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Savannah Parker's first place essay
The
Enemy Is Within the Gates
Savannah Parker
In each of the following
redefinitions, which represent only a few out of many, the Neo-orthodox annul
the validity of God’s revealing Himself to men in a way they can understand:
By
reinterpreting language, they cannot have a God who speaks.
By
rejecting logic, they cannot have a God who communicates in a way men can understand.
By
redefining truth, they cannot have a God who is capable of revealing the way things
are to men.
By
repudiating knowledge, they cannot have a God who is knowable.
By
reinventing faith, they cannot have a God who is able to be trusted for any
reason whatsoever.
The inerrancy of the Word of
God is closely connected to all of these topics. The unfailing Bible is alone
the source of the orthodox doctrines of Scripture, language, logic, truth,
knowledge, and faith—all of which are done away with by Neo-orthodoxy.
Why is the inerrancy of
Scripture an issue?
“Christianity is supposed to
be about Jesus, right? And about how we live for Him; so what is the big deal
about the Bible? Why can’t it have mistakes? After all, the men who wrote it
were fallible human beings.”
So run the simplest
objections to an orthodox insistence on the inerrancy and infallibility of the
Word of God. Those who say such things demonstrate that they are already under
the influence of this dangerous enemy within the churches today,
Neo-orthodoxy.
The foundation of all
Christianity is the doctrine that Holy Scripture “alone and…in its entirety…is
the Word of God written, and therefore inerrant in the autographs” (52). Why is
the Bible the foundational doctrine? This question is best answered by the
asking of another. How do people know about Jesus Christ? Perhaps they learned
of God and salvation from a preacher, or from their parents, or from a
friend—but how did these people come to know about Jesus? Where did they
learn of Him? Go back all the way and ask, “What is the ultimate source of
men’s knowledge of God and of His Christ?” It is very obvious that people do
not come to know about the redemption of God from the stars or the seas or the
stones. They get this understanding only from the Scriptures.
Because the Bible is central
to our knowledge of God, it alone is the foundation of all Christian beliefs
about God, men, and things. Therefore, when the Neo-orthodox attack the full
trustworthiness of the Bible, they are attacking Christianity at its very core
principle. When we analyze a system of thought (a body of beliefs), whether our
own or that of an enemy within or without our gates, we must begin at its
methodology, at its epistemology, at its answer to the question, “How do you
know?” We cannot start our theology (our system of beliefs) with the doctrine
of God, because we first must establish how it is that we learn of Him. After
all, we are not born knowing that Jesus Christ came to save sinners and that we
ought to love Him above ourselves. Dr. Clark explains: “In a systematic
treatment, the methodology ought to come first…[when] someone asks, ‘What is
God?’ How can one go about answering that question? …A method must be chosen
(or used unwittingly) before any answer is forthcoming…We cannot start with
God; we must start with the Bible. Why not say so first and then proceed to the
theology which the Bible teaches” (178). We cannot know the Christ or live for
Him apart from God’s revelation in His Scriptures; this is why we must have the
true Scriptures of God as the axiom.
Every system of thought is
dependent upon axioms, unprovable first principles—including
Christianity. Dr. Clark, an eminent logician, describes very clearly what this
means; “even a Christian in his own thought cannot construct a formal
demonstration of the authority of Scripture because all Christian syllogisms
are grounded on that authority” (17). Every system of beliefs is a system of
propositions we are asked to trust, whether philosophical, mathematic,
scientific, or theological.
“There,” someone might say,
“then that solves the problem. We do not need to worry anymore about the inerrancy
of the Bible! We have faith in God, so we do not need to worry about convincing
anybody that we are right, especially if we can’t do it logically, as you say;
and we all know that we cannot
change other people’s hearts.”
But he who answers this way
has entirely missed the point and is showing his Neo-orthodox leanings towards
a ‘personal-only’ idea of Christianity. As Christians, we have a special duty
to be ready with an answer for those who ask about the hope that is within us
(I Peter 3:15)—for our hope is not based on irrational belief. But how
can anyone do this if he himself does not really know what it is that he
professes to believe? How can he be settled in his own mind that the things he
believes about Jesus are true and real? We know that we cannot change men’s
hearts; but we also know that men can twist the truth into error very easily,
so we should be very careful in receiving their words. Unless one goes to
Scripture as a trustworthy source, how can he know whether the things he has been
taught about Jesus are true? Wherever people look, whatever the topic, they
must have some reason for believing something is true, despite what they may
have been told about the paradoxical nature of faith. They could go to the few
extra-biblical gospels and to any variety of cultic literature and ground their
beliefs about Jesus in those contradictory accounts; but why should they not go
to the Bible as truth, since it is a fully reconcilable collection of sixty-six
books written over a span of more than a thousand years?
The test of logic, which
demonstrates the self-consistency of a system of thought, is the only analysis
through which reason can attest to the Bible’s truth. Faith and reason are not
contrary here or anywhere else, for, as Dr. Clark succinctly states, “reason is
identified as the laws of logic.” He goes on to explain that the substantiation
of the Bible’s self-consistency is the only legitimate test of reason (79). The
independent reasoning of men from nature alone is not a legitimate use of
logic. Logic is a tool and a pattern; and as such, its use is not found by
itself without context. The laws of logic will not manifest truth unless they
start with the truth of God’s revelation. The logical consistency of a series
of propositions is the only thing that makes them meaningful; and logical
consistency “is exemplified in the Scripture” (82). It is as Dr. Clark says,
“if propositions have no meaning, obviously they reveal nothing” (79). If the
test of reason fails, if the revelation of God is not intelligible or if it is
contradictory, it has no meaning and no truth. And if the Bible is not true,
then surely, as the apostle Paul said, “we are of all men the most pitiable” (1
Corinthians 15:19).
The Neo-orthodox enemies of
the truth claim that faith in what the Bible teaches is irrational (logically
impossible) because they ignore the witness of the Bible’s logical
self-consistency and because they believe it to be full of mistakes and
contradictions. But this brings up the obvious question that Dr. Clark asks so
well, “Of what value would be an irrational or illogical revelation?” (77). If
we cannot learn real truth about the Christ from it, what would it profit us if
we put our faith in Jesus, as the Neo-orthodox urge us to do?
Please let it be remembered
that this test of logic is not a proof of the Bible’s truth, though it is evidence. Dr. Clark stated: “Logical consistency…is evidence
of inspiration; but it is not demonstration [logical proof]” (16). There are
many confirmations of the Bible’s trustworthiness, but these are not logically
conclusive proofs. Indeed, there can be no proofs for the first premises of a
system of thought, for then there would have to be still more basic premises
for those proofs to stand on. It is for this reason that proven “first
principles” are not first principles at all.
Dr. Clark says this
concerning the Neo-orthodox, though it applies to anyone teaching doctrine,
“Unless we know their method first, we cannot accept their theology” (184). If
the method used by those who teach us our system of theology is not in accord
with Scripture, we ought to be hesitant in accepting what they tell us. The
Neo-orthodox pretend to base their theology on the Bible, but the evolutionary
and existential premises of their method assume the Scriptures are erroneous
before they ever open the covers. Whereas the Biblical method of perceiving
true doctrine is the logical examination of the statements of and the
inferences from Scripture with the illumination of the regenerating Spirit, the
Neo-orthodox believe that truth is obtained by neglecting reason and relying on
an emotional experience of some sort to convince themselves to believe
something (not necessarily the literally stated or logically derived truth of
the Bible).
The Neo-orthodox argue that
the Bible is not inerrant on the grounds that it is historically inaccurate. A
cursory look at the history of archaeology demonstrates that quite often the
Bible has been more accurate than the historians. In perpetuating this myth of
the historical falsity of the Scriptures, they misrepresent both the Bible and
a great body of scholarship. Emil Brunner, a prominent Neo-orthodox thinker,
provides an example of this hostility towards the Scriptures as truth. He
bluntly stated that the Bible “is full of errors, contradictions, erroneous
opinions concerning all kinds of human, natural, historical situations (Philosophy
of Religion, 155)” (113). Dr. Clark
does not spend much time discussing the witness of history because his logical
arguments are more than sufficient to destroy the inconsistent proposals of the
opposition, without bringing in the many detailed examples from historical
research. He nevertheless points out that “we are delighted with the trend of
archaeological investigation. But it is not scientific or
scholarly—indeed it is utterly illegitimate—to ignore what the
Bible says about itself as [the Neo-orthodox teachers] want us to do” (54).
Even though historical evidences of Biblical validity are worthwhile to study,
the defense of Scriptural reliability can be taken deeper, against the very
foundations of the arguments of Neo-orthodoxy.
The same “scientific method”
so honored by these evolutionary thinkers uncovers testimony on top of
testimony to the Scriptures’ truth. Nevertheless, the Neo-orthodox refuse to
even consider the Bible’s witness of itself—even while they believe that
Herodotus wrote a history of the Greco-Persian wars. It is very unscientific
for these admirers of the scientific method to ignore the self-witness of the
Bible. The Neo-orthodox, in their worship of all things bearing the name of
“science,” also fail to realize that, if God is who He says He is in the Bible,
then the Scriptures can only be believed on account of God’s authority, for
there is none higher. Dr. Clark said this very plainly: “because God is
sovereign, God’s authority must be taken on God’s authority” (19). There is no
extra-Biblical method or witness that may give the Bible authority. Only God
speaking in His Word has given it the final authority. Yet, even though they
disbelieve God’s testimony of His own Word, its self-consistency, and the
witness of history, the Neo-orthodox claim that the Bible has authority for
Christians regarding salvation and morality. How can this be? They have already
removed its authority by saying it is untruthful. Who will trust a book of
unrecognizable and unknown mistakes for their eternal salvation? I ask with Dr.
Clark, “May we not legitimately ask how an erroneous book can be inerrant and
spiritually authoritative?” (60).
The Neo-orthodox can only
procure authority for this stripped book by redefining what they mean by
authority—and this they do. The Neo-orthodox replace the true meaning of
inerrancy (and its synonymous infallibility) with a redefinition of
infallibility. “Infallibility” is redefined to mean something like this: “The
general meaning of the Bible is infallible, even though the statements are not
necessarily true.” It does not matter whether what is said is correct for the “general
meaning,” however an individual takes it, to be called “infallible.” Under this definition, the church
cannot live in obedience to Scripture by being of one mind because there is no
appropriately appointed authority to determine the meaning of the Bible for
all. It is impossible for there to be a unity of positively stated doctrine
among Neo-orthodox-influenced Christianity because they do not hold, with the
Bible, that “no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation” or that
“prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were
moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter
1:20, 21). Their unity is rather in what they deny—the Word of God as
truth.
What this means,
practically, is that, as the true concepts of infallibility and inerrancy have
been banished from the thinking of Christians under the tutelage of
Neo-orthodox-leaning pastors, the other orthodox doctrines have dropped from
Christianity as dead leaves. It is as Dr. Clark said; when infallibility is
cast off, the other Scriptural doctrines also go by the wayside (55). Because
the true Scriptures, the support for the whole body of Christian doctrine, has
been refused and removed, both orthodoxy and its accompanying Christian culture
are dying.
Language Reinterpreted and Logic Rejected
The Neo-orthodox will not
accept that human minds think in concepts capable of expression in words
(propositions—logical statements that can be true or false). They will
not accept that God can be revealed through our languages, as the Scriptures
claim to do. Because these enemies of the faith think that our logical human
languages developed out of long eons of emotional animalistic noises, there is
then nothing that inherently links language or logic with the image of God in men.
Language itself is inherently logical; for without the law of contradiction
(the basic premise of logic), language could have no meaning. Because of their
evolutionary assumptions, they cannot accept that language, and therefore logic
also, is of divine origin. In their way of thinking, language must have some
primitive ancestry in animism. Therefore it follows, for them, that the mind of
God does not use propositional truths expressible in language. Thus it is that
they can say that “divine logic” is completely unrelated to “human logic.” In
countering such an absurd idea, Dr. Clark challenges them to “state their own
theory without making use of the law of contradiction” (49)—which of
course they cannot do. In their system it is impossible for the Scriptures,
which are full of propositional declarations, to be the true words of God. They
say that human language “is incapable of expressing literal truth [a
description of reality] about God” (163). Because language is human, then, God
cannot speak. They have silenced the immutable One simply by redefining
language.
If this is so, the Bible,
all sixty-six books and all 1,500 years of it, is a joke. If God cannot speak
to us because He is not able to be revealed in language because He does not
employ logic because logic is human (the result of evolution), the word of God
is not God’s Word. It then is simply the creation of several old men under the
influence of who knows what. Therefore, the Bible is untrustworthy for eternal
salvation—but the Neo-orthodox are unwilling to say this outright.
Nevertheless, men and women
think with language and logic; we are the only creatures in the creation that
are made in the image of the invisible God. The image of God (which is a
metaphorical use of “image,” for God cannot be pictured) is not the shape of
our bodies, it is not our emotional or chemical makeup at any given point, nor
is it found in our cultural products or in our imaginations. It is the way that
we think according the basic principles of logic: a thing is itself and is not
something else. Other things that are also considered part of the image of God
in man, like our immortal souls, our creativity, and the dominion given to
mankind over all the Earth, are conjoined to our ability to know and reason.
Dr. Clark gives three reasons why it is proper to ascribe to God a logical
system of thought. First, the truth He revealed “is grammatical, propositional,
and logical.” Secondly, the Bible speaks of the wisdom of God and of Christ as
“the Logos in whom are hidden all
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Finally, Christ is “the light that
lights every man,” all of which are made in God’s image (35). But perhaps when
the Bible says that we are made in God’s image, it is only the mistake of a
cracked old sheepherder. The Neo-orthodox can allow for this possibility, but
they cannot tell us how to distinguish the literal, propositional meanings of
the prophets from the personal meanings of God for us.
Despite the necessity of
logic as the image of God in man, and therefore, as an attribute of God (as the
Bible teaches plainly), the Neo-orthodox have forsaken it as unnecessary to our
faith and life. Taking their cue from anti-intellectual, anti-Christian
existentialist philosophers, they have stated that there is no single point of
coincidence between God’s thought and our thought. None of the content of our
minds can be the same as the content of the mind of our Father. They say it is
impossible for us to know anything that God thinks! If this were so, how then could
we possibly think that He or ourselves existed? How could we think that it was
His will to save anyone from sin and misery? That would be incredibly impudent
of us!
We learn
of our Creator God and of His will in the Bible, His own revelation of Himself
to men; but the Neo-orthodox have cut themselves off from this certain
knowledge. They have denied that God can speak to men in words, using logic
(upon which depends the intelligibility of any statement), so they cannot
answer when we ask, “How do you know? What is your source of knowledge about
whether or not there may be eternal salvation?” Surely the stars did not
whisper it to them, for even if that were so, in order to now be proclaiming it
in words they must have been able to comprehend the concept being conveyed in a
logical manner.
Dr. Clark
asks this pertinent question regarding logic and God and ourselves: “If we did
not…use the laws of logic, how could we know anything about God?” (186). The
understanding of anything requires the employment of reason. We could not know
anything reasonably, nor could we even experientially know persons, if God had
not given us logic. Further, if He had not given us His revelation alongside of
logic, we could not know Him or of His salvation. “If logic founders,” says Dr.
Clark, “We must therefore make a leap of faith and accept a revelation from
God” (77). He also points out that because truth and falsity have equal value
for the Neo-orthodox (because they try to annul logic in their thinking), their
continued defense of revelation is self-defeating (78). Revelation has been
made in propositions; so to deny the one and keep the other is impossible. By
their claim that the Scriptures are erroneous they have destroyed the basis for
all Christian doctrine, including the spiritual authority of the Bible.
In
witness to their low esteem for God and His truth and also to their
evolutionary and existential predispositions, the Neo-orthodox teach that it is
unnecessary for us to have an infallible revelation from our God. We only need
something that can fulfill our spiritual needs—as if our spiritual need
is not for truth. They fail to perceive, or perhaps purposefully forget, that
the Bible so thoroughly declares itself to be the very Word of God that it is
either what it says it is, the authoritative revelation of the Creator, or the
whole book is a madman’s delusion, which entirely discredits and ignores its
many witnesses throughout the ages.
The Neo-orthodox willfully
forget that the words they use are meaningful and comprise declarations that
can be true or false. They forget, as Dr. Clark pointed out, that “every
sentence, indeed every word, in the Bible depends on the logical law of
contradiction for its intelligibility” (185). But if they did not banish the name
of logic from Christianity, their system of religious skepticism would fail. In
the beginning of the Neo-orthodox onslaught, the layman understood their
Christian terminology in the familiar manner; but through long years of sitting
under Neo-orthodox teachings, a great number of Christians today have come to
understand these terms in a Neo-orthodox way. This bane of the churches has
left them “spiritual,” though their teaching of the Scriptures are thoroughly
helpless to equip the man of God for every good work in all of his life (2
Timothy 3:17).
The Neo-orthodox teachers
reject the inerrancy of the Bible. They do not believe that God has spoken to
men in truth only. One of them has even said blatantly that God can just as
well speak His Word to men through false doctrine as well as true (Brunner, as
quoted by Clark, 38). But that is clearly nonsense. How can something be both
true and false at the same time? Is not God a God of truth? How could He speak
lies? But then, if their system were true, how would we know? The Biblical
passages that speak of the unfailing words and entire truthfulness of God might
just be some of the mistakes made by the ancient shepherds, priests, and
fishermen who wrote the manuscripts of the Bible.
It seems that those who
deny the Scriptures’ trustworthiness have not faced this question: if the Bible
is wrong about itself, why should any of the rest of it be accepted as true and
worthy of belief? It would seem that, as Dr. Clark says, “A book that gives a
false account of its own origin and nature (or a prophet who mistakes the
current views of history and the cosmos for the Word of God) is not a reliable
guide in religion” (59). “If the Bible does not correctly represent itself,”
Clark says again, “there seems to be no good reason for taking it seriously on
any other subject” (113). Again he asks them, “If the prophets spoke falsely
when they said that their words were the words of God, put in their mouths by
the Holy Spirit, so that the God who cannot lie was speaking through
them—if they were thus in error, what confidence can we have in anything
else they said?” (58). If
Herodotus did not write the history book that bears his name, why should we
believe any of the things he says that are not explicitly backed by archaeology?
And if we deny that archaeology backs up Herodotus, as the Neo-orthodox deny
that archaeology backs up the Bible, why should we believe a word he says? What
basis do the Neo-orthodox have for trusting the Scriptures to reveal to them
even their cherished, personally-derived truths regarding eternal salvation and
moral standards? I ask with Dr. Gordon Clark, “By what epistemological
criterion do they distinguish between the Bible’s truths and the Bible’s
mistakes? For if the Bible makes false assertions, there must be a criterion
independent of and superior to the Bible’s by which its assertions must be
judged” (184).
Truth Redefined and Knowledge Repudiated
Even though it seems as
foolish to try to derive truth from error as it does to bring gold forth from
the lead pot, the Neo-orthodox think they know how to do it. They begin their
attempt to discover spiritual truth about salvation and morality from an
error-filled Bible by dividing truth into unknowable “divine truth” and
inexpressible “personal truth.” Logical truth—real, understandable
truth—does not come into the picture. The Neo-orthodox do not grant that
truth is propositional, i.e. that
“only propositions are the object of knowledge” (180). They think they can
discover something about salvation by dividing truth (which they have redefined
to be irrational) into God’s truth and man’s truth. However, because it is
impossible to reconcile or know these two truths, the Neo-orthodox and their
followers are left in philosophical skepticism masquerading under Christian
language.
Before we can talk anymore
about how this bifurcation of truth bears on the question of the Bible’s
trustworthiness, we must remember that unless truth is attainable by human
understanding it does not matter whether the Bible is true or not. As Dr. Clark
wisely points out, “the question of truth is a prior question, and unless the
Bible is true, there is not much use in discussing inspiration” (1). Unless
truth is knowable, inerrancy, like inspiration, has no meaning or purpose in
the Christian’s life. If truth is inaccessible by men, the doctrines one
believes make little difference.
The Neo-orthodox believe
that the human mind cannot know real truth. This demonstrates why they are
unwilling to accept the axiom of Christianity—it is because they are
unwilling to accept the axiom of all thought and logic, the law of
contradiction, without which nothing is intelligible or can be true or false.
Because they have rejected logic, they have rejected truth. Dr. Clark relates
the following about a certain Neo-orthodox teacher; “The statement was made,
questioned, and reaffirmed…that the human mind is incapable of receiving any
truth; the mind of man never gets any truth at all” (34). If the Neo-orthodox
doctrines are true, the knowledge of truth, that is, an understanding of
reality, is inaccessible by men and women. What else is this but skepticism?
Why does it even retain the name of Christian?
It is just as evident that
we can know something of reality as it is that we cannot know everything about
reality. These Neo-orthodox teachers are both dangerous and logically absurd
when they say that it is impossible for us to know any truth about reality. If
it is as they propose, the Bible is a big book of falsehoods because it purports
itself to teach knowledge about God, men, and things. It is an effective denial
of God, just as much as it is of His Word, to think that we cannot know the
truth that God has revealed to us. In order to deny God and manifest the fruits
of skepticism, someone does not have to teach outright that knowledge is
entirely unachievable. He only needs to say that we cannot know anything for
certain. The results are the same. Truth is made unknowable, life is made
meaningless, and God as God is denied. Dr. Clark states this very clearly:
“even the most innocuous skepticism is sufficient to defeat the Gospel. To
speed the dissolution of Christianity, it is not necessary to say that we know
a contrary philosophy is true; it is equally effective to say that we do not
know anything is true. The Gospel is a message of positive content, and whether
it is dogmatically denied or merely silenced makes little difference” (196).
By redefining familiar
Christian terminology, the Neo-orthodox have deceived a great number of
Christians. Many people in the pews are totally unaware of their teachers’
skepticism; but, even though they would disagree with it, they still use
arguments based on Neo-orthodox premises. They do not know the foundations of
their own statements. For example, if someone says this about the Bible’s
doctrinal teachings, “Well, that may be the way you read it; but I read it this
way, and it doesn’t really make any difference,” he is assuming that the
Biblical propositions do not declare objective knowable truth, which all
Christians are to believe and live by. His words presume that Scripture does
not reveal the mind of the unchanging God in an accessible, understandable way.
Rather, he is assuming the Neo-orthodox idea of personal truth. Because the
Neo-orthodox are human and think with logic and still want to have the truth
they have denied themselves, they have proposed a theory of personal truth.
This idea is set against truth as propositional and it does not depend on the
truth or falsity of the Scriptures, but on the emotional “faith” of the person
having the experience.
“But,” cry the Neo-orthodox,
“there is no single point of coincidence between God’s thought and our thought.
We cannot know what God thinks!” Dr. Clark quotes Emil Brunner saying, “God and
the medium of conceptuality are mutually exclusive. God is personal and
discloses himself only in the medium of personality…. One cannot be related to
God by way of thinking (Philosophie und Offenbarung, 50)” (100). That is, no one can think about God (or
any other person) and have their thoughts be true about Him. Words are unable to convey truth in
Neo-orthodoxy. This is diametrically opposed to the Biblical system, in which
truth is equated with God’s words many times (John 17:17; Psalm 119:30). Dr. Clark describes it this way: “God has spoken his Word in
words, and these words are adequate symbols of the conceptual content. The
conceptual content is literally true, and it is the univocal, identical point
of coincidence in the knowledge of God and man” (38). Because the Neo-orthodox
deny that God can use words, Dr. Clark’s query is very sound: “Where do these
theologians obtain their information as to what God can or cannot do?” (118).
Since they do not trust the Bible’s statements as a source of truth and
knowledge (the basis of faith), what is the source of the infallible personal
truth from it, which they believe? It cannot be the Scripture’s propositions.
And how can they learn something (true or not) that they can think about, like
salvation or morality, from a personal truth that is unable to be thought
about? They never answer this question.
What then is personal truth?
“Personal truth” is really indefinable. Since the Neo-orthodox have rejected
propositional truth and language as a medium of conveying meaning, they must
say that the concepts of reality are incommunicable, that real truth is
inexpressible. In this they are merely existentialists, and are not Christian
at all. But because they want to be ‘Christian’ they teach, “Jesus is the
personal truth of God.” If we know Jesus personally, we can then know the truth
of God—we just cannot explain or discuss that truth (i.e. that experience), for then it would not be the real
truth. If described in words, truth becomes falsity because truth is not
propositional, but experiential. The real truth is the personal experience with
God, not the concepts conveyed by His words.
Personal truth is not an
understandable statement of the way things are; it is better classified as
individual spiritual encounters here and there. What hopelessness! They must
then be always searching for some experience of the “truth”; but never finding
anything solid that would have any bearing on their lives. Additionally, it
surely is as Dr. Clark says, “a meeting in which no conceptual knowledge or
intellectual content was conveyed would not give the subject any reason for thinking he had met God” (102 emphasis in original). Even though an experience might be called
by the name of some religion or other, it does not deserve any proper title if
there is nothing conceptually involved. Religions, including existentialism,
demand more than passion; they demand that something in particular, a certain
set of propositions, be believed.
It is for the Neo-orthodox
theologians who know the skepticism they have devised for themselves as it was
for Kierkegaard, here described by Dr. Clark: “Religion is a matter of feeling,
of anti-intellectual passionateness. What one believes is of no importance; how
one believes it makes all the difference in the world” (95). Regarding the
“how” and the “what” of belief, Dr. Clark brings up a very valid point:
“Indeed, if there were no intelligible speech or thought, we could never know
whether an encounter was an encounter with Christ the Son of God or whether it
was Kierkegaard’s encounter with an idol. The very identification of Jesus as
the Son of God cannot possibly be made without intelligible thought” (102).
Since the Neo-orthodox despair of knowable truth they also must despair of
knowing Christ, even by encounter. Because they have divided truth and insist
that knowing God is only “personal,” and in no way conceptual, they have made
both God and reality unknowable.
Jesus
Christ is the Mediator between God and man and the Revealer of the truth of God
to man. He expressly said, “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I
came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37). There are a great number of
other passages that say this same thing, i.e. that one of the deeds of the Christ
was to teach men accurate concepts about God, men, and the universe—the
truth. The Neo-orthodox like to think of Jesus as the truth incarnate, while
explaining away the fact that truth is not personality, but proposition. Our
Savior is a Person and, as such, He is not “truth,” but the Person who reveals
truth. Truth itself is the meaning of propositions that make correct statements
about reality, visible or invisible, concrete or abstract. All other uses of
the word “truth” are figurative. John 14:6 stands as an example. If Jesus did not use
“truth” metaphorically when He said, “I am the truth, the way, and the life,”
He would have had to be a physical highway and a universal life shared by all
things, as well as the whole system of true propositions. Nevertheless, the
Neo-orthodox have been known to say that this was not a metaphorical use of
“truth” and to use this figurative verse as grounds for their claim that Jesus
was truth embodied.
All personal relationships
have been confused on account of the Neo-orthodox slant towards rejecting
thought as capable of knowledge. By denying that we know persons through our
conceptual perceptions of them (whether true or not), every relationship,
including with Christ, has been reduced to irrational emotion. Responsibility,
authority, and accountability are all laid aside in relationships if we cannot
know people by thinking about them. Please let it be remembered that Brunner
said that conceptuality and personality are mutually exclusive. This means that
God’s children cannot know Christ through His Word or anything true about men
and nature that can be explained or taught or communicated to another. Personal
truth does not involve knowledge. To them, true knowledge of a person—a
true relationship—is merely an emotional experience, and involves no real
knowledge. This leaves a big question: when was the last time anyone met
someone else or had an encounter with something and thought was not involved?
One Neo-orthodox writer said
this concerning our relationship with God: “Worship in spirit and in truth
includes the recognition that human words are inadequate, so that our prayers
must be given by the Spirit a meaning that we cannot verbalize” (Hamilton as quoted by Clark, 168 emphasis added).
He is saying that the Holy Spirit transforms our prayers and praises so that
God can understand them. Somehow, God the Spirit is supposed to “translate” our
prayers, giving them another meaning so that God the Father can comprehend our praises and petitions. Though
they probably will not say it quite like that, it is what they mean if they
really believe any of the rest of the things they say about the disjunction
between God’s knowledge and ours. It seems that those who would agree with
Hamilton have forgotten to ask how it is possible for the Holy Spirit of the
God of “personal truth” (i.e.
encounter) to understand our propositional prayers in order to unverbalize them
for God’s benefit.
Thus it is that
Neo-orthodoxy teaches people that knowing God is something that we cannot know.
This is not the Scripture, which says that faithful obedience is loving and
knowing God (Jeremiah 22:15, 16; Philippians 3:8, 10; 1 Timothy 1:5; 1 John 5:3; Psalm 119:142).
Neo-orthodox ministers think that truth is merely an inexpressible encounter
and that knowing God is to trust an unknowable Person without cause. Our thoughts
and prayers in words are null and void because they are not strictly encounter.
Neo-orthodoxy cannot well answer the immediately arising question: “But if we
cannot think about God, how can we know if our encounter with truth was with
Jesus? How can we distinguish between truth and error, good and evil, God and
the Devil? How can we know there is even eternal salvation offered to us?”
Neo-orthodoxy’s attempt to
answer how one may know there is salvation if God cannot directly tell us
depends on yet another redefinition. Though they might think they have the
answer neatly lined up, it is necessarily full of much-glorified logical
paradox. They will say they have faith—but what they put their faith in
is only an analogy. The Neo-orthodox think that all human knowledge is simply
an analogy of what is in the mind of God. This they feel free to call the
truth, regardless of the fact that an analogy of a truth is by its very nature
not the truth.
This claimed “analogical”
knowledge of the truth, attained by men from a fallible Bible, is a total
disjunction from the knowledge that God has. The conceptual content in the mind
of man is totally unlike the conceptual content in the mind of God. Their use
of the word “analogical” to claim this is self-defeating and displays yet
another layer of redefining required by their first redefinition. They find it
necessary to redefine “analogy,” as well as “knowledge” and “truth,” because
real analogies depend on the existence of at least one concept that is
identical in the minds of both parties. Thus, the “analogical knowledge” they
propose is not analogous at all, but rather is an equivocation. According to
Dr. Clark, their allegation that knowledge is analogical only disguises their
skepticism. Although an analogy requires at least one point of coincidence in
order for there to be any understanding communicated, the analogical knowledge
taught by the Neo-orthodox has no such property (33). If there is no point of
coincidence at all between God’s knowledge and our knowledge, there is no
analogy and even less communication.
Since the Neo-orthodox have
set themselves independent from God’s knowledge, it is incomprehensible why
they continue to say there is such things as eternal salvation or morality or
such a Person as God. They can neither prove nor give any evidence (indeed, the
evidence is against them) for a merciful God who has provided atonement to save
many from sin and misery (though they redefine these latter subjects as well).
The most devastating reply of all is Dr. Clark’s: “if the human mind were
limited to analogical truths, it could never know the univocal truth that it
was limited to analogies” (33, 34). The Neo-orthodox claim that “the human mind
cannot receive any truth at all” is a claim to a universal truth, which is
exactly what they are denying we can know. No philosophizing theologian, or
anyone else, can escape the logical natures of language, truth, and knowledge
in which they inherently function as creatures made in God’s image.
Faith Reinvented
We have seen that the
Neo-orthodox reject the possibility of God’s speaking to man because they have
rejected the possibility of knowing the same thing that God knows—and yet
they ask us to have faith in and enter into a relationship with this unknowable
God. They go to great pains to show Him as incapable of communication, which is
the essence of a personal relationship, and then they go out and call people to
“have faith in Jesus.” What sort of false hope is this that they call men to?
What do they mean by “faith”? Yet again, they redefine truth into error.
This
faith they speak of, this leap of faith to “believe” what is unknown and
unknowable, is not at all Christian. Christian faith is firmly grounded in the
truth of God. The Christian’s faith is his believing, through the effectual
working of the Holy Spirit’s regeneration of his heart, that which he has heard
and understood from the Word of God. Because all men are sinners by nature, Dr.
Clark states, “In order to accept the Gospel, therefore, it is necessary to be
born again. The abnormal, depraved intellect must be remade by the Holy Spirit;
the enemy must be made a friend…a heart of flesh can be given only by God
himself” (20). The Christian believes that the Holy Spirit of God opens the
hearts and ears of those “appointed to eternal life” that they might believe
the word of the Gospel, which they have heard (Acts 13:48),
the testimony God has witnessed to His Son (John 3:33;
8:18, 47). As Dr. Clark says so well, “The witness or testimony of the Holy
Spirit is a witness to something. The Spirit witnesses to the authority of
Scripture” (21). And Scripture plainly teaches that the gospel of Christ is
understood in the mind of the sinner before it is believed by faith from a
heart regenerated by the Spirit of God (Romans 10:17). The person who submits to
the righteousness of God then trusts Him and is brought into relationship with
Him.
Dr.
Clark explains that at the moment of conversion Christ does not impart new
knowledge to a person, but rather causes him to accept and believe that which
he has heard and understood. Since this is the manner in which the Spirit
witnesses to the previously communicated message, strong emphasis must be
placed on the work of the Holy Spirit in every discussion of faith in God and
in His Word (22). It is only the Holy Spirit who can make a friend and a
believer out of natural men, whose minds are natively hostile to God and His
revealed Word regarding Himself, men, and things. Even so, faith is the
righteous and only rational response to the Scriptures. Unbelief is a wicked
and irrational response because the Bible is found to be clear of any charge of
inconsistency in either doctrine or historical account. The Spirit of God who
gave it works faith in some who hear its words and leaves others in rebellion,
to blatantly and absurdly jump to the conclusion that it is false.
“But faith is the response
that is supposed to be like a leap,” many people would say. “Faith is something
miraculous, and has nothing to do with logic. It is by faith that we love and
trust Jesus, without having to have reasons or answers.”
But
do you ordinarily trust a stranger? How do you know about God? How do you know
that the Jesus you love and trust is the real Jesus? How do you know Him? This is
why the doctrine of the inerrant Holy Scriptures is so very important for
Christians to understand, believe, and steadfastly hold. Though the Bible is
the source of our knowledge of God and our faith is the gift of God, the
Neo-orthodox do not like to think of Scripture and faith being connected with
such an unbreakable bond as the Spirit of God. In their anti-intellectualism
they would personally prefer a faith that is logically paradoxical, and thus
groundless. Clark quotes Brunner: “The paradoxes of faith…are not merely
problems difficult to solve but are ‘necessary contradictions in themselves and
therefore also contradictions against the fundamental law of all knowledge, the
law of contradiction, ergo no
knowledge’ (Philosophie und Offenbarung 34)” (101). The “faith” of Neo-orthodoxy has no basis. It is emotion
without cause.
The veracity of the
Scriptures has no part in Neo-orthodox faith and life like it has had
throughout the history of God’s people. The Bible’s primacy is forgotten. Dr.
Clark states that each system of thought “depends of necessity on
indemonstrable premises, and every system must make an attempt to explain how
these primary premises come to be accepted” (19). In Christianity, faith is the
means by which the primary premise of the Scripture as the sufficient Word of
God is accepted. The Neo-orthodox take issue with this because they have
rejected the Scripture as the Word of God, logic, language, truth, and even
knowledge itself. For them, faith is irrational, and thus meaningless. Without
logic, nothing (even God’s own revelation) has any meaning whatsoever, truth is
fallen in the street, and language and knowledge are laid in the grave without
mourners. Only passionateness is left, aimless and impersonal; for without
logic even relationships are no more. Under the influence of the Neo-orthodox,
the Christian faith has necessarily become a useless blend of confusing
contradictions. Without rationality, no one can know anything, all
relationships are dead, there is no truth, and nothing is really real.
In all their arguments and
paradoxes, there always remains one little thing which the Neo-orthodox have
not been able to redefine away, and that is this: if their system was true and
things are as they claim—if we only had analogical knowledge, if emotion
was faith, if the mind of man could know no truth—this truth also could
not be known by human understanding. In facing this, they are left with two
options, neither of which they will willingly choose: either God is not God at
all and their salvation and faith is void—or they are wrong. If their
basic univocal truth-claim is right and there is no univocal truth that both
God and man can know, how do they know this?
For the Neo-orthodox, God is a Liar
There is, then, for the Neo-orthodox,
no real communication between man and man or God and man (i.e. no true revelation or relationship); God is
unknowable and His Word a lie. One can believe it in whatever way he wants to,
for it is an untrustworthy source of knowledge. But before anyone disbelieves
it, they ought to remember Hebrews
12:25, a word from the unfailing God of truth, whose word breaks the rocks:
“See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who
refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away
from Him who speaks from heaven.” Nevertheless, as Dr. Clark says, “If, now,
anyone prefers a symbolism that points to some unknowable, if anyone takes
pleasure in irrational paradox, if anyone enjoys wordless encounters, further
words and ideas will not change his emotions” (120). Though we may lay out
indisputable reasonings regarding the inerrancy of God’s Word, we cannot coerce
the Neo-orthodox to believe the truth because faith is from God.
The Neo-orthodox teachers
are unwilling to accept that God can speak to men because they are unwilling to
be God’s creatures, made in His image. These enemies of God’s truth disbelieve
the inerrancy of Scripture because they do not believe we can know any truth;
and they disbelieve truth because they have cast aside logic, the image of God
in mankind. It is for these reasons that the Neo-orthodox influence in the
church has been so very harmful and weakening, as it has diverted many from
true faith, knowledge, and life in the Spirit. For truly, as Dr. Clarks says,
“if skepticism prevails, if there is no truth—no gospel that the human
mind can grasp—we might as well worship idols in a heathen temple” (197).
Though this is so, we may take comfort in these words of Dr. Clark, drawn from
his logical analysis of the Scriptures and his faith in their righteousness: “A
satisfactory theory of revelation must involve a realistic epistemology…God has
spoken his Word in words, and these words are adequate symbols of the
conceptual content. The conceptual content is literally true, and it is the
univocal, identical point of correspondence in the knowledge of God and man”
(38). Scripture, faith, and reason agree in testifying that God’s words are
sufficient for His revelation of Himself, that we have been given the ability
to know them, and that, by His saving grace, we have also been given faith to
believe them. Let us say with the Psalmist, “Forever, O Lord, Your word is
settled in heaven…I will never forget Your precepts, for by them You have given
me life” (Psalm 119:89, 93).
[i] All quotations other than Scripture (NKJV) are from God’s
Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics,
1995.
