Dr Greg Bahnsen - Philosophy of Christianity: Dialectical Tensions (Part 2)

O Lord and our God, we approach you acknowledging the full supply of wisdom that is your own and appealing to you that by your Holy Spirit you might enlighten our minds. Grant us the wisdom necessary to understand how our faith relates to the pressing issues and the intellectual concerns of our day. We ask you to do this for us that we might be better equipped to guard the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and to discern those death dealing errors of men over against the life giving truth of your word. We ask that you do these things so that we might be better prepared to be apologists to those who can confute the gainsayers, those who can protect Christ's people from the errors of men. Lord, we ask that you would do these things. Not that any glory would come to ourselves, but rather that you would receive all glory as the fount of all wisdom, that we might be able to call upon you and that we might be able to fear you, recognizing that that is indeed the beginning of all wisdom. We thank you for the privilege of studying in this classroom. We pray that you would make our minds submissive to your word through this hour, for it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. In our last class hour, I began by asking a question why any Christian would be interested in studying philosophy, not simply in this class, but philosophy in general. And we came up with at least three reasons that the Scripture itself supplies for us. The Christian is going to want to study philosophy for critical discernment. Paul tells us in Colossians 2 to beware of that philosophy which is after human tradition and worldly rudiments or presuppositions. And he implies that there is a philosophy that is after Christ. But we must be careful of that which is not after Christ, lest we be robbed of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge deposited in him. And so not only must we study philosophy for critical discernment, somewhat like a doctor who studies disease, that he might bring greater health to his patience, but we study philosophy to preserve knowledge as well. Or if we take the wrong step philosophically, it appears that we may be robbed. We may be actually the Greek word mugged, Paul says, mugged of what? The treasure that we possess in Christ, and that treasure he identifies as wisdom and knowledge. And then thirdly, we study philosophy to learn how to guard the Gospel, to refute the gainsayers, to contend earnestly for the faith, once for all, delivered unto the saints. Let me give you an illustration of the sort of thing that can happen when a Christian approaches undiscerningly thought forms which are popular today. How easy it is to get, if you will, deceived and robbed of the treasures that are in Christ. Imagine that you or one of your parishioners is reading, let's say you're reading in the writings of Dr. Karl Barth. And Dr. Barth reasons in the following way that the resurrection of Jesus Christ as it's presented in the Bible has eternal significance for the Christian. It is of the most fundamental importance to the Christian. It is something that is of such spiritual value that nothing having to do with the contingencies and the vicissitudes of time can challenge. If I do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ as Barth, then I am not a Christian at all. But it's just because of the eternal significance of the resurrection that Barth says we must draw an absolute and unqualified distinction between time and eternity. Whatever happens in time is subject, as I said, to contingency, to relativism. It's subject to unclarity and nothing can be sure about it. But the resurrection can't be that for the Christian by its very nature, because it challenges his Christian faith if it should be that. Consequently the resurrection cannot have taken place in calendar time. To put it in calendar time is to say that Lessing's broad ugly ditch stands between us and the resurrection. And what eternal significance could there be to an event that happened sometime way back then? And so it's only in order to glorify and to magnify the resurrection that Barth says it must have taken place in an arena other than calendar time. It must have taken place in the arena of eternity. And so you have the well known distinction between history and geshicht, not only in Barth, but in other words, neo orthodox theologians. Now if you're reading along and you are carried away by the expressed motivation of Barth, or more importantly, those who haven't had your seminary training are reading along and they are convinced by this line of reasoning that it's just in order to guard the resurrection that they must say it didn't take place in history. You see how easily they are robbed of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The question is, is that a biblical way to reason? Is that a Christian philosophy? Now we're not talking about is that a Christian doing philosophy? I have no interest in drawing any conclusions about the spiritual state of Karl Barth today. We're asking rather, is this line of thought in conformity with the word of God? We study philosophy just so that we might be able to discern such errors as this, that, that you can only have something of eternal significance if it takes place in the arena of eternity. And we'll be talking about transcendence and eminence and other philosophical issues that are related to this polemic of Barth later. But I think that's a good example of why the Christian studies philosophy for critical discernment, to preserve knowledge and to guard the gospel. Now, the second point was that we have to discern what philosophy is. And I went on to tell you that philosophy is many things, but primarily it is a critical and a constructive task. Critically, men want to gain clear thinking by analyzing arguments and examining the most fundamental presuppositions of thought. And they want to constructively, if you will, put together their philosophical presuppositions into a coherent, unified overall world and life view. And that led us thirdly to observe that there are then two, at least two major kinds of philosophy, two ways of doing philosophy. There's a twofold approach to philosophy. Simply put, there's the Christian approach, which tries to answer philosophical questions about what is reality, what is knowledge, what is the proper way to live, tries to answer such philosophical questions humbly before God and obediently to his revelation. Whereas false philosophy, non Christian philosophy, is an attempt to answer such questions autonomously, with man and his intellect being a law to himself and hindering the truth in unrighteousness. And I think that's just about the point that we ended the lecture last time and I'm about ready to go on and talk about to give you a critique of all non Christian systems of philosophy and show why I hold, as I do in my syllabus, that the Bible correctly says that those who follow an unbelieving manner of thought are really doing destruction to knowledge, do not love wisdom and truth, but are in fact making knowledge impossible. Paul says, where is the wise? Where is the disputer of this age? Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Philosophy, as we said, is the love of wisdom. And that which the unbelieving world loves God makes foolish. Their philosophical schemes come to nothing. Those which do not follow Christ do not have the treasures of wisdom, wisdom and knowledge, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. And we'll try to show in a more philosophical rather than, if you will, biblical and polemical way how that is. But I'd like to give you some opportunity now to discuss our last lecture. There wasn't nearly enough time for that previously. What questions do you have thus far? About why we study philosophy, why what is philosophy? And then the twofold approach to philosophy. I had a question that kind of springboards from the reading, which I think ties in with what we've been talking about. And that was thinking of the scientific method as it applies to chemistry and aspects like that. How do you see the believing stance then affecting the scientific method? I began to wonder. My perception of it was that one needs to approach with an open mind, as I was taught in chemistry and all. And now how do you see that applying without presuppositions, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah. The question of open mindedness in the scientific method. Well, I think the most obvious thing that almost any Christian that naively reads the Bible will have to say about that. Now granted, a lot of people make efforts not to allow this to have a bearing upon the scientific method. But in some prima facie way at least, the Bible says the Christian does not have the privilege of having an open mind about certain questions. We have no privilege to have an open mind about whether there is or is not a God, much less whether or not the living and true God presented in the Bible is the God that we want to talk about. We have no privilege to question the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That isn't to say we don't offer evidence of that and all that. But the Christian by his very nature does not question the resurrection or to the degree that he does, his sanctification at least is slipping. And perhaps even worse, it challenges the integrity of his profession of faith. And so there are certain things on which we cannot have an open mind. But we can get a little more detail too. The Bible doesn't allow us to have an open mind, it seems to me, about a behavioristic approach to man. Okay, now in the realm of chemistry, you say, well, there aren't really full blown high level conclusions of a chemical nature to be found in the Bible. That's probably true. However, most of what a chemist does in terms of the philosophical or underlying presuppositions of the method is very much affected by the Bible. Let us assume that the chemist approaches his subject and the method of science, the scientific method, saying anything is possible. By the way, that is a presupposition of the scientific method as it has been classically expressed. Expressed from the Enlightenment. Anything is possible. Is that true for a Christian? Is anything possible? Well, the philosophy that anything is possible is in effect a metaphysic of randomness. That is one's view of ultimate reality is that everything is random. And since Everything is random. Or if I hate using this expression, expression because it is so ambiguous in popular expression, but you will hear it from time to time. It's a metaphysic of chance. Everything happens by chance. Now, we know that there are chemical interactions that we've come to expect habitually. But as far as we know, things may be completely different tomorrow or in two minutes. You do one experiment, you do an experiment in one one way on Tuesday, and you get the following distillation and outcome. On Thursday, it may be completely different. Who knows? The scientist, the unbelieving scientist, if he's true to his assumptions about the world, says nobody knows because he holds to a random philosophy of chance. He says anything can happen. Well, now, if that's true, if anything can happen, then I would argue, indeed I have argued, and it's getting prepared for publication, my book on the philosophy of religion, that if the scientists can give us no reason to trust the uniformity of nature, the scientist can't know anything at all. He can't even know his past experiments. Think about that for a moment. If anything can happen, nobody knows for sure, and there's no uniformity to my experience, no guaranteed uniformity to my experience. Then usually the polemic goes like this. Well, it's true that in all probability the future will be like the past, and we only know for certain what has happened in the past. So here we are in the present, and the projection into the future is an appeal to the idea of probability. Very probably this will happen. And the idea is that at least in the past we can be certain certain things have happened. Let's ask ourselves about both of those alleged inferences. The scientist says, like an existentialist, I only know where I am right now, and I can tell you for sure what has happened in the past and very probably will happen in the future. And the reason he says that is because he has this metaphysical chance doesn't know about the uniformity of nature. Okay, what is probability? What is a probability judgment? You know that you have a large number of instances, okay, some number of instances. And in those known instances we've seen the following reaction take place. Let's say 10 out of 13 times that establishes a statistical probability that it's going to happen. If we do it again, we're going to get the same result with a probability factor of 10 over 13. What does that assume? That assumes that the way things have gone in the past and the proportion that we see there is going to be the way things go in the future. So that we will be able to expect the same kind of probability. At this point we have to chuckle a little bit because you see, the question is how can we be sure the future is going to be like the past? Scientist, who is an unbeliever says we can't be sure the future is going to be like the past. We can only say very probably it's going to be like the past. But you see, a probability judgment is inherently by its very nature a claim that what the future is going to be like the past. See, probability is just putting things down in terms of we don't know for sure about all the instances, but whatever the ratio was in the past is what you can expect the ratio to be in the future. That is, it relies upon the very thing that is yet to be proven that the future will be like the past. So as a matter of fact, the unbelieving scientist who says we don't know for sure and anything can happen, doesn't know anything probably. I mean, that is really, as David Hume showed many years ago, a philosophical cop out. That's just something substituting another word and showing a form of humility. But philosophically, it's on no better footing than the claim of knowing for certain because both claims rely upon the assumed uniformity of nature. Well now, how about this past certainty? That's right, we're not sure. Maybe the sun won't rise tomorrow, maybe the chemical reactions won't be the same, but they certainly were that way in the past. Oh, how do we know? Because I remember doing it on Tuesday. And is your memory consistent? Is what you're remembering now what you were experiencing then? Now? Because common sense tells you that that's true and everybody follows it, you probably will have to talk a little bit to your milkman to show him just how sleazy an assumption that is philosophical. I mean, I don't, you know, people who just live pragmatically and say, well, hey, it works, you know, I remember it, I can count on it. In the future you have to do a little probing and show them how this is a critical assumption that hasn't been proven. But for a philosopher, I mean, we'd like to know now what underlies the assumption that what I am now thinking that's an experience to remember is an experience. I'm now having a mental image of what I did last night. Well, now wait a minute, not so fast. It's true that you're now having a mental image. Is it a mental image of what you did last night? Well, by its Very nature. I'm thinking of last night. And therefore what I'm doing in this image must be what I did last night. No, no, not at all. It may very well be that what you're thinking about right now has no relationship to the past at all. Because we dream up things we did in the past sometimes too. So if you can't be sure that the future is going to be like the past, you can't trust the consistency of memory. Or how about if you read a document, okay, I pick up some scholarly work and it says, doctor, so and so, on a certain date did the following experiment and this is what the result was. We say, well, obviously it was that way in the past. We do the experiment, it's that way today. So we have this much to go on. Well, that assumes, of course, that the meaning of the words used by the author in the past is the same meaning of the words that you're taking now in the present. But how do we get. Where do we get the assurance of this linguistic consistency? We have the question of memory, the question of meaning. For all I know, the very person who's doing the experiment today is not the same person who did the experiment in the past. How do we know that? You, you know, there's such a thing as personal uniformity. Now, this is the kind of radical criticism that a lot of people get very uncomfortable with because it's the sort of thing that you don't have to worry about when you're cooking dinner or putting the kids to bed or, you know, making out the bills. You just don't seem to going through all this sort of thing. But that isn't to say that they aren't real questions that have to be answered. What it is to say is that everybody knows very well the answer to those questions because they're made in the image of God. Because God constantly reveals himself. And we're relying on it even when we're challenging the very truth of God. Dr. Van Til puts it very well when he says, you know, a little child couldn't slap his father's face if he wasn't already sitting on his father's lap. And the unbeliever could not slap the face of God by all these questions about whether this or that's the case if he wasn't already being sustained by God. And so the unbelieving philosopher doesn't know anything in the past for certain, doesn't know anything in the future, probably. Well, now, if that's true, then it just becomes a question of how Finely, you want to divide up the timeline, right? Okay, you don't know anything for sure a day ago or an hour ago or a minute ago, maybe a second ago. Well, you don't know anything for sure a second from now or an hour from now. So forth one begins to say, what do you know for sure? I'm not even sure the man can answer the question because the answer to the question is going to take a couple of seconds, but he doesn't know anything for two seconds. This is the sort of apologetic which relies upon a form of skepticism that only the Christian can answer. The sort of apologetic which even untrained Christians are able to use too. It doesn't require, although it's nice to have, and I don't despise at all the philosophical training that I was given. It's nice to have it, to flesh it out and to make it stand up against some of the people who are a little more clever and try to get around it. But the fact is everybody can understand that, everybody can use it. Now, as you approach the scientific method, coming back now and honing in on that question all along, you say, well, the Bible doesn't have any chemical conclusions in there, so what relevance does the Bible have to this? Well, it always has that relevance. Can anything happen? Is that the assumption the chemist is using now? He's using the assumption that what things are going to be today like they were yesterday, and tomorrow they'll be like they were today. As to say, he knows very well the promise of the Noah covenant, the seed, time and harvest are going to follow each other even as night and day, because there is a loving God who keeps things uniform. And so he's sitting in the very lap of God even while he may be doing his experiments in hopes of proving that life can be created in the test tube or that many bald or something like that. Well, did I scratch for you, Richie? Okay, that's a good question. Another question. Well, okay, let's get on to looking at a few more instances like the one that I've just been going over, showing why it's so difficult to do philosophy from a non Christian standpoint, from an unbelieving perspective. The first thing I'd like to point out, I said I was going to show you certain dialectical tensions in unbelieving thought. And the first one is going to be called the rationalism, irrationalism, tension. Every non Christian philosophy can be categorized as a rationalistic approach to life or an irrationalistic approach to life. That probably doesn't come as a Surprise to anybody who's read Francis Schaeffer or has done any thinking about the subject at all. But. But it may come as something of a surprise to point out that every non Christian philosophy of life is both a rationalist and an irrationalist approach to life. And that's what we'd like to talk about here for a few moments. Let's begin by looking at rationalism. Now here I am not talking about schools of philosophy. And so if I don't make that point very clear at the outset, you may be misled. I am not talking about what is called the rationalist school of epistemology. The school did not begin with Descartes, but popular in undergraduate textbooks of philosophy, usually will tell you Descartes is the father of rationalism and that he was following certain strains of Plato. But my point is not to say who belongs and doesn't belong who's the originator of the rationalist school. I'm talking about a motif, not a school, not those who claim the title rationalist, but I'm talking about a. A motif of thought, a manner of thinking, a mode of reasoning. Now, the rationalist, the strong point of the rationalist motif in all thought is that any philosophy, any philosophy must assume that the universe is ultimately rational in the sense now of being capable of rational description in language. Anybody who does philosophy must assume that the universe can be rationally described in language. You stop and think about it, you can see that's not really a very big claim. It was a rather obvious one, isn't it? You wouldn't do philosophy if you didn't think you could describe the universe in language. That's just what philosophy is. So anybody who attempts to do a philosophy is assuming that the universe is ultimately rational, at least in this trivial sense, that it's capable of rational description in language. For anything that is not rational in this sense can't be spoken of. And if it can't be spoken of, it can't be reasoned about. And if you can't reason about it, you can't even say it exists. All right? Can't speak of it, can't reason about it, can't reason about it, can't even say it exists. Consequently, if people are talking about the universe, trying to answer any question of philosophy, they are assuming in some sense that reality is rational. And so everything that does exist must, in at least this sense that I've been speaking of, be rational. Everything that does exist is rational. Now for Christians, they acknowledge that the world is fully knowable to God and It's knowable to us as far as he reveals his knowledge to us. Okay, so the assumption that reality is rational is quite natural for the Christian because we believe God knows everything. We believe that we can know things to the extent he reveals his knowledge to us, either through Scripture or through the created world, either through special or general revelation. So the knowability of reality is not a problem for the Christian. How about the non Christian? As trivial as it seems, why should the non Christian assume that the universe is describable in human language? Non Christians must assume that the universe is somehow fully knowable to someone other than God, either to another God, to all men, or at least to an elite group of thinkers. That is, the non Christian has got to assume the universe is somehow fully knowable, either to another God than the living and true God of the Bible, to all men in general, or to some elite group, a subsection of all men. The elite thinkers here, strangely enough, usually turn out to be the philosophers. By the way, one thinks of the kind of mockery that is inappropriately used by certain pagans, that if horses, you know, had a God, they'd make God in the image of a horse. And I think that's very inappropriate for reasons we can talk about later, but it's certainly applicable here. If horses were doing the philosophizing here, they might think the elite group were horses, but the philosophers at least think they know what the universe is and can describe it. Perhaps all men do. Maybe another God. Now, what's the breakdown of non Christian rationalism? The breakdown of non Christian rationalism is that sooner or later, sooner or later it's going to become evident that the proposed rational scheme offered by the non Christian philosopher cannot account for everything. Remember we said the universe must be fully rationally describable if you're going to philosophize at all. But after you read just for a little while, you get past the first few pages, it's pretty clear that non Christian philosophers cannot account for everything by their rational scheme. Something appears which is mysterious, which resists exhaustive description. And that's true of all non Christian patterns of thought. Okay, Let's look first of all at religious non Christian rationalism. Religious non Christian rationalism. Most every non Christian religion has, it turns out, not a personal God that is followed or worshipped, but an impersonal principle. Okay, the first subsection of religious non Christian rationalism. And it's going to be those non Christian religions that don't have a personal God, which is the majority of them. It turns out historically. But they have rather an impersonal principle. For instance, the principle of karma, which is above all gods, the Hindu system of thought. Well, what's the problem with that? Well, if it's an impersonal principle, it can't be said to know anything because principles don't know people, persons know. And so there you have it. To philosophize it all, there must be someone who knows or can describe the universe fully in language. The non Christian follows a principle and the principle can't be said to know anything. And the non Christian religious rationalist can't be said to know anything either. Well, that usually doesn't stop the unbeliever. He says, but there are non Christian religions that do have personal gods. And so we need to talk about that. Not just these impersonal unknowing principles. There are some that are personal, but it turns out if you'll study them, the non Christian religions which have personal gods generally conceive of them as being finite and limited and indeed limited by their own ignorance. Just read the interesting stories of Greek mythology in look at the limitations, indeed the knowledge limitations, the ignorance of the gods. But if the God, the personal God spoken of is limited in some way, and especially if he's limited as to knowledge, then he can't be relied upon to know for sure. So you begin to see how this rationalism motif breaks down, admitting some form of mysticism, some form of nobody knows for sure. Impersonal principles can't know anything and limited gods can't be relied upon. So then we thirdly come to those non Christian religions which, though they are non Christian, are nevertheless deeply influenced by the Bible. And here I'm thinking of Judaism, Islam and the cults. Judaism, Islam and the cults. Again, if you will study historically the works of Judaism, Islam and or the cults, you will notice that some of these develop impersonal gods, it turns out. Christian science, for instance, non Christian mysticism, Zen. Others of these develop finite gods. Think of Mormonism and a multitude of materialistic gods. So if they develop impersonal gods or finite gods, what do we have? We're right back here to the problems of A and B. And what are you left with? Well, the ones you're left with are the ones that you can reason with theologically because as a matter of fact, fact, they're Christian heresies. That is to say they really, if they can answer the question about rationalism at all, they're doing so because they're relying upon the Bible. And that may be true of Islam, Judaism and some forms of the cults. But to the degree that they do that, what are they doing? They're heretically following the Bible, that is, they're picking and choosing, distorting and all that. And consequently the way you reason what they on the premise of the Bible, since they want to make their appeal to the Bible and to the Bible, they must be driven. And when you do that, that's a theological argument and we can go on with the philosophical discussion. My point is then that all non Christian rationalism sooner or later becomes in some sense mysterious because there's something that exhausts, that resists exhausted description. There is not a rational scheme that accounts for everything. Well, over against religious non Christian rationalism, we have to add now secular non Christian rationalism or secular schemes of thought that have this rational motif. What's the problem with them? Well, first of all, the rational principle offered by secular philosophers cannot account for all the details, cannot account for all the particulars of experience. Let me give you an example. Take one of the earliest philosophers, Thales. Thales says all is water. Here's his rational scheme. The universe, that which is real, must be subject to description in human speech. All is water. Anybody see any problem with that? Philosophy? Well, after all, this doesn't seem very watery, does it? What did he have to resort to? Well, it is water, even though it doesn't appear to be water. And one begins very early in philosophy to say these philosophers are strange characters. You mean to say the way things appear is not the way they are. But if the way things are is not the way they appear, then what do we have? We have a real big epistemological problem, because how can you count on anything if reality and appearance are not the same? So all is water. Here's my rational principle. But it can't account for all the details, you say. Well yeah, but those were those ancient Greek less than sophisticated philosophers. The modern 20th century philosophers don't have that problem because they don't say all is everything. Well, they don't, huh? All is matter. Materialistic naturalism. Oh, well then why is it that we love our wives, discipline our children, convict criminals, use the principles of logic, believe in art and beauty, and think that there's such a thing as a mind if all is naturalistic and materialistic. You see, the non Christian philosopher keeps trying to come up with some general scheme for things. But his general scheme always leaves some details out when examined. The claim of absolute truth turns out to apply only to something purely formal, to the bare idea of truth. The rationalist, when he's pressed, will generally claim only an absolute knowledge that there is truth. We don't know what it is, but there must be absolute truth. Nobody knows for sure, but there must be. You see, it's just a purely formal claim. No content to it, no substance to it, just the formal claim that there is truth, that knowledge gives us no specific knowledge. And so you see the breakdown of religious non Christian rationalism, the breakdown of secular non Christian rationalism. Well, how do the unbelievers try to remedy their problems? How can we get around this difficulty? Well, you can try to be a more consistent rationalist. Okay, you start with rationalism. There must be some God or some person, or all people can describe the universe in rational speech. And by now we're running into problems saying that because the schemes we're offering just don't take account of everything. How should we remedy the problem? By being more consistently rationalistic. And how do you do that? You say, whatever seems to escape my rational scheme simply does not exist. Driven to the wall, the non Christian rationalist can choose to be thoroughly consistent. And I liken that to the man who arrives at the airport with his suitcase in hand. And here, out of the suitcase, are all of his clothes dragging. Okay? You see, his suitcase has not been able to capture the load. And now there are things that are trailing out of his suitcase. And as he tries to check in his bag at the airport, the person says, But Mr. Jones, don't you see that your suitcase hasn't got all of your packing in there? It's going out the edges and out the side. And so what does he do? He becomes very consistent with his principle of the suitcase, takes out his scissors and just cuts along the edges and says, whatever is not in my suitcase is not in my suitcase. Very consistent. Great answer to the problem, right? It's also the ancient story of Procrustus. You know, whoever didn't fit his bed, he had a way of handling that. The rack would stretch them to the point if they weren't big enough, and if they were too big, then he just had a way of cutting off their feet. So everybody fits the bed of Procrustus. And everybody, it turns out, on the consistent rationalist scheme, everything's going to fit his scheme, because if it doesn't fit, his scheme just doesn't exist. Right? Thales says, all is water. You say Thales, but when I hit the rock, it doesn't feel like water. He says, then it is not the way it appears. It Couldn't be real, you think? It seems solid, couldn't be, because we know all is water, Everything is materialistic. 20th century naturalist says, but now one's love for his wife doesn't seem to be a material object. Well, it doesn't appear so, but it must be so because I'm going to be consistent with my rational scheme. And that is simply to say that there must be some naturalistic biological explanation of love. Okay. Rather than be driven to counter example, the unbelieving philosopher says, no, I'm just going to cut around the edges and whatever doesn't fit just isn't going to be called real. It's going to be called illusion. And so there's the breakdown of non Christian rationalism. One way to deal with it, become more consistent and just call everything else illusion. What's the problem with that? On the rationale approach to life, even illusions have to be given an account. How do you account for the fact that we're having illusions about love or illusions about the solidarity of rocks? You see, even that has to be accounted for if you're going to give a totally exhaustive description of the universe. If we simply deny the existence of what eludes the rational scheme, then it will turn out that the scheme itself becomes trivial. The scheme becomes only a knowledge of its own structure and contents. And in that sense it's no help in understanding the world. You have the rational scheme swallowing up everything. Well, there's another approach though, and that's the approach that says instead of being consistently rationalistic, we're going to allow in a little irrationalism as well. Well, you have consistent rationalism and then less consistent rationalism that wants to let in a little bit of irrationalism. But what happens if you let in a little bit of irrationalism? What happens when you put muddy water in with clear water? You're going to get clear water back. Now there you have the many, the diversity of the world swallowing up the rational scheme. Now you don't even know for sure if your rational scheme is right. I mean, if you have to say the rational scheme has to allow for something that's irrational, that doesn't fit the scheme, then you begin to wonder about the scheme itself. So you can either say my scheme is ultimately authoritative and I'm just going to cut everything away that doesn't fit, that makes the scheme trivial, or you can say, no, my scheme doesn't work. How can a rationalist admit that if he allows him irrationalism, that he's lost the authority of esteem? Seems like that the Non Christian loses the authority to scheme one way or another, right? Damned if you do and damned if you don't. That's what it amounts to. Because if he holds consistently to his rational scheme, it becomes trivial, therefore without any authority. And if he doesn't hold to it, it doesn't have authority. Now we started with a very easy premise, didn't we? And just by simply step by step by step thinking about the implications of this, the unbelievers got a lot of problems. Notice how natural it was for the Christians. Say all of reality is exhaustively describable in language. God is omniscient. God shows us by revelation what we can know, no problem. But for the unbeliever, it's a great problem. Let's look then at irrationalism. We've been looking at rationalism these few minutes. Now let's talk about irrationalism. What's the advantage of an irrationalist approach, an irrationalist motif? Well, the strong point of it is that any philosophy must admit that the human mind is limited, that it's finite, that it cannot serve as its own ultimate standard of truth. The human mind is limited in some way, it's finite and therefore can't be an ultimate standard of truth. If you admit that, then your thinking is going in the direction again direction or motif of irrationalism. We're not talking about the irrationalism of existentialism or anything like that. We're just saying that that admits that not everything's quite so rational and not everything fits. Are Christians irrational in this sense? In this sense? Well, sure we are. We're the first to admit that our minds are finite, undependable, and not the absolute standard of truth. Christians therefore acknowledge that the human mind must look outside itself, must look to God, must look to the word of God for an ultimate standard of truth and for ultimate truth itself. What do non Christians do though? If they begin with the premise that the human mind is limited, finite, somehow undependable, not the absolute standard. Non Christians are driven to say the truth. Well, they're either driven to deny that truth exists, or they're driven to say that any truth that can be known cannot be known with certainty. Okay, either you can't know anything or you can't know anything for sure. What's the breakdown of non Christian irrationalism? Begins with a good point. Human mind's limited concludes well, there is no truth or nobody can know it for sure. And the breakdown of that is very simply that it's inconsistent with the non Christian rationalist approach. The non Christian approach is, well we have to be able to keep give some kind of description to the world. That's what philosophy is. And then he says but nobody can know anything. Then what's he got? Oil and water? On the one hand he's got to be able to describe the world and know something. On the other hand nobody can know for sure. And so you have this internal contradiction. Moreover, the non Christian is reduced to saying I know that I don't know, which is an awkward position to be in. If you can't know anything, how can you know that you can't know anything? So you have an internal contradiction. If you approach this from the irrationalist standpoint, well, how can we remedy the breakdown? Well, we can be more consistently irrationalistic, can't we? Well, how can we remedy the breakdown? Well, we can be more consistently irrationalistic, can't we? Sounds like a contradiction in terms of sorts. Paradoxical, more consistent inconsistency more consistently. I can pursue this irrational motif by denying that we even know the truth of irrationalism. Person can say nobody knows for sure, but I'm not even sure of that. Deny that you even know the truth of irrationalism. But if that's what you're reduced to, then you must renounce any attempt to convince others that you're right. You haven't got much of an argument left if you've been reduced to that. Moreover, although you can say this, I mean you can utter the words, the question is, can you really live that way? Can you really live like a new nobody knows anything for sure. And I don't even know that. Of course not. I think this is the strong point of Francis Schaeffer's apologetics. Short of the mental hospital, people can't live like irrationalists. Well then of course there is another approach of more consistent irrationalism. Rather than denying that, you don't even deny that you know the truth a irrationalism, just renounce reason altogether. Just choose insanity if you will. What's the problem with that? Unbelievers don't like this when I tell them. But you know, even in the condition of insanity the Bible says God creates you. And you're not going to run away from God by just renouncing reason and becoming insane. Because even in that condition God's rational word can make a difference. Well, if you can't be consistently irrationalistic, then try less consistent irrationalism. Allow some mixture of rationalism now to re enter the scheme. But what happens if you add those? If you take that approach? Well then you have all the problems that we've already mentioned up here. Now I hope you begin to get in at least some elementary way, a sense of sense for the dialectical tension of the unbeliever. You see, let's say he begins with a rationalist approach to life. And the more he tries to be rationalistic about things, to have a rational scheme that accounts for everything, he's driven more and more to irrationalism to admit that his mind is finite, can't account for all the details, is ignorant and is not an absolute standard truth. But to the degree that he says that and it's consistent with his irrationalism, he's driven right back the opposite direction, he's driven to rationalism. Because if he isn't, then he's going to have to admit that he doesn't know anything. But then he's going to have to say that he knows that there isn't anything. But then if you say but how do you know that you don't know? Then he's going to have to either give an account of it or become insane. And so he says, well, I do have a rational scheme. Oh, okay, let's look at the rational scheme of me. Lo and behold, it doesn't account for everything all but you can see back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. This is constant problem of trying to deal with absolutes on the one hand and on the other hand trying to deal with his own finitude. How can a finite mind come up with an absolute truth? And so all non Christian systems of thought are in one way or another. Combinations are on the move in this dialectic. Yeah. How does one admitting that whether you're taking a Christian perspective or a non Christian perspective, that there are presuppositions that all of us have. How does one avoid getting accused of circular reasoning? Why would you worry about being accused of that? Well, how does one argue? That's a big question. You want to narrow it a little bit. How does one argue about what? Well, were we to take any one of these arguments, it wouldn't matter or even any specific point in these arguments. A non Christian can say that's based on your presupposition, say about the Bible. And then if you try to refute that with the Bible, you they would be accused of circular reasoning. Sure you would. So is a non Christian free of that problem? No, they have their presuppositions also. Oh, so it all depends on which circle you want to be in then, is that right? Non Christian says here's my standard of truth, whatever truth is it must be logical. My ultimate standard of truth. Truth is logical, you say, oh, no, it's not. Truth is an onion shoot. That's what truth is. Now, Christian says, no, that isn't right because that's not logical. You see, you're reasoning in a circle. You're applying the standard that we're supposed to be arguing about. You prove to me that truth is logical. Prove to me that truth is logical. How would you like it proved in the onion approach or the logical approach? What will you count as proof? Well, if you allow something to be proved that is not logical, then you've renounced the standard and shown that it's not ultimately logical. But if you insist that whatever counts as truth must be logical, then you're reasoning in a circle because the very thing that's being challenged is what you're appealing to to prove your point. Well, let's say the truth is not logical. Then you have the same problems. Well, what if you say anything that exists must be. Anything that is real, must be sensible. You must be able to contact it with one of your five senses. Okay. Is the truth that whatever is real must be sensible. Sensible. Has anybody touched that recently? Misplaced it in your drawer at home? Maybe one of those things. No, you can't sensibly touch that. And consequently, it must not be real, must not be absolute, must. You see, the non Christian has got to appeal to his standards, ultimately, reason. A circle too. The answer to that problem. Have you read through my syllabus yet? All the way, yeah. Okay, well, I'm not sure whether that takes you, but I deal with that problem. What you have is you have two circles of thought. By the way, the circular reasoning here we have to see right away it's not the sophomore fallacy of the logic books. Why do you believe A? Because of a. Why do you believe there's a God? Because there is a God. And why do you believe the Bible is true? Well, because the Bible is true. I mean, that would just be saying A is true because of A. The circular reasoning we're talking about is how can you be sure of your ultimate state? What happens is you have to apply the standard to all these problems. But of course, in applying the standards, you're always assuming the standard. But if your standard is able to encompass everything that has to be encompassed, then you see it's going to have some value if it takes care of the diversity of one's experience and makes it intelligible, and that's fine. What you're going to do then is compare different circles of thought. The Christian says to the non Christian, look, let's just assume what you say about reality to be true, what you say about knowledge to be true, what you say about ethics to be true and see what happens. If you start reasoning with the man, you put yourself on his position and work it out. And what happens, lo and behold, he can't account for anything. It's this rational irrationalism thing that we've been going through today here he doesn't know anything at all. He says, nobody knows for sure. But I know you're wrong, okay? He can't give a consistent account of his world. And then the Christian says, well, now put yourself on my position. Assume for a minute the truth of the scripture, living and true God, the trinitarian God, the all powerful, sovereign, providential God created the world, created you, created your mind, governs all things. You go on and on and on. Pretty soon you see the Christian position accounts for knowledge and accounts for a knowledge of absolute, accounts for ethics and accounts for our lives and our experience and makes it all intelligible. The non Christian doesn't. I think that's the way you have to debate ultimate standards. Now that's true whether we're in a religious classroom, by the way, or not. Secular university, I teach the same thing. It's a transcendental approach to epistemology. You have to reason from the impossibility of the contrary. When you're talking about ultimate standards, here's what's going to happen. Somebody says, this is my ultimate standard. When all is said and done, that's rock bottom for me. That is it. No further you say prove your ultimate standard. Well now what if he proves his ultimate standard by appealing to something more ultimate than it? That's not his ultimate standard, is it? But if he doesn't appeal to something more ultimate than it, then he doesn't prove his standard. He's using his standard. And that means in some sense he's reasoning in a circle. And I think the only alternative to that impasse. Now some people have been willing to accept it. Wittgenstein said that it's just a matter of prejudice. Some people are trained to believe one thing, some people are trained to believe another. And there's. When all is said and done, all you can do is yell heretic at each other. Okay? Dewey said the way out of that impasse is pragmatism. You just better find out which solves the problems of your life, which helps you to integrate with your society or biological environment. You can Read about this in the Foundation's Christian Scholarship in my article on presuppositionalism, pragmatism and prejudice. The problem is that the only way out of the impasse is to argue from the impossibility of the contrary. The Christian wants to say, all right, I'm willing to. Well, let's take all the time you want. I'll keep buying cups of coffee. Let's just keep talking. You tell me about your world and life view. Let's see what happens with it. Turns out it can't make sense of experience. Can't even make sense of what it's talking about. Can't make sense of the laws of logic, the principles of science, art, beauty, whatever you want to talk about just isn't able to do it. Then the Christian says, well, now, look, one more cup of coffee before you leave. Let's talk about the way I see things. Put yourself in my position for a minute. You want to show him the impossibility of the contrary. There's no other approach that will make sense of reasoning and science and civilization. So, yeah, we reason in a circle. But, I mean, everybody reasons in a circle in that sense. And that's no defect to a system of thought. As a matter of fact, it's the strongest way to prove your position, to show that you can't prove anything without it. Dr. Van Tuil said the proof for the existence of God is that one cannot prove anything without the existence of God. It's the very foundation of proof. And I think that's the strongest form of theistic argumentation that's ever been offered. Not that Dr. Van Till is the only one who's done it. But, I mean, that expression of it is very nice. That's what it amounts to. Does that satisfy you, or would you like to pursue. You answered my second question. And that, too, I was going to say, if we're both admitting that we're using circular reasoning, then is it a stalemate? And you answered that question also. That's right. I don't think we're reduced to being in our mutual towers, loathing each other. You know, you're in your world, I'm in mine. And you know, all we can do is just hate each other for it or scream at each other or browbeat each other. No, we can say, no, let's reason about this. And as Paul says, the wisdom of the world will be reduced to foolishness. And that's very true. Because if you don't begin with the fear of the Lord, you can't really know anything. You can't account for it. That isn't to say unbelievers don't know things. It just is to say that they know things because they already know God. They know themselves to be the creatures of God and accountable to him. They don't want to admit those things. They want to suppress it in unrighteousness as possible in Romans 1. But they do know it. That's the only way that you can give an account of the knowledge they do have, whether it be of lions or mathematics or physics or history or religion. Well, my point is autonomous reasoning here leads to extremes. It leads to either extreme of rationalism or irrationalism are running back and forth and tension between the poles. It's an unstable mixture of the two. Only God can tell us where our powers and limits begin and end. Even if they are intellectual powers and limits. Only the Christian can successfully account for the rationalist motif. Everything is rationally describable. And the irrationalist motif, nevertheless the human mind is not the ultimate standard of truth. Let me show you another tension that we can talk about. I think I can tell you very quickly before I time read that. What I call the monism atomism, tension in unbelieving systems of thought. There are kind of two directions of thought that you'll find if you read through the history of philosophy, that different thinkers have taken. One I call the monistic approach to philosophy. I'm being very, very generalistic. Now, I'm not talking about monism as a school or atomism as a school, strictly speaking, but the monistic approach to philosophy very generally is that the parts must be understood, terms of the whole. You want to explain something, you must explain it in terms of a broader context. That would be the monistic thrust of philosophy. Explain the parts in terms of the whole. Anaximander and Parmenides and Plotinus and Erigena and Spinoza and Hegel and on and on and on were all examples of this approach to philosophy. Explain the parts in terms of the whole. Would this be the closest thing for the Christian philosophy? No, no, no. And neither is atomism. See, the whole problem is that by not taking a Christian approach you're always going to be strewn, you see, on the tension between rationalism and irrationalism, monism and atomism. It's not as though, look, we're closer to rationalism because we admit the finite fallen nature of our mind. So we're not rationalists. Oh, well then you must be irrationalist. Well, by no means. See, the Christian can't say Am I closer to one or the other? We're the Tertian quid, if you will. And that's not right though, because that gives the appearance that we have these schools of thought and we came along with later and reconcile them. No, it's just because we began with the truth of God and people have defected from it. They either go this way or that way and can't ever reconcile their philosophies. But here you have the monistic approach to philosophy. Hegel says you want to understand the War of 1812. You understand it in its context. You have to put it in the broader perspective of universal history. Okay, well then how is that an explanation? When does the explanation end? If you have to explain the part in terms of the whole. Okay, this part is explained in terms of this broader context. Explained in terms of this broader context, explained on and on and on in terms of this broader context. What is it that's finally self explanatory? The whole. The whole is only the entire universe is truly explanatory. Only the whole is self explanatory and self existent. Okay, so the modistic approach says that if you're going to explain anything, ultimately you have to explain everything. If you're going to know anything. Hegel said you must know everything. To know anything, any detail of history is to know its property place in universal history. Well, then you have a completely different approach to philosophy that I call the atomistic approach. What is it to explain something? It's not to get bigger and bigger and bigger context. Explaining a part in terms of a whole, it's just the opposite. It's to take something as a whole and break it down to its pieces. Break it down, analyze it, dissect it, chop it up. Instead of looking for the one huge context monistically to explain things, you break things down into all its discrete pieces, all atomistic like that. Wholes must be interpretive in terms of their parts then. So here you have the attempt to explain monism as the attempt to explain parts in terms of wholesale. Atomism is the attempt to take things as wholes and explain them in terms of their parts. Reality has smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller parts until you have, if you will, one basic unit of being. I'll give you some examples of these people. Democrates, Epicurus, Lucretius, Occam, Leibniz, the early Bertrand Russell, the early Wittgenstein were all atomists. You explain things in terms of the parts of which they are, that they constitute, of which they are constituted. Excuse me. Yeah, Okay. Would not Christians be explained in terms of God? I mean, he being the host hole, Is he the whole everything? He's everything. See what you do? Yeah. You see, the minute you follow that line, pretty soon you want to start going, no back this way. But when you start going that way, you're going to want to go, no back this way. No, you don't want to do any of that sort of thing. Believe me, this is the pits over here. You don't want to do any of this. I just don't want to get confused. That's okay. But I mean, you get the point. No, this is what we're all glad we're saved from. Okay, Praise the Lord. We haven't got these intellectual problems. We have other kinds, but not these. Let me just get this out here a second. We're going to have to break holes. Must be understood in terms of the parts. Okay? So Wittgenstein says, if you want to understand the meaning of a set, this is the early Wittgenstein, you must understand the meaning of the discrete words in it. And to understand the meaning of the discrete words in it is to understand the reference of the words is to understand the materialistic reference of the word, which is understand, therefore the concrete grammar of the sentence and its reference. So what is the meaning of a sentence? Well, you have to break it down into its parts. And then at one point, one phase in his long and phase phase, phased existence as a philosopher, Bertrand Russell thought that there was, if you will, a universal grammar. Not in the sense of depth grammar. Now, if any of you have studied that issue. But the idea that a sentence is true if its syntax and its referent reflect what is true of the world didn't pan out, as you can figure out, because words don't relate to each other like that math relates to me. So a word about the math and the professor is not going to have the same configuration as the math. And the professor in the room so very confused. But that's what happens when you try to explain whole in terms of parts. Reality is smaller and smaller parts, so you get a basic unit. But now look what happens whether you're a monist or an atomist. Just give me a second here. Whether you're a monist or an atomist, you're always going to have a tendency toward mysticism. Why would you always have a tendency toward mysticism? Because monism never gets you to an adequate universal principle. Any characterization that somebody offers of the whole is going to be a limitation of the whole to characterize. It is to limit it. And so reality will always be just one step beyond the characterization. Reality is always going to be larger than what you say about it. Reality is bigger than the particular designation you give it. But if you're an atomist, if you try to get to the particulars, these can't generally characterize things. These can only characterize the properties of things. And so Adamas says, let's look at the properties or parts. But then you say, well, what's the property? What's the part? Well, that has to be explained in terms of a more basic property or part. You can't finally speak of the ultimate element. You can't finally describe that ultimate atom of experience because it's going to be an indescribable simple. As Wittgenstein put it, you're going to get to something that can't be broken down further. But if it can't be broken down further, then you can't explain it, can you? Because what is explanation? It's breaking things down. But if you get to the thing that can't be broken down any further, then you can't explain it. But if you can't explain it, then you have to be rather mystical about it. And by the way, some 20th century philosophers have been about their ultimate simples of life, very mystical. They can't be described, can't be accounted for. So you see, the articulation of the basic concept is impossible, whether you're a monist or an atomist. The basic concept is too big for description in monism, and it's so small and indescribable for atomism. But either way, whether you're a monist or an atomist, you can't describe your basic explanatory context or part. And in that sense, everybody tends toward mysticism. But here you have two forms of rationalist philosophy, monism and atavism. Everybody starts being rationalistic. What have they end up? Mystical. And on that note, I'll leave you for this afternoon. Thank you. I'll answer any questions of those of you who have them, but you're dismissed.