Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Foundations IV (Part 4)

We're going to begin our third lesson and deal with the subject of revelation as the foundation of knowledge, which is chapter five in the syllabus. Before we begin, let's have a word of prayer together. Lord, we come into your presence and beseech you to be with us, to help us this night to understand your word and to apply it faithfully. We acknowledge that we are nothing in your sight. We are nothing by comparison to and we had nothing ourselves to commend ourselves to you, and we would truly know nothing at all were it not for your grace to continue a relationship with us, to enlighten our minds, and above all to send us your word to apply that word to our hearts. By your Holy Spirit, we ask that you would help us to take these truths and apply them to our lives as we witness to others, that we might defend the most premises in a way that gives glory to you and does not suggest to those who refuse to know you that they have any right to knowledge or any claim upon it without bending their knee to you. We thank you that you by your Spirit have changed our hearts and enlightened us. We thank you that by your grace you have brought us to know you and in so doing have enabled us to understand how we can know anything. All we pray in Jesus Name. Our last Lessons we have looked at the principle of neutrality in Christian apologetics and have thoroughly rejected it. I last week tried to point out that if we don't hold to a neutral approach to knowledge, have a worldview that allows us to proceed on the basis of no one knows for sure, we can't be committed one way or another to God and to God's Word. If we reject that assumption and that leads to the conclusion that there will be an antithesis, a fundamental conflict or tension between the way the believer reasons and thinks and the way the unbeliever reasons and things, the believer and the unbeliever are going to have different starting points, they're going to have different non negotiable points in their thinking, they're going to have different methods of reasoning, different standards of reasoning, and finally different conclusions to their reasoning. Neutrality and second principle antithesis between the thinking of the believer and the now we're going to jumping to this. That's going to begin to give us a really powerful apologetic if we understand its implications and are able to talk it out, to flesh it out when we talk about believers. And that third thing that I want to get hold of is that God's revelation is foundational to all of our knowledge. And the reason why this is going to become a platform for a powerful apologetic is that if we know how to show this and carry it through in our conversation with the ambulieber, we're going to say, you do know things and the only way in which you could account for the knowledge you have is because of the revelation of God. Therefore, every bit of knowledge that the end believer has becomes an indictment against him for failing to worship the living and true God. We're going to try to show that all knowledge has to be understood in terms of God's revelation and would be impossible without it. That's a very strong claim. Why would anybody even try to start down that road apologetically? It'd be a lot easier for us to say, well, all of us know a little bit. If we get together and group our little bit of knowledge together, maybe we'll find enough principles to show very probably that there is a God, very probably that this God has spoken in the Bible, and very probably that Jesus is his Son. That way we don't offend anybody and we can all be kind of unsure of ourselves. We can all be kind of, well, no one knows for certain. No one has all knowledge. And so you can't hold that against us Christians. Not going to hold that against you. And we're just going to kind of proceed down the agnostic road together. That'd be a lot easier. However, the Bible teaches contrary to that. And as you know, if you've read today's home assignment chapter five in the syllabus in Proverbs 20:17, 21, God tells us to apply our hearts unto his knowledge if we are to know the certainty of the words of truth. So turn to Prov. Verse 22. I'd like to read verses 17 to 21. God says, incline your ear and hear the words of the wise, and apply your mind to my knowledge, for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you, that they may be ready on your lips, so that your trust may be in the Lord. I have taught you today, even you. Have I not written to you excellent things of counsels and knowledge to make you know the certainty of the words of truth, that you may correctly answer to him who sent you. If you look at philosophy today, if you look at the intellectual world, the university world today, you will find a characteristic that most people deny that there can be any absolute truth, or if they don't deny that, they deny that we can know with certainty the absolute truth. The truth is either not there or the truth is unreachable for all of us. And so it's an interesting contrast when we turn to the book of Proverbs to read that we may know the certainty of the words of truth. That expression is a very strong one. We may know with certainty the absolute truth from God. And so if you begin with an unbelieving approach to the world, you will end up saying irrationality engulfs everything. No one can know for sure. The absolute truth is unavailable because not one of us knows everything. And it may well be that in that domain where we don't have knowledge, which is anybody humble would admit is far greater than what we do know, it may be that there's no explanation for it, that even the passing appearance of knowledge that we have is only kind of a. Well, it's a shadow, a ghost. It's not really there. It is the case that no one knows for sure and I can't be certain even of what I'm claiming. And so in the long run, certainty is lost and irrationality, that is the bleak possibility that no one knows anything wins out. You begin with the non Christian approach to the world and there is no certainty because the unbeliever can't claim to know everything. Now the Christian has a different worldview. He begins by saying knowledge is not only possible, there's absolute truth that we do know and can know because of God's revelation. God says, I can make you know the certainty of the words of truth. So the one worldview begins with will and ultimately skeptical foundation. No one can know for sure. The other worldview begins with the presupposition that we are certain of certain things, certain of particular truths because God has made them known to us. Let's just think about that contrast. By itself, this is very elementary, very low level. We're not talking sophisticated big vocabulary type stuff yet. Just starting right there. And you see a problem with the unbeliever's philosophy. We can't know anything for certain. Richard says we can know something for certain. In fact, we do know something for certain. What's the problem with the unbelievers approach, Joe? Well, it's just an assertion. Well, it's more than just an assertion. It's an assertion assumed to be known to a certainty. The unbeliever, to begin his philosophy, must say no one can know for sure and I'm sure of it. Believer. His position presupposes the rationality that his position doesn't support. That's right. His position is that we must be rational. That's Why, I can't believe all this superstitious stuff that you Christians do. We must have a foundation for our knowledge to be scientific. We have to be rational. And yet when you push him hard, he says, but of course, ultimately this is a chance universe and no one can know anything for sure. And so, as Dr. Van Till would say, the end of the world has got to pay off the debts of his rationality with irrationality, while he's paying the debts of his irrationality with rationality constantly going back and forth between the two. Is it that we can know things for sure and that's what drawing. You Christians have violated what we know for sure? Or is it that no one can know anything for sure? He begins. He cannot begin by declaring the possibility of knowing. He has to say, can't know for sure. But then he really should be quiet, just like, hey, are you sure of thinking? Says, I can't be sure. So the unbelievers caught things always bouncing back and forth, kind of like two mushrooms taking each other's laundry. You'll probably hear me refer to this a number of times before we finish this. But of course, let me just tell you that the term that is often applied to this is the rational irrational dialect. The dialectic is like a dialogue back and forth. There's tension in the dialectic, and the end believer has within his thinking a tension, a dialectic between wanting to be rational and yet holding to an irrational, beautiful world, his own thinking. What does the unbeliever think of the mind of man? Well, the mind of man is the brain of man, first of all. So he's got some problems and that he has to account for the mental agility of the mind in terms of physical, biological, electrochemical principles. There's, I think, probably on the surface of it, incredible outcast to think that all of the things that we do mentally can be reduced simply to the firing of electrons or firing of fibers in our mind or something in our brain? Is it possible that if a surgeon were to slice open my head and be examining my brain while I'm thinking, is it possible that just by looking at the physical things that are happening there in the cranium that he can tell me if I'm thinking about a horse or a sunset, tell me whether I'm reflecting about the Star Spangled Banner or trying to sing the Star Spangled Banner? You see, there just seems to be something on the surface that was very implausible about that possible philosopher, the unbeliever reduces man's mind to brain Tissue. Now why does his brain tissue work the way it does? What brought about the human right? Evolution. Evolution. Not divine finger or some inherent, hello, some goal oriented fact about the universe, but just chance. By chance, the human mind brain works the way it does. I don't know about you, but do you ordinarily trust the outcome of things that you honestly call chance? Random events? How many of you would plan to go shopping only if you won the lottery next week? There's a genuine thing, it's a matter of randomness, of chance. Yeah, I trust that. I'm going to go shopping next week after the lottery. We don't usually do that. The sorts of things that happen arbitrarily, like weeds growing and so forth, those are the things we usually try to get rid of in favor of, well, planting rose gardens, nice superhighways and things like that. The end lever, however, says that I should trust village, whatever it is, and in fact my whole eternal destiny to what amounts to this repetition inside that evolves from the slime of evolution. It just doesn't make any sense. His rationality is based upon an irrational view of the universe, the possibility of knowledge. He has to deny even at the time that he's pursuing knowledge and telling us that we don't know what we're talking about. The unbeliever will say to the Christian, not always in so many words, but this is what it amounts to. Nobody knows for sure, but I'm sure that you're wrong. You see, if nobody knows for sure, then you should just say, well, maybe you're right, maybe this guy's right, maybe that guy. There are all these different ideas and the Christian idea is one of them. Maybe it's right. No one knows for sure. But the unbeliever wants to be rational enough to say that we are wrong, but irrational enough to say, I don't have to give you a foundation for my knowledge. I don't have to tell you, I don't have to give you a view of the world. My claims to knowledge makes sense. Okay, My point has simply been now to go back to the fundamentals here that the unbeliever is essentially skeptical about knowledge. Whereas the believer beginning with God's revelation says, God reveals to us the certainty of the words of truth. And so God tells us in verse 17 of this passage of Read, apply your mind to my knowledge. God says, if you want to know something, apply your mind to what I know. Think my thoughts after me, receive my revelation, and in terms of it you can come to know Other things as well. Last week we looked at, and I Repeat here, Psalm 36:9. In thy light shall we see light. In the light of God's knowledge, in revelation we are able to see light. We are able to acknowledge. Psalm 18 declared, the Lord my God illumines my darkness. So into the darkness of man's ignorance, which has resulted from an attempt to be self sufficient, come the words of God bringing us life and understanding. Turn back to Proverbs 5:1:2, My son, give attention to my wisdom. Incline your ear to my understanding that ye may observe discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge and keep knowledge. If we attend to the wisdom and instruction that comes from God, if we base our thinking on his revelation, then we'll be able to preserve knowledge. You know, why is it that sinners are fundamentally from the heart opposed to believing that God's revelation is foundational to all their knowledge? What is it about themselves they want to preserve so that they cannot grant this? They want to be independent of God if they're going to come to God. A lot of unbelievers will say, I'm not opposed to coming to God. As long as God passes the test that I have for him, then I'll be glad to come to God. I don't want to have to think that even my reflection on the possibility of God is under the control of God. I want to be independent of him, and it will be by my choice that I submit intellectually to his truth and word. Unfortunately, some Christians give a similar impression that that they have become Christians because in some sense they have a superior intellect. They figured things out, verified things to a large degree have confirmed the teaching of Scripture, and that's why they believe. Whereas David said, God's Word is a light to my path. God's Word illumines my darkness. It's not my light, my intellectual accomplishment. It gives credibility to God's Word. Proverbs 1:7. The beginning of knowledge is the fear of Jehovah. Actually in Hebrew, barosh of knowledge, as in Rosh means Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah means head of the year, beginning of the year. And so the rosh of knowledge, the head, the beginning point of knowledge is the fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord is not at the end of your knowing process. See, some people, I put it together that we get to know enough things and confirm enough things, then finally we'll bow, bow down and directs God to reverence me at the beginning. That's the starting point of knowledge. All knowledge begins with God. And so those who wish to have knowledge must presuppose his word. They must renounce their autonomy. First Samuel 2, verse 3 says, Talk no more proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth. Is a God of knowledge. We cannot be arrogant in the face of God and his sovereign claims and uniquely sovereign claims to knowledge. Psalm 94:10. He who chastens the nation, will he not rebuke? Even he who teaches man's knowledge. Where does man's knowledge come from? God. God is the one who teaches us knowledge. In these passages we've looked at, we don't see the writers of Scripture drawing distinctions between different kinds of knowledge either. You don't see the Psalms with the writer or father saying that the beginning of religion, religious knowledge is God. The beginning of knowledge about worship or salvation is God. It's all knowledge. And here God teaches man knowledge, not simply about things pertaining to salvation or supernatural, but any knowledge at all. It's unqualified, it's categorical. Man's knowledge stems from God. So whatever we have, even the knowledge we have, have about the world should be considered a gift from God. First Corinthians 4, Paul says, what do you have that you have not received? When we've received it, we have no basis for pride. Our intellectual self sufficiency. In that same passage, First Corinthians, Paul says accordingly, as it stands written, he who glories, let him glory in the Lord. So as Christian philosophers, we have to begin at a lot more humble place than the unbeliever, and yet a lot bolder place than the unbeliever. It's kind of an interesting irony there. The unbeliever starts out real humble, as it were. No one can know for sure. We're very bold, we say, no, you can know something for sure. And the believer, on the other hand, is arrogant about no one knowing anything. He says, anything that is to be known will be known on my terms. The believer, on the other hand, says no, everything that I know, I know in God's terms. Both the Christian and the non Christian have a boldness and a humility about them. The Christian view of boldness, you will find that it contradicts the non Christian view of humility. The non Christian humility is no one can know anything for truth. We all have to ultimately be skeptical. Whereas the Christian boldness is no, we can know things, we can know the certainty that the words are true. On the other hand, the non prevalentness this corner, which is to say any truth, any knowledge there is to be had must be on my terms and according to my standards, contradicts the Christian's view of humility, that all knowledge must be based on God's terms and our submitting to him. So there's this interesting reversal and contradiction between the two systems. We're both going to have points of boldness and humility in our approach to philosophy. But where we are bold, they are trying to be humble. Where they are bold, we're trying to be humble. Does that make any sense? Does char trump at all kind of crisscrossing pattern? Romans 1:21. Paul tells us what happens when people will not bow to the lordship of God in intellectual matters. Romans 1:21. For even though they knew God, they have not known. Even though they knew God, because they did him as God would give thanks, they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. So even though they had knowledge, the way in which they tried to account for their knowledge turned them into fools. They were at one time followers. They could have been bold because they know God. But because they refuse to keep God in their knowledge, they become, if you will, timid and humble in the sense that they can't know anything. The Bible lays out a pattern then, for us to see. This pattern will not necessarily be fleshed out or discussed in the same way by everybody and every apology. But the framework, the general pattern of what we want to get across to the unbeliever should be clear to us. We want to argue that his approach to knowing his worldview actually turns him into a fool. His heart becomes darkened, his mind becomes ignorant on his principles, and yet he does know God. He is able to know things, regardless of what he claims about the world and about his manner of thinking. And how do we know that he knows God? In Romans 1:18, Paul says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth by means of unrighteousness. Because that which is known about God is evident within them. For God made it evident to them. 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. For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God. So Paul insists that two things are going on. They know God, and yet they're doing everything they can to not know him, to suppress the truth. And yet he says they are. The Greek is Xantus pan Theon knowing the God, he doesn't talk in general abstract terms about knowing a God, just any God, that some supernatural, supernatural force way out there. There's got to be something more to this world than what I know. Some people think they're flattering God when they say that kind of thing. God says, you know me very personally, very intimately and very much in detail. And you're without excuse for this. I will send you to hell. Because you know so much of it. You use the living, you suppress it. Like that person playing the game in the pool, holding the volleyball down, you suppress it. And all the while, while you're suppressing it, you're in contact with it. You know it very well, and yet you've convinced yourself there's no law of God, there's no knowledge of God, but because God has made it known to them, they do know him and are responsible to him. So a distinction that you're going to want to remember the rest of your life is between knowledge, a revelation as God accomplishes that, and revelation as the unbeliever acknowledges that there's a difference between God accomplishing the revealing of himself and the unbeliever acknowledging that God has done that. And you know what we usually deal with? We usually respond to the end believer saying, I don't acknowledge that I know God. I don't believe that God has revealed himself to me. So we say, oh, well, I guess if you don't believe it. Gary demar, in his book Surviving College Successfully, has at the beginning of chapter one, a wonderful illustration talks about a college student coming out of an evening class at the college and walking to a dark parking lot and unfortunately encountering a man that has a knife, nice long, sharp blade, threatening him. And the college student, having been warned that this sort of thing happens, pulls out a revolver. He says, don't approach man with a life. Says, I don't believe in the efficiency of the life. And the student says, oh, my drops and says, well, they cut me up. Now, why is it when we deal with an illustration like that, we see the point so easily? The fact that he doesn't believe that my revolver is going to put him on the ground doesn't mean that I'm going to give up using it. He takes a step toward me. I empty the clip. That's it. The argument's over. I mean, all the statistics he wanted to cite in the world about how guns never work and knives are the best weapon wouldn't make a bit of difference, would it? So in an argument with Unbelievable. The fact he says, well, I don't believe in revelation. I don't think I am depending upon God for all, oh well, I dropped my gun. I guess it's not true. What you want to say is, well, let me start applying this weapon to you and we'll just see how much you really do know, how much you are dependent upon God. So unbelievers know the truth. God's revelation is the foundational to their knowing anything. It's because he reveals himself, they know anything. And though they deny it, this is what we want to get across to them in our apologetical argument, that even the process of denying and arguing against the faith presupposes the faith. They're holding the volleyball down, they're in touch with it even while they're denying that it's in the pool. Now, there are two ways in which we can do this. I'm going to cover one of them very briefly because my emphasis is going to be for the rest of this course. And the other one way in which we can show them that they couldn't know anything if they didn't know. To point to the results of the advanced scholars of our age in the chapter here, I say just examine the sort of scholarly material that's being produced by the universities of our land. Just look around you. Existential despair, relativism, respecting truth. You could put about morality in there as well. Irrelevance in detailed studies. You would be a amazed at the things that university scholars turn out. Absolutely no use to anybody dehumanizing scientific advances. The more it seems like the natural sciences get ahead, the less human we are being treated. We see that medical science all the time. People are disadvanced to animals, be dealt with by the doctors, the political paper chase, the infighting and the politics of university programs. You look at that and you have to agree with Paul. Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? If this is what the world is going to offer us, I think someone who hasn't even been to college kind of stand back and chuckle and say, that's what all this intellectual error. And men are not proper stewards of that which God has given them. God has given us our intellectual abilities and we don't use them to his glory. The Bible says that he takes away that which was previously possessed. Remember the story how Jesus tells it? The master gives out a certain amount of money to each one of his stewards they're supposed to invest. Turns out when they haven't done the job as Jesus or the master of the wants them to do it. He takes away what he gave them. He gives it to someone who will produce in a similar way. By analogy, I believe that God is taking away in our culture, even our ability to know things about the world and about our own lives is making. He's making us fools because we refuse to apply our minds to his knowledge. But then again, as Christians, we who know Christ's word have been turned from darkness to light. Acts 26:18 uses that image from darkness to light. And God, who calls Himself only wise, and the one who made this world according to his wisdom, so gives us, According to Ephesians 1, the spirit of wisdom and enlightens our eyes that we might both know him savingly and therefore know his world truthfully. It's one of our elementary Christian assumptions about the world and life is that God's mind is reflected in the creation, the world around us. And God has our minds, we know him and are made in his image. And consequently there can be a fruitful connection between our minds and the created world around us. All of this, of course, is in the context of God understanding that God made and controls the world. God made my mind enlightened my mind leads me to think the way I do about the world world so that I can arrive at the truth. I can have knowledge of the world, But a knowledge of the world is accounted for on the basis that God made the world. And God enlightened my mind so that I'll think that right way about that world. And it turns out that knowledge of the world presupposes God, that God has made Himself known to me so that I can understand the world that he made as well. These are very general theological platitudes at this point. As we go through the course, more and more flesh will be put on the skeleton. So you can see how this is. But tonight's lesson primarily calculates this is a biblical claim that if it weren't for God revealing Himself to us without giving a knowledge of Himself to us, we'd just be fools. We'd be darkened in our hearts and ignorant in our minds. But because God has turned us away from the darkness of autonomy and has given us the light of his word, revelation is made knowledge possible. Not just knowledge of God, but God, God's world as well. Do you have any questions on tonight's lesson? John? These patterns are placed in their mind and they have naturally their knowledge to experience. Well, I think when a person says, my knowledge is just my experience in the world, the of sense. Questions that arise in the standard epistemological disputes about knowledge arise about experience too. Is it the world that they're experiencing objectively and truthfully, or is it their imagination? Do they know the world the way it really is, or do they only know appearance? Is memory reliable? Can you know anything beyond your present experience? Is your experience of the way things have been in the past a reliable guide to the way the future therefore helpful to you in planning your life and predicting doing anything, like taking the next step down the street even, or balancing the checkbook, the same questions arise. So I don't see that when someone claims, well, I just know things based on experience, that he's really answered anything. The real question is how does experience give us knowledge if we don't look at the world and man's thinking in the terms that God lays down in his word? Remember, we're going to compare worldviews. Given your worldview, how could experience teach you anything? Given my worldview, experience could because God has made us in such a way. Again, we're looking at our foundational presuppositions. What defines my approach approach to the world? Bob, what do you do? What's the simplest way to deal with somebody given a Passage by Proverbs 22:17 that's Solomon's. And Solomon. Well, first our assumption here is that Solomon is speaking for God. So when God speaks of applying to my knowledge, he's referring to his own, not just Solomon. I know that. Well, there's that. If his question is whether that's what the text actually is claiming, then we might approach it one way and we have to go back to our doctrine of inspiration and so forth. On the other hand, if this point is, well, that's what the text claims and how do we know that it's true, then we're right. And it's the same kind of argument that we're involved in already. Because what we're going to say is, well, how could you know anything is true on your worldview, no knowledge is possible. And what I'm saying is on my worldview I can make sense out of knowledge. So it's a self vindicating claim in the sense that without it you couldn't argue against it. I know you're going to hear that over and over again and eventually you're going to start talking to people that way. You're going to find out it works, the gun really shoots. I don't have to. I don't believe it. You know, just drop it. So I guess that's the end of that. If I'm not persuaded, is there another question? So far you've been contrasting the believer and the young believer, and that's an easy contrast. Do we not deal a great deal with this? The unbeliever denies the existence of God or, and, or the validity of the Bible? Mr. Believer has very different thoughts on. Sure. Well, you deal with him in slightly different ways in that the unbeliever, you're going to show the stark contrast between his worldview and your own. Whereas the person who is in a sense trying to use part of Christianity's outlook on life but not following the Bible consistently or fully is trying to integrate his own creativity and imagination in there. You're going to start attacking his internal inconsistencies, aren't you? You're going to say, well, now you believe in God and you believe God's revealed himself, but now why do you say that it's the Bhagavad Gita rather than the Bible? And at that point you can treat him just like an unbeliever. Say, what is the worldview of the Bhagavad Gita over against the worldview of the Bible? Or you could be thinking of someone who says, well, I, I follow the Bible. But then they just terribly misconstrued the Bible on that. What you do is you simply have to deal with them in biblical terms. You go to the text and show that they're wrong and do comparison and that sort of thing. And all three of those illustrations. The Stargate believer person who follows a different revelation, as it were, or someone who misapplies God's revelation, you're going to be doing a comparison, internal contrast, I mean internal. Looking for internal consistency or inconsistency in their systems. Someone who says, I'm following the Bible, but I don't believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, I'm obviously going to go to the biblical text and show the deity of Christ and saved in their system. And that inconsistency shows that you're being arbitrary. And arbitrariness is the primary sin of philosophers. Anybody who's caught being arbitrary is not playing by the rules. Okay, Rich, going to keep digging into this a little bit more and more next week. Take only chapter six because it's going to take us one whole lesson just to go over this. We can summarize what we've been learning about no neutrality, about antithesis, and about revelation being foundational to knowledge. The conclusion I'm going to draw is in the title itself. That God's authorities authorize itself. God's authority is self attested. It does not look for anything outside itself to validate it. This is the thing that many unbelievers don't like. In fact, many Christians will say, well, you can't just reason in a circle. You can't let God's authority its own authorization. And I think we'll see why. In the nature of the case, it must be.