CalvinDude.com

I just posted this comment over on Triablogue (see: this post) and thought I’d repost it here too. Note: The last highlight of the term “paradox” is explained by the fact that the original post this comment was written for was about Paradox in Christian Theology and most (if not all) of the supporters are, naturally, idelogical descendents of Van Til. The person who responded under the handle “Ghost of Van Til” is really a Clarkian. Unfortunately, the Clarkians who responded do not make Clark look very good at all.

I should point out that I do have a lot of respect for Gordon Clark (apparently, I have more respect for him than his defenders over on Triablogue do). I enjoy many of his books, and even have his Logic textbook. However, when it comes to the disagreements between Clark and VanTil, I’ve found myself mostly on VanTil’s side.

So with that in mind…

—

As I read through these comments, I saw this quote and was struck by a few thoughts.

Ghost said:
—
You earlier said that you recognized an epistemic distinction between God’s Word and all other words. If so, then why do you call both “knowledge”?
—

My first thought was “Probably for the same reason you use the word ‘word’ for both God’s Word and human words.”

After all, when you think about it typologically and from the aspect of imaging, it’s not at all unusual to realize that human knowledge is typed after divine knowledge, just as all our attributes are.

As way of explanation: God exists. People exist. Obviously, this is not to say that people exist in an identical manner to how God exists; but it does not make it any less true to say that both God and people share a common attribute: existence.

Here’s the distinction. God’s attribute of existence is the archtype for our own existence. While God’s existence is self-existence, our existence is dependent upon God’s existence. God’s existence is infinite and universal; ours is limited and localized. God’s existence occurs independent of our existence; our existence is dependent upon His. In God, existence is ultimately defined; in man, our existence is imaged after God’s, and thusly defining “existence” requires us to start with God’s existence. Our existence is meaningless without God’s existence being presupposed.

The same is true of power. God is omnipotent; we have limited power. We do not have “no power” for we are able to do things within our limited sphere of influence, just as God is able to do things in his unlimited sphere of influence. Again, God’s power is the archtype for our power. His is infinite and universal; ours is finite and local. His is independent; our is dependent upon Him. Thus, God’s power must be presupposed in order for us to define what our power is.

Now back to the point of the quote. The same is true of knowledge. God’s knowledge is the archtype for all human knowledge. God’s knowledge is infinite and universal, while ours is neither. God’s knowledge is eternal while ours is temporal. God’s knowledge is independent of us; ours is dependent upon Him. Again, speaking of human knowledge is meaningless unless we presuppose God’s knowledge. Without God’s knowledge, we cannot speak of man’s knowledge, since man’s knowledge is patterned on God’s.

Why is it that we can use the terms “existence”, “power”, and “knowledge” when refering to people even when the term does not mean the exact same thing when used for God? Because these terms are ultimately defined by God in the archtypical sense regardless of what men think, believe, hallucinate, etc.

We, being created in the image of God, image these attributes in a finite way–and because even non-believers who have never read Scripture are still created in the image of God, this seems to be a death blow to the Scripturalist concept.

Our imaging of these attributes is not identical to the original, but because we do image them, the definition of our capabilities is linked to the same capability in God. Again, this is due to our creation in the image of God; it was true before God revealed anything in Scripture that man was created in His image. This is a universal truth of our being, and it does not require revelation for us to know this. Indeed, this is the very basis for Paul’s claims in Romans 1 that the unregenerate are without excuse because they KNOW the things of God.

And there is more we can press logically from this concept. I would go so far as to argue that this imaging is the very foundation for Language in the first place, and thus Scripture itself (being comprised of Language) presupposes this imaging. Without the linkage between God and His image in man, all terms (at least relating to attributes) are meaningless. Indeed, the reason God can reveal anything to man is because God created man in His image.

In summary, to define an attribute requires two things: 1) God’s already having that attribute, and 2) an actual link between that attribute and our own attributes. This linkage is NOT a 1:1 correlation, but it must be sufficiently similar in order for meaning to occur.

To deny this is ultimately to make God so completely “other” that there is no correlation between God and His creation, and makes Scripture itself meaningless for all. It is nothing less than turning the phrase, “In the image of God He created them” on its head. In the final analysis, to argue that these terms have no correlation is to argue that God cannot speak to man at all, for there is no longer any way for God to relate to man.

And if God cannot speak in Scripture then the slipperly slope finally ends in realizing that Jesus Christ Himself could not reveal the Father in any meaningful sense. The very Word of God, in other words, is just as meaningless as human language is if you deny this linkage.

Certainly it sounds like we are offering praise to God when we say: “God’s knowledge is so higher than ours that we ought not use the same term for His knowledge and ours.” But in reality, this is the false foundation that leads to the complete inability of revelation to occur. In short, to hold this view (as the Scripturalists do) is to deny Scripture any meaning; and again, is ultimately to deny that Christ really did reveal the Father.

Granted, I doubt Ghost has thought this far and I doubt he would actually take the step in saying Christ could not reveal the Father…but all this means is that he must embrace the…*gasp*…”paradox” within his own belief system!!!

I discovered an interesting fact watching yesterday’s game.

There are no refs in hockey. That’s right. There are only “[expletive deleted] refs.” And by [expletive deleted] I mean not only any individual expletive, but also many expletives in a row.

That’s right, everyone hates the [expletive deleted] refs, and they do their best to earn that distinction.

Not that I think it affected the final outcome in yesterday’s game. The way they were playing (great defense, but no offense), I think the Avs would have lost in OT in the shootout. Instead, the refs gifted Vancouver with a 5-3 so they could score early in the 3rd. I’ve never heard fans boo that loudly or for that long on any other blown call.

Seriously, it wouldn’t have been a problem if they just called it both ways. But apparently the [expletive deleted] refs were too busy calling Ken Klee for everything to concern themselves with what Vancouver was doing.

Oh well. Like I said, I don’t think it affected the final outcome any (except for the fact that if the Avs had lost in OT they would have gotten a point in the standings). If they lose the playoffs by one point, this could be the reason…but I don’t see that happening either, unless Calgary decides to commit hockey suicide (possible, but highly unlikely).

Aside from that, though, the game was fun to watch. I’ll get to go again on Saturday :-) Yes, Travis, this means God still loves me more than you :-P

UPDATE: By the way, I just read this:

Salo’s 13th goal came with the Canucks on a 5-on-3 power play that lasted a full 2 minutes. Ken Klee and Joe Sakic were penalized on the same sequence at 1:14 of the third period.

A minute later, Salo took a pass from Henrik Sedin in the deep slot. Salo sent a slap shot through a screen that got past Theodore.

“I saw an opening and we had a good screen on the goaltender,” Salo said. “We were just lucky enough to have a two-man power play.”

Cooke and Daniel Sedin’s empty-net goals came after Theodore was pulled for the last 1:01.

“We were just lucky enough…” is code for: “I don’t know why the refs called it that way either but since it was for us I’m not complaining.”

Yes…the title of this blog entry tells it all…

I will be at the Pepsi Center this evening to watch the Avs mutilate the Canucks.

Of course no one will forget this.

Even without Betuzzi, the Canucks are t3h ebil. Although since Detroit now has Bertuzzi, Detroit is once again t3h uberebil, the Canucks will always remain t3h ebil.

Recently, James White blogged about an e-mail he received from an atheist fundamentalist. You should read White’s response by clicking the above—what he said was spot on and thus I have no need to repeat it below.

The person who e-mailed White is apparently the webmaster of www.GodsReward.com. This person (who remains anonymous throughout his website) offers $100,000.00 to anyone who can prove God exists. It’s rather easy to offer rewards when you remain anonymous and thus no one can reach you to win it. At least Randi has his name attached to his million dollar challenged for the supernatural…

But that’s really a side issue. Other side issues include the vast amount of political nonsense this person spouts too. Instead, we are going to look specifically at the way the challenge was stated and the underlying philosophy behind it to demonstrate its fallacious nature.

Firstly, we observe:

Millions of people worldwide are searching for God in their lives. I began searching at five years of age by praying to learn whether God answers prayers. At the age of thirteen I read the entire Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Since then I have read documents of other religions. I have attended services of different religions and spoken with believers of various faiths. In 1996 I began offering a reward for proof God exists. GodsReward expands the offer to reach more people to pursue the first goal to search for God.

This, of course, is written to sound as if this person is an “honest seeker” who wishes to know that God really does exist. Yet we shall quickly see that this is not the case. The first clue is found in the stipulation:

As payer of the reward, I reserve final judgment for acceptability of the proof.

This alone demonstrates that the challenge is bunk. This individual is not demanding proof of the existence of God; he is demanding that we meet whatever standard of “acceptability” he decides to enact at any given time. After all, $100,000.00 is not a trivial sum. In addition to the depravity of natural man, this person has added on the extra financial motivation to never accept anything as proof.

At the very least, an impartial third party ought to be the “final judgment”. But this webmaster is not interested in a valid challenge; he is only interested in scoring “points” with other atheists.

This individual also writes:

The second objective is to defend the individual right to believe as one chooses. In various nations religion is forced upon individuals by inclusion of religious dogma in politics and the law of the land.

The second sentence is written in a negative tone (as the rest of the paragraph bears out—it’s the second paragraph under the “Welcome to the Search for God” header); yet the author is seemingly unaware that he is actually NOT defending “the individual right to believe as one chooses” when one chooses to believe one ought to include “religious dogma in politics and the law of the land.” In short, he only defends the individual rights of those who agree with his position, while claiming a universal defense of rights.

We see that later under “Part II: Reasons Proof God Exists Is Needed.” There we read:

Each individual has the right to personal beliefs.

Firstly, such a statement is absolutely false. It is not the case that each individual has the right to personal beliefs. Just look at any third world country, for example. Or try to be a blogger in China…

So we begin with a factual error. (Note, he did not say that each person ought to have this right; he says each person does have this right.)

But let us assume that each individual does has this right, for the sake of argument. Where did this “right” come from? Presumably, given his “manmade” proof position (see below), these “rights” are nothing more than manmade rights created by different individuals. In which case, the “right” is nothing more than a consensus of various individuals. As such, people only have “the right to personal beliefs” when society allows them this right. If society does not allow them this right, they do not have this right. There is nothing “wrong” with a society who decides that people do not have these rights—it is simply what is.

This is a fundamental human right of utmost importance that deserves respect.

Really? If it is fundamental, then why wasn’t this right codified until the 17th Century? If this is so fundamental, then why isn’t it universal? Why have 99% of societies that have ever existed on this Earth not held to this “fundamental” human right? Indeed, why did it take a bunch of Christian Protestants to get this concept into popular culture?

Secondly, in what way does this right “deserve respect”? This right is just as “manmade” as any other strain of thought, including Nazism. Why does this concept “deserve respect” but not Hitler’s Final Solution?

Even concepts that have been proven by science to be false are within the right of belief of the individual.

Of course this begs the question that “science” is the final arbiter of what is true in the first place. But the truth of science changes on a daily basis. Just a few generations ago, scientists believed in phlogiston and the ether…

Secondly, the right to believe something surly must imply the right to act upon one’s belief. Yet this author has already demonstrated that if you act on the belief that others ought to believe as you do, you’re “wrong.” (The self-contradiction in this concept is impossible to make up!)

Thus, this author claims:

Assertion of God in public policy violates the right of individuals to believe there is no God, or of individuals who believe in other Gods. When unfounded beliefs guide public policy, it violates individual rights.

Yet advocating this violates the rights of those who believe we should assert God in public policy. It violates the individual rights of these individuals to deny them the ability to live as their beliefs would dictate, wouldn’t it?

It should be noted that this self-contradiction destroys the very basis for why this individual demands proof of the existence of God. Naturally, he can still have personal concerns, but his social complaints are based on self-refuting ideology.

This contradiction is only exemplified by his standard of proof. For instance, we read the following under the header “Evidence [For The Existence of God] That Will Not Be Considered”:

Manmade products of any sort will not be considered. … Manmade products include (but are not limited to):

* words, whether spoken, written, sung, or electronically generated
* art, whether painted, sculpted, or crafted by any manmade process
* fabric or other materials manufactured by manmade processes
* architecture
* scientific devices
* humans themselves
* human actions
* etc.

I’m not quite sure how one is supposed to even respond to this individual. After all, any argument that you decide to make for the existence of God entails, at the very least, words that you speak or write. One is left wondering how, exactly, we are supposed to communicate with this individual in the first place if words and even pictures are not allowed!

It also bears pointing out that under such rules, evidence of any historical claim is invalid. Imagine if I asked for proof that Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, but you couldn’t prove it to me using words, art, fabric, architecture, etc. How could you prove it happened? Even if you could demonstrate that an eruption did occur at some point (by, for instance, taking me to the location), that does not prove it happened in 1980!

In fact, with such restraints on what constitutes proof it is impossible to prove anything aside from the fact that this radical skepticism fails miserably.

In short, all this fundamentalist atheist has done is set up a fictional challenge with rigged rules that serves to disprove his own philosophy in the process! This is the type of game you must play, however, when you deny the existence of God.

You know, after having been on vacation, the next week back to work takes FOREVER! But thankfully, it is finally over!

I have some projects I’m working on that I’ll hopefully be uploading in the next few days. These include a book review (maybe two or three) as well as an upcoming rebuttal to something I read on-line, unless that gets bumped. :-) But alas, right now I’m only ready to crash and snooze!!!

From the fine folks who run The Patriot Post (click on the picture to open it in a new window if it doesn’t fully display due to your browsers table settings).

Mathematicians solve a 248-dimensional puzzle. The proof takes up 60 gigs…when on a “highly compressed” hard drive. (60 gigs = about 45 days worth of continuously playing mp3s…)

If written out, the proof would cover the entire island of Manhattan. It’s roughly 60 times the size of the Human Genome Project.

And yet: “The calculation does not have any obvious practical applications.” In fact, “‘To say what precisely it is is something even many mathematicians can’t understand,’ said Jeffrey Adams, the project’s leader and a math professor at the University of Maryland.”

You know what I’m thinking? That’s right! The next time someone tells me that playing video games is a waste of time, I’m pointing them to this article :-D

This article kinda puts the concept that only Christians are fundamentalist whackos to death. I’m not talking about the teacher; I’m talking about the parent comments at the end of the article:

Parent John Rahm told the newspaper that he became concerned when his freshman daughter said she was confused by the supplemental material provided by Helphinstine.

“He took passages that had all kinds of Biblical references,” Rahm said. “It prevented her from learning what she needed to learn.”

…

“How many minds did he pollute?” Dan Harrison, the father of a student in Helphinstine’s class, said at the meeting. “It’s a thinly veiled attempt to hide his own agenda.”

Ah, yes…the Bible “pollutes” and it also prevents people from learning….

Next thing you know, they’ll be advocating banning prayer in school….

The recent discussion Paul’s been having on compatibalism over on Triablogue reminded me of an argument by Arthur W. Pink in The Sovereignty of God. This argument is addressed to believers (sorry, atheists who wish to respond—this is an intramural discussion) who have a problem with the Calvinistic understanding of the sovereignty of God:

Friend, was there not a time when you walked in the counsel of the ungodly, stood in the way of sinners, sat in the seat of the scorners, and with them said, “We will not to have this Man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14)? Was there not a time when you “would not come to Christ that you might have life” (John 5:40)? Yea, was there not a time when you mingled your voice with those who said unto God, “Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve Him? and what profit should we have, if we pray unto Him?” (Job 21:14, 15)? With shamed face you have to acknowledge there was. But how is it that all is now changed? What was it that brought you from haughty self-sufficiency to be a humble suppliant, from one that was at enmity with God to one that is at peace with Him, from lawlessness to subjection, from hatred to love? And, as one “born of the Spirit,” you will readily reply, “By the grace of God I am what I am” (I Cor. 15:10). Then do you not see that it is due to no lack of power in God, nor to His refusal to coerce man, that other rebels are not saved too? If God was able to subdue your will and win your heart, and that without interfering with your moral responsibility, then is He not able to do the same for others? Assuredly He is. Then how inconsistent, how illogical, how foolish of you, in seeking to account for the present course of the wicked and their ultimate fate, to argue that God is unable to save them, that they will not let Him. Do you say, “But the time came when I was willing, willing to receive Christ as my Saviour”? True, but it was the Lord who made you willing (Ps. 110:3; Phil. 2:13); why then does He not make all sinners willing? Why, but for the fact that He is sovereign and does as He pleases!

Pink, AW (1961). The Sovereignty of God: Revised Edition, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust (pp. 45-46; all emphasis in the original).

One point I would focus in on is the personal aspect Pink brings up. Everyone is born a sinner in rebellion against God, and as such “a non-believer.” Each of us—even those of us who were saved at a young age—knows what it is like to be in rebellion against God. The question is rightly asked: “What was it that brought you from [that state] to one that is at peace with Him…?”

The common reply of “I was willing to receive Christ” begs the question. Why did one become willing? What is it that was involved in the mechanics of your choice? The choice is not made in a vacuum—if it were, it would be a random, arbitrary choice, morally no different than flipping a coin.

Yet we know that when we chose Christ, it was because we desired Him. We longed to be with Him. We wanted fellowship that only He could give us.

In short, the choice was made only after we found Christ desirable. We could not have chosen Christ if we hated Him for such a choice would go against our nature! We could only choose Him then if we are coerced into doing so. But that is not how we know we were saved. We did not choose Christ grudgingly or against our desires; we chose Him after our very hearts were already turned toward Him! We chose that which we most desired.

The choice, therefore, was nothing but a reflection of what was already present in our heart.

Scripture is clear that we are born at enmity with God (Romans 8:5-8). This explains why those who are disbelieve refuse to submit to God’s law. Yet something must occur within us to change us from hating God to loving God. This change cannot be the choice we made to follow Christ for, again, that choice can only be made after the change has already taken place.

The common Arminian refrain, “I’m elected because I selected” echoes hollowly when you realize that your being—your nature—began to love Christ before you chose Him. Your selection had nothing to do with your altered nature; your altered nature dictated your selection.

Whew…I am now BACK!

Yes, I spent the last week on vacation, and for a good portion of it managed to stay away from the blogosphere! But all good things must come to an end, so I’m back once more.