Is Christian Belief Accessible to the Unregenerate Mind?

The question is usually framed a little differently in apologetic or philosophical parlance. Is Christian belief rational? While many apologists would contend that such a question is best asked of the apologist, or the Christian philosopher, I think it’s best asked of the Christian theologian. Then again, I am a wee bit biased. The task of Christian theology never really ends. It never ends because it must constantly respond to old ideas packaged in new wrappings that continue their age-old objective of contradicting Christ. And the question before us today is no different. Some would say that I am being a bit sarcastic for framing the title the way I have and I suppose there might be a degree of truth in that.

In a recent debate between Sye Bruggencate and Eric Hernandez, Eric made the following claim: “Faith is a confidence based on knowledge.” Now, the debate concerns apologetic method, and in particular, evidentialist vs. presuppositional methodologies in Christian apologetics. To be sure, Eric’s description of faith is what I want to zero in on because I think it is here that most of our differences reside. Regarding Eric’s understanding of faith, and that of most evidentialists, this is exactly what Wolfhart Pannenberg would say about faith as well. Faith is limited to that historical evidence that is accessible to reason. Many of these modern apologists seem oblivious to the fact that their understanding of faith is informed by the enlightenment move rather than by Scripture. Rather than challenge the methods introduced by the historical-critical method, theologians retreated into mythology and bowed to the majesty of human reason. It all began with John Locke. Evangelicalism had accepted the scientific method without question and the historical critical model that she brought with her. Christianity bragged that science was her best friend and there was nothing to fear: science would only always join Christianity in lock-step (pun intended) and proclaim her undying loyalty. Everything was going just swimmingly until Robert and Susannah Darwin decided that four children were not enough. Enter their fifth child, Charles.

It was like a bad dream. The Christian family had an informant among them. It would be men like Charles Darwin who would redefine science, Christianity’s bedfellow, only to have that friendship shattered by the most brutal betrayal of all time. Since the theologians had built their theology upon the assumptions of the principle of inference and scientific method, they were impotent against the attacks that science would unleash against them. Human knowledge would come through the senses. The role of the human mind would be paramount in discovering truth, in attaining true knowledge, in achieving rational thought altogether. Since the Christian theologians were committed to the inductive principle, they reasoned that the truth of Christianity could be arrived at the same as any other truth. After all, all truth is God’s truth and if induction works everywhere else based on natural law, why shouldn’t it work here as well? Now, revelation must submit to reason for its rite of passage. Even the Christian canon, Scripture, would have to give way to the canons of human reason. The final authority for how faith would be defined and even what we believe about the nature of Scripture would have to pass the tests of autonomous human reason. And so it remains true today of evidential apologetics as Eric Hernandez so aptly demonstrates.

According to the evidentialists, the Christian faith is not a faith that serves as the necessary precondition for knowledge. The regenerate and unregenerate mind alike is of the same structure and capable of making the same evaluation of truth-claims. This is a faith that is limited by autonomous human reason. Our faith can go no further than our knowledge can take us. And since that knowledge can never attain certainty, and could be wrong at any point along the way, our faith is always subject to revision, perhaps even a radical revision depending on how human knowledge goes. And since we cannot gain certainty in this arena, then the theological concept of the certainty of faith collapses within the evidentialist scheme. The evidentialist way of defending the Christian faith actually reduces it to a naturalistic exercise and in the end, unwittingly destroys Christianity by destroying its most basic claims about the nature of human beings: without Christ, we are dead in trespasses and sins.

However, Henriette and Jan Fredik Kuijper would contribute to this conversation by way of their son, Abraham. It was Abraham Kuyper’s observations of the movements taking place within evangelicalism that should grab our attention. Kuyper rejected the speculations of rationalism and of enlightenment philosophy, holding fast to his reformed Dutch theology, and more specifically, to a distinctly biblical epistemology. Kuyper pointed out that it was devastating to the Christian faith to ignore the noetic effects of sin on the unregenerate mind. Nothing is more fundamental to Christianity than that we are utterly hopeless and helpless without the work of Christ. And that work must be supernaturally applied to our person, indeed, our minds, through the agency of the Holy Spirit. It is through that work alone that men come into the true knowledge of God, of Christ, of God’s revelation of Scripture. Kuyper argues that God as revealed in Scripture is known by us, not as a conclusion of an argument but as a primary truth immediately apprehended as the result of spiritual communication to the human consciousness. Kuyper saw knowledge as an entire noetic structure while the evidentialist take the inductivist approach. The evidentialists unwittingly place themselves in a no-win situation, supposing that such evidence and arguments constituted conclusive arguments for the truth of Christianity. [Faith and Rationality]

Is Christian belief rational? If by rational you mean, does it meet the rational criteria demanded by the unregenerate mind, the answer is no. For the pagans, blasphemers, God-haters, and the lawless, Christian belief is not rational. How do I know this? For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1:18) According to Paul, Christian belief is moria, or moronic, to those who are unregenerate. This raises the question, why are we attempting to make Christian belief rational to someone who’s very state does not possess the necessary structure to make it so? Why then do we engage the unbeliever at all? We engage because we love to obey God and God commands us to engage. So, doesn’t God use imperfect declarations of his truth, even poor arguments to win men to himself? I suppose he can and does. But that misses the point. When I engage the unbeliever, my goal should be to follow God’s method, to honor His truth, to stay true to His message, not to see results. So the idea that it works is no excuse to slack in this area. Christian belief is rational to the truly rational mind: the mind of God.

A Christian Understanding of Paradox

Before one explores the differences between a Christian understanding of paradox and the non-Christian understanding of it, it is better if one takes a look at what a paradox is according to the limitations of temporal human logic. Then, and only then will we be in a position to make this important distinction. A ‘paradox’ thus amounts to a set of claims which taken in conjunction appear to be logically inconsistent.[1] Note that Anderson has not defined a paradox as actual logical inconsistency but only the appearance of such. Later, Anderson admits, “As the debate stands today, no writer from the first to the twenty-first century has offered an explication of the doctrine of the Trinity that is both clearly orthodox and free from apparent contradiction. It seems that the careful theologian inevitably faces a dilemma: that of embracing either paradox or heterodoxy.”[2] It seems clear enough that the proponent of Christian theism needs to understand the nature of paradox and it’s relationship to the Christian worldview. This is not to say that theological paradox is beyond vindication. It is one thing to recognize and embrace the appearance of contradiction from an almost fideistic perspective and another to acknowledge its place in a system like Christian theism.

The elephant in the room is the abstract reasoning of the unbeliever. The Christian reasons differently, or let us say the Christian ought to reason differently. The issue in autonomous human philosophy is the infamous one-many problem. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity actually dissolves the one-many problem by challenging the view that reality ought to be interpreted using abstract principles. Bosserman states it eloquently, “Stated another way, the Trinity solves the one-many problem by being free from it himself, and then enabling believers to reason concretely on the basis of a systematic interpretation of reality so that they are effectively freed from it as well.”[3] 

When the Christian apologist encounters accusations of contradiction, unless he addresses the fallacy of abstract reasoning, he probably deserves the criticism he receives. But the Christian apologist can, should, and must do better. If we are to faithfully publish and defend Christian truth, we must do so in a way that is reflective of and consistent with the system in which it operates. God makes no apologies for being the self-contained ontological Trinity from whom all reality flows. If we really believe what we say we believe, we must be prepared to defend the consequences of those convictions in a way that is consistent with divine revelation rather than pretending that unbelieving, abstract, autonomous reason can produce something that does not lead to absurdity.

Since modern conceptions of syllogism and logic depend on the Aristotelian framework of categories, we must undertake a fundamental reform of logic as well as of metaphysical categories.[4] Failure to recognize what should be an obvious fact for the Christian apologist and theology can be devastating to Christian thought. As a result, Christian theism becomes a sort of admixture of Plato, Aristotle, and Christ. What is worse is these ideas make their way into Christian theology and practical thinking and living within the Christian community. Moreover, the consequences of a failure on the part of apologists to recognize this important aspect in Christian reasoning can result in unnecessary criticisms and even worse, embarrassing encounters with opponents of the Christian faith. Christian theism begins with a fundamental distinction between the Creator and the creature.

By contrast, non-Christian philosophy pretends that there is only one universal level of being.[5] From the very beginning the principles involved in human reason are antithetical to those that control Christian logic. The way in which Christians reason about reality, like everything else about us, must be reformed, reshaped by the work and power of the Holy Spirit within. If it were true that the effects of sin have touched every other aspect of human existence, why would we think that logic alone remains unscathed? But that is precisely what philosophers, apologists, and even the majority of theologians believe. Only in a consistently reformed system of thought do we find the sort of expressions of Christianity revealed in Scripture coming into their own in theological systematics and in apologetic methodology.

The Christian system of thought is by definition distinct, and as a matter of fact, antithetical to the non-Christian system of thought. If Paul does not teach this in 1 Corinthians 1-2, he does not teach anything in those chapters. All that the believer needs, in order to be logically consistent in treating an apparent contradiction as an exciting impetus to greater discovery, is personal assurance from God that his revelation-based knowledge is true and sufficient, even though finite.[6] Given the claims of Christian theism as a whole, how could a dissimilar course be possible? The basic foundation of Christian theism is in fact paradoxical. An infinite Creator has created a finite being out of dirt, which was created out of nothing. It matters not how you explain this event; for the natural man, it sounds foolish within the bounds of fallen, finite logic. For the Christian, as Bosserman says above, it is an exciting impetus to greater discoveries about the world in which we live.

On this position, logical reasoning is best defined as a procedure of “implication” where the believer (a) looks through the lens of the biblical worldview upon created facts, events, qualities, etc.; (b) discerns how they are illuminated by the Christian system, and in turn constitute new contributions to it; and (c) develops a fuller portrait of the biblical worldview.[7] Contrast this with the non-believer who presupposes the laws of logic and human reason essentially in a vacuum. Logic becomes little more than a mere convention of human language, or so it is claimed or at least that is the essential conclusion whether it is admitted or not. Rather than being guided by the transcendent, self-contained ontological Triune God of Scripture, the non-Christian places all his faith in the mere accident of the human mind, which is in essence the unavoidable, the product of chance. Far too many of us unwittingly subscribe to the doctrine of John Locke, who said, “nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath nothing to do.”[8] In Locke’s system, human reason is the final bar for judging all things to include what is and is not divine revelation. Man is the final measure and ultimate reference point for human predication. Far too often, Christian apologists inadvertently expose this as one of their own deep convictions without realizing just how antithetical it is to Christian theology and how devastating it can be to a consistent and biblically faithful defense of the gospel.

The Christian then fully embraces this understanding of paradox recognizing that Scripture enthusiastically affirms that such is the case. Finite human reason, created logic, must be reformed because like everything else, it has been woefully affected by sin. We must humbly reason analogically, thinking God’s thoughts after Him while recognizing that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and because this truth has been clearly revealed in Scripture, we can have confidence that paradoxes, rather than threatening Christian truth, are a natural outcome of it.  

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[1] James Anderson, Paradox in Christian Theology: An Analysis of Its Presence, Character, and Epistemic Status, Paternoster Theological Monographs (Eugene, Or.: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 5-6.

[2] Ibid. 59.

[3] B.A. Bosserman, The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox: an Interpretation and Refinement of the Theological Apologetic of Cornelius van Til (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 85.

[4] Vern S. Poythress, Logic: A God-Centered Approach to the Foundation of Western Thought (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2013), 669.

[5] Ibid, 670.

[6] B.A. Bosserman, The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox: an Interpretation and Refinement of the Theological Apologetic of Cornelius van Til (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 89.

[7] B.A. Bosserman, The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox: an Interpretation and Refinement of the Theological Apologetic of Cornelius van Til (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 89-90.

[8] Baruch A. Brody, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytic Approach, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, ©1992), 17.

Revelation and Reason: Revisiting the Dialectical Movement [Part 2 of ?]

In this post I continue my revisit of the dialectical movement with a review of the place of revelation in Christian theology. As you read the comments below, I hope you begin to see that revelation is an indispensable component of Christianity. From there we will move to a Christian understanding of human reason and explore why it is a mistake to attempt to create dialectical tension between the two.

Another word that Scripture uses to describe divine revelation is the word dēloō. We see this word appearing in the LXX in Exodus 6:3. “And I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, LORD, I did not make myself known to them.” The text speaks of a specific manner in which God would manifest Himself to the children of Israel.

“It is true that El-Shaddai (God Almighty) was known to the patriarchs, and in Genesis 17:1 and 35:11 it is El-Shaddai who is connected to the aspects of the covenant that were realized during the lifetimes of the patriarchs. In contrast, “Yahweh” is connected to the long-term promises, particularly that of the land, so it can rightfully be said that the patriarchs did not experience him (that is, he did not make himself known in that way). The patriarchs probably did not worship God by the name Yahweh, but the text does not require the conclusion that the name was foreign to them.”^[1]

The Hebrew word behind the LXX in this case is yāda. This root, occurring a total of 944 times, is used in every stem and expresses a multitude of shades of knowledge gained by the senses. Its closest synonyms are bîn “to discern” and nākar “to recognize.” The root is found in Akkadian, Ugaritic, and the Qumran materials. In addition to “know,” the KJV uses the archaic forms “wot” and “wist.”^[2] 

It seems safe to conclude revelation then is the impartation of information, facts, or knowledge. Space simply does not allow a more thorough treatment of the concept of revelation within the Christian worldview. Nevertheless, the information provided is more than enough to understand the Christian perspective on the concept of divine revelation. Moreover, this is a concept that serves as a fundamental underpinning of sound Christian theology and philosophy. Abandonment of this concept can lead to serious error and at a minimum may place the Christian apologist in a philosophically untenable and indefensible position in his defense of Christian theism. Indeed, a defense of the Christian worldview is seriously compromised without this understanding of God’s activity in divine revelation. In short, a deficient understanding in, or lack of emphasis on, the significance of divine revelation in the Christian worldview can tend to philosophically undermine that worldview. 

While it seems clear at this point that Christian doctrine points to the idea of an active unveiling or disclosure as the nature of revelation, the next question that concerns us is the shape that such revelation has been known to take throughout history. What are the modes of revelation to be studied in order to produce a reasonable grasp and intellectual comprehension of the concept of revelation?

B.B. Warfield writes, “The religion of the Bible is a frankly supernatural religion. By this is not meant merely that, according to it, all men, as creatures, live, move and have their being in God. It is meant that, according to it, God has intervened extraordinarily, in the course of the sinful world’s development, for the salvation of men otherwise lost.”[3] 

Warfield picks up after the disaster of man’s fall into sin. In fact, from the very beginning man was dependent on revelation for knowledge. Man’s ability to study creation and understand it is a reflection of the imago deo, which is itself a mode of divine reflection just as much as the creation itself. Calvin writes, “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the pretense of ignorance, God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty.”[4] 

This sensus divinitatis is itself a divine revelation of God occurring in the person of every human according to Calvin. This would make the revelation of God inescapable and knowledge of God subsequently unavoidable.

“All knowledge of God rests on revelation. Though we can never know God in the full richness of his being, he is known to all people through his revelation in creation, the theater of his glory.”[5] 

The most obvious mode of divine revelation is creation. This not only includes what has been said above about the image of God imprinted on the conscious of man, but also the external world in which man finds himself. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”^[6] 

The Christian worldview asserts that all of creation, to include human reason, is contained in the divine revelation. In other words, human reason itself is divine revelation. Without the creative activity of the Divine Mind, not only would human reason not exist, there would be no human to reason.

In addition, not only has God acted in divine revelation in His creative activities in the world and in the human person, but He has also revealed Himself throughout the history of redemption in a variety of modes. These phenomena are called theophanies. God appeared to men like Abraham (Gen. 17:1), Isaac (Gen. 26:2), Jacob (Gen. 32:30, and Moses (3:2-6). In the very beginning Scripture informs us that Adam and Eve heard the sound of God “walking in the garden” in the cool of the day.

God has intervened in the history of men by way of miracles, signs, dreams, and visions as well. This fact inevitably leads to the conclusion that Christianity, if nothing else, is a religion of revelation. Any attempt to dismiss revelation or to reclassify it as little more than myth produced by overly superstitious men of an unsophisticated era is sure to produce disastrous results for the Christian religion.

It is important, I think, to touch on the “why” of revelation. Revelation is not simply some arbitrary act of a divine being looking to entertain himself. Moreover, it is not the over-active imagination of unsophisticated and highly superstitious men. Revelation is indispensable for human knowledge.

The essence of common grace is the restraint of the process of sin; its scope is man and his world. Its ultimate foundation, we must add, is the mercy of God. Says Kuyper: “Thus common grace is an omnipresent operation of divine mercy, which reveals itself everywhere where human hearts are found to beat and which spreads its blessing upon these human hearts.”^[7]

Revelation is the Christian’s epistemological outlook. The activity of divine revelation has as its aim glory and praise for the Creator and preservation and mercy for the creature. By revelation man is able to understand his world and avoid the self-destructive consequences of the nature of sin. Were it not for revelation, man would inevitably descend mercilessly and helplessly into the power and grip of sin until he utterly destroyed himself from the earth. By God’s common grace, man is able to understand enough about himself and his world to avoid this self-destruction. Were it not for God’s revelation and the organizing principle it creates in the reasoning process or intellect of the human person, chaos and destruction would ensure man's complete self-destruction.

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^[1] Victor Harold Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, and John H. Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), Ex 6:8.

^[2] R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, eds., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 366.

[3] B.B. Warfield, Revelation and Inspiration (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1932), 3.

[4] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: The Westminster Press, 1960), 43.

[5] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004).

^[6] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ro 1:20.

^[7] Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace And The Gospel (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Nutley, NJ, 1977).