Lux Lucet

My previous posts in this series were intended as a survey of what the Bible has to say about the four main disciplines of philosophy: epistemology (the theory of knowledge, metaphysics (the theory of reality), ethics (the theory of conduct), and politics (the theory of government). The structure and ideas contained in this series are taken from the tract What is Christian Philosophy? written by John Robbins and published by The Trinity Foundation.

These posts were written with three goals in mind. First, to lay my philosophical cards on the table. Since my purpose in writing this blog has always been to articulate the Scripturalism of Gordon Clark and John Robbins, it seemed good to set forth the basic assumptions of this system as clearly as I possibly could.

Second, it has been my hope to show the importance of systematic thinking. Systematic thinking is not popular today. That the world should passionately embrace irrationalism is not surprising. But the hostility toward logical thought in the professing church is alarming. Christ is the logos, the logic, of God. And those who bear his name, those who have the mind of Christ, of all people should have respect for sound thinking.

My third goal with this series has been to make philosophy accessible. Often people are turned off from philosophy, because they think they cannot understand it. Much of this is the fault of the philosophers themselves. If you are in that camp, I understand. In spite of my best efforts, I never understood philosophy until I started reading John Robbins. He was possessed of remarkable ability to take ideas that in the hands of other authors were all but impenetrable and make them clear. It has been my goal to do the same for others.

To close out this series, I have summarized my previous posts on Christian philosophy below.

Epistemology: Philosophy’s Foundation

All thinking must begin somewhere. That was one of the first and most

Raphael’s The School of Athens, depicting Plato and Aristotle.

important things I ever learned from reading John Robbins. The way a thinker answers the question, How do you know?, will control the way he answers all other questions. In the history of thought, there have been two major schools of epistemology: rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism begins with certain ideas called axioms, unproven assertions that are the basis of all proof. The geometry you took in high school is a good illustration of rationalism. Empiricism, on the other hand, claims that sense experience furnishes us with truth. Empiricism seems to be the default position for most people, even those who have never studied philosophy. The saying “Seeing is believing” is a good statement of empiricism.

These two methods are the world’s way of discovering truth. But the apostle Paul tells us that the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God. Neither rationalism nor empiricism is capable of furnishing men with truth. But where the world fails, Christian epistemology succeeds. Christians do not, as the rationalists and empiricists, claim to discover truth on their own. Rather, Christian epistemology is rooted in God’s revelation, the 66 books of the Bible. The Christian bases his knowledge claims on the information revealed in Scripture. When challenged with the question, How do you know?, the proper response from any Christian is to answer, “the Bible tells me so.” Such a simple answer will likely meet with derision from the world. But that is a small matter.

Metaphysics: The Theory of Reality

Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius argued in his work De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) that, “[A]ll nature itself has consisted, and consists, of two parts; for there are bodily substances, and vacant space, in which these substances are situate, and in which they are moved in different directions.” This included the mind. As at death the body decomposed, so too did the mind. After death, so argued Lucretius, there was nothing. No afterlife. No judgment to be feared. Only nothingness.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1771.

Although a Christian cannot agree with Lucretian metaphysics, he can have some sympathy for why Lucretius said what he did. Lucretius lived and wrote in the first century B.C. His materialistic metaphysics (as indicated in the quote above, Lucretius believed reality consisted of minute particles, what we would call atoms, and space) was directed against the pagan religions of his day. Lucretius observed the misery and terror of people under the sway of various pagan beliefs, and sought to provide solace for those who feared judgment in the afterlife.

But reality is not matter in motion. Quoting words the Greek poet Epimenides first applied to Zeus, the apostle Paul spoke metaphysical truth to his Athenian audience on Mars Hill when he told them, “in him [God] we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Reality is that the triune God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob spoke the material world into being, in the space of six days, and made it all very good. The world, and everything in it, including ourselves, are his creatures, and all creation is under the curse of God due to Adam’s sin. One day, Jesus Christ will bring history to a close, judge the world in righteousness, and usher in a new heavens and a new earth, in which will dwell his redeemed people.

Ethics: The Theory of Conduct

Ethics is the study of what we ought to do. One popular ethical statement from the sixties was, “if it feels good, do it.” On a more refined level, secular philosophers have sought to establish their ethical systems primarily in one of two ways: natural law and utilitarianism.

Natural law states that one can discern moral principles from observing what

Dictionary definition of the word “ethics”, in macro.

goes on around us in the world. As Scottish thinker David Hume pointed out over 200 years ago, this is a logical fallacy for the simple reason that one can never derive an “ought” form an “is.”

Despite this, some Christians attempt to argue that ethical knowledge is obtained both by natural law and by revelation. This is a mistake. For it is God’s propositional revelation alone – propositional revelation is simply the idea that God reveals his will in declarative sentences – that determines whether something is right or wrong. This ties back to what was said above under epistemology. Revelation alone in the 66 books of the Bible alone furnishes us with knowledge. This includes knowledge of what is right and what is wrong.

Politics: The Theory of Government

In What is Christian Philosophy?, John Robbins made the following important point:

Christian political philosophy is grounded squarely on divine revelation, not on natural law, nor on majority rule, nor on exercise of mere force.

Attempts to base a theory of government on secular axioms result in either anarchy or totalitarianism. Only Christianity, which grounds the legitimate powers of government in the delegation of power by God avoids the twin evils of anarchy and totalitarianism.

The Bible teaches that government has a legitimate, but limited, role to plan in society. Government bears the power of the sword for the purpose of punishing evil doers. Civil government is not a natural institution, as Aristotle and others have believed. At creation, man was given what is sometimes called the cultural mandate. By God he was told, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” But while man was to have dominion over nature, there is no command by God for man to have dominion over man. That came as a result of sin, as Paul implies when he tells us the purpose of government, describing the magistrate as, “an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.”

Conclusion

Christianity is not a hodge-podge of ideas randomly thrown together. It is not what we intuit in our own minds. It is not what we observe in nature. It is not even what those who name the name of Christ say it is. The axiom of Christianity is this: The Bible alone is the Word of God. And Christianity is the system of thought that flows from this unproven first principle in the 66 books of God’s revealed Word. As John Robbins wrote,

Christianity is a complete philosophical system that proceeds by rigorous deduction from one axiom to thousands of theorems. It is a whole view of things thought out together. It meets all non-Christian philosophies on every field of intellectual engagement. It offers a theory of knowledge, a way to Heaven, a refutation of science, a theory of the world, a coherent and practical system of ethics, and the principles required for political liberty and justice (What is Christian Philosophy?)

Great are the benefits of being a child of God. Among these is the peace of mind that comes with knowing the truth. Jesus told his disciples, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” The Christian is free indeed. Free from the vain philosophies of man that promise so much and deliver so little. Free from the anxiety of those always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. Free to proclaim with boldness God’s propositional truth revealed to us in his infallible, inerrant Word.