Starting with the Answer
NOTICE:
This is an outdated and unofficial item. The article was released as a draft/preview to Captive to Reason. For the current and official version of the article, please download the book from the online library.
(The following is an edited message that I sent as part of a discussion on apologetics.)
In a previous message, I wrote, "We know that an axiom is true because God revealed it, and we know that God revealed it because the same logically undeniable axiom tells us so. This is presuppositionalism."
Let me make a related point about this.
I have written an answer to the problem of evil, but this answer would not be necessary if there isn’t a problem of evil to start with. Evil itself is neither a question nor an objection, so it does not demand an answer, defense, or explanation from us, but a response is needed only when someone makes it into the problem of evil, that is, an objection.
As a child before conversion, and then for some time after conversion, I had never even considered the problem of evil, although I had reflected on evil itself. It never occurred to me that evil was a problem against Christianity. Of course God could do whatever he wants, I thought, and of course he is righteous in all that he does. Up to that time, I had never considered this positively held belief as a response to any objection against Christianity; nevertheless, this is precisely one of the main biblical answers to the problem of evil.
You see, I started with the answer, but never considered objections against it, so I never considered it as an answer to anything — to me, it was just the plain truth. But then, as I became aware that there were rebellious souls who challenge God's word, I turned this into an answer against the objections; yet, it is the same truth, only that I now express and employ it in a way so that it functions as an answer against particular challenges.
The Bible is true because God revealed the truth in it — as long as there is no challenge to this, there is no apologetics involved. Thus, apologetics always implies the presence of sin. If we were sinless, we would always immediately believe whatever God tells us. There would be no objections against which to defend ourselves, and there would be no false beliefs for us to attack. If there is no rebellion and unbelief, then there is no need for apologetics, although there will still be theology. When we use the biblical or presuppositional approach to apologetics, we are using what we positively affirm in our theology to interact with our opponents in a way such that revelation now functions as a defensive and offensive weapon.
This is an essential difference between the biblical or presuppositional approach and the classical or evidential approach. In biblical or presuppositional apologetics, we start with the answer, so that some of what we say in apologetics depends on the nature of the challenge, since our apologetics is really an adaptation of our theology to a particular situation.
On the other hand, the classical or evidential approach starts from a point that is very far from the answer, and then it tries to get to the answer from there. It deliberately begins from the sinner’s own starting point — from one’s subjective intuition, fallible sensation, or a false axiom. Since its own starting point (common with the sinner’s) is not the answer, and not a word from God, it must argue even if there were no unbelief, rebellion, or objection. This cannot be heaven’s way of thinking, but we have the mind of Christ even now.
If revelation is really the answer, and if it is only through revelation that we can truly understand and interpret anything, then it is self-defeating to put aside this necessary revelation in order to get back to revelation from some non-biblical starting point, which starting point is adopted only because of man’s sinfulnes and rebellion in the first place.
Thus to learn the biblical approach of apologetics (dogmatism, presuppositionalism, biblical rationalism, biblical foundationalism, etc.), we must become familiar with the biblical system — that is, what Scripture has revealed about various subjects and their relationships with one another — and with those things that are necessary to every intellectual system, so that we may grasp and critique every opposing system as we encounter it. If there is no challenge against revelation, then it continues to stand true on its logical necessity and self-attesting authority (for God cannot swear by anyone higher than himself), and this is the system of truth that we affirm. To the extent that we correctly understand Scripture, there will be no essential modifications to our understanding of this revealed system even when we get to heaven, but only increased understanding of the same revelation, as well as additions to it.
At the same time, the biblical system also logically excludes all non-biblical systems, so that as long as our system stands true and defensible, all others are false by necessity. Then, when there is a direct challenge against it, we only need to adapt its content to decisively answer it, both to defend our faith, and to crush our opponent.
In other words, in practicing a biblical or presuppositional approach to apologetics, we are acting as God’s instruments to unleash his own revealed wisdom to vindicate himself and to defeat the enemy. Rather than using our intuition, sensation, or fallacious reasonings to testify about God, our apologetic is essentially an expression and application of God’s testimony about himself, since God is his own best witness, and he can swear by no one higher.
This is a theological explanation of what happens in biblical or presuppositional apologetics. For more information, including practical instructions, I recommend the exposition of Acts 17 in my Presuppositional Confrontations and my Apologetics in Conversation.
Recommended:
Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology
Vincent Cheung, Ultimate Questions
Vincent Cheung, Presuppositional Confrontations
Vincent Cheung, Apologetics in Conversation
Vincent Cheung, "The Problem of Evil"
Gordon Clark, Christian Philosophy
Gordon Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things
Carl F. H. Henry, Toward a Recovery of Christian Belief
Why I am Not a Van Tilian
By W. Gary Crampton
© The Trinity Foundation
It was Dr. Kenneth Talbot who first introduced me to the writings of Gordon Clark. In seminary I had been taught the Van Tilian system of apologetics, and in comparison with evidentialism, it seemed to be a breath of fresh air. Further, as one Reformed scholar assured me: "To be Reformed is to be Van Tilian, and to be Van Tilian is to be Reformed."
Yet, as impolitic as it was to challenge the teachings of Dr. Van Til, his system left me without answers to far too many questions; it produced a strange melange of logical antinomies. How can one be a presuppositionalist and still believe that there are proofs for the existence of God? How can one be in the orthodox camp of Christianity and maintain that the God of Scripture is both one person and three persons? How can one read and understand the Scriptures if there are so many humanly irresolvable contradictions in them? How can one stand for the Christian faith and at the same time endorse a form of irrationalism? The answer to all of my questions was simple: One can’t. And neither does one have to. It was Clark, through Talbot, who pointed this out.
But it is not only Clark who has seen the errors in Van Til’s teachings. Drs. Robert Reymond1 and Ronald Nash2 have also recognized the irrationalism of Van Til. And it is Clark’s disciple, Dr. John Robbins, who has given us the fullest criticism of Van Tilianism to date.3 In the opinion of this writer, an honest reading of Robbins’ book, followed by a serious study of both Van Til’s and Clark’s works, will convince the reader that Van Tilianism is an error. There are few, however, who are willing to study the issue seriously. They have already made up their minds, and their attitude seems to be, "Don’t confuse me with the facts."
Presuppositionalism
Where is it that Van Til has gone astray? Using Robbins’ book as a guide, I will begin with Van Til’s view of presuppositional apologetics. Presuppositionalism, by definition, excludes the use of proofs for the existence of God. Not so, however, with Dr. Van Til. Here indeed is a paradox: Dr. Van Til, who is frequently touted as "Mr. Presuppositionalist," is not a presuppositionalist. For example, he writes,
Men ought to reason analogically from nature to nature’s God. Men ought, therefore, to use the cosmological argument analogically in order thus to conclude that God is the creator of this universe…. Men ought also to use the ontological argument analogically…. The argument for the existence of God and for the truth of Christianity is objectivity valid. We should not tone down the validity of this argument to the probability level. The argument may be poorly stated, and may never be adequately stated. But in itself the argument is absolutely sound…. Thus there is an absolutely certain proof for the existence of God and the truth of Christian theism (13).4
These statements sound like Thomism.
At the same time, with his flair for dialectical reasoning, Van Til rejects the proofs of God’s existence: "Of course Reformed believers do not seek to prove the existence of their God. To seek to prove or to disprove the existence of this God would be to seek to deny him…. A God whose existence is proved is not the God of Scripture" (14). But this is the same God whose existence Dr. Van Til has also told us can be proved.
The Trinity
As the arrangement of the Westminster Confession of Faith would indicate, apart from the doctrine of Scripture (WCF 1), the most fundamental doctrine of Christianity is that of the Trinity (WCF 2). Orthodoxy maintains, as so clearly set forth by the Confession, that "in the unity of the Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost" (2:3).
Dr. Van Til demurs. He writes:
We do assert that God, that is, the whole Godhead, is one person…. We must maintain that God is numerically one, He is one person…. We speak of God as a person; yet we speak also of three persons in the Godhead…. God is a one-conscious being, and yet he is also a tri-conscious being…. [T]he work ascribed to any of the persons is the work of one absolute person…. We do assert that God, that is, the whole Godhead, is one person…. [W]e must therefore hold that God’s being presents an absolute numerical identity. And even within the ontological Trinity we must maintain that God is numerically one. He is one person (18-19).
Lamentably, this peculiar teaching has spread. John Frame, a disciple of Van Til and professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, also says that "Scripture…does refer to God as one person" (20). Speaking of the Trinity, Van Tilian Gary North writes: "We are not dealing with one uniform being; we are dealing with Persons who constitute a Person."5
David Chilton, another follower of Van Til, has written: "The doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one God (one Person) who is three distinct Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and that each of those Persons is Himself God. There are not three Gods – only One. Yet those three Persons are not different ways or modes of God making Himself known to us, nor are they to be confused with one another; they are three distinct Persons. Cornelius Van Til states it about as clearly as anyone has…."6
One of Van Til's more creative and imaginative disciples, James Jordan, has added another twist: While Van Til, Frame, and North state that God is one person and three persons, Jordan adds tri-theism. God, says Jordan, is one essence and three essences. He writes; "First of all, God is One and Three in essence. The Father and the Son are One; the Father and the Spirit are One; the Son and the Spirit are One; and the Three are One. This is a mystery, and is an ontological or metaphysical reality. But second, the Father, Son, and Spirit are each persons, and they exist in Society. There are relationships between them."7 Jordan’s one and three essences are another deviation from Christian orthodoxy, and the notion is as Biblically and logically fallacious as saying that God is one person and three persons.
Now it is simply jejune to argue, as some have done, that these are merely "apparent contradictions." These are irreconcilable contradictions. It is a violation of the law of contradiction to say that God is one person and three persons, or one essence and three essences, at the same time and in the same respect. But this is precisely what Van Til taught and many of his disciples are teaching. It is a strange alchemy that can make 1 = 3 and 3 = 1.
The Bible
Dr. Van Til is well known for his assertion that the Bible is full of logical paradoxes, apparent contradictions, or antinomies. In fact, he avers that "all teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory" (25). This is due, first of all, to his attitude toward logic. Whereas the Westminster divines had a high view of logic, Van Til did not. The Confession, for example, states that "the whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture" (1:6). Logic, says the Confession, is a necessary tool to be used in the study and exposition of the Word of God.
Van Til, on the other hand, almost always speaks of logic (not the misuse of logic, but logic itself) in a disparaging manner. For example, he speaks of "logicism" and "the static categories of logic." And with reference to the Confession’s statement quoted above, Van Til says: "This statement should not be used as a justification for deductive exegesis" (24-25). But deductive exegesis is exactly what the Westminster divines were endorsing.
In a chapter entitled "The Religious Revolt Against Logic," Ronald Nash writes, "I once asked Van Til if, when some human being knows that 1 plus 1 equals 2, that human being’s knowledge is identical with God’s knowledge. The question, I thought, was innocent enough. Van Til’s only answer was to smile, shrug his shoulders, and declare that the question was improper in the sense that it had no answer. It had no answer because any proposed answer would presume what is impossible for Van Til, namely, that laws like those found in mathematics and logic apply beyond the [Dooyeweerdian] Boundary" (100). In other words, Van Til, like Herman Dooyeweerd, assumed that the laws of logic are created.
It is true that in some places Van Til implies that logic is not created.8 But in other places he says the opposite, that is, that logic is created.9 And the difference is not explained by saying that Van Til changed his views; that would be fine. Rather, it is part of the Van Tilian paradox.
Van Tilian Richard Pratt is of the same opinion. He writes: "Because logic is a part of creation, it has limitations…. Christianity is at points reasonable and logical, but logic meets the end of its ability when it comes to matters like the incarnation of Christ, and the doctrine of the Trinity."10 Apparently the doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity, key Christian doctrines to say the least, are illogical. Edwin H. Palmer believes they are. Regarding the doctrine of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man, Palmer writes in his book, The Five Points of Calvinism: "Over against these humanistic views, the Calvinist accepts both sides of the antinomy. He realizes that what he advocates is ridiculous…. And the Calvinist freely admits that his position is illogical, ridiculous, nonsensical, and foolish" (85). Of course, if Van Til and Pratt are correct in their assertions that logic is created, then God could not think logically; neither could he give us a rational revelation.
Thankfully, they are not correct. As Clark has pointed out time and again in his writings, the laws of logic are the way God thinks, and he has given us a rational revelation by which to live. In fact, Clark states, Jesus calls himself the Logos (word from which we get "logic") of God in John 1. He is Logic incarnate, and if we are to think in a manner that pleases God, we must think as Christ does: logically.11
With his faulty view of logic, it is not surprising that Van Til believes that the Bible is full of "apparent contradictions." The Bible says that God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33), but Van Til says that "all teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory" (25). The Westminster Confession (1:5) speaks of "the consent of all the parts" of Scripture, but Van Til maintains that "since God is not fully comprehensible to us we are bound to come into what seems to be a contradiction in all our knowledge" (26). Van Til and his disciples revel in the notion that the Bible is full of logical (that is, irreconcilable) paradoxes. He writes: "While we shun as poison the idea of the really contradictory, we embrace with passion the idea of the apparently contradictory" (26). The difficulty is that Van Til gave us no test by which we might distinguish between a real and an apparent contradiction.
In his defense of a rational Christianity, Robert Reymond argues against Van Til’s concept of Biblical paradox; "If such is the case [that all Christian truth will finally be paradoxical], [then]… it condemns at the outset as futile even the attempt at systematic (orderly) theology… since it is impossible to reduce to a system irreconcilable paradoxes which steadfastly resist all attempts at harmonious systematization" (29). In other words, if Van Til’s view of Scripture is taken to its logical conclusion, there could be no system of Biblical truth.
There are indeed parts of Scripture that are "hard to understand" (2 Peter 3:16), but there is none impossible to understand. Such a "revelation" would not be a revelation at all. Gordon Clark, who trenchantly argued against the confusion espoused by Van Til, defined a paradox as "a charleyhorse between the ears that can be eliminated by rational massage."12
The root of the problem here is Van Til’s belief that all human knowledge is (and can only be) analogical to God’s knowledge. Writes Van Til: "Our knowledge is analogical and therefore must be paradoxical" (26). Reymond writes that "what this means for Van Til is the express rejection of any and all qualitative coincidence between the content of God’s mind and .the content of man’s mind" (20). Reymond is correct. And this is a fatal error.
Clark, however, corrects the error. "To avoid this irrationalism…we must insist that truth is the same for God and man. Naturally, we may not know the truth about some matters. But if we know anything at all, what we know must be identical with what God knows. God knows all truth, and unless we know something God knows, our ideas are untrue. It is absolute1y essential, therefore, to insist that there is an area of coincidence between God’s mind and our mind. One example, as good as any, is… [that] David was king of Israel."13
Clark, of course, is not denying that there is a difference in degree between God’s knowledge and our knowledge — that is, God always knows more than man does. What he is denying is Van Til’s assertion that there is no point at which our knowledge is God’s knowledge. That is, there must be a univocal point where truth in the mind of man coincides with truth in the mind of God. (The difference in knowledge, then, is one of degree, not of kind.) Without this univocal point, man could never know truth. Man could not, to use Van Til’s own phrase, "think God’s thought after him," unless God’s knowledge and the knowledge possible to man coincide at some point.
Van Til’s faulty view of human analogical knowledge entails skepticism. Van Til himself wrote:
It is precisely because they [the colleagues and followers of Van Til] are concerned to defend the Christian doctrine of revelation as basic to all intelligible human predication that they refuse to make any attempt at "stating clearly" any Christian doctrine, or the relation of any one Christian doctrine to any other Christian doctrine. They will not attempt to "solve" the "paradoxes" involved in the relationship of the self-contained God to his dependent creatures (27-28).
John Frame is in agreement with Van Til. Frame seems to defend Van Til’s view of analogical language when he proposes his "multiperspectival" approach to theology. Frame points out that "Scripture, for God’s good reasons, is often vague." Perhaps Frame has the parables in mind. But he goes on to draw an invalid inference. "Therefore," he concludes in an obvious non sequitur, "there is no way of escaping vagueness in theology, creed, or subscription without setting Scripture aside as our ultimate criterion." Frame, like the rest of the Van Tilian school, is very concerned to do away with precision in thought in favor of vagueness.
"Scripture," says Frame, "does not demand absolute precision of us, a precision impossible for creatures…. Indeed, Scripture recognizes that for sake of communication, vagueness is often preferable to precision…. Nor is theology an attempt to state truth without any subjective influence on the formulation."14 One might ask how it is that vagueness, rather than precision, in theology, or any other thing for that matter, is good? – a logical question. Ah, but there is the rub. It is a logical question.
Apparently the Van Tilians have forgotten the Reformed doctrine of the clarity of Scripture. The Westminster Confession of Faith expresses it this way: "All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them" (1:7).
David clearly assures us that the "commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes" (Psalm 19:8); Christ clearly is concerned that his church pay heed to the meticulous details of the Word of God (Matthew 5:17-20); Peter clearly tells us that as we study the "prophetic Word" it will be as a light that shines in a dark place, shining brighter and brighter, "until the day dawns and the morning star rises in [our] hearts" (2 Peter 1:19); and John clearly writes, "We know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know him who is true" (1 John 5:20); but Professors Van Til and Frame are content with vagueness and imprecision. And what is worse, it seems that Van Til and Frame not only assert that there are parts of Scripture that are irrational, but defend it as properly irrational.
Dr. Robbins has correctly stated that "there is no greater threat facing the Christian church at the end of the twentieth century than the irrationalism that now controls our entire culture…. Hedonism and secular humanism are not to be feared nearly so much as the belief that logic, ‘mere human logic,’ is an untrustworthy tool for understanding the Bible…. The more conservative seminaries already have fallen or are falling prey to irrationalism and heresy in the form of Van Tilianism…. The ministers have been taught that irrationalism is Christianity. Those theologians who have accepted Van Til’s views believe that Christianity is irrational" (39).
Conclusion
Cornelius Van Til has been extolled as a man whose insights "are life-transforming and world-transforming;" he is "undoubtedly the greatest defender of the Christian faith in our century;" his "contribution to theology is of virtually Copernican dimensions;" he is "a thinker of enormous power, combining unquestioned orthodoxy with dazzling originality;" he is "perhaps the most important Christian thinker of the twentieth century" (1-2).
Yet, when one searches the Scriptures to see if the distinctive teachings of Van Til are true (Acts 17:11), all too frequently he will find that they are not. Worse, as I trust we have seen, some of them are dangerously wrong. Van Til’s thoughts may be "original," but it is truth and not originality that should characterize Christian theology.
I have in no way attempted to distort or misrepresent the teachings of Cornelius Van Til. (Nor is the piety of the man being questioned.) Each reader must judge for himself the accuracy of the statements made here, and their necessary implications. Read Robbins’ book, as I did, and check the references; read Clark’s books as well; then judge.
If this essay offends anyone, I am sorry. But it is more important that truth be made known, even if feelings are hurt. Let us not be at enmity one with another because I have sought to tell you the truth (Galatians 4:16). I am not a Van Tilian, because Van Tilianism is not true. It is a body of thought that militates against the truth; it does not support it.
Robbins has said it well: "Let us turn from Van Tilianism and ‘embrace with passion’ the Scriptural ideals of clarity in both thought and speech; let us recognize, with Christ and the Westminster Assembly, the indispensability of logic; let us believe and teach, with Augustine and Athanasius, the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity; and let us defend the consistency and intelligibility of the Bible. Then, and only then, will Christianity have a bright and glorious future in America and throughout the Earth." (40).
Notes
1 Preach the Word! (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1988), 16-35.
2 The Word of God and the Mind of Man (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 99-101.
3 Cornelius Van Til: The Man and the Myth (The Trinity Foundation, 1986).
4 The quotes used in this article are taken from Robbins' book, where one may also find the title and page number of Van Til's statements. As best as I can determine, Robbins has accurately quoted Van Til. Interestingly, when I first presented his book to some of my Van Tilian friends, they assured me that if I checked out several of the sources I would find that Robbins had unfairly quoted Van Til. I did, and he hadn't.
5 Gary North, Unconditional Surrender: God's Program for Victory (Tyler: Geneva Press, 1983), 18.
6 David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance (Ft. Worth: Dominion Press, 1987), 58.
7 James B. Jordan, Biblical Horizons, No. 46, February 1993, 2.
8 Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980), 215.
9 Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1974), 92.
10 Richard L. Pratt, Jr., Every Thought Captive (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1979), 25.
11 Gordon H. Clark, The Johannine Logos (The Trinity Foundation, 1989 [1972]).
12 Gordon H. Clark, The Atonement (The Trinity Foundation, 1987), 32. For more on the subject of logical paradox, see my article, "Does the Bible Contain Paradox?" The Trinity Review, Number 76, November/December 1990.
13 Gordon H. Clark, The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, edited by Ronald H. Nash (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1968), 76-77.
14 The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987), 226, 307. For more on the errant thinking of Frame, see John W. Robbins, "A Christian Perspective on John Frame," The Trinity Review, Number 93, November 1992. For an excellent analysis of Frame's approach to Scripture, see Mark W. Karlberg, "On the Theological Correlation of Divine and Human Language: A Review Article," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, March 1989, 99-105.
Human Cloning and the Soul
(The following is an edited message answering the question of whether a successfully cloned human person would have a soul.)
Assuming that the procedure is truly successful, the human clone would possess a soul; otherwise, we cannot say that it is indeed successful. Under the locus of anthropology in systematic theology, "creationism" holds that God creates a new soul probably at the time of conception and associates it with the new body, and "traducianism" holds that both the soul and body are inherited from the parents.
For our purpose, there is no need to discuss which position we should prefer here. Either position would allow a successfully cloned human person to have a soul. If creationism is correct, then it just means that God creates a new soul each time a person is successfully cloned; and if traducianism is correct, then there is little technical difference between what happens in cloning and what happens in natural conception, since the soul would be propagated from the original to the clone.
But that something "works" does not mean that it is moral. If we can establish that cloning is against the moral precepts of God, then it would be sinful to practice cloning. However, since each successfully cloned person would have a soul (again, assuming for now that human cloning can ever be successful), this means that the success of cloning and the clones have all along been decreed by God.
As with many things (murder, rape, the crucifixion of Christ, etc.), what God has decreed to happen is often different from what God has commanded for man to do. That is, what is made according to God’s decree might at the same time be made against God’s precept. For example, a child may be conceived because of rape. In this case, the rape is against God’s precept — it is a sin — but both the rape and the child have come about because of God’s decree.
So, whether we are considering the problem of the soul relative to cloning, or whether we are considering the sovereignty of God relative to something that might be against his moral precepts, there is no problem from the perspective of apologetics. Successful cloning, even if sinful, poses no rational objection against Christianity. In other words, if human cloning is successful, it would not violate anything that the Bible teaches about reality, even if it would violate what the Bible teaches about morality.
Recommended:
Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology
Vincent Cheung, The Sermon on the Mount
Gordon Clark, The Biblical Doctrine of Man
Gordon Clark, Essays on Ethics and Politics
J. P. Moreland and Scott Rae, Body & Soul: Human Nature & the Crisis in Ethics
John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate
Eryl Davis, Human Cloning: Right or Wrong
Lane Lester, Human Cloning: Playing God or Scientific Progress?
John Jefferson Davis, Evangelical Ethics: Issues Facing the Church Today
Some Sins Greater Than Others
(The following is an edited response to a question on the topic.)
When considering whether some sins are greater than others, we must make a distinction. In absolute terms, every sin generates infinite guilt deserving of everlasting punishment, because every sin is a transgression against the infinite God. However, within the revealed system of moral laws, some sins are indeed more severe than others.
But first, James says:
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker. (James 2:10–11)
If you break even one law, then you are a sinner. Some people have denied to me that they were sinners, but when they were pressed about it, what they meant was that they had never committed what they considered as gross transgressions such as rape and murder. So telling "white" lies, harboring ill-will toward other people, practicing divination, and other things did not count as sins to them. Rather, for them "sin" designates a special category of actions that they would never commit. If they have done it, then it must not be sin; and thus they were sinless by definition.
James rejects this way of thinking and says that any transgression of God's law is sin, and a person is sorely deceived if he thinks that he has never sinned, and that God will welcome him into heaven for this reason.
With that in mind, Matthew 23:23 says, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former." Although transgressing any divine law would be sin, some of God’s laws are "more important" than others, so that in the law of Moses, some sins are punished more severely than others.
In addition, the amount of our knowledge also has something to do with how the sin is judged:
"That servant who knows his master's will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." (Luke 12:47–48)
Notice that even the one who "does not know" will be judged by the same law and punished, only that the punishment will be less severe.
To learn more about the relationship between God’s law and our sin, please see The Sermon on the Mount and Systematic Theology.
Preservation and Providence
Jonathan Edwards:
And with respect to the identity of created substance itself, in the different moments of its duration, I think we shall greatly mistake, if we imagine it to be like that absolute, independent identity of the first being, whereby he is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Nay, on the contrary, it may be demonstrated, that even this oneness of created substance, existing at different times, is a merely dependent identity; dependent on the pleasure and sovereign constitution of him who worketh all in all. This will follow from what is generally allowed, and is certainly true, that God not only created all things, and gave them being at first, but continually preserves them, and upholds them in being. This being a matter of considerable importance, it may be worthy here to be considered with a little attention. Let us inquire therefore, in the first place, whether it be not evident, that God does continually, by his immediate power, uphold every created substance in being; and then let us see the consequence.
That God does, by his immediate power, uphold every created substance in being, will be manifest, if we consider that their present existence is a dependent existence, and therefore is an effect and must have some cause; and the cause must be one of these two; either the antecedent existence of the same substance, or else the power of the Creator. But it cannot be the antecedent existence of the same substance. For instance, the existence of the body of the moon, at this present moment, cannot be the effect of its existence at the last foregoing moment. For not only was what existed the last moment, no active cause, but wholly a passive thing; but this also is to be considered, that no cause can produce effects in a time and place in which itself is not. It is plain, nothing can exert itself, or operate, when and where it is not existing. But the moon’s past existence was neither where nor when its present existence is. In point of time, what is past entirely ceases, when present existence begins; otherwise it would not be past. The past moment has ceased, and is gone, when the present moment takes place; and no more coexists with it, than any other moment that had ceased, twenty years ago. Nor could the past existence of the particles of this moving body produce effects in any other place, than where it then was. But its existence at the present moment, in every point of it, is in a different place, from where its existence was at the last preceding moment. From these things, I suppose, it will certainly follow, that the present existence, either of this, or any other created substance, cannot be an effect of its past existence. The existences (so to speak) of an effect, or thing dependent, in different parts of space or duration, though ever so near one to another, do not at all co-exist one with the other; and therefore are as truly different effects, as if those parts of space and duration were ever so far asunder. And the prior existence can no more be the proper cause of the new existence, in the next moment, or next part of space, than if it had been in an age before, or at a thousand miles’ distance, without any existence to fill up the intermediate time or space. Therefore the existence of created substances, in each successive moment, must be the effect of the immediate agency, will, and power of god.
If any shall insist upon it, that their present existence is the effect or consequence of past existence, according to the nature of things; that the established course of nature is sufficient to continue existence once given; I allow it. But then it should be remembered, what nature is in created things; and what the established course of nature is; that, as has been observed already, it is nothing, separate from the agency of God; and that, as Dr. T. says, god, the original of all being, is the only cause of all natural effects. A father, according to the course of nature, begets a child; an oak, according to the course of nature, produces an acorn, or a bud; so according to the course of nature, the former existence of the trunk of the tree is followed by its new or present existence. In one case, and the other, the new effect is consequent on the former, only by the established laws and settled course of nature; which is allowed to be nothing but the continued immediate efficiency of god, according to a constitution that he has been pleased to establish. Therefore, according to what our author urges, as the child and the acorn which come into existence according to the course of nature, in consequence of the prior existence and state of the parent and the oak, are truly immediately created by God; so must the existence of each created person and thing, at each moment, be from the immediate continued creation of God. It will certainly follow from these things, that God’s preserving of created things in being, is perfectly equivalent to a continued creation, or to his creating those things out of nothing at each moment of their existence. If the continued existence of created things be wholly dependent on God’s preservation, then those things would drop into nothing upon the ceasing of the present moment, without a new exertion of the divine power to cause them to exist in the following moment.If there be any who own, that God preserves things in being, and yet hold that they would continue in being without any further help from him, after they once have existence; I think, it is hard to know what they mean. To what purpose can it be, to talk of God preserving things in being, when there is no need of his preserving them? Or to talk of their being dependent on God for continued existence, when they would of themselves continue to exist, without his help; nay, though he should wholly withdraw his sustaining power and influence?
It will follow from what has been observed, that God’s upholding of created substance, or causing of its existence in each successive moment, is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment. Because its existence at this moment is not merely in part from God, but wholly from him; and not in any part, or degree, from its antecedent existence. For, to suppose that its antecedent existence concurs with God in efficiency, to produce some part of the effect, is attended with all the very same absurdities, which have been shown to attend the supposition of its producing it wholly. Therefore the antecedent existence is nothing, as to any proper influence or assistance in the affair: and consequently God produces the effect as much from nothing, as if there had been nothing before. So that this effect differs not at all from the first creation, but only circumstantially; as, in the first creation there had been no such act and effect of God’s power before: whereas, his giving existence afterwards, follows preceding acts and effects of the same kind, in an established order.
Now, in the next place, let us see how the consequence of these things is to my present purpose. If the existence of created substance, in each successive moment, be wholly the effect of God’s immediate power, in that moment, without any dependence on prior existence, as much as the first creation out of nothing, then what exists at this moment, by this power, is a new effect; and simply and absolutely considered, not the same with any past existence, though it be like it, and follows it according to a certain established method. And there is no identity or oneness in the case, but what depends on the arbitrary constitution of the Creator; who by his wise sovereign establishment so unites these successive new effects, that he treats them as one, by communicating to them like properties, relations, and circumstances; and so, leads us to regard and treat them as one. When I call this an arbitrary constitution, I mean, that it is a constitution which depends on nothing but the divine will; which divine will depends on nothing but the divine wisdom. In this sense, the whole course of nature, with all that belongs to it, all its laws and methods, constancy and regularity, continuance and proceeding, is an arbitrary constitution. In this sense, the continuance of the very being of the world and all its parts, as well as the manner of continued being, depends entirely on an arbitrary constitution. For it does not at all necessarily follow, that because there was sound, or light, or colour, or resistance, or gravity, or thought, or consciousness, or any other dependent thing the last moment, that therefore there shall be the like at the next. All dependent existence whatsoever is in a constant flux, ever passing and returning; renewed every moment, as the colours of bodies are every moment renewed by the light that shines upon them; and all is constantly proceeding from god, as light from the sun. In him we live, and move, and have our being.
The Works of Jonathan Edwards (2 Vols.)
(Hendriksen), Vol. 1, p. 223–224.
Recommended:
The Transcendental Argument for Materialism
Short Answers to Several Criticisms
"Biblical" Empiricism Incoherent
Biblical Rationalism vs. Psycho Assertionism
Vincent Cheung, "The Problem of Evil"
Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology
Vincent Cheung, Commentary on Ephesians
Vincent Cheung, Ultimate Questions
Vincent Cheung, Presuppositional Confrontations
Gordon Clark, Christian Philosophy
Gordon Clark, Predestination
Gordon Clark, God and Evil
Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will
How You Can Meet Gordon Clark
"How You Can Meet Gordon Clark" by John W. Robbins
I met Gordon Clark reading a book: Religion, Reason, and Revelation. I don’t recall the exact year — probably 1970, but it may have been a year later.
As a graduate student in political theory and philosophy at The John Hopkins University, I knew that I would have to write a defensible doctoral dissertation. Therefore, I began looking for a defensible philosophy. I read Thomas Aquinas, C. S. Lewis, and Francis Schaeffer, among others, but I decided that their systems were not defensible. It was too easy to find the flaws in their arguments for the existence of God, and if those arguments fail, the whole Thomistic system collapses.
In high school and college I had read R. J. Rushdoony, for he wrote about subjects that interested me: politics, education, and American history. Since he thought highly of Cornelius Van Til, I read everything by Van Til that I could find. This meant semi-annual trips to Nutley, New Jersey, stopping by 55 Beech Street to pick up Charles Craig, then a man in his sixties, driving over to his warehouse and selecting a large box or two of books at half price — Oswald Allis, B. B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen, Herman Dooyeweerd, R. J. Rushdoony, as well as Cornelius Van Til — whatever Mr. Craig sold, I bought.
None of the authors I read mentioned Clark very favorably. Some had written before Clark’s time; others ignored him; a few made disparaging remarks. As a result, Clark’s were the last of the books to be read. But, as Scripture says, sometimes the last are first.
Clark’s essay on "God and Evil" in Religion, Reason, and Revelation convinced me that there was a man who offered what I was looking for: a defensible philosophy. He tackled one of the most important problems of Christian philosophy, the problem of evil, and dealt with it candidly, honestly, logically, and Biblically. There was no rhetorical backing and filling, no pious platitudes about God "permitting" bad things to happen, no desire to ignore the problem and hope it will go away. I found in that book, in contrast to most other books written by professed Calvinists, a willingness to believe the statements of Scripture and a rapier sharp intellect wielded in defense of revealed truth. I immediately began reading all the rest of Clark’s work, and I learned more and more about him, and through him, about Christ.
It wasn’t for several more years that I actually shook Gordon Clark’s hand. After that meeting, I realized that his books sound like his voice: deep, well-modulated, witty, deliberate, thoughtful. Even today, as any of his students can attest, one can pick up his books and "hear" him speaking.
In February 1978 our third daughter was born, and we made arrangements to have Clark baptize her at the church he attended in Lookout Mountain. Three of us flew to Chattanooga one Saturday in May, met Clark at church on Sunday morning, and he took us out to dinner that afternoon. In the evening he baptized Mary Ellen Robbins.
The next day he gave us a guided tour of the Civil War battlefield around Lookout Mountain, and we were amazed that a man of 75 years could walk as far and as fast as he did. More amazing still was his knowledge of the War; he gave detailed descriptions of armies, commanders, troop movements, and engagements. One might have thought that American history, not ancient philosophy, was his field.
During this trip I told Clark that some relatives, friends, and I had just established a Foundation to publish essays and books. He asked, which books? I told him his. He looked startled at first, but as we discussed the plan, he seemed to think that it was a good idea. Before we left, he insisted on giving me a generous check to help get Trinity into business.
From about 1973 to 1985 Clark and I corresponded. I remember asking him in late 1972 or early 1973 where I should apply for a teaching job. He advised me not to seek a job at a religious college, for I would be afforded more freedom to teach and write at a private secular school. I presumed then that he was recalling his unfortunate experience at Wheaton College in Illinois, which, even 45 years ago, disliked the doctrines of grace.
It was not for another five years that I saw Clark again, this time in Colorado, where he taught during the summer. The years between had been filled with correspondence, telephone calls, and several newly published Clark books and essays. I sat in his class for only two summers, 1983 and 1984, and saw him for the last time on Earth in October 1984. He was an extraordinary man. In the providence of God, when this student needed help, Clark was there, talking about God and evil, logic and knowledge, time and eternity. It is my hope that what I received through Clark — a thoroughly defensible philosophy — others may find as well.
Clark no longer confines his lectures to the mountains of Colorado, the plains of Indiana, and the hills of Georgia. His classes are much larger now, and they are offered all over the globe. Those who have not met him may regret it, but don’t regret it too much. New acquaintances will be made, as well as old acquaintances renewed, in Heaven, which is only — at most — a few years away for any Christian. But if you would like to know Clark now, it is not too late. There are more Clark books in print in 1989 than there were at any time while he lived among us. If you wish to meet the man, read his books.
Taken from:
Gordon H. Clark: Personal Recollections, edited by John W. Robbins,
The Trinity Foundation, 1989, p. 95–98. Used by author’s permission.
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The following is a partial list of works by Gordon Clark. Note that his Introduction to Christian Philosophy, Three Types of Religious Philosophy, and Religion, Reason, and Revelation are now combined in the one volume, Christian Philosophy. Also, God and Evil is included in Christian Philosophy, as it is originally part of Religion, Reason, and Revelation.
Purchase from The Trinity Foundation:
A Christian View of Men and Things
The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God
The Christian Philosophy of Education
Historiography: Secular and Religious
What Do Presbyterians Believe?
God’s Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics
Karl Barth's Theological Method
The Clark-Van Til Controversy (by Herman Hoeksema)
Purchase from Monergism Books:
Building Up the Church
The following are taken from two email messages, edited for the purpose of this blog entry.
The first one is part of my response to a Reformed writer who asked me to write a refutation against an Arminian who was stirring up trouble. The second one is part of my suggestion to a pastor who was speaking out against a heretic. The main point in both is that, while we should take time to refute false doctrines, our ministry strategy should never be purely reactionary, but we must give even greater emphasis to building up believers in sound doctrine.
Ephesians 4 teaches that the Church will cease to be tossed back and forth by every wind of doctrine, not when we directly refute every little falsehood that we come across, but by building up the Church in sound doctrine, in unity and knowledge, by the efforts of the teaching offices.
If we are not careful, we might be distracted by the newest false teaching, or the newest version of an old false teaching, until we have neglected our main focus of "preach the word." Of course we must refute false doctrines. Titus 1:9 says, "He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it," but the main focus is on "the trustworthy message" and "sound doctrine" even in this verse. It is sound doctrine that we must affirm and practice, and it is by and for sound doctrine that we must refute the false.
— 1 —
Anyway, I think that although there is a place in dealing with specific individuals, we can't take time to refute every new guy that comes along. We must make strategic decisions. And in addition to offering refutations, we must increase our efforts in establishing Reformed Christians in the doctrines of grace. Some believers have been in Reformed churches longer than I've lived, and although they call themselves Reformed, their understanding is still shallow and imprecise, and often really half-Reformed and half-Arminian at best.
Thus we need to raise the theological prowess of all Reformed Christians, and raise it by a lot. Churches should train even housewives (I say "even" not because I regard them as less significant, but because churches have regarded them so at times, at least when it comes to theological education) to be more competent in theology and apologetics than the typical seminary student. I am convinced that this is one of the things we must do to, as you say, "put an end to this age old controversy." We must set up a total clash with Arminianism on all levels, and not just on the "top" professional level.
I am, of course, referring to a reformation, and reformation is broad and positive in its main focus, not narrow and negative.
— 2 —
I support your stance against heresies. I would only urge you to consider the following points.
It is biblical to make direct attacks upon heresies. However, the primary task of the church, as well as the primary solution to heresies, is not the negative task of addressing problems like these when they come up, but the positive task of teaching God's people the Word of God. It is by establishing them on the truth that they will not be tossed back and forth by every wind of doctrine. As long as God's people do not have a positive knowledge and foundation, even if you successfully defeat one heresy, then they will be caught up by the next one. In fact, they will be caught up by one heresy while you are fighting the other, since there are too many heretics and heresies to even keep track of, let alone directly refute.
This is why I do not focus on individually refuting every false doctrine or system. If I were to do it this way, I would never make a dent in the kingdom of darkness, and my writings will soon become irrelevant (or at least less relevant), since every narrow heresy will eventually fade away (the broader ones stay, like atheism, or Arminianism, etc.). Rather, I focus on the positive task on teaching the Bible and correct theology to God's people, and to teach them how to think biblically, so that they will more and more learn to discern for themselves falsehood that I have not even mentioned.
Again, I support direct refutations of heresies, but this does not mean that every minister must do this with every heresy that comes down the stream, since if this were to be the case, we would have no time to focus on the positive task of teaching.
In connection with this, I urge you to give other ministers the benefit of the doubt if they do not all scramble to act whenever you mention a problem, especially if you already know them to be uncompromising ministers of God — they might have their own legitimate agendas to pursue and heresies to refute, that God has providentially arranged for them to encounter. You might consider your cause very important, and it is, but what they are working on might also be very important.
So, if I (or others) do not always give you the active support that you wish for, it might not mean that I disagree with you or that I don't care, but it might just mean that I trust you (and other brothers in Christ) to handle this very serious problem. The Body of Christ is indeed a "body" that includes many people of different strengths, and assigned to different tasks — we can't all be the same. In fact, those who focus on the problems of teens, the homeless, etc., might be wondering why we are not more like them or why we don't care more about them! Don’t they have legitimate and important ministries? But we can't all give equal focus on everything at the same time.
So, if you are serious about dealing with this heresy in question, my suggestion is threefold:
1. Strengthen your teaching ministry. That is, not to teach against a particular heresy, but teach the whole counsel of God — do it better, do it more.
2. Directly deal with each false doctrine as God providentially arranges for you to encounter it.
3. Appreciate any help and support that you get from other ministers, but also understand their own callings and their limitations.
If you do not do #1, you might win the battle, but lose the war. When Satan is using the machine gun method (many heresies everywhere), he doesn't really care if you can dodge one or two, or even ten or twenty bullets.
Please continue to include me in your updates on this and other situations. I am concerned and interested, even if I might not always be able to give you the direct support that you want.
Recommended:
Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology
Vincent Cheung, Commentary on Ephesians
Vincent Cheung, Ultimate Questions
Vincent Cheung, Presuppositional Confrontations
Vincent Cheung, Apologetics in Conversation
Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine (or, his Systematic Theology)
Louis Berkhof, Summary of Christian Doctrine (or, his Manual of Christian Doctrine or Systematic Theology)
Samuel Bolton, The Arraignment of Error
William Lyford, The Instructed Christian
Doctrine and Obedience
(The following is an edited email correspondence.)
Is the frequently asserted relationship between right doctrine and right practice biblical? Does correct doctrine really lead to greater obedience? Why is it that many people who do not know or who are not interested in solid Bible doctrines are nevertheless godly, despite their lack of knowledge? How can we explain this inconsistency?
This question receives deeper treatment in some of the great theological works on sanctification than what I can provide here. I encourage you to look into some of them. But I will try to give you a preliminary answer.
There is a positive relationship between doctrine and obedience, but when it comes to doctrine, we must make a distinction between mere profession and true faith or belief.
True faith results only from a work of the Spirit in the heart by means of the Word of God. According to James, this faith will always produce good works; in contrast, mere profession has no necessary relationship to holiness. You can always say that you believe something, but whether you really do is another question. You can always say that you affirm a doctrine, but whether this affirmation is a product of the Spirit’s grace and power is a different matter. If it is the latter, then your profess the doctrine because your heart has been changed by the Spirit through the doctrine, and good works will necessarily result.
So, when answering your question, we should rephrase "right doctrine leads to obedience" into "true faith in right doctrine leads to obedience." Seen this way, many who profess right doctrine do not necessarily believe what they profess — they might just be parroting it. An atheist can recite the Bible or the Westminster Confession, so that he is physically saying the right things, but not out of sincere belief or a changed heart. This explains the instances in which professing Christians do not act like Christians at all (they are not really Christians), and the instances in which true Christians profess a doctrine that they do not obey (they do not yet really believe it). In the first case, conversion is needed; in the second case, further sanctification by the the renewing of the mind is needed.
But perhaps this does not yet explain everything, since there are instances in which one acts against the doctrine that he genuinely believes. Thus we introduce sin into the situation. It leads a person to rebel against the knowledge of God that he sincerely affirms, and thus sin is not only rebellious, but irrational. Therefore, we must use the means of grace that God has given us, such as the Word and prayer, to train ourselves in holiness and to petition him for preserving grace.
As for those who seem to have little doctrinal knowledge but demonstrate great obedience, it might just be that they truly believe what little they do know, that the Spirit of God has truly worked in their hearts through what little of the Word of God that they have heard and learned, and that is enough to produce a generally godly lifestyle.
Then, there are those who lack biblical knowledge and still do certain things right, as if by "accident" and not according to knowledge. In these cases, we shouldn’t think that they are holy at all.
Also, never forget that to affirm right doctrine is in itself part of a holy lifestyle — it is godly and righteous to affirm the truth of divine revelation, and it is sinful to neglect, reject, or distort it. So those whom you consider holy but are very theologically flawed, are not nearly as holy as you think, since they have already sinned in their false beliefs. God judges our thoughts as well as our actions.
Some people would teach that it is useless to learn the Bible unless that you are going to do it, and that to learn the Bible is only for the purpose of doing it. They are close to making a biblical point, but this is not exactly right. James says not to be a hearer only, but also a doer; however, he never says that it would be fine if you could be a doer without first being a hearer. The hearing part is required and assumed in the context of James, but he is trying to emphasize the point that you cannot only hear and then not do.
In fact, he uses the illustration of someone looking at the mirror, but who forgets what he has seen after turning away from it. Thus if you don’t do what you have heard, it is also as if you have ignored or forgotten what you have heard. So, the question is, if you hear and not do, have you really heard? Or, have you lost what you have heard even if you did hear it?
In any case, the point is that the Bible never denies that learning the Word of God is inherently valuable and godly, only that if you do not follow it through with obedience, then you have not really learned it, or at least it didn’t stick — just like someone who forgets what he looks like after turning away from the mirror. Thus, the purpose of theology is not solely practical or ethical, contrary to what some have asserted.
Recommended:
Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology
Vincent Cheung, Prayer and Revelation
Gordon Clark, Sanctification
Rational Faith and Nagging Doubts
The following is an edited and condensed message, responding to an inquirer who have nagging doubts about the Christian faith, although he could perceive no logical flaws with the biblical system.
It is usually difficult to give someone like this a satisfactory, effective, and let alone a final answer in an email. Rather, study, prayer, fellowship, and pastoral guidance are needed. Depending on his actual condition, he must either convert by God’s grace, or he must grow in the grace already given, so that he must receive assurance.
— /// —
Thanks for your message.
Your problem is not rare, and it might still require some time and patience before it is resolved. An email from me will not fix everything, but I will give you several points that might help.
First, you need to firmly grasp a coherently formulated system of Christian theology. If you are misinformed about what Christianity teaches, then no wonder there are oppressive questions and doubts. So, you need to continue studying reliable literature on theology.
If there are indeed logical doubts about Christianity, then you need to resolve them, and they can be resolved.
Nevertheless, it appears that your problem is not only (or even mainly) logical in nature.
That is, even if you perceive that Christianity is rationally invincible (and it is), and that you can't see any logical problem with it, you will still doubt. This is because you are not strictly rational even though Christianity is strictly rational. And you are not strictly rational because there is sin in your mind. Faith is not something that comes only by arguments, even if it is at times the means by which God will give it to a person. But faith is a sovereign gift of God.
Jesus said, "But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand" (John 10:26–28). A person does not finally believe, not because Christianity is not rational enough, but he does not believe because he is one of the reprobates, chosen for damnation.
Now, does this mean that you are one of the reprobates, because you have persistent doubts? Not necessarily. But you must with equal persistence pray that God will show you the truth, to give you the gift of faith and assurance, so that you can and will believe that which is already rational and true.
Mark 9:24 says, "Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’" It appears that you are in a similar position — it is not that you completely disbelieve, but you still have nagging doubts. You must pray to God about this and ask him to help you. He is the author and perfecter of faith.
In addition, I recommend some of the books written by the Puritans on seeking God through the means of grace. You can start with the following:
Thomas Watson, Heaven Taken by Storm
Thomas Hooker, The Poor Doubting Christian Drawn to Christ
Scripture for Man's Culture
(The following is an edited email correspondence.)
I am a third year medical student writing from India. I have read most of your material and have been awestruck by your boldness in offensively attacking unbelievers. You are a great source of inspiration to me.
I wrote this mail to tell you about a particular problem I am facing which I got into when I was talking with a person right now.
We started of with the subject of marriage. We were discussing as to how we will marry: choose our own or allow our parents to choose for us. I stated that my parents will not mind even if I marry somebody of a different nationality.
To this my friend replied, why not marry somebody from a different religion. He said, "After all, you can win her to the truth." I immediately opened my mouth to quote the Apostle Paul in the first letter to the church at Corinth. Even before I could complete my statement, he retorted saying, "That applies to the church and those people at Corinth and not to us, who are separated spatially, geographically, and culturally from them. We should not take the Bible literally, but get the general idea that is being conveyed and them frame our own values from that."
I said that truth is truth wherever it is and that the problem faced by the Corinthians is the same faced by us today, so the message of the Bible still does apply to us.
I asked him as to whether his statement (that you should not take each verse literally, but get the general idea and apply it) is justifiable. If justifiable, on what authority does he assume his view to be right? He remained silent for a while. By that time, both of us had finished our coffee. This finally got nowhere, except for the fact that both of us were tired of arguing and very diplomatically stopped the discussion.
Sir, I want your advice on how to tackle these sort of viewpoints.
Thanks for your message.
I don't have time to give you a detailed answer, but I will make some general remarks that should point you toward the right direction.
He makes this point because (1) he doesn't understand the correct principles of biblical interpretation in general, and (2) he doesn't understand the actual words and contexts of Corinthians in particular. To deal with this type of problems and objections, you must learn both (1) and (2). This is the direct solution.
So you should study books on hermeneutics and also reliable commentaries on Corinthians to answer him on this particular point. The rest of my answer deals with some of the issues other than what is directly addressed by commentaries.
He says that we should ignore the direct or "literal" meaning of Scripture, and derive a general idea for our own adaptation. But how does one determine this so-called general idea from a biblical passage? And what is the general idea from the passage in question? Isn’t the general idea precisely the admonition to marry "only in the Lord," and not to be yoked together with unbelievers, as if light should join with darkness? That’s a general idea, isn’t it? Or are we supposed to derive an even more general idea, so that when applied, suddenly light should join to darkness?
Also, what is culture? What is its boundaries and definitions? Does God reveal himself that way only to the Corinthian culture, or is the Bible for the culture of man — that is, the whole mankind? Or does he think that the Corinthians were exactly like the Hebrews? Yet Paul applies the Hebrew Scripture literally to the Corinthians.
Unless he has a principle that can be consistently applied to determine why one passage applies (or can be taken "literally") and why another passage doesn't apply, then the whole Bible can be read as culturally conditioned, and therefore inapplicable.
Then, it follows that all of God's moral laws no longer apply, so that all laws against murder, rape, perjury, and whatever other evil you can think of, are no longer applicable. By your friend's own standard, God was only talking to people of those times, so that there is now no relevant laws against murder, rape, and commit perjury, etc.
But yet another implication is that even the promises of salvation are also culturally conditioned, so that only the people who lived in the first century could be saved by faith in Christ. After that, there is no way of knowing whether the promises of salvation apply or not. Thus, by your friend's standard, the Bible promises him no salvation.
We need not stop there. We can even say that the very existence of God as mentioned in the Bible is culturally conditioned, so that by your friend's standard, he has no biblical reason to believe in God at all.
As you can see, by your friend's standard and the way he views Scripture, marrying an unbeliever would be the least of his problems. His very salvation is in question.
Most likely, the truth is that he does not consistently apply this principle, but it is just an excuse to ignore biblical passages with which he disagrees or wants to disobey.
Finally, if either parts of the Bible or the whole Bible is inapplicable because it is culturally conditioned, then your friend's statement itself is culturally conditioned. It is spoken in its own culture, context, and to its own audience. So, this means that you don't have to take this or any of your friend's statements "literally" from this point on. In fact, all of your friend's statements and thoughts become irrelevant to reality. So by his own statement, he has committed intellectual suicide; he has destroyed himself in all debates and discussions.
Recommended:
Vincent Cheung, Ultimate Questions
Vincent Cheung, Presuppositional Confrontations
Vincent Cheung, Apologetics in Conversation
Gordon Clark, God’s Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics
Daniel Doriani, Getting the Message
Dan McCartney and Charles Clayton, Let the Reader Understand
Louis Berkhof, Principles of Biblical Interpretation
R. C. Sproul, Knowing Scripture
The Evisceration of Christian Faith
By Sean Gerety
© The Trinity Foundation
One of the central doctrines of the Reformation and the Christian faith is the principle of sola Scriptura – Scripture alone. It is in this principle that all other Biblical doctrines find their source, legitimacy, and warrant. It is the underlying axiom of the Christian faith. Not surprisingly, and as one would expect, any alteration in this foundational doctrine will affect every other doctrine which may be logically drawn from this one inerrant and infallible source. Throughout history this critical doctrine has been the focus of attack for the simple reason that if the foundation can be broken, it is only a matter of time before the whole structure will fall. Even the redundancy, "inerrant and infallible," is evidence of an earlier attack on the doctrine of Scripture by Liberals and Neo-orthodox who sought an "infallible" word from God in what they believed to be an erring book. Yet, today, among those calling themselves Reformed, there has been an even more deadly and pervasive attack on the truth of Scripture that has left men impotent to defend the Gospel. This movement has attempted to divorce the statements of Scripture from their logical and necessary implications.
The principle of sola Scriptura is often misunderstood as being restricted to the explicit statements of Scripture; any implication that might be drawn from them tends to be regarded with suspicion. Logical deductions from Scripture are often derided as the products of "mere human logic," the underlying assumption being that man’s logic is one thing, and God’s logic, whatever that might be, is, well, another. Of course, those who defend such a view never actually explain what God’s logic is or how we can tell one logic from the other, yet they couch their misology in pious language. Human logic, they say, while of some limited value, must be "curbed." That was not the position of the theologians at the Westminister Assembly who asserted both the sufficiency and rationality of Scripture: "The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men" [emphasis added].
Notice, the "whole counsel of God" consists not merely of those statements "expressly set down in Scripture" but also includes all those statements which may be validly deduced from Scripture. According to the Westminister Confession, Christianity is a rational, deductive, logical system, and valid deductions from Scripture are no less the counsel of God than those statements that are assigned a chapter and verse. All of them together are the "whole counsel" of God, which is all that is necessary for God’s glory and man’s salvation, faith, and life. Therefore, the principle of sola Scriptura and the divine authority of Scripture extend to all, and not just to some, additional propositions that may be validly inferred from Scripture. Christians are not to assent to the so-called prophetic babbling of Charismatics or some self-appointed Magisterium, or even succumb to the comfort of human tradition and custom. Scripture alone, the mind of Christ, should be the sole object of our belief, for it is God’s Word alone that sets us free from the tyranny of sin and human invention. God’s Word – the whole counsel of God – includes all necessary inferences which can be logically deduced from Scripture.
It is precisely this relationship between Scripture and those propositions that can be necessarily deduced from Scripture that many theologians, including Cornelius Van Til and his followers, have long denied. Van Til argued that all Scripture is analogical and apparently contradictory, that God’s logic is not man’s logic, and that there is a qualitative, in addition to a quantitative, difference between God’s thoughts and man’s. According to Van Til, it is not just the extent of God’s knowledge that can never be exhausted by man, but there is a complete discontinuity between the truths God knows and the "truths" man knows. God’s knowledge and the knowledge possible to man, Van Til and the Westminster Seminary faculty wrote in 1944, do not coincide "at any single point." Van Til repeated this statement many times in his subsequent books. As a consequence of this complete disjunction between God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge, "Our knowledge is analogical and therefore must be paradoxical,"1 and "all teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory."2 Not only is there a complete break between God’s thoughts and man’s, but, as we will see, God’s logic and man’s logic are not the same. This explains why one of the hallmarks of Vantilian Newspeak is the distinction (without a discernible difference) between "apparent" and "real" contradictions in Scripture. As Van Til put it, "While we shun as poison the idea of the really contradictory, we embrace with passion the idea of the apparently contradictory."3
Two questions that arise are these: What is the difference between the "really contradictory" and the "apparently contradictory"? and, Is there any method by which we can tell one class of contradictions from the other? If there is no such method, what are the meaning and purpose of asserting that all Scripture is "apparently contradictory"? Does not such an assertion encourage laziness in Bible study, commend ignorance, and elevate clerics and academics, especially those of the Vantilian stripe, into a new priestly class who alone can peer into the Biblical stew of apparent contradictions, antinomies, tensions, analogies, and insoluble paradoxes and demand assent to their contradictory view of truth on the basis of nothing more than their own authority?
According to Van Til and his followers, the "apparent contradictions" of Scripture arise primarily as a result of our "creatureliness" or "finitude," and, as creatures before the Sovereign Creator, we are to accept these "apparent contradictions," not try to reconcile them, and to believe that for God there are no real contradictions. This is the explanation offered by John Frame in his essay, "Van Til: the Theologian" (which can also found in the book Foundations of Christian Scholarship [edited by Gary North] under the title "The Problem of Theological Paradox"). Frame asserts:
[W]e are in a strange state of affairs: we have two propositions ("God is good" and "God foreordains evil") which we can show to be logically interdependent in one sense; yet we cannot show them to be logically compatible except by an appeal to faith….4 This balance of interdependence and paradox is in the interest of thinking in submission to Scripture. Scripture must be followed both in its assertions of interdependence and in its refusal to reconcile all doctrines to our satisfaction.5
Thus, a paradox remains for us, though by faith we are confident that there is no paradox for God. Faith is basic to the salvation of our knowledge as well as the salvation of our souls [17].
Notice the role "faith" plays when confronting an apparent contradiction in Scripture. According to Frame, and by way of example, we cannot show through the use of logic how God’s goodness and his foreordination of evil can be harmonized; instead, we appeal to "faith." According to Frame, "We must not simply push our logic relentlessly to the point where we ignore or deny a genuine biblical teaching" [33, emphasis is Frame’s]. Logic fails, and we are unable to harmonize a particular set of Biblical teachings. That’s where "faith" comes in. We are not to wrestle with these "contradictory" teachings and attempt to logically harmonize what might seem to us to be conflicting truths, for, it is assumed at the outset, all such wrestling is futile and is a prideful violation of the Creator/creature distinction.
This procedure, in which "faith" curbs logic, is hostile to systematic theology and the Confessional idea that Christianity (which consists of all the propositions of Scripture plus all those propositions which may be deduced from them) is a rational, deductive faith. If Frame were interested in affirming his own "creatureliness" at this point and were merely confessing his own inability, one could hardly object. We certainly can’t expect everyone, particularly a new Christian, to know how all the pieces of the Christian system fit together. Frame, of course, is not a new Christian. He has been a seminary professor for forty years. Frame is not humbly admitting his own limitations; he is arrogantly asserting that if he cannot reconcile these doctrines, no one can, and anyone who claims he can, or even tries to reconcile them, is impious, lacking "faith." It is this refusal to try to harmonize apparently contradictory doctrines of Scripture that Frame calls "thinking in submission to Scripture." Surrendering the mind to the "apparently contradictory" becomes for the Vantilian a divine duty and a sign of true Christian humility. But where in Scripture are we commanded to submit ourselves to contradictions, real or imagined? Nowhere, of course. One might be tempted to overlook such a sanctimonious leap into the absurd if it were merely the result of a particular theologian’s embarrassment over his failure to harmonize one or two particularly troublesome Biblical doctrines. How often have we all heard even the best theologian or pastor appeal to the proverbial (and un-Biblical) "mystery" when confronted with a particularly sticky question for which he has no answer? Yet, that is not the case here, for Van Til and his disciples make this leap into the absurd a principle of Christian theology, asserting that "all" our knowledge and all the teachings of Scripture are paradoxical and apparently contradictory. Frame writes:
One might conclude…that Van Til regards Christianity as a deductive system in which each doctrine, taken by itself, logically implies all the others. Van Til, however, explicitly denies this notion. There is no "master concept" from which the whole of Christian doctrine may be logically deduced [14].
Yet this is precisely what the Westminister Confession and the Scriptures affirm when they assert all the parts of Scriptures "consent," that is, agree with one another. Jesus put it this way: "The Scriptures cannot be broken." It is the consent of the whole (for the meaning of God’s word is not manifold, but one) which provides evidence, through the power and work of the Holy Spirit, to convict men that God’s Word is true. If one rejects the notion that Christianity is a logically deductive system, then there can be no "consent of the parts." While no one denies that sinful men are fallible and often err in both exegesis and when drawing inferences from Scripture, the error of the Vantilians and the Neo-orthodox is to impute error to logic itself. As John Robbins observes:
Logic – God's and man's – is unaffected by sin, just as arithmetic is. Man's thinking is affected by sin, so we make mistakes in both logic and arithmetic. But our sin consists precisely in violating the rules of logic and arithmetic, which are the rules of God's own thinking.
Further, if Van Til is correct and all Scripture ends in paradoxes, which, by his definition, defy harmonization, what becomes of any application of Acts 15:15: "And with this the words of the Prophets agree, just as it is written…"? If there is "no ‘master concept’ from which the whole of Christian doctrine may be logically deduced"6 (if Christianity is not a logical system), then what difference does it make if a doctrine agrees – or disagrees – with "the words of the Prophets"? As has already been shown, according to Van Til and his chief apologist John Frame, the "words of the Prophets" also end in apparent contradiction, and there can be no hope of logical harmonization. Christianity, for the Vantilian, is a hodgepodge of conflicting "truths," and the belief that there is "no contradiction for God" is nothing more than a blind leap of un-Christian "faith." Whatever truths the Christian faith may consist of, they are impervious to systematization and are, quite literally, beyond logic and beyond belief. The theologian, not to mention the average person in the pews, is prohibited, all in the name of "faith," "mystery," and "thinking in submission to Scripture," from trying to understand how the teachings of Scripture cohere. If "embracing with passion" the apparent contradictions of Scripture is the height of Christian humility, it follows that attempting to harmonize these apparent contradictions, that is, doing systematic theology, must be the apex of sinful arrogance and pride.
The Clark-Van Til Controversy
A powerful example of Van Til’s vilification of anyone who would dare even to try to harmonize the supposed "apparent contradictions" of Scripture occurred during the controversy that developed in the 1940's between Van Til and Gordon Clark. One of the central issues in that controversy was Dr. Clark’s contention that he had harmonized one of the so-called insoluble paradoxes of Scripture, specifically the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. What is particularly revealing is the reaction of Van Til and his associates to Dr. Clark’s proposed solution to this problem. (For Dr. Clark’s argument see his article "Determinism and Responsibility," or the last chapter of Religion, Reason and Revelation.) As Herman Hoeksema observed in The Clark-Van Til Controversy (which is a very readable account written at the time of the controversy), instead of engaging Dr. Clark’s argument or even attempting to refute it, Van Til and his followers viciously attacked Clark as a "rationalist." To quote the Complaint Van Til and others filed against Dr. Clark’s ordination:
Here then is a situation which is inadequately described as amazing. There is a problem which has baffled the greatest theologians in history. Not even Holy Scripture offers a solution. But Dr. Clark asserts unblushingly that for his thinking the problem has ceased to be a problem. Here is something phenomenal. What accounts for it? The most charitable, and no doubt the correct, explanation is that Dr. Clark has come under the spell of rationalism. It is difficult indeed to escape the conclusion that by his refusal to permit the Scriptural teaching of divine sovereignty and the Scriptural teaching of human responsibility to stand alongside each other, and by his claim that he has fully reconciled them with each other before the bar of human reason, Dr. Clark has fallen into the error of rationalism [The Clark-Van Til Controversy, 23].
The reason the Complainants slandered Dr. Clark as a "rationalist" was that he claimed to harmonize two doctrines of Scripture which they, the Vantilians, claimed could not be harmonized. What else could the Vantilians do except slander? If this so-called "apparent contradiction" could be harmonized at the "bar of human reason" – if Dr. Clark could harmonize doctrines that Van Til and the Westminster Seminary faculty insisted could not be harmonized – then Van Til’s entire philosophy, resting on his analogical and paradoxical view of Scripture, would be exposed as a fraud. Yet, as Hoeksema pointed out, the only "proof" Van Til could provide that Dr. Clark was "under the spell of rationalism" was that he mentioned pagan philosophers. Of course, Dr. Clark’s opponents failed to note that he mentioned Calvin’s Institutes as well, which, as it turns out, is central to Dr. Clark’s argument and key to solving this puzzle "which has baffled the greatest theologians in history." Of course, if the mere reference to pagan philosophers warrants the epithet "rationalist," one doesn’t have to read too far in the Institutes to conclude that Calvin must have been a "rationalist." Paul himself, who quotes a pagan poet in Acts 17, must have been a "rationalist," too.
For the Vantilians, at least those true to Van Til’s teachings, apparent contradictions do not function as "red flags" warning them to go back and check their premises, carefully define their terms, and examine their inferences. Instead, when they encounter an apparent contradiction, they must bow their heads in feigned Christian piety and resignation. Such false humility is sheer arrogance, for they do not even entertain the possibility that they may have erred. The apparent contradictions are due to their "creatureliness," not to their stupidity or foolishness. Frame’s answer to the logical paradoxes of Scripture is "just believe," but believe what? How does Frame or any Vantilian know "there is no paradox for God"? By an appeal to Scripture? Impossible, since "all teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory." Without any reason the Vantilians command us to believe that for God there is no contradiction. Magic "faith," divorced from logic and Scripture, becomes the means by which they assert "there is no paradox for God." But why wouldn’t it make more sense, even as a matter of simple intellectual honesty, to conclude that if Van Til is right and these so-called paradoxes of Scripture are logically irreconcilable, then perhaps God himself is contradictory? There is and can be no warrant in Scripture – since Scripture itself is contradictory – for asserting that God is non-contradictory.
When Frame insists we "cannot show" that various teachings of Scripture are logically compatible, we must ask how he (or any Vantilian) can possibly know this? Does it follow that because he or his mentor could not harmonize various teachings of Scripture, that no one can? What sort of arrogance is this? If we accept Van Til’s doctrine of Scripture, how can we tell a "real" from an "apparent" contradiction, since neither, we are told, can be harmonized at the bar of human reason? If we, at the outset, must embrace apparent contradictions "with passion," what possible incentive can there be to search the Scriptures and examine other places that, in the words of the Confession, "speak more clearly"? Must we bow in submission to error as well? It would seem so, for we cannot distinguish between "apparent" and "real" contradictions. That is, given Van Til’s doctrine, we cannot distinguish between truth and error. Frame’s proposed "solution" to the problem of theological paradox is a deadly blow to the Biblical doctrine of Scripture. Simply put, without some clear method by which an "apparent contradiction" can be distinguished from a "real contradiction," it is impossible to tell one from the other. Since both classes of contradiction appear identical to the human mind, and human logic cannot distinguish or reconcile either one, Van Til’s and Frame’s view of Scripture results in complete skepticism.
Van Til: The Father of Norman Shepherd
While Frame gives many examples of so-called "apparent contradictions" in Scripture, which, we are told, are impervious to logical harmonization (divine foreordination and human responsibility, the unity and diversity of the Godhead, God’s foreordination of sin while not being sin’s author, to name a few), it must be remembered that this paradoxical and contradictory view of Scripture extends to all teaching of Scripture and to all our knowledge, including our knowledge of the central doctrine of the Christian faith, justification. Frame writes, "Thus, the doctrine of justification by faith incorporates the paradox of divine sovereignty. The doctrine of justification by faith – when fully explained in its relations to the rest of Scriptural truth – is just as paradoxical as divine sovereignty."7 Note carefully, the doctrine of justification is just as paradoxical and contradictory as any other Biblical doctrine in the Vantilian anti-system. Also, note how it is that we come to a paradoxical view of justification. Paradoxes arise precisely when we attempt to explain a doctrine in relation "to rest of Scriptural truth." For the Vantilian, the doctrine of justification is as resistant to logical harmonization as are all other Biblical doctrines. This is the connection between Van Til’s doctrine of revelation and the current heresies over justification and other doctrines that have emerged in Presbyterian churches.
Another example of this rejection of the Biblical doctrine of Scripture comes from Doug Jones (erstwhile assistant to Greg Bahnsen, now a teaching elder at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho; editor of Canon Press; Professor of Philosophy at New Saint Andrews College; and regular contributor to Douglas Wilson’s Credenda / Agenda magazine), who cites Frame in his review of John Robbins’ booklet, Cornelius Van Til: The Man and the Myth:
Van Til holds that we use logic under the guide of Rom. 3:4: "[L]et God be true, though every man be found a liar." We adopt what can be deduced from Scripture by good and necessary consequence unless our inferences force us to deny other Biblical teachings. (See John Frame's "Van Til: the Theologian" [28-37] for the full explication of this point.)8
Notice the twist placed on Romans 3:4 where the truth of God’s Word, which corrects the errors and presumptions of men, is used to support Van Til’s contradictory view of Scripture. Of course, nowhere in Romans 3:4, or anywhere else in Scripture for that matter, are we told that God’s Word is "apparently contradictory" and impervious to systematization. Contra Jones, Frame, and Van Til, the Westminster Confession affirms, echoing Scripture itself, that truth is characterized by the logical and harmonious relationship of propositions, not by "apparent contradictions," antinomies, or insoluble and inscrutable paradoxes. Were the Confession writers wrong when they claimed a "consent of the parts" as one of the evidences for the truth of Scripture? If we are to believe Van Til and his followers, it would seem so. They assert that necessary inferences from Scripture are permissible, except when one deduction contradicts another. But if they understood what truth is, they would know that it is non-contradictory, and one valid inference from true premises cannot contradict any other true proposition. If an inferred conclusion contradicts Biblical teaching, the inference must be invalid. Biblical teaching is non-contradictory. But the Vantilian method assures us in advance that valid inferences from Scripture will eventually "force us to deny other Biblical teaching." Could their rejection of the Confessional affirmations that all the parts of Scripture "consent" together, that is, logically cohere, and all valid inferences from Scripture are Scripture, be any clearer?
The Insufficiency of Scripture
Some Vantilians have recently taken the tack of trying to attribute the "insoluble paradoxes" of Scripture to the inherent insufficiency of Scripture itself. This illustrates how far Vantilians have gone and will go in twisting Scripture in order to defend the theology of Van Til.
One prominent Vantilian who has been very active on Internet discussion boards in defense of Van Til over the years, David Byron, has championed this particular argument by stating, "God doesn't reveal enough to us for us to see how some of the teachings of Scripture cohere (though God assures us that they do, in the proverbial grand scheme of things) [emphasis is Byron’s]."9 Therefore, the contradictions of Scripture, which, we’re assured, are not "real," don’t arise merely because of inherent human limitations due to our "creatureliness," but also because of the insufficiency of God’s special revelation itself. Scripture is inherently incoherent, that is, Scriptural doctrines do not cohere. Scripture’s alleged insufficiency prevents us from seeing how the teachings of Scripture logically fit together.
It is important to see just how Byron proceeds in trying to defend Van Til. Byron begins his argument by moving his shells around quickly so the reader is advised to pay close attention [all emphases in the following quotes are Byron’s]:
Some sets of propositions constitute apparent contradictions. Among the sets of apparent contradictions, some are actual contradictions and some merely seem that way. Call the actual contradictions "Class-A Apparent Contradictions" and call the ones that merely seem contradictory "Class-B Apparent Contradictions." Class-A and Class-B combined constitute the set of all apparent contradictions.
Notice that Byron begins by calling actual contradictions "apparent." This confuses the situation, rather than clarifies it. Byron continues:
Here is an example of a Class-A apparent contradiction [that is, an actual contradiction]:
[a] On 16 August 1999, George W is the front-runner.
[b] On 16 August 1999, it is not the case that George W is the front-runner.
If, and only if, all the key terms in statement [a] have the same definition in statement [b], then we would want to insist that [a] and [b] are directly contradictory, and that the reason they appear contradictory is precisely that they are so.Here is an example of a Class-B apparent contradiction [that is, an apparent contradiction]:
[a'] Someone who stabs a child in the face with a sharp object is someone who thereby performs an immoral act.
[b'] Bob is someone who stabs a child in the face with a sharp object.
[c'] It is not the case that Bob is someone who thereby performs an immoral act.On the face of things (so to speak), it appears that the conjunction of [a'] and [b'] stands in direct contradiction over against [c']. It appears that, given the truth of [a'] and of [b'], Bob must be someone who performs an immoral act when he stabs. And if we had good reason to think that [a'] through [c'] were the whole story, then we might also have good reason to find a Class-A contradiction here. However, [a'], [b'], and [c'] are not the whole story. What God hasn't revealed (to suggest the relevant analogy) are the true statements [d'] and [e']:
[d'] Someone who is a dentist and who, in the course of his legitimate practice, stabs a child in the face with a sharp object that is an appropriate dental instrument is NOT someone who thereby performs an immoral act.
[e'] Bob is a dentist.
There are several things to say about this somewhat contrived and strained analogy. First, Byron has not shown, or even attempted to show, that it models anything in Scripture. Second, it rests on an obvious equivocation in at least two terms: "stab" and "face," thus violating Byron’s own rule that "all the key terms [must] have the same definition." Because of this equivocation, the statements a’, b’, and c’, do not result in any conclusion. Byron even admits the equivocation:
The revelation of more information, in the form of [d'] and [e'], makes evident that there is more than one way to "stab a child in the face," and that some senses of that phrase denote immoral acts while some other senses denote acts of dentistry.This admission of equivocation is fatal to Byron’s argument. Finally, Bob the dentist is as clumsy as Byron the philosopher.
Consider Byron’s argument carefully as it relates to Scripture, particularly 2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness…." If all Scripture ends in apparent contradictions, then in what sense can all Scripture be profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, etc.? We could not even judge, much less correct, the actions of a "face stabber," given Byron’s scenario. So what happens when we try to make judgments or to draw inferences from Scripture? If Scripture is inherently insufficient, as Byron argues, if one doctrine will invariably appear to be the contradictory of another, as Van Til asserts, which side of any given Biblical contradiction will serve the various functions Paul outlines above? It seems, despite their explicit denials, that both Christ and Paul did speak "Yes and No."
According to Byron’s example, when we come to the insufficient Scriptures we must expect to be confronted by contradictions. Further, the information we need to distinguish real from apparent contradictions has not been revealed to us. All we are left with are contradictions, because Scripture is insufficient.
According to Byron, every judgment that we might want, or, better, need to make in light of Scripture, and in the face of any controversy which might arise, must always be tentative, since we could never be sure if any of our inferences, sound though they may be, are resting on complete information. The Trinity may in fact turn out to be The Pentanity: Scripture simply doesn’t tell us about the Mother and the Daughter. Or maybe it is the Octinity, with the Dutch Uncle, Aunt, and Cousin thrown in. Absurd, you say? Absolutely. These are the absurd consequences of asserting the insufficiency of Scripture in order to defend Van Til’s irrationalism. Blasphemous, you say? The blasphemy lies in asserting the insufficiency and irrationality of Scripture. Byron’s Vantilianism is no less fatal to Christianity than Liberalism and Neo-orthodoxy.
For Vantilians like Byron, "apparent contradictions" appear to the mind and function as actual contradictions, and they are the result of the inherent insufficiency of God’s propositional revelation. Scripture is not "the whole story," and we cannot expect to understand God’s revelation. For the Vantilian, Scripture is not the perfect and complete revelation of God.
The Fruit of Vantilianism
It should be obvious by now that the principal effect of both Frame’s and Byron’s arguments is to subvert the Christian faith and preclude any systematic study of the Scriptures. This explains why Vantilians eschew systematic theology and embrace with passion Biblical Theology, where eisegesis can proceed unencumbered by the systematic teaching of Scripture. It must be recognized that the Vantilian, if he is faithful to the teachings of Van Til on paradox, does not believe that the Scriptures evidence a "consent of the parts," as the Westminister Confession asserts. Quite the contrary, for the Vantilian the Scriptures are resistant and impervious to systematization, and the so-called truths of Scripture consist of various and conflicting doctrines that can never be harmonized, no matter how hard or how long we try. Further, any attempt to harmonize doctrines that the Vantilian declares to be apparent contradictions (which, as we have seen, extend to all Biblical doctrines including justification), is to fall under "the spell of rationalism." They say that our only hope is that these apparent contradictions will be resolved in Heaven, but of course we have no reason to hope for that either. Since we will still be creatures in Heaven, God will never be able to explain the apparent contradictions to us. According to the Vantilians, not only is Scripture insufficient, but God, far from being omnipotent, cannot reveal himself to his creatures in intelligible, non-contradictory propositions. This explains why so many men schooled in Van Til’s philosophy and apologetic method have been willing to accept the contradictory and heretical teachings of men like Norman Shepherd. Besides, what else could these men do when one of their own, a man openly defended by John Frame and even by Van Til himself,10 proclaims that a sinner is justified by faith, even by faith alone, and yet at the same time is saved by his "faithful obedience" to the demands and conditions of the covenant? That is why it is no surprise that the faculty and administration at Westminister Seminary, as well as the Philadelphia Presbytery of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, men schooled and trained in Vantilian apologetics and epistemology, discussed Shepherd’s contradictory, heretical faith/works doctrine of justification for seven years, and in the end failed to discipline Shepherd or denounce his teaching as heresy.11 Instead, Shepherd was able to leave the Seminary and the OPC in good standing. Many of Shepherd’s defenders in the administration and faculty at Westminister Seminary were allowed to continue to champion, develop, and promote his contradictory and destructive doctrines. The result is that his disciples now control the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Westminster Seminary (Philadelphia). Thanks to Van Til’s deficient view of Scripture, and his rejection of the doctrine that Scripture is a logical, non-contradictory system, Shepherd’s views have spread throughout Reformed and Presbyterian denominations.
The alarm was sounded long ago by Dr. Gordon Clark as he exposed the skepticism, irrationalism, and hostility to the Biblical doctrine of Scripture implicit in Van Til’s theology. Few, it seems, took any notice. Yet, in contrast to what we have seen concerning Van Til’s doctrine of Scripture, Dr. Clark championed the truth that the Scriptures cannot be broken. Dr. Clark saw the central importance of defending the Christian faith as a logical system of doctrines, because it is the logical relationship of Biblical propositions to each other which provides evidence that God’s Word is true. Dr. Clark wrote:
Archaeology, of course, can contribute little or nothing toward proving that the doctrines, as distinct from the historical events, of the Bible are true…. The literary style of some parts of the Bible is majestic, but Paul's epistles are not models of style. The consent or logical consistency of the whole is important; for if the Bible contradicted itself, we would know that some of it would be false.12
If, nonetheless, it can be shown that the Bible – in spite of having been written by more than thirty-five authors over a period of fifteen hundred years – is logically consistent, then the unbeliever would have to regard it as a most remarkable accident…. Logical consistency, therefore, is evidence of inspiration….13
Since, as we have seen, neither Van Til nor his followers have been able to provide any method by which we might distinguish an apparent contradiction from a real one, the "apparent contradictions" they passionately embrace turn out to be inescapable contradictions after all.
The misology and false view of Christian humility and piety in the Vantilian system preclude the harmonization and systematization of the doctrines of Scripture, and Vantilians anathematize those who assert that all the parts of Scripture logically consent. Consequently, and unless things change dramatically, the Neolegalist march through Presbyterian and Reformed denominations will continue. Thankfully, some Vantilians are beginning to see the rotten fruit of Van Til’s doctrine of Scripture, particularly as it relates to the current justification controversy, yet all too many remain blind. Unless Van Til’s view of Scripture is completely excised from Christian thought, the strength and vigor of the Reformed faith, which finds its source and sustenance in that central and foundational doctrine of Scripture alone, will disappear, and the Reformed faith will be replaced by a clever counterfeit in the churches.
Notes
1 Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 61.
2 Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, 142.
3 Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, 9.
4 Frame does not explain how an "appeal to faith"demonstrates anything, let alone shows the logicalcompatibility of two propositions. His use of the word "faith"here involves a denial of logical analysis and demonstration. "Faith" is Frame’s magic wand.
5 John Frame, Van Til the Theologian, 30. http://www.reformed.org/apologetics/index.html?mainframe=frame_vtt.html. Of course, Scripture does not "refuse" to reconcile doctrines. It is Frame and the Vantilians whorefuse, eschew systematic theology, and forbid others todemonstrate the logical consistency of Biblical doctrines.
6 The "master concept" is actually a master proposition,the axiom of Christianity itself: The Bible alone is the Word of God.
7 John Frame, Van Til the Theologian, 35.
8 Jones’ review appeared in Journey magazine in 1987(edited by OPC minister Richard Knodel).
9 http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/vantil-list/archive-Aug-1999/msg00056.html
10 See John W. Robbins, A Companion to The Current Justification Controvery, The Trinity Foundation, 2003, 41-46.
11 See O. Palmer Robertson’s history of the Shepherdaffair, The Current Justification Controversy, The Trinity Foundation, 2003.
12 What Do Presbyterians Believe? 17-18.
13 God's Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics, 16.
The Incoherence of Empiricism
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(The following is an edited email message.)
One argument alleges that Scripturalism* is incoherent because the proposition, "All knowledge comes from biblical propositions and their necessary implications" is not itself a biblical proposition, and that it cannot be deduced from biblical propositions; therefore, if one accepts Scripturalism, one should reject Scripturalism.
However, this argument begs the question. In effect, it is just saying that Scripturalism is false because it is not true, but it says this without showing that it is not true.
But the principle can be deduced from Scripture. The Bible teaches that God is infallible, that the Bible is his infallible revelation, that God controls all things, that man is fallible, that man's sensations and intuitions are fallible, etc., etc. — put them together, and BAM, you have Scripturalism.
Then, just think about empiricism. Yes, it is often assumed that sensation is a generally reliable way to obtain knowledge. But consider just several of the problems connected to empiricism and science:
1. If empiricism is rational, then should not it be possible to demonstrate its rationality by a valid process of reasoning? What is this process of reasoning? And is it really valid?
2. If empiricism necessarily uses induction, then how can it avoid the logical problems that come with induction?
3. If empiricism is the very foundation of science, then how can science be considered eminently rational when we have yet to defend empiricism?
4. Then, how about the fact that the scientific method, by its very own nature, practices the fallacy of affirming the consequent in every experiment?
So, how can anyone who attacks anti-empiricism know anything by sensation by his own at least partially empirical epistemology?
He can't possibly prove it by "pure reason." Does he then claim that Scripture provides the preconditions for empiricism? It certainly provides the preconditions for us to understand that it is irrational and false, but does it provide rational justification to say that empiricism is true? Matthew 24:32 is not the only verse in the Bible. (And as mentioned, Matthew 24:32 itself cannot prove a "I see, therefore I know" epistemology.) How about John 12:28-29 and 2 Kings 3:16-24?
If Scripture shows only one instance when sensation is not reliable, then at least we need a reliable standard or method by which we can tell which instance of sensation is reliable. What is this standard or method? And is this standard or method really reliable?
Or, if they claim that one sensation verifies another one, then this begs the question, since we don't know which one is right, and maybe both are wrong.
So it doesn't matter how many passages they show, but as long as there is even one in Scripture that suggests the fallibility of sensation, then we are taken right back to the question of a standard and method to tell which instance is reliable.
But I have already said all of this in my books and articles, so you will read more about this eventually.
It is amusing to me that some presuppositionalists have been so passionately arguing against my anti-empiricism that it is as if they are now defending empiricism, and in a manner that often contradicts what they would say when they argue against evidentialism in apologetics.
Just don't forget to ask that, as they attack anti-empiricism, have they justified empiricism? How have they done this? And if empiricism (any degree or kind) is part of their epistemology, then they must first justify empiricism before attacking anti-empiricism; otherwise, they are just arguing in a circle while standing on thin air.
Finally, consider this. If they claim that one must use physical sensations to read the Bible, and that, in some sense, the words of the Bible are conveyed to the mind through the physical sensations themselves, and if they also admit that sensations are fallible, then whether or not the Bible is infallible immediately becomes irrelevant to them, since they can never have an infallible Bible in practice. This is because the Bible in effect will only be as reliable to them as their sensations.
Even if I allow them to believe that sensations are generally reliable, it is still irrelevant until they can show me how reliable they are, and even more importantly, how they know in which instances they are correct. If one cannot show me in which instances sensations are correct, then in effect it is as if none of the instances are reliable, since there is no way to tell one from the other.
Some of them say that the Bible teaches them that God has created man in a way that man can use his senses to gain some knowledge, even if the sensations are fallible. But there are at least two problems with this:
1. They just got through saying that you must use the senses to read the Bible in the first place, so how did they find out what the Bible says about sensations without first proving the reliability of sensation? They argue in a circle.
2. The Bible provides many examples showing that the senses are fallible, that they are often deceived. So even if we forget about #1, we are still at a loss as to in which instances sensations are reliable, and we are back to square one again.
Thus, it is really their view that is incoherent.
On the other hand, my scheme bypasses all of these difficulties, since I start from the mind of God, and not the senses of man.
At this point, they sometimes exclaim, "Well, then you can't know anything!" But this is not proof that empiricism is the way out of skepticism! So don't be fooled by arguments like this one.
In fact, my proposal is to overcome skepticism by starting with the Bible — that is, really start with the portion of the incorporeal mind of God that has been verbally revealed in Scripture — instead of just saying that we start with the Bible but then allow our fallible sensations as the only way to know what is in the Bible in the first place.
* Note: I do not apply the term "Scripturalism" to my own approach to philosophy or apologetics.
Recommended:
Short Answers to Several Criticisms
The Transcendental Argument for Materialism
Biblical Rationalism vs. Psycho Assertionism
Vincent Cheung, Ultimate Questions
Vincent Cheung, Presuppositional Confrontations
Vincent Cheung, Apologetics in Conversation
Gordon Clark, Christian Philosophy
Gordon Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things
Gordon Clark, The Lord God of Truth
Gordon Clark, Philosophy of Science and Belief in God
Christ and Crossan
(The following is an edited email correspondence.)
I have heard a very small part of a debate that Crossan had with William Lane Craig about The Historical Jesus. Crossan sounds dangerous. He obviously does not believe in the inspiration or inerrancy of Scripture.
Please, can you direct me to some of your writings, or the writings of others, that could help a layperson like myself to provide some kind of a response to a person who is influenced by Crossan's views?
There is Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? which is the debate with William Lane Craig.
But the more useful books would be those that positively deal with the historical reliability of the Bible, whether or not they interact with Crossan. This is because there are many people like Crossan attacking Scripture, and their theories sometimes vary slightly, sometimes widely. So the preferred strategy is to learn the positive historical evidences for the Bible, and then if you need to, read about the direct refutations for a specific person.
Some of the books that you might read include:
Jesus Under Fire
Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment
Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels
F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
Norman Geisler, A General Introduction to the Bible
I am just writing down the books that come to mind at the moment, so you might want to investigate further, as there might be some even better or more relevant choices.
This is the historical and empirical approach. However, the way to quickly shut down the whole range of attack would be for you to attack historical and empirical arguments themselves. Make Scripture the logical starting point of your intellectual system, and interact with your opponent on this basis. But get to the root of your opponent's opposition against you by going straight for his epistemology. That way, you will completely and immediately shut him down, logically forbidding all kinds of anti-biblical arguments at one stroke.
For this, I recommend my Ultimate Questions, Presuppositional Confrontations, and Apologetics in Conversation.
Recommended:
Vincent Cheung, Ultimate Questions
Vincent Cheung, Presuppositional Confrontations
Vincent Cheung, Apologetics in Conversation
Gordon Clark, God’s Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics
Gordon Clark, Christian Philosophy
Gordon Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things
Real Death, Real Resurrection
(The following is an edited email correspondence.)
I have been reading through your Systematic Theology and came to the passage in the Gospel of John (19:32–33) on how the Roman soldier thrusted a spear into the side of Jesus, now dead on the cross.
As you say, the passage shows that Jesus had in fact died, but it seems to me that the Spirit has something more to teach than the simple medical fact that Jesus was well and truly dead.
It is a fulfillment of the Word (John 19:37), of course, but the faithful would have understood Him to be dead even if verse 34 was not in the text. But it is there.
Is there further truth to be learned from this?
Thanks for writing.
In context, John is describing what actually happened, and what happened was that Jesus died, that he really died. This sets up the narrative for the resurrection that is coming up in the Gospel.
It is true that "the faithful would have understood Him to be dead even if verse 34 was not in the text," but how did they learn about this in the first place, and what is the explicit and stated purpose of John? He writes, "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (20:31). So there is a heavy evangelistic thrust to what John is writing; that is, John is making the point that Jesus really died, and that later he really resurrected.
Again, I agree that there is probably more that you can get out of this passage (check Calvin and Matthew Henry’s commentaries); nevertheless, we must not neglect its context and main purpose. "The Spirit has something more to teach" must mean "the actual words of the biblical text has more to teach"; otherwise, if we think that the Spirit is teaching something "more" than the words, we would risk falling into some kind of illegitimate allegorical interpretation or other forms of eisegesis. Sometimes the "simple fact" already produces tremendous ramifications, as is the case here; and sometimes the "simple fact" is exactly what the Spirit intends to teach.
Many thanks for your reasoned reply. Matthew Henry touches on allegorical ideas, but is not fanciful. It is good to be reminded that Jesus really died, and was later really resurrected, then to reflect again that all this was for His sheep.
Recommended:
Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology
Daniel Doriani, Getting the Message
Dan McCartney and Charles Clayton, Let the Reader Understand
Louis Berkhof, Principles of Biblical Interpretation
The Elements of Style
(The following was originally part of an email correspondence, edited and expanded for the purpose of this article.)
The ability to clearly communicate ideas is one of the most important skills of an effective minister. When it comes to producing books and articles, this means the ability to write in concise and readable prose. It can make a world of difference to the readers. So, I would like to tell you about the things that have helped me as I learned to write, and to offer some suggestions for you.
People like R. C. Sproul, J. I. Packer, Wayne Grudem, and many others are excellent when it comes to readability, but how we wish people like Jonathan Edwards and the Puritans had practiced clearer writing. Packer once noted that if John Murray had been as good a writer as C. S. Lewis (in terms of readability), his works would be much more popular today. Despite the terrible prose, Packer suggested that we endure Murray’s Principles of Conduct anyway, and with that I fully agree — it is one of my favorite books on biblical ethics. Nevertheless, I have great sympathy for the believer just starting to read the great theological works, for in his studies, Murray’s prose would only be the beginning of his sufferings.
Bad prose persists in Christian literature. Many books that are well-written are not worth reading, and many books that are worth reading are not well-written. Theology would not seem so tedious and difficult to people if not for the complicated sentence structures, infrequent paragraph divisions, confusing table of contents, lack of organization and symmetry, wordiness, and other characteristics exhibited by many theological works.
Good writing has a lot to do with clear thinking. You might think that you have a firm grasp of certain ideas in your mind until you must put them into words, and then you discover that your thinking has been in reality unclear and imprecise, and that it often consisted of little more than a nebulous intuition or feeling.
When you put your thinking into words and sentences, you cannot assume that the reader already knows what you are thinking, even if he could mentally fill in some of the blanks that you have left unfilled. But if you are introducing a new line of thinking or even making an argument to the reader, you will have to describe each step of the reasoning process and write down the premises that you would usually assume, and then provide justification for them. Sometimes, you might even need to abandon an argument, or at least reduce the conclusion to a mere opinion, because even though you thought you were correct about a given claim, once you are writing it out for another to read, you discover that there is in fact no rational justification for it.
The ideal, of course, is to totally eliminate such a disparity between private thinking and public expression, so that there is nothing that you need to state, clarify, and prove to your readers that you have not already done for yourself when you first reached a certain conclusion on a topic. Frequent writing can help you lessen this disparity, even if you can never eliminate it.
Thus writing helps you develop clear and precise thinking, and the writing process also exposes to you the strengths and weaknesses in your belief system. This in turn also means that as your thinking becomes more clear and precise, and as you learn to accurately attach words to ideas, and to express them in an orderly and systematic manner, your prose will become more readable to people. In other words, verbalization aids intellection, and intellection aids verbalization (see my Prayer and Revelation).
I read many classic fiction works while I was in elementary school, including the novels written by John Steinback, J. D. Salinger, H. G. Wells, George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, and others. These were not assigned to me at school, since it hardly taught English at all, but reading was my favorite hobby, and I wanted to read what the American high school students were reading. This was my early exposure English prose of high quality. After I was converted, I turned my attention wholly to Christian non-fiction and theological works, and I have been putting up with tedious and convoluted writing ever since.
Reading excellent fiction works helped me develop some sense of style and creativity in writing, but the contents of these books were not always best for very young minds. Yet when we look for alternatives among Christian literature, we are often disappointed. Some of you must have read Left Behind by LaHaye and Jenkins. Other than the false eschatology espoused in the series, the writing is abysmal. Try The Last Disciple if you want something with both better writing and a better theology. When training children and teenagers to write, I suggest that the curriculum should include a number of carefully selected Christian fictions. Perhaps these should include the fictional works of C. S. Lewis, read along with their teachers’ guidance regarding the content and the interpretation, to protect these young readers from some of the dangers in his theology.
Other than what I have mentioned so far, the most important thing that I have done in learning to write readable prose was to study The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. Every writer must get this book, and if you have never read it, you must buy it now. NOW, I said. It is short, inexpensive, available in almost every bookstore, and reading it might be THE most important thing that you will ever do to improve your writing, especially when it comes to producing non-fiction works, including essays, speeches, and so forth.
Now, I don’t consistently practice the rules taught in that book in everything that I write (avoid the passive voice, eliminate unnecessary adverbs, etc.), and this is certainly one reason why my writing is not better than it is. However, it is not because I don’t want to faithfully follow those rules, but it is because I am unable to implement all of them as I write, and then I almost always only have time to proofread my materials once before they are released. If I have the time, I would definitely proofread everything that I write several more times and make the appropriate changes according to the Strunk and White rules. In fact, once I revised one of my books and shaved off twenty whole pages from the manuscript. The text did not suffer any damage, but rather became more concise and forceful.
Then, other than Strunk and White (get it NOW!), I also recommend How to be Your Own Best Editor by Barry Tarshis. It is a guide to help you revise your writing using rules similar to those taught in The Elements of Style.
I have a small mountain of writing guides, but if you want to spend your time writing rather than reading writing guides, then the two already suggested will give you a great start. But if you want more, then consider the following (preferred titles marked by "*").
This is not a very complete or organized list, since I am writing it almost entirely from memory, based on the books that I have purchased and reviewed. So, your favorite title might not be listed, and you might want to look into other available options before making your selections.
*Patricia T. O’Connor, Words Fail Me
Patricia T. O’Connor, Woe is I
Patricia T. O’Connor, Your Send Me
Bill Walsh, Lapsing Into a Comma
Bill Walsh, The Elephants of Style
*Joseph M. Williams, Style
Elizabeth Danziger, Get to the Point!
Maryann V. Piotrowski, Effective Business Writing
*Jan Venolia, Write Right!
*Jan Venolia, Rewrite Right!
*William Brohaugh, Write Tight
William Zinsser, On Writing Well
*Rudolf Flesch, The Classic Guide to Better Writing
*A. P. Martinich, Philosophical Writing
*Anthony J. Graybosch, The Philosophy Student Writer's Manual
*Zachary P. Seech, Writing Philosophy Papers
Deborah Core, The Seminary Student Writes
*Robert Hudson, The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style
Marlene Bagnull, Write His Answer
Ethel Herr, An Introduction to Christian Writing
*Bruce Ross-Larson, Edit Yourself
Bruce Ross-Larson, Stunning Sentences
Bruce Ross-Larson, Powerful Paragraphs
*Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style