Unnatural Philosophy

Of Reason and the Faith

Unnatural Philosophy of Reason

Know thyself.

Theses of Faith and Reason

  1. Humans must receive all knowledge from outside ourselves.
  2. Any human knowledge must be received and believed by the holder based on faith in the outside source of knowledge.
  3. Human reason is not rational or logical by nature, but rather humans must learn logic from school or other experience, and therefore human logic is based on faith.
  4. Humans can only comprehend that which is based on experience with our physical senses.
  5. Humans can only comprehend any divine or spiritual realities via physical manifestations of those realities.
  6. Humans cannot know if a divine or spiritual force has manifested physically unless that force defies the laws of physics.
  7. Without any divine or spiritual manifestation, all human knowledge and reason must be limited to that which can be based on the laws of physics.
  8. Philosophical, non-physical knowledge of right, wrong, good, and evil cannot be directly, objectively known by humans based on the laws of physics.
  9. If we refuse to believe that the laws of physics have been or can be defied by divine or spiritual forces, we refuse to believe that we can have an objective source of truth for non-physical questions of right, wrong, good, and evil.
  10. Non-physical knowledge of right, wrong, good, and evil can only be objectively true for all creation if it is defined by a supreme being who has authority over all creation.
  11. Any human knowledge that we receive from a source that is bigger than the human mind or that describes a truth that is bigger than the human mind cannot be fully comprehended by the finite, physically-bound human mind, and must therefore be a subject of debate and disagreement among humans any time we attempt to comprehend the whole picture.
  12. Any description of a supreme creator that fully makes sense to the finite, physical human mind describes something that is not bigger than the human mind, and therefore it cannot be a description of an all-intelligent, all-powerful, supreme creator or ruler over creation.

Fallacies Against Faith

The Problem of Evil

✓
  1. Man says, “A good God would have prevented evil.”
  2. But logic dictates:
    • Starting assumption: Let “God” be defined as the supreme being: the highest authority over everything who is all-powerful and all-knowing.
    • Therefore, God is the author of the definition of “good”.
    • As an all-powerful, all-knowing supreme being, God acts in accord with His own standards.
    • Therefore, God is good. (He asserts this Himself. See Matthew 19:17 and James 1:17.)
    • If anyone attempts to accuse God of evil / wrongdoing:
      • The accuser asserts their definition of good as an authority over God.
      • Therefore, that definition is made a higher authority than God, to which God must conform if He is to be judged as objectively good.
      • But God is, by definition, the highest authority. Logical contradiction.
      • Therefore, no one can accuse God of evil / wrongdoing.
    • If God doesn’t act according to my idea of good (such as by allowing evil to exist):
      • Therefore, my definition of good is opposed to God’s definition of good.
      • All opposition to good must be evil.
      • Therefore, all opposition to God must be evil.
      • If I define good and evil in a way that opposes God’s definition, then I am in opposition to God.
      • Therefore, I am evil.
  3. Our good God is a God who destroys evil. He will burn all evil on judgment day, as He has warned. But for now He is being patient toward you, so that you can repent and be saved and share in His joy and love in His kingdom. (See 2 Peter 3.)

The Age of the Universe

✓
  1. Assume God made the world in 6 literal days in the way He said He did. (Gen. 1)
  2. Assume that on the 7th day you are able to observe creation and apply a dating method to what you see.
    • For example, you can apply a model that human hair grows at about 6 inches per year.
  3. You apply your dating method and determine that the thing you observe is older than 6 days.
    • You see that Eve has hair that is 3 feet long, and you conclude that her hair is 6 years old.
  4. Contradiction: By the premise, creation is only 6 days old.
    • Fallacy of assuming the conclusion: Your dating method assumes that what you observe came about gradually from the physical processes of creation.

All dating methods must assume that the entire span of the timeframe that they are used to model is influenced entirely and only by the gradual, continuous processes of physical creation. That assumption is invalidated if God created the processes of physical creation during that timeframe, or if God created the object that is being modeled as fully-formed in any way during that timeframe.

No dating method can logically claim that the creation account in the Bible is false without assuming its conclusion.

The Blindness of Faith

✓

Some assert that:

  1. “Faith” is believing something contrary to rational observation.
  2. Therefore all “faiths” are irrational.
  3. Therefore the Christian Faith is irrational.

This is the fallacy of equivocation. Each of the 3 lines above uses the word “faith” in a different sense:

  1. “Faith” in the sense of believing something contrary to rational observation.
    • This is called “fideism”, which historical Christianity rejects, though it became popular in the 1800s through to today.*
  2. “Faith” in the sense of a religion.
    • This sense of the word only rose in common usage in the late 1900s.*
  3. Faith as “The Christian Faith”
    • Christianity is the first to use the word “faith” in a religious sense. It was a secular word in Greek prior to Christ.
    • “The Christian Faith” refers to the faith, the fealty, that followers of Christ bear toward Him. It is not founded on belief for its own sake (fideism), but on the testimony of rational eyewitness observations of the event of His resurrection from the dead, which proves His authority as King and God and Savior. (1 Cor. 15)

The Christian Faith is not blind. But we walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor. 5) in the sense that, while we walk through this life, we do not focus on the present pain but on the future reward that Christ our King promised us. In faith, we believe that promise, because God in Christ has kept all His past promises and has proved that He has the power to fulfill them.

*See the book “Faith Misused” by Alvin J. Schmidt for details on the different senses of the word “faith” in English over the years.

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Computational Principles of Rational Theology

  1. Whatever you hold to be certain must be built only from the authority of God’s Word.
    • God spoke many things that are not recorded, but only the Bible remains today as a reliable and attested record of the Word of God.
    • The created universe was spoken into being by God’s Word and is also a reliable foundation for knowledge. But its usefulness is very limited when it comes to knowing anything more definite than the processes of present physical matter.
    • The role of human teachers is to point out implications of God’s Word that you might not have noticed. They are not sources of truth themselves.
  2. Your theology must not add to God’s Word.
    • Every step of thought must be linked to and supported by its foundation.
    • “Most likely” and “probably” and “many early church fathers say…” are insufficient justifications for holding an interpretation of God’s Word as absolutely certain. The guess might very well be correct, and it is fine to speculate, but one must be honest about uncertainty whenever one is guessing or whenever one is relying on the interpretations of other mere men.
    • If the only Biblical support for a proposed idea comes from passages that all have other equally reasonable interpretations, in context, than those which support the proposed idea, then that idea is not proved by those passages.
  3. Your theology must not subtract from God’s Word.
    • Any passage that you find confusing shows a shortcoming of your understanding, and thus a flaw in your perspective or logic in how you read Scripture. You must learn from such passages, not ignore them.
  4. If you derive a statement in any way from another idea that is not 100% certain based on God’s Word, the derived statement inherits the same degree of uncertainty.
    • In other words, each logical consequence of a guess is also only a guess.
  5. God’s recorded behavior teaches what is objectively good and wise.
    • Both what God chooses to do and what He refrains from doing should be part of what you learn from, though with the understanding that He has authority as God and Creator that you do not.
  6. Jesus of Nazareth’s recorded behavior teaches what is good and proper for man.
    • It must also be part of what you learn from, in imitation by faith, though with the understanding that He has a higher authority as Christ the Son of God that you do not.
  7. Do not import definitions from man’s distinctions or terminology onto God’s Word.
    • Interpret God’s Word according to the context of its original language as it would have been read by its intended original audience.
    • If a term would be treated broadly or colloquially by the original writer and recipients of a Biblical message or text, do not force it into a narrow academic sense when reading that text.

Against Quarrels of Bounded Rationality

The reasoning and understanding of mankind is bounded to that which can be expressed in terms derived from the created, experienced world.

Just as a person who is born blind cannot understand what he means when he talks about sight, so also humanity cannot understand what we mean when we talk about anything spiritual that is beyond or outside of our physical world and experience. We do not know where or how to draw the line between the physical and the spiritual in our self-conscious experience. We are blind to the spiritual world except in what God’s Word reveals.

Thus, for each of the following subjects, mankind provably oversteps the limits of his bounded understanding whenever he attempts to make definitive statements about them that go beyond what God has explicitly revealed about them:

  1. The Trinity (God’s nature)
  2. The Incarnation (how God and man are one in Jesus Christ)
  3. The Human Spirit (any aspect of humanity that is not composed of physical creation)
  4. Angels / Demons (non-human spiritual beings)
  5. Activities of Other Realms (what it is like outside the creation we know, such as in heaven, hell, or the promised future new creation)
  6. Election (God’s mind, plan, desire, and foreknowledge from outside creation or time, in combination with and His sovereign interaction, work, and influence among us within all of creation)
  7. Baptism (how God cleanses from sin and regenerates in the Holy Spirit through baptism)
  8. The Lord’s Supper (as with the Incarnation, how Jesus as God is present in the meal for the forgiveness of sins for the faithful and for the harm of those who abuse Him)

With each of these, to wrangle about words beyond the Word we have from the Lord is useless and leads to the ruining of those who hear (2 Tim. 2:14). The only logical approach is to trust God’s Word at face value in the words He uses to describe these and let their details remain mysteries. God sees both the spiritual and the physical; we do not.

It is then especially irrational to quarrel or create divisions about these topics as if we could apply the logic of our material world to the functions of the spiritual or of the eternal. The only acceptable occasion for such divisions is when they result from one party faithfully clinging to the face-value Word of God about these subjects in the face of a faithless other party that seeks to override God’s Word with their own (see 1 Cor. 11:19).

Unnatural Philosophy of the Faith

Know thy Maker.

Recovering Forgotten Definitions

The following are the Biblical terms that I find are most central to understanding the narrative of God’s gospel message for us. The definitions are summarized according to their common usage in the Biblical languages:

  1. Gospel
    • Good news of the Kingdom/Kingship of Jesus Christ
    • NOT merely the news that Jesus died for your sins. (Good Friday is not good if separated from Easter and Ascension and Pentecost.)
    • “Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom…” (Matt. 4)
  2. Law
    • An assigned bond or instruction by which an authority leads its subjects
    • NOT merely a formal written legal requirement.
    • “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” (James 2)
  3. Faith / Belief
    • Fealty of the heart / Mode of to whom you listen
    • NOT merely trust or mental assent about someone or something
    • “…to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name’s sake” (Rom. 1)
  4. Obedience
    • Submissive hearing; listening that forms a heart that willingly responds
    • NOT primarily the performance of the outward act
    • “So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.” (Deut. 30)
  5. Fear
    • Submission / Respect / Awe / Recognition of a greater power
    • NOT dread of expected evil
    • “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” (Ps. 130)
  6. (Steadfast) Love
    • Zealous family-bond service / mercy / devotion
    • NOT a mere emotion
    • “Do you love Me? … Tend my sheep.” (John 21)
  7. Hope
    • Assurance / confident expectation
    • NOT a wish or uncertainty
    • “…always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3)

Rightly Proclaiming the Gospel and Dividing the Laws

  1. There are two kingdoms in Scripture:
    • The domain of darkness
    • The kingdom of heaven
  2. The Gospel is the good news of the Kingdom of heaven now come to you in and through Jesus Christ. (Matt. 4:23, Luke 16:16, Acts 8:15)
    • It is a gospel of salvation, of peace, and of hope, but also a gospel of repentance and judgment, because it is news that all enemies of the anointed King Jesus will be cast out and destroyed, but that all who are united to Jesus as their Lord through faith will be saved from destruction and from evil and will share in Christ’s inheritance eternally with Him.
    • More specifically, the gospel is the good news that by Jesus’ death and resurrection, He defeats death and transfers everyone who is joined to Him through faith out of the domain of darkness and into His kingdom of heaven (Col. 1:13-14). Everyone who is thus transferred between the two kingdoms shares in Christ the king’s inheritance of eternal joy where evil has been destroyed (Rom. 8:16-17, Phil. 3:20-21).
  3. The transfer from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of heaven and the inheritance thereof is gifted purely by grace through faith, apart from works. (Rom. 4:4-8, Gal. 3:21-22, Col. 2:13-14)
  4. There is one law that opposes God’s law:
    • The Law of Sin: The bond of our selfish, sinful, rebellious nature, following the will of the devil. This law drives a person to pursue pleasure, pride, independence, and self-destruction.
  5. There are two laws of God:
    • The Law of Ordinances: The bond of God’s demands and teachings for every behavior of body and mind. This law reflects God’s will but also condemns a person to death for any single transgression.
    • The Law of the Spirit: The bond of free responsibility under Christ in faith to Him to pursue His will of love by His Spirit as adopted sons and as stewards of His house. This law does not condemn a person for individual failures in perfectly executing love, but it does condemn anyone who abandons faith, that is, anyone who intentionally rebels, shirks their duty, or otherwise refuses to be ruled by the Spirit.
  6.  Those who are transferred from the domain of darkness to be heirs of the kingdom of heaven are transferred out from under the Law of Ordinances and into rule by the Law of the Spirit, which is the rule of Christ as their Lord in spirit and truth. (John 4:23, Heb. 10:8-9)
  7. The Law of Ordinances rules from outside of its subjects, as a tutor over children who do not understand the spirit of the law (Gal. 3:23-29), particularly those who are inwardly ruled by the Law of Sin (1 Tim. 1:9). But for those who are made alive in Christ, the Law of the Spirit replaces both the Law of Sin in inward rule (Rom. 7:4-6, Rom. 8:2-4, Col. 3:5-8) and the Law of Ordinances in outward rule (Col. 2:14, 2 Cor. 3, James 2:12, Matt. 24:45-51).
  8. Those who willfully refuse to be ruled in spirit (and thus in the deeds that flow from ones spirit) by the Law of the Spirit refuse the kingship of Christ, and thus refuse His kingdom and will be left outside of it. (1 Cor 10:1-12, Heb. 10:26-29, Luke 12:35-48)
  9. Those who have faith in Christ but who deny complete assurance of their inheritance of His kingdom, whether because they believe they earn the transfer of kingdoms by their works or because they deny God’s power to transfer them, deny both hope and faith. (Rom. 8:20-25, Heb. 10:29-12:2)
  10. Those who are in Christ are not cast out of the kingdom of heaven for any individual failures in their actions, but rather for willful refusal in their spirit to act according to Christ’s commands. If you can say with Paul that the evil you do is what you do not want, you do not obey the Law of Sin in your spirit. If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rom. 7:6-25, 8:1-11, 10:8-13)
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Basic Narratives of the 4 Gospels

The gospel message is the good news of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Each of the four written “Gospels” presents a different facet of who Jesus is as our King.

The following is not to be asserted with divine authority. However, it is drawn from the narratives that are plainly visible in the Gospels when they are read holistically in combination with the symbolism used by the early church (~4th century) to describe them.

Let this symbolism serve as an assistive tool when reading the narratives of the Gospels.

The symbols of the kingdom are the 4 Living Creatures:

  • Matthew: Man
    • Jesus as Immanuel (God with us), both the Son of Man, who fulfills God’s promises of a human descendant who would crush the serpent’s head and whose kingdom would have no end, and the Son of God, who truly has authority over all things
  • Mark: Lion
    • Jesus as the Lion of Judah, neither tamed nor understood by man, but good and true; a king to be feared (in the Biblical sense), with power over even death, who uses that power for your salvation
  • Luke: Ox
    • Jesus as the suffering servant, or beast of burden, the king who takes on our humble estate and our labor and who dies in our place, who casts down the mighty and exalts the lowly
  • John: Eagle
    • Jesus as the Word from above, the king who descends from the Father to bring down to us what we cannot attain from our lowly estate and to bring His kingdom to the world