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Is God Beyond Our Ability to Know Him?

by | Aug 1, 2012 |

This really continues monday’s post…Here’s one more response to Stephen Prothero’s book God is Not One. The story he’s referring to is the Blind Men and the Elephant, which I discussed a couple weeks ago. First the selection from the book, and then my response:

For me, this story is a reminder not of the unity of the world’s religions (as Ramakrishna and the perennialists would have us believe), or of their shared stupidity (as Saxe and the New Atheists would argue), but of the limits of human knowledge. …One function of the transcendent is to humble us, remind us that our thoughts are not the thoughts of God or the Great Goddess – to remind us that, at least for the time being, we see through a glass, darkly. Yes, religious people offer solutions to the human predicament as they see it. Yet these solutions inevitably open up more questions than they close down. This is definitely true of Confucius and Hillel, who, perhaps more than any of the figures discussed in this book, followed Rilke’s admonition to ‘love the questions themselves.’ But it is also true of Muhammad, who once said, ‘Asking good questions is half of learning,’ and of Jesus, whose parables seem designed less to teach us a lesson than to move us to scratch our heads.

When it comes to safeguarding the world from the evils of religion, including violence by proxy from the hand of God, the claim that all religions are one is no more effective than the claim that all religions are poison. Far more powerful is the reminder that any genuine belief in what we call God should humble us, remind us that, if there really is a god or goddess worthy of the name, He or She or It must surely know more than we do about the things that matter most. This much, at least, is shared across the great religions.

Prothero’s main claim in the bolded passages is that God is too far beyond us for us to know Him or describe Him in any meaningful way. This is another very common claim about God which floats around. But can we examine it?

Here are some pertinent questions:

  • How does Prothero know that God is transcendent? And how does he know what, exactly, the “transcendence” of God is, or means?
  • On what basis does he refer to Isaiah 55:8 (“our thoughts are not the thoughts of God or the Great Goddess”)? Is he saying Isaiah is a reliable guide to knowledge of God? If so, does he adhere to the rest of the prophet’s writings? (And has he grappled with the reaction Isaiah would have to inserting “the Great Goddess” into the verse?)
  • Similarly, why does he quote 1 Corinthians 13:12? Does he trust Paul as a witness to God?
  • When he states the true intention of Jesus’ parables, is he claiming an understanding of Jesus’ motives? If so, where does he come by such knowledge? Jesus Himself seems to have expressed other kinds of intentions for His parables in passages like Matthew 13:10-17.
  • How does he claim to know what a “genuine belief” in God would produce in a believer? What if God were a proud, violent God, who wanted proud, violent followers? Or is Prothero certain that God is not like this? How does He know this?
  • Why is the fact that God must know more than we do relevant to the discussion as to whether we can know God at all? (This is where we’ll go next Monday night, by the way…)
  • Finally, if “He or She or It” knows “the things that matter most,” is He or She or It unable to communicate which things those are? (This takes us back to last week’s study…)

What we need to see here is that Dr. Prothero is claiming to know certain things about God–specifically, that God can’t really be known or described. And all we need to ask is, how does this author come by this knowledge? Implicitly, he’s asking us to trust his mind over any other source of information. He stands above any other claim to knowledge about God to tell us what we can really know about Him. It is as if we are asked to believe that the bible may not be infallible, but Dr. Prothero is.

The Source of True Victory (notes from last night)

by | Jul 31, 2012 |

It was a great time with everyone last night as we looked together how the Israelites were defeated when they held on to their sin but as soon as they repented and cried out to the LORD, God fought their battle for them and continued to deliver them as they walked in the light. Repentance is not a popular topic but is the center of a genuine Christian’s life. God wants to fight your battles for you but it first comes through the cross. Here is what we went through together.

1 Samuel 4:1-11, 7:1-17; & New Testament on Repentance

The Old Testament is relevant for us today.

Jesus is our great high priest, Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, the law being filled and many other OT examples only make sense if we rightly understand the OT. The OT was written as examples & warnings for us (1 Cor 10) and God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

1 Sam 4:1-11

 

Background (before 1 Sam 4)

  • God chose a people to show his covenant faithfulness to even when they weren’t faithful. He called them Israel and gave them his perfect law as a standard to live up to but they couldn’t keep it so God setup sacrifices to deal with this problem.
  • The nation is in a HORRIBLE state of pride and sin.
  • The Priests
    • Should Be:
      • the ones who were supposed to be most consecrated
      • holy to God
      • teaching the people the very words of God
      • ministering before the Lord on behalf of the people bringing sacrifices for sins that people would be forgiven
    • Instead, they were:
      • having sex with the women coming to worship
      • taking the fat and the best meat for themselves that should be offered to God
      • abhorring  the offerings of God (2:17)

Notes on 1 Sam 4:1-11

  • In their sin, they reduced the glory of God to a lucky rabbit’s foot.
  • 30,000 foot soldiers are dead, Israel is defeated, the priests are slain, the ark of the covenant is taken captive into uncircumcised Philistine territory (for the first time ever!), and the glory of God is departed from Israel.
  • Significance of the Ark
    • Moses built it out of acacia wood & overlaid with gold, inside & out, with rings for 2 poles to carry it, and a mercy-seat cover as a base for the 2 cherubim made out of gold which were over the ark. Inside was a jar of manna and the 2 stone 10 commandment tablets. [mercy seat = ἱλαστήριον (Exo 25:17) or propitiatory (translated from Hebrew)].
    • You could go to a jeweler right now and order one for the right price. Nothing special about this gold box except…God chose to make his dwelling among them by putting his shekinah glory, a visible manifestation of God’s presence above the ark, between the cherubim.
    • Ex 25:22 “The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you. There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from bbetween the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.”

Part 1 – 1 Samuel 7:1-6

  • v1. – The ark comes back to Israel.
  • v2. – [20 year gap] People mourned (lamented) & sought after the Lord
    • Presumably, Samuel’s word had been going out to all Israel as a prophet since 4:1. Some 20 years have passed since they have been defeated and God’s glory was honored in their midst.
    • Now, they are faced again with God’s presence and their sin.
  • v.3 Samuel helps lead them through 4 steps of repentance
    • 1. Returning to Lord with all your hearts
    • Deut 6:5 “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
    • Not kinda-sorta coming back. If you do this truly, things will change in your life.
  • v2. Rid yourselves (put away – KJV) of the foreign gods & ashtoreths
    • fertility god – // picture of pornography
    • Necessary requirement.
    • 1st Commandment – you shall have no other gods before me.
  • v3. Prepare your hearts to the lord (commit yourselves to the LORD-NIV, direct your heart to the LORD-ESV)
  • v4. AND SERVE him only.
    • Matt 6:24 – “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. (Mat 6:24 ESV)
    • Serving God isn’t restrictive, oppressive, or anything else but liberating & full of love and joy.
    • Sad when you see people look directly at God and say I will not serve you because you are trying to oppress me, it’s all made up by man etc.
    • Rather, fullness of joy is in it because we were made to serve him.
      • PS 16:11 in your presence there is bfullness of joy; at your right hand are cpleasures forevermore. (Psa 16:11 ESV)
      • Eph 2:10 For awe are his workmanship, bcreated in Christ Jesus cfor good works, dwhich God prepared beforehand, ethat we should walk in them. (Eph 2:10 ESV)
    • IF you are returning…HE will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines
      • Not the ark.
      • God promised in the OT to do this already!
  • v4-6. They put away baals (male counterpart) & ashtoreths (female fertility God) & served him only.
  • v6. Assemble all Israel at Mizpah (means watchtower – high hill) – Samuel to intercede & pray to them.
    • Fasted, confessed their sin before the Lord.
    • Drew water & poured it out before the Lord.
      • Ps 62:8 – “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”
      • Lam 2:19 – “Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street.”
    • Drink Offering
      • Can’t undo pouring water on the ground.
      • Act of humility and emptying oneself of all of your pride as an expression of laying everything before the Lord in an irrevocable manner.
      • God doesn’t ask you to pretend when he calls you to confess, he already knows everything already.
      • Confessed – we have sinned against the LORD.
      • To say the same thing God thinks of our sin in order to receive true forgiveness. (1JN 1:9, PS 32)

Repentance – What is it?

  • Definition – to turn or return; to change your mind; to turn around and do an about face, to turn from sin and turn towards God (Heb shubh; GK μετάνοια or ἐπιστρέφω)
  • The message of repentance hasn’t stopped in the OT, it’s what our Lord wants all disciples to preach to all people, everywhere – in all generations. The need for repentance hasn’t changed from 1 Sam 7.
  • Sometimes we can think that repentance is an over hyped sermon preached only by doomsday preachers on the street corner. I don’t know where we get that idea but that’s not the Bible. As Brian’s been saying, let’s allow the Bible to shape our thinking. Here’s much of the NT on repentance.

New Testament Scriptures on Repentance

  • Matthew 4:17 – From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
  • Matthew 12:41 –  The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
  • Luke 5:32 – I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

No One Is Excluded

  • Luke 13:3, 5 – Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
  • 2 Peter 3:9 – The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
  • Acts 3:17-19, 26 – “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that chis Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out…. God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”

Repentance is a gift given in order to come out from judgment

  • Romans 2:4 –  Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?
  • Acts 17:30-32 – “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”  Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.”

Repentance will change your behavior

  • Acts 26:20 – but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.
  • 2 Tim 2:19 – But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.”
  • Rev ch. 2&3: Jesus commands 5 out of the 7 churches to repent.

Repentance is central to the Christian message

  • Luke 24:45-47 –  Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day crise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed bin his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Repentance is central to the gospel

  • John 3:16-20 “For God so loved bthe world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world bto condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

We can’t think for a moment that we are able to get away with sin or presume that God’s OK with it.

  • The end of wickedness is destruction by God, final judgment, when they will have to give an account for all their sins against God apart from the free gift of salvation & righteousness of Christ.
  • Asaph learned this and told us in Ps 73 how he saw the prosperity of the wicked and envied their easy life of bliss until he came to understand how God saw them and what their end was apart from him, forever.
  • Although we may not die in physical battle like the Israelites did in 1 Sam 4, judgment is coming on the world. Everyone will give an account, even the careless words we say. Jesus certainly doesn’t take this lightly.
    • Matt 12:36-37 – I tell you,on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.
  • God’s patience leads us to repentance (Rom 2) yet God will not be mocked.
    • Gal 6:7-9 – Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And alet us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
    • We are often very cavalier, with our lives & with sin.
      • “Be as moderate as you can” says the luke-warm mainstream.
      • But God says, “Be holy because I am holy.”
      • Let’s see our sin how God sees it. Confess it for what it is. Call a spade a spade! And turn from our ways that God may grant us forgiveness.

1 Sam 4 vs. 1 Sam 7

  • 1 Sam 4
    • God in a Box – it’s there good luck charm.
    • Still in sin.
    • Doing what’s right in their own eyes.
    • This will always defeat you.
  • 1 Sam 7
    • Repentance leads to victory.
    • God now hears their prayer and acts on their behalf.
    • Israel is now broken and in their rightful place.
    • God isn’t looking for those who are able to drag him into battle.
    • God is looking for those who are broken over their sin and cry out to him in humility so that he may act on their behalf.

Part 2 – 1 Sam 7:7-17

  • Persecution
    • It’s no surprise that the Israelites face conflict as soon as they return to the Lord.
    • We are promised persecutions.
    • Don’t think it STRANGE (1 Pet 4)
    • John 16:33 – I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
  • v9. Lamb – offered it up as whole burnt offering to the LORD.
    • He cried out to the LORD on Israel’s behalf & the LORD heard him – the story of every saint who has known God.
    • Notice how Samuel is not even paying attention to the battle! He’s on a high hill with a fire & smoke for all to see!
    • God’s strategy for battle isn’t necessarily our strategy for battle.
  • v10. Notice that God sent victory AS Samuel is worshiping!
    • Battles are won on your knees. Moses with his hands lifted in Ex 17 etc.
    • God’s plan for victory never relies on great strategy effort.
    • He lifts up the humble. He binds the broken. He protects the weak.
    • Samuel went to seek the Lord & continued to draw near to him in the midst of the trial.
    • Don’t run from trials but run to God. When trials come, what do you turn to: God in prayer or your own strategy?
  • v11. Courageous men rushed to slaughter the Philistines. Righteousness = boldness & courage.
  • v12. “Thus far has the LORD helped us.”
    • Ebenezer means stone of help – the rock served as a memorial.
    • Ebenezer had been the same place they were defeated in ch 4. Now, it’s the place where God has helped them.
    • You will see his faithful hand if you walk with him.
    • As far as we have come, the Lord has helped us.
    • God had already promised to fight their battles for them. Samuel was just trusting in God’s word.
  • Notice what true repentance does to you. It gives you the ability to call upon God. You can’t rely on the one you don’t trust in. If you love your sin, you can’t love God. We only have the ability to serve one. If you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength – he will give you the ability to do his will.
    • You trusted in ________, which couldn’t save you. Now, you trust in the living God, who is mighty to save.
    • God hears through the blood of a sacrifice. You can’t come to him on your own and expect that he will listen apart from Christ. Ultimately, what would it get you anyway? A nice house, car, family, yard, boat, power, success for 80 years and then what? You need the blood of the lamb. The whole offering of a wholly consecrated life of the perfect son of God to save you.
  • v14 – cities restored to IS (from Ekron to Gath – the very cities that were taken by Philistines in Ch 4) – God can reclaim anything you’ve lost in your flesh.
  • v17 – Returned to Ramah (his home for the 1st 3 years of life) & built an alter to the LORD.
    • Samuel grew up in the tabernacle at Shiloh.
    • Even though he is no longer inside the walls of the tabernacle at Shiloh where the sacrifice was, he never left the alter. It was his relationship with God in repentance that marked his life.
    • Take note of these things for they are examples for us.
  • Read Psalm 27 as a heart that wants to draw near to God.
  • Let’s not mess around in our youth but lets grow up to be men and women of God (1 Cor 13:11). Lets invest in one another, stirring one another up towards love and good deeds. Let’s repent now and live a life producing fruit in keeping with repentance & worship our God that he may give us the victory.

God. Incomprehensible, yet knowable.

by | Jul 30, 2012 | ,

Tonight we’ll have Josh Nelson bringing the word for our meeting. Next week I hope to finish the series on epistemology. In the meantime, I saw this passage from John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God that summed up so much of what we’ve been saying that I had to post it here. Wade through the philosopher talk to get to the good stuff.

When non-Christians argue that God is unknowable, they generally appeal to the limitations implicit in human knowledge. They claim, with Hume, that our knowledge is limited to sense perception or, with Kant, that we can only know “appearances” or “phenomena,” not reality itself. Or, with more recent (but currently unfashionable) positivism, they argue that we know only what can be established by a certain kind of scientific method. Thus God either must be unknowable (the non-Christian transcendence standpoint), or He must fit within the realms of finite sense-perception – “phenomena” or science – and thus be less than the biblical God (the non-Christian immanence standpoint); or else we must bounce arbitrarily back and forth between these two positions (the approach of modern dialectical theology and philosophy).

It is certainly true that our knowledge is finite. The agnostic has recognized that in some measure, though he illegitimately uses it for his own purposes. But the limitations of human knowledge are, we will see, very different from the kinds of limitations supposed by Hume, Kant, and the positivists.

For now, however, we should simply remind ourselves who the Lord is. Because He controls all things, God enters His world – our world – without being relativized by it, without losing His divinity. Thus in knowing our world, we know God. Because God is the supreme authority, the author of all the criteria by which we make judgments or come to conclusions, we know Him more certainly than we know any other fact about the world. And because God is the supremely present one, He is inescapable.

God is not shut out by the world; He is not rendered incapable of revealing himself because of the finitude of the human mind.

On the contrary, all reality reveals God.

The agnostic argument, then, presupposes a nonbiblical concept of God.

If God is who Scripture says He is, there are no barriers to knowing Him.

Science and the Interpretation of Data

by | Jul 26, 2012 |

This will take you about half an hour, but if you have any interaction with modern science, or with others who do, it will be worth your time.

I’ve put up a couple of posts about the Higgs Boson particle that has been in the news since its existence was confirmed. This post is not really about the Boson, but about some essential things to remember when we read headlines and see interviews and have discussions with peole regarding, not just the findings of modern science, but more importantly, the interpretations given to those findings, and the philosophical and theological claims made based on the interpretations.

Below is a clip from a CNN interview with theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. Listen carefully to the claims he makes about the nature of the Higgs Boson and what it tells us about the universe.

Now, here are links to the audio of the Reasonable Faith podcast with William Lane Craig, in which he responds to this CNN interview.

  • Reasonable Faith Podcast: “The God Particle”  Download or Stream 

In this podcast he points out two major things:

  1. The theological claims Dr. Kaku makes have no basis in and no connection to the confirmation of the Higgs Boson’s existence, or to anything having to do with physics in general. Thus, when he goes beyond the physics to make metaphysical claims, he simply does not understand what he asserts. (Giving him the benefit of the doubt, of course.)
  2. Worse, evidently Dr. Kaku goes even further than this, to make several claims about the Higgs Boson that are scientifcally false. They’re just not true in terms of what we currently know about physics. Dr. Craig explains this well in the clip, as he goes point by point to respond to Dr. Kaku.

He concludes his observations like this:

“I’ve said…that as a result of my experience with people like Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Hawking, and certain others, that we can no longer trust these men to tell us about the implications of modern scientific theories–and especially about their philosophical and theological ramifications. And I think we have to add now Michio Kaku to that list. There is an agenda–perhaps a naturalistic or anti-religious agenda–that drives these statements suggesting that, somehow, the discovery of the final particle in the standard model (that everyone has always assumed to be true) somehow disproves religion…or worse.”

We as Christians do need to ask ourselves the questions that stem from these kinds of issues. Questions like: What would make someone of Michio Kaku’s stature go on CNN and make incorrect and misleading statements? Why doesn’t he just report an exciting confirmation of theoretical physics? What makes him go even further, to act as though he is an authority on questions that have nothing to do with his field of study?

More importantly, we need to ask ourselves this: What do we as believers need to keep in mind when we watch these interviews, read these headlines, and hear these claims?

Real Knowledge Leads to Worship

by | Jul 25, 2012 |

Francis Shaeffer, channelling the heart of this summer’s Young Adults studies:

A number of years ago I was at a discussion group in Detroit. An older pastor was there. We discussed many intellectual and cultural problems and the answers given by Christianity. One would have called the discussion “intellectual” rather than devotional. As he was leaving, the pastor shook my hand and thanked me. If he had said, “Thank you for helping me to defend my people better,” or “Thank you for helping me be a better evangelist,” I would have been very glad that what I had said had been helpful, and then possibly I would not have given it another thought.

But what he actually said was, “Thank you for opening these doors to me, now I can worship God better.”

I will never forget him because he was a man who really understood.

If this is not our own response first of all, and then the response of those whom we try to help, we have made a mistake somewhere.

–from The God Who is There

How Do We Know Things? (Notes from Last Night.)

by | Jul 24, 2012 |

Last night we continued our look into how we as Christians justify our claim to know things, especially things about God. Here are the  notes: 

A Christian Epistemology, Part 2: How do we know things?

First, a little recap. Here are the questions we’re addressing: How can Christians claim to really know God? How can they claim to have a true knowledge of God, especially one that is more accurate than other concepts of God? How can we really know anything? Or maybe, how can we really know anything except by direct experience?

 There are ar least five assumptions behind questions like these, and were using these studies to address and examine them.

The assumptions behind all these questions:

  1. That the source of our knowledge is within—what we can figure out with our own brains. That our brains are limited, and that these limits are the limits of our knowledge.
  2. That if God exists, he could not give, or has not given, or would not give, information about Himself and the world. (…That God doesn’t exist in any meaningful way.) There has been no authoritative information given about the world or about God.
  3. That if a being such as God did give information, we could not understand it in any more than some partial, vague way. In other words, if God spoke, He would be unable to communicate truly and accurately to the minds that He made. He would be limited by our minds. So He can make us, but not communicate to us.
  4. That in order to anything meaningfully, we must know exhaustively. Since we can’t know everything about God, we can’t claim to know anything about God.
  5. Since no one is there to explain the world to us, it is up to us to figure it all out using our minds. We do this by observing objects and analyzing data. In other words, knowledge is impersonal.

Last night we specifically examined assumptions #1-3 by thinking about revelation.

Assumption #1:  If #5 is true, then # 1 is true.
Is it true that our only source of knowledge is what we generate by experience of gathering data and interpreting it? (In other words, is Assumption #5 true?) If that were the case, then assumption #1 would be correct—and our knowledge would be limited by the limits of our own mind.

But if it’s true (as we saw last week) that there is more to the universe than impersonal facts for our mind to analyze, that if—as the Bible explains—all the facts in the universe are put in place by Someone who is behind it all, then another possibility is raised. Because if this Being, who possess all knowledge, decided to communicate to us, then we would have access to knowledge which our minds could otherwise never know.

This raises more questions, which need to be answered by people making assumptions 2 and 3.

Assumption #2: Do we have any reason for assuming…

  • …that God is unable to give us information? This seems unlikely if He can create us (our minds.)
  • …that God unwilling to give us information? This is possible, but why should we assume this is the case? Is it really likely that God would make us, and then refuse to speak to us?
  • …that God simply hasn’t given such information? This also may be the case, if He was unwilling. But again, why should we assume this to be true? Can anyone prove that the Creator has not given us any information about Himself, ourselves, or our universe?

This is the main assumption made by people, especially in academic settings, if they are willing to grant that God exists. So you get discussions that proceed along the lines of: “You think you’re right about God, the Muslims think they’re right about God, and the Hindus think they’re right. Let’s just admit that we are all partially right and partially wrong. No one has the whole story.”

But within assumption #2 there’s another assumption at work: That if more than one person thinks they’re right about something, then they can’t all be right. But we wouldn’t see it this way in other contexts. Imagine a bank where the workers discover that someone has smuggled counterfeit bills into the vault. The fake bills are filling the banks cash drawers. The branch is shut down while the employees try to find which bills are fake and which are true. What they discover is that there are many kinds of counterfeits. They find dozens of versions of 20’s and 100’s alone. Quickly, arguments form as to which bills are authentic. Several different groups of employees form around certain bills. Each group claims that they have the correct bills, and they can list all the reasons why their bills are the real bills.

 Now, if we were to step in to the situation, we would understand a few things immediately.

  1. It is not possible for every group to be right. They have different bills. The disagreement is real.
  2. It is possible that they are all wrong. This would be the case if either they happened to not have any true bills in the branch (in other words, real bills exist, they just don’t have any) or if, in fact, money isn’t real, and they are deceived about there being a monetary economy, in other words, there is no such thing as authentic currency at all. But we know that, in our nation at least, the second option is not the case, so we would only need to discern if there were any real bills in the branch, and identify them.
  3. Since there was so much disagreement among people, what would be needed would be an outside source of information. This could come from a person, say, a representative of the U.S. Mint, who was an authority on the subject, maybe even carrying a copy of real currency. This could also come from a book—say, if one of the branch employees found a U.S. Mint “Guide to Identifying Authentic Currency.”

But notice, at no time in the story would we simply assume that since people are in disagreement, and fervently believe that opposing views are true—that it follows that none of them can be right. In other words, the presence of disagreement doesn’t negate the possibility of someone being right, and of a real bill existing. It just means we have to do our homework. So to apply this to our discussion—unless you assume there is no God who truly exists, then you have to grant that, unless He has hidden Himself and refused to speak, it is at least possible for someone to know what He has said, and therefore to be right about who He is.

Assumption #3: Why should we assume that a being Who could create our minds couldn’t also communicate clearly to us, in a way we could understand? 

The game changer for Christians is this: revelation. That is, we have come to see that even though our minds are limited, and we can only reach so high with them, God has pierced down into our world with information. This is possible because He made our minds, and made us in His image. In other words, He made us expressly for the purpose of communicating to us. (See Genesis 1:3, 1:26-30, 2:16-17.)

So, How has He communicated? In Three main ways:

Psalm 19:1-6 – God Communicates in Nature.

  • He made every physical thing to show: Glory, Power & Authority (Rom 1), Care (Gen 1)
  • For more on this, check out Job 38-41, Psalm 104.
  • Nature is revelation: personal, intentional, communicative.

Psalm 19:7-14 – God Communicates in His Word.

The spoken and written word of God is different than nature because it is propositional—that is, it communicates information in the form of definite statements. It’s the difference between the communication of a facial expression and the communication of a sentence. In short, nature must be interpreted, but propositional revelation is interpretive. But there’s more. The Bible says that it is only this Word revelation that can save us. Here in Psalm 19 we see that the word does these things: Turns us back to God, makes us wise (v.7), brings us joy, enlightens us (v.8), keeps us in the pathway of God’s blessing (v.11), helps us understand our errors (v.12-13), and keeps us in general agreement with God (v.14). See Psalm 119:11, 25, 104; Romans 10:8-18, Luke 24:46-47, for more to think about along these lines.

Hebrews 1:1-2; John 1:1-4 & 14; 1 John 1:1-2 – God Communicated in Christ

The final and fullest revelation of God works together with both nature (He took on flesh and came into our world) and the written word (He fulfilled prophecy and is completing the history recorded in it) to give the fullest expression of Who God is and how we may be reconnected to Him. God’s message is a Man, His life, His character, His work, His message. This s good news! What does God communicate in Christ? Grace and Truth! (John 1:18, 29) Love!

Thus God has communicated to us in our context (the universes and our planet) in a book (the Bible) and in a person (Christ). So our knowledge is not limited solely to what our minds can analyze from data, but we have open to us everything our Creator has communicated in these three ways. So the possibility of real understanding and knowledge about God, and much more, exists.

Knowledge and Spiritual Life

by | Jul 23, 2012 |

We’ll continue tonight to look at how a Christian is able to claim to know things. In the meantime, here’s C.H. Mackintosh with some essential thoughts on what it means to know things about God, and how that should impact our relationship to Him:

The present is an age of knowledge — of religious knowledge; but oh! knowledge is not life, knowledge is not power — knowledge will not deliver from sin or Satan, from the world, from death, from hell. Knowledge, I mean, short of the knowledge of God in Christ. One may know a great deal of Scripture, a great deal of prophecy, a great deal of doctrine, and, all the while, be dead in trespasses and sins…

How much happier to be a worshipper at the feet of Jesus, though with slender knowledge, than to be a learned scribe, and a heart cold, dead, and distant from that blessed One! How much better to have the heart full of lively affection for Christ than to have the intellect stored with the most accurate knowledge of the letter of Scripture!

What is the melancholy characteristic of the present time? A wide diffusion of scriptural knowledge with little love for Christ, and little devotedness to His work; abundant readiness to quote Scripture, like the scribes and chief priests, but little purpose of heart, like the wise men, to open the treasures and present to Christ the willing offerings of a heart filled by the sense of what He is. What we want is personal devotedness, and not the mere empty display of knowledge. It is not that we would undervalue scriptural knowledge; God forbid, if that knowledge be found in connection with genuine discipleship. But if it be not, I ask, of what value is it? None whatever. The most extensive range of knowledge, if Christ be not its centre, will avail just nothing; yea, it will, in all probability, render us more efficient instruments in Satan’s hand for the furthering of his purposes of hostility to Christ. An ignorant man can do but little mischief; but a learned man, without Christ, can do a great deal.

You can read the whole thing here.

Is Faith the Opposite of Knowledge?

by | Jul 20, 2012 | ,

When we speak about knowing things as Christians, one thing to remember is that the way we use the word faith is very different than the way our culture typically uses the word. Most people use the word to describe something other than knowledge. If you have faith, it is because you believe something, but that doesn’t actually indicate whether that thing is true or not. People say “faith” and “belief” especially about things they don’t think can be proven, tested, or known to be actually true. Hence, you’ll often hear sentences like, “Well, you can believe that, but you can’t know.” It is a discussion worth having, but we need to remember that in the bible “faith” does not mean, “something you think when you can’t know.” Rather, it means something more like, “trusting someone or something to be faithful to do what He or it is supposed to do.” Really, “trust” is a better word here. Hence, faith may look like our trust in the words God has spoken about Jesus being raised from the dead, even if we have not physically seen Christ in His resurrected body.  That’s one way to understand what Jesus said to Thomas in John 20:29.

Francis Schaeffer has a great parable about this, relating it to climbing a mountain and getting lost in a fog…

“Faith” Versus Faith.

One must analyze the word faith and see that it can mean two completely opposite things. 

Suppose we are climbing in the Alps and are very high on the bare rock, and suddenly the fog shuts down. The guide turns to us and says that the ice is forming and that there is no hope; before morning we will all freeze to death here on the shoulder of the mountain. Simply to keep warm the guide keeps us moving in the dense fog further out on the shoulder until none of us have any idea where we are. After an hour or so, someone says to the guide, “Suppose I dropped and hit a ledge ten feet down in the fog. What would happen then?” The guide would say that you might make it until the morning and thus live. So, with absolutely no knowledge or any reason to support his action, one of the group hangs and drops into the fog. This would be one kind of faith, a leap of faith.

Suppose, however, after we have worked out on the shoulder in the midst of the fog and the growing ice on the rock, we had stopped and we heard a voice which said, “You cannot see me, but I know exactly where you are from your voices. I am on another ridge. I have lived in these mountains, man and boy, for over sixty years and I know every foot of them. I assure you that ten feet below you there is a ledge. If you hang and drop, you can make it through the night and I will get you in the morning.”

I would not hang and drop at once, but would ask questions to try to ascertain if the man knew what he was talking about and if he was not my enemy. In the Alps, for example, I would ask him his name. If the name he gave me was the name of a family from that part of the mountains, it would count a great deal to me. In the Swiss Alps there are certain family names that indicate mountain families of that area. In my desperate situation, even though time would be running out, I would ask him what to me would be the adequate and sufficient questions, and when I became convinced by his answers, then I would hang and drop.

This is faith, but obviously it has no relationship to the other use of the word. As a matter of fact, if one of these is called faith, the other should not be designated by the same word. The historic Christian faith is not a leap of faith in the post-Kierkegaardian sense because He is not silent, and I am invited to ask the adequate and sufficient questions, not only in regard to details, but also in regard to the existence of the universe and its complexity and in regard to the existence of man. I am invited to ask adequate and sufficient questions and then believe Him and bow before Him metaphysically in knowing that I exist because He made man, and bow before Him morally as needing His provision for me in the substitutionary, propitiatory death of Christ.

[This is Appendix B in He is There and He is Not Silent]

Let’s Pray for Each Other. Like This.

by | Jul 19, 2012 |

One of the things that struck me in our recent study of Ephesians 6 was a particular thing Paul said about prayer in 6:18. Part of our armor, he says, is to be constantly praying for each other–“for all the saints.” With that in mind, in a recent reading of Colossians, I noticed how much instruction Paul gives us in what we should desire, and pray, for each other. By showing us what he desired for the Colossian church, Paul shows us (in 2012, in Philadelphia) what the Holy Spirit desires for us. And this instructs us in how to pray for ourselves, for each other, and for the Church at large.

So what did Paul want for the Colossians?

  1. That they’d be filled with the knowledge of Gods will. (1:9)
  2. That they’d have spiritual wisdom and understanding (1:9)
  3. …so that they could please the Lord with their life. (1:10)
  4. That they’d have lots of fruit-nearing good works. (1:10)
  5. That they’d be growing in their knowledge of God (1:10)
  6. That they’d be strong from God’s power (1:11)
  7. …so that they could endure trouble with joy (1:11)
  8. …and give thanks to God. (1:12)
  9. That they’d continue in the faith, strong and unmoveable. (1:23)
  10. That they’d reach maturity in Christ. (1:28)
  11. That they’d be encouraged. (2:2)
  12. That they’d be “knit together in love.” (2:2)
  13. That they’d reach full assurance of understanding (2:3)
  14. …so that no one could deceive them with false doctrine. (2:4)

If you’re excited about what God is doing with us on Monday nights and as a group, let’s pray these things for each other. Let’s pray them for our church and for our friends. Let’s respond to what God is doing by asking Him to do even more.

Knowledge and the Scientific Method

by | Jul 18, 2012 | , , ,

As we continue to study the Christian’s justification for claiming to know things about God and the world, it might be helpful to think for a moment about how the Scientific Method relates to what we know as Christians. What do we say if someone says they won’t believe in the Bible or in our message about Christ because they only believe in the Scientific Method–they only believe in what they can test scientifically?

John Frame’s work on epistemology, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, is full of incredibly helpful thoughts on all of these things. Here’s a short passage where he discusses how the popular conception of the Scientific Method as some sort of impartial way to know truth is flawed: 

The “popular understanding of the scientific method”…is really a serious oversimplification. Scientists do not just “check out the facts” by means of sense-experience.

(i) Generally they use instruments, rather than their naked senses, because the senses by themselves are generally not sufficiently accurate for scientific purposes. But the instruments that scientists use interpose a great deal of human theoretical ingenuity between the observer and the things he observes. When he uses such instruments, the scientist is not only checking his theory with observations, he is also checking out his observations by means of theory-dependent instruments.

(ii) Scientific work does not consist in just making and reporting observations but in analyzing and evaluating data.

(iii) Scientific theories do not merely report observational data; they go beyond it. Scientific laws are usually general; they claim to hold for the entire universe.

(iv) What we “see,” “hear,” “smell,” “taste,” and “feel” is influenced by our expectations. Those expectations do not come just from sense-experience but from theories, cultural experience, group loyalties, prejudice, religious commitments, and so forth. Thus there is no “purely empirical” inquiry. We never encounter “brute,” that is, uninterpreted, facts. We only encounter facts that have been interpreted in terms of our existing commitments.

(v) Often, then, scientists do not recognize data that contradict their theories. But even when they do, they do not immediately accept such data as refutations of the theories in question. An apparently contradictory datum constitutes a “problem” to be solved in terms of the theory, not a refutation of it. Only when the problems multiply and alternative theories begin to look more promising will the scientist abandon his theory for another.

For all of those reasons, the work of science is far more than merely “checking out the facts.” And if scientists are unable to separate theory from fact, non-scientists can hardly be expected to do so. Science does not operate by means of a pure empiricism, and certainly the rest of us cannot be expected to either.