2003 Shepherd's Conference, A Ministry of Grace Community Church 818.909.5530. © 2003 All Rights Reserved. Grace Community Church. A CD, MP3, or tape cassette copy of this session can be obtained by going to www.shepherdsconference.org
Standing on Mars Hill
(Handout and Study Notes)
Associate Professor, Historical Theology, The Master’s Seminary
I. Introduction
A. Acts 17 records Paul’s powerful defense before the Unbelievers of Athens
1. It is motivated by a provoked spirit (Acts 17:16)
2. It begins with the Gospel message of “Jesus and the Resurrection” (Acts 17: 17–18)
3. It assumes a context of spiritual confusion (Acts 17:18–21)
4. It recognizes that man is inherently religious, yet willfully ignorant (Acts 17:22–23, 27)
5. It defends the truth by declaring the truth (creation, sovereignty) (Acts 17:24–26)
6. It exposes the unbeliever’s unacknowledged dependency on God (Acts 17:27–29)
7. It calls men to repent of their foolishness in light of God Judgment and Christ’s resurrection using evidence in a dependent way (Acts 17:30–31)
Question: What is Paul doing on Mars Hill to defend the faith? As you stand on Mars Hill, what defense do YOU offer?
B. Purpose
1. Not to give you a theological or philosophical lecture
2. Not to offer you a confusing system of technical arguments
3. But to challenge you to think about how you defend the faith and how you can make your defense biblical and thus powerful against unbelievers. Sadly most contemporary apologetics is at best dodging the bullets of pagans with evidences rather that taking the gun out of the unbeliever’s hand with the truth.
4. Our purpose it thus to focus you on a biblical apologetic, which provides a head-on collision of starting points or presuppositions, as Paul did in Acts 17. This we call presuppositional apologetic.
5. It is my purpose to introduce you to this powerful apologetic and offer you help in taking it to the street.
C. Questions
1. How do you answer the attacks of a critic, cultist, so-called atheist or post-modernist?
2. How do you reply to the one who see no convincing reason for believing that the Bible is true and dismisses it as a book written by men?
3. What do you say to a hardened Mormon, Jew, Catholic, Orthodox, or Muslim?
II. What is Apologetics?
A. Definition
1. Apologia—a defense
a) a reply to a formal charge
b) a defense of one’s innocence
c) it is presumed innocence, not presumed guilt
2. Christian Apologetics—Our statement as to why Christ is innocent of the charges made against him. More formally, the vindication (or justification) of the Christian world-view against various forms of non-Christian worldviews—protecting Christianity from attack. Cf. Acts 22:1; Acts 24:10-11; Acts 25:16; Acts 26:1.
B. Relation to Evangelism
Apologetics is evangelistic and it supports evangelism
1. Paul’s statement of Evangelism (1 Cor. 15:3, 4)
2. Paul’s relates evangelism to Apologetics (Phil. 1:7)
C. A Moral Obligation
1 Peter 3:15: “The Magna Carta of Apologetic Texts”
1. Apologetics is non negotiable, “always ready” (15b).
a) For pastors and teachers (Titus 1:9)
b) For everyone (Jude 3)
2. Apologetics is giving a reason or answer for the hope (15c).
This answer will close their mouth (Ps. 8:2; Isa. 52:15; Rom. 3:19; Tit. 2:6–8)
The unbeliever is literally “without an apologetic” (Rom. 1:20)
a) Apologetics is not persuasion—the Holy Spirit must be the One to persuade and give faith (Acts 16:14; 1 Cor. 2:4, 14).
b) Apologetics is not subjectivism—an inner conviction of salvation or assurance of truth given by the Holy Spirit. While this assurance is true, truth is not subjective, but objective in God.
c) Apologetics is not relativism—saying something is “true for me” in distinction from that which is true for someone else. Feelings do not make something true.
3. Apologetics gives rational answers in the right way.
a) A mind submitted to Christ (15a)
b) Spoken with a proper attitude (15d)
(1) gentleness: avoiding contentiousness—presenting an irrefutable argument with the right spirit
(2) reverence: humility, love—avoid provoking (Eph. 4:15; 2 Tim. 2:25)
D. Summary
1. Why do we defend the faith? It is the command of God!
a) We defend Christ when He is ridiculed; not when we are ridiculed!
b) While God needs nothing, He chooses to use us! Cf. Acts 17:25; Numbers 22; Luke 19:40.
III. The Place of Reason in Apologetics
A. Reason is a tool
The ability to reason is part of the image of God in man (Gen. 1:26).
1. Matt. 22:37: Love the Lord with all your mind!
2. Luke 2:52: Christ grew in wisdom
B. Reason must be the servant of Revelation (God’s Word).
1. Isaiah 1:18 “Come let us reason together” really says come let’s set the record straight in it’s context. God is man’s only hope (Isa. 43:10-11; 44:6; 45:5–6, 14; 46:9).
2. Human reasoning results in foolishness (Prov. 1:7; Rom. 1:22), delusion (Col. 2:4), and deception (Col. 2:8).
3. Biblical reasoning is truth and life (Rom. 1:25; 2 Cor. 10:5-6).
C. Reason cannot be understood as an independent or ultimate authority.
1. All knowledge and correct reasoning comes from Christ (Col. 2:3). In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
2. There are two kinds of people (Rom. 1:25)
a) Christians, who worship and serve the Creator rather than the creature
b) Non-Christians, who worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator
Non-Christians think independently of God’s Creation. They judge God. They are their own “god.” Christians think dependently—submitting to God’s truth.
Ø John 14:6: “I am truth.”
Ø Proverbs 1:7: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
3. The opposite of truth (true knowledge) is not ignorance (i.e., lacking facts and knowledge), but in rebellion and foolishness:
a) Romans 1:25 “they exchanged the truth for a lie…” Cf. Genesis 3:3-4 and 2 Corinthians 11:3
b) Matthew 12:30—"He who is not with Me is against Me…”
c) Ephesians 4:17-19—Ignorance, hardness, callous, sensuality, impurity
d) Proverbs 1:7b—Fools are ones who are smart but use their mind to deliberately reject God. They progress from naiveté and simplicity, to scoffing, to hatred of true knowledge (Prov. 1:22). A Bible fool is one who lives in a settled state of deliberate rejection of the truth.
e) 1 Samuel 26:21—Fools hate God.
f) Proverbs 14:3—A fool is proud. The unbeliever’s problem is moral, ethical and spiritual, rather than intellectual—they are proud and will not be told.
g) Genesis 11:4 Babel—a tower whose top will reach into heaven
4. The matter of apologetics
Apologetics uses reasoning from the Scripture to cast down the foolish of sinners (II Cor. 10:5), showing unbelievers that without God:
a) They are a fool (Ps. 14:1)
b) They cannot account for any knowledge, morality, unity, invariance in his world, science or anything. Romans 1:22.
c) They cannot make sense out of life.
d) They have no basis to object to the truth 1 Corinthians 1:20.
IV. Toward a Biblical Apologetic
A. Man is not epistemologically neutral.
1. Epistemology addresses one’s theory of knowledge or source of truth.
a) Ephesians 2:1–2—Dead in trespasses and sins
b) Rom. 1:18–20—Man has an inescapable sense of deity (Calvin)
(1) v. 20—He has knowledge of the true God from the creation:
(a) God’s eternal power, omnipotence
(b) God’s character, His unchanging glory, unity, and consistence
(2) v. 18—They suppress (holds down) the truth in unrighteousness.
(a) They are a “spiritual weasel”!
(b) They rebel in pride against the truth.
(c) This suppression is beneath the threshold of his working consciousness.
(d) They pretend to be neutral.
2. We do not have to prove God the unbeliever—he already knows God.
3. Metaphysically or ontologically, Believers and unbelievers are in agreement because they both know God and are made in His image, yet unbelievers are always inconsistent.
a) Romans 2:14, 15—Their conscience accuses them. In contradiction to their view they continue to rely on God!
b) v. 21-22—They offer lame excuses, vain reasoning, speculations, foolishness
(1) Only because God is in their hearts they know all about science, medicine, baseball, rockets and music, but they get it all wrong. They do not know as they ought to know.
4. Epistemologically, believers and unbelievers do not ultimately agree on anything because each interprets every “fact” from a different starting point. At the same time unbelievers borrow from the believer’s worldview because their own view does not make sense, but they will not admit it. The KEY issue is authority, and the unbeliever will not honor and submit God as his source of Authority (Rom. 1:21).
a) For the unbeliever, God’s creation becomes a proof for His non-existence. Brown cows eat green grass and produce white milk without out God and thus become a proof that God does not exist.
(1) Daniel 5:22–23 “But God in whose hand are your life-breath, you’re your ways, you have not glorified.”
(2) Hosea 2:8: “For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain…which they used for Baal.”
b) Their wisdom becomes foolishness.
B. Man’s Problem is not intellectual but moral.
1. Romans 1:18—Willful suppression
2. 2 Corinthians 10:5—Speculations, prideful and lofty thoughts outside of God must be destroyed and taken captive by obedience.
Think about your own conversion.
Ø Did you become a Christian by using your superior intellectual ability as the ultimate authority to judge of the evidence of the credibility of Christ?
Ø You became a Christian when you bowed your heart and mind in repentance with submission to the Lordship of Christ.
C. In the end, all men have faith and they reason from that faith.
1. Genesis 1:1—“In the beginning God”
2. Genesis 3:5—Faith in themselves as god
Unbelievers say that they have facts but their facts rest in nothing, chance, irrationality. They offer no intelligible basis on which to build a worldview.
The question must ultimately become for every man, “What is the object of your faith?”
D. Evidentialism—A misguided approach to apologetics
Commonly called semi-rationalism, classical, or empirical apologetics, it is the method of Catholics, Arminians and many inconsistent Calvinists.
1. Evidentialism (a methodology) believes that there is common ground (or natural theology) between the believer and the unbeliever, holding that man’s mind is neutral and is capable of judging of the credibility of truth. The evidentialist puts God on trial using the unbeliever’s mind as a neutral court. He appeals to reason and proceeds to faith using empirical evidences or historically verifiable facts to argue a probability case for God. He argues the Christian view appealing to the laws of logic and so-called neutral evidences, seeking to avoid circular reasoning in favor of flat-line reasoning. Evidentialists have starting points or presuppositions, but seek to prove the probability or permissibility of them before presenting them. Evidentialism is reflected in the following positions.
2. Roman Catholics (Aquinas and the Scholastic Philosophers) use traditional arguments for God (including Cosmological, having to do with the nature of the universe; Ontological, having to do with the nature and relations of being; Anthropological, having to do with human beings as to their origin, distribution, etc.; and Teleological, having to do with design or purpose) to build a probability case for God. They start with reason and proceed to the probability of faith.
3. Arminianism argues that man’s mind is neutral and when presented with evidences he will yield to Christ. Bishop Butler, in his famous Analogy, used nature to build a probability case for life after death against Deism in the 18th Century. He said that a “reasonable use of reason” could interpret aright “the course and constitution of nature.” Butler went on to say that “revealed religion is rendered credible by analogy and the evidences of miracles and prophecy.” “The whole of religion then is throughout credible” In the same way, John Warwick Montgomery claimed to be “…drug, kicking and screaming across the threshold of grace by the sheer weight of the evidence.” Norman Geisler stands tall in this tradition.
4. Inconsistent Calvinism uses some form of common ground or points of agreement in appealing to the laws of logic and natural uniformity to build a case for God. They would present so-called neutral evidences to build a probability case for God. Charles Hodge wrote, “Man can judge of the credibility of a Revelation.” John Gerstner and R.C. Sproul build a probability case for God from nature while claiming to avoid circular reasoning at every level. J.P. Moreland builds a permissible case in similar fashion. E.J. Carnell argues for pre-evangelism with evidences before the gospel can be presented. Josh McDowell calls for “faith based on fact."
5. The Problems—
a) The facts do not speak for themselves.
(1) Matthew 28:17—Men who saw the resurrected Lord did not believe.
(2) Romans 11:33–36—Gods does not go outside Himself to prove Himself.
b) Unbelievers cannot and do not give God a fair trial according to our theology.
c) Evidential apologetics grants the unbeliever too much.
The Evidentialist grants the unbeliever the right to think as an unbeliever (autonomously) while at the same time asking him to give up his unbelief (autonomy). This is theologically impossible. The unbeliever will always employ his tools of reason to reduce the contents of Scripture to naturalism.
Reality: Evidentialism is the last pocket of Arminian leprosy in the bosom of Calvinism!
V. A Biblical or Presuppositional Apologetic
A. What is Presuppositionalism?
It is a view that places the Christian worldview and it’s starting point over against the non-Christian worldview and it’s starting point! It places presuppositions (or ultimate starting points) over against other presuppositions. It addresses the pre-conditions of intelligent thought. It attacks the unbeliever with a head-on collision presenting him with the opposite of what he believes. It understands that common ground is not “facts” upon which both agree, but rather the inescapable sense of Deity that exists in every sinner (Rom. 1:18-22).
Presuppositionalism presents reason and evidences within a biblical framework and thus reasons from faith to faith. It calls the unbeliever to submit to the Lordship of Christ, thinking His thoughts after Him (2 Cor. 10:5) lest he be a fool. The Presuppositionalist puts the unbeliever on trial in God’s court and exposes his sins of the heart and mind. It defends the truth in a way consistent with the truth.
B. The Features of Presuppositionalism
1. A head-on collision with the unbeliever.
a) The opposite of foolishness is truth—call him from sin to obedience (Isa. 1:18).
b) He must take his faith out of himself and put it in Christ.
c) Challenge his proud right to judge God—confront his pre-commitment to naturalism.
d) Ask him to embrace the Christian faith and its Christian evidences not as a fideistic irrational leap of faith, but as faith rooted in biblical reasoning.
2. An absolute case rather than mere probable or permissibility.
a) Christianity offers absolute certainty.
(1) Acts 2:36—“All the house of Israel knows for certain…”
(2) Luke 1:4—“So that you may know the exact truth…”
(3) John 20:31—“These things were written that you might believe…”
b) Christianity offers infallible proofs.
(1) he witness of God in nature and in man’s conscience
(2) The uniqueness of the Bible in all of history
(3) The authority of Scripture—it speaks like no other book
(4) The incomparable message of the Bible—it alone calls for a broken submission to God in repentance and biblical faith
(5) The miracles, the resurrection, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy
3. A fundamental conflict over the issue of authority.
a) A Christian witness
(1) Begin with a clear presentation of the gospel with the full assurance that it is true and fully defensible.
(a) Ask for the opportunity to present the Christian worldview.
(b) Present God, creation, holiness, sin, Christ’s person and work, man’s human condition, salvation, repentance, faith and man’s need for dependence on Christ.
(2) Call for the unbeliever to submit to his creator and to use his mind to think dependently upon God rather than independently outside of God.
(3)
Answer honest
questions of understanding.
Present Christian answers and Christian Evidences based on the Christian
worldview.
(4) Call for repentance and faith.
b) A Christian defense
For example, “I do not need salvation and I am not convinced that the Bible is true—it is just a useless book written by men.”
(1) Answer from truth (Prov. 26:4).
(a) The principle: Do not answer a fool according to his philosophy or you will be like him—to argue from his worldview is to encourage his rebellion.
(b)
The application:
Do an external critique of his position reasoning with him from
the Bible.
—Press him back to the Bible.
—Insist that the Bible is the only possible position.
(c) For example:
c) My answer is rooted in the Bible (Acts 17:23–24)
d) Allow me to present the Christian explanation for this question:
(1) The evidence of Scripture (O.T.) (1 Cor. 15:3–4)
(2) The evidence of the external world (1 Cor. 15:5–7)
(3) The evidence of personal experience (1 Cor. 15:8)
e) Expose the reason why the unbeliever rejects your answer.
Ask the “Why” question to push him back to his starting point of self authority or autonomy.
Ø Why do you reject the message of the Bible?
Ø Why do you reject its claim of inspiration?
Ø What authority gives you the basis to reject the Bible?
Ø Why do reject your need for salvation?
f) Show him from the Bible, that in the end, he has no credible reason as to why he rejects Christ, save his pride (1 Cor. 1:20).
(1) Answer from folly (Prov. 26:5).
(a) The principle: Answer him according to his folly (what his folly deserves) by showing him what God says about his worldview.
(b) The application: Do a brief internal critique of his worldview showing him that his position reduces to absurdity. Turn the unbeliever’s beliefs back on him.
Ø A worldview based on nothing cannot account for anything.
Ø Show him that in his heart he is a theist, for atheism presupposes theism.
Ø He borrows from the Christian worldview to make sense out of his view for he is inherently religious.
(c) Example:
g) Based on his worldview, knowledge is impossible. He cannot account for anything he believes from within his worldview. He continues to make absolute or super-statements without authority.
He offers only mere opinion, arbitrary statements, relativism, ignorant conjecture, and unargued bias. These sins of the intellect are common to all unbelieving word views, including modern science, contemporary nihilist, all false religions such as liberalism, Mormonism, Islam, and Catholicism. The are all equally arbitrary.
h) His worldview reduces to his own arbitrary self-invented ideas. His independent commitment is based on his own independent commitment. (“The god he believes in is the one he sees in the mirror”—John MacArthur)
i) How can he possibly know enough to stand in judgment of the God of the Bible. His “certain” positions (i.e., super-statements) are actually uncertain as they are based in his own conclusions. He crucifies reason as his rationalism rests on irrationalism!
j) In denying theism, he has assumed theism. He is self deceived, for in an effort to deny God he assumes God for the laws of logic, laws of non-contradiction and morality that allow him to assert truth. In biblical terms, he is a fool (Ps. 14:1; Rom. 1:21; Col. 2:3–4).
k) The unbeliever is proving that Christianity is true by borrowing its foundation to assert his unbelief. He is saying—given God’s creation, man’s reflection of God’s image and God’s laws of logic—I choose to rebel against God.
(1) Press your apologetic advantage.
(a) The Bible can explain everything. God created everything and gives life, natural order and the laws of logic.
(b) The unbeliever cannot explain anything and keep drawing God to make sense out of their views. (unacknowledged dependency). He can count but he cannot give an account for his counting!
(c) At the same time the unbeliever has no credible argument to bring against God (1 Cor. 1:20).
(d) We are left to return to the gospel (1 Cor. 1:18–19; 24–25).
At first, the unbeliever says it is foolish to think:
Ø that man would need one to die for him.
Ø that man should be confronted with his sin.
Ø that man should need to understand the cross.
Ø Now it is wise for he is a fool who rejects the Lord.
4. The reason for our hope: the impossibly of the contrary.
a) A transcendental argument is one that transcends normal patters of thought and speaks to the possibility of intelligible though or rationality. It is a clash of ultimate starting points.
b) It places the unbeliever’s circular reasoning, which is filled with self-contradiction and irrationalism, over against the believer’s circular reasoning based on the Bible, which makes total sense out of life. All men reason in a circular manor, it’s just that unbelievers reason in a vicious circle!
c) The proof of God’s existence is the impossibility of the contrary
(1) If Christianity is not true, then nothing is true (Prov. 1:7).
(2) Without the Christian worldview, no position is possible.
(3) The Bible is the precondition of all rational thought.
Reasoning, perception, and pragmatic judgments all require the assumption of basic abstract (immaterial), universal (universally applicable), and absolute (without exception) entities such as the laws of logic. These are created by a loving God who expects men to acknowledge their dependence on Him alone for these things!
(4) Unbelievers need God to account for the laws of logic, inductive reasoning, uniformity in nature, predication, human dignity, an invariant moral code, laws of science, mathematics and everything that underlies all their thinking.
(5) Unbelievers use what God gave them to ridicule Him (Isa. 45:21; Hos. 2:8; Acts 17:28).
(6) The unbeliever has rejected God with foolish pride.
d) We must call for the unconditional surrender of the unbeliever to Christ so that he would think God’s thought’s after Him (2 Cor. 10:5) beginning with repentance and faith.
e) The unbeliever is as foolish as the little girl, sitting on her father’s knee, depending on him for everything while she slaps him in the face.
C. Some Final Questions
1. Why do I believe Christ is the Savior of Men?
a) Because Christ said He was the Savior and Lord (His Claim).
2. Why do I believe what He says?
a) Because it is presented in the Bible, the Word of God, and I believe it is the very Word of God.
3. Why do I believe the Bible to be true?
a) Because through reading it, Christ has convicted me and saved me.
b) Because without the Bible nothing makes sense—not the past, present or future. Not morality, reasoning, understanding.
c) Because without the Bible I would be a fool (Ps. 14:1).
d) Because Christianity is the only possible position.
D. The Challenge
1. Thinking through a Presuppositional Apologetic. Some will be bunnies and others giraffes! Prepare your defense as you stand on Mars Hill.
Bahnsan. Always Ready
________. Van Til’s Apologetic
Cairns, Alan (ed). Dictionary of Theological Terms
MacArthur. Ashamed of the Gospel (Acts 17:22–34)
Van Til. The Defense of the Faith
________. Why I believe in God
2. Some starting points
a) Knowing the strength of our defense, declare the gospel of truth with unique authority.
b) Do not prove God’s existence to those who already know Him in their hearts.
c) Do not encourage the unbeliever’s rebellion, but rather challenge it with biblically centered arguments.
d) Speak the truth in love (1 Pet. 1:15).
e) Use presuppositional apologetics in dealing with every kind of objection to the truth for at the core of every objection are the arbitrary thoughts of the proud.
f) Use presuppositional apologetics in your teaching and counseling ministries.
The Conflict of Worldviews
Creator (GOD)
“In the beginning God…”
Source of all truth (a priori)
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Creation (Man)
Dependent creation
True Knowledge of God and His creation
True righteousness
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Believers |
Unbelievers |
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Worship the Creator |
Worship the creature—“self” |
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Think God’s thoughts after Him:
Ø In principle (noetic effects of sin)
Ø Dependent reasoning (biblical) |
Reject God's thoughts, but do not live that way. They know God, but do not glorify Him as God (“truth”)
Ø Inconsistent:
** In rebellion, they assert independence (pretended neutrality and autonomy)
** In reality they continue to think according to the remaining effects of God's image in them. “A-theism presupposes Theism.”
Ø Depend on God for the laws of logic, uniformity in nature, human dignity, a moral code (Rom. 2:14–15).
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Speak to unbelievers with confidence that they are made in God's image, putting the unbeliever on trial (2 Cor. 10:5).
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Evidentialism |
Presuppositionalism |
Fideism |
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Reason is an independent, ultimate authority and a neutral enterprise. |
Reason is a tool of revelation and is never neutral, including the laws of logic. |
Reason is inappropriate; truth is inaccessible to reason. |
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Reason-to-faith; independent rationality. |
Reason from faith-to-faith; dependent rationality. |
Suspend reason and leap to faith. |
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Knowledge—Common ground or “Brute Facts.” |
Knowledge—No agreement, all facts are “interprefacts”; only Rom. 1:18–22 in common. |
Same |
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Opposite of true knowledge is ignorance. |
Opposite of true knowledge is rebellion and foolishness. |
Same |
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Joins with the unbeliever using common “truth.” |
Head-on collision with the unbeliever—the truth is the opposite of his position. |
Does not reason with the unbeliever. |
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Argues a Probability case for Christianity. |
Argues an Absolute proof for God from the impossibility of the contrary “atheism presupposes theism.” |
Makes no argument, merely quotes Scripture; denies the possibility of an apologetic. |
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“Christianity is the most logical view.” |
“Christianity is the only view.” |
“Repent.” |
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Uses classic probability arguments developed by Aquinas an others. |
Uses the transcendental argument setting competing worldviews against each other. |
Uses no arguments. |
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Presents neutral evidences and arguments introducing presuppositions later. |
Presents “Christian Evidences” and arguments based on one’s presupposition. |
Presents faith without arguments or evidence. |
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God is on trial |
The unbeliever is on trial |
No trial takes place |
Conclusion of Presuppositionalism: We cannot grant the unbeliever his autonomy and at the same time expect him to reason to the position of giving up his autonomy. We must exploit the last stronghold to which the unbeliever retreats. Evidentialism is the last pocket of Arminian leprosy in the bosom of Calvinism. Fideism is unacceptable in light of the biblical mandate (Prov. 26:4, 5; 1 Pet. 3:15).
Common Non-Christian Worldviews
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World View |
Presupposition |
Source of Truth |
Line of Reasoning |
Answer |
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Christianity |
“In the beginning God.” |
“Thy Word is truth” which is absolute truth. |
Submission to the will and intellect of the absolute God. |
None |
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Atheism |
In the beginning man. |
Man is capable of judging of god’s existence. |
There is no God. “I am my own god.” |
Absurd and arbitrary opinion which assume theism and omniscience for meaning. Self refuting. |
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Agnostic |
Man starts from within himself without any outside special revelation. |
Man is capable of judging of god’s existence. |
God is unknown and unknowable. |
Same |
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Skeptic |
Man starts from within himself without any outside special revelation. |
Man is capable of judging of god’s existence. |
The existence of god is doubtful. |
Same |
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Modernist (Hegel) |
The ultimacy of the laws of logic and individual “common sense” thinking. |
Objective knowledge is tested by reason and truth is established outside God (chance). |
God and the super-natural are not possible. |
Criteria for establishment is arbitrary and dependent on theism for meaning. |
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Cultural Relativist |
Everything is relative to the speaker’s mind—no moral judgments made. |
Man is the source and measure of all truth. |
All truth is relative. |
The absolute nature of this view of truth is self refuting. |
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Nihilist (Postmodernism) |
Everything is relative to the speaker’s mind—no moral judgments made. |
Relative truth flows out of the individual as self is the source of truth. |
There is no truth (absolute truth). |
This itself is an absolute (and arbitrary) statement of truth. |
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Theol. Liberal |
Man’s sincerity and imagination can produce a religion that makes all happy. |
Truth is learned by an absolute dependence on subjective understanding. |
God is what I sense and taste him to be. |
All judgments or evaluation of God is arbitrary speculation and rebellion. |
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Neo-Orthodox |
Man’s subjective judgment is the beginning of reality and ultimately determinative of god. |
Truth is obtained as man is empowered by god through existential encounter. |
The Bible becomes the word of God as it speaks to me. |
You have become your own god! (arbitrary). |
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RCC/ EOC |
Reality begins with man guessing about god, the Bible and religion. |
Truth is found in the Bible as corrected by tradition & experience. |
Roman Catholic/EOC teachings are ultimate. |
Exchange faith in a self conceived god for faith in the living true God. |
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Orthodox Jew |
Same |
Truth is found in the Bible as informed by Jewish tradition (Talmud) & speculation. |
Denial of the Messiah along with other humanist claims. |
Same |
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Muslim |
Same |
Truth is found in the Bible as “cleared up” by the Koran |
The Scriptures must be rejected for the Koran. |
Same |
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Mormon |
Same |
Acceptance of Joseph Smith’s corrections & addition to the Bible through a subjective conclusion. |
The Scriptures must be rejected for Mormon teaching. |
Same |
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "Shepherd's Conference Collection" by:
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
Box 119
Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022
Our websites: www.biblebb.com and www.gospelgems.com
Email: tony@biblebb.com
Online since 1986