, can be described as the most precise and prolific advocate of the doctrine of the late Cornelius VanTil usually dubbed "presuppositionalism." This post concerns itself with the analysis of the former in an essay entitled: Science, Scripture and Subjectivity: Is Biblical Interpretation "Scientific"? This piece also bears the alphanumeric designation "PA044" on the Covenant Media Foundation website page listed as "Free Articles."

Here, Dr. Bahnsen undertakes to show that the Positivist, Empricist, Evidentialist, Intuitionist, and other conceptual approaches to the sciences, and logical systems, do not amount to the kind of project these parties and others would have us believe. In short, he avers, these disciplines are not neutral, objective and invariant. He also intends to rescue the discipline of hermeneutics from the pitfalls of subjective judgment, retaining for it an honorific status as "scientific." He maintains that the sciences and logic are not so "objective," and the practice of hermeneutics not so "subjective," as we have repeatedly been told.

Here I will argue that Bahnsen's own critique (this one and others) implies a position regarding the sciences dubbed "theoretical instrumentalism" or else "theoretical antirealism," which he shuns at several points where he clearly implies this doctrine, pulling back at the last moment in silence to retain a kind of scientific realism which amounts to epistemological pragamatism. I also contend that this persistent oversight remains due to the fact that the presuppositionalist methodology of Dr. Cornelius VanTil has received lop-sided applications in popular theological literature, exploring rigourously its applications to philosophical questions, to other apologetic approaches, and to a few non-Christian religious systems (and then only in part), while awaiting such an exercise in comparative religions generally, the philosophy of the sciences, the philosophy of logic, and many theological questions likely to be raised in apologetic encounters with theological systems presently described by Christians as "cults" and the "occult."

It is these domains which I urge exploratory applications of Dr. VanTil's and Dr. Bahnsen's momentous insights. For our purposes here, I will argue that Bahnsen's critque falls short in precisely 3 ways:

First, his own reasons given against the positions he opposes suggest that he himself out to have reformed his philosophical approach to the study of the sciences in favor of a biblical form of theoretical instrumentalism (to avoid subjectivism), which he implicitly shuns.

Second, I will argue that he needed to draw important distinctions between the study of revelation and the study of the sciences, in order to retain the absolute epistemic priority of the Word of God over the sciences (which distinctions he failed to impose).

And, third, I contend that he left the reader with no certain philosophy of the precise relationship of biblical hermeneutics to the various sciences, which the Bible demands of us that we expound their both the defined borders of these two subjects (their proper limits), and their real-world interactions, both definitely and accurately.


Now to the stated purpose of Bahnsen's article we turn. Dr. Bahnsen writes that he categorically denies that, "a 'scientific' approach is (1) objective, (2) neutral, and (3) invariant. With it the arbitrariness, relativism, or scepticism threatened by subjectivity in a discipline can be countered."

The latter reference to "subjectivity" in his essay refers to the alleged overly-flexible handling of interpretive efforts, especially with regard to assigning meaning to the texts of the Bible. Here, Bahnsen challenges that the skeptics are too skeptical, just as they are too credulous when it comes to their allegiance to the sciences as the primary or exclusive source of objective knowledge about the natural world.

He continues his inroads against the oppositon in these words:

".... in answering the challenge that Biblical interpretation is unscientifically subjectivistic, we also have good motivation for critically questioning that conception of science which has been encountered above. We should see that science or theorizing in general cannot legitimately claim to be a fully and objectively justified enterprise, any more than it can credibly be seen as an example of unity." [Emph. added].

Here, Bahnsen takes excellent steps toward a fuller critique, but stops short of the inquiry's implicates, which he has begun.

Here I should like to add what he has implied. Since the various sciences cannot theoretically enjoin any kind of unity -- logical compatibility across disciplinary lines -- it is obvious that many of these successful theories are false. Otherwise irrationalism follows. This implies the right hand of arguments in favor of the bibical position: false theories can be useful for controlling the environment, for improving our standard of living, and for creating new innovations which can accomplish impressive feats and develop even new technologies in some cases. The truth-status of a theory is no guide to its utility, and vice-versa. These are independent attributes.

Second, Bahnsen has earnestly (and highly successfully) refuted the Pragmatist thesis, that success insures some form of identifiable veridicality by non-arbitrary means. This implies that the success of theoretical reason is no guarantee as to any other of its attributes. The most we might say is that greater utility equals greater profitablility in the economic markets. This correlation is well-established. But it hardly follows from "my theory made me a bunch of money" to "my theory refers to the real world accurately."

Third, "Theorizing is not a fully objective or justified enterprise" begs the question we must ask on behalf of Bahnsen. WHY is it not justified? He must -- to be consistent with his earlier critiques -- answer with the same objections given to the pragmatisms he has overcome earlier. To name but a few: it is not justified because it depends upon criteria which differ from field to field, for which there seems -- other than utility -- no objective basis (arbitrary criteriological considerations); judging a theory "true" based on its predictive power (or some other empirical feature) renders its truth-value time-conditioned. What is true today can become false tomorrow, when new evidence overthrows the old verdict. This has happened often in the history of science, and some have undertaken catalogs of them (i.e. Dr. Larry Laudan's Science and Values, etc); Third, since different fields of study employ different criteria, sometimes various criteria chosen make it impossible to distinguish between theory rivals. One might be simpler, and may explain a bit more of the present evidence well, while the other has great predictive power. This is the problem of mixed criterological comparisons (apples and oranges).

Let this suffice for now. Bahnsen continues:

"The common justification for science and its assumptions which concerns us now is that scientific inquiries as presently practiced are fruitful - solving important problems and enabling us to cope with the world. The indebtedness of modern proponents of this answer to Pierce and C. I. Lewis is rather obvious. With science we may better achieve our goals. The pragmatic answer rests, of course, upon the previous acceptance of a certain goal, and thus at this point we must not become intellectually lazy but press on and ask critically about the rationality or arbitrariness of that choice.

We can grant the superiority of science's problem-solving tools only after we are convinced that science is dealing with the right problems in the first place. So then, why should our goal be that of coping with the environment, instead of the alternative or perhaps more weighty aims of mystical union with nature, interpersonal rapport, appreciation of beauty, etc.? What justifies adherence to the particular goal chosen by empirical scientists? Perhaps that goal is simply arbitrary - consequently reintroducing relativism and scepticism."

Now this criticism properly applies the charge of arbitrariness to the question of operational VALUES in the sciences (i.e. how does one prove experimentally that we ought to big a bigger bridge, more fuel-economic car, etc.). Such values do not grow in a Petri dish. They are plainly imported from one's worldview into the practice of the sciences. Again, Dr. Bahnsen has presented an excellent point. But he could have converted this up-the-middle double into a base-clearing home run with a little additional pressure cooking.

One would have expected him -- given the title of his article -- to show that the criteriological values (we prefer theory X because it can predict stuff) -- not just the operational ones -- have no objective basis in theoretical constructions not deliberately tied to the empirical world. The same can be said for its methodological preferences, which differ from field to field as well. Why use microscopes of this kind, instead of those? Or some other instrument for the same job? Thomas Kuhn has also pointed out (and demonstrated) that instruments have built-in presuppositions as well (these are instrumental values), and one might ask after the objective reasons for those too, if any.

In short, this author could have deconstructed the entire party, but simply opted to upset the snack tray, and fire one of the caterers.

The odd part here is that Bahnsen has read all the requisite material to indicate that he knows this -- Thomas S. Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and several others -- and yet he balks at the clear implications of his own critique. The theoretical sciences have no warrant from scripture to theorize apart from the ideas and formulae suggested by empirical study anchored in observation and induction. And when they do this, they can still yield better paint guns, much to the glee of Orchard Supply Hardware customers the world over; but theories so derived remain -- here is the important word -- inherently -- retain an unknowable truth-status. We can only know their utility by observation, experimentation, and by trial and error.

Let the reader permit an important distinction. Men may lawfully theorize all they want this way or that, so long as they make no pretense whatever to have produced knowably true theories. The utility of any such consequent theories, and their results, has no bearing whatever on the truth-status of their constituent claims. This stems from the fact that such sciences employ (speculative) man-made and various criteriologies, standards (allegedly) of truth, when the truth has not multiple standards, but only one. Bahnsen has stated this repeatedly throughout his writings, citing Proverbs 20:10 and additional passages to buttress the point that "Differing weights and differing measures, both alike are an abomination to God."

The very multiple number of (and apparently arbitrary choices regarding) different tests in different fields, should suffice to demonstrate the antirealist thesis. And Bahnsen is easily astute enough to have caught this.

Multiple, logically incompatible standards (criteria sets) which pretend each to yield true theories, taken together, represents a form of epistemic pragmatism, a view so well rebuffed by Dr. Bahnsen's article entitled, "Pragmatism, Prejudice and Presuppositionalism" (to which he has alluded just above in his reference to C.S. Peirce and L. Wittgenstein), as to leave us wondering again at his truncated critique.

Theorizing apart from emprical anchors is not a realistic (truth-identifying) enterprise, wherein we may expect that the central features of its theoretical constructions point to real entities. Many are just placeholders, which pretend to name something "out there," when the number they dial has never been connected in the first place.

And if and when they actually do refer, we cannot say with determined accuracy. If you guess often enough, one might suppose eventually you will get something right (Even blind-folded dart games can still end in some points for each side, as well as a few badly injured cats).

This position, theoretical antirealism -- implied both by the holy Scripture, and by the persistent and many critiques of Dr. Bahnsen -- yet seem to elude him, just when we most expect him to speak up in its favor. Part of the problem consists in the fact that Dr. Bahnsen only seems interested in the epistemological question -- are these activities and procedures objectively based or are they arbitrary (subjective only). This overlooks the more interesting question, "Is anyone really home?" Regardless of whether these ideas are arbitrary or not, do they actually name entities that exist out there -- point to real objects? This is a metaphysical question, a question regarding what kind of things we have (or do not have) in this cosmos we have to navigate until we end our days under the sun.

The question of objective reference asks a metaphysical question rather than the sort Bahnsen seems most comfortable answering - or best trained to handle.

Dr. Bahnsen summarizes extremely well the controversial work of Thomas Kuhn, dubbed "the Structure of Scientific Revolutions," and yet sees the question still only in epistemological terms (perhaps this was as far as he wanted to go in this one article).

"Some recent philosophers of science have argued further that within a particular scientific discipline it is not possible to make a decisive choice between equally coherent alternatives as to methods and conclusions (see [Michael] Polanyi's Personal Knowledge and Hanson's Patterns of Discovery).

In particular Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions[22] goes beyond inter-field variance in science to establish the fact of intra-field variance as well; argumentation will differ from school to school within a particular field of science. To understand the working history of science, Kuhn speaks of incommensurable paradigms which espouse unique views on the basic issues of a field, offer a model for problem-solving, stipulate fixed points of conviction, and constitute a disciplinary-matrix of commitments to particular standards and methods.

When such a paradigm triumphs over its competitors within a field of science, it launches a period of "normal" scientific activity and investigation where series of problems are dealt with according to the pattern assumed by the paradigm. However when normal science runs into, not simply counter-examples, but disturbing anomalies which are sufficiently complex to render the paradigm unworkable or unsatisfactory, the subsequent tension within the field of study will stimulate renewed debate over basic epistemological questions and encourage random experimentation to be carried out.

Eventually, when the old paradigm is set aside - not without various non-rational means of resistance being utilized to preserve it - a revolution within the field takes place which may be likened to a gestalt switch, a new paradigm gaining ascendancy with its own standards of evidence, pattern for procedure, etc. Due to the reconstruction of its fundamental concepts and criteria, a reconstruction of the field of study itself is actually accomplished. Because competing paradigms are incompatible and weigh evidence or argumentation differently, the new paradigm does not succeed by direct verification; competitors argue with each other at cross currents until incidental and "non-scientific" factors influence a conversion to the new outlook, style, and methodology." [Emph. Added].

Bahnsen continues his Hume-like withering criticism on the alleged objectivity of logical systems, from the standpoint of one thorougly familiar with the most relevant epistemological features of the debates logicians are wont to have, one with another.

"Although the preceding discussion only suggests a program for cross-examining various alternative ways of justifying logical truths, it does give some reason to think that this issue is not an absolutely clear and certain matter in philosophy, and it does remind us that the approaches taken to the question are far from uniform. If the question cannot be clearly answered, we can well go on to ask, does the logician have a rational basis for his claims?" [Emph. Added]

While Bahnsen makes superior inroads against the Positivistic outlook which sees the sciences and various systems of logic and the mighty fortress of objective truth, and certain knowledge, a few added distinctions from the Christian world-view would have enabled him to resist the urge to think that any subjective edginess among the sciences and logics would somehow apply equally to the study of the holy Scripture. It is this subliminal equation -- if it is true of the sciences, it must also be true of the Bible -- that (I believe) finally cut short his critique, blunted what would have otherwise been the coup de grace to the old Enlightenment behemoth, that yet lumbers along in the popular mind, having long ago given up the substantial ghost.

Here are the distinctions we should like to add to Dr. Bahnsen's critical evaluaton. First, the Bible distinguishes between different kinds of methods in the sciences, giving a warrant to some (based on observation, trial, induction, repeatability and the like) while denying a like justification to others. Purely theoretical sciences construct -- they do not discover --the entities they investigate, building something like a rational puzzle -- a house of cards -- with logically connected parts, but which parts are completely disconnected to the real world.

There is no reason to think we have anything in these which will end up referring in the real world, since they did not have their origins here. But they can still -- because they reflect the rationality of the human mind -- find applications (sometimes very creative ones) which will in fact produce inventions or innovations destined to make our lives easier and (if one likes scientific puzzles) much more fun.

Second, the Bible has an utterly unique set of characteristics, which introduce to the world, a third category of information, called "revelation." Theories yield ideas about logical relationships between disparate data -- they can help us connect the dots. Observation yields a different sort of knowledge, we call "empirical" (meaning what we discover with our senses).

Now Mr. Kuhn offered the insight that all data are theory-laden. VanTil said something similar in arguing that no fact is neutral, but is formulated as a fact within a larger framework. Kuhn focused on different sized intellectual matrices like these, calling them "paradigms." VanTil focused on the most ultimate of these, calling this paradigm a 'world-view.' The Bible gives us information that is an exception to Kuhn's dictum. It is not the case that all knowlegde is theory-laden. All of it is "general revelation-laden." Now theorizing occurs within the context of revelation too.

But the knowledge we have in the Word of God is not theoretical. Theories can be wrong. God cannot. Theories come from the mind of man. Revelation comes from the mind of God. These two classes -- what God reveals and what man theorizes -- have mutually incompatible sets of attributes. One is eternal, the other temporal, and on it goes. This makes all the difference in the world in studying the Bible versus studying the natural world by way of theoretical constructing. Dr. Bahnsen nowhere notes this.

Again, God gives both his Holy Spirit to God's people, and gifts some with special insight, calling them to be pastors and teachers. This divine empowerment is not available to the secular scientist. He has only his natural gifts and perhaps a few good teachers. Now the Holy Spirit who speaks in the Word lives in God's people and the two are a perfect match. The sanctified reader is enabled by a power not his own to grasp the sense of the Spirit-inspired text.

By way of final important distinctions, the Bible -- though given through the media of many men -- for Holy men who spake of old wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit -- have a unifiying underlying Source, so that the Bible is the very Word of the living God -- not the many theories collected together of a large group of scientists. This gives the Bible an inherent one-ness you cannot find with theories constructed in different places and times, by widely different kinds of people -- with no spiritual unity of personality undergirding the message conveyed in each theory, from this or that nation or century.

The consequent system of theology which arises from the necessary (theopnuestic) unity of the holy Scripture means that each true proposition of the Bible rightly understood does two things, and has one other important implicate:

1. It mutually and reciprocally affirms all other passages of the Bible rightly understood (the consent of all the parts)

2. It, by logical implication (carried far enough with the other passages), eliminates all other possible interpretations when carried out to its final conclusion. The truth tolerates no competition because God hates lies. This is by design.

3. The full final sufficiency of the written Word, combined with its inherently superhuman logical construction, means that it can do anything, so long as one continues to maintain only the proper (biblically justified) forms of reasoning when extending the biblical paradigm into new academic territory. The system can also be used to correct (by cross referencing the implicates of its various doctrines) any student who pays adequate attention.

In other words, the Word can overcome our sinful vicissitudes, and wavering assessments. Nothing is too hard for the Lord. We are not left guessing at any time, but can check our homework by the other parts of Scripture at any time, to ensure the proper results. This idea promotes the "logical sufficiency" of the Word of God as a necessary implicate of Jesus Christ as the Lord of wisdom and knowledge.

The Bible reproves -- corrects -- its interpreters, and so the Church can over time progressively gain greater and greater accuracy and insight not only into the theology of the Word, but all its many applications (perhaps infinite) to the natural world around us. The World is a very big place, and God's Word is sufficient to the dominion mandate. This would imply that the eternality of God's Word, combined with the reflection of God's eternal power and divine nature being seen from the creation would make for a never-ending, but increasingly glorious, task of learning to better control our environment to the glory of God and for the benefit of men.

Scientists, without the Word, have no objective basis to check their work. The charge of relativism (or better anti-realism) is therefore not reversible. These doctrines could receive elaboration at length, but these should suffice to show that had Dr. Bahnsen continued his analysis by careful scriptural assessment at each point of comparison here, he would have with greater boldness, rushed in where scientists cannot tread.

This means that Dr. Bahnsen's attempt to bestow the "honorific" title of "science" upon the systematic art of hermeneutics represents something of a misguided demotion. For it says, "without a doubt, the lesser is blessed of the greater." If one considers science an inherently realistic enterprise, he will wish to adopt a like name for hermeneutics. But if he reverses the polarity of this equation -- the systematic (but not scientific) study of the self-correcting revelation forms the bulwark and vanguard of Truth, to which the sciences must conform if they wish the blessing of truth-acquisition for an attribute, then the question can be seen in its proper and misguided light. Is hermeneutics scientific? I sure hope not, or we are in serious trouble if it must stoop that low for its right to declare authoritatively.

The very idea of the sciences having such a primary epistemic role necessarily subordinates the word of God to the words of men. But it is written, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test" (not even a very scientific test).

These unique characteristics of the written Word begin -- but only begin -- to fill out it special nature as HOLY to the Lord. Is it not theoretical; it is not relativistic; it is not variant; and it most certainly is not neutral. The Bible does not convey science per se, but its implicates concerning knowledge, the nature of man and his mind, the true nature of the real world, its doctrines of God and the creation and fall, etc both provide the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of the sciences and logic, but they also specify the true nature, scope and limits of each of these, setting the pattern for true knowledge in all things.

For all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid in Christ.

The above begin to describe according to this revealed wisdom how VanTillians must modify their current paradigmatic understanding of the relationship between revelation and theory, between theories and facts, between the mind of God and the imaginations of men.

The Bible has the answer, and for one reason only. It actually IS the very Word of the living God. Handle with care.

Archaeologists Discover King Herod's Temple Construction Compound

The Associated Press has just reported that archaeologists have discovered the site of Herod's Temple construction, a quarry over 2,000 years old. The AP news clip reads,

"JERUSALEM - Israeli archaeologists said they have discovered a quarry that provided King Herod with the stones he used to renovate the biblical Second Temple compound — offering rare insight into construction of the holiest site in Judaism."

Here, the ordinary archaeological nomenclature "Second Temple," refers to the temple built by the Jews following their return from the Babylonian exile, after Persian King Cyrus declared their release, around 529 B.C. This is that Temple destroyed by the Roman under the command of Vespasian in A.D. 70, of which the Lord Jesus had prophesied "not one stone will be left upon another," which is exactly how Josephus describes its extraordinary destruction.

He carries the name (given him by secular historians) "Herod the Great" for his zealous building program, especially toward the end of his life, which was marred by excessive bloodshed and some form of mania or paranoia.

He reigned over Judaea (37 B.C. - 4 B.C.), and then Galilee, dying most probably very shortly after the Lord Jesus was born. How long Jesus remained in Egypt with his parents we do not exactly know. Among Herod's other construction projects, he greatly built up the Temple complex known to Jesus and the apostles, adorning it at length.

Israeli antiquities authority's archaeologist, Yuval Baruch, "said coins and pottery found in the quarry confirm the stone was used during the period of Herod's expansion of the Temple Mount in 19 B.C."

You can read the yahoo! article on topic here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070923/wl_mideast_afp/israelarchaeologyjerusalem_070923215014;_ylt=ArluaiYK.O6TRgEOHMERhagUewgF

Comments Regarding the Significance of the Find:

Digs like this pop up in archaeological literature from time to time, and the details always tend to confirm the biblical accounts. Gone are the days that historians dare challenge the veracity of Luke, except in a few special details where they seem to misunderstand the reading of the text (as with Luke's claim that Quirinius was governor in Syria at the time of the birth of Christ -- they say -- which was NOT in fact Luke's point.). But they are historians and not exegetes, and some often confuse the two. One can, of course, be both with proper training in each. But the two are not synonymous. The art and science of interpretation -- hermeneutics by name -- requires a special skill set only partially learned by most historians.


Here, we have another confirmation from the annals of archaeology establishing a background picture to the Gospel narratives wholly consistent with their testimonies. Yet, quixotically, no number of such finds will persuade a determined skeptic, who will cling to any apparent inconsistency he can find, despite the overwhelming evidence in favor of Luke and the other Gospel writers. This is why the Lord Jesus, in the person of Abraham (Luke 16) said:


"They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them hear them. But if they will not believe Moses, then will they not be persuaded, even though one were to rise from the dead [to tell them]." Interestingly, the Lord implies a self-reference as a subtext, in his rising from the dead on the third day in fulfillment of the Scriptures [Moses and the Prophets].


And, as usual, He was correct. If they will not believe the first Testament [Moses and the Prophets], they will not believe the Second [the Gospels, etc]. This is because each book of the canon, by the foreordained purpose of God, implies all the others by mutual affirmation, so that the rejection of any one part implies the rejection of the whole. Discovered inscriptions with the name "Joseph Ben-Caiaphas," and a host of recent discoveries with an abundance of detail, which should have utterly overthrown the New Testament were it simply a pious fiction, have done nothing but confirm its themes and empirical details.


The simplest and best explanation for this tenacity to survive the plethoric testimony of the world of archaeogical discoveries can be summed neatly in one word: "Eyewitnesses." The Gospel writers knew they were testifying about God, what He did and said, in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, which bound them strictly and with great fear, to tell the truth, the whole truth (as much as was practical and relevant), and nothing but the truth, so help them God. And He obviously helped them quite a bit, since no other extensive text of antiquity compares to the detail and comprehensive historical insights of the Gospels.


We can even learn all about Roman customs -- should one care to study them -- from the Gospels, including the right of Romans only to impose the death penalty, the status of slaves and insurrectionist in Roman law, the right of roman soldiers to compel a man to carry his burden one mile at will, and a host of other background teachings of the Gospels and NT writings which get these right in the least detail. Even linguistic idioms and phrases current at the time have parallels which show up in other like ancient documents of the time. Thus, can we compare the Greek of Josephus with that of Luke and John. This can yield some surprising -- and still largely unearthed -- detailed accuracies of the NT which might otherwise go overlooked.

While Josephus cannot disprove the NT by any contradiction of it - this would prove Josephus in error - yet his writings are of great interest in accurately describing the temper of the times over a large portion of the history of the Jews (See Antiquities of the Jews), their customs and interactions with other peoples. It helps us fill in some of the places we might easily have overlooked from the NT writings, and even offers a few novel insights not mentioned in the Christian writings. which elucidate them further. For instance, with Josephus, we get an excellent personality profile of one "Pontius Pilate," which helps explain his actions in the New Testament, and the likely rationale behind them. But that is another post.


This highly detailed accuracy of the Christian writings would simply be impossible were the apostles not exactly what their qualifications allege: people who told what they knew firsthand, and wrote with the utmost care for accuracy and fidelity to God, for the generations of God's people to come who would --like Theophilus -- need instruction in the faith of Jesus, once for all delivered to the saints.


Christians do not fear, you will notice, additional archaeological discoveries. The more, the merrier. And this has been the trend for a very long time now. But the proof for the truth of the Word of God is found in its own testimony, which is necessarily the case for final standards in all world-views. These discoveries can only confirm and illuminate what we already know.


If one were to depend upon the discoveries of historians to prove each and every point of the biblical account before believing it, this would undermine the very authority of the Word of God, shifting it instead to the testimony of modern men, who often get it wrong. Empirical evidence is a pool never finished. But the Word of God is eternal and infallible. Only its inscripturation took time -- but what was to be written was in the mind of God from of old -- for the writings concerned historical persons yet to be born when the world was new. Once finished by A.D. 70, the canon became the standard God uses for all men of all ages, and by which He will judge them on a great Day known only to Him.

Until then, the study of archaeology remains a helpful tool to historian and exegete alike. And Christians would do well to pay attention, now and again, to the latest insights which debut in the news.

Running the Line: More Help With Transcendentals for Beginners and Experts

I do not envy the person who first encounters the concept of "transcendentals," since this notion has about two thousand years worth of development built into it, as it shows up in contemporary debates featuring the biblical practice of apologetics (defending the Christian worldview against any other -- and all others). This practice ordinarily goes by the name "presuppositionalism," given its strong emphasis upon inquiring as to the presuppositions necessary simply to account for what we do in the every day world (not to mention in specialized activities like logic, science, ethics, and the like.

Today, I plan to digress briefly, touching upon Plato's famous doctrine of the "Forms" or "Archetypes," Immanuel Kant's main ideas about how we know things (Kantian epistemology), and then Dr. VanTil's use of the term "transcendentals" to outline a thumbnail sketch of just what presuppositionalists do -- and do not -- mean when they speak of transcendentals.

In other words, by giving a brief historical account (from the history of western thought), I wish to tie down as neatly as possible and otherwise elusive and somewhat nebulous concept.

First, Plato faced a difficult task in attempting -- as do philosophy teachers everywhere today -- to get students to think in term of what philosophers now call "universals." These are something like the "common denominator" as a set of attributes (or single attribute in simple cases) which members of a particular set have in common. These, however, are not incidental features, but defining features, the most relevant characteristic set that makes a thing what it is.

For example, upon asking "What exactly is a 'chair'?" one might attempt this or that definition. Then someone else will -- notoriously, here come the hecklers -- insert something we know is NOT a chair, but which meets the definition so far given. When a group of ancient philosophers met to define what is a man -- having given the operational definition to it as "a featherless bi-ped," Diogenes the Cynic was said to have met early at the place of their discussions, just at the right time, tossing a plucked chicken -- his counter-instance to their definition -- over the fence at their feet. A plucked chicken is a featherless biped too, after all, and not a man. (If this account is not historical, we all know it should have been).

On any account, the essential features of a defined class of objects or persons ordinarily receive the name "universals," so that "sweetness" (in general) might be said to be a universal of the class of "fruit." One might attenuate this class as "ripened fruit" to avoid the hecklers.

Plato saw a certain "hierarchy" to these, with which it is easy to sympathize as a Christian (and Augsutine and many others did so sympathize), calling them "forms." These were patterns not found anywhere in the material world, but in which each member of the set (say "ripe fruit") was said to "participate." For sweet strawberries, pineapple or watermelon certainly seem to participate in the attribute of "sweetness."

Now since Plato's judgment regarding life saw ethical attributes of the highest importance among men, he placed at the top of his hierarchy what we call "the Good." Just below this were the forms of "Justice," and other virtues. Plato envisioned -- this also is in some way consistent with the biblical outlook (and in others not) -- these Forms as existing by themselves eternally, since they were not subject to physical interaction, decay, time and change. If the rule -- do not murder -- was just yesterday, he taught, then it must always be the case that this rule is just.

Being eternal, these forms (Plato held) must necessarily exist APART from the objects or persons who participate in them. A just man, for instance, was just because he participated in this eternal form of justice. Justice could then not be found in whole in any one concrete example (any one person) of its expression in time. These are but copies or shadows of the actual Form so exemplified.

This necessarily made them the "universal preconditions" of knowledge, truth and goodness practiced down here in the emprical world of "copies and shadows." The sense of "preconditon" here is two-fold. Plato actually believed in the metaphysical existence of such entities -- these things he called "forms." They were not for him just some sort of convention we must assume in order to make sense out of the particular things we encounter in our daily lives (and why we classify them into sets like "all things fruit," or "the total number of cars in the world" by simply saying "cars use gas." I suppose at least Diogenes would have needed many men to throw an electric car over the fence at us.

So Plato recognized the forms as real-world things "out there" somewhere (metaphysical realities) and as entities who existence was NECESSARILY assumed in any debate about the world around us, and our knowledge of that world, the world of particular things. So the complement (you might say 'opposite' of) to universals is "particulars," where this term just means this or that thing you see, taste touch, smell or hear in everyday, which you distinguish as something separate from the other many particulars out there.

For example, we all notice that chocolate bars are not the same sorts of things as airline jets. These different sets of particulars belong to different classes of objects. Chocolate bars carry no passengers, and (so far as I know) 747's are not delicious.

In sum then, Plato recognized that in order to make sense out of ordinary human experience -- its particular details, we have to group them in classes with particular attributes, in which all members of the set we name must somehow "participate" in these universal traits. The more important universal traits were the ethical and jurisprudential ones (the ones you need to appeal to in law courts to get justice).

Immanuel Kant, the 18th-century, German "Enlightenment" philosopher would then adopt and greatly modify the original sense of Plato's Forms, for the first time calling them "transcendentals." Kant dropped the idea that these Forms actually existed "out there" in the real world, but retained the idea that humans must see the world according to these certain ways of perceiving it (and classifying things).

Why do clouds appear white to us? one might say in ordinary conversation, "All clouds are white." This might not receive much controversial attention. Kant answered (in short, very short) that humans have certain categories -- like filters -- built into what we might today called their "hard drives," which require them to sort out their many perceptions (which assault us all at once from the moment we open our eyes -- white clouds, bright candies at See's, all manner of different sizes of books, and the like.

Our brains must manipulate billions of bits of (again a modern metaphor) streaming data hurled at us minute by minute. How do we know how to sort and analyze them in ways consistent with the ways other people will do it too (if we all did this differently language would not be possible). So Kant's solution to figuring out how we know -- where the most important word is WE -- is that the human condition involves built-in perceptual categories which help us do all this sorting, analyzing and classifying (and whatever other jumping jacks the mind may do) of the particulars we run into daily.

These then became the necessary preconditions for rendering the overtaxing flow of streaming whatever that comes at us (reality) -- "intelligible" to us. Kant held that if the world tossed data at us -- say light that is not on the visible spectrum (perhaps infrared light) -- we simply do not have the filter for it, so this data would simply be ignored or unnoticed.

As a child, I encountered a game -- involving Play-dough -- where if you cranked the handle which shoved the dough forward, it forced it through some pre-cut shapes -- stars, squares or what not, and then Play-dough simply came out in these shapes for the pressure and pre-cut patterns built into the plastic machines. That is a fair picture of how Kant viewed the knowing process. We see stars because are hardware is set so to grasp the many colors of light, categories of size and shape, with which we show up to the game from the first.

These perceptual categories were then for Kant "the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of human experience." This phrase cannot be found exactly in his works so far as I know, but Dr. VanTil did use it. VanTil restored the sense of objective reality to these universals -- as with Plato -- but found them not existing separately as discrete units floating about in etheral space -- but fully integrated and mutually affirming in the nature of the God of the Bible.

Chalk one up for Cornelius. Now He also, following the biblical world-view's understanding of man, agreed with Kant, that -- since humans are made in God's image -- we do in fact have "prefab" perceptual categories. But unlike Kant, VanTil held that these actually "matched" the world out there. The objective world, having been made by the same Creator who made man -- Augustine had already taught this after a similar fashion -- the sense and mind of man naturally correspond to the real world about us. Kant had shrouded the real world (he called it the "noumenal realm" beause this sounds more academic) in mystery by suggesting that we can only know what "fits" our "knowing filter" apparatus.

VanTil in the bibical tradition reaffirmed that there exists a natural fit between the two (the world and mind of man), and that in the knowing of these, God's attributes showed through as the necessary preconditions -- like a subtext in the study of literature or rhetoric or "substratum" in other fields -- which objectively gave light to us so that our categories of knowing are properly enabled to do their cognitive jobs -- analyzing, collecting, sorting, synthesizing, postulating, and the like.

This is confessionally, the light of nature, which gives light to every man. His built-in hardware which enable him to know are simply the result of his being made in the divine image. VanTil the restored the focus of knowing -- and especially its preconditions -- in the objective world which Kant would have called the "noumenal realm." The mystery of this realm God overcomes by the light of nature, and especially in His giving the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures to His people that we might know Him, and see plainly all the goodness, wisdom, power and marvel of His many other glorious attributes -- the true ethical "Forms" in the Person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ the Lord. He is supremely Plato's "just man," and the "philosopher-king" who alone is fit to rule all things for the inherent goodness of his noble character -- and far more than anything Plato ever dreamt (the fulfillement of all the light of nature and prophetic Word of God).

For "however so many be the promises of God, they are in [Christ] both the 'Yes' and the 'Amen.'"

So transcendentals -- though Plato called them only "forms" -- started off as "objective only" -- written in the sky (so to speak) for Plato and the many who followed him. Augustine added that they had a ready perceptual counterpart in the Imago Dei -- the image of God in man -- rendering knowledge possible. He added famously that without these preconditions -- both anthropological (built into us) and cosmological (built into the rest of the world) -- that knowledge would in fact be impossible.

Here was the first full argument which implied that the God of the Bible, and his particular attributes resident in all the creation (and especially clearly stated in the Bible) formed the neceessary preconditions for rendering the world knowable to us. Here is the punchline: Augustine also held that the contrary -- without these -- knowledge proved impossible.

This put Jesus Christ, the Logos from the Beginning -- which enlightens every man -- as the foundation of all wisdom and knowledge. Shoots. Scores.

Kant explained well that without some form of pre-established knowing categories to act as filters for the knowing process, the world would otherwise remain altogether mysterious, even bizarre and irrational to us, without form and void. This actually provides the backdrop -- a very useful insight -- for the reason why God HAD to first reveal Himself lest we be altogether without knowledge. Hence our complete and total dependence upon the Triune Christian God for all things good. You won't get very far in life without knowledge now will you.

Doctor VanTil neatly integrated these various insights, producing the unbeatable premiss, that in order to explain anything at all, we must assume (presuppose) the whole Word of God written as a single unit of thought (or worldview), for its explanation alone provides escape from the otherwise dauntingly impenetrable mystery of the noumenal world, which like a large black void would rob us of all sure knowledge, once we fail to uphold both the subjective preconditions for knowing (we are made in God's image) and the objective preconditions for knowing (the truth of the Word of God). knowledge comes as a package deal, or it comes not at all.

Now VanTil also recognized from the study of philosophy -- following Augustine's lead again (and John Calvin's) -- that some propositions must be affirmed because their negation would undermine the possibility of knowing. These necessary truths were thus said to be "transcendental." The denial of any one of these propositions self-cancels. Go ahead and do the math for yourself. This is the nature of transendental claims -- their denials eliminate themselves by logical implication, leaving their affirmations as the only veridical game in town. They therefore MUST BE true because their contradictories (the contrary in ordinary speech) are logically impossible.

These include the claims that:

1. Our sense are generally reliable (barring unusual conditions, i.e. drugs, dehydration, etc)
2. That our memory-beliefs are generally reliable
3. That some truths are both true and knowable
4. Inductions can be warranted
5. Human language is objectively meaningful
6. Laws of Logic exist
7. Absolute laws of morality exist (or alternately, "Some acts are inherently wrong, not conventionally wrong only" (i.e. genocide, blowing up the whole planet, theft from innocent people, etc).
8. Some beliefs are true and others false.
9. Not all beliefs are equally valid.

And these have many implicates I could go on listing, especially when these transcendental claims are cross-referenced in syllogistic fashion. This is the teaching of the light of nature, as these are knowable and deducible apart from the Word of God, and yet remain wholly consistent with its teachings. Many philosophers have deduced them (and like propositions) in this manner.

Transcendentals then "run the line" between the transcendent (noumenal) world and the immanent world of everyday experience. They form a knowable -- anti-neutral zone -- providing information about the world we cannot see from the one we can, by logical operations common to men (or at least men and women who do their homework). This explains the title of today's post. The specific content of the light of nature -- transcendental content in the nature of the case - is in fact available in propositional form, and is known by them in all things they do and say in everyday life -- but only as a substratum -- as set of necessary preconditions that come as a package deal (not in slices or one at a time the way we must study them in isolation from the others -- see Dodging the Pepperoni Pizza Fallacy by Carson C. Day at many ezines)

In order, however, for us to understand how the parts of this package accurately and properly relate to each other, we will need some help from the "other side." God has graciously provided this to us in the form of the canon of Holy Scripture.

This is -- going just a bit beyond VanTil and his contemporaries (for God has commanded us to march forward) the only meta-transcendental -- which properly balances the teaching of any one proposition of the light of nature with any other, and qualifies each with additional information we could not have thereby obtained. And each form of God's revealing - from nature and His written Word -- comes togther fully integrated (with the mutual consent of all the parts) only in the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory and One greater than Solomon.

But we only know the Lord from the light of nature and the written Word of God. Christians do not believe in just any Jesus -- for many false christs have gone out into the world and some preach "another gospel," which is no good news at all. We believe in Jesus, the Lord and giver of life, the only-begotten of the Father -- ONLY as He is offered to us in the gospel and as this gospel is revealed from heaven -- taught, prophesied, explained, qualified and promised -- in ALL the Holy Scripture together as a single worldview.

This Gospel, as the meta-transcendental -- the light which interprets and judges finally and sufficiently of the less clear "light of nature" -- remains therefore infallible, unchallengeable, in debate unbeatable, invincible, irrefragable (for the Scripture cannot be broken), powerful to its appointed end, inescapable, sufficient, and the glorious point of boasting in which all God's people can rest in its verdict.

For the contrary is impossible. And all knowledge presupposes it necessarily. This saying is true is worthy of full acceptation. For it is written, "The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul." What is left to say, but the "Yes" and "Amen"? For Jesus is the light of the world.

Prometheus Restrained: Overcoming Atheism With Atheism

Atheism and the philosophical problems it cannot solve form the basis for the informed Christian critique showing the transcendental failure of this family of related outlooks. Now the term "Atheism" actually names a host of related worldviews, having different ethical and epistemological (views about what we can know and why) permutations, but with a common metaphysical denominator. No atheistic view includes a divine being as the ultimate metaphysical fact in the cosmos.

Materialistic atheism forms the basis of this critique, though the criticisms found here will apply equally well to disparate variations on this theme.

Atheism has grown fairly popular in America since the U.S. constitution not only does nothing to forbid it, but its Deistic outlook -- God exists but does not interact in human affairs -- actually promotes it, since this amounts to God as a musuem piece and nothing more in terms of historical eventuation. (The Declaration mentions divine providence, but says nothing about WHO comprises the "divine," leaving it an empty reference). In short, the do-nothing God of the founding documents of the U.S. differs in no material respect from the view which holds he does not exist at all. Thus, anyone who sees such documents as "Christian" implies that Christianity is consistent with Atheism, a most unlikely position to be accepted either by Christians or "Atheists."

Since the natural revelation of God clearly portrays Him sufficiently to all men to condemn them for their sins (barring their repentance and saving faith in Jesus Christ the Lord), there are ultimately no Atheists, but since the number of pretenders to this position prove significant, I will not here quibble over what to call them. If they prefer the label, then the label shall they have.

However, Atheism (Naturalism) is an utter philosophical failure, and has been for thousands of years, including that of the atomistic Epicureans of the first century (and before). The world needs an explanation because men want to know, indeed are commanded to find out about the world and subdue it to the glory of their Creator. This makes worldviews ethically obligatory, and they also happen to be inescapable since people are made in the image of God, and try to systematize and interpret their experiences, weaving them into a unit of thought or belief system. These are more or less rational in terms of their motivational responses to learning how to get by in life. The problem comes when comparing the different responses (interpretations and answers) given to the different questions which arise when we inquire about the world around us and our place in it.

Atheism's various answer run so various to the different questions that any comparison of them quickly brings to the fore its actual logical conditions standing behind the "titanic-like" promise of naturalistic sciences, and the Atheism these both assume and promote. To being our brief interrogation, we should like to pose a few of the classic difficulties philosophers have faced -- as well any thinking person who may have asked such interrogatives.

The ancient "pre-Socratics" (Thales of Miletus, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus to name a few) troubled themselves with an observation that change seemed both obvious and universal, and yet people do not cease to be the same people we knew as they get older, though they now look little like the person they were a infants. The fact that each retains the same name, and that we think of them this way, shows that a persistent identity remains through all the drastic changes their physiologies undergo.

This is one aspect -- one might also compare a seed to a huge redwood -- of the problem of identity through time. Given the drastic changes we observe, their constant and thoroughgoing nature, what justifies the assumption that this is the same person from one moment to the next, nevermind over 40 years?

The Christian answer to this comes obviously given its outlook. People are created as having both a body and a soul, and while the body, being material only, continues its changes through the full cycle of life, the soul matures in a different way, and provides an underlying identity not subject to the vicissitudes, wear and dissolution of the material world. Spirits do not rust either.

But this answer is not available to the Atheist. In fact, no good answer avails itself to the one who commits himself to the evolutionary and materialistic outlook, which affirms that change is the only constant, with each and every cell and somatic system traversing its way through the chemical changes common to us all.

But given this Heraclitean tendency to favor change over identity, this leaves wholly unexplained why we see identity, and need to in order to function in life, in one person from one day to the next. So you were Herbert Jones yesterday. Today is a whole new physiological ball game (if you are only 98 cents worth of chemicals). With inflation, we might be able to get a buck fifty for you. But this problem has yet to be tackled in any serious manner by Atheistic proponents.

Each of their weak rejoinders to the so-called "mind-body" problem only underscores the frailty of the naturalistic outlooks as they attempt to grapple with what their evolutionism denies. There is no Planck's CONSTANT in a world overrun by change, no aging by the SAME people from day to day, and as Heraclitus said it well, "They can never step in the same river twice." I hereby declare all identification cards for Atheists invalid and non-referring beyond twenty-four hours. They will need to renew them daily, given their views. No, wait. They must renew them hourly, or was that by the minute? Time is actually not the problem, no matter how small one slices the unit of time, we can always point to the faster transformational processes in this world. Explosions make for very difficult "time splittings" and the smaller units of time they do promote are distinctions without a real difference.

Change is real. So how does identity obtain at all? We are still waiting to hear from the atheistic world on this one. My advice? Don't hold your breath. They simply do not have enough variation of kinds of this native to this cosmos (no souls, no identity through time). By the way, laws of logic are likewise invariant, and retain their identity through time. Thus, given Naturalism's commitment to "all is material in origin that is real," there could be no laws of logic. Thus, Atheism eliminates the preconditions for rationality, and cannot claim to be rational on its own terms.

The tired old rejoinder that these are mere conventions of men is not an answer. It is a denial that there are LAWS of logic at all. Laws are not conventional. Only their descriptions are. Moreover, any affirmation of conventionalism is self-refuting. How is the claim that all linguistic references are only conventional ITSELF avoid this criticism? This is called the "Fallacy of self-exception," which enjoins upon all views a rule from which mine alone is exempted with no argument offered for the ARBITRARY (did I mention self-serving?) exception.

The sciences also require as a given assumption what is habitually called, "The uniformity of nature." This, please note, names a universal constant, which does not exist, given cosmological evolution. Thus, materialistic outlooks undermine the preconditions for the sciences they need to launch their assaults on other views. This is the fallacy of cutting off your own legs, which notoriously leaves hop-along Atheism with no "scientific" leg to stand on.

Atheism fares no better handling the historic "problem of induction," widely popularized by David Hume, the so-called "Scottish Skeptic." Hume noted that there seems no empirical (observational or data-based) reason to make the sort of assumption -- an extrapolation -- regarding the future, just because things seem to have occurred similarly in the past. We cannot observe future cases of any given grouping of data. So just because every crow we may have seen to date turns out to be a black crow, this provides no justification for assuming that "all crows are black" (even if this turns out to be true).

Inductions always involve extending what we know from the past into the unknown future concerning like objects or situations. Moreover, since we never have all the evidence (inductions are always incomplete), no induction is ever justifiable since the next instance on any one set may be the counter-instance we have not yet seen to our postulated idea that "all crows are black." The next one might be the white crow -- or blue crow. But since inductions form the primary basis of knowledge based on sense perceptions (we experience all our knowledge via one or more of our five senses), Atheism then -- if true -- would leave us with no knowledge whatsoever. This means that every fact you know is a proof that Atheism is simply false.

You obtained that information by some form of induction, and induction is not warranted on any Atheistic outlook. Without constants, you cannot have inductions either.

On the biblical view, God created all things "in the beginning" each "according to its own kind" (which statement appears 14 times in the first two chapters of Genesis. It also explains that God created men and women in his own image. So the mindset of the highest creatures corresponds to the objective world God created. Given this view, it naturally and smoothly follows that we percieve objects in classes which we note by see a common set of traits which they possess and have an OBJECTIVE warrant for expecting that future cases (in the case of strong inductions) will be like the past cases. The "kinds" (classes) of objects appear similarly because that is simply the way God created them (and the laws governing them and their behaviors). So all coins of roughly the same size and weight will fall at the same rate tomorrow as they did today -- given similar initial conditions.

This in fact EXPLAINS why inductions come naturally to us, and what warrants the good ones. Atheism in effect implies these simply are not possible to warrant, but since we MUST do this in order to know (and get by in life), Atheism requires blind FAITH (warrantless credulity) where the Word of God does not.

This embarrassingly leaves the naturalistic sciences "faith-based," while Christianity would render them rational (given the other biblical parameters governing them).

Finally, let us end our brief excursion into the problems of naturalism with a cursory overview of its inability to provide moral absolutes, and why this is such a problem for them. Think on the scientific enterprise for a moment. What would happen if all researchers everywhere instantly felt free to falsify whatever documentation they deemed "fun" or profitable. People trusting such bogus data in hospitals could die. Others might suffer medicinal side-effects they did not expect and would not have taken such drugs had they known of the possiblity of incurring such problems later.

All the sciences which we have come to respect come with ethical barriers -- confidentialilty issues regarding patents, warning labels, the removal of some known hazards from foods sold (or their removal from the marketplace), research protocols, conflict of interest issues, the required nature of scientific experiments (some must be double-blind to be legally proper), and other legal and ethical matters which affect which kind of science may be performed and under which conditions, and how its products may or may not be used. Please do not imagine that the use of nuclear weapons is not controversial. So is the storage location of spent fuel rods.

How, on an Atheistic account of things could one ever derive from matter in motion the universal invariant entities like moral laws one needs in order to assert "You shall not falsify research" (even if it profits you greatly), "You shall not murder" (by failing to note carcinogenic factors on packages for sale) and all the other variants of the ten commandments which underlie the sciences in practice. No ethics? No science -- at least none that westerners would want to live with. If anyone were free to use nuclear weapons on a whim, the desires of westerners could be a moot point anyway. Mushroom clouds are equal opportunity.

The sciences, as well the rest of the practical aspects of life -- professional ethics on the job -- whether one is a doctor, lawyer, minister, or even a food packer, each occupation carries certain risks to one's self and others -- their health, reputations or property -- which require ethical considerations, and ethically limited behaviors. Ethics are not escapable. This is why every society has them, even when the social mores of one seem less than palpable across its cultural borders. Westerners --even the most pluralistic -- are not prepared to accept genocide as a "cross-cultural" feature we should simply yawn at like the color choices for one's clothing, or whether women may or may not wear makeup (Puritans tended to frown on it, since they emphasized the development of inward virtues rather than artifically enhanced outward appearances). Although the Book of Esther seems plain enough to me [Insert shrug here].

In any case, the ethical pre-conditions for life, for the sciences, for professions and all social interaction need governing rules. Irresolvable conflicts arise without rules sufficient to distinguish the proper procedure or resolution in each case. This is why Christians believe in the 613 commandments (minus the ones repealed under the Newer Covenant -- dietary restrictions, Israelite land laws, tribal regulations, ceremonial ordinances, and the like).

Given the Christian view that the international, transcendent and sufficient legal code it names the Law of the Lord was given to men by God for just this purpose -- to impose as ethical and legal standards to supply the necessary preconditions for logic, science and morality in every area of life -- it makes perfect sense as to why Christians might do science in an ethical fashion. This is not only consistent with, but required by, the Christian worldview.

The Atheist, on the other hand, cannot do the inductions (since he cannot warrant them) by which one might claim to derive ethical lessons from observed cases of say "other animals," and even if he did, this would be a mere convention, which any scientist could feel free to exempt himself from when convenient. Conventions are not absolute. And absolutes are not conventional. Finally, attempting to derive what one ought to do from described instances forms the textbook example of this is-ought fallacy, which confuses what is the case with what OUGHT to be the case. What is true now is only normative if you think this is (right now) a perfect world (which cannot be improved).

This is obviously false. So is Atheism. In sum then, in each and every instance where the Christian worldview shows the intellectual and explicative (it explains well) strengths necessary to account for why things appear as they do (identity seems to exist through time), how we can know what we know (inductions can be warranted, but only by one worldview), and how we ought to live our lives (ethical standards, scopes, limits and behaviors), Atheism fails badly, not only in its inability to provide an account offering the necessary preconditions for the activity, knowledge type or idea in question, but in offering also rather botched (mutually incompatible) attempts to explain different aspects of what we wake up to in the morning, and what people actually do at work.

When Atheists "explain," that which Laurel giveth, Hardy taketh away. Whether this is a comedy, or more a tragedy, I shall leave it to the reader to decide. The inherent contradictions within the various naturalistically "explained" parts of the Atheistic outlook surely give away its man-made origin as a self-eliminating proposition, not fit to survive in the marketplace of ideas.

And this provides but a sample of its implicates, and the more greatly tangled webs they have woven. More could be said at length on each of these points (and several others). But that is stuff of a later day. Readers need coffee breaks too. Viva Sumatra.