“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception [pseudo-intellectual babble], according to the tradition [and musings] of mere men, following the elementary principles of this world, rather than following [the truth—the teachings of] Christ.”
Colossians 2:8 AMP
False religions try (and fail) to offer answers to the categorical issues of human life. But because God created the world and, therefore, the categories within it, the false theories must scramble to answer questions over which they’d prefer to escape. Mankind simply cannot makes sense of the world and life without presuming God and His word at the bottom of it. Many Christians today speak of revival but don’t know what that means. They assume it’s some sort of emotional frenzy…like a rock concert in which Jesus is singing and playing lead guitar. Instead, in reality, it’s the repentance of sin and the personal turning away from evil, which means, in the main, living and thinking biblically. To not understand the implications of Scripture, that the Bible is a divine set of principles governing every single aspect of man’s life and world, is to live a life of practical atheism. This is America’s sin right now. Yes, the political and cultural sins we see rising around us, like a putrid tide, are horrific.
But they’re the direct result of the church being unbiblical in its thoughts and actions. All around us we see professing believers who don’t understand the true implications of God’s radical sovereignty and the pertinent fact that no other way is the way. Syncretism is a sin that Israel was commonly guilty of – mixing the pagan religions with the Lord. We do that today too, you know. It’s like a fighter in training who keeps breaking camp to party and overeat. Worse, it’s like an adulterous husband. Remember: there is no true knowledge or wisdom outside the Lord and His word. All facts in life, whether in business, leisure, or anything else, are revelational of Christ. All non-Christian thought is, therefore, unable to make sense of reality and must necessarily be externally unable to make sense of life and internally inconsistent. A revival will come only when the church chews all this meat off the bone.
Cornelius Van Til said, “…non-Christians are never able and therefore never do deploy their own methods consistently.” All non-Christian philosophy and thought must borrow Christian premises in order to stand, thereby invalidating them. Their own premises never cohere with the facts of reality.
Only Christianity provides the logically integrated answers to the issues of creation, truth, meaning, suffering, death, and destiny.
And all of these are only found in the Bible. Supernatural revelation is man’s only hope for true knowledge or else man is himself god.
It’s important to know, incidentally, that no other religion has a single holy book as does Christianity. Hinduism has a collection of ancient writings – four, in fact – called the Vedas. Buddhism has the Tripitaka, which is, like with Hinduism, not a single authoritative book but a collection. It’s the same with Islam, incidentally. The Quran, though the central book of the faith, shares authority with the Hadith (a collection of sayings and stories about Muhammad).
As we pointed out in the last blog, the fact of creation, truth, and meaning requires the existence of a Creator who is personal. An impersonal force can’t logically cause personal beings, nor have a relationship with them. This means that scientific materialism is philosophically self-defeating because rocks don’t care where they come from nor where they’re going. Rocks don’t care at all. Impersonal force can’t account for meaning, love, beauty, and justice, so we know that atheism isn’t just flawed, but logically impossible.
We know that if Bob is in Chicago right now that he’s not in Miami too. The law of contradiction rules that out. Well, it’s the same with atheism and scientific materialism. If Darwinism is true then there can’t be truth because truth is immaterial and in Darwinism only matter is real. Thus, if Darwinism is true, it’s false. That’s what it means to be logically impossible.
We also know that truth is ultimate and applies to persons.
Any truth that isn’t ultimate isn’t true. It’s something else. A suggestion maybe. But the question of authority rears its head with a vengeance whenever we’re talking about truth and its wonderful cousins: rights and authority. For something to be true it must carry authority and that must apply to persons. This rules out all forms of polytheism, deism, pantheism, and philosophical pluralism. Unless God is ultimately true and authoritative, unless He is who the Bible says He is, then there can’t be derivative authorities or truths. In a world without the Creator God who is truth and righteousness Himself, all that matters is matter; all that’s real is brute force and the question of truth, or rights, would never occur to anyone in the first place.
Scripture alone provides non-contradictory answers for life’s philosophical building blocks. The presuppositions of life, the pre-conditions of intelligibility, are only given logical support, and would only ever occur to us if the Bible is true. Thus, the word of the Lord is self-attesting because for man to think and live it must be true and he (man) must assume its truth or die (Proverbs 8:36).
Where did everything come from (Genesis 1:1)? What is man (Genesis 1:27)? What’s wrong with the world (sin…Genesis 3)? Why does everyone die (the penalty of sin…Genesis 2:17)? How do we fix the problem of sin and death (Jesus Christ…John 3:16)? What is the duty of man (the obedience of faith…Romans 1:5; Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)? How do we learn this obedience of faith (the Holy Scripture…2 Timothy 3:16)?
False religions, if they try to answer these at all, pose counterfeit solutions to these basic issues of life. They are utter foolishness because they’re attempts by mankind to suppress the obvious revelation of God (Psalm 19:1). Every fact of nature is revelational of Him and, as Van Til said, “the rational creature of God must naturally live by authority in all the activities of his personality.”
Darwinism, for example, is the attempt to answer question one (where did everything come from) with an elaborate dodge. Even if macro-evolution were true (and it’s not) it still wouldn’t settle the most basic problem of where everything came from to start with. Darwinists today, patting themselves on the back, smug in the self-assurance that they aren’t illogical like those faith-based Christians, skip clean over this. And to avoid the obvious contradiction of a purely materialistic universe (atheistic, mechanical, impersonal) they commit the fallacy of personification when they speak of evolution. Note how evolution is spoken of in personal terms…she wants things…she directs things. But wait. Is evolution a mindless process or a personal thing? Wait…what? Is evolution a person, after all?
Darwinism and evolution collapses due to its inability to cohere to the facts of reality and fails to be internally consistent.
The Christian ethic is to love your neighbor as yourself. This is logical, not arbitrary because we aren’t our neighbor’s god. We’re his equal. Slavery, murder, rape, oppression…all of those evils come from playing god. In Darwinism, though, why shouldn’t we kill our weak or infirm neighbor? Why was Hitler such a baddie? Wasn’t he just trying to help evolution along by killing off the weak? Under the Darwinistic philosophy there’s no way to morally pass judgement upon such a man. To say we “probably” shouldn’t kill our weak neighbor, and take his stuff, isn’t an ethical commandment. In a godless universe, as Dostoevsky said in the Brothers Karamazov, “without God all things are permissible.”
The modern Christian is, terribly, dreadfully, unaware of the power of God’s word because they often think that the non-believer “has a point.” He has a point only insofar as he borrows Christian premises to argue against God and His word. If we want a revival, if we want to save America, we must repent of our collective sin of this thinking in bits-and-pieces, as Francis Schaefer called it. We must return to a truly robust biblical worldview and life (Romans 12:1-2). A revival won’t happen because of emotional things. It will happen when the store owner, the waitress, the homeschool mom, the accountant, and, as Gordon Clark put it, the mechanic, know the Scripture as well if not better than the theologians. At that point, on fire with the truth of the word of God, following Him in love and thankfulness, seeking His glory and kingdom in all things, the revival would already have happened because that’s literally what a revival is!
In true Christianity we aren’t to be afraid of philosophical arguments and the thousands of little lies that permeate our schools, media, and businesses. Van Til said, “…we shoot the big guns…” and are driven to “philosophical discussion all the time and everywhere.” Christians today, rather, are pragmatists – seeing the facts of this world as unrelated rather than according to the plan of God. What high treason! Where is the debater of this age? Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor? Does the Lord need advice on economics from Bernie Sanders? Does He need Karl Marx to teach Him about caring for the poor? Do we send our kids to hear professors who preach the gospel of humanism because we think the Bible doesn’t have anything to say about economics, law, and daily life? How dare we call on the Lord to fix America but live as though His word is sufficient only on Sunday and the rest of the week is the world.
Is Christ our wisdom? Is His word sufficient for all of life or only part of it? Does Buddhism “have a point?” Again, these things, stoicism, Taoism, and anything else, only have a point insofar as they presume and cohere with God’s plan and intention of factuality. There’s nothing sinful in recognizing that all men, even outside of God’s will, can express wisdom in bits-and-pieces due to the fact that they’re image bearers of God and have His law written on their hearts. But there is great sin in thinking that there is literally wisdom and truth outside of Him.
Want revival? Then remember: all of Christ for all of life. Remember to ask: where is Christ in this? Ask: to whom goes the glory of this idea, Christ or men? In your work: where is Christ in this? In your politics: where is Christ? In your thinking: where is Christ? In your debates and conflicts: where is Christ? A revival can’t happen for dead men trying to live on the ideas that killed them in the first place. Christ is the Alpha and Omega. We need to let that sink in. This is the crisis of our time, not the LGBTQ movement or anything else. The crisis isn’t the woke Left. All of that are symptoms and signs of judgment. The cause of man’s suffering is always the same: sin. The answer is always the same: repentance and faith in Christ alone and trust in His word/law alone.
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