Stolen Clothes

Answering Unbelief

In public discourse and debate, Christians need to be cautious and careful, on the one hand, and wise and fearless, on the other.  In that regard, the following proverbs are of great help:

Answer not a fool according to his folly,
    lest you be like him yourself.
Answer a fool according to his folly,
    lest he be wise in his own eyes.  [Proverbs 26: 4-5]

At first glance these two proverbs appear contradictory: the fact they are back-to-back, however, tells us that the contradiction is superficial and is, like many proverbs, intended to provoke thought.

The social context of these proverbs is that of a fool (an Unbeliever) uttering something, espousing an idea, policy, or position.  He may or may not be speaking directly; often times he will be speaking indirectly, through some medium such as a book, an article, or a quotation in the media.  But, in any event, some foolishness has come forth.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Apologetics and the Heart

Posted on Saturday, January 18, 2014 

By Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

This article was originally published in Antithesis (July/August 1990). I still agree with all of this, but I must say that reading stuff of mine that is over twenty years old gives me the feeling that I used to compose my prose with flattened cardboard boxes and tin snips. Just so you know. In preparing this for the blog, I fixed a few typos, and no doubt introduced a few new ones. And all the italics refused to transfer for some reason.

Apologetics and the Heart
I must perhaps begin by explaining that I do under­stand that an (abusive) ad hominem argument is a logical fallacy. There is no reason to think we have refuted someone’s arguments simply because we have vigorously attacked their person. There is also another fallacy, closely related to the ad hominem, dubbed “Bulverism” by C.S. Lewis.[i] He pointed out the modern tendency to dismiss an argument on no stronger grounds than the fact that you had explained how your oppo­nent came to believe it.

But it does not follow from this that there is no connection between lifestyle and truth. It is inadequate to argue that the atheism of Jones cannot be true because he kicks his dog. If he offers arguments, then the arguments should be addressed. A thorough apologetic method will address arguments while at the same time understanding and taking into account their source.

As Christians, our intellectual object is to think God’s thoughts after Him. Our aim must not be a false humanistic “originality,” but rather, in one sense, submis­sion to the way things are.

Ultimate Time and Chance

Both Feet Firmly Planted in Midair

Justin Taylor
August 09, 2013

Francis Schaeffer once described moral relativists as those “who have both feet firmly planted in mid-air.” (See Koukl and Beckwith’s helpful book built on that title.)

An even more vivid illustration is that of Cornelius Van Til who sought to describe the impossibility of unbelieving reasoning if their worldview is employed consistently:

Standing Ground

Ten Tenets of Covenantal Apologetics

Justin Taylor

From Scott Oliphint’s Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith (pp. 47-56):

1. The faith that we are defending must begin with, and necessarily include, the triune God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who, as God, condescends to create and to redeem.
   
2. God’s covenantal revelation is authoritative by virtue of what is, and any covenantal, Christian apologetic will necessarily stand on and utilize that authority in order to defend Christianity.
   
3. It is the truth of God’s revelation, together with the work of the Holy Spirit, that brings about a covenantal change from one who is in Adam to one who is in Christ.
   
4. Man (male and female) as image of God is in covenant with the triune God for eternity.
   
5. All people know the true God, and that knowledge entails covenantal obligations.
   
6. Those who are and remain in Adam suppress the truth that they know. Those who are in Christ see truth for what it is.
   
7. There is an absolute, covenantal antithesis between Christian theism and any other, opposing position. Thus, Christianity is true and anything opposing it is false.
   
8. Suppression of the truth, like the depravity of sin, is total but not absolute. Thus every unbelieving position will necessarily have within it ideas, concepts, notions, and the like that it has taken and wrenched from their true, Christian context.
   
9. The true, covenantal knowledge of God in man, together with God’s universal mercy, allows for persuasion in apologetics.
   
10. Every fact and experience is what it is by virtue of the covenantal, all-controlling plan and purpose of God.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

If It Were a Pancake 

Atheism and Apologetics - Apologetics in the Void
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 06 March 2013

Steve McSwain, "Author, Speaker, Thought Leader, Spiritual Teacher," has written a piece over at HuffPo that requires some sort of response. From the rigor of argument displayed in his piece, one guess could be that he is most likely a mentor of spiritual formation at a place somewhere in LA with a name something like Kimberly's Nail Salon, with his office just off the room full of tanning beds.

According to McSwain, Christian need to cool it with the following six dogmas that are just embarrassing the heck out of us urbane Christians. "Christians must stop saying the following things." Okay, get your legal pads and pens out! Take good notes -- it is up to us to stop humiliating the sophisticati. This is no small task, for they humiliate easy.

"1. The Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God."

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Nothing Worse Than an Analytic Fairy 

Atheism and Apologetics - Apologetics in the Void
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 02 February 2013

Yesterday I was having a good discussion on apologetics with Pastor Will Little of Mars Hill, and the discussion dislodged in me a few thoughts on the subject that I thought would be good to note here.

We were talking about presuppositionalism. I think it is crucial for us to distinguish between presuppositionalism as a foundation for the apologist, and presuppositionalism as a subject that the apologist will broach with the unbeliever. There are times when it will be both, but those times are rarer than apologists who are trained Van Til ninjas might think.

If the point is to win men, and not arguments, then we have to understand where the actual hang-up is with that unbeliever.

Why is Van Til So Significant?

 

The Most Important Christian Thinker Since Calvin?

(We reproduce this excellent piece from Justin Taylor.)

John Frame says that Reformed theologian and philosopher Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) “is perhaps the most important Christian thinker since Calvin.”

Frame offers several qualifiers to his provocative claim:

To say that Van Til is the most important Christian thinker of our time is not to say that he is the most comprehensive thinker, or the clearest, or the most persuasive.
Certainly it is not to say (as some of his more fanatical followers assume) that he is beyond criticism.
Nor is it to say that he has had a greater impact on present-day Christian thought than anybody else; indeed, his isolation continues, and his influence remains relatively small.

So what does he mean?

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Worldview Fist Pumping

Goo-Mongers - Postmodernism
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, April 27, 2011 11:04 am

After my previous post on Pearcey and the pomos, one correspondent wrote to me, asking me to respond to this review of Pearcey's book by Alissa Wilkinson.

Now in the review, Wilkinson has a laudable "credit where credit is due" pattern that I appreciated very much. But at the end of the day, she was unsettled by Pearcey's book.

"This is precisely what made me so uncomfortable as I read the book: the feeling that in so emphatically stating the truth, Pearcey was leaving little room for thoughtful disagreement or the knowledge that those who hold different views are often incredibly intelligent, compassionate, thoughtful people who care about the world and desire to lead significant lives. They are not simply misled away from a Christian worldview by secular ideas. They are not stupid, or insufficient. And I am not more intelligent or worthy than they are because of the way I look at the world.

Instead, for many in the "secular" world, the church has simply failed to show them a picture of a good life, a good society, that they see as worth their time. While Pearcey mentions this, she spends too much time on pointing out wrong ideas and too little time observing that the church's embodiment of the Bible's teachings has been insufficient."

In short, the problem is Pearcey's militance. And when you are a militant leader, and you are in a culture war groove, you often get simplistic and reductionistic militance from some of the followers. This is quite true, and you can get a good bit of it from high schoolers with two weeks of worldview seminar instruction under their belts. Yeah, that's a problem, but it is minor one. More on that in a minute.

So two quick reponses then. The first deals with the second objection above. This is that Pearcey's whole book is predicated on the assumption that the church has serious problems. She is writing the book to address those problems. But the reason this kind of humility doesn't resonate with Wilkinson is that Pearcey's criticism of the church is coming from the opposite direction. Wilkinson, and other soft worldview engagers, want us to tell the world they have a point, wants us to meet them halfway, wants us to have a conversation. Pearcey is criticizing the church from the Bible side, from the God side, and Wilkinson wants her to criticize the church from the other side, from the vantage of the values of secularism. Here's a sample batch. "Why is it that gays feel so unwelcome in conservative churches? Why won't your pastor preach on racial reconciliation on the nearest Sunday to MLK day? Why are conservative Christians so focused on abortion all the time?" The issue is not the presence of criticism, but the direction from which it comes.

Now the tone problem. Say you teach worldview thinking to teenagers (which you should do), and you teach it from a basis grounded in God's revealed absolutes (which you must do), you are going to get bloviating apologists for a time, who will mock what they don't fully understand. That's right. That will happen. But if it is true that we wrestle against principalities and powers, and if it is true that we are in a fight against wickedness in high places, and if it is true that we are engaged in a campaign to bring every thought captive to Christ, we are not going to be slowed down (not even a little bit) by this. Young Demetrius of Ephesus, who got caught up in Paul's soaring rhetoric about spiritual warfare, and told his mom on the way home that the "devil was going down," is going to have to grow into some more wisdom. So let's let him, and let's not tone down the book of Ephesians, because that won't really help. Sophomores will always be sophomoric, which I suppose is their right.

I think of one of those panoramic views of the D-Day invasion, with hundreds of amphibious landing craft from the left frame of a very wide picture extending over to the right frame, and smoke coming off the beach already. And then, we notice the little conversation coming out of one of the craft. "Sarge! Williams here says that we're going to go in there and kick Jerry's butt, and I am not sure I appreciate his tone."

What is the problem with boasting apologists? They underestimate the danger and potency of the enemy. And what is the problem with those who want to speak in the way Wilkinson urges above? It is exactly the same problem -- underestimating the nature of the conflict, and the danger and potency of the enemy.

When you go from the trash-talking infantryman in the landing craft to Eisenhower in his war room, you are not moving from one who is combative to one who is less combative. No, you are moving from one who is combative with limited information to one who is even more combative because he has a lot more information. Eisenhower isn't up there worrying about the many German soldiers who "simply want to live significant lives."

To think this way is to surrender beforehand. And this is why pomo apologetics, or pomo-style apologetics, is never going to get us anywhere. Preparing to lose is just that -- preparing to lose.

Specious Pleading

Over Egging the Pudding

Zen Tiger, over at NZ Conservative, posted on the latest billboard put up by try-hard atheistic folk in the UK.



This is one of the most egregious examples of question begging floating around fashionable, Chardonnay-sipping circles of Unbelief. It represents either a terrible wilful ignorance or an intellectual laziness. The propaganda point of the billboard is that children deserve to the raised in homes where human autonomy and pseudo-rational thinking are the only tolerated views, which is to say that children should be conditioned to be rationalists. Since those propagating this ideology are themselves staunch believers in human autonomy and pseudo-rationalism, it's all a bit rich.

The Christian philosopher and apologist, Cornelius Van Til once wrote a pamphlet, entitled Why I Believe in God. It consists of a conversation between Van Til and a thoroughly modern Unbeliever. In it, Van Til contrasts his Christian upbringing with that of his Unbelieving friend. He describes his own upbringing thus:

Ours was not in any sense a pietistic family. There were not any great emotional outbursts on any occasion that I recall. There was much ado about making hay in the summer and about caring for the cows and sheep in the winter, but round about it all there was a deep conditioning atmosphere. Though there were no tropical showers of revivals, the relative humidity was always very high. At every meal the whole family was present. There was a closing as well as an opening prayer, and a chapter of the Bible was read each time. The Bible was read through from Genesis to Revelation. At breakfast or at dinner, as the case might be, we would hear of the New Testament, or of "the children of Gad after their families, of Zephon and Haggi and Shuni and Ozni, of Eri and Areli." I do not claim that I always fully understood the meaning of it all. Yet of the total effect there can be no doubt. The Bible became for me, in all its parts, in every syllable, the very Word of God. I learned that I must believe the Scripture story, and that "faith" was a gift of God. What had happened in the past, and particularly what had happened in the past in Palestine, was of the greatest moment to me. In short, I was brought up in what Dr. Joad would call "topographical and temporal parochialism." I was "conditioned" in the most thorough fashion. I could not help believing in God -- in the God of Christianity -- in the God of the whole Bible!

Now it is this sort of thing which the Billboarders above get so upset about. They view this as a form of child-abuse. But, Van Til goes on to describe the conditioning of his Unbelieving interlocutor:

Living next to the Library of Congress, you were not so restricted. Your parents were very much enlightened in their religious views. They read to you from some Bible of the World instead of from the Bible of Palestine. No, indeed, you correct me, they did no such thing. They did not want to trouble you about religious matters in your early days. They sought to cultivate the "open mind" in their children.

Shall we say then that in my early life I was conditioned to believe in God, while you were left free to develop your own judgment as you pleased? But that will hardly do. You know as well as I that every child is conditioned by its environment. You were as thoroughly conditioned not to believe in God as I was to believe in God. So let us not call each other names. If you want to say that belief was poured down my throat, I shall retort by saying that unbelief was poured down your throat. That will get us set for our argument.

Van Til then goes on to describe his conditioning in a Christian school, but then completes the comparison/contrast with the way his unbelieving friend was schooled:

How different your early schooling was! You went to a "neutral" school. As your parents had done at home, so your teachers now did at school. They taught you to be "open-minded." God was not brought into connection with your study of nature or history. You were trained without bias all along the line.

Of course, you know better now. You realize that all that was purely imaginary. To be "without bias" is only to have a particular kind of bias. The idea of "neutrality" is simply a colorless suit that covers a negative attitude toward God. At least it ought to be plain that he who is not for the God of Christianity is against Him.

What the Billboard atheists are arguing for is the need to condition and propagandise all children into Unbelief from the outset. Their suppressed "deep-magic" assumption is that the God of the Scriptures cannot possibly exist because man is the ultimate determiner of truth. He decides these things for himself, which is to say that the God of Christianity is excluded from the get-go.

Now, we would have respect for any Unbeliever who candidly acknowledged this reality. What we cannot respect is the self-serving question begging of the Billboard atheists calling for all children to be given the right to choose. Either they do not see the logs in their eye--in which case they are to be pitied--or they do, yet dissemble and mislead--in which case they need to be called out. For your own sake, we want to say, get off your conditioned railway track "talking points" and slogans, open your closed minds, and think a bit harder and more rigorously.

More on Collision!

The Deeper Significance of the Hitchens vs Wilson Debates

We have posted several times on the forthcoming release of the DVD, Collision! which is available exclusively from Amazon. The protagonists are currently engaged in promotional activity for the release, including profiles on the Huffington Post, the Laura Ingraham radio show, and Fox News.

David L. Bahnsen recently posted an excellent review on his blogsite. It puts the whole exercise in its proper theological and ecclesiastical context. He points out that debates with unbelievers, if properly conducted, are always to be debates over faith, not my argument versus your argument as some sort of prelude to faith. He commends Douglas Wilson for hitting this nail upon the head consistently and repeatedly. He also has some kind things to say about Christopher Hitchens, yet with a yearning and longing for the man's soul that is biblically faithful and honouring to our Saviour, Who, we recall, wept over the doomed City of Peace.

Collision Highlights the Great Antithesis: A DVD Worth Having

By DLB, on October 25, 2009

The about-to-be released DVD, Collision, is an important work that I heartily commend. The immensely talented and passionate Darren Doane has directed a gripping piece highlighting the debate over God’s existence between Pastor Doug Wilson of Moscow, Idaho and the well-known secular writer, Christopher Hitchens. The video is gripping, the participants are most-compelling, the editing is fantastic, and most importantly, the great divide in the debate over God’s existence is spendidly exposed.

Nearly twenty-five years ago my late father, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, debated the highly acclaimed atheist scholar, Dr. Gordon Stein, at the University of California in Irvine. The debate caused shockwaves then, and continues to stir interest today, probably selling more MP3’s, CD’s, and tapes over the years than all of my father’s work put together. And for good reason: it is a simply stunning apologetic for the Christian faith from an immensely qualified philosophical intellect. And at the risk of sounding like a biased son, I am rather certain it is the best defense of the faith I have ever heard.

Now, over a decade after my father’s passing at the age of 47, “popular atheism” staged a comeback, or maybe a fresh rally altogether. Hitchens’ own book God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, became a New York Times bestseller, and other atheist scholars such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins enjoyed a few minutes of fame themselves, touring the world protesting the idea of a divine creator, writing a few books, and building a bit of a following around college campuses where their secular atheism became a sort of biological and philosophical defense for the rank hedonism already being played out seven nights a week in the campus dormitories. Of the three or four players in this resurgence of atheism, Hitchens is by far the most capable, particularly if one defines capable in terms of rhetorical skills. He is a profoundly talented writer, and he is just smug enough in his oral presentations that he comes off persuasively and impressively. Hitchens has been on a torrid tour schedule over the last few years, usually finding some unsuspecting stooge that he is all too happy to carve up in front of a perplexed audience wherein the worldview of Christianity is hardly presented at all, and whatever version of Christianity’s defense that is presented is capably handled by Hitchens either via his superior intellect, or at least his superior rhetorical wit. Some foes have been more capable than others (Dinesh D’Souza comes to mind), but Hitchens has not been forced to deal with the epistemological assumptions of his worldview. Wilson takes him to task in this series of discussions and debates that Collision captures, choosing to focus on Hitchens’ basis (or lack thereof) for a belief in morality. Bahnsen chose the Christian worldview’s explanation and basis in logic when he debated Stein, but the underlying point (whether it be science, logic, or morality) is this: the atheist is forced to borrow from the Christian worldview when they deny the Christian worldview. The atheist lacks the foundation necessary to make truth claims, whereas the tenets of the Christian worldview account for the laws of logic, and account for standards in ethics.

I can not put into words how pleased I am to see Doug Wilson having taken on this task with Christopher Hitchens. The DVD documentary gives Wilson ample opportunity to concede the whole thesis of Christianity, as so many self-proclaimed apologists often do. “You have your reason; I have my reason; and I think my enlightened reason outperforms your enlightened reason, therefore I am a Christian.” Wilson avoids this perverse attempt at apologetics at all costs, and provides a splendid defense of the faith within us without ever abandoning the operative word: faith. He upholds a cogent defense of the Christian worldview, and poses questions to Hitchens that are never addressed satisfactorily. The emperor has no clothes, and as Wilson says, John Lennon’s dream laid out in the song Imagine has horrfiying implications (both metaphysically and ethically). Hitchens never takes the full bait of Wilson’s reductio ad absurdum, attempting to the very end to justify a basis for morality founded in personal whims and fancies (though the scene at the Washington D.C. pub seems to capture Hitchens admitting to an audience member during Q&A that there is no basis for cosmic justice).

I find Hitchens to be a deeply troubled man, and I have been reading his political writings as long as I can remember. I can not think of a single person on the planet that I agree with as passionately as I do when he is right, and disagree with as passionately as I do when he is wrong. But the story of Christopher Hitchens is a tragedy, no matter how you look at it. He is a haunted soul, who wears his disdain for God on his sleeve. Telling the stories of his fundamentalist past on tape is powerful stuff, and suffice it to say, it serves as a sort of window to where his “anti-theism” comes from. I have rarely taken popular atheism very seriously. The analogy I use is one of anti-Santa Clausism (though the tooth fairy works as well). I do not believe there is a real life Santa Claus (I hope my kids are not reading this), but I spend very little time trying to talk people out of it who do believe in such. The reality is that if one really believed that theism was merely a fantasy life concocted up by primitive pre-modern people who lacked the enlightenment tools of science and reason to know better, it hardly seems like a very rewarding use of one’s time to focus on it day and night. Atheists have never had a belief problem, because if they did, they would never talk about it. They have a faith problem. They have an obedience problem. And Hitchens makes this unbelievably clear throughout Collision. In fact, his disdain for the doctrine of redemption expressed in the King’s College debate is the furthest thing from an epistemological objection; it is purely theological, and it is not at all uncommon. Hitchens does not want to address the demons that haunt him, and he is rather remarkably gifted at masking those things through some stunningly effective conventions. He is an engaging individual, and is quite superficially respectful to those whom he encounters that he disagrees with (particularly if he deems them to be intellectually capable people).

But what Hitchens will not stand for, and what most vigilant atheists will not stand for, is someone- anyone -telling them that they need a redeemer. The message of the cross is a scandalous message, and when Christians attempt to kick the ladder down once they have gotten to the top of the building, it is disheartening to see. Doug Wilson engages this dialogue with Christopher Hitchens with the reliance on faith, juxtaposed with reason and conviction, sorely lacking in Christian apologetics today. I do not believe anyone watching the DVD will have their mind changed in the great subject of God’s existence, and I do not believe anyone has had their mind changed in the last 25 years from listening to the Bahnsen/Stein debate either. But what I do believe is this: to proclaim a defense of theism without a proclamation of the gospel is a tragedy, and when I watch Christopher Hitchens, I have seen enough tragedies for one night, thank you very much. Wilson should be commended for not doubling up on the tragedy, and in fact, faithfully working to extinguish it.

Christopher Hitchens is a talented and special individual. Christendom could use him. But Doug Wilson has accomplished a Bahnsenian feat in not compromising the essence of our faith in his attempts to persuade Hitchens of its value. I could not possibly mean that as a bigger compliment than I do.

Find Collisionand see it. Give it out to other people. Discuss it with your friends. And when you are done, remember that Christianity is a religion of trust and obedience. Atheism is a religion of fear and escape. May Christopher Hitchens find the God who provides a peace that surpasses all understanding. And may Doug Wilson continue on with the task of defending the Christian worldview. As Van Til taught us, “In thy light, shall we see light” (and even he borrowed it straight from King David).

Collision! Hitchens vs Wilson

A Synopsis of the Debate

We have previewed the forthcoming DVD and movie release of Collision! which presents the multi-city debate which took place last year between Hitchens and Wilson over atheistic materialism vs. belief in God the Father Almighty. Hitchens is a tireless advocate for his cause. He was recently in Sydney, warning Seedneeesiders of the dangers of religion in general and the Christian faith in particular.

A summary of the respective cases of the two protagonists has today been published on the Huffington Post.

Firstly, the intro:

Last fall, we went on tour debating the topic "Is Religion Good For The World?" Our arguments were captured on film for a new documentary, Collision. Are our morals dictated to us by a supreme entity or do discoveries made by science and reason, make Atheism a natural conclusion? You decide.

Then, Hitchens makes his case:

Religion Is Absurd
by Christopher Hitchens

Religion will always retain a certain tattered prestige because it was our first attempt as a species to make sense of the cosmos and of our own nature, and because it continues to ask "why". Its incurable disability, however, lies in its insistence that the answer to that question can be determined with certainty on the basis of revelation and faith.

We do not know, though we may assume, that our pre-homo sapiens ancestors (the erectus, the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals, with whom we have a traceable kinship as we do with other surviving primates) had deities that they sought to propitiate. Alas, no religion of which we are now aware has ever taken their existence into account, or indeed made any allowance for the tens and probably hundreds of thousands of years of the human story. Instead, we are asked to believe that the essential problem was solved about two-to-three thousand years ago, by various serial appearances of divine intervention and guidance in remote and primitive parts of what is now (at least to Westerners) the Middle East.

This absurd belief would not even deserve to be called quixotic if it had not inspired masterpieces of art and music and architecture as well as the most appalling atrocities and depredations. The great cultural question before us is therefore this: can we manage to preserve what is numinous and transcendent and ecstatic without giving any more room to the superstitious and the supernatural. (For example, can one treasure and appreciate the Parthenon, say, while recognizing that the religious cult that gave rise to it is dead, and was in many ways sinister and cruel?) A related question is: can we be moral and ethical in our thoughts and actions without the servile idea that our morals are dictated to us by a supreme entity?

I believe that the answer to both of these questions is in the affirmative. Tremendous and beautiful things have been achieved by science and reason, from the Hubble telescope to the sequencing of the DNA of obscure viruses. All of these attainments have tended to remind us, however, that we are an animal species inhabiting a rather remote and tiny suburb of an unimaginably large universe. However, this sobering finding -- and it is a finding -- is no reason to assume that we do not have duties to one another, to other species, and to the biosphere. It may even be easier to draw these moral conclusions once we are free of the egotistic notion that we are somehow the centre of the process, or objects of a creation or a "design". Dostoevsky said that without belief in god men would be capable of anything: surely we know by now that the belief in a divine order, and in divine orders, is an even greater license to act as if normal restraints were non-existent?

If Moses and Jesus and Mohammed had never existed -- let alone Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Kim Jong Il or any of the other man-made prophets or idols -- we would still be faced with precisely the same questions about how to explain ourselves and our lives, how to think about the just city, and how to comport ourselves with our fellow-creatures. The small progress we have made so far, from the basic realization that diseases are not punishments to the noble idea that as humans we may even have "rights", is due to the exercise of skepticism and doubt, and to the objective scrutiny of hard evidence, and not at all to faith or certainty. The real "transcendence", then, is the one that allows us to shake off the notion of a never-dying tyrannical father-figure, with its unconsoling illusion of redemption by human sacrifice, and assume our proper proportion as people condemned to be free, and able to outgrow the fearful tutelage of a supreme supervisor who does not forgive us the errors he has programmed us to make.

Wilson rejoinds:

Atheists Suck at Being Atheists
by Pastor Douglas Wilson

From the perspective of a Christian, the refusal of an atheist to be a Christian is dismaying, but it is at least intelligible. But what is really disconcerting is the failure of atheists to be atheists. That is the thing that cries out for further exploration.

We can understand a cook who sets out to prepare a reduction sauce, having it simmer on the stove for three days. But what we shouldn't get is the announcement afterwards that he has prepared us a soufflé. The atheistic worldview is nothing if not inherently reductionistic, whether this is admitted or not. Everything that happens is a chance-driven rattle-jattle jumble in the great concourse of atoms that we call time. Time and chance acting on matter have brought about, in equally aimless fashion, the 1927 New York Yankees, yesterday's foam on a New Jersey beach, Princess Di, the arrangement of pebbles on the back side of the moon, the music of John Cage, the Fourth Crusade, and the current gaggle representing us all in Congress.

If the universe actually is what the materialistic atheist claims it is, then certain things follow from that presupposition. The argument is simple to follow, and is frequently accepted by the sophomore presidents of atheist/agnostic clubs at a university near you, but it is rare for a well-published atheistic leader to acknowledge the force of the argument. To acknowledge openly the corrosive relativism that atheism necessarily entails would do nothing but get the chimps jumping in the red states. To swallow the reduction would present serious public relations problems, and drive Fox News ratings up even further. Who needs that?

So if the universe is what the atheist maintains it is, then this determines what sort of account we must give for the nature of everything -- and this includes the atheist's thought processes, ethical convictions, and aesthetic appreciations. If you were to shake up two bottles of pop and place them on a table to fizz over, you could not fill up an auditorium with people who came to watch them debate. This is because they are not debating; they are just fizzing. If you were to shake up one bottle of pop, and show it film footage of some genocidal atrocity, the reaction you would get is not moral outrage, but rather more fizzing. And if you were to shake it really hard by means of art school, and place it in front of Michelangelo's David, or the Rose Window of Chartres Cathedral, the results would not really be aesthetic appreciation, but more fizzing still.

If the atheist is right, then I am not a Christian because I have mistaken beliefs, but am rather a Christian because that is what these chemicals would always do in this arrangement and at this temperature. The problem is that this atheistic assumption does the very same thing to the atheist's case for atheism. The atheist gives us an account of all things which makes it impossible for us to believe that any account of all things could possibly be true. But no account of things can be tenable unless it provides us with the preconditions that make it possible for our "accounting" to represent genuine insight. Atheism fails to do this, and the failure is a spectacular one. Nor does atheism allow us to have any fixed ethical standard, or the possibility of beauty.

It does no good to appeal to the discoveries made by science and reason, for one of the things that reason has apparently brought us is atheism. Right? And not content to let sleeping dogs lie, reason also brings us the inexorable consequences of atheism, which includes the unpalatable but necessary conclusion that random neuron firings do not amount to any "truth" that corresponds to anything outside our heads. This, ironically enough, includes atheism, and so we find ourselves falling out of the tree, saw in one hand and branch in the other.

Contrast this with the Christian gospel -- God the Father is the Maker of heaven and earth. He sent His Son to be born one of us; this Son died on gibbet for our sins, as the ultimate and final human sacrifice, and He rose from the dead on the third day following. Having ascended into Heaven and taken His place at the right hand of His Father, He sent His Holy Spirit into the world in order to transform it, a process that is still ongoing. Now obviously, this is a message that can be believed or disbelieved. But the reason for mentioning it here includes the important point that such a set of convictions makes it possible for us to believe that reason can be trusted, that goodness does not change with the evolutionary times, and that beauty is grounded in the very heart of God. Someone who believes these things doesn't believe that we are just fizzing.

You can deny that this God exists, of course, and you can throw the whole cosmos into that pan of reduction sauce. And you can keep the heat on by publishing one atheist missive after another. But what you should not be allowed to do is cook the whole thing bone dry and call the crust on the bottom an example of the numinous or transcendent. Calling it that provides us with no reason to believe it -- and numerous reasons not to.

Half-way House Theology

Playing the Game on the Devil's Terms

There is the world-view of the Bible. Then there is the world-view held by many Christians. The two are different. Which is to say that many professing Christians need to shape up.

When we become converted, we are united to Christ: the complex of death, which once reigned in our lives, dies. This means that we put away all of the old ways, all of the attributes and remnants of the way of death, and take on the life and attributes of Christ. This means that when we are converted, the house changes owners. But it takes a while for the new owner to get rid of the grime and the filth.

Much of the dirt resides in clinging to pagan ways of thinking. We continue to nurture and nurse views of reality and of the cosmos (world-views) that belong to Unbelief and the complex of death. We need to be aware of this shortcoming. We need to hunt out these remnants of false belief and skewer them. In order to do this we need to become self-critical of the way we think about ourselves and the cosmos. We need to subject even the way we think and the fundamental categories of our mental furniture to the mind of Christ.

Here is an example. Many Christians think that the cosmos consists of three realms. The first realm belongs to God and His heaven. The second realm belongs to the Devil and his hell. The third realm belongs to neither, but it is the field of battle upon which the two (God and the Devil) clash. This third realm is neither believing nor unbelieving. It is neither for God nor against Him. It is neutral, objective, even-handed, disinterested and impartial. It is the world of "facts", "data", and "science". It is mediated by "reason" which is impersonal. This world carries an objective authority which is beyond God and the Devil. Both need to be subject to it.

The idea is that the Devil and Unbelief come out on to this no-man's-land and try to take control of it. It is said to be the duty of Christians to get out on the neutral middle ground and do battle with the Devil for the hearts and minds of men. But this is wrong. There is no middle ground. No-man's-land does not exist. There is no neutral realm. There is no third way. There are only two realms.

Put bluntly, either you are a servant of the Lord, or you are a servant of the Devil. If you are not a servant of the Lord, you have been taken captive by the Devil to do his will. (II Timothy 2: 25, 26). This is the fundamental Christian world-view. The introduction of a third realm which is independent of God and therefore has the authority to sit in judgment upon God is not Christian. It is of Satan.

As someone once said, there is no soul so firmly in the control and grasp of the Devil as the person who disbelieves his existence. Following closely behind is the person who believes that whilst God and the Devil exist there is yet another realm which is independent of both. The Devil has that person under his influence. Satan is perfectly comfortable with the person who professes to believe in God, yet also believes that there are realms of creation that are beyond God and independent of Him. Such a person is busy manufacturing an idol; he has already disbelieved what the Scripture reveals about the Living God and all other reality.

God has definitively declared Himself to us. He has revealed that He alone is God, and there is none other. He created all things of nothing. All things live and move and have their being in Him. There is no third realm. No neutral ground. All is from Him and to Him and through Him. This is the God Whom we love, serve and worship.

Any human or angelic thought, word, or deed which presupposes or assumes independence against God is therefore rebellious and evil. If we are not with our Lord, we are against Him. He who does not gather with Him, scatters. He who does not believe has the wrath of God abiding upon him. There is no neutral, half-way house, where we can be neither for Him nor against Him. There is no third realm, no middle way.

The world-view of Belief is that such neutrality is impossible. It does not exist. Independent objectivity is a myth—a falsehood encouraged and perpetuated by the enemy. The assertion of neutrality, of independent objectivity, presupposes from the outset that the God spoken of in the Scriptures does not and cannot exist. The Devil is perfectly happy to play the game on that chess board.

Ever since Adam's sin that fateful day in Eden, all human beings descending from Adam by ordinary generation, agree with him. That is, unless and until they are regenerated by the Spirit of God.

Yet there remains the embarrassing reality that many Christians still cling to that old world-view. They still hold to the neutrality, objectivity, and autonomy of the human mind. They still want God to be the way they want Him to be. They still lust after a god who is in their own image. Shape up, guys. Put off your cloying idolatry. Such things are unbecoming the citizens of Jerusalem.

The Truth About Culture Wars

Athenian Culture Wars are Really Clone Wars

Today we hear the term “culture wars” used frequently. The Christian version of this term is “world-view wars.” The Christian term is decidedly better, since the word “culture” is ambiguous. “Culture” has a breadth of meanings, some of them quite trivial. “Culture wars” may be used, for example, to characterise a debate over the relative merits of classical versus hip hop music—hardly earth-shattering stuff.

The clash of “world-views” gets closer to the heart of the matter. Take it down another layer and the clash at its most fundamental level can be characterised as between those who believe in and love the infinite, eternal and unchangeable Triune God Who has revealed Himself in Holy Scripture, and those who do not. This is the ultimate world-view clash. There is nothing more fundamental to human existence. There are no issues more foundational to life and being. There is nothing which more powerfully shapes human history. The options are stark: either this God exists and all forms of Unbelief are a delusional lie; or, God does not exist and therefore all bets on anything and everything are off.

For the Christian “world-view wars” implicitly includes a struggle between truth and lies. For the Unbeliever, “culture wars” or “world-view wars” implies a struggle over mere preference, cant, and prejudice. One man's rubbish is another man's treasure. What is sauce for the goose may not necessarily be sauce for the gander at all. And that's all right.

When we survey the Athenian market place of ideas it is hard to get worked up over all the permutations and combinations on offer. When we consider the so-called “culture wars” within Athens between the West versus Islam, Left versus Right, Conservatives versus Whigs, Idealists versus Empiricists, Socialism versus Capitalism, or the One versus the Many—to name but a few of the available options in the Athenian agora of ideas—all have equal claim and relative pedigree.

The highest degree of certainty any “ism” in Athens can offer its own clients is that it may probably be true. But, something that is probably true is also possibly false. There can be no final certainty within Athens about anything—only that the truthfulness of what is espoused within Athens is a mere rolling the dice and calculating relative probabilities. Therefore “culture wars” within Athens are really intra-mural, like the rivalry or competition within a particular university faculty. “You say potato, I say potarto.” They are debates over preference, prejudice, and cant.

This is what the Scriptures call “the wisdom of this world.” Although full of sound and fury, in the end it signifies nothing.

Now to be sure, there are some options on offer within Athens that approximate more closely to the Truth—that is, to the universal reality that prescribes, inscribes, and circumscribes the world as God has created and ordained it to be. For example, there are some stalls in the Athenian market place which assert the reality of sin and moral guilt. Others defend the constructs of crime and punishment. Still others posit immaterial dimensions of reality and existence. Others yet again stress personal responsibility and the defend private ownership of property.

These carry more weight and gravitas because they tell half-truths about the world as it really is, that is, as God rules over it. But at the same time they are also less consistent with the fundamental principle upon which Athens is built—that the ultimate reality of the universe is brute chance, and, therefore, chaos nihilism and meaninglessness prescribe, inscribe, and circumscribe everything.

But there are other options in the Athenian agora which are more faithful to that city's deep magic of brute chance and its corollaries. These options stress the meaningless flux of everything and the ultimate irrationality of all existence. However, these rarely gain traction or weight, adherents or wide following, because they are so at odds with the world as it daily presents itself to us. Nevertheless, they are more consistent with the diabolical spirit of that evil City.

So, Athens will have its culture wars. But they are really family squabbles.

Jerusalem knows this. Jerusalem knows that it is either the Living God, or meaningless prejudice. Therefore, Jerusalem does not make common cause with Athenian approximations to the truth. Jerusalem does not shop in Athenian market places. Jerusalem knows that there is melamine in the milk. The only way it could be made fit to eat is by a complete re-processing and re-engineering to remove the poison.

Jerusalem also knows that there is no sustainable common cause with Athenian approximations to the truth. Athens is bound together by a common confession of faith: despite the fact that Athens trades only in mere probabilities, in order to do so, it must propose one great, eternal certainty that is beyond all doubt, relativity, probability, or question. Athens is absolutely certain that the God revealed in the Scriptures does not exist. That is why all Athenian culture wars are familial, inter-mural struggles.

It is commonly observed that anyone who intervenes to break up, or take sides in, a family fight risks his life. Most often, faced with an outside threat, the warring family members will instantly unite to crush the outsider. Blood is thicker than water.

But faith is even thicker than blood. When it comes down to it, when push comes to shove, Athenians will always close ranks against Christians. For all Athenians have a common unifying confession of faith that is more deep to them than life itself. All Athenians believe that the God of the Scriptures is a myth. He does not exist. He cannot exist. This is the deepest magic of Athens. It is what makes ultimate chaos acceptable. It is the strongest bond that welds together all who traffic in the Athenian agora of ideas into an implacable, serried, closed rank against the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and all who belong to Him.

Athenian culture wars are always wars between clones.

ChnMind 1.21 There's Poison in the Well

The Pathology of the Unbelieving Mind

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.
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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wilful Blindness: a Malady of our Times

There is none so blind as those who will not see

Proverbs represent the pithy distillation of wisdom tested by successive generations,and, if deemed true, passed on to next generations. The proverb, “There is none so blind as those who will not see” comments upon the condition of stubborn blindness. A refusal to face the truth or the evidence, for ulterior reasons, leads to the worst form of blindness—a wilful, determined ignorance. Or, as one sage put it, an ignorance that is invincible.

But this kind of blindness is the worst, not just because of its inveterate nature, but because of its moral culpability. It is at root a blindness which is evil since it arises out of an act of the will. In this case, ignorance is not bliss, but wickedness.

It is ironic that modern Athens betrays on every hand this worst form of blindness. Ironic, because modern Athens boasts of its enlightened character. Its much vaunted “scientific method”, its scholarship, its institutions of research, its mass media promulgating knowledge far and wide, its halls of learning, its publicly funded education system, its technological prowess—all play a part in reassuring us that modern man is truly advanced, enlightened, and wise. The modern Athenian citizen has banished all superstition and ignorance from the playground. Or, so the mantra runs.

Every human action, including the discovery and promulgation of knowledge, draws deeply upon a reservoir of assumptions. In the case of learning and research those assumptions will determine from the outset what conclusions you are likely to draw. Evidence or data that conflicts with the pre-determined conclusions will be explained away. There is none so blind as those who will not see.

The honest broker, the truly enlightened, the properly wise commences with a frank disclosure of his fundamental and guiding assumptions. He puts them out there for all to see. He discloses his prejudices from the beginning. He is rigorously self-conscious of them. Of course, this procedure—the only one which avoids the trap of invincible moral culpable ignorance—forces a great deal of humility into academic and learned debates. That's partly why it is avoided like the plague. Declaring one's pre-commitments from the outset forces everyone to face up to the fundamental circularity of all knowledge—which, to the modern rationalist Athenian, is a deep embarrassment.

The dishonest broker will not acknowledge his pre-commitments. Rather, he appeals to the neutrality and objectivity of the facts, of the data, and of his “seeing things as they really are”. His claim to authority is based upon the “evidence”. He presents himself as dispassionate, detached, objective. For him, knowledge is not circular because he, the investigator, has not intruded himself onto the facts. He is not part of the facts. His pre-commitments have not informed him throughout. His net has not determined from the outset what fish he will catch. The dishonest broker, by denying the circularity of all knowledge, including his own, is nothing more than a propagandist.

A couple of examples may serve to illustrate tendency to wilful culpable ignorance. I am currently reading a truly remarkable book (Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret of Qumran. [London: BCA, 1995]) The initial modern discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (there were prior discoveries) occurred in 1947. For 50 years it was asserted that these scrolls were produced by a Jewish sectarian community, the Essenes, living at Qumran on the Dead Sea during the time of the incarnation of Christ our Lord.

It has now finally been demonstrated to have been an egregious error. But for 50 years the error held sway amongst scholars, governments, universities, journals and media. Fifty years of error in a supposedly enlightened world! Reputations and careers were made by promulgating the error. Careers were ruined by those with the temerity to question the then current orthodoxy. There is no doubt that the reigning mode of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship for over half a century was flat out dishonest and culpably ignorant. How did this happen in such an enlightened, modern age? It occurred very simply. Here are the steps:

1.Initial scroll research asserted the Essence theory without a full disclosure of the fundamental assumptions lying behind the theory which undergirded it. (In this particular case, the assumptions were utterly baseless, and had never been examined, verified or tested.)
2.Academics began promulgating the theory as established fact—based on the “evidence”.
3.Those who questioned the theory were personally attacked and ridiculed as fantasizing ignoramuses.
4.A wilful sociology of ignorance took over. The more the error was stated, the more widely it was promulgated, the more believable it became. Credulity runs in packs. Repetition means truth. Mantras have huge influence in a culture dominated by culpable ignorance as is the case with modern Athens.
5.As data or evidence was subsequently found that did not fit with the Essene theory, it was explained away (“the evidence was forged”, etc).

Eventually, the theory collapsed and was shown up for the folly that it was from the beginning. So, we had a grand conspiracy—but one where the culpable perpetrators allowed themselves to be duped and then defended their duplicity. They turned out to be nothing more than propagandists. This arose because they suppressed their starting assumptions.

Now, of course, if they had been honest from the beginning and disclosed them, their initial findings on the origin and provenance of the scrolls would have been far more tentative, far less sensational, far more humble, and much more quickly revised and corrected. The circularity would have been evident from the beginning, and therefore much more quickly scrutinized and (in this case) rejected.

A church caretaker once noticed the preacher had left his sermon notes on the pulpit. Scrawled in the margin at one place in the manuscript was the notation: “Weak point—speak more loudly.” The prevailing modern blindness which refuses to accept the circularity of all knowledge and hides fundamental pre-commitments and assumptions has fallen into the same deceit: the modern world thinks that by repeating something loudly and often, it establishes its veracity. Truth becomes a matter of shouting down the opposition. Truth becomes politicized. Truth becomes propaganda.

Another example, far more widespread, is the current prevailing Athenian belief in Evolutionism. This truly has become the Great Lie of the modern world. But it has been allowed to prosper because of the unwillingness of those who recite its mantras and incantations to make its fundamental premises explicit. And for good reason. If they did so, the circularity would soon be scrutinised and shown to be vicious, not virtuous.

Evolutionism asserts the randomness of the universe and insists that randomness accounts for the creation.

Imagine at the commencement of each evolutionist tract the following disclosure was made: “My starting assumption is that the universe is random, chaotic, and the ultimate reality is brute chance.” Who would bother to read further? The very disclosure itself is vitiated by the starting assumption. Or, if the starting assumption is meaningful (that is, we understand the meaning of the proposition) it cannot possibly be true.

Consider some of the assumptions packed into the initial disclosure:

1.“My”: a personal pronoun asserting identity and personality and distinction from those persons who are not “me”.
2.“starting”: the word indicates commencement and implies a procession of events or activities thereafter. Procession implies continuity, connectedness, relation, order.
3.“assumption”: a noun meaning a belief set or a propositional statement, which implies a world where meaning is not only possible but it can be represented in propositional forms.
4.“is”: third person singular, present tense of the verb “to be”, implying continuity of existence, a settled state, non-randomness.
5.“that”: a conjunction, introducing the following noun clause, implying that in the world things such as matter, ideas, and concepts can be joined together and related meaningfully.

We could go on, but the point is made. The initial disclosure that all evolutionists should make only has meaning if the world is anything but what they assert it to be: that is, not random, but ordered in both space and time, such that regularity and continuity actually exist, along with personal identity.

As Karl Popper once said, with respect to Evolutionism: if evolution can be described, it cannot possibly be true. If it were true, it could never be described.

The circularity of Evolutionism is vicious because some of the fundamental assumptions upon which it trades and is built exclude the very possibility of it being asserted or described in the first place. So we are left with loud, insistent repetitions of the nonsense to confirm its veracity. We are left with propaganda.

There are none so blind as those who will not see. Athens is awash with vacuous, wilful, evil ignorance. It is racked with a frenzied suppression of the truth. It has built an edifice of scholarship on a sea of self-contradictory nonsense. Athens is the great charlatan, the peddler of superstitions. But it wills it to be so. It wants it to be so. Anything but the truth. Therefore, God has given it up.

ChnMind 1.19 The Entrance of Unbelief into Human History

A Snake in the Grass

A mind operating “independently” of God. Musings presuming to operate outside God's pre-interpreting Word. To mankind now, this is “deja-vu all over again”, to quote Yogi Berra. Thinking neutrally, or in a way that presupposes from the outset that God and His Word is external to, and outside of me, is Athens stock-in-trade―now. It happens everywhere, on every hand, in every place. But universality is not an evidence of truth―regardless of how “natural” it may seem.
In Genesis 3, we are confronted with evil. Sin―which is “every want of conformity unto, or transgression of the Law of God”―(Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 15) enters into the world and human history. How it enters is most critical, most instructive. Mind and thought preceeded action. Before disobedience of God acted, it thought. In Genesis 3 we are confronted, for the first time, with the Unbelieving Mind―a Mind which is now both universal and “normal.” So universal is Unbelief that it has become normative. To recover the Christian Mind, we have to lay aside thought frames and patterns that have become normative―the lie―and return to the original―the truth.
The serpent comes to Adam and Eve as a creature―one of the creatures created on the sixth day. While the text is not explicit, subsequent scriptural revelation confirms that the serpent was animated by Satan, a created heavenly being who, shortly after his creation, had rebelled against God. Satan comes to enlist man, the one creature made in God's image, to his ranks. But Satan is incredibly clever. He does not come directly, but obliquely. He chooses the most subtle or clever animal as his emissary. His sole objective is to encourage the man to think “for himself” outside of God, as if he were an independent being. Therefore, the temptation comes “from below” which plays to Adam through the position of authority which Adam held.
How often we have seen this satanic and demonic pattern repeated. Satan will ever take our strengths, play to them, magnify them, exalt them―until they pervert us and lead us into evil.
If Satan had come to Adam in all his malignant demonic power and confronted him as an enemy, demanding his fealty, Adam would immediately have sought security in God. Instead he comes obliquely, indirectly, and seeks to insinuate himself subtly into the mind of man. Adam's defences were down. So the serpent speaks, not directly to Adam, but indirectly. He speaks to Eve.
We can assume that Adam knew that the serpent was acting beyond his created abilities and that he was being animated by another, external being. The assumption rests upon Adam's already demonstrated and confirmed ability to discern the true nature of all the creatures on the earth, and name them accordingly. Further, the text confirms that Adam was present throughout the interchange. Adam was “with her” when Eve took the fruit and ate (Genesis 3:6).
In order to enter into this interchange, Adam had to tolerate a perversion of the structures and order of creation itself. Both Adam and Eve had to allow themselves to be led by an animal. Adam relinquished his God-given duty to exercise dominion and rule over all other creatures upon earth. Secondly, Adam allowed himself to be led by his wife. Tolerating and acting within this perverted order was already to be outside the pre-interpreting Word of God. At the very commencement of the interchange with the serpent, Adam was thinking sinfully.
The serpent leads the woman and the man to a position where they are exercising judgement over God's Word. God had commanded that, whereas they could eat freely from every tree in the garden, there was one from which they were not to eat―the one designated the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:17). Firstly, the serpent asserts a rule that is more restricting than God's command and attributes the more restrictive rule to God. “Has God really said you should not eat from any tree in the garden?” Satan has always delighted to entice God's people to add to God's Word―to make its commands more high, more restrictive, more exacting than God has actually commanded―because that very action makes man the lawgiver, the lawmaker, and implicitly over God. Man's word is thereby more important than God's and carries higher authority. The generation that sets itself up to be stricter than God's Word will be followed by a generation that denies the authority of God and His Word totally.
Next the serpent openly denies the truth of God's Word: “you shall not die!” (Genesis 3:4) God is lying. Neither God nor His Word is true. As Adam and Eve entertained that hypothesis as a possibility, they sinned in their mind, in their thoughts. But to strengthen the proposition, the serpent attributed a motive of envy to God. His explanation as to why God might lie and deceive the woman lay in God's envy of man. In other words, God did not have Adam's best interests at heart. The fallacy of attacking the “man” not the proposition was present right from the first entrance of evil into the world. He also appealed to human pride: if they ate, they would be divine, equal with God. They would know good and evil for themselves. They would be able to determine their own law, independently of, and equal to, God.
Here, then, is the essence of sin and evil. Man, the creature, arrogates to himself the position (the “right”) to work things out for himself, independently of God. Neutrality towards God is actually a position of enmity toward, or rejection of, God. The Unbelieving Mind―for by the stage Eve had gone over to the Dark Side―began to consider two conflicting propositions: either God was true or the serpent was true. Mmm. Let me see now, which is right? That frame of mind is the mind of Unbelief. It is the very essence of Athens. It is when Athens first appeared in human history.
Then Eve engaged in a bit of neutral empirical research. She “saw” that the tree was good for food. That is, she formed the view, contrary to God's command. Her empirical research led her to the conclusion that the tree was a delight to the eyes―it was indeed beautiful. She had forgotten that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that by now her eye was well and truly corrupted. She was no longer seeing things as they were, but was seeing things as she wanted them or constructed to be. Similarly, the tree would make her wise. All of that empirical research on the tree was not neutral; it was informed by and animated by a growing rebellion against God.
So she and Adam ate.
Rationalism and humanism began in the Garden of Eden. Rationalism is the belief that human reason is sovereign over life. By means of reason, man can discover and determine truth for himself. Man can determine truth independently of God. Man can determine God's existence, God's commands on his own authority. Man can verify the Word of God. This belief isas innate to fallen man now, and as unconscious to mankind, as breathing. It only changes when someone is born again from above, by God. When we are born again, when we are subsequently converted from unbelief to belief in God and His Christ, then we are able to stop being rationalists. In principle we move back to the position of Adam before God, before the Fall. We are able, once again, to think God's thoughts after Him. We are able, once again, to see the world truly and truthfully―as it really is. We are able to see and know the world as pre-interpreted by God and His Word.
Humanism is the belief that the ultimate being in the universe is man. Man is the measure and standard of all things. Man is god. All citizens of Athens, all unbelievers, are both rationalists and humanists―regardless of whatever denominational stripe they may adopt. Of course, rationalism and humanism are in themselves idolatries, and, like any and every idolatry, will be ultimately destroyed. Pity the unbeliever who clings to his idols.
But―and here is where Jerusalem needs to grow up―the currency of the realm of rationalism and humanism is neutrality. Athens both presupposes and asserts that data and truth have an objective reality―a meaning that is of itself and from within itself. When Eve conducted her empirical investigation on the tree, deciding that it was desireable and so forth, she was framing reality according to her (already) sinful mind. But the assumption, the presupposition upon which she proceeded was that these supposed characteristics of the tree existed independently of God and had reality apart from God. She could investigate, learn, prove, and conclude these things whether God existed or not. (Which is to say that Eve had already decided that God did not exist. She was already replacing Him mentally with a false god―one who was envious and evil.) Man, likewise independent of, neutral toward, and objective over the data can discover and determine truth for himself. Man can prove God, or disprove God. It matters not.
To assert that man can prove or establish God, is to assert that the God revealed in the Scriptures cannot possibly be true. In “proving” God, the rationalist by that action or proof disbelieves the God of Scripture. There is no other possibility. There is no neutral, middle ground. Either God establishes and pre-interprets man, or man establishes and pre-interprets one or more gods.
When Christians―no doubt with all the best intentions in the world―seek to clothe themselves with the garb of rational neutrality so they can go down to the Athenian market place and seek to discuss the “facts” with Unbelievers in an effort to get them to believe, they regress to the lying attitudes adopted by the serpent and Adam. They have compromised the truth of God and His world before they start. They have again put on the smelly rags of Unbelief. God, as Calvin says so acutely, is not served by our lies.
Or, to approach the issue in another way: the Believing Mind knows that there is not one atom or sub-atomic particle in the universe that does not depend for its existence utterly and completely upon God. To enter a discussion where man is invited to consider, determine, or confirm for himself whether that might be the case is to take the form and shape of the serpent. It is to make man the measure of all things, including God.
Athens is idolatry. Everything it is and does is idolatrous. Jerusalem has been delivered from Athenian idolatry, but like our fathers in the desert who longed to return to Egypt, many citizens of Jerusalem employ rationalist and humanist modes of life. Nowhere is this more evident than at the point of interchange between believers and unbelivers. Many Christians think the only way they can appeal to unbelievers successfully is to go and stand with unbelievers on their fields of idolatry and lead them step by step to the Christian faith.
A favorite approach has been to argue the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. If we reasonably consider the evidence for Jesus' resurrection it becomes clear that overwhelming evidence is attached to the event. As we work through the evidence and the rational arguments arising out of the evidence, unbelievers will be confronted by the truth and will be lead to faith―or so it is claimed.
This leads us to ask whether the problem that confronted Adam and Eve in the garden was a lack of evidence. Adam had the facts, the truth, all around him. The problem was not the facts or the obscrurity of the evidence. The problem lay in Adam filtering the evidence through mind of Unbelief―the mind of sin. How could that happen? It happened as soon as he asserted a “right” to examine the evidence “neutrally”, outside of God, for himself.
Thus, to return to the issue of leading people into the Kingdom by means of objective, neutral, “just the facts, ma'am” consideration of the resurrection or any other Christian doctrine, the rationalist will say, in heart, “Even if I am persuaded that the facts indicate that Jesus did actually rise from the dead, they are utterly uncompelling in convincing me to become a Christian. For if I can establish such truth for myself, why do I need God at all? If I can establish that Jesus rose from the dead, I can un-establish it. After all, in a random world, such things as resurrections may actually occur. But the significance and meaning of that random event, I will determine for myself.”
God is not well served by our lies. If we stand with Unbelievers in the field of Unbelief and join with them in their lies agreeing with them that they we can verify and establish God as it seems good to them, we are promulgating a lie. We are entering into the age-old Satanic deceit. There is a snake in the grass.
God alone is true. Every man, apart from the One, is a liar. And Satan is the father of lies, from the beginning. So entered sin into the heart and mind of man.