THE
REDEMPTION OF HUMAN REASON
There is good news however to be found in the
second man Adam, who came to rescues man not only from sin and death but also
from ignorance, from futility, and from blindness.
“For
this reason also, since the day we heard of
it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled
with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so
that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in
every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;[1]
The Christian can attain true knowledge of
God. This true knowledge comes as a result of being in Christ. Paul tells us
that all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ (Col 2:3).
Paul says that Christians have attained to all the wealth that comes from the
full assurance of understanding and that this results in a true knowledge of
God’s mystery (Col. 2:2). Clearly the apostle Paul taught by divine revelation
that an epistemological antithesis exists between the believer and the
unbeliever. He went on to say that Christians are being renewed to a true
knowledge (Col. 3:10). The antithesis between what Paul said about the
unbelieving mind and the Christian mind is unambiguous.
In Acts 16:14 we find the conversion of Lydia,
a woman from the town of Thyatira. Luke informs us that the Lord opened her
heart to respond to the things that Paul was saying. Here we see reason and
revelation in the context of Christian conversion. Paul was preaching about the
revelation of Jesus Christ, the gospel of truth. Christ opened Lydia’s heart so
that she was able to reason correctly about the revealed truths of Christ. The
result of this inward work on the human person was that Lydia was able to
reason correctly about the facts of the Christ event and the truth of her need
for repentance. In Lydia’s case we see that it was not revelation or reason, it
was not faith or reason, but it was revelation and reason. In this case,
Lydia’s reasoning was instantly the product of a new intellect, a regenerate
mind.
Paul, in writing to the Church at Colossae
informs us that the “new self” is being renewed to a true knowledge according
to the One who created him. The Greek word there is epignosis and it means a definite and full knowledge. Paul’s prayer
for the Ephesian Christians was that God would give them the spirit of wisdom
and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:17). Concerning the
false teachers, Paul tells Timothy they are always learning and never able to
come to the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 3:7). Clearly there is a distinction
to be made between the sort of reasoning that is unredeemed and that which has
been redeemed through the work of regeneration.
Peter tells us His divine power has granted to
us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge that
is in him who called us by His own glory and excellence (1 Peter 1:3) According
to Peter, only the work of God on the human heart can produce true knowledge of
the truth. It is the genius of
Protestantism to make the God of the Scriptures the final reference point of
all predication.[2]
In the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ
we see that revelation and reason are not opposites. Faith and reason are in
truth intimately related to each other. In Christian theism we see human
reasoning in service of God’s gracious gift of faith. Man can only begin to
reason correctly when he understands who he is in relation to his Creator. That
is to say that man can only reason correctly when he understands he is a sinner
in rebellion against God. This is the beginning of knowledge.
CONCLUSION
Reason is considered the source of knowledge
through which all experience is interpreted and that such knowledge can be
obtained through reason alone. It would mean that spiritual events and
all experiences would be subject to the limits and parameters of rational
examination.[1]
To this we add that God is the source of reason by which humans engage in the
predication necessary to arrive at true knowledge.
The Christian understanding of revelation is
that God has revealed the facts of reality to humanity through what we call
natural and special means. God has revealed Himself in the human person by way
of the imago dei. We are all created
in the image of God and therefore the sense of the divine remains etched upon
the human conscience. God has also
revealed facts about reality and Himself in the created order. We see God’s
fingerprint everywhere we look. The revelation of God is indeed inescapable.
God has revealed Himself in the characteristics and qualities of the human
person, not the least of which is the human experience of predication. Every
time we engage in the process of reasoning, we put on display the God who is
there. God has also provided human beings with a divine and miraculous
revelation of Himself in Christ and in Scripture. This revelation reveals
truths about God that may be hidden from natural revelation. The act of God’s
self-disclosure is an act of profound grace.
As stated above, revelation is the giving of
facts and information. It is essential divine communication. God wanted man to
possess certain facts about Himself and the created order. God ensured that man
would come into possession of these facts by revealing them to him directly and
indirectly and by making that revelation unambiguous. From the very beginning
man possessed the intellectual capacity to reason correctly about what God had
revealed. Revelation was as much a part of reason then as science is today.
From the beginning man was created with the
ability to reason correctly about the revelation of God around and within him.
Man thought about creation correctly because he understood himself to be a
creature contemplating that which was created by a Creator. Man recognized his
dependence on God for all knowledge and understanding of his world. The process
of human reason itself was entirely dependent on and revelatory of the triune
God.
The attempt then to separate faith and reason,
revelation and reason, is a vain and hopeless project. If we can prove that men
can reason rightly about their world apart from God, we end up showing that
revelation is not necessary. And if we show that revelation is unnecessary, we
destroy revelation. On the other hand, if we prove that reason has nothing to
say about revelation, no role to play in interpreting God’s revelation, we
destroy reason. If God’s revelation is beyond reason, then it is
unintelligible. A revelation that is unintelligible is a revelation that does
not communicate meaningful facts about anything that can be understood. The
dialectical movement then that seeks to separate revelation from reason, that
seeks to disintegrate the relationship between faith and reason ends up not only
destroying Christianity, it destroys knowledge.
The special revelation of God to man
came not only by way of intellectual information. It came both as word and as
deed. In theophany and in miracle, we have facts of revelation rather than
words. But these facts needed to be explained by God himself. Sinful man cannot
and will not explain them truly. Sinful man would be sure to misinterpret them.
He would regard them as mere accidental occurrences. Men sometimes believe the
resurrection of Christ as an historical fact, and then fit this fact into a
pragmatic conception of history. According to a pragmatic philosophy of history
anything may happen and nothing will have any particular and universal meaning.
On the other hand word revelation without fact revelation would hover in the
air and not reach reality. Special revelation needed actually to dip into this
sinful world with redemptive power. Hence special revelation could not come to
man in the form of a book dropped from heaven. Revelation had to be historically
mediated.[2]
[1] "Carm,"
, http://carm.org/.
[2]
Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to
Systematic Theology (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company:
Phillipsburg, NJ, 1979).
[1]
Ibid. Col 1:9–10.
[2]
Cornelius Van Til and Eric H. Sigward, The
Pamphlets, Tracts, and Offprints of Cornelius Van Til, Electronic ed.
(Labels Army Company: New York, 1997).
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