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Taking Every Thought Captive |
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APART FROM GOD, FACTS ARE MUTE (An expose of the fallacy that
“facts speak for themselves”) by Jay Wegter I. Anti-theism assumes that God has no
bearing upon facts. A. Anti-theism makes the naïve
assumption that facts are there as the ultimates at the outset. (Such vain reasoning is a function of assumed human autonomy. For without God, the human mind arrogates to itself the task of
supplying unity between facts.)[1] 1.
The natural man thinks that he can supply the connection between facts. He assumes that he is the final reference
point in predication. In order for man to succeed at relating
facts, he would have to be able to do the
following: a.) He must be able to make a
system that allows him to see exhaustively all of the
relations between facts. b.) He must reduce the facts that
confront him to logical relations. The individuality of each fact must be given
up in order that it may be wholly
known by man. c.) He must strive for exhaustive
knowledge, in short, he must be omniscient.[2] (Man does not strive for exhaustive
knowledge. Why should he? His presuppositional commitment to a temporal notion of reality
attributes facts to chance.) 2.
The natural man’s attitude about the interpretation of facts can be summarized as follows: a.) He considers himself the
ultimate judge of what can or cannot be. (He will not allow any authority to be above him revealing what has or has not happened
and what will or will not happen in the future.) b.) His assumption of autonomy
works against an understanding of God’s nature. He denies that God is sovereign controller
of all phenomena. The natural
man denies that the universe is created, controlled and
redeemed by Christ. c.) The above assertions imply a
third: that man’s thought is absolutely original. He assumes that the interpretation he makes for himself will be
true for him because his thought is “legislative” with respect to
his environment. d.) The facts of man’s environment
are not created or controlled by the providence of
God. They are brute facts
(uninterpreted and ultimately irrational because they exist in a universe controlled by chance).[3] B. If the facts of the universe are not
interpreted to the glory of God, man is left with an atomistic concept
of knowledge. In that system of irrationality, facts have no meaningful
relation to one another, no significant contact. 1.
There is not a single fact that can be interpreted rightly without reference to God as Creator of that
fact. Man cannot truly apply the category of causality to facts
without the presupposition of God.[4]
2.
The assumption of brute fact is the most basic denial of the creation doctrine. (We need to challenge man’s ability to
interpret any fact unless that fact be
created by God and unless man himself is created by God.)[5]
(Man’s “quarrel” with God is never
about any fact or combination of facts. The argument is about the nature of facts. Back of that there is the argument about the nature
of man. The unbeliever denies that he is a dependent
creature accountable to God.)[6] 3.
Brute facts are mute facts -- they are ultimately meaningless if they do not reveal God. Like beads with no holes and a string with no ends, unrelated,
uninterpreted facts are the product of an irrational world view.[7] 4.
All facts are God’s facts. God
conditions and structures all reality. In order
for man to NOT see facts for what they are (God’s facts), man asserts the non-createdness
of reality. The natural man’s assumption of brute fact is
based upon his presupposition about the nature of reality. [8]
5.
Brute facts are facts that are unrelated to God’s plan. The Christian world view asserts that
there are no facts that are unrelated to God’s plan. (Because there is one system of reality, there are no brute facts.) II. The most fundamental question in
epistemology is, “Can facts be
known without God?” A. Only God can give unity to the
facts. The debate with the unbeliever cannot be settled by a direct appeal
to facts. The reason for this is that only a final reference point
can make facts intelligible.[9] B. Presuppositional apologetics exposes
the following: One’s starting point
is not the same level of being as the facts to be studied.[10] (A transcendental argument determines
the presupposition behind the fact. The traditional method
of apologetics sees facts as more ultimate than one’s world view.)[11] C. The natural man sees facts as existing
by their own power. The unbeliever clings to this
epistemology because it allows him to retain his autonomy.[12]
1.
If a person presupposes chance, he won’t be able to find Christianity in the facts. (Although they study facts in depth, more than 95% of scientists are
unbelievers. Because unbelieving scientists presuppose a
chance universe, they deny all the authority structures and
relationships set up by God.)[13] 2.
The believer and the unbeliever do not have a common method of knowing. a.) When the unbeliever interprets
the world, he sees every fact through the lens of his own
autonomy. He views reality as consisting of a non-created or
purely contingent factual space-time cosmos and a
non-created, timeless, abstract principle of logic.[14]
b.) The presuppositionalist rejects
the idea of a common ground of interpretation. Such common ground would be a meaningless absurdity. Can any one intelligently assume that he is both a creature and
not a creature, a sinner and not a sinner?[15]
III. Only a Christian philosophy of facts can
explain facts. A. Only a universal can give meaning to
facts. The question is, which universal can state or give meaning
to any fact? There is only one such universal, the God of
Christianity.[16] 1.
The Christian’s view of reality is based upon his view of being. God is the ultimate reference point
for all knowledge. God’s control of all things demands the
coherence of knowledge. a.) Every transaction in the realm of knowledge
necessarily has an ultimate reference point.
God’s knowledge is the basis for all coherent thought. b.) The coherence of God’s thought is the very
foundation of human knowledge. (It is
the apologist’s task to show the unbeliever that he has no intelligent
philosophy of fact.)[17] c.) Only the Christian can claim
ultimate rationalism. The interpretation of all things
by God’s revelation is the basis for unified rational thought. 2. A coherent world view is the
condition of knowledge. a.) The Christian must argue that
the unbeliever’s outlook renders pivotal concepts such
as fact, reason, experience, science, necessity, meaning
and morality unintelligible due the incoherence of the
unbeliever’s world view.[18] (The apologist seeks to remove the
unbeliever’s foundation by reducing his world view to absurdity.) b.) The absurdity of autonomous
philosophy is described by Van Til: “If you have a bottomless
sea of chance, and if you as an individual, are but a bit of
chance, and if the law of contradiction has by chance
grown up within you, the imposition of this law on your
environment is, granted it could take place, a perfectly futile
activity.”[19] c.) Christianity is the only position that does
not take away the very foundation for
intelligible scientific and philosophic procedure. (The unbeliever actually has been working
and thinking in terms of two
conflicting world views. He openly acknowledges the autonomous
view but does not wish to acknowledge the theistic
world view which he needs to make sense out of language,
math, science, history, logic, ethics, and everything else in his
experience and reason. The unbeliever professes his
autonomous point of reference, but suppresses knowledge of
God.)[20]
B. Facts are what they are by virtue of
their place in the plan of God. 1.
God’s plan is necessary to make sense out of both “causation” (natural explanation) and
“purpose” (teleological explanation). The whole meaning of any fact is
exhausted by its position in an relation to the plan of God.[21] NOTE: At Scripps Institute of Oceanography unbelieving
researchers devote countless hours of post graduate work studying
certain species of sea life. For all their effort, they come not one
bit closer to discovering “causation” and “purpose.” In essence, a grade school Christian student knows far more when he
says “God created that fish (causation) for His glory
(purpose).” 2.
To say that
some facts may be known without God is the opposite of the Christian
position. The unbeliever’s spiritual
blindness is evident, for he is optimistic that his study facts without God
will result in true knowledge.[22] 3.
The issue is not, “What can unbelievers do intellectually?” The issue is, “Can unbelievers give
an account of facts within their world view?” The unbeliever cannot make the object
of knowledge intelligible by means
of his world view.[23] C. The effort to evade God is never
successful intellectually. Attempts to gain knowledge without
stopping the suppression of God’s truth will always result in absurdity, vanity and folly (Rom 1:18-25). 1.
No proof for God and the truth of His revelation in Scripture can be offered by an appeal to
anything in human experience that has not itself received its light
from the God whose existence and whose revelation it is supposed
to prove.[24] 2.
God’s revelation in nature, together with God’s revelation in Scripture, form God’s one grand
scheme of covenant revelation of Himself to man. The two forms of revelation must therefore
be seen as presupposing and supplementing
one another. Revelation in Scripture and
revelation in nature are mutually meaningless without another and
mutually fruitful when taken together.[25] D. Unity of knowledge (a central
principle of man’s cultural task) is only possible if God is ultimate.
(God is ultimate being, ultimate knower, ultimate reference point/
starting point, ultimate authority.) 1.
Unity of knowledge cannot be obtained by a compromise of principle between those whose
ultimate point of reference is God and those whose ultimate
point of reference is man.[26]
2.
God’s knowledge is absolute, men must have God’s knowledge in order to have their own knowledge. The only alternative is folly. The natural man displays the vanity of his thinking when contends that he does not need
an absolute universal in order to know with certainty. (It ought to be clear that the nature of knowledge and the nature of reality are necessarily joined. If they are not joined, knowledge
has no rational basis. Ontology has everything to do with knowledge,
for in God, what is real is rational. It is His omniscience that makes rational,
unified knowledge possible.) IV. The Creator-creature distinction gives us
our starting point and
method for finding the meaning of facts. A. The unbeliever takes the erroneous
position that the law of reason is the point of identity between
God and man. 1.
There is no single point of identity between the mind of God and the mind of man . The difference between the mind of Creator and creature is not merely
quantitative, but qualitative.[27] (God knows a rose in a qualitatively
different way than man. God is the original Knower, He thought
of the idea of a rose in eternity and created it in time. Our thoughts will always be finite and “creaturely”.) 2.
God’s being is “fundamentally other.”
Man is but a derivative of God, therefore the content of God’s
mind is radically different from the content of our own
minds. We can never know what God knows in the same way that
God knows it. God lives wholly above and beyond time. Any notion we apply to God will at best be a finite replica of the same
notion God has of Himself. (As far as our conceptualization is
concerned, we cannot think of eternity otherwise than as the
passage of years.)[28] B. Non-Christian thinking is univocal
thinking. (Univocal
refers to man thinking independently of
God. The unbeliever’s reasoning is “univocal” in that he views knowledge
as identical for God and man.) 1.
Our knowledge of the world is not univocal (the same as God’s), but analogical (dependent
upon the self-revelation of the Creator).[29]
2.
Univocal reasoning denies the foundation upon which analogy is built. a.) It seeks to erase the ontological
distinction between God and man. b.) It rejects the authority of God
and His Word. d.) It is an abrogation of man’s covenant
consciousness. e.) It represents an effort to shed and flee from
the temporal, finite make up of man. (Human reason is enthroned by univocal reasoning; “you shall be as
gods.”)[30]
C. Univocal reasoning reveals one’s
view of reality. 1.
When one attempts to reason univocally, one assumes that reality is of one type. Therefore, when discussing ontology, cosmology or even trees, one
assumes that these categories are the same for God at every point
as for man.[31] 2.
By contrast, the Christian reasons analogically. Man is an analogue of God, he is to think
God’s thoughts after Him. When the believer reasons about the
complexities of human anatomy, he reasons analogically. He declares along with the Psalmist that man is “fearfully and
wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14). a.) The unbeliever places God’s
knowledge of the human body and a doctor’s knowledge of
the human body on the same plane. As a consequence of arrogant univocal
reasoning, the unbeliever refuses to
say of God’s knowledge, “[It] is too wonderful for me” (Ps
139:6). b.) The believer is careful to
guard the following in his thinking in order that his reasoning
will be thoroughly analogical: ·
He thinks under
the authority of Scripture. ·
He thinks as a
being in covenant with God. ·
He recognizes
the finite, creaturely status of his thoughts.
He regards his thoughts as derivative of their original (God). ·
Consequently,
his reasoning uses the law of non-contradiction.[32] c.) Analogical thinking is firmly
rooted in the Creator-creature distinction. Being is key, everything other than God is
the creation and the creature.[33] We do not know one thing as God knows, otherwise we would
posit an identity between the mind of God and the mind of
man.[34] 3.
Univocal reasoning always leads to skepticism and self- contradiction. Epistemological despair is the result of suppressing the truth of God;
the only source of certainty.[35] 4.
Univocal thinking assumes that a finite human can attain epistemological self-sufficiency. a.) It is God alone who knows
all knowledge simultaneously. God’s mental processes
established the laws of logic. His providential laws of
causation uphold the creation, His orderliness is the basis for
inductive science. b.) God made our senses and
reasoning faculties to be accurate, but limited probes of
objective reality. God alone is the “Fisherman” whose “net” catches all “fish” (knowledge). c.) We are gifted with an
imitation of His net that will catch many fish. But countless fish are too small for the
mesh of our net. And innumerable fish are too big for our
nets. God has told us what categories
(of knowledge) these “fish” are so that we won’t be
presumptuous enough to fish for these.
No fish are too large or small
for God’s net. My net is made in the image of God’s
net. But mine is creaturely, finite, limited. The fish which only God’s net can catch are
not absurdities.[36] 5. God’s incomprehensibility is
infinitely inexhaustible. a.) Man’s ignorance is not primarily from
finitude. Man’s ignorance is due to the
infinite ontological “chasm” between self-existent God and the creature. b.) Paradoxes and antinomies will not be resolved
by more knowledge or even exhaustive knowledge. If the paradoxes could drop away by more information, then the
Creator-creature distinction would drop away as well. (Univocal reasoning “flirts” with the concept of the divinized
mind. It attempts to insert the
temporal into the eternal.)[37]
V. A fact can only have the meaning that
Scripture ascribes to it.
Facts are only interpreted truthfully by the knowledge of God. A. The apologist must always maintain
that the “fact” under discussion must be what Scripture
says it is in order to be intelligible as a fact at all.[38]
1. The apologist must present his philosophy of
fact with his facts. The presuppositional apologist
does not need to present less facts in doing so. He
will handle the same facts, but he will handle
them as they ought to be
handled. (It’s futile to talk endlessly
about facts without ever
challenging the unbeliever’s philosophy
of fact.)[39] 2.
The evidentialist mistakenly assumes that facts can be considered apart from an
interpretive system. a.) Frequently the apologist is
challenged by the unbeliever, “Let the facts speak for
themselves.” The natural man often appeals to the realm of
empirical science as a zone “free from world view.” b.) On the contrary, all empirical
observation and observation is laden with theory. Modern scientific description is itself explanation. When researchers describe the simplest
facts, the description presupposes a
system of metaphysics and epistemology.[40] c.) A person cannot even be a
scientist without a philosophy of reality. (Our battle is always over philosophy of
fact.) Christianity does not need to
take refuge under the roof of a scientific method independent
of itself. Rather than assuming a defensive posture, the
apologist can assert that biblical Christianity offers itself as
“a roof” to methods that would be scientific.[41] B. Every starting point involves faith.
1.
Even the description of facts requires a starting point. A starting point always involves a
commitment to presuppositions. 2.
The anti-theist claims that man can have true knowledge of a fact without the “fact” of
God’s existence. Thus, the starting point is man himself. His starting point and method are solely from himself. (By contrast, the theist knows that
knowledge of any fact presupposes the
existence and knowledge of God who created the fact and Christ who
interpreted the fact in Scripture.)[42]
3.
All men do their thinking on the basis of a position or perspective that is accepted by faith. If your faith is not in God who speaks infallibly in His Word through
Christ, then your faith is in man as autonomous. “All of one’s reasoning is controlled by
either of these presuppositions.”[43] 4.
Underlying the natural man’s discussion of facts is his commitment to his particular method of knowing. His theory of knowledge (epistemology) is but a
part of a whole network of presuppositions he maintains. His presuppositions include beliefs about the nature of reality
(metaphysics) and his norms for living (ethics). A key point for the apologist to understand
is that the unbeliever (when espousing his
autonomy) treats his method of knowing, reasoning, proving and learning as normative.[44] C. All the facts are in for God,
therefore we must accept His interpretation of them. (In an open universe with a finite god, a “new fact” may appear at any time.)[45] 1. In order for man’s
interpretation to be correct, it must correspond to the interpretation of God. The accuracy of man’s synthesis and analysis rest upon God’s
analysis. Our thought is receptively
constructive.[46] 2.
To be neutral in method is to suggest that the universe is open for God as well as you. It implies that system is non-existent. It infers that synthesis is prior to
analysis for God as well as for man. It places God within the universe. 3.
If facts are not viewed through the lens of the plan of God, they will be viewed through the lens of
possibility. (Chance and possibility are like a bottomless
pit. The skeptic can toss any fact into its dark depths while
uttering, “without a system, anything is possible.”)[47]
D. Every fact of the universe must be
Christologically interpreted. 1.
Christ came to
save the world. His work is of cosmic
significance. Therefore through
Christ and His word, an authoritative interpretation is given to mankind of the
whole cosmic scene. Thus, every fact in
the universe must be Christologically interpreted. 2.
Only the world
view that centers upon the Person and work of Christ can render facts
intelligible to sinful men.[48] (Even when we investigate a fact, we cannot
come up with “truth” that does not correspond with God’s truth in Christ.)[49] E. A transcendent argument determines
the presupposition behind the fact.
1.
The starting point is never the same level of being as the facts
to be studied. The transcendental method exposes the world
view behind the facts. When seeking to uncover the foundations for the “house of human knowledge,” it
behooves the apologist to ask questions that reveal a person’s
world view: ·
What is the
nature of things that are real? ·
How does the
world operate? ·
Where did it
come from? ·
What is man’s
place in the world? ·
What is man’s
nature? ·
Are there moral
or epistemological norms that are not chosen by the individual? ·
What are the
criteria for truth? ·
What are the
proper methods of knowing? ·
Is certainty
possible?[50] 2.
When interpreting facts, we never grant to our opponent that human categories are
ultimate. If we compromise at that juncture (by granting the ultimacy
of human categories), it destroys the self-consciousness of
God. God’s absolute self- consciousness is inseparable form
His authority as final interpreter of facts.[51] |
