Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the toughts of his heart was only evil continually.In these series of studies on The Christian Mind: Foundations in Genesis we are seeking to understand the basic structures and orientations of the Christian Mind, as well as something of the fundamental conceptual furniture of that Mind. We need to do this because we have a duty to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” (II Corinthians 10:5) A second reason is that if we Christians do not self-consciously root out the ideas and concepts of Unbelief within ourselves―ideas which are sinfully natural to us―we will end up continuing to be guided by the principles of Unbelief, and consequently do harm and damage to God's Kingdom.
Genesis 6:5
The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God”.
They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds;
There is no-one who does good.
The Lord looked down from heaven upon the sons of men,
To see if there are any who understand
Who seek after God.
They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
There is no-one who does good, not even one.
Psalm 14: 1—3
One of the mental components furnishing God's House is believing in the God Who created all things of nothing in the space of six days and all very good. Another item of mental furniture is to understand that man's uniqueness amongst all creatures is his being in the image of God. These basic elements provide the fundamental principles and truths within which the Believing Mind operates. They, also, are elements which are fundamentally and infallibly true.
Prior to Adam's sin the basic structures and orientations of his mind were completely aligned to God and His truth. Adam's mind naturally thought and operated consistently with God and in perfect harmony with the good world He had created. As we say in modern parlance, Adam was mentally “in the zone”.
With the Fall, Adam's mind was radically changed to a mind of Unbelief. Now, he naturally and instinctively thought in unbelieving terms, in opposition to God, and, consequently, in a mode of lying and self-deceit. He had taken off the crystal clear, pure glasses of Creation and had put on a new set of glasses which coloured and tinted everything he saw, thought, and did. We see clear evidence of this in the text (Genesis 3: 7―13) immediately after Adam's sin:
1. Adam and Eve were conscious of shame (verses 7 & 10); the furniture of their minds and hearts had altered radically, such that they knew that things were fundamentally wrong.
2. They instinctively sought to hide their shame from themselves and one another (verse 7). This is the first act of denial of the truth within the human race—it occurred instantaneously and immediately after the Fall. It has governed and ruled fallen (non-redeemed) humanity ever since. From this point on a willing conspiracy to deny the truth has dominated the Unbelieving Mind. It was already walking after its new father—the Father of Lies.
3. They sought to hide from God (verse 8). Already they were naturally and instinctively thinking of God as a god, not the Living True Omniscient God before Whom all things like bare and exposed and nothing can ever be hidden. Adam would not have so distorted and misconstrued the truth prior to the Fall.
4. Adam now naturally and instinctively sought to elide away from responsibility for his actions, and pass accountability and responsibility on to his wife: “the woman Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” (verse 12) But even more sinister was the implication that it was God's fault―after all, it was God who had provided the woman as Adam's companion. Adam's thought patterns had now completely reinterpreted the world and its data according to the principles of unbelief and sin. He had a new set of “shades” with which he was interpreting all reality.
5. Eve shows that she too had undergone a fundamental mind shift: she also seeks to elide away from responsibility and blame the serpent: “the serpent deceived me and I ate.” (verse 13)
Adam and Eve were clearly the same creatures, but fundamentally altered. They were radically different from the creatures they were a few short hours previously. The difference shows up in their minds! How they thought about God, the world, and themselves in relation to one another and to God and the rest of the creation had radically changed.
The Bible makes clear that all mankind inherits from Adam an Unbelieving Mind. The basic furniture and contitutive frame of the mind of every man, woman, and child (apart from the One) when they come into the world is blighted with sin and unbelief. It is not a whole mind, but a pathogenic mind of lies and errors, instinctively thinking of God and everything else sinfully, deceitfully, and wrongly. That which is instinctive and natural to that mind is wrong. The curse of sin falls upon the mind insofar as it falls upon man in the totality of his being. Theologians call this the noetic effects of sin, from the Greek, “nous” meaning mind.
This truth, so clearly revealed in Genesis and elsewhere repeatedly in Scripture, is of such vital importance that it is hard to overstate it. The times when Jerusalem has neglected to face up to it has led it into all kinds of error, idolatry and sin. In the history of Jerusalem there have been traditions—which exist to this day—that have sought to argue that the mind of man escaped the influence of Adam's sin, so that it was possible for fallen man to think truthfully and correctly and rightly about the world and about God. These traditions have caused much harm and damage in the Holy City. They must be exposed and rejected wherever found, for they set the mind of man up as an authority over God and His holy Word. They insinuate filthy idols into God's City.
As a result of sin, the following features characterise the way all human minds think, apart from the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, when a man is born again from above and becomes a new creation:
1. Man is the ultimate authority in the universe. We call this doctrine humanism―the ultimacy of man.These six principles represent the fundamental doctrines of Unbelief. These six principles represent the fundamental constitution of Athens. These six principles all hang together and they represent the indelible frame of all human minds and souls―apart from the regenerating grace of God. These are the presuppositions of unbelief. They cannot be argued for or established by reasoning or evidence or argument without presupposing them as you commence. In other words, they must be assumed to be true even to argue for them or try to justify them.
2. Man's mind can determine truth for itself. We call this doctrine rationalism―the supposed ability not just to discover, but actually to establish truth by means of rational processes, where the human mind determines truth for itself, without prior submission to God.
3. Reality is not pre-interpreted. It is objective and independent. The data of the universe will provide the furniture and truth for man. Knowledge, meaning and interpretation is intrinsic to the universe; it does not come from outside the universe.
4. The human mind is not pre-conditioned in any way, but is a blank slate, open and neutral towards the objective data of the universe.
5. If any god or “higher power” does exist it does so only in frame consistent with the four fundamental principles above: that is, gods may exist, but only as determined, verified, authenticated, and established by man. All gods thus ultimately exist only by the good pleasure of man.
6. The God of the Bible is excluded from the bounds of possibility from the outset, since His existence would make a nonsense of the five fundamental principles above.
All unbelieving thought is circular, and turns upon man, the creature. Consequently, the circle of all unbelieving thought operates in a vicious and destructive way, and is at root fundamentally contradictory, irrational and foolish. It is the fool, after all, who says in his heart that God does not exist.
What do we mean when we say that irrationality and foolishness are bound up in the heart of Unbelief? Well, consider some of the internal contradictions that rack the idolatry of Unbelief―and this is but a sample:
1. The Unbelieving Mind presupposes the objectivity of reality―the objective existence of the facts―which means that the Unbelieving Mind imposes objectivity on the universe as a pre-condition for human thought. But if the universe and the facts were truly objective nothing could ever be asserted about them in advance. Even the presupposition of the objectivity of the facts is a denial of the possibility of objectivity. But if nothing can be asserted about anything in advance, it is impossible and contradictory to assert their objectivity in the first place. It is both stupid and meaningless self-contradiction. Rather, if the universe were finally objective, it would be impossible to assert it to be the case. If it can be asserted, it cannot possibly be true.
2. The Unbelieving mind presupposes that the mind of man can discover and establish the truth of all things, and therefore there is no ultimate conditioning Being. Yet if the universe is not conditioned, it can only ultimately be random. Consequently, the world must be ultimately unknowable. A non-conditioned―a non-ruled universe―is a universe which cannot possibly be described, studied, researched or known. All appearances of regularity and order are just that: appearances which cannot possibly be true. They are a cosmic joke. Truth, verities and certainties are therefore impossible. Rationalism can only exist by trading on a universe it must also assert is ultimately irrational and unknowable. That is why the Bible declares unbelief to be foolishness at root.
3. If the mind of man is truly a blank slate, without any pre-conditioning, the mere assertion of that doctrine to self or another in a same breath equally asserts that my mind maintains a continuous conceptual frame that is common to all. Or still further, the concept of a universal tabula rasa (blank slate) mind is a contradiction in terms for that condition in itself represents a universal character, a mental pre-conditioning. But you cannot hold both to universal mental pre-conditioning, on the one hand, and assert no conditioning on the other. It is an irrational contradiction in terms. Once again, if you assert that man has no mental pre-conditioning, but that his mind is autonomous, neutral, and detatched, by that very proposition you deny that it can possibly be true.
We could go on, but these examples serve to illustrate that the Unbelieving Mind is only evil in its operation, self-deceitful in its mode, and self-contradictory and destructive in its procession. This is what the Bible means when it says that the Unbeliever suppresses the truth in unrighteousness and prefers the lie (Romans 1: 18―25). This, indeed, is the pathology of the Unbelieving Mind.
If we go back to the six fundamental propositions of the Unbelieving Mind, we can only conclude that by those propositions the Unbeliever evidences infallibly his bias, his conditioning, and the glasses which colour everything he thinks, says and does.
The citizens of Jerusalem used to live, move, and have their being in exactly the same frame. But, by God's grace they were transformed. They were born again from above. They were given a new heart and a new mind, so that for the first time they could think truthfully and in principle according to the way that Adam was able to think before the Fall.
But the citizen of Jerusalem is also conscious that many of the old habits of thought still remain, and old habits die hard. Therefore, Christians, when they realise that sin has noetic effects, that sin corrupts the mind, come to be self-conscious and highly self-critical of their innate and natural conceptions. They don't trust themselves. They feel the need―correctly so―to take nothing for granted, but test everything by the Word of God. As this process takes place, they progressively cast down every empty speculation and lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and learn to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (II Corinthians 10: 5).
Between the Unbelieving and the Believing Mind is a great gulf. They have nothing in common in principle. They operate with irreconcilable world views. The Unbelieving Mind has a pathology of sin which asserts from the very outset its independence of God, which is also to assert in the same breath, that God does not, and cannot exist. For if God be true, then it is impossible that any mind, or atom, could be independent of Him. The Unbelieving Mind can no more comprehend the God of the Scriptures than it can deny itself. It is conditioned by Adam's sin to unbelief. It is dead in its trespasses and sins.
But, the pathology of the Unbelieving Mind goes deeper. Not only must it hold its independence amidst a sea of internal self-contradiction and irrationality, the Unbelieving Mind depends upon, draws upon the truth of God and His world in order to assert its unbelief. It presupposes order, structure, rationality, truth etc―it presupposes God and His creation of the universe in order to deny Him and His creation of the universe. It presupposes universal truth, in order to assert that universal truth does not exist. It presupposes the pre-interpretation and pre-conditioning of all reality when it asserts that all reality is objective and carries truth in itself.
It presupposes the non-randomness of the world, in order to assert the ultimacy of chance. But is also presupposes the ultimacy of chance in order to assert that the man is not pre-conditioned and that he can discover meaning and truth for himself. It presupposes that there is a correspondence between the mind of man and the external world, yet at the same time, denies that such things could ever possibly be proven or established.
These characteristics of all Unbelieving Minds makes the Unbelieving Mind not just wrong or mistaken, but wicked. This is what the Bible means when it declares that the unbeliever suppresses the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1: 18).
This is why Jerusalem and Athens are engaged in an irreconcilable conflict. The Unbeliever is dead in his trespasses and sins. His mind is corrupted. Like Adam and Eve after the Fall his enmity toward God means that he can see and reason only in ways which deny the possibility of God existing in the first place. Just as Adam in his deadness could only think of God after the Fall as if He were a god―and that change was both radical and swift―so all his descendants can only proceed on sinful lines with respect to God. The very action of claiming or asserting or proceeding as if one were independent of God means that they must recraft and reinterpret God to be a mere idol.
Thus, when the Unbelieving Mind uses the three letter word “god” both the connotation and denotation of that word is not what the Bible reveals concerning the true and living God. Accordingly Believers and Unbelievers have no common ground to engage in debates and discussions about God. If we stand on the ground of the Unbelieving Mind to discuss God, we have already agreed with the Unbeliever that the God of scripture does not exist, and there are only a god—which is to say, there are gods. (A finite, limited god must contend with what limits it—which means that whatever limits it is equally entitled to be regarded as a god.) But, on the other hand, the Unbeliever will not, and cannot, stand on Jerusalem's ground when he discusses God. The pathology of his mind, his spiritual deadness, prevents it.
Our task as citizens of Jerusalem is not to seek to serve God by lies. We must not deny God, and agree with Unbelievers that we will only discuss gods, when we are speaking with them. We must always be faithful to the truth.
Must we ever then, Believer and Unbeliever, pass like ships in the night? No. For despite the deadness of the Unbeliever, the God revealed in Scripture is true. He alone makes meaning possible. The very fact of being able to think and communicate meaningfully about anything is an infallible ineradicable testimony to the Living God. Therefore, no man, woman, or child is beyond His reach. Every man, woman, and child already knows deep down, truly, that the God of Scripture is true and that they are lying to themselves. But there is no blindness so dark that He cannot remove. As we call all men to come, God is able to bring life, so that the deadness of heart ceases, and that no longer suppresses the truth about God. God is able to change the mind of dead Unbelief to one of Belief. He is able to remove and heal the pathology of the Unbelieving Mind―so that the new citizen of Jerusalem is able to declare, “Once I was blind, but now I see.”
God is able. But will He? Emphatically, yes. He has sent His Son into the world and raised Him from the dead that He might be made Lord of both the living and the dead―so that all creatures might be taught to walk in His commandments. (Matthew 28: 18―20) To God alone be the glory.
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