Dr Greg Bahnsen - Loving God With All Your Mind: How to Discern and Disarm Worldviews, Pt 3 (Part 4)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

Now, because God is the sovereign creator and controls everything and knows everything, God is able to come right into our experience. The transcendent God, just because of his transcendence, has no problem coming right into our world and controlling whatever happens in the world. That's the doctrine of Providence. Revealing Himself clearly in the world. In fact, coming into the world in the person of his own Son at the Incarnation and entering this world and controlling it as on the day of Pentecost through the work of His Holy Spirit. And so the eminence elements of Christian thinking have to do with the fact that God is controlling the world in which I live and making Himself very clearly known in human experience and human history. The sovereign Creator has entered history. He's part of the here and now. He's part of daily experience. Because everything that takes place takes place by his wise counsel and plan. He has made Himself known through the created order. His glory, his holiness is known to us in the created order. And he has given Himself to us in a book. He's given us a word that is infallible and inerrant. It makes Himself known to us very clearly, unambiguously and absolutely. He has come right into our history by becoming incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, the God man. And he dwells in our midst by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the corporate church and individual heart of the Christian. And so you notice that the transcendence of God, his absolute sovereign control is what makes very possible. You know, it's very consistent with the idea that God therefore can make Himself clearly known in history. God can be very detailed and he can hold us responsible for all that happens, even though he's the one that controls everything. Human responsibility fits right in with that. So the transcendence of God leads to the eminence of God. These two aspects of our philosophy work together. That means Christian philosophy. Hear me out. This is going to shock you for a moment. Has some elements that seem irrational and also rational. And by irrational, I mean here, not based ultimately on the authority of man and his thinking. Man doesn't become the ultimate rational authority in the Christian way of looking at things. And so our transcendent commitment about creation sovereignty, God's ultimate authority, inerrancy and so forth, will seem irrational to those who say no. Only man's mind is the authority. Because we say we can't count on ourselves, we didn't create ourselves. We don't control the conditions of our lives. It's only through God's providence and his revelation that we can know anything at all. We are, if you will, utterly dependent upon God. We don't depend rationally upon ourselves. We depend upon an authority beyond us. Now that is a renunciation of rationalism and therefore will seem irrational to the unbeliever. But that's nothing we need to be afraid of or ashamed of. In fact, it never bothers me. It used to. I don't want to pretend I've always been where I am now in my thinking, but it doesn't bother me when people say, when I appeal to the Bible and I say, well, the transcendent sovereign God revealed this and therefore I can't, you know, dispute it. People say, oh, you're just being superstitious, a Sunday school child, what an irrational little child you're being. I'm saying, well, yeah, maybe I am in terms of your way of thinking, but at least my irrationality gives a foundation for rationality. Science, morality, logic, human dignity and all the rest. That ain't such a bad irrationality as far as I'm concerned. But I'm willing to grant that this goes beyond myself, beyond my authority. I didn't make the world, I didn't create the categories. Logic doesn't depend upon my thinking and so forth. You're right, I have an irrational transcendent element. But I also have very strong rational elements in my philosophy because this God who is beyond me has revealed himself in his word and has revealed himself so clearly and so authoritatively that I have a basis for philosophy and logic. Because God, who is transcendent, controls this world and has promised to keep it uniform. I have a basis for doing science. You see, as a Christian, the fact that I believe in a miracle working God and a God who can intervene in the course of history, I'm not led to say, oh well, who knows what's going to take care of the sinus infection. Should I use antibiotics or should I just, you know, drink lemonade all day? No, I believe that you can study scientifically and expect that the world will operate in a law like way, in an orderly way, and therefore you can predict, you can finally find out that Dr. Bonson needs antibiotics and not just lemonade. And so my quote unquote irrational element, the authority of a God that transcends me is actually the foundation for my very strong rational practice of science in this world and my insistence that people think logically and not be allowed to get away with inconsistencies. I believe that ethics is based upon the transcendent authority of God. So I think it's absolute. But the absoluteness of ethics does not mean that everything has to be very vague and ambiguous. For me, since God can reveal himself very clearly in this world, God can give me very specific commandments like don't put a stumbling block in front of a blind man. You see, God doesn't have to just leave things at the element of generalities like play fair, love one another, be honest. Yeah, but what does honesty mean? What does fairness mean? What does love mean? God goes beyond that and he gives very specific commandments. In fact, they're so specific I didn't come here to talk about this today. We could talk about ethics sometime. I dare say that's the offense of the Bible. Nobody would be upset with the Bible if all it said is, hey, show goodwill to everybody. You can get that from unbelievers. Nobody has any problem with that. It's that goodwill means you don't commit adultery, you don't engage in fornication, you don't lust, you don't defraud, you don't steal from people, you don't trip blind people, you don't talk behind the deaf man's back or what have you. Those sorts of specifics are what bother people. But God's transcendent authority enables him to come right into the world and tell me directly, don't do this and don't do that and do this and do that. And so there is a rational element to the Christian system. We have a rational ethic, we have a rational science, we believe in the use of logic, we want to reason clearly and not fallaciously and all the rest. Okay, so I've tried to belabor the fact that the transcendence of the Christian worldview and the eminence elements of the Christian worldview play very well together. That I irrationally, that is, don't depend upon my authority, look to a God that goes beyond me. And that's the basis for my very strict rational use of ethical details, scientific details, and all the rest of the. Now let's turn around and talk about non Christian philosophy. And the first problem we're going to have, and I just warn you ahead of time, is that people will say, what do you mean the non Christian position? There's no one non Christian position. There's all kinds of non Christian positions. And I agree with you. But my conviction is that every one of them, for all of their Differences are nothing but a family squabble. Or maybe I can use another analogy. We can look at the non Christian set of worldviews as like Baskin Robbins. Okay, you go into Baskin Robbins and it's one ice cream store, but there are 31 flavors there. @ least there used to be. You know what I'm talking about. You all heard of Baskin Robbins. Wouldn't it be terrible if I went someplace people I'd heard in the Baskin Robbins? I can lose my illustration. Plus just think of how culturally deprived you'd be. Nevertheless, there are 31 flavors or more of non Christian views. But they all have certain things in common. And I'm going to generalize for you so that whenever you run into a non Christian worldview, I assure you this is what you're going to find. In the first place, the non Christian has his transcendent elements as well. Now remember I said transcendence pushes, if you will, the irrational side of a worldview. And the non Christians transcendent or irrational elements are tied to this kind of conviction. I'm being overly general. You're not going to taste the chocolate, vanilla and strawberry here, but you're just going to get general ice cream this year. The general non Christian position is that because the human mind is limited, because the human mind cannot account for all the details, there can be no absolute certainty or universes, there can be no unqualified authority. Let me say that again. Every non Christian philosophy in one way or another through its 31 flavor expressions is going to say the human mind is limited. And because the human mind is limited and cannot account for all the details, there can be no absolute certainty, no universals, no unqualified authority. If you've written that down just the way I gave it, you don't have to do that. But if you happen to, I want you to circle the word human. Because the human mind is limited. Therefore anything that would have absolute authority would transcend the human mind, right? There can't be anything, therefore that's universal because there's nothing but the human mind. Since the human mind is the basis of authority, there can't be any absolute authority, any universal authority, anything that is certain. Every non Christian philosophy. I'm going to give it to you another way now. This may be an easier way for you to think of it. Every non Christian philosophy says in one way or another, nobody can know for sure. And because nobody can know for sure, non Christian philosophies of life tend toward relativism. Every non Christian philosophy of Life believes that there's an inscrutable, impersonal chance that governs the universe, that the universe is ultimately mysterious, and that if there's any human freedom, it's part of that mysterious, inscrutable nature of reality. And so human freedom goes beyond our ability to comprehend and understand. The way the universe works cannot be reduced to anything that's universal and known by man, because the universe, anything can happen. It's a random realm and no one can have ultimate ethical authority. Ultimately everything is relative because nobody knows for sure. Nobody can encompass all the details, nobody can be absolutely certain. Now this may seem strange to you that I'm claiming that every unbeliever has this in his worldview, because unbelievers don't usually want to stress that. You will find that the pattern is unbelievers want to talk about the eminent element of their worldview and they only run to the transcendent when they get pressed. Give you an example as part of the immanent view of reality that you have in unbelievers, they will say, reality in principle is fully knowable apart from God somehow. The human mind in principle could know all of reality, or better human minds. If we kind of put together everything we knew, if we had big enough computer and we could gather all the historical information and all the scientific information, all the research that we do for thousands of years and so forth, then in principle the human mind could know everything somehow. And because the universe is knowable and predictable, everything happens in a law like form fashion. That is to say, and believers will tend to have a deterministic view of the way the world works. And in terms of their determinism, that's how they think we make scientific advances and technological advances, we can go to the moon and do all these sorts of wonderful things because the universe is fully predictable and deterministic. Okay, so now here you have this here and now elementary of impersonal determinism in the non Christian's worldview and you start saying, oh well that means that what you are saying to me right now is fully predictable and determined in advance as well, right? In other words, there's really no authority, there's really no certainty about what you're saying because you're just one more cog of this universe that's nothing but a machine. Everything's grinding its way out and you're grinding out this opinion. So your conviction about determinism is undermined by the fact that you didn't have any choice in the matter. You have to say what you do, or if you will, you talk to unbelievers about their ethical notions and how they want to punish criminals for stealing from them and so forth. You want to say, wait a minute. In a deterministic universe, that makes no sense. Ethical evaluation, the punishment of criminals assumes some measure of human freedom and accountability. But given your view of the universe, no one's accountable for anything. It's just the machine working its way out. And at that point, I guarantee you, when you press the unbeliever to be consistent with his eminent elements, he'll immediately hop over here and become transcendent and say, oh no, somehow there is an I thou dimension to reality. That there is the universal machine that we live in in nature. And yet somehow human nature is beyond the machine and we do have freedom. Evolution, don't you love this? Evolution starts out with primal slime. And somehow, amazingly, the slime starts to develop and it develops, you know, into inorganic things. And then finally life comes from non life. Isn't that amazing? And then intelligence comes from non intelligence and then morality from that which is non moral. And then eventually that which was determined and purely material, the slime with which we began, that evolves and evolves, evolves beyond anything that's materialistic and now has the characteristics of freedom and dignity. You say, how can that be? And you're going to get some version of this answer. Well, the human mind can't account for all the details. Isn't that where I started? Since the human mind can't account for everything, there is a realm of mystery, there's a realm of freedom somehow that goes beyond us. No one can know for sure. It'll be frustrating to you because the minute you catch on to worldview analysis, you're going to find that you can really cut down non Christian worldviews fairly easily. In fact, it is such a powerful tool, it has such nuclear strength that after I teach my students this, I usually have to now put on the back burners, you know, and thrusters to say, now wait a minute. You also have to learn to be humble and to respect your opponent and not just, you know, drive him into the ground and so forth, because intellectually you can tear up the non Christian's worldview. He has this irrational, transcendent pole where he says nobody knows for sure. But then he has this rational, imminent pole where he says reality is fully knowable by the human mind somehow. And there's an impersonal determinism and predictability about the world. And so the human mind is able to know, but no one can know for sure. Dr. Van Till used to teach us. And I wonder sometimes if people really saw the profundity of the dialectic or the tension that he was talking about. But he would put it very, in a very cute way. He'll say, you know, the unbeliever will say to you as a Christian, nobody can know for sure, but we're sure that you're wrong. You know, it's kind of like nobody can master all the details. So don't come in here and pretend there's a religious authority of universal dimensions. Nobody can know for sure. And then he'll turn right around and become very eminent in philosophy and he'll say, but you guys are wrong because we've studied science and history and psychology and logic and we know you Christians are wrong. You'd say, well, now which is it? I mean, is it, do you hold that nobody can know for sure or that you know very surely every non Christian philosophy has both of these poles and it would be frustrating to you because you want to get in there and tear up this philosophy and the minute you show that its rationality breaks down, then the unbeliever will appeal to his irrationality and say, oh yeah, well, the human mind can't master everything. We'll have to work on that problem later. Well, you're teaching me simultaneously that I'm nothing but evolutionary slime that's evolved through the animal kingdom. And yet on the other hand that it's wrong for me to live in a certain way or to hold certain views and that I have to ethically conform to your non Christian ethic. Well, which is it? Well, we're not really sure. It's like when we feel like talking about ethics, then we have one view of human nature. We feel like talking about science and getting rid of the creator, we have a different view of human nature. Well, but you have an obligation to bring these together. Well, we're working on that. It's always beyond the human mind, and yet the human mind is the ultimate authority. Well, I'd like to show you something further. Now, about this chart. It has greater value than just showing you how the two worldviews are going to stand opposed to one another. And secondly, showing you the internal tension within every non Christian worldview. Because if you've been writing these things down on your chart, you're going to find a very interesting relationship between number one and number four. It turns out that what the Christian says about transcendence is logically, diametrically contrary to what the non Christian says about immanence as well. You will notice that number two and number three stand logically, diametrically contrary to one another. The Christian says God is the sovereign creator, his, his word has ultimate authority. And then you go down to the other side of the diagram and you notice the non Christian says reality is knowable apart from God by the human mind. The non Christian's desire to be rational is going to be in utter contradiction to the Christian's willingness to be irrational and depend upon what transcends the human mind. We appeal to God as the ultimate authority. The the non Christian appeals to the human mind as the ultimate authority. But now let's turn it around because we think God is the ultimate authority. We think that rationally there are very clear details that we can know about God, man, about how we should live our lives, our human responsibility, what have you. But if you go up to number three, the non Christian will always say every time you say that God has clearly revealed himself, the non Christian will say, oh, nobody can know for sure. Nobody can have universal knowledge. Nobody is able to have absolute authority. And so whenever we try to appeal to the authority of God, the non Christian counters with the authority of the human mind. And then we point out that the human mind isn't ultimately authoritative and we start refuting that. The non Christian jumps to his irrationalism. Nobody can know for sure. And, and we come in and we say, well but the Bible tells us. And they'll say, oh yeah, but nobody can know for sure. The Bible can't be the absolute word of a creator God. You're always going to have the antithesis between the non Christian view of eminence and the Christian view of authority and the Christian view of eminence and the non Christian view of the transcendence or the unknowableness of this world. I hope this square of religious opposition therefore will show you three things. First of all the basic elements of the two worldviews. Secondly, the harmony over against the tension the harmony of the non Christian, excuse me, the harmony of the Christian worldview over against the internal tension of the non Christian worldview. And then thirdly, the antithesis between every form of authority that we appeal to and the kind of eminent detail that the non Christian wants in his philosophy and the antithesis between our view of the clarity of God's revelation and the non Christian view that no one can know anything for sure. And you're going to run this dance over and over and over again. You're going to do it with The Hindus and with the Buddhists and with the Jehovah's Witnesses. You're going to do it with those who are materialists, those who are Platonistic, dualistic Stoics. Every worldview and you're going to find the same square of opposition keeps coming into, you know, play. The non Christian has a tension within his worldview that he isn't willing to recognize. And it so happens that every time you want to appeal to transcendence, he's going to talk about his eminence. And when you talk about the eminent elements of your philosophy, he's going to say, no one can know for sure. What do you do when somebody is dancing around like that? Well, you got to slow them down and show them the tension within their own worldview. You have to say, you know, you're not really playing by the rules as you think you are. Because you'll say one thing when it's convenient about, say, determinism and another thing when it's convenient about human dignity. You'll say one thing about the authority of human science and then turn right around and say, but nobody can know for sure because we can't get all the details into our theories. And the unbeliever has got to realize then that he is caught in this kind of attention, whereas the Christian worldview is not. Now, the second thing I promise to do in this hour, and, boy, I am really going to be pushed to get it done with the time, is to go over the various worldview possibilities that we have seen throughout history. If you turn to, well, I guess it's page 15, but go on to page 16 and you'll find a little chart that's been developed that summarizes my outline of worldviews. Because time is short, I won't tell you everything that I might. But I'd like to go through the various possible worldviews and make a couple of comments about their characters and the problem that we have with them. To put it very simply, if you look across the top of your chart, what we're doing here is looking at the 31 flavors. Now within the non Christian set of worldviews. Every non Christian worldview is either going to be monistic, dualistic, atomistic, or skeptical. The skeptical view, if I can put it tongue in cheek, is none of the above. No one knows. It's impossible to say, okay, so you have a monistic view that says reality is one. And as we come back to this, I'm going to be referring to it as a spiritual monism. Reality is a spiritual one. There's not two types of things. There's only one kind of thing and it's spiritual. The next view, very simply put, the dualist view says no. Reality is made up of two kinds of principles or two kinds of things, material and spiritual, or if you will, material and mental. And then thirdly, atomism is, if you will, the counterpart to spiritual monism. The atomist is a materialistic person, but the materialist. There aren't any materialists who think reality is all one block of matter. Materialists are atomistic in their view of matter. Matter breaks down into smaller and smaller components, into ultimate atoms. Atom means in Greek, uncuttable, that which can no longer be made smaller. Okay, so what is the unbelievers view of reality? Is reality one spiritual thing? Or is reality accounted for in terms of two kinds of things, spiritual and material? Or is reality made up of an infinite number of bits of material things? You're going to get variations within this, but those are the three possibilities. And then there's that school of thought that says, hey, nobody knows for sure. None of the above. The skeptical approach to philosophy. Let's look at each one of these now with a little more detail and maybe a few critical remarks. Spiritual monism is illustrated primarily in Eastern philosophy, especially the philosophy known as Hinduism. But it's not just Hinduism. We find Hindu kinds of thinking in a number of other religions. Jainism for instance, Hare Krishna, whatever. But more relevantly and especially in terms of being avant garde, the New Age movement is essentially a Hindu philosophy of life. And yet it isn't just the avant garde, those who want to be eastern in their outlook. You also have the basic elements of a Hindu philosophy in Christian Science. People will find that strange because Christian Science is a Western phenomenon. But Christian Science denies the reality of the material world, denies the reality of disease and sickness and death, for instance. And although I'm not saying that there are no differences, basically that's what the Hindu says about our experience of the daily world as well. It's an illusion. You can't really count on anything there because the ultimate reality is spiritual. So I'm only going to, for the sake of time, deal with Hinduism. Essentially, the Hindu says the problems that we have as human beings are all tied to our thinking in terms of distinctions. You distinguish between yourself and me, and that's why we don't love each other, we're selfish and so forth. And we distinguish between humanity and what is called the natural world. The woods and the trees and the seas and the skies and that sort of thing. And therefore it's very easy for us to abuse the natural world. We don't respect the world as being part of ourselves. In fact, according to the Hindu, everything is one. We're all part of the ultimate God, Brahman. God is everything. God is me and you and the birds and the bees and the trees and the skies and the seas and everything. We're all God. And the problems that we have arise from our falling into thinking as our day to day experience tempts us to do that. There's a difference between us and other things. We should think in terms of oneness. And because we don't think in terms of oneness when we die, it turns out we have built up bad karma for ourselves. You all know what karma is, kind of like the universal bank account of morality. You've built up bad karma and you're going to have to come back now, probably in a lower life form and work that off and then work your way back up to humanity. Hope you get it right this time. And you're going to come back, probably most of you probably as hard barks or something terrible like that. And eventually you'll come back. And as a human being you'll say, I want to get off this wheel of life. I want to stop this cycle of reincarnation. And so the Hindu will give you yoga and meditation and other ways in which you can break this wheel of life. And if you practice the yoga and you meditate properly, the day will come when eventually you'll reach enlightenment. And when you reach enlightenment, then you will break from the wheel of life, break from all thinking about distinctions, and you will enter into nirvana. And what is nirvana? Nirvana is likened to the drop of water that finally falls into the shoreless ocean of being. There is this ocean of being that has no shore. It's infinite in extension. There are no distinctions. It's all water, if you will. And you will be like the drop of water that's now splurged into the infinite sea, sea of water. There will be no more you, no more me, no more world. And us, we'll just be all one. Okay? And so here is somebody, the Hindu, who has given us a rational account. By rational I mean here. Not that it's cogent, but has given us allegedly an understandable account about the nature of reality and the human dilemma and how we can escape from it. But now watch what happens to this rational account when we push on it. Let's assume Dr. Bonson has been in the Airport. And he's been listening to one of these Hare Krishna's witness to him and so forth. And I say, okay, now let me see if I understand this. I'm going to run this past you and make sure I've got it right. According to you, the problem that I have in my life, in fact all of us have in this world, is that we think in terms of distinction rather than oneness and unity. Is that right? Yes, that's right. And if I want to break from the wheel of life in this terrible reincarnation pattern and be entering into Nirvana, I've got to finally meditate and become enlightenment enlightened and think in terms of utter oneness. Yes, that's right. And so if I'm ever going to get from Samsara, where I am now, the world of illusion, to Nirvana, then I've got to practice the yoga and meditation and stop thinking the way I think. That's right. You see, the Hare Krishna thinks he's got a near convert on his hands. But then at this point Dr. Bronson says, well, if I've understood you correctly and that ultimately there are no distinctions, then of course we can't distinguish between Samsara, where I am now, and Nirvana, where you want me to go. If all is one, I must be in Nirvana right now. And so, thank you, but I don't need your evangelistic techniques. I don't need your enlightenment. Goodbye. I've got a plane to catch. What have I done? I've taken this alleged rational description of the nature of reality and how we can get rid of our problems and so forth, and I've turned it against itself and I've shown that it has an internal contradiction. It claims there are no distinctions and that's the source of all of our misery, and then turns right around and draws a distinction between Samsara and Nirvana, between daily experience with its illusions and the world of Nirvana where we see that everything is one. Now, what's the Hindu going to do? What's the Hare Krishna going to say to me? Well, I'll tell you what they have said. They said, well, there you go with your Western logic. What did I tell you? Here's this eminent description of reality and how to solve our problems. And then I say, oh, but there's an internal contradiction. And now we jump to transcendence. Nobody can know for sure. Don't try to use logic on us. I said, wait a minute, you don't believe in logic? Absolutely not. Logic is a Western trick. Logic draws distinctions and therefore will draw you down. It's logic that the source of Western rationality's difficulties. I say, well, then, you don't believe in logic. No, I don't. Then I say, well, then, yes, you do. There is something more to that than just two children saying, yes it is. No, it isn't. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Let me play this out for you. The Hindu says, I don't believe in logic. I say, well, if you don't believe in logic, then you do. Well, how can that be? Well, let me assure you, when you say you don't believe in logic, then you're saying that contradictions are acceptable, that no one can discount something because it contradicts something else. The rejection of logic is the acceptance of logical contradiction. And since you reject logic, then I can logically contradict you and you have no comeback. You can't deny that. And so you say you reject logic. I logically contradict that by saying, you don't reject logic and you now cannot complain because contradictions are acceptable in your philosophy of life. And so every time you say you reject logic, you've given me the basis to say, no, you don't. You can't escape it. And now the Hindu takes one more step in his transcendent direction. He'll not only reject logic, he'll say, well, then I don't have to talk to you. Okay, that's true, you don't have to talk to me. But you still can't escape these philosophical problems. Well, I'll meditate, I'll purify my mind. I will not allow myself to do these sorts of things well, because I believe God is sovereign, in control of all things. God will pursue you if he wishes to, even in your silence, even if you enter the mental institution where you don't want to have any rationality or conversation at all. The Holy Spirit of God can find you there. But the important point is for you to see that every spiritual monist must eventually reject argumentation, must eventually accept irrationality and be quiet. Now, at this point somebody will say, well, Dr. Bronson, what do you do? How can you evangelize somebody who's going to run away from the argument? Well, that's a different question than the apologetical question. Not that it isn't a good one. And I can talk to you about methods of dealing with people who don't want to argue and so forth, but what you need to understand is in terms of comparing worldviews. When a man says, I'm going to be illogical and I can't talk anymore. You have won the argument. You cannot change a person's heart, but you can close a person's mouth. And that's what God calls you to do in apologetics, to make unbelieving worldviews shut up, to admit their poverty, their foolishness, their irrationality. Well, we've only looked at one of these. Let's hurry on. Other worldviews will not be spiritual monistic worldviews, but they'll be dualistic in the sense that they believe there are both material and immaterial elements to of reality. And you can scratch out the middle option there on your chart. The only two I'll mention today are idealism and Stoicism. The idealist would be someone like Plato, who granted that there is a material world, there is a realm of matter, but there's another realm that goes beyond the material world as well, the realm of ideals, where the form of justice, or the idea of humanity, or if you will, the idea of duckness are to be found. All those ideas that we use, and especially those moral ideals that we follow, they exist in a world that is not material, is not temporal. It's a world, if we can speak metaphorically, beyond time and space. It's a world that's unchanging. It's a world that's not characterized by the diversity and the flux of our human experience. In the day to day world, it's an unchanging world of ideas, standards and ideals. In Plato's day it was recognized by the way, it was recognized by Plato himself, but all the more by his best student, Aristotle, and by many others following him. As much as this appears attractive even in our day to many people, the fact is Plato could never bring these two worlds together. It's one thing to say there are two kinds of worlds. The mental world, the ideal world, the world of ideas or thoughts, rationality, and in the world of flux and matter, and it's all together another matter to have a principle by which these two things can be harmonized and brought together. So you know what Plato did in order to bring them together? He appealed to what he called the demiurge. The demiurge was something that was used in Greek religion and philosophy previous to Plato. And Plato knew that he was appealing to a myth. In fact, he asked his reader to indulge him in appealing to a myth at this point, because he said, the only way I can answer the question is to tell you a story. I don't happen to believe the story. I don't think Plato Believed the story. But he said, I don't know what to do with this problem. How does the immaterial world of ideas, duckness come into contact with the ducks of this world? How do you bring these two together? Plato had no answer, so he appealed to mythology. Isn't that wonderful? Here's this arch rationalist, Plato, and when he is pushed in his worldview, he finally appeals to what Mythology, the eminent element. Plato says, I can account for all these things in my worldview. I can tell you this philosophical story. Then you press the philosopher and he says, oh, yeah, but nobody knows for sure. All I can do is tell you the story of a demiurge in our day and age. Forgetting about the sophistication of Plato and his philosophy. You have next door neighbors, I would bet you, who believe that there is a physical world, but nevertheless there are principles by which we should live in this physical world. And you need to press them to say, how can you bring these two together? I like to characterize this approach to life as, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus approach. You know, the old story, is there a Santa Claus? And the editorialist writes back to Virginia and he says, anywhere where there's goodwill among men, where there's compassion and tenderness and so forth, there is Santa Claus. Okay, what I want to know is in this world of matter, where do we ever come up with goodwill among men? How do you ever bring together the ideals or the immaterial things like how we should be living with compassion, dignity and justice? And the idea that this world is nothing more but matter that has evolved. How do you bring these two things together? The Stoics had the idea that nature has a law that runs through it, a logos that runs through it. There is a mind, if you will, that infiltrates everything in the physical world, and that's what governs the natural order. In fact, natural order is a redundancy in Stoic thought. Nature is the orderly world that is brought about by the nous or the logos that flows through everything that is material. And so the Stoics said, the way to live your life is to get into harmony with nature. Don't fight against the way things are. Accept fate, accept the natural course of things, and live with the stiff upper lip, if you will. And we have people who teach a kind of stoic approach to life today as well. They'll say, hey, you can't change things. So don't get frustrated, don't fight it. You know, go with the flow if you will. You all don't have the kind of freeway system that we do in Southern California. But imagine that you live in Southern California, you've got a, you know, really important engagement you have to get to at 7 o' clock at night. You've got to get across the LA Basin and you get on the freeway system and it's just one massive parking lot. Now, there are a couple things you can do here. You can fight against the natural order. Get really frustrated, beat on your steering wheel, start swearing at other drivers, Cut in, cut out, have your blood pressure go up, have a heart attack, die. You can do that. Or you could just say, hey, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm going to go with the flow, sit back, turn up the radio, just let things happen, be stoic about it. All right, so although this is an ancient school of thought, the philosophy of Stoicism was still with us. But you see, the same problem exists for the Stoic as existed for Plato. How can there be these two different kinds of principles? You have the natural order, which is physical, and then you have this realm of ideals or mind or how to live your life to its utmost and to be the happiest. Those principles run through and inform the physical world. That's an interesting picture, but I have no idea philosophically what that means. What does it mean to say the word the logos or the principles for happy living flow through the natural world. So if you just get in harmony with nature, then you can be happy. This is all nonsense. It sounds eminently very relevant and detailed and good, but. But when you press on it, it turns out that no one really knows for sure. I mean, is there a Santa Claus? And in this physical world, why should anybody have goodwill toward man? Where does goodwill come from in the physical world? Just like Plato, the modern idealist cannot bring together his ideals and the historical world in which he lives. And so this has pushed other people in the atomistic direction. Atomism is the view that reality is all materialistic, but this material world is broken down into smaller and smaller bits, into atoms, if you will. And I divide atomistic worldviews into those which affirm that there is no free will, deterministic atomistic views, and those that say there is free will. And so in your chart you have determinism and indeterminism as the second breakdown of the atomistic worldview. And among the determinists you have historicists. They would be like Marxists, who tell you that everything is determined in history by the, by the forces of history, and particularly by economic factors and Then you have the naturalist who say everything is determined in history by biological considerations, like your genetic background and all the rest of the. Now, what's the problem with atomism in general? Well, when you get ready to debate with an atomist, you need to realize that this person is affirming that there's nothing in this world except matter. And then he or she will go on to tell you about the structure of matter, how it breaks down, how the parts relate to each other, and so forth. But if there's nothing in this world but matter, then of course there can't be anything like laws of logic. There can't be anything like scientific generalizations, there can't be any classes of things, there can't be any human dignity, and there can't be any ethical absolutes. You've already listened to a very long lecture and I'm getting into heavy stuff, so I'm going to simplify. I'm going to illustrate with each one of these, what are the laws of logic? Those laws by which men are supposed to reason. Are they something that you run into in the material world? Is it possible to go into the store and say, hey, I'll have a six pack of laws of logic today, please. Can anyone trip over a law of logic or swallow it accidentally? No. The laws of logic are immaterial. And yet the atomist, as the only real thing, is materialistic. So ultimately, an atomist has to reduce the laws of logic to just the interaction of atoms or the material world. And no one has yet in the history of philosophy made any credible case for that, and no one ever will. And the reason for that is the characteristics of matter are in contrast to the characteristics of laws. Matter is always particular and isolated, that is, it is localized, as we say. But laws are universal and without qualification, they are absolute. And so you'll never be able to reduce that which is thought to be universal, abstract, and absolute to the characteristics of those things which are localized, material and changing. And so an atomist, in the end, has a difficult time explaining why he tries to be logical. And he would equally have a hard time explaining why anybody should be ethical. If this world was nothing more but atoms falling through space, why should anybody be held accountable for his behavior? Hey, that's just the way the atoms fell, as we could say, right? That's the ancient Greek way of saying, when you go to court, hey, my brain made me do it. You know, there are certain principles of biology and chemistry and physics, electrochemical reactions in my brain, and I picked up the axe and cut off his head, you know, to hold me accountable. It's just one set of molecules doing something, another set of molecules, because of the principles that control molecules. And so atomism destroys logic, it destroys ethics. It cannot account for scientific advance. It certainly cannot explain why there's any human dignity. And yet you'll find if you look at the naturalist and you look at the Marxists, that amazingly, they want to talk about things like human compassion and justice and how in history we must have a better world order and so forth. My goodness, you can't bring together your metaphysics, your view of reality, and your view of ethics and what human beings are supposed to do and relate to each other if you're an atomist. So somebody says, okay, get rid of those deterministic guys. Let's turn to the indeterministic side of atomism. Well, this is even better, because the indeterminist has now got to explain to us not only the laws of logic, ethics, science, human dignity, but explained to us how in a world where everything is sound and fury, how everything is nothing more but atoms colliding with each other, there can be any kind of free will. Epicurus had an answer to that. In the ancient world, you'll love this. You see, according to previous atomistic thought of Democritus, all of the bits of matter are falling through infinite space together. And since all the atoms are falling and everything is controlled by the principles of physics, then there is no free will, it's just an illusion. And so Epicurus now, wanting to be more ethical, wanting to have a philosophy that has ethical dimensions to it, it has got to deal with this problem that Democritus has created. So Epicurus says, as the atoms are falling, one day one of them swerved like that, and when this one swerved, what happened is, of course, it hit another atom, and then, just like, you know, billiard balls started creating all kinds of havoc everywhere. And that's why not everything is predictable, because there is an irrational swerve in the realm of physics, and that's how we get human free will. That's a rather crude account, but worse than its crudeness in terms of an image of reality. The problem is, why did one of those atoms swerve? Here's a very rational account of reality, right? But then no one can know for sure because we can't give an account for why one of the atoms would swerve. You have your eminence, and then you appeal to transcendence when the eminence doesn't make Sense, no one knows for sure. And so there is free will. But you see, I don't think that's an adequate account. But once you do get free will, then you notice you have at least four different approaches to the use of free will. Underneath indeterminism there. How should man use his free will for his own personal good? Egoism. Or should free will be used for the good of society as a whole? Utilitarianism. What brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number? Or even worse, should we be existentialists who say freedom is its own value and it makes no difference what you do with freedom as long as you do it freely? Hedonism finally says you should use your freedom for the sake of pleasure. See, if you dealing with an unbeliever, you have to ask him if his worldview somehow accounts for free will, then how should we use our free will? How should we live for ourselves, for pleasure, for the good of society? Or is freedom its own value? Existentialism. So make of yourself whatever you will be. Unbelievers love to write books on ethics and to tell us how to live our lives. The problem with every single one of them is to the degree that unbelievers get detailed and give specific answers, live egoistically, live in a utilitarian way, whatever it may be. We always have the right to say, and by what authority do you say that? See, they have a real detailed, eminent rational ethic, at least rational as they see it, egoistically, in a utilitarian light, or what have you. But there's no authority behind that ethic. Because for every book that's egoistic, I can give you a book that's utilitarian. And for every book that's egoistic or utilitarian, I can give you a book that's existentialist. And on and on it goes. It turns out that unbelievers want to develop an ethic, but they can never give us an ethical authority. And so when you start moving back toward having an ethical authority, unbelievers turn out to say things like, we all have to do the just thing, but then they disagree with one another as to what justice is. So when you start asking, okay, is this just? Is that just? And so forth, you get all these detailed studies and you're back to, yeah, but what authority is there for your view of justice or your view of justice? And it's just this constant, transcendent, eminent, transcendent, eminent. And it's just a real silly kind of thing. And you got to stop the Unbeliever and show him you've got no authority to your ethic at all. There are probably internal problems that you could bring up as well. But time is going to elude me as it already has. I need to move on to the last option, and that's the skeptical one. In one sense you can be very sympathetic to the skeptic. The skeptic knows that all these people who have tried to put it together have tried to give us a worldview that accounts for reality and knowledge and ethics. They've all failed. The skeptic says there's this problem, there's that problem, there's. They all disagree with each other. So the skeptic ends up saying something like nobody knows for sure. But you see, after you've said nobody knows for sure, you have your own problem because you have to ask, do you know for sure that nobody knows for sure? Transcendent, eminent. Transcendent, eminent. You're going to have the same dialectic come up here for the skeptic. Three versions of skepticism, quickly. First of all, sofas, the ancient sophists are the best analogy I can think of to our modern low life, scum sucking lawyers. I say that for Jeff's sake here, praise God. There are Christian lawyers like Jeff that are trying to change the reputation of the field. But I think you all know what I'm getting at. Lawyers are hired guns, right? They have no principles. For a price, they'll argue anything. Well, in the ancient world the sophists were like that. They said, there is no absolute truth. So manage to become an expert in debate and then when you go into the assembly or into the courtroom, you'll win your case. And that's why we call tricks of debate sophisms. Because the sophist said, the important thing is that you learn to persuade people by these tricks of argument. That's a really cynical view of life, isn't it? Well, not as cynical maybe as the cynics were. We look at another class of skepticism, the ancient cynics. They differed with the sophists. The sophist said, no one knows for sure. So manage tricks of debate to get your way, kind of go along with civilization. The cynics said, no, we don't want to go along with civilization, we want to get back to nature. Since nobody knows for sure. Don't let society impose mores on you. The cynics were the pre Socratic hippies in ancient Greece. They wanted to get back to mother Earth. And the reason they were called cynics, the Word kainos, from which we get cynic in English. The word kainos in Greek means dog. As most of you know who have ever had a dog. Sadly, dogs don't have a whole lot of civilized mores when it comes to their sexual habits. They copulate publicly. And the cynics wanted to be like the dogs. They wanted to say, civilization has no mores that should govern us. We just want to live in a natural way. And so if we copulate openly, then that's just as acceptable as not doing so, because we have to get back to nature. So here you have two groups of skeptics, the sophist and the cynics. The one says, hey, get along with civilization. It will be better for you. The other says, defy civilization. So when you have skepticism, then you don't have any kind of worldview that can give you an order or a philosophy of life that's consistent. You just fall into your opinion versus my opinion. And so finally, we get in the 20th century, the pragmatist who says, nobody knows for sure and who cares? The only thing that really counts is that we're able to make the species survive, that we're able to be successful in solving our problems. Problems. We cannot give you a rational account of reality. And that's not important. The only thing that's important is that what we are doing works in solving our problems. And that may look like a credible philosophy until you realize that means you have to answer two more questions. What problems should be solved? First of all, that is, if you are a pragmatist, you need to know, what is it we should be seeking to achieve? And how does the pragmatist know? Most people don't realize this, especially those who are introduced to philosophy. There are half a dozen or not more different consequences or aims that pragmatists say we ought to be, you know, trying to achieve. Is it the survival of the species, the survival of our society, psychological survival? What is it that we're supposed to be achieving when we have finally found the pragmatic approach to, to life? And then secondly, the pragmatist must always wonder whether he hasn't been short sighted. Pragmatist says, I don't care what you Christians have to say. I have managed to get along well in this world. I know how to cure these diseases. I know how to make money. I know how to be comfortable, enjoy my life. I know how to solve, you know, problems between my neighbors. They really don't. But let's just say they did all that if they put all that together, we would still have to say to them, and how do you know you're not going to answer to God after you die and spend eternity under his wrath? Pragmatist says, I don't have to answer that question. I'm solving my problems right now. But then, you see, the problem is if you're not solving the problem of what you're going to do for all eternity when you're under the wrath and curse of God, if what we're saying is true, then your philosophy of life is not pragmatic at all, is it? It's short sighted and asinine because you're saying, I'll just get by without God for what, 70, 80 years and then spend eternity under his wrath and curse. The pragmatist is not really being pragmatic unless he can dismiss the Christian worldview and say there is no God. But those are the very questions he refuses to look at as impractical. Okay, so we've had to go flying through this and I apologize for that. But I want to get one thing across to you in this one hour. When you analyze the different features of worldviews, their transcendent and eminent features, you see that there is an antithesis between Christian thinking and non Christian thinking. And that non Christian thinking is always in tension with itself. And then secondly, when you look at the different options and there are only so many, monism, dualism, atomism, skepticism. Each one of those philosophies of life is internally problematic. The book of Proverbs 26 tells us that we should answer fools according to their folly, lest they be wise in their own conceit. When you deal with the unbeliever who is a fool because he won't submit his thoughts to the revelation of God, you're dealing with somebody the Bible calls a fool. And there is a place for taking the fool's philosophy and saying, okay, who? Let me reason this through with you. Let me talk to you, Mr. Plato, about how you get ideals and matter together. Let me talk to you, Mr. Hari Krishna, about Nirvana and Samsara. Let me talk to you, John Dewey, about your alleged pragmatic, successful approach to life. And from within their own worldview, you can address questions to them that show that the fool's folly should not leave him any room to be wise in his own conceit should not lead him to think, hey, I finally got it wired. It is quite possible whether you do it at the level of a sophisticated philosopher in public debate, or just the child sitting on the curb looking at the King being naked. It is possible for you to disarm every unbelieving point of view. Paul assures you of that. If you bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, you will cast down every every high thing, every form of reasoning that's exalted against the knowledge of God. And if you can hold on for one more session after we take a break here, when you come back, I'd like to make some very personal and then social applications to this way of thinking that I've been teaching you this.

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