Daily Meditation

Recognizing Our Enmity

Ligonier Ministries

As children we played games drawn from the scenario of war. When a friend approached we pretended that we were sentries. The dialogue was simple: “Halt! Who goes there? Friend or foe?” Our categories left no room for indifferent neutrality. They were restricted to two options, friend or enemy. Those are the only options we have in our relationship with God. No one is neutral. We are either God’s friends or God’s enemies.

Jonathan Edwards once preached a sermon titled, “Man, Naturally God’s Enemies.” In this sermon Edwards declared: “Men, in general, will own that they are sinners. There are few, if any, whose consciences are so blinded as not to be sensible they have been guilty of sin … And yet few of them are sensible that they are God’s enemies. They do not see how they can be truly so called; for they are not sensible that they wish God any hurt, or endeavor to do Him any.”

Yet despite human protestations to the contrary, Scripture clearly describes natural fallen men as enemies of God. Paul, in speaking of our salvation, wrote, “While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:10). Again, “You … were alienated [from God] and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds” (Col. 1:21). Also, “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God” (Rom. 8:7).

Coram Deo

Think of the characteristics and qualities of intimate friendship, then apply these to your spiritual relationship with the heavenly Father. Are you truly a friend of God?

Passages for Further Study

Romans 8:7
Colossians 1:21-22a
Romans 7:18

Where It All Began

Meditation For the Lord's Day

We have been working through a most remarkable book.  Written by Alex Motyer, it is entitled, Look to the Rock: An Old Testament Background to our Understanding of Christ (Intervarsity Press, 1996).  It is full of profound observations.  Here is one of them:

In . . . Genesis 3:9, 10 there is the matter of a bad conscience.  We are not told how the man and the woman greeted the Lord's earlier visits to them.  However, the air of easy delight that breathes through the narrative in Genesis 2 suggests that, when God spoke to the man about his place in the Garden and the law under which he was to live, and when he shared with the man and woman the divine ideal of marriage, they stood in his presence with open minded pleasure. 

Now, however, that fear of God which is henceforth to mark human reactions to his appearing--that moral fear which cries out 'I have seen him; I will die'--has entered the world.  Never again can humans stand unafraid before God.  Yet it is not the awesomeness of his presence that warned the first couple of this, but the inner voice of conscience: it was now natural for them to be afraid of God. 

Genesis 3: 7-10 lays the groundwork for all human ills in a fallen world; we are dislocated within ourselves, dislocated from each other, dislocated from God.  Personal fragmentation, social tension and spiritual alienation are now the parameters of life upon earth. ( p.119)

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow, Idaho

Resentment of the World That Is

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

God created the world. He spoke the heavens and the earth into existence, and this should be the starting point of all our reasoning. As a practical matter, it needs to be our starting point, for had we not been created . . . we couldn’t start.

As the capstone of His creative work, God placed our first parents in a position of authority, establishing them as vicegerents in this world. From that position, when Eve offered the fruit to Adam, he took it and in his rebellion plunged the world into futility and bondage to decay.

So on this side of the Jordan, we must reckon with two fixed realities that are fundamentally characteristic of our world. Those realities are the fact that the world is created, and the fact that it is fallen. Considered from another angle, there are things basically right with the world and there are things basically wrong with the world.

At the same time, as a result of God’s redemptive purposes, there are now two humanities living here.

Meteria Turei and the Bible

Unwittingly Turei Confirms the Scriptures and Condemns Us All

We are finding it hard to move on past the mendacity and priggishness of Green leader, Metiria Turei.  Here was a public exposure of universal human depravity--an uncloaking of what lurks and festers inside all of us.

The particular events are now well known. But to recap, the Green Leader has admitted lying for over a period of at least five years in order to maintain her state income support benefit which was means tested.  In order to get the full entitlement, there were limits on how much "other income" Turei was receiving.  In this case she owned or operated successive apartments which she had sub-let to several other flatmates.  She lied to the welfare authorities about the income she was receiving from her cohabitants.  If she had told the truth, of course, like ordinary folk, her state welfare benefit would have been reduced accordingly.

Now, years later, Turei has cast herself as both a victim and a martyr.  She was forced into lying, she says.

Decay and Rot Is A Perpetual Norm

A Perpetual Fifth Column

It has been said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.  Why?  The presumption behind the adage is that men are not just corruptible, which alone would be sufficient reason for eternal vigilance, but that men are prone to corruption.  Given half a chance the ever nascent spectre of the Lord of the Flies emerges from a putrescent carcass.  We must needs be vigilant precisely because the risk of tyranny is real. 

Not that this should surprise us.  All Nature is in decay in one way or the other.  Steel rusts.  Foundations rot.  Rivers flood.  Species die out.  It's no surprise, therefore, that the human species would be prone to decay and retrogression.  It's what made the Cold War a very real threat.

G. K Chesterton takes this a stage further.  He suggests that the threat to human liberty is that liberty itself allows--even promotes--decay and rot from within.  A previous generation's glory becomes the downfall of the next.  Our glory becomes our next curse.  It is for this reason that eternal vigilance is required.  He cites some historical examples of liberties producing tyrannies in fast order:

Making Things Right

False Messiahs

We are not sure if you have noticed, but the world is slightly short of being a perfect place.  People die, for one thing.  They get ill and suffer and expire.  Moreover, accidents happen.  On other occasions, human beings become angry and in a fit of rage they attack and murder other human beings.  Worse still, some coldly and systematically plot the demise of neighbours. 

You get the point.  We could go on for a long extended description of all the things which are wrong with the world.  In fact, the world would not contain all the books that would need to be written to describe exhaustively every aspect and scintilla of imperfection on this terrestrial ball.  The Christian calls this imperfect state of the world fallen.  The world is filled with evil (natural and unnatural).  Moreover, we--human beings--are responsible for the world's fallen state.  The world was originally created to be without sin, evil, or wrong.  We humans (not Nature, not the animal kingdom, not the solar system) brought all this evil and imperfection to this planet.  In a fit of galactic stupidity we decided to rebel against our Creator and replace Him with ourselves as gods.

The fallen condition in which we live necessarily means that humanity spends a great deal of time and effort combating evil and protecting itself from the worst excesses of wrong.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Natural Evil and the Classical Christian School

Blog and Mablog

Douglas Wilson

December 17, 2014

One of the central arguments that materialistic atheism offers against the Christian faith is that the reality and universality of suffering is inconsistent with the doctrine that we were created by, and are loved by, a gracious heavenly Father. If we intend to do our job in training our students to be able to defend their faith as they go out into the world, it seems to me that we ought not to begin by granting the foundational premise of unbelief.

Believe me, the pressing reality of natural evil is a major argument that the atheists use, and the theistic evolutionists will have to do a lot better than they have done thus far in mounting a reply.

If evolution was God’s means of creating, then this means that pain, struggle, suffering, agony, and torment were His means of creation, and He pronounced all of it “good.”

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

That Seamy Chain of Syllogisms 

Political Dualism - Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
 Thursday, 17 May 2012

Marriage is a political act, and not an individual choice. How you marry is a way of testifying to what city you belong to. Who defines marriage? The difficulty we are having in our generation in answering this question shows how theology shapes and drives everything.

If God created the world, and put one man and one woman in it, married them to each other, and established that as a pattern for the rest of human history, then marriage should be defined in accordance with that reality. If He did nothing of the kind, and we actually evolved out of the primordial goo, then we get to shape and define it however we would like it to go.

One other item of Christian theology has to be taken into account, and that is the reality of the fall into sin.

Eve Had it Right All Along

Intelligent Design Theories

We have been reading a book entitled God and Evolution, edited by Jay Richards.  Its default position is the promotion of Intelligent Design, with a collection of essays by Protestants, Roman Catholics and Jewish contributors.  In this and some future posts, we will interact with some of the contributions.

Now, on one level--the broadest referent--nobody denies "evolution"--the concept of development, change, and adaptation is  universally taught in the Scriptures and self-evident everywhere in the creation.  In a similar fashion, all Christians acknowledge "intelligent design" of the universe.  To believe that God created all things of nothing necessarily requires a belief in intelligent design.  After all, "in the beginning was the Word. . . . All things came into being through Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being."  (John 1:1-3)  the Greek noun, "logos", used here for the Word, means rational, verbal expression. 

But Intelligent Design protagonists want to say something more.

Bureaucrats Pure as the Driven Snow

A Great Guffaw Moment

The West believes passionately in the sinlessness and perfection of man as an article of faith. At least in an abstract sense. Mocking and sneering at the Bible's declaration of universal human depravity, the West has turned from the worship of God and replaced it with a spurious reverence for man.

This deep and profound religious attachment to man, which is now the established religion of the West, is the ultimate and final expression of idolatry. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God and sinned, the Serpent acutely revealed what was the essence of the matter: in the day they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil man would become like God, knowing good and evil for themselves. (Genesis 3:5)

"Primitive" cultures and civilisations were steeped in idolatry. It was an intrinsic part of the world-view. Men speculated over and created deities; they made representations of them; they bowed down to them and sacrificed to them. The truth of the Serpent's assertion lay hidden beneath the surface. Man bowing down to dumb idols does not much seem like man being as God. Yet it was. It was man who was determining for himself what gods existed, how they acted, what they were like, and how they were to be mollified and won over.

In the West, in the post-Enlightenment age, the veneer disguising the Serpent's proposition has been stripped off and tossed aside. Man has come forth asserting boldly and without shame his prerogatives to determine good and evil for himself. No longer does the modern man feel the need to genuflect to a higher power or entity in pseudo-humility. No longer does he fear retribution if he fails to do obeisance. In the West, man has grown up. There is no truth, right, wrong, or reality higher than the ratiocinations of the Western human rationalist mind.

It has finally emerged--the truth of Satan's observation about man as god. It has taken millennia, but eventually, in the West, the rebellion of man against God has reached its apogee. Man no longer feels the need to "hide" or disguise his assertion of supremacy and autonomy: he is confident enough to assert it outright. There is no entity or being higher than man. There is no god to be worshipped. There is only man. Idolatry has now reached its most consistent expression: it can go no further in terms of its overtness or the consistency of its outworking.

Another way of expressing this is to say that in the West idolatry has taken its most extreme form; the rebellion of man against God has matured to the point of succeeding in building a civilisation that is more or less consistently grounded upon the proposition that man is god. And this is a first in human history.

But just a few pesky problems remain. Whilst in the West man is now definitely in charge (at least in his own mind) Western civilization continues to be beset with a daunting array of problems ranging from disease to crime; poverty to illiteracy; credit crunches to obscene bonuses paid out to, in President Obama's words, "Wall Street fat cats". We could go on with an extensive litany of "sins" that remain part of modern experience. Man may be charge, but the old saw about lunatics running the asylum bites a bit too close to the bone.

Thus, human perfection and sinlessness must be seen as a relative concept. Some are more sinless and perfect than others it would seem. And here we come to one of the great guffaw moments of our age. In this most extreme form of idolatry, the West is forced to cast about for someone, some representation of humanity, that is more godlike who can be trusted to lead the race out of its remaining problems to its final perfect state.

In order for our extreme idolatry to maintain a veneer of credibility there must always be at least one class of human beings which has achieved a greater slice of divinity, which has risen above the petty and the petulant, which has achieved one of the key attributes of deity. This attribute is essential to lead other men in the West to their final perfected state, to an existence where manifold problems are solved once and for all. It is the attribute of absolute disinterest, of pure objectivity, which would lay aside self-interest, and act only in the interests of others, or for the good of man as a whole. Only such men and women are worthy of being trusted and believed in so as to lead all in the West to final perfection. When man is god, it will always turn out that some men are more divine than others. It is this deifying, not just of men in general, but of a specific type of man, or class of man, or individual as being more divine than others, and therefore worthy of our trust to bring man to perfection, which is the guffaw moment. It is the great joke of the age.

This uber-deifying of a certain man or class of men is so common and so intrinsic to the West that it no longer seems remarkable. It has achieved the status of being beyond debate, a truth to all intents and purposes self-evident.

Theodore Dalrymple, writing in City Journal gives us a classic rendition of this psychosis and spiritual blindness. He is writing about John Kenneth Galbraith, about whom he says many interesting things, which we will hopefully get to discuss in another post. Galbraith, of course, is probably the most lauded economist in the US in the twentieth century, and Galbraith has some very definite views about which section of Western society has achieved absolute disinterest and is godlike enough to lead the rest of us.

Dalrymple points out that Galbraith had a deep disdain for private business corporations--a disdain which is coming back into vogue. He held that the bigger and more successful a private business became, the more its management developed a bureaucratic mindset and began to look after its own interests. Clearly business managers, as a class, have not yet achieved the levels of perfection that are required of those whom we can trust. Where, then, does Galbraith place his faith?

In Galbraith's case, he places his faith firmly in government bureaucrats. Dalrymple takes up the narrative:

There remains, however, an astonishingly gaping absence in Galbraith’s worldview. While he is perfectly able to see the defects of businessmen—their inclination to megalomania, greed, hypocrisy, and special pleading—he is quite unable to see the same traits in government bureaucrats. It is as if he has read, and taken to heart, the work of Sinclair Lewis, but never even skimmed the work of Kafka.

For example, the chapter entitled “The Bureaucratic Syndrome” in his book The Culture of Contentment refers only to bureaucracy in corporations (and in the one government department he despises, the military). Galbraith appears to believe in the absurd idea that bureaucrats administer tax revenues to produce socially desirable ends without friction, waste, or mistake. It is clearly beyond the range of his thought that government action can, even with the best intentions, produce harmful effects.

And later:

Galbraith explains resistance to higher taxation thus: “It is the nature of privileged position that it develops its own political justification and often the economic and social doctrine that serves it best.” In other words, men—except for Marx and Galbraith—believe what it is in their interest to believe. It is hardly surprising that Galbraith always writes as if what he says is revealed truth and counterarguments are the desperate, last-ditch efforts of the self-interested and corrupt.

Galbraith never solved, or even appeared to notice, the mystery of how he himself could see through self-interest and arrive at disinterested truth. In general, his self-knowledge was severely limited.

But in believing as he did, Galbraith reflects the most widely held "vote" in the West for the class of men who have achieved higher states of deity and who can be trusted to lead us lesser gods into nirvana. It is the gummint. It is the state bureaucrat who is the ultimate disinterested, self-denying, other-centric human being. All these are attributes of deity. It is this breathtaking folly which makes us split our sides with laughter.

But, we are careful not to make our mirth too public. To question the higher-being-status of government functionaries comes perilously close to blasphemy in our age. Is it not self-evident that some are more human (and thereby more divine) than others? Is it not self-evident that whatever problems remain, government functionaries will deliver us from them? It is not self-evident that the more problems that arise the more functionaries we need? These things are believed by all, and are beyond dispute.

In the West we have made ourselves to be gods, knowing good and evil for ourselves. Government bureaucrats got there first. Human civilization's greatest tragic farce.

An Aftermath of the Columbine Massacre

Congress Did Not Expect This

We have heard recently of the spate of family murder/suicides, mass shootings, and other crimes with guns in the United States. This has led to renewed calls for gun controls. The ideology of the "ban" is alive and well.

A Congressional House Judiciary Sub-Committee has been conducting hearings on this matter and at a recent sitting heard from the father of one of the victims of the Columbine Massacre, Rachel Scott. Her father, Darrel Scott gave the following unexpected, profound, insightful testimony. Needless to say, it was apparently not well received nor appreciated.

Since the dawn of creation there has been both good & evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.

The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used.. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain's heart.

In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA - because I don't believe that they are responsible for my daughter's death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel's murder I would be their strongest opponent.

I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy -- it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves. I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best.


Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You've stripped away our heritage,
You've outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question "Why?"
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!


Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation's history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact.

What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine's tragedy occurs -- politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws. Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts..

As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America, and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain.

Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him. To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA -- I give to you a sincere challenge.. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone!

My daughter's death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!"

Hat Tim: The Patriotic Resistance

Meditation on the Text of the Week

Caretakers and Heirs: Both Have Rights

When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
The moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained;
What is man, that Thou dost take thought of him?
And the son of man, that Thou dost care for him?
Yet Thou hast made him a little lower than God,
And dost crown him with glory and majesty!
Thou dost make him to rule over the works of Thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet.
Psalm 8: 3—6

When the entire human race fell into sin through Adam, the marvel was that all mankind was not obliterated on the spot. Such a comprehensive destructive judgment would have been holy, just, and good. The soul that sins, it shall die, says the Law. Mankind in its entirety was from that time under sin and the sentence of death.

Yet, for reasons known only to God, He determined that a new human race would be perfected out of the vitiated, ruined, and blighted detritus that remained. This new, perfected human race would have a new Head. Adam was dethroned as the head; a new human race would be created around a new Head—even Jesus, our Lord.

This meant that there were now going to be two human races: the first had its head in Satan—called the Seed of the Serpent; the second had its head in Christ, called the Seed of the Woman. (Genesis 3:15) Eventually, the Seed of the Woman would overcome and crush the Seed of the Serpent. The second race would come out of the first. The first-born and Head of this new race was to be the Lord Jesus Christ. He atoned for, and cleansed all the sin of all His people—the new human race. This second human race, eventually the only one which shall remain, is now working under its Head to subdue, restrain, grow, and develop the entire creation. The old creation is being re-created anew by the Lord and His people.

The first human race, the Seed of the Serpent, belongs to the old order and is passing away. Eventually, it will be completely gone—reaching the state of obliteration that has been pending and yet long delayed ever since the first sin of Adam. But they have been useful in their time—for a season. It has pleased the Lord to use the Seed of the Serpent to maintain the human race, to maintain some semblance of order over the creation and human society, until they become redundant and are replaced by the new human race descended from the Second Adam.

This means that even Unbelievers are the servants of God, although they know it not, nor will it to be so. Despite themselves, they do His bidding and will and serve His purposes. They act as caretakers throughout history, progressively being replaced by the true heirs, the new human race, led by Jesus the Lord—until finally they are removed and the Lord and His people inherit the entire earth. At this time, finally, all enemies of God will have been placed under His feet.

This biblical world-view, this sweep of history, provides the only foundation for human society: for justice, for ethics, for judgment, for rights, and for freedom. It demands that all mankind is granted privileges and rights for the sovereign Lord has declared that it be so. The Seed of the Serpent has been granted these rights (protection of life and property) temporarily while they carry out their role in the earth as temporary caretakers. The Seed of the Woman has been granted these rights in perpetuity—for eternity—for Christ has won the right to grant them, His people, eternal life.

Man was originally made in the very image of God, only a little lower than God. He was originally crowned with glory and majesty. All this was vitiated and lost when he fell, through Adam, into sin. But it pleased God to allow mankind to keep vestiges of his original glory: for some, they would keep the vestiges temporarily while judgement was prorogued while they acted as caretakers on the earth; for others, the vestiges of glory remained until Christ came forth to cleanse, perfect, and re-create them after His own perfect image.

As we live in this historical dynamic of ever-unfolding redemption and coming inheritance in Christ, God's people are thankful for the functions of caretaking performed by Unbelievers ultimately for their sake and inheritance. Therefore, they treat all men with respect, for the Lord's sake. They call all men--regardless of race, tribe, creed, or profession--to turn from their Unbelief and to come, serve the Living Saviour. Yet, while being servants to all men, they also strive and work diligently for Christ alone, hastening the day when the last enemy, Death shall be abolished and they will enter into the full inheritance that Christ has prepared for them that love Him.

That inheritance is to enjoy a new heavens and a new earth, to participate in a new, glorified, perfected, sinless human race, and to be with the Lord, our beloved Saviour forever.

O Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is Thy name in all the earth!

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.

ChnMind 1.20 The Meaning of Death

Death Comes to All Men
Benjamin Franklin once opined that the only two certanties in life are death and taxes. But the question is begged, Why death? Why does death exist in the first place?
After all, scientists have concluded that there is no intrisinc physiological reason why men grow old and die. There is no physiological reason why a human being does not regenerate cells for ever.
In the mind of Athens, death tends to be regarded as just part of the natural cycle of life. It must always be written in lower case. Its sheer universality or ubiquitousness encourages the Unbelieving Mind to think of death that way―which is the point Franklin was making. But the understanding and interpretation of death captures and reflects one's understanding of life, of being, and of existence. Explore one's view of death and you will come face to face with one's world-view, or religion. Consequently, Athens has a theology of death which exhibits its understanding of life. Jerusalem also has a (very different) theology of death which reflects God's pre-interpreting revelation of absolute truth and, therefore, of life as it really is. Whatever your understanding of death is, it will tell you whether you are a citizen of Jerusalem or Athens.
In developing a Christian Mind we must think carefully the thoughts of God after Him with respect to Death. We must also cast off any remaining vestiges of Athenian miscontruction and misunderstanding of it.
Genesis is very clear. Death is a juridical punishment for sin (which, as we have noted earlier, is the “want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the Law of God.”) In Genesis 2:17 God says to Adam: “. . . but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” Death, then, is the consequence of disobedience to God's commands and directions. When Eve was debating with the serpent, the issue of death was raised again. Eve correctly stated that God had said that if they ate from the one tree, they would die. The serpent, however, flatly denied that eating the tree would result in that juridical punishment: “You surely shall not die,” he said. (Genesis 3:4,5)
Here lies the first clash of arms between the beliefs of Athens and Jerusalem: for Athens, death is never juridical; for Jerusalem, death is always juridical; it is always connected with punishment.
As soon as Adam and Eve ate, the judicial sentence fell. Man entered into a state of Death. The first and immediate consequence was shame. The second was an urgent need to be covered and protected from an external threat. The third was that they hid from God and did not want to be in His presence. (Genesis 3:6―8). But the sentence was progressively worked out upon Adam and Eve throughout their lives, leading finally to their actual physical death when their bodies returned to the dust when they came.
The death of the body, the cessation of bodily function, is the final end to life upon earth―but after the Fall one's entire life existed and exists as under the sentence of Death, which is progressively worked out and which progressively falls through all one's days upon earth. We are born to die. We are born condemned and in the state of judicial punishment. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism so aptly expresses it:
“All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself and to the pains of hell forever.” (Question 19: “What is the misery of that estate whereinto man fell?”
The first thing to understand about Death, then, is that it is the judicial punishment of Adam and Eve by the Judge of the heavens and the earth for their sin. That punishment and its consequence was progressively exacted over their entire lifetimes upon earth. This makes clear that Death was not, and never has been, natural. The ubiquity of Death has been used within the corridors of Athens as an evidential argument for it being a natural part of life—part of the natural order, as is breathing oxygen, conception, birth, or the existence of the sun, as it were. But God declares that Death is not part of the natural order at all. The only reason Death came to Adam was as a punishment for his sin.
The second aspect is to understand that Adam's sin was not a private individual act. It was a public act, a federal act, in which all humanity was deemed by God to have so acted. The entire race, all of humanity, descending from Adam was caught up and captured in this one crucial act of disobedience. The juridical sentence for that one act of disobedience fell upon all mankind, for all were judged and accounted guilty in Adam.
So, again, the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity; all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression.” (Question 16: “Did all mankind fall in Adam's first transgression?”). You may ask, Where does the text say that? Where does the Bible assert that Adam's sin was a public act and the guilt of that sin fell upon all humanity descending from him? Well, it doesn't—at least not in Genesis. The reason, of course, is the self-evident existence of Death, its ubiquity, its comprehensive coverage of every creature upon the earth. Genesis does not state it because natural revelation, the universal experience of man—being born to die—made the point evidently clear. After all, name one human being who has not died, or who will not die. Franklin was right—at least with respect to death. Yet death was not part of the original created order. Death was the punishment for Adam's sin. Death, then, being not part of the original Creation which was declared by God to be good, but being the punishment for sin, since all men die, we conclude that all men have sinned.
Later, however, the matter was made explicit in the Bible, yet in a manner which underscores the self-evidence of our relationship to Adam, that he represented us and the guilt of his sin is imputed to every human being (apart from the Lord Jesus Christ—but that's another story.) Paul argues this almost dismissively, almost in passing—underscoring the self-evident nature of the case. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned . . . . Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's offense, who is a type of Him who was to come.” (Romans 5: 12,14)
The guilt of Adam's sin being put to every human being is demonstrated beyond doubt insofar as those human beings, who have never sinned pesonally, are yet subject to Death, sin's penalty. They die! They fall under the juridical sentence of sin. Paul refers to this, when he observes that “even those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's offense” are subject to the reign of Death. Miscarraiges, which Paul alludes to here, are a constant human reality, are the “living proof” that from conception onward, even before a person has done anything sinful by their own thoughts, words, and actions, we bear the guilt of Adam's sin, and its punishment—death. As the Holy Spirit speaking through David said, we are conceived in sin. (Psalm 51:5)
The Believing Mind, then, has a very different view of Death from that which prevails within Athens. In Jerusalem, Death is viewed with horror, as something terribly unnatural, as wrong—despite its universality and ubiquity. Death is a judgement. Its attendant horror and sense of wrongness is inextricably related to it being a judgement and punishment for evil. Our evil. My evil. Thus, in Jerusalem, Death is an enemy. It is my enemy because I have been at enmity with God. I have broken his Law. I reached forth in Adam and ate from the forbidden tree. I have followed it up with a lifetime of disobedience and sinful words, thoughts and deeds. Therefore, I am subject to Death. It is a punishment for sin.
But this great enemy has been and will be defeated because Christ, the Second Adam, has come forth into human history to make atonement for my sin—not only for Adam's sin imputed to me in the first place, but for all sins of which I am guilty by my own device. This is as certain as the reality of sin itself. Therefore, in Christ, the juridical nature of death remains, but is deflected to Christ. The concept of Death as horrible remains, buts its horror is concentrated upon Christ's death in my place on Calvary, where I have already juridically died in punishment for my sin. Therefore, since Christ rose from Death, my own (physical) death when it comes will have utterly lost its sting. As in Christ I died at Calvary, so in Christ I have risen and will rise. In Christ Death died.
Thus, Jerusalem knows that there are two kinds of death amongst humanity: the juridical and the non-juridical. When the citizens of Athens die, it is indeed Death—the juridical punishment of God upon the sinner because of his guilt. When the citizens of Jerusalem die, all juridical aspects have been removed, such that, in due time, physical death itself will be removed in the resurrection to come.
Within Athens there is an utter confusion of babbling voices over Death and its significance. In the first place, it must always be written in lower case. There are those who tell themselves that the dying loved one has gone to a “better place”. They want to ascribe some sort of immortality to the soul, which, having shuffled off its mortal coil, is set freed from this valley of toil and trouble. Other Atheniens fix onto some elements of the Christian Gospel and imagine that the dead has gone to be with a god. Still others imagine that the dead have become gods in their own right. Others tell themselves that there is nothing after death. There is only material reality. Death is the end. So they seek to recount in memory the person and deeds as a way of “keeping them alive” for the living. Others hope that the dead will come back again, in and endless cycle of existence. They will reappear in some other life form or as another human being.
However, amidst this babble of voices there are two doctrines common to all Athenian mythology concerning death: firstly, all Athenians insist that death is neither significant nor important; secondly, all Athens insists that whatever else it may be, death most certainly is not a sentence of judgement upon the sinner. Search all the annals of Athens. You will certainly not find anywhere the doctrine that death is a judgement of the Living God upon sin. You will struggle to find even a hint that death has anything to do with sin or wrongdoing or punishment of any kind at all. That is definitely inconceivable and unspeakable in the streets and drawing rooms of Athens. It is what Athens would call blasphemy.
These two “infallible” doctrines of Athens are, of course, related. In the Garden the serpent emphatically insisted that were Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit they would most certainly not die. The juridical punishment would not fall because there was nothing morally wrong with eating the fruit in the first place. There was a deeper morality, a higher ethic above and beyond God upon which Adam and Eve could rely and draw. God was “in fact” no more than a god, hissed the serpent.
When Death did fall the serpent had to modify the story. The serpent insisted that actually he was right all along. Although Death did come to Adam and his descendants, it was, and is not, a punishment for them doing anything wrong. The serpent's purported higher magic is still valid, he claimed It is just that death is unimportant and irrelevant. It is all part of life, part of being a god unto oneself.
All in Athens are under the thrall of the Devil. They are his seed and children (as we shall see, shortly in Genesis). When it comes to the meaning and significance of Death, they, like their father, follow the original lie utered to Adam and Eve. Death is not a punishment. Death is unimportant. It is simply natural. It is the way things ought to be.
In Athens, Death must always be written in lower case.

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.