In my last post, I stated that the claim that
there is no common objective ground (no neutrality or, as Van Til says, “point
of contact”) between a believer and unbeliever is inseparable from the claim
that there are no “brute facts.” I argued that this view (what I also called
“hard presuppositionalism” or “epistemological idealism”) conflicts with our common—actual
and routine—experience of knowing. We can indeed, as I suggested, observe and
identify the properties of things in
themselves. I called this Interpretation 1 and illustrated it with a
lectern, beef stew, and a toothpick. Our knowing, then, as humans is not
confined, exhausted, or totally determined by our presuppositions, as “hard
presuppositionalism” (or what I called Interpretation 2) maintains. Put
differently, there is a decisive role for the non-mental (that is, external
reality itself) in determining truth, which means that reality has a physical,
non-mental, or material aspect to it that is what it is objectively regardless
of what the human mind attempts to make of it subjectively.
As
is perhaps evident by now, my general concern is that the adoption of this kind
of integration of philosophy with Christianity/Reformed theology was not, in
the first place, critical enough from
a biblical standpoint. I suggested earlier that in a quest to enhance Reformed
theology, philosophy in its arrogance seemed to offer an understanding of
knowing so centered and absolute in the human mind (“all knowledge is human
knowledge”) that were one to substitute that centeredness with the mind of God
(“all knowledge is divine”—and known for believers through regeneration and
Scripture), it would seem to glorify God all the more. One could extend,
thereby, the dimension of sin to include a problem of unknowing in general due
to the absence of knowing God’s mind. Consequently, the gospel would be
construed as first addressing this problem of unknowing by putting in place
what Christians believe (based on Scripture) as the condition for knowing
anything at all. The only problem, however (as I’ve been arguing), is that the
theory so used to create this hybrid of philosophy and Christian/Reformed theology
is itself wrong or untrue to the nature of the reality of knowing as we commonly
experience it.
There
is, however (and as already indicated), another (even more important) test on
which, I trust, we may agree: Whatever
our epistemology, if we find that it is inconsistent with biblical assumptions
or apostolic practice pertaining to truth, should we not prayerfully reconsider
it? That is, if the hybrid doctrine of Christian/Reformed theology and
philosophy I’ve been examining is true and from God, would it not have always
been so? Would it not, therefore, be reflected in biblical assumptions or
apostolic practice? Or are we as the church today claiming to know something
about the nature of truth that the apostles and prophets didn’t know—that the
Spirit never guided them to recognize in Scripture? Moreover, did the church
have to wait until that succession of modern philosophers from Descartes to
Kant (the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries)—wait even longer until Van Til
interpreted them for Christian/Reformed purposes in the twentieth century—to
get an upgrade on how best to glorify God in its apologetics? That is, did the
church wait almost two thousand years before it discovered that there are no
“brute facts,” that external reality (or objective truth) is not directly
knowable, that there is no public or universal truth for—no common or neutral
ground between—believers and unbelievers? If so, do the Scriptures truly make
“the man of God” complete, fully prepared for every good work? If so, what
about the work of defending the faith? And do we truly have the whole counsel of God in Scripture (the
assumption behind the historic Reformation appeal to sola Scriptura)? Or did the church have to wait, late in its
history, until certain philosophers came along to inform us (with the help of
Christian/Reformed theology) that there cannot be common ground for truth
between a believer and unbeliever? If so, what else will the church learn in
the future from the philosophers? And should we not be encouraging the church
to start reading the philosophers—not just the Bible—to build ourselves up in our
most holy faith? If we as the church, for lack of philosophical insight, have
been always so deficient in understanding on such an important matter throughout
our long history, why would we not get wise to the situation and start devoting
outselves not only to the apostles’ but also
the philosophers’ teaching?
I
don’t believe that TGC council members would support that. But, sadly, even in
Christian/Reformed academic circles (colleges and seminaries) one often finds
the view that philosophers are the experts on things like knowledge and truth,
because it is thought that the Bible simply has nothing to say about such
things. This is why we may not discern the nuance in a statement like that made
by TGC, when it says (at its website under its Confessional Statement on
“Revelation”) that Scripture is “final in its authority over every domain of
knowledge to which it speaks [emphasis
mine—jnp].” I mean that for Christians who respect the Bible as God’s Word and,
hence, authoritative and final as truth over all the fields of learning, it may
not be readily understood that there are Christian leaders and scholars (and I
am not implicating TGC here but just speaking generally) who might say things
like: “Yes, the Bible is the final judge and standard of truth in our belief
and practice but the Bible does not intend to give us knowledge about things
like how the world began (cosmology) or what we are to do with the
philosopher’s questions about knowing (epistemology).” That is, if it has been
determined that the Bible does not speak to a particular domain of knowledge
(let’s say, a scientific or philosophical theory), then it is perceived as
having no authority as truth on that
matter. (As someone has said, “the Bible is not a little black book of
theories.”)
However,
one problem with this approach to biblical authority in relation to the various
fields of learning is that apparently it assumes the Bible has to raise certain
questions and deal with them as the various fields of learning do in order to
be understood as offering knowledge on such. We seem to be claiming that if on
any question the Bible does not play, for instance, philosophy’s games or dance
to its theoretical melody (didn’t Jesus encounter that sort of challenge in his
public ministry?), then, again, it doesn’t have anything to say in that regard.
But does the Bible, for example, have to treat ethics the way philosophy does
to have a divinely authoritative position on ethics? Does the Bible have to
theorize about history as philosophers do to have a divinely normative
philosophy of history? (Obviously, Augustine didn’t think so.) And more
pertinently, does the Bible have to entertain the questions philosophers have
about knowing in order to have a view—even a decisive and normative one—about knowing?
Here
is my concern: if we let philosophy, based on its methods, set the standard for
what qualifies as real or true knowledge, then it isn’t just truth which is at
stake (as if that were not enough!) but nothing
Christians believe is safe. For instance, the Bible never handles the question
of whether one person can die for others (what is central to the atonement of
Christ) in the sophisticated manner Kant does in his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Does the Bible have a
theory on this matter? It does not in the sense that it does not treat this
subject matter as Kant does. But does it have a position on such? I’m sure we
would agree that it certainly does. On the other hand, what is the conclusion
of Kant’s philosophical treatment of this particular question? That as a matter
of justice, the vicarious suffering and death of one man on behalf of others is
simply not rational. As such, therefore, the doctrine of Christ’s atonement is,
on Kant’s account, unworthy of an enlightened human race.
There
are many other things to be considered on this question of biblical authority,
epistemology, and philosophy. But this is not the appropriate context to
enlarge on such. However, I could not proceed with a presentation of biblical
assumptions and apostolic practice without anticipating a dismissal of
everything I am about to say based on a prior decision that the Bible has
nothing to say about epistemology. What this tends to mean, as just stated, is
that philosophy will in some sense (however slight or limited) occupy the
driver’s seat for epistemology. The net result will be the real risk that
certain biblical prerequisites for the self-disclosure of the God of truth to
people on earth will be altered, adversely affecting the dynamics of its
reception at the level of human knowing itself. Whereas Christian conservatives
today, thankfully, are quick to stand against schemes that charge the Bible
with errors—knowing the negative effect this would have for confidence that we
can know God and his will—we seem naive or strangely gullible to the possibility
that essentially the very same loss occurs when we accept philosophy’s
skepticism (cloaked as “Reformed theology”) about human knowing itself.
But
I leave that topic and proceed by restating the question already introduced: Whatever our epistemology, if we find that
it is inconsistent with biblical assumptions or apostolic practice pertaining
to truth, should we not prayerfully reconsider it?
Biblical
Assumptions about Knowing
Let’s
consider, first, biblical assumptions. As already stated in different ways (such
as my tri-level illustration for knowledge) that the Bible clearly and
consistently treats truth similarly to the way we understand truth in a court
room or every day life: it is knowable, can be discovered through evidence and
witnesses, can be (contrary to Phillips) reliably known and carried
successfully by humans to others, etc. For example, the ninth commandment which
forbids bearing false witness about one's neighbor and implies positively a
command to bear true witness (be faithful or reliable agents of truth) that way presents us with a God who is not so much
concerned (as philosophers are) with the question of how we know as much as he is with that we know—and what we do
with what we know. From that standpoint, there may even be a problem with
bearing false witness about knowing itself—that is, what we indeed do know and know that we know under God's common
grace (as quoted earlier, what Calvin calls “common experience”) outside the
philosopher's shade—under which, I repeat, neither
the Old Testament prophets nor the New Testament apostles ever sat. This
seems especially true if our questions about knowing are encouraging us as
Christians to bury our epistemic talent or not act on or be faithful to what we know—or be fully engaged in
making it known (talking, reasoning, preaching, etc.) to others—perhaps because
we think our Lord, like many philosophers, is a hard epistemological
taskmaster.
Unquestionably,
Scripture presents everywhere on its sacred pages an epistemic confidence about
ordinary knowing and truth-telling in general. Indeed, the Bible assumes what
is called “epistemological realism” throughout its pages. By the latter, I mean
the view that, first, knowing is not just mental but also physical in
nature—that contrary to Descartes and others in the modern tradition, the
relationship between the mind and the body (or physical world) is not so
substantially different that there is no overlap, connection, or relatability
between them. As you know (and I often tell my students), quite different from
the ancient Greek thinkers to whom Western philosophy is greatly
indebted—Hebrew epistemology is “the kind of knowing that makes babies.” (I
might add: one doesn’t make a baby by thinking about it.) Second, by
“epistemological realism” I mean that knowing involves, positively, a
correspondence, accord, or match between the mind and the body (or physical
world) such that by God’s common grace (being made in his image and sustained
by his goodness) we ordinarily and reliably do know the truth—and can tell the
truth—about many things.
This
God-given ability for truth is also implied in the assumed integrity of the
relationship between simple seeing and knowing in the quite significant role of
the witness in relation to God’s
standard method of establishing truth. That is, for instance (and as we know),
under the Law of Moses every charge had to be established by the testimony of
two or three witnesses (Deut. 19:15; 2 Cor. 13:1). Now if we consider an answer
to a particular query concerning truth as similar to ascertaining what
something weighs, we might say that having “two or three witnesses” to confirm
the truth of a matter is what God has appointed as scales for weighing it. Accordingly, if “a false balance is an
abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is his delight” (Prov. 11:1), would
it not follow that if truth by virtue of human finitude (not to speak of sin)
is necessarily “subjective,” “partial,” or “selective” and that even one
witness, on that account, would be defective for ascertaining truth—not to
speak of the additional problems that would result from compounding the
testimony of two or three persons thus defective—wouldn’t God, in that case, hate—certainly not command—reliance upon
such witnesses to weigh the truth of a matter? Is there not, therefore, an
implied divine, though qualified,[1]
vote of confidence here in the “scales” of human knowing? And are we not even
called by God to recognize, if not uphold, that epistemic confidence when as a
church we follow the Lord’s instruction requiring two or three witnesses to
confirm any charge (2 Cor. 13:1)?
What
all this clearly implies, from a biblical standpoint, is that there must be in
some sense a reliable overlap in what the philosophers call “substance” between
levels one and two (respectively, body and mind) of my earlier tri-structure
illustration for knowing. However, as we know, this is precisely what Descartes
in his own epistemology rejects from the outset in favor of his mind-body
dualism (as inseparable from his subjectivity with all its problems for truth).
Nonetheless, this philosophically innocent relationship of simple seeing with
knowing is necessary, from a biblical standpoint, to give epistemic weight or
value to what a witness knows.
Hence,
in contrast to the foundational, first-person knowing (the “I think therefore I
am”) of Descartes and his modern successors, the Bible is third-person oriented
throughout. The Bible teaches us to say: “God is, therefore, I am.” It teaches
us to look away from ourselves—not within—to get to the foundation for
knowledge. “Thus saith the Lord,” as the prophets declared, is integral to
their task as witnesses for God—a third-person way of speaking.[2]
Or: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” is, again, a
third-person way of knowing. We begin not with ourselves but God—one who is other to us. In short, God is the
foundation for knowledge that Descartes exchanges for his own subjective consciousness.
As knowers, we always open our eyes, first of all, to the God who powerfully
shines through all that he has made. We hear what is written, “In the
beginning, God made the heavens and the earth.” Babies see, first of all, not
themselves but their mothers. Life is objectively oriented by nature. It takes
deliberate, contrived, self-conscious effort to become (allegedly for the sake
of knowledge) introvertedly subjective in the manner of a Descartes and the
entire modern, philosophical tradition that succeeds him. By virtue of
creation, knowledge does not come that way to us naturally. All this
third-person confidence for knowing throughout Scripture, to be sure, is why
one also finds there, as already indicated, the significant, mostly problem-free
role of witnesses for establishing truth. Indeed, such a confirmation for truth
is designedly not subjectively centered but, as just indicated, depends on at
least two or three persons who are objectively other to us.
Unsurprisingly,
this is also why modern philosophy in the tradition of Descartes undermines the
role of the witness (this plays out even more in Locke and Hume); it is because
its own first-person knowing (whether rationally based as in Descartes or
empirically based as in Locke and Hume) provides its foundational confidence
for what it knows. This is why the famous question as to whether or not other
persons even exist arose in the first place. If their very existence is in
question, where does that leave their testimony to truth as witnesses? Hence,
anything (the external world, other persons, etc.) outside that inner,
subjective consciousness amounts to a reality radically less certain and
ultimately unverifiable objectively as truth.
On
the other hand, under Hebrew realism, there is no such skepticism. For
instance, this is evident in the original word for “witness,” which is ed. This word means simply: “to repeat”
or “re-assert.” The implication is that a “witness” has the epistemic potential
or ability to make what they have experienced as reliable knowledge (or truth) occur again in a sense for others through words. It is not complicated. In
the Greek, the word for “witness” is martus,
which means, “one who attests to or reports what he has seen or heard.” It can
be applied to a person, such as what was required of an apostle in Acts 1:22,
namely, that he had seen Jesus after he was raised from dead. The implication
is that, when someone sees or hears something related to a case where truth is
needed and yet is uncertain (as in a court of law), a witness tells, repeats,
or attests to what they know (along with evidence and testimony from other
witnesses) as part of a discovery process designed to ascertain that truth.
Hence, I offer the following definition:
A
“witness” is one who by the ordinary powers of intelligence or perception has
seen or heard something and therefore knows something of interest—occupies the
role of an agent for truth in that
regard—and offers it as testimony to others in a particular veridical quest.
When I speak of a
“witness” as one who “has seen or heard something and therefore knows
something,” I mean, to go a bit deeper, that in the Bible and everyday knowing,
there is an operating assumption which both modern and postmodern philosophy
reject, namely, that we as humans made in God’s image have a direct (or
unmediated), epistemically reliable relationship to external reality.
Philosophers in the modern-postmodern mold deny that there is an “immediate
beholding” between a knower and the known. They maintain that our “beholding”
is mediate or that all knowing is
mediated by subjective ideas, representations, or “sense data.” That is, the
only direct relationship had between the mind and its world are these inner
states or conditions which supposedly derive in part from the real world but
mostly have more to do with the way our minds subjectively process things.
Consequently, on this view (as I’ve been saying), how we process or interpret
external reality cannot be checked against that reality itself. This has been
called the “egocentric predicament” or the “categorio-centric predicament.” The
former holds that knowing is centered in (or locked into) the ego, while the
latter maintains that the way our minds see or categorize the world is not something we can escape or get outside
of to verify if how we see things truly corresponds to the way things really
are.
However, one has only to
insert such a skeptical notion into a biblical context to see how alien it is
to the confidence for knowing one commonly finds there. Imagine, for example,
Moses responding to the Lord’s “What is that in your hand?,” with: “I have a
categorio-centric predicament, Lord. I don’t know what’s in my hand.” Or:
imagine Jesus Christ saying something like, "It seems to me (though I realize
others may have a different perspective on this) that I am the way, the truth,
and the life." Or: what if John the Baptist said: "To my mind, you
perhaps may want to think through the possibilities of repentance; for it
appears to me (and this may just be me talking here but) many people in our
culture seem to feel that there is a high degree of probability that the
kingdom of heaven is—all things being equal—at hand!"? Or: consider what a
more skeptical apostle Paul might say in his last letter to Timothy: “My dear
Timothy, I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to claim either that ‘I know whom I have believed,’ or that ‘I am convinced that he is able to guard
until that Day what has been entrusted to me.’ I will only say that, in my
view, what really counts, in the midst of all my doubts and uncertainties about
God and everything else, is to just keep believing. Faith is, as I’ve often said,
what you do when you don’t know. Do you understand, Timothy? We make the road we are walking.”
As I was saying, there is
a strong biblical emphasis on the role of the “witness” in relation to truth.
There is also something interesting about its composition as a word. It
combines “wit,” which, as we know, means (among other things), “a knower or
something that conveys knowledge,” and “ness,” which is a suffix meaning “the
quality or state of something.” In the current, skeptical atmosphere, it might
be helpful, therefore, instead of “witness” to employ a somewhat awkward
expression, such as, “a knower in state.” Keeping in mind my earlier
definition, what I mean by a “knower in state” is someone who we have grounds
to believe is in a state of knowing or
truth with respect to a particular matter—one which is of particular
interest to others who do not have that same knowledge, and for whom the
absence of that knowledge has created a problem or urgent need. Of course, I
would be quick to recognize that there are problems with witnesses (imperfect
memory, lying, wrong motives, a political agenda, etc.). However, the Bible,
our court system, and every day life (for example, reporting the news or what
happened at school or who said what on the political stage) all provide
contemporary weight and justification for the ongoing and important role of
witnesses.
Henceforth, also, I will
mostly use the expression “knower in state” instead of “witness” as I consider
the use of this important word in Scripture to emphasize the importance of
truth as objective, reliable, or trustworthy knowledge both in terms of God’s
self-disclosure and in what Scripture assumes about what humans can have or
grasp as truth both generally and particularly with respect to the truth of the
gospel. That is, contrary to Phillips’ statement that “with the postmoderns, we
are skeptical that finite, fallible humans are the agents of truth,”[3]
the Bible assumes that humans are and can be such agents in situations where
public truth is needed. My purpose in all this is to juxtapose biblical
assumptions or confidence in objective knowing with what I interpret as
Phillips’ (and TGC’s) variety of biblically qualified skepticism or
subjectivism, as I seek from TGC a reason or justification for this disparity.
I begin with what God says
about himself: "I am the one who knows, and I am a knower in state, declares the Lord" (Jere. 29:23). Here God
equates “one who knows” with a knower in
state. Moreover, that God is all-knowing in his role as a knower in state is spoken of elsewhere
in this way: "The eyes of the LORD
are in every place" (Prov. 15:3); or in another verse, "all are naked
and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account" (Heb. 4:13).
In this anthropomorphic understanding of what it means to know (and, again,
contrary to what many philosophers believe), seeing is knowing—that is, there is an implied successful or
reliable correlation between physical seeing and mental seeing such that truth
or knowledge is the result. Of course, it isn’t that this correlation is always right or always results in
reliable knowledge; rather, that there is the assumption that it ordinarily does so when there aren’t
internal and external conditions that might distort perception (such as drunkenness,
intent to lie, darkness, etc.).
Obviously, as already
stated, God's self-description here is an anthropomorphism. Importantly,
however, it is an anthropomorphism God has chosen to make himself known to us.
It indicates a direct relationship between human seeing and knowing, I say,
which seems to have an integrity sufficient
to provide an apt analogy for God's own knowing. Similarly, we see this same
correlation of seeing and knowing when Jesus says to Nicodemus: "we speak
of what we know, and bear knowledge in
state to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony" (Jn.
3:11). Or John the Baptist's description of his task of testifying to Christ:
"I have seen and borne knowledge in
state that this is the Son of God" (Jn. 1:34). Conversely, if there
were (as many philosophers maintain) a radical problem for human knowing, such
that there is no simple or unmediated seeing, would God have used this
anthromorphism to disclose the certainty of his own knowing? More to the point,
if Phillips were right that human finitude in itself means that human knowledge
of truth is only and always “subjective,” “selective,” and “partial”—if this
sort of errancy was the constitutive
state for mental seeing (that is: “seeing is not reliable knowing”)—again, would God have borrowed this feature
of what it means to be human to assure us that he, too, sees and knows?
I realize that there is an
immediate counter to this last statement: “Yes, but God also uses
anthropomorphic features like anger to reveal himself but in no way associates
himself with the humanly negative or sinful aspects of such.” This is true. But
when that occurs, Scripture tends to make such clear or obvious. For instance,
there is a human anger which is righteous (“Be angry but sin not; don’t let the
sun go down on your wrath”—Eph. 4:26) and unrighteous (“the anger of man does
not produce the righteousness of God”—Jas. 1:20). However, Scripture never identifies constitutive or innate
human problems with seeing and knowing (or pertaining to physical and mental
seeing) itself—that is, problems pertaining to every day matters of observation
and truth, in the manner of the
philosophers.
Now,
to take this a step further, as one considers the way in which God discloses
himself in the Bible, it is also apparent that he condescends to people on
earth by placing himself on trial not only through his Son in an actual trial
with its subsequent verdict and ultimate result but also epistemically with
respect to his truth as revealed in the Bible concerning his Son. Although in
his sovereignty, God could have simply declared his Word and left it to the
Holy Spirit to confirm that word directly as his Word in the hearts of his
people, God did not do that. Undoubtedly, the Holy Spirit does confirm the Word
to the heart but does so, according to God’s own counsel, in conjunction with
and through his own appointed evidence, testimony, or witnesses of various kinds. I repeat: by God’s own sovereign design, he has not
appointed his truth to be believed based merely on his own authority as
God or the internal witness or work of the Holy Spirit.
We may think that this is unworthy or
unspiritual of God as God to do such a thing—that is, to make himself subject
to such a trial. We may say to ourselves, "All God has to do is tell me
something. I don't need evidence for it. I don’t need his miracles. I don’t
need his witnesses. His Word is true, and that's all I need." But if God himself has sovereignly given such
evidence and summoned us to this trial, who are we to reject what God has
appointed? Admittedly, it is wrong to put God to the test, for example, in the
way that Satan tempted Jesus to jump off the temple so as to confirm that God
would catch him. On the other hand, when God commands us to test him, for example,
in the giving of tithes and his promise to bless us for such or when he says,
"Taste and see that the Lord is good," it amounts to sin or unbelief
if we don’t.
Moreover,
this kind of testing as testimony or confirmation of his truth is consistent in
general with God's way of dealing with us.
For example, when Paul says to those in Lystra, "He did not leave
himself without knowledge in state"
(Acts 14:17), this is true not just when it comes to God's faithfulness to
maintain seasons of the year but true in general of God's entire way of
revealing himself through the prophets and the apostles: That is Heaven's first century verdict issued
by the apostles beginning at Jerusalem and spreading throughout the entire
world, namely, that Jesus is God's Messiah, came through apostles who had been
prepared and appointed by God to be knowers
in state—people who had seen and who knew things about Jesus of Nazareth,
the way other people know things by hearing and seeing and touching (see 1 Jn.
1:1-3). Jesus had said to the apostles:
"You will be my knowers in state
in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth"
(Acts 1:8; see also Acts 10:41).
Furthermore,
their role as knowers in state or
“agents for truth” was simply the last stage in which God spoke to the world
through His Son who is himself identified as "the faithful knower in state" (Rev. 1:5). The
apostolic testimony as knowledge in state
had itself been preceeded by over 1,500 years of testimony in which God spoke
through the prophets who were also God's knowers
in state for the coming Messiah: "To Him all the prophets bear knowledge in state" (Acts 10:43).
Having
heard this, someone once objected that the apostles were given by the Spirit
special faculties of hearing and seeing. They were made infallible, therefore,
not merely in what they taught or wrote but also in the use of their senses.
God gave them abilities different from the rest of us. Hence, when they saw
Jesus after his resurrection, what they saw, heard, and touched—their ability
to exercise sensory perception—was supernatural. And this is what commends
their testimony as witnesses and makes it reliable. Now I hope the problem such
a hypothesis presents is obvious. Besides the fact that this shows how far some
have gone to accommodate modern and postmodern skepticism and that Scripture
nowhere indicates that the apostles had special sensory powers, the more
significant problem with such a proposal is that the only reason a witness has
a role in discovering or confirming the truth in relation to others (in quest
of the same) is as a kind of surrogate
knower for them.[4]
That is, there is a fundamental assumption behind the role of a witness in
helping us arrive at the truth of a matter: such
a person knows what they know in the same way others could have known had they
been there to witness the same things. As I stated at the beginning, if a
witness claims a special knowing for sensory matters, their testimony is not
useful for attaining the needed truth (that is, the judge would throw it out).
This is because, in that case, for everyone else (the judge, the other
attorney, the jury, etc.), the problem of what they need to know gets
compounded by the introduction of a way
of knowing to which they are strangers. That is, such a witness is
disqualified as a surrogate knower.
It is true that prophets and apostles have many things to say that “no eye has
seen or ear heard or the heart of man conceived” (1 Cor. 2:9). However, when
the apostle John says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with
our hands, concerning the word of life” (1 Jn. 1:1-2), he is claiming to be
(along with the other apostles) a surrogate knower in an ordinary sense (as in
a court of law)—a compelling and convincing knower
in state—so as to assure our hearts that his testimony about Jesus Christ
is wellfounded, true and reliable. This just means that knowledge proceeding
from God and by the Spirit through regeneration in the heart—as truly
supernatural as it is—has by God’s design and for its confirmation a natural,
external, or physical aspect to it. Consequently, God’s truth is not full-orbed
or fully biblical unless we recognize this public, even ordinary, dimension.
Furthermore,
what we see with the apostle John in the passage just quoted is just the
culmination of God’s way of showing himself as God to all the nations. And he
does so (again, contrary to Phillips) in a way that assumes a common
epistemological ground not only between believers and unbelievers but also
between himself and the nations (that is, mostly unregenerate people). We see
this, perhaps most graphically in Isaiah 43:8-12 and 44:6-8, where we find God
looking at earth and all its history, again, as a kind of court room process in
which all of earth's inhabitants (including Israel) are under a divine subpoena
to show up as knowers in state. What
God does here is evidence of his concern for discovery (similar to the court
room) on the part of all people with respect to an ultimate veridical quest to
know who the true God and Savior of the world is. He turns to the nations
themselves (that is, other than Israel) and challenges them to look at their
history. They are asked to consider whether they can produce as knowers in state the evidence of
fulfilled, predictive prophecies that one finds with God's prophets or
Scripture itself. "Let them declare
what is to come and what will happen" (Isa. 44:7), God says to the nations
gathered in his court room. And again, he says, "Let them bring their knowers in state to prove them right,
and let them hear and say, It is true" (Isa. 43:9). Then, in that same
court room, God turns to assembled Israel and says, "You are my knowers in state [i.e., you have seen my
prophecies fulfilled, you know these things are true]...that you may know and believe" (Isa. 43:10).
Later,
God challenges Israel in its state of apostasy to argue with him, again, as in
a court of law: "Let us argue together," God says, "set forth
your case, that you may be proved right" (Isa. 43:26). He is asking them
to pit their own knowledge in state
against the knowledge in state of
prophecy or Scripture and see what the veridical results might be. Therefore,
to both the nations and Israel God is declaring that the miraculous aspect of
fulfilled, predictive prophecy is itself a knowledge
in state supportive of the truth that he as the God of Israel is indeed God
alone, that what his prophets are saying is true and truly from him. The
implication is that the nations of the earth can produce no testimony or
knowledge or truth either equal or opposite to God's testimony so as to
overturn the verdict established by God's own knowledge in state that He alone is God and there is no other.
In
Jesus' earthly ministry, this planetary court room process orchestrated by God
himself continues in that final period of time in human history known as “the
last days”: the verdict to which the
process was aimed is that he is truly the Messiah, the Son of God. We see this
especially in John's Gospel (5:30-47), where Jesus supports the statement,
"my judgment is just" (concerning his identity as the Son of God), by
pointing to an array of weighty knowers
or knowledge in state. It is indeed
very much like he is conducting a trial:
(1)
John the Baptist: There is another
who bears knowledge in state about
me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to
John, and he has borne knowledge in
state to the truth (5:32-33).
(2)
The Miracles of Jesus: The
testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the
Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear knowledge in state about me that the
Father has sent me (5:36).John sums up his gospel with the words: "These things are written that you might believe" (Jn. 20:30-31); and, again, "This is the disciple who is bearing knowledge in state about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true" (Jn. 21:24). In Luke's gospel, we find Jesus saying, "That you may know [emphasis mine - jp] that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins," [he said to the man who was paralyzed] "I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home" (Lk. 5:24).
Therefore,
what the Bible says about the evidential role of fulfilled prophecy, miracles,
and knowers or knowledge in state in relation to its verdict that the Bible is the
Word of God and that Jesus is the Christ, would seem to indicate that arriving
at the point of belief in the verdict or truth itself is not merely a result of the direct operation of the Holy Spirit upon the
heart, imparting faith. If it had been so, all that would have been
necessary is for God to declare by his own sovereign authority that Scripture
is his Word and Jesus, his Christ.
Instead, what we find in the Bible is that belief (again, as in a court
of law) includes rational persuasion based on evidence, which in turn, depends
upon the reliability of ordinary knowing (what is common to everyone) based on knowers or knowledge in state with their ordinary or "simple seeing"
regarded as reliable knowing. The
Bible does not, in this sense, set up an antithesis between faith and ordinary
or natural knowing of a "simple seeing" sort; surely, faith involves
more than ordinary or natural knowing (such as eyewitness testimony to the
miracles or resurrection of Jesus) but just as surely not less than that.
Ultimately,
therefore, it seems that what we do with respect to evangelism comes down to
this broader, underlying question of epistemology: Does God intend for the
truth or knowledge of the gospel of His Son to be understood—particularly with
respect to unbelievers—as non-public or
objectively inaccessible? As only
true under (or relative to) Christian beliefs or presuppositions? Or accepted
as true merely on divine authority or because of the direct operation of the
Spirit on the heart? Is it, again, a kind of witness or testimony with a
special, group-oriented, or private way of knowing (reflecting a coherence
theory), which would be thrown out in a court of law or which is different from
how we understand and seek truth generally?
I have noted repeatedly that Phillips makes this claim of no objective truth
between believers and unbelievers—again, as he does with his claim that truth
is subjective—without direct Scriptural support.[5]
He merely delivers it, quite confidently and dogmatically. Whereas in other
places in his booklet, Phillips seems concerned about an appropriate reserve or
humility with respect to any claim of knowledge. In this particular case,
however, Phillips seems unconcerned about any possible charge of arrogance in
making such a claim. He seems to know for
certain—seemingly, based on a firm, common, objective ground for truth
which is the same and knowable for everyone—that there is no firm, common,
objective ground, etc., for truth.
Notably, neither finitude nor sin keep him from being confident on this.
Somehow he is in this one respect impartial and non-selective. Somehow he has
clarity now, indeed knows the truth truly
about one of the most momentous questions one could ask about the nature or
concept of the truth of the gospel itself: Is such knowledge “true truth” (as
Schaeffer says)—objective and accessible to all—and consistent with an ordinary
court room epistemology or what is actually, universally, knowably there in
reality? His answer is distinct and clear: No.
However, biblical assumptions, as just presented, indicate otherwise.
Apostolic
Practice and Knowing
Now let’s consider
apostolic practice. When Peter stood up with the other eleven apostles on the
Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, he was facing thousands of Jews and devout people
from all over the world, who did not share his presuppositions (or religious
“as-structures”) as a Christian. There were, however, certain facts or
realities (“is-structures”) that, like the toothpick or the lectern in earlier
illustrations which, for these people, were universally knowable and not
negotiable for reality. Obviously, Peter did not see it as his task to first
convince the people to adopt a “way of knowing” or what Christians generally
believe such that the crowd might have the necessary presuppositions to know
anything, including that Jesus is Lord. Instead, he directed their attention to
something objectively available and reliably knowable by all, namely, the
miracle presently being witnessed by everyone, as the small company of the
Lord’s disciples with tongues of fire over their heads were declaring the works
of God in languages they had not learned. To state the obvious, this was
something the people were experiencing firsthand, as Peter himself indicates:
“for he has poured out this that you
yourselves are seeing and hearing” (2:33). And, obviously, there is no
indication of some philosophical mind-body problem here that would make
(whether through finitude or sin) what they knew, to that limited extent,
unreliable as knowledge, or even errant.
He says to the crowd,
“These people are not drunk,” as some had supposed, “since it is only nine
o’clock in the morning” (2:15). Notably, the apostle is making an inductive
argument here with people who did not share his presuppositions concerning
Jesus Christ. That is, there is an implication here that it never entered
Peter’s mind that he could not reason with these people about the gospel
because (a) they had no basis for knowledge, (b) they did not share his
rational framework or view of truth as a Christian, or (c) it would—because of
(a) and (b) and, thus, through an inappropriate presumption about knowledge
itself—dishonor the lordship of Jesus
Christ. Instead, Peter’s argument at this point assumes such ground, as it
relies on probability derived through common experience. That is, most people
do not drink and get drunk at nine o’clock in the morning. Peter could also
have said (again, based on a commonly shared knowledge about life) that drunk
people, however otherwise creative they may be in that state, are not able to
speak fluently languages they have not learned. Next, though, Peter goes
directly to the point that what people were observing that day with this small
company of believers was a fulfillment of Joel 2, where the Lord says that in
the last days he would pour out his Spirit on all flesh. So far, then (and,
again, similar to my illustration with the lectern and the toothpick), Peter
presents an objective, non-negotiable reality true and knowable for everyone,
regardless of their presuppositions.
Let’s listen now as Peter
continues:
"Men
of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God
with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst,
as you yourselves know [emphasis
mine—jnp]" (2:22).Again, is there anything here that would make us think that Peter (as speaking to unbelievers) didn’t believe these people had the appropriate presuppositions or “as-structure” for reality necessary to understand or reliably know the things he is presenting concerning the gospel? Is he not, again, assuming a basic and common objective epistemological ground shared between himself as a believer and the unbelievers to which he is preaching? Does he not, even by the Spirit, clearly affirm that they indeed had knowledge (“as you yourselves know”) of these things—even the attestation of Jesus of Nazareth by God through miracles? Were they regenerate at this point? There is no indication that they were. How, then, did they know such things? Undoubtedly, these people didn’t know things the way Christians or the regenerate do and yet, in some important sense, they knew what Peter was talking about. The Holy Spirit, I’m sure we would agree, would certainly not have led Peter to say something untrue about the state of knowledge these people had, even though they were, at this moment, unbelievers and unregenerate.
Was
Peter just ignorant of epistemology? Did he need the modern philosophers to
educate him on the nature of knowing (that is, through human finitude, its
alleged subjectivity)? And was he unaware of the effects of sin on the mind (as
Phillips says, “humans are no longer able to know truth truly at all”)? Why is
Peter seemingly assuming that these finite, sinful humans can know truth?
But
let’s continue with Peter’s sermon:
"—this Jesus, delivered up
according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and
killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of
death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it" (2:23-24).
“This
Jesus,” Peter says. In God’s wisdom and foreknowledge, a simple word from
Scripture like “this” may become very important. As we know, “this,” is a
demonstrative pronoun. In the present context, “this Jesus” refers to the one of whom Peter had just been
speaking—that is, Jesus of Nazareth through whom God had worked miracles in the
midst of the people to whom Peter was speaking. Again, that much of what Peter wishes to communicate to his audience is
indisputably (between him and the people) and in some important sense shared knowledge. It is, indeed, the truth—even the whole, objective, and
absolute truth—particularly, if it serves as the answer to the question: “Did
Jesus of Nazareth in fact work miracles in the midst of these people to whom
Peter is speaking and did they, as a result, commonly and reliably know this much to be the case?” Therefore, to
claim, as Phillips does, that humans are finite (or limited)—as these Jews and
devout people were—such that their knowledge can only be “subjective,”
“partial,” or “selective”—or that humans are sinful—as, again, these Jews and
devout people were—such that they cannot
know truth truly at all—is belied or flatly contradicted here by what Peter
both assumes and boldly declares to be true.
When
Hegel, consistent with modernity’s epistemological idealism, says that the
demonstrative “this” from a common sense standpoint and as reflective of what
is objectively gathered by the senses is empty,
he means that it only gains its richness as
knowledge through subjectivity.[6]
That was his way of saying, “there are no brute facts” or (by implication) there
is no shared neutral ground for knowledge among the various worldviews. By so
claiming, Hegel agrees with the modern philosophers in the succession of
Descartes to Kant that the mind is primary for knowing. Hegel differs from
Kant, however, in that he believes the phenomenal is the noumenal (or all there is for reality). And whatever possibility an objective “this”
has had, it is not, in Hegel’s view, what actually makes things rich,
interesting, or valuable as truth. Instead, it is what we as humans
subjectively and creatively (that is, in the spirit of what the Bible calls
“the wisdom of the world”—1 Cor. 1:20) bring to what is there in reality—not
what is there outside and apart from us (such as, facts, God, absolutes,
Scripture, etc.)—which constitutes its real value as meaningful.
On
the other hand, what Peter says with his repetitive use of the word, “this,” in
Acts 2 implicitly assumes precisely the opposite to all this. No doubt these
Jews and converts to Judaism gathered before Peter as he is preaching brought
with them their own subjective view of what it means to please God. And no
doubt, their subjective view was interesting and valuable to them. Indeed, it
was their rationality, perspective,
or way of looking at things. The only problem was that, up to that point, such
subjectivity did not include Jesus as Messiah and Lord. The apostle Paul will
later speak of unbelieving Jews who had a zeal for God but not according to
knowledge (Rom. 10:2). Paul could have said their zeal was not according to truth or reality. Clearly, it isn’t that these people did not have knowledge
at all—nor that they did not consider such interesting or valuable,
subjectively speaking. It is just that they were wrong, as Paul implies.
We
observe this same attitude in Peter, as he is preaching in Acts 2. Peter did
not regard “this Jesus” as a reality
completely unknown or unknowable to his audience. We could even say that Peter
is deliberately working with and from this level of knowledge common to all—what they already knew—in
order to supplement it with more knowledge intended to convince them that “this Jesus” they crucified was not (as
they thought) an impostor or blasphemer but indeed the very Messiah he claimed
to be.
After Peter speaks of how God had
raised “this Jesus” from the dead, he
quotes King David’s prophecy recorded in Psalm 16:8-11, as further confirmation
of this fact:
"I saw the Lord always
before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my
heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For
you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You
have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with
your presence."
Peter had already drawn the correspondence between
the prophecy in Joel and the outpouring of the Spirit the crowd was witnessing.
Referring to the disciples speaking in languages they had not learned, Peter
had said “this is what was uttered through the prophet
Joel” (2:16; emphasis mine—jnp). We might say that, throughout this sermon,
Peter is matching certain “this” statements with “that” statements, not only
for explanation but also as confirmation of the ultimate conclusion that Jesus
is Lord. And so what is the “that” to which “this Jesus” (the miracle-working Jesus attested by God—things of
which the people already knew, as Peter says in 2:22) corresponds? That is, if the tongue-speaking (the people were
witnessing) corresponds to the outpouring of God’s Spirit foretold in Scripture
(Joel 2), to whom does the miracle-working Jesus, the people had also witnessed
(in that sense, “knew”), correspond in Scripture? This is the direction Peter
is going.
Admittedly,
there is a difference to be noted at this point. The people directly heard the
tongue-speaking and could relate it to the aforesaid prophecy highlighted by
Peter. On the other hand, they were not witnesses to the apostolic claim (2:24)
of the resurrection of Jesus. The apostles, however, were. And Peter was
speaking to a crowd of people who generally knew that God had said in Scripture
that when a matter comes to trial every truth shall be confirmed by two or
three witnesses. There were, indeed, twelve
apostles serving as such witnesses. There were also, presumably, many (or
all of the) others in the small company of 120, who served as witnesses to
Jesus’ resurrection, not to mention other witnesses, such as (in another
context) the 500 brothers and sisters Paul identifies in 1 Corinthians 15.
To
continue, it was Peter’s concern in this part of his sermon to show the
correspondence between Psalm 16 (a prophecy concerning a “Holy One” whose body
would not be left in the grave to decompose like other dead bodies do) and the
risen Jesus (its fulfillment), just as earlier it was his concern to establish
a correspondence between Joel 2 (a prophecy) and the disciples who were
miraculously declaring God’s works in languages they had not learned (its
fulfillment). Peter is connecting, in both cases, the truth of something
present with the truth of something past. The past involves what God has both
predicted and purposed to happen in “the last days.” The present is the time
when these predictions are coming or have come true.
After
quoting from Psalm 16, where it is said that God would not let his “Holy One
see corruption” (v. 10), Peter says,
Brothers, I may say to you
with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and
his tomb is with us to this day. (2:29)
The “confidence” Peter speaks of pertains to the
quality or state of his knowledge. He could have said, “I know for certain that David died, was buried, and his tomb is with
us to this day.” He also is saying something not only he but his audience
confidently knew. They could have said: “We know
for certain that David died, etc.” Again, their different presuppositions
did not prevent this. Their finitude and sin did not prevent this. I repeat: in terms of knowledge and beyond dispute,
Peter is on common objective epistemological ground here with the people (the
unbelievers) to whom he is preaching. He is setting forth public truth,
truth that everyone shared.
Now
this fact that David is dead, of course, presents a problem for what is written
in Psalm 16:8-10. We read there: “You will not let your Holy One see
corruption.” That is, you will not let your chosen king die and stay in the
grave. About whom is God speaking here? Clearly, King David died, was buried,
and is still in the grave. The prophecy could not have been referring to King
David personally. It had to be indicating something true of the Messiah who was
in his lineage. And this is, indeed, what Peter argues, as he says of David:
Being therefore a prophet,
and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his
descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the
Christ, that he was not abandoned in Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.
(2:30-31)
Hence,
Peter is now ready to wrap up his case for Jesus as the Messiah. What he has
told the people so far, as I’ve been indicating, amounts to a pairing of things
they knew (tongues-speaking people,
Jesus’ divinely attested through miracles, and David’s tomb) with Scriptural
prophecies they could also know. The one thing left is to pair this Jesus whom they knew as divinely
attested by miracles with the fact that he is not only from God but Israel’s
long-awaited Redeemer and Hope, indeed the Messiah of God. That is, he is the very one about whom David is
speaking in Psalm 16.
But
there is one more item of knowledge necessary to make this final pairing,
namely, that “this” miracle-working Jesus the
people knew is the Psalm 16 Messiah raised from the dead they did not know. Accordingly, Peter
supplies this missing piece, as he finishes his case:
This Jesus God raised up,
and of that we all are witnesses.
Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the
Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are
seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he
himself says, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I make
your enemies your footstool.” Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him
both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom
you crucifed. (2:32-36; emphasis throughout mine—jnp)
The last item of knowledge supplied, then,
completes the pairing of the Jesus they knew with the Jesus they didn’t know,
who is the Messiah of Psalm 16—the “Holy One” raised from the dead. As
knowledge, it comes to the people not directly but indirectly through the
apostles who were divinely appointed witnesses. These witnesses are good witnesses, prepared as such, by the
Lord. They are persons in a state of
knowing (or agents for truth) which is as reliable as a good set of scales
(what God loves) and what they have to offer is, therefore, of interest to
others for what they don’t know but need to know. In this case, what they don’t
know is that this Jesus they
crucified is indestructibly, eternally alive and is now King of kings and Lord
of lords. Everything Peter has been saying has gone toward arriving at this
final conclusion, about which he exhorts “all the house of Israel” (and by
implication, the whole world) to “know for certain.”
Admittedly,
“hard presuppositionalism” maintains that the unregenerate cannot possibly
piece together what they already know with what they need to know in order to
be saved. This is because, according to that view, without Christian
presuppositions such persons cannot know anything
(or anything appropriately)—that none of the pieces can make sense the way they
need to. The conditions necessary to know anything at all (that is, at least
the basic tenets of the Christian perspective itself) are not in place. But,
contrary to that assumption (though there is some truth in it), is this not
precisely what Peter is doing here? Piecing together what unregenerate people
knew with things they didn’t know? Is Peter not demonstrating, what I indicated
earlier (with my tri-structure for knowing), that there is no problem at the first
two levels of knowing (physical and mental seeing)? That even if the knowledge they had was not integrated and appreciated
the way it is for those in Christ, yet, it was sufficient for the apostolic
purpose of establishing that Jesus is the Christ? No doubt, he and the
other apostles knew that there would be people who would hear this same case
for Jesus as the Messiah—have it all pieced together for them successfully at
these first two levels for knowing—and still not know it in that third level
sense of spiritual knowing, which occurs only with regeneration and is
necessary for salvation.
And
what is the result of this strong, argumentative case for Jesus as Lord and
Christ? The people are “cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37) and say to Peter and the
rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” As it says later in Acts
17:4 concerning others who also had been convinced by apostolic argument that
Jesus is the Messiah, they were “persuaded.” The Bible presents no problem between
faith arrived at through reason and evidence and faith as a gift from God
through regeneration by the Spirit. Nor should we. Surely, for those three
thousand who were baptized in Acts 2, being convinced by empirical evidence
that Jesus was raised from the dead was no less important for truth than the
authoritative declaration of God’s Word that Jesus indeed is the Messiah. Consistently
throughout the pages of Scripture itself, the authority of Scripture as God’s
Word or truth is never pitted against external evidence and reason in support
of that truth. Again, why would we accept
some view of epistemology that emboldens us to slight the latter, presumably to
exalt the former, when Scripture never does?
The
apostle Paul, of course, provides another example of apostolic practice with
respect to epistemology, particularly, with his reasoning about the gospel
among the Greeks. The latter were undoubtedly influenced by philosophical
trends quite similar to our own modern/postmodern trends. With his education,
there is no doubt that Paul was well versed in Greek philosophy. His world, in
that sense, was very much like our own in the Western world today. But whether
encountering the skepticism of thinkers like Pyrrho (who held that reality is
not knowable and our unverifiable interpretation of the same is conventional or
cultural in nature) or the relativism of Protagorus (with his “man is the
measure of all things”) or, in general, the ideas of the Sophists who were
quite similar to postmodernists in our time (as both Lyotard and Derrida
maintain), do we ever find Paul telling the church, “We live in an era which is
skeptical of truth, and we ought to learn from their insights as well as
recognize how the Spirit remedies or compensates for the philosophical problems
of our age?” Or do we ever see Paul, in relating to the Greeks, following
Phillips’ recommendation of not preaching, not reasoning, but merely handing
people an Old Testament scroll with perhaps another scroll containing his
apostolic message concerning Jesus as the Messiah? Can we even imagine Paul
making a subjective or experiential appeal with such people, again, as Phillips
does: “Jesus promises that his Spirit will give understanding to anyone who sincerely
seeks the truth in God’s Word”? Would Paul not (if what he did in Athens is any
indication), rather, open his mouth—reason
with them and preach the truth of the gospel directly to them—regardless of their philosophical bias or
conditioning? Would he ever say something like, “Here, try on these Christian
presuppositional glasses, first, so you can know things in general; second,
that you might know something in particular, namely, that the gospel is the
truth”? Or: “I am not going to tell you what
I know until you accept how I know it”?
Rather, did he not simply (and faithfully) relate the same case God had already
made through fulfilled prophecy and the eyewitness testimony of the apostles
for the truth that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah? Whether Paul or the other
apostles, were they not by the Spirit fully committed to make this same court-like case (the case God
had already made) as faithful stewards and in a simple, even philosophically
unadorned, naive manner? And is this not why we hear them saying things (as
Peter did) to those they would evangelize (who, again, often had the wrong
presuppositions), such as, “Know for
certain that this is the
truth!”? Or, as Paul says to Greeks in
Athens: “What you therefore worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23)? Did the apostles not
demonstrate in this way of relating to unbelievers a certain confidence that
the “what” (the case made or truth defended) would bring people, if they were
brought at all, to the “how” (the appropriate Christian perspective with its
biblical presuppositions)? Was not the apostolic approach to evangelism
somewhat similar to what any of us would do if we lived in an apartment
building that was on fire? Even if there were people who lived there who were
skeptics about reality or who (from an Eastern influence, let’s say) thought
life was just a dream or illusion, would we hesitate to cry out, “Fire! Fire!”?
Not that their message was that simple but that whatever presuppositions the
people may have had, the apostles seemed confident that by a faithful,
passionate proclamation of the truth as well as the heart-work of the Holy
Spirit, all those who were going to believe would believe. Those who did not
believe were, nevertheless, considered accountable or disobedient to the gospel
(2 Thess. 1:8)—neither of which would be possible, if there were no common,
objective epistemological ground between believers and unbelievers. (As I said
before: one cannot disobey something one does not understand in some sense.)
In sum, when we apply the litmus
test of biblical assumptions and apostolic practice to the three claims
Phillips (or TGC) makes about knowing—namely, that due to human finitude truth
is subjective, due to sin truth is not knowable, and due to the relative or
perspectival nature of truth it is not universal for believers and unbelievers—all fail as foreign to or inconsistent with
those standards. Additionally, if these claims TGC and Phillips are making were
true, then all that the Bible says about the witness in relation to truth is
naive and misguided. Moreover, the apologetic work of Peter and Paul (for
instance, their assumption of common ground for truth with unbelievers) would at
best, appear in a poor light. It would also mean that, in that respect, they
did not appropriately honor the lordship of Christ. Projecting the future into
the past, it would mean (to employ the jargon of presuppositionalists) that the
apostles were the first “modern evidentialists.” Because they clearly did not
require unbelievers to first accept Christian presuppositions (or a Christian
worldview) as a framework for, first, knowing anything at all, and, second,
accepting Jesus as the Christ. To the contrary, employing neutral, or universal
standards of truth (oblivious to the concerns of epistemological idealists),
the apostles made a public case for the truth that Jesus of Nazareth is the
Messiah, apparently knowing, that once Jesus is lord of one’s heart through
believing the gospel and regeneration by the Spirit, a life of coming to know
the tenets or presuppositions of the Christian faith (devoting themselves to
the apostles’ teaching—Acts 2:42) will have begun. Once the cornerstone is in
place, then the edifice is built. Therefore, selling people on the coherence of
the Christian perspective (as if the truth of the gospel is only indirectly knowable relative to a
framework of Christian beliefs) is not the same as directly making a public case for Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah.
A correspondence view of truth—with a universal access (in some sense) to
knowing reality as part of that view—has the potential to challenge or take us outside
of our presuppositions. It is, admittedly, more minimal than that, and yet, as
minimal, can bring great change in our presuppositions. It can be (as it is
with the truth of the gospel) the very stone on which everything (including the main tenets of the Christian faith) is
built.
[1] I say, “qualified,”
because God requires not one but two or three witnesses to confirm the truth of
a matter. Allowing one witness as adequate to establish the truth of a matter,
though it is technically all that is needed, seems to be an arrangement too easily
abused in the event that someone has an agenda to harm another. This doesn’t
mean that two or three might not also conspire to lie in a particular case (as
we know, this happened at the trial of Jesus).
[2] I am not, of course,
intending to minimize first-person knowledge of God or second-person knowing,
for instance, the relationship of a child of God who by the Spirit relates to
God through Christ and says, “Abba, Father.”
[4] If a “friend” is, as
Aristotle says, “my other self,” perhaps we could also say that a “witness” is
“my other knower”—the knower I would have been had I been there.
[5] By “direct Scriptural
support,” I mean that there is nothing in what Scripture plainly says or in the
relevant examples it provides that would support the idea that there is no
“epistemological common ground” between a believer and unbeliever. Instead,
Scripture teaches just the opposite.
