W W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Volume What is New
CHAPTER 9
THE MODEL
OF DIRECT RATIONAL REALISM
IN BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS
Outline and Application of Method
THE APPROACH
The approach adopted in this work is chiefly that of direction rational realism (DRR). For all that, it includes the concept of apologetic orchestra, so that other approaches may be included at any time; but the distinctive is as noted. It detailed outline is as in What is the Chaff to the Wheat! Chapters 3 and 4, as exemplified in SMR and TMR in particular. Attention is given to a variety of aspects in Department of Bible and Spiritual Affairs, Vol. 4, Ch. 2, for example. This includes religion as does the Appendix to this Chapter. The definitional sub-method for variety and diversification is noted in Vol. 3, Ch. 6.
It is specifically NOT presuppositional in kind, though this can be used as additive. It proceeds from reason as a continual reality, without which you cannot even argue for or against any proposition, either to embrace or to criticise it. This will validate itself in pointing to a result, which can then be verified factually, in terms of what it is, THAT it is there; or if the negative were to arrive, it would be unverified, as all religions other than the Christianity of Jesus Christ and the Bible are. It is this religion only which in fact is eminently testable in a large number of categories, and so able to be verified as the outcome of reason. Reason itself is thus confirmed, just as it confirms. All fits in harmony, and what would leave man logically useless is avoided by showing the validation it has in its ultimate usage. No presupposition was made; the way inscribed in our minds was followed, as necessary for any argument, and confirmed.
Verification fits in various ways. In finding verification in various fields and depictions, declarations and predictions, indeed retrodictions as well. Validation follows as night from day, the quality research confirming the rational index to the Bible in doctrine, Jesus Christ in Person, as multiply attested.
A speechless, whether apoplectic or dumb, indifferent or declining God is excluded by the simple fact that He has attested Himself in categorical style where no other has the capacity, the qualities or the power. It is also as shown in SMR, TMR, logically, as in other works (cf. Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4, SMR Ch. 1, pp. 580ff., Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 9, Bright Light Ch. 7, with further features at this site) that a speechless God is an illusion.
In method, the reality of God proven, and His minimal characteristics or features logically shown, the necessity of His principles of eternity NOT being disrupted, debased, rendered derelict, annulled, or made a majesty of torts in practical operation, but His divine nature exposed as a manifest attestation of existence: this remains. Were He evil, then this is tantamount to seeking for himself what he lacks at the expense of others, which denies the minimal power of God as Creator as defined and demonstrated in SMR, TMR, Sparkling Life Ch. 4, Barbs ... 6 - 7, and other works. Since He is not in that delimited and deficient domain, inhabited by what is subordinate, then the abuse of what is good, sound for His creation, through what misleads by specious propaganda and spoils His creation in terms of His own being, needs, or imagined inherent deficiences whether psychological or innate, is merely a tendential lapse from necessary truth. It simply represents logical self-contradiction, as so often pointed out on this site.
If God WERE to contradict Himself, then infinite force would be on both sides, leading to extinction, which is not possible since as shown, the Maker of time as a creation is beyond its little ways (cf. Acme, Alpha and Omega: Jesus Christ Ch. 8). It would also involve subjection to a system unmastered, not basis for all system, another variation from the demonstrated necessities of the case.
The VERIFICATION that God does not at all contradict Himself has been one of great joy, since logic and the Word of God, the Bible, and the living Word, Jesus Christ all agree in such depth as to force one to marvel, unless spiritually unconscious*UC, as many are to much, such as to truth or beauty indeed.
One of the great features in this mode in found in the realm of what our
SEVEN VOLUME SET, the Predestination and Freewill Heptad, has as its formal name:
ON PREDESTINATION and FOREKNOWLEDGE,
LIBERTY and NECESSITY,
RESPONSIBILITY, DUTY and CREATIVITY.
Not merely is it found that the Bible in its principles and declarations provides a harmonious coverage of all these elements in perfect internal consistency, but it SO provides it that all the peripheral elements are resolved which, in history, have swirled along continuously like destructive whirl-pools, needing for resolution what is already and has long been written in the Bible
Nor is even this all, in principle. It is not merely the harmonious character of the elements of the biblical presentation, nor the power of this perspective to resolve surrounding issues readily and fluently. Indeed, its principles are of such a kind, in this world of empirical events, that there is no room for any other explanation, but that of the Bible! It is exclusive by its nature, and the nature of the case to be resolved.
This is shown in such sites as these.
Possess Your Possessions Vol. 5, Ch. 6,
Vol. 6, 2, Vol. 7, 3, Vol. 8, 3, 8, 4;Dizzy Dashes ... and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth 5;
Now the Highway, Then the Heights Ch. 7
(includes the proper place of mystery cf. NHTH 5),
╬ Aspects of the Glory of the God of all Grace Ch. 6 (composite) with Ezekiel 18-33 (3);
What is the Chaff to the Wheat! 4 (A),Why Not Ch. 12
Deity and Design ... Ch. 10, esp. *1
Marvels of Predestination and the Ways of Will
Ch. 2 (selections); 6, *2, will and meritless operation;
Department of Bible ... Vol. 4, Ch. 2, Vol. 3, Ch. 6,
The Pride of Life ... and the Destiny of Man Ch. 3, *1
Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 11, esp. pp.172ff.;Great Execrations ... Greater Faith Ch. 9;
His Wounds Opened Eternity Ch. 4 (also contrasted with Islamic deficiencies);
Sparkling Life ... Ch. 7,Earth Spasm, Conscience Chasm and the Renewal of Life Ch. 6;
Scaling the Heights, Scanning the Depths ... Ch. 5;Gratitude for His Glorious Grace App;
Downfall from Defamation Ch. 3; Licence for Liberty Ch. 1
Serenity not Serendipity ... Ch. 12 (trinity, reality, man and liberty); as also
Progress, Regress, Emphasis and Perfection Ch. 4,
Logos Uncreated ... Ch. 7Religion, Religiosity and Reality in Jesus Christ Chs. 5 and 9.
The irrationality of determinism and materialism is covered often, but in such sites as these:
Repent or Perish Ch. 7, Christ Incomparable, Lord Indomitable Ch. 2,
It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 11, Step 3,Predestination and Freewill Section I,
News 45, ; Christ Incomparable ... Ch. 2,
Religion, Religiosity and Reality in Jesus Christ Chs. 5 and 9.
LIBERTY RELEASED and REALISED
Once liberty is clarified*1, and man's place in this regard, you leave the philosophical bog holes that have blighted man for generations and millenia. You are born free (not in Rousseau's sense unfortunately), as a race. You are inheritors of the past blights, through an elevated assertion of self-will and self-glorification, crucially the fall at the first, and this at the ultimate spiritual level: such is to attribute untruth to God and truth to yourself, despite the course record of both, and the logical situation as noted above.
After first doing this (as in Genesis 3, Romans 5), man got what he wanted, and thus no longer was placed in a simple, sample position of trust and beneficial blessedness; but where tests on a FAILED beginner, became routine, so did the squalls of diseases of the mind, body and spirit, till the race became like a rebellious crew, before the flood. Then, when those not so and in fact repentant, became crew on a ship of salvation, then they lived amongst death. Dramatically and with long foresight from the Lord obeyed in the construction of that ship, they rescued and as such became constant reminder of divine grace, as are Sodom and Gomorrah, of human rupture, of something very different. This ? it is that preying on the mercy of God by showing little or none to man, opposing divine laws and perverting His design for man, contrary to truth and to wisdom, soon reverses itself. The luxury of self-will becomes the laceration of reality which repays in kind. It is praying in sincerity of heart, to Him who saves, not preying, that is needed.
Preying on the means of human life on earth, even on those who respect them for what they are, not for what they are not, while foresting in the ways of dishonest gain and sharp practice, and standing on those whom force may for a time subdue: it appeals to many, who will hear no appeal. That is for beasts of prey (cf. Romans 8:18ff.), and of these none appear near so vicious as the spiritually subverted children of men! The test passes, the time is suddenly gone and the wake of the tempestuous engines of spiritual sedition looms swelling on the seas of life for a time, before new powers and polluted rulers in social fashion, militant rebellion, tepid thought and haughty demeanour arise, only to fall baseless, into the hinterland of history. The wake leaves a little foam, discoloured; and the wandering world continues its prayer by a few, where prayer is heard, where God is, and His way in found in the Saviour appointed, but with much else! While this world is gathering itself, it seeks further its prey on or by more, many being the victims of vice, viciousness and vanity alike, in a whirl-pool of unwisdom, amid interacting forces and squalls of sin.
But what again ? Writhing like some giant whale in its turmoils, when harpooned, the powers of this world desire nothing less than to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ (Revelation 11:15). Therefore, divorced from reason and life alike, they go to their unrest, as this world diligently traverses its historical lines and comes to the epoch of final reckonings. To be sure they are activated by a cunning devil as in Revelation 20:3,10), dynamised into crazed self-will and some to aspirations to a false glory, and this through a seedy submission to the mandates of men, or their manufacture or both, whether for religious purposes by unverified commands or for secular, through unfounded dreams. So they foam out their shame, killing, wounding, marring, fracturing co-operation, savouring revenge, as if seeking the end of the patience of the Almighty for their vanity and their shame.
But this does not at all quench the loving liberty which God provides, or the multitudes who accept it, so being shown like wheat amid chaff, at which many chafe; and just as Christ declared, concerning those who follow Him, others may kill them (John 16, Matthew 24), for the servant is not greater than his master. Yet like diamond to glass, so they live, and with them, who know the Lord, it is for ever, past this episode of creation, within the Eternal kingdom of that Lord (I Corinthians 15).
Thus the control by sin:
 |
in its blighting benumbing of the mind and callow misdirection of the heart, as |
|
|
in its tampering with the spirit of man till he can become a vain devil or a murderous lout, a prissy self-congratulatory fool or a self-made saint lacking only saintliness, so great the self-deception, or even
a morose or quaking failure, knowing only that he knows too little |
this continues its prodding, as if by an electric prong.
Yet while this limits and distorts the liberty of man, it does not entirely remove it. The selection of priorities continues; the weighing of possible courses of action does not cease; moods, modes and moments of pity, kindness are not all desecrated, serviceability is not in entire arrest even if hateful vying and contriving do not cease. Even the seeking of grounds for priorities is not deleted; and yet the control modes beyond these things, the sinful appetites whether for false glory or rebellious shame are not dead. It is only man as created in the image of God who is dead, deprived of the things necessary for walking with his Creator (Ephesians 2), being alienated from the life of God (Ephesians 4:17ff.). Indeed, there are moments of aspiration even in some of the most derelict or devilishly dynamic; there are thoughts of revival and repentance; and the Lord acts sovereignly like a good physician, above the current state, imbuing and inclining as He will; but in this, He never forces.
He calls as to sheep, stretches out wings as to chickens; but in matters of faith, it is faith and not force which is His key, and faith where it belongs which turns it in the door of salvation.
So is freedom original, yet not continued in its inbred totality, but vigorously compromised; so is control working, beyond this liberty, because of the constraints of the spiritual disease and the mental unease of sin.
Thus man is neither deterministically dynamised as one whole, nor entirely free as one reality; but in him now inheres a diseased point of liberty, become alien to the love and hence comradeship of God, subject to moods and swings, to hopes and aspirations, to deadliness of heart allied to its disease, and to hopes of harmony, but without basis, as also to incursions of grace from the loving God*1A and to exhortations to receive Him, where the dominion of sin meets the entrance of light, as dawn over a dark sea, embraced by many clouds. Simplistic substitutes for reality always slight the totality that is man, and hence the determinists offend the voluntarists and vice versa, the one not accounting for the residual liberties or the reason for them in their construction outside the withering ways of a fallen race, and the other not allowing for the force of the incursions of a sin which in its slyness slips into control mode, now here, now there, like leprosy on the skin. Superficial and often secluded from truth, relentless warriors push this or tht extreme, preferring fantasy to fact, reductionism to reality or tradition to truth.
The Lord allows for lessons. Thus those who ignore His grace, can find that the sea of circumstance can become quite impersonal, at which they may complain; but this is the inheritance of one who tips himself out of the plan of faith (Psalm 1:4-5), and refusing entry, falls into space where, but for any further grace, its structural impersonality becomes his witless and allegedly meaningless place. It is not at all meaningless (cf. SMR Ch. 3, contrasted with Ch. 5); but it is meant to show what are the results of losing your place and ignoring personal grace FIT FOR PERSONS, and so being lost in the medley of lesser things, overwhelmed or foolishly arrogant in unyielding despair or any other temporary anodyne. But for all that, it is not out of hand, when the hand is that of the Sovereign, who made freedom as nothing else can; for only He has no needs, being not only subject to no systems but precisely what He wants to be, exporting goodness to His creation with no ulterior motives: for truth is what He says, there being no devastating war between what He says and what He does, which being infinite, would mean dissolution.
Thus when He gives evidence of a grace allowing REFUSAL to His redemption, or acceptance, here is liberty's ultimate - provision to BE what you now are NOT, by the grace of One who knowing your heart (seen without sin as before creation - Ephesians 1:4), ensures it is not forced. Even if all entered heaven like spiritual boat people, those not loving God would find it intolerable. The spirit of rebellion is its own master, and makes itself its own slave.
God only does and can provide ultimate freedom. That is where the beauty of His holiness eclipses the cynicism of the meandering materialist (cf. SMR Ch. 3), determinist, derelict; for here and here only is there a possible freedom not only to do what you want, but to BE what you want and to escape self-limitations amid squirmings and distortions.
Without God, only the former is available; with Him, who being beyond you and yet seeking you without self-seeking that distorts the selection, the latter also comes into line; for He is able to give to you the life you seek in your soul, even when the waves of circumstance would otherwise have blotted this out, like someone capable of sanity, but in delirium. When the topic is the action and presence of God, it is well not to forsake it and move to some other model, so omitting the very topic in view! So can the habit of custom confuse; but when God acts, there is nothing to restrain Him, His principles His own, His ways as He chooses (Psalm 115, Isaiah 14:27).
His is the rescue path not only in Himself and His word explaining the reality of liberty, but even exposing the reasons for the refusal of that concept of liberty by many, as of its acceptance by others and of the war of the millenia.
It has been a martial field. This matter has been fought between wandering extremists, so that often missed is the wonder in which liberty is held and justly prized, mankind being granting it on a simple basis, if only he will receive it. Sending His Son to SHOW who He is directly and in a way readily understood even by sinners, and going further in providing for the hatred of man to God to crucify Him who did so much dynamically magnificent good with power, He then turned these things, according to prior plan, into a sacrifice for sin as in Isaiah 52-53 in that prophet's prediction centuries before. Thus sin was tricked into serving the truth (I Corinthians 2:8), as man exposed not only the Saviour to the direct testimony of His love, but made murder a teaching lesson on grace, using fraud in his alleged religiosity (cf. Religion, Religiosity ...), whilst being hoist with his own petard. So did the evil expose the good, and demonstrate before its own eyes, the full woe of what it was, leading to conviction in some, recalcitrance in others.
Indeed, God has foreknown each soul, and before sin crushed its purity and twiddled its dials, He has understood who are His own, though His desire is for all; yet in His own modelling of man, desire is not the point, but devotion, loyalty, trust, responsibility, character and truth; in the midst of love. These things cannot be manufactured, but they can be foreknown, and God can indeed make arrangements in His authoring of history, to do what seems good, in terms of all the alterations, alternations, equivocations and the like. Concerning each, He knows the truth, and He acts on it. It is called foreknowledge, and the acting on it to ensure it is not betrayed in the fray, is called predestination. These things are amidst the main topics of the 7 volume work on predestination, foreknowledge, duty, responsibility, liberty and love, set on this site.
Man is neither forced to sin nor chained to rebellion, but free from the first, he inherits in folly many bonds, which indeed make a mockery of liberty, and binding with psychic force, spoil like a polluting wind, the objectivity available when the person knows God, and hence is able without distortion to know the ways which work. It is so whether in logic, psychically, personally, spiritually, morally or scientifically. We have already found many wishing to divorce science, even theoretically, from its testing rules, and to put theoretical considerations above those empirical, though they do not and cannot work, and this disinclination to realism, even in this crucial field of ostensibly rigorous and remorseless test, merely shows one more of its un-magnificent facets. Scientific method set forth by some to lack tests and triumphs or failures, this shows the eclipse of reason well, and what eclipses it: the sheer magnitude of self-will.
CLOUD BURSTS THAT WOULD DROWN SCIENTIFIC METHOD,
MARRING MANY OF ITS OSTENSIBLE PROPONENTS
The disease of spirit concerned, being pandemic, makes no exceptions for this or that profession, acting in a selective dynamic wherever needed, like an anti-servant. As famous British scientist, Lord Zuckerman, pointed out in his work, Beyond the Ivory Tower, white coats by no means assure white hearts, and devious departures from truth are not confined to this or that category of humanity, having their own place amid scientists as well as others.
These aspects of life and developments amid mankind are systematically explained in the biblical depiction of sin, its origin and its results and cure from curse, as in Romans 1, 5, 8, Titus 2-3, Isaiah 2, 24, 32, 40,49-55 and in a grand extravanganza of analysis, appeal and grace throughout the Bible. This word of God is complete with predictions such as those of II Peter 2, II Timothy 3-4, Matthew 23, Luke 21 and Isaiah and Zechariah, till the scientifically investigable joinings of predictions, principles, explanations and realisations comes to the point of being incomparable above all contention, while the demonstrations are shown free of serious competition. Elements of these things appear in particular in fresh cast, in the recent series, Department of Bible and Spiritual Affairs (cf. Library), and its most recent volumes, and systematically in the millions of words which constitute the volumes:
LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST
WHO ANSWERS RIDDLES
AND WHERE HE IS, DARKNESS DEPARTS.
What then ? In particular, we have seen aversion even on the part of some scientists, of scientific method, to the point that philosophy is preferred to test, confusion is found in comparing facts with theories, and non-explanations are kept for cultural reasons, even when their day of confused authority is long past. In fact, scientific laws are merely the re-discovery of the sanctions of the Creator over His own work, law no companion of chaos, reason of irrationality; and as men discover these, so they learn, though many seek to subvert the understanding of them as far as they may, or at least so act, as seen in SMR Ch. 2, Ch. 3, TMR Ch. 1, Department of Bible ... Vol. 4, Ch. 2 , Vol. 3, Ch. 6, and the list of many of the irrational and philosophical pretensions noted above. See also The Splendour of the Biblical Coverage ... Ch. 3
FELICITIES INSTEAD OF FANTASIES
In many areas of thought, many likewise seek to bring turbulent waters into the peace of truth, so making insoluble problems, both human and material, for their thoughts, wars for the world and confrontation with reality for their suffering nations. This observable slant in much of mankind is allayed only by restoration to God and His ways (though some pick out especially foolish nostrums, before they even find the Lord, as in the case of Stephen Jay Gould, who wondered as he wandered, and found it virtually impossible to reconcile theory with fact, though a leading Harvard Professor in his own biological field, as notable in his Wonderful Life). Others more directly direct logical, empirical and critical fire at the smouldering ruins of the theory of organic evoution, such as Professors Nilsson, Løvtrup, Dr W. R. Thompson, Lord Kelvin, Dr Giertych of Poland, famed debaters Drs Gish and Johnson of our era and hundreds of other specialists in these spheres, and small wonder. The fantasies reaches their heights in the depths of irrationalism. This is shown in eminent detail in the volumes of The gods of naturalism have no go!
The comedy and tragedy, the irrationalism and evasive twistings of both naturalism and the ethereal projects to support it which many in desperation seek, are treated in many ways which may be found in many places on this site, not least those here listed*2.
In revealing survey, these are confronted not only with logical rebuttal, but with the evidentially verified biblical concepts confirmed by data of Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Lord Kelvin*2A and others who have led science to the uttermost, as well as by hundreds of modern Ph.D. scientists, not at all willing to be subverted by mysteries that do not explain, confusions which do not meet facts and contentions which fight with words empty of logical or empirical endorsement (cf. Scientific Method ..., Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, Evidence and Reality Ch. 6).
Even many who do not even know God, nevertheless note their antipathy to this or that feature of the crass bedevilment of facts in ardent, misled theorists*2B who tire of the miasmic myth, that organic evolution that has no rational basis, and blasts verificatory possibilities at large, without formal penalty. Few have lamented its folly more than Professor Fred Hoyle of Cambridge*2C, former British astronomer, who lambasted the clash between theory and fact in this field, and at least, if cursorily, looked for a personal basis. . . Such mythical incursions are predicted (II Timothy 4:2ff.) for our times, and it is the uneasiness with God (repressed but bubbling up in the more rational moments of many minds) on the one hand, and on the other hand, with His absence in their hearts, that so readily leads, as so often in the past, so now to their enjoying a time of fulsome but illusory praise, before being changed or ditched.
Thus, even outside Christ, they may in this or that, revolt at the practice of pandering to philosophies, while defiling logic and subverting science, no less than did Hitler in his so popular theories. As normal in these quasi-scientific fields, his evolution-dynamised racial theories ceased to be so invasive of German life when their weak follies ceased to be sheltered by mere force, such as raises its confused head above the waters, before repetitively sinking into 'the past'. This largely has Nazism done, with a toll of millions of deaths, tortures, debasements, harassments, inhumanities, all in a good naturalistic cause, and hence unchallengeable in political terms, till the blood not only could write documents but soak them, and so parallel that other scamping on the East, in impersonal, naturalistic, God-avoiding plague, indulging in such niceties as slow death by continued virtual starvation, contribution for the welfare of Ukraine, Communist style (cf. News 98, SMR pp. 925ff.).
Moral laws likewise, involving understanding of God and His personal ways, may be scamped, scarified and seemingly subverted, only to take their toll-money later, when least expected. They are executed when man is ready to execute no more, and the grand executioner of death separates body and soul as the sublimity above meets the unredeemed sinner from below.
Meanwhile the truth, already demonstrated, as in SMR, TMR and such volumes as Deity and Design ... remains, unconquered by rebellion, a human fault making man a heavy matter for digestion amid the sorrows of his grasping, imperious, seemingly impervious, and anon, imprecatory ways. It is both intensively sad and intensively foolish (cf. Psalm 57). Swirled in the enforced absence of God, as if in the stomach of fate, and in this dizziness, as in a projected vomit, now quite well able to send off atomic bombs when the madness is sufficient, man continues his play, even works at it, as if afraid God might find him, should he relent. His dance proceeds; anon he staggers in a drunken stupour and sacrifices a few more millions, or seeks earthy gains, though it cost the earth, almost literally!
Once poison gas was too horrible to be legal in war; now only a fool would be likely risk so much on such a basis, in a battle; but when tens of millions have already been killed in Germany, Russia and China, by unmanned dictators, it is apparent that once God is missing and manias of control-freak folly seize power, there is very little that man will not attempt. He then is apt, at the national level, to become not only like a car without a driver, but worse, like one driven by devious if not devilish desires. Indeed, it can easily resemble a maddened stallion rushing over a fence as if possessed, with flanks heaving.
Of all this travail, there was no need, and for culpable involvement in it, there is no call; for the logical, loving, lordly, majestic, gracious call comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not to mangle with the reductionist follies of man, always trying to ignore the questions in providing simplistic part-answers or irrelevancies altogether, or to adopt the dreamy visions of those who need neither confirmation nor proof, though given minds to use. Rather His call is to come back to the Creator, to repent of the rebellion (even of ignoring Him in daily living and practical questions) and to seize His pardon with relish, as the avenue to mercy and godliness, to the kingdom of heaven and to a peace based on reality, not on drug or notion.
Here indeed is the plan of salvation as in the Bible, and the Person of Salvation, Jesus Christ and the testimony of it all.
Here is the solution
found to every philosophical confused bog, belch and stand-off,
with a clarity which is appropriate to truth, from Him who made man for Himself.
Here is
 |
the end of
prevarication and the load of testable truth, |
|
|
the rewinding of
tangled truth, drawn back |
|
|
the reason
provided for the errors in the first place |
|
|
the cohesion of
concepts, the harmony of every aspect of the account of truth, |
|
|
the source of a
perspective that not only resolves problems, |
|
|
the provision of
verification for the word on the ultimates, |
|
|
the field of felicities of
NOT skipping major questions but pondering their answers, |
Here lies
the cohesion of the answers to these questions, each with the other,
under the sovereign reality basic to it and to truth, that it might be known.
As no other book is testable, which ascribes its basis to God, as His word, and this is not only testable but systematically provides test and confirmation, verification and validation, and fails not once in its retrodictions and predictions, but rather is vindicated against the many layers of challenge throughout millenia, it is the work of reason to be ravished with its integrity, delighted in its being extant, and to register it in this sphere of the provided functions of man as the word of God, sole authorised, written word of the Creator to mankind. It is not reason which misleads, just as it is not stomach which causes the ingestion of poison.
Not only this, but in its discovery of the Bible, here is the ground and reason, that truth MAY be known, its source and the basis of its emplacement, and better yet for limping man, here in this very Book there is shown the divine desire that this, the utterly precious thing, the truth, BE KNOWN:
even that it be seized as with relish and rapacity,
as meat for the hungry and drink for the thirsty (John 6, Revelation 22:17, Isaiah 55).
INVETERATE NECESSITIES
Many are the ways of showing these things*3, but in this work, as noted, the preferred focus (though not the only functionary) is that of non-presuppositional, rational but not rationalistic approach which, once complete in its identification of the word of God, leads on verification and validation to confirm reason itself, used as is necessary in all argument, without which no argument may be made.
Ditch reason and then ? That would be like having hands and refusing to grasp a spoon with which to eat, or a gun with which to defend yourself from the death-threatening leap of a lion, or having a heart, and refusing to use it in courage, love or pursuit of reality. It fails because it does not test, and presumes without trial, as if given a sports car and refusing to use it, and so walking till feet give out, over thousands of kilometres of burning asphalt with no clear signs or suggestions of destination. What a wonder for logic and a marvel for the God-given powers of testing, that not only does reason SHOW where the word of God is, and testing GIVE the verifications in detail, but the very PRESENCE of the Bible, to enable this, is the confirmation of reason itself, not only as the norm, but the apt mode for action, God-given and like much else, an apt provision for finding Him, whose word it is thus shown to be.
At times, as a supplement, we may move retro-actively, from moves from areas to implications direct, finding synthetic confirmations in the midst of the areas that interact, in a cognitive output of their own, as in Department of Bible, Vol. 3, Ch. 6. Such methods may even be used in mutual collaboration. Methods are important, but less so than joint results. However, the use of that noted above, Direct Rational Realism, which proceeds to discovery, verification and validation, from the basis of reason and its grounds for survey, and indeed its grounds for use, is sufficient by itself, though welcoming companions.
But what of those who ignore the frank and unyielding results of enquiry, systematic and expansive, into the Creator and His conditions ?
It is, for analogy, like someone who WROTE a book having reason at work as he writes it, and of course, using it in the conversation of his characters, whether as a charade in their ludicrous abuse of it, or an illustration in its employment by them. Reason*4 is an affair of thought, thought of mind, mind an associate of spirit which uses it, and the whole of its deployment within what shows no evidence, no 'nature' capable of making itself before it was there to do it, leaving only the necessity of the One who made reason work in this world, as an output from His own working, and with it, manufactured form and substance, whether to enable thought or anything else. As earlier noted, the biblical term LOGOS covers all this, this being personal to God, and able to be incarnate, His very expression, not only of reason but in revelation, of Himself directly and categorically.
Indeed, this aspect of the wonder of God is linked to the certainty of communication*5, in turn verified by the unique Bible which attests its own source, which in turn, as source, insists that we try it out and see if there is anything else of this degree of certainty and testability and if so to SHOW IT! (Isaiah 41, 43, 48).
The main reason why something else is never shown is that like the source for naturalism, there is nothing there. It is assumed but never exhibited: this in the most anti-scientific method possible, and in the case of the Big Bang a startlingly ludicrous exhibit*6. Is it big, where did size come from ? is it a bang ? where did its energy come from ? is it confirmed ? why is it failure unrecognised so that it is categorically rejected as a question begging piece of irrational intrusion into enquiry concerning origins! Does it create a multitude of interlocking laws of form and substance and life by being an absentee from any basis, indistinguishable from nothing, from which it successively imports, as does Marxism, what has no place to be in its own model, the whole thing an invasion without base, source or reason, a dream so rational however that it is even relatable by reason!
It is not banging but building which is required, not size but capacity which is necessary, not evasion but invasion as when things are constructed, from what is necessary for the type of thing involved, with the outcomes in view; for imaginary powers will make nothing, and nothing as source will come to nothing; while eternity lacks nothing to the point of making time, and matter and mind and spirit, the Eternal One shown with the capacity exhibited in His works and the logic in His deeds, inserting both into the created realm, which subsists as He has insisted, and resists in man as He has provided, and uses the freedom He has founded for man, to his own detriment, so that the only escape is to return, and the wonder of it all is that the Bible to which reason points and on which it insists, has the means of re-entry into the presence of God.
Moreover, this return is not by a prescription, though it has some comparison to that, nor by an empty order, though there is command (Acts 17:30,Luke 13:1-3), nor yet by an incomprehensible provision, but His own direct action, as appointed, predicted and fulfilled in its stated time and manner and for its stated reason with the stated result. This means that any may come with a profound understanding of its weight and work and nature, and find in Him rest (Isaiah 11:10, Matthew 11:28-30) from the empty scintillations and pregnant subversions which make up so much of the dereliction of a drifting race, seizing power this way and that, in order, rebuked, to drift again.
Thus has this inglorious race done, not each one but in normative rushes of misrule, till its very ludicrous adventuring, as now, makes mankind so bedevilled with rampant power and empty philosophy*7, hiding truth while preying on what may be ruined by it, that its name rings like a shattered bell. It is one that sounds, cacaphonous and cracked, during the descent to the ruin for which it now has increasingly inveterate destructive power, its own life in hostage to its own follies.
What spurns God, God spurns, but not without going so far as actually, as in the Bible, that blessed and validated book, becoming a man, in His trinitarian exercise (cf. Isaiah 48:15ff.). In this, securing the death trap for sin in His own person to displace it from those who receive this, His salvation, and showing the eternal life which is His in the irruption of this same Saviour, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, from the dead, He provides all things, from the creation of the form and law of matter, the force and analytical power of mind and the spirit of man in its imaginative probing and disciplined finding, or pathological preference, granting liberty concerning such things, to the remedy for ruin, result of sin, in this same Messiah and His works of grace.
THEN anyone may come, and God has from the first the knowledge of all that is, to the last (Ephesians 1:4, Isaiah 46:8, Ephesians 1:11), so that nothing that receives Him, none so desiring, despite the depths of depravity of sin, is lost.
This is as shown above, and He who is above the mere workings of what has been made, is not above stooping so low as to raise to His very side and kingdom, by His knowledge and love, the results of His cosmic compassion, reaching as in Matthew 22:1ff., to the uttermost and disregarding none. Indeed, He is at vast pains not only to provide free salvation by grace only, His the works involved, but to exhort, appeal*5 and apply the love shown in His staggering actions (Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2:1ff., Ezekiel 33:11, Matthew 23:37ff., Luke 19:42ff., John 3:15ff.). Yet He takes none by force, so that despite the fact that He would have all to be saved, and all, in heaven and on earth to be reconciled to Himself, He strikes neither twisted bargains nor odious deals, with one Gospel for all, immune from the infestations of man (as in Galatians 1:6-10).
NOTES
CONSCIOUSNESS
Unconscious ? A relatively poor state physically and mentally; but what of consciousness itself ? This is precisely where the biblical orientation and perspective prevents the total failure of reductionist blindness to become a pandemic for bewildered mankind. Man has mind, matter (organised sublimely in a logically investigable manner, to enable investigators to find its almost never ending subtleties and commands for construction), and spirit; and each attests itself (cf. SMR Ch. 1).
The Bible ignores nothing, being a factual book driven by the Deity who made us, and KNOWS us utterly. One well remembers a pastor who being an engineer had evidently supervised the construction of a Church. "I know where every brick is," he said, " in this building," or some such words.
In Genesis 3 - as applied in Ezekiel 37, you see that in man, there is not only the obvious, the outward form (like that of a jet fighter) but a mass of internal brilliance, organised for performance AS ONE UNIT (like the human body with its DNA, but after the first, this can build itself by procreation), for an estimable purpose. It is not too hard to get some idea, in the case of a jet fighter, as you survey flight provisions and armaments, what that purpose might be. It becomes more obvious when anyone finds out how to use the thing. This is not hard, in principle, since the designer made it for use as one multi-competent unit, to be operated by one knowing this, the pilot. He acts in deploying the components, or subsisting with them, in the cases where the means do not need to be known, but merely directed, or at times, not even that, some being entirely automatic. Let us revert to that other equipment, incomparably more sophisticated, the unit call man, but one just as subject to causal requirements (cf. Causes).
The interface of spirit with mind, at its call, through the relevant equipment in the body is called consciousness. The brain itself, as you see in those remarkable works by medical pioneer Dr Paul Brand in his works, In His Image, and The Gift of Pain, has amazing capacities to adapt on a specified base, in a way as tyres do, on different roads; but this is vastly more ingenious and multi-empowered in the way it works in our bodies, whether with electricity, chemicals and sensors, memories or for codings for storage, of many kinds, resulting from such actions as the automated analysis of bacteria types for future use. We do not have to do this; the equipment does it.
Not only does it have the capacity to provide the facilities needed for the staggeringly brilliant gift of life, but it has interface, provision almost like a plug-in, for the spirit of that unitary being, man, to OPERATE it. In so doing, he is aware both of the nature of the equipment (more or less in detail, but functionally), and the nature of his will, which may be utterly and even irresponsibly directed contrary to both the impact of his mind and the limits of his body (as in suicide, elevated misconceptions and madness, whether mental or only spiritual, as in many dictators, who confuse desire with reality).
In being made so expressive so that he even can envisage or write down his own thoughts, whether to conceive or to deceive, to receive or to blast, to last or to rush into maelstroms of his own making, or through those of others, man uses his basic equipment for despatch of desire into action. The instrument is his body, and when his mind is astray, as in nervous tension, it may readily ruin some of the bodily components, since they were not made for a divided mind (Psalm 84), but a whole one, which many in fact possess, being quiet in spirit and aligned to reality. Man is most variable in imagination and desire, but most conformable to type in bodily provision. That is part of the marvel of liberty: you need power to use it, but individuality to have it. This is dealt with in this Chapter in the topic of freedom, so that it is not pursued here.
The consciousness, like the body, is an exceedingly individual provision that has ideational flair, observational capacity, using sensors and thought in the domain of a free and roving spirit, and may itself vary as spirit wanes or is troubled, but may equally be tuned in and up, by the thrust of spirit, to the meeting of crisis, be it in the domain of ideas, or understanding or bodily safety or any other thing it is enabled to sense, secure or administer. It may witness doom or deliverance and even contribute to either, at the behest of spirit; and at the behest of God, if known, it can become like a galloping steed, enabled for far greater things.
On the topic of consciousness, then, see for example:
Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 2, with Chs. 1, 2,
Grand Biblical Perspectives Ch. 7,
Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 1
Possess Your Possessions Vol. 6, Ch. 8 ,
Vol. 4, Ch. 4 esp. *3, Vol. 10, Appendix,Christ's Ineffable Peace Ch. 1
Consciousness is a function of spirit, in its divinely chosen organisation in a constructed and constricted design. In spirit there is amplitude for imagination and initiative (including attacks on a man's own body in some cases, nnot least those of many terrorists). In It Bubbles, It Shrieks, He Calls Ch. 9, we have seen that the invisible is ultimate for man, the visible its domain. That is simply a fact. As to spirit, see SMR pp. 348, and the excerpts below from Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 2.
A)
We have pursued the considerations which attest in man a spiritual being.
It is fraught with powers of imagination, mental construction, emotional projection, moral intimation, ethical finesse, passion for justice, and consciousness is its screen, conscience the internality of its procedure, reason the relish of its constructions, fever the father of its mis-fashionings and a host of functions, used or misused, are associated with it, without which man would be animal, and not that wholly diverse operational agent that he is.
The powers of mind are intermingled with the thrust of purpose to the point, empirically, that they may be bent, twisted or even overthrown by the passion of the latter. Thus conscious but unconscionable purpose may prevail, and rarely a better case in secular literature than that of Macbeth, tortured, tormented, prodded, incited, directed, assuaged, encircled by the telling tongue of Lady Macbeth as you used his lust as a lord to drive him to his fateful work.
Truth often falls victim to desire, whether the lust be of the flesh, the mind or the spirit itself. In grievous cases, mind, like a swollen arm in the body, can become an object in itself, no more subservient to human purpose, design or propulsion, but asserting itself, swell in dimensions until other functions of the spirit of man become lost, unco-ordinated and lost. Thus the biblical depiction of man as lost without God, is just, whether the infection be primary in the spirit or secondary in time, but primary in dynamic, in the mind.
The substitutes for God may be in parts of one's own apparatus, as in the vanity of mind and pre-occupation with its esoteric thrusts, vanity of body, and enchantment with its various provisions, or fever of spirit, with virtual worship status for individual, group or race, and accreditation for divine seeming post, a virtual god. Thus, and not seldom, man becomes as asinine as the fleecy clouds, were they to aspire to be god, being high above the earth. Self-willed, he becomes a horror, given power, he invents a holocaust, a USSR, a Mao-ist China, murder machines not least, and still he is not sated.
The construction of mind and spirit which enables these aspects of man through the torment of desire, the propulsion of diffuse purpose or the rebellion of heart to be their own lord, is like that of some giant air liner with its millions of integrally conceived and operative parts. Spiritual terrorists in disarming manner or imposing presence delight to secure each prize, each person, each heart, spirit. They prey on those who do not pray, or pray to their own gods, or seek to construct them.
No less than the facility of the body for similar follies, capture of man's spirit has results yet more devastating than gashes to the body. Thus man's spirit and mind leave room for the wrong pilot, plan, method and mastery to be in some measure, in control in a fashion more ultimately baneful than is disruption to the finesse exhibited in his bodily powers, for construction and reconstruction, in birth and in healing. It is not only babes which may be aborted, but spiritual life, fouled at its outset.
Again, it may resemble those horrendous cases where some militant, insatiable for evil, breaks a leg of a captive, and as it heals, does so again. It is the very nature of what refuses divine nurture, when its purpose is crossed or its desire flares, to be insatiable for evil, even delighted in its ostensible power, apparent impregnability or derisible splendour.
Most appalling is the case where the captive delights in his bonds, relishes his own ruin and aspires to his own damnation, calling it blessing, rapture, mission or achievement, not malady, nor yet perceiving its deathly destiny in disorientation and demeaning dynamic. Many are the layers of pathological occupation of man, from passion to dispassion, for evil or at it, from hatred that yearns for revenge and knows no bounds to haplessness which flows with the torrent of ruthlessness, as if it did not perceive: as in Nazi Germany for many, whose eyes were selective when it came to the Jew.
Nor is this all. Evil is no mere abstraction, for its burning coals of fire may be perceived in the eye and the very personality of many, as in their unspeakable actions, and not few are those possessed not merely by disordered desire, but the dynamism of devils.
The operations of a Faust are not operatic only, nor are all sales conscious, for repression of reality is a favoured method of deception leading to disruption, corruption and entanglement.
The invisible is the very key status of man, for what gun is not used for a purpose, and what war is not fought for an aim, and what praise is not for courage, without weight, for love without dimensions or for other aspects of the invisible, in which man deals as a merchant in money!
Like the physical counterpart, the spirit of man can be crippled, paralysed in part, seized up in the arthritis of hate, like pistons which can no more throb in their accustomed journeyings. It can be distorted, as by curved mirrors, so that he CANNOT see the obvious. Just as the body, cramped for years with children in the Industrial Revolution, can become so misshapen as to create an alien impression of man, so the spirit, cramped in cultural vices (cf. SMR pp.422Qff.), societal squalor or personal ambitions which never release it, can become a realm unremedied, with a pathology virulent and unresting, possessing it.
B)
The spirit of man, where consciousness is its monitor, conscience its admonition and a body its opportunity, where mind is the connection with knowledge and the fear of God its access to reality, is not only more obvious than the body, since one must desire to see the body and use it to become cognisant of it: it is more immediate. The desire and purpose for the action, these are spiritual. The means are subservient, and though indeed they may rebel, such is scarcely surprising after millenia of misuse by many.
C)
Then consciousness is not an unworkable anomaly of materialism, but a phase of the spirit which animates the body and deploys it; then conscience is no more an inexplicable residue of reductionism, but a corrigible consequence, often itself wandering, of creation: and now there is layer upon layer of meaning.
It is in one sense like sedimentary rock, layer upon layer, but all with a meaning such as is found when an entire rootless tree is found through many layers. We do not see the deposition of ages, but the results of vast thrust. The meaning in such rock is deluge, and the meaning in man is design. Thus, while the elements are co-ordinate, the results may be inordinate when their nature being ignored, their misuse grows beyond all bounds.
The physical flood is both an illustration of spiritual wreckage and a result of it: as in Genesis 6 (cf. News 1). It is foretold, just as the flood itself was foretold (Genesis 6:13ff.). Indeed, the work of Noah must have occasioned no little mirth, as there was no apparent usage for so magnificent a construction as the ark, this being a work of faith.
Faith however, being a matter of trusting the God of creation and salvation, naturally appears unnatural to those whose trust in 'Nature' is mere idolatry, and who thus realise neither the power of God nor His purpose.
Faith works in consciousness because not only is this an interface between spirit and the technology of the physical, enabling awareness for operation of this unitary thing, the human body, but enables another interface, that with the Maker of the body, a communication channel, amongst other things, with the Manufacturer of persons, who has stipulated for knowledge and wisdom, how to find Him in the first place (as vessels seeking the dead, have looked for the missing Malaysian aircraft for weeks on end), and what to do in the second.
Consciousness is the mental attestation of a doubly related spirit, on the one hand to its site and now in man's fall, its plight, and on the other to its creator, in His provision of meaning and remedy. In short summary form, this is found in Romans 1-3, Galatians 1-3 and Romans 5, with John 1 and 3. So far from being a problem for the Christian, in itself, it is a necessary outcome of spirit being placed in an executively empowered body, so that THOUGHTS of the Maker or of what else is made, can have a lodging place and an executive arm. Materialism fails to grasp how and why consciousness comes, since it is a debased and reductionist fantasy, ignoring much of what makes man. Its failure is necessary, predictable; just as the facing of the full scope and functionalities of man's being, requires it, and the provision of spirit enables it.
This is just one more of the vast array of solutions and perspectives in harmony which is found by research in every department of life, this being unique to the depiction of the Bible and the state of man.
Detail is given in LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST
as in Deity and Design... not least in sections 2 and 8.
In practical terms, once liberty is liberated from confused turmoil into appreciation of its elements and limitations, significance and situation before God, the resolution of much debate on many sides opens to the light of day, and it opens the door to the ready resolution of many areas from the toil of reductionist superficiality and imaginative incohesion, needlessly producing endless wrangling without good. Then there appears a whole landscape of systematic resolutions.
Once it is shown and understood that God is the only possible source of freedom, together with its nature, limits, reality and current sickness in unconverted man, then turning from this impasse, one finds a simplicity of understanding that can stand great depths and rise to great heights, the issues now like a deliverance from slavery and a relish in the powers at hand, He has made a dower of predestination to fulfil the power of the foreknowledge, wrought outside and beyond the squalling, squirming processes of sin, and implemented, not as a mere input, but with the authenticity of reality of freedom itself, of which more or less experience may be felt in the action of conversion. It is indeed true that concerning Christ, that "no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father," as in John 6:65, and often indeed would He "have gathered your children together a a hen gathers he chicks under her wings, but you were not willing," Matthew 23:37.
The integrity of the love of God, who would have ALL reconciled to Himself (Colossians 1:19ff.), but is quite prepared for many to defy Him and deny this privilege, is complete. He means precisely what He has said in all quarters, and most blessed is the human race to have a God of such depth, despite its own depravity, who yields in nothing even up to the uttermost sacrifice of Himself, yet without spiritual change, to secure those to whom His outgoing love reaches, to deliver the acme of joy in His everlasting presence.
Thus will of man is neither irrelevant nor sovereignly operative in man when the question is his coming or not into the kingdom of heaven. Man WAS free to say no, God Himself not being bound and man relative to God being likewise free from mere control. Here is love, here is rationality, here is friendship, devotion on the one hand, and raging torrent of untruth on the other, all for sale: the price that of the soul, to lose it, on the part of man, or for God Himself as He has appointed, that of the Cross of Christ, so that we who believe, being freely forgiven, should gain the heaven of hallowed holiness and glorious liberty in divinely assigned love, relished as the darkness might relish the light, when it realises how long has been its deprivation.
Man at the first, was free to choose; but is not so now. Sin has distempered the resources of his soul (I Corinthians 2:14), marred his spirit, cancerously enlarged his spiritual heart, and while he has many yearnings even to the point of experience (Matthew 13:20ff., Hebrews 6:4-8), the twist arises against truth, as the ground to the body of someone whose parachute did not work.
But God knew all before anything ever happened as in Acts 15:18, Isaiah 44-46, and FOREKNEW those who are His. What He foreknew was not yet a creation, being statedly before our venue of time was even so much as in place, but HE abundantly realised each one and as in Romans 8:29ff., knowing, He marked His own, predestining them. Nothing could go wrong in the realms of eternity, for God had it covered.
For the cost of salvation, He paid in Christ (II Corinthians 5:17ff.), in the substitutionary atonement to cover all receiving it; for the ensurance of the actual finding of those afflicted with sin, all was present and assured in the divine predestination based on foreknowledge. In this, man as such had no part, but GOD KNEW AND FOREKNEW, from the creation to the fall to the remedy to the restoration in regeneration. The result is truth, no one being mis-assigned, and the inner realities not misconceived by the Almighty, but construed aright, there is a peace on all sides past understanding. This means that if you seek the Lord, it is not as if He did not want you,so that this is in vain (I Timothy 2, Colossians 1:19ff., Ezekiel 33:11), nor as if it were a modern charade when all is already sealed impersonally. WHAT is sealed is the truth, in genuine fore-KNOWLEDGE of persons and principles, with a forth-going love that did not spare God's only begotten Son. HERE is spiritual service, and passion worthy of the name.
As often seen in the Bible (cf. Proverbs 1), IF you choose not to come, THEN you are in the dark. That is a procedural matter, and as biblical as anything other feature. However God is far deeper than that. IF you choose not to come, in the end, not to repent, having known the Gospel, then you qualify for rejection categorically (John 3:19, 15:22ff.), your sin being illustrated in the very laboratory setting of history. In effect, for this to happen you have to be aware of the issues just as they were in the John 15 case, where Christ made it clear that IF He had not acted in their very sight and hearing, uniquely with the flavour of deity, then theirs would not be the sin of exclusion. Ignorance does not quell love; and that is one reason for which He came, and so spoke!
In the toils and tremors of approach to Him, then, it is not fake or fraud but the outward showing of what has already been KNOWN by God, possessed of all reality and significance. That foreknowledge of what is not even at that point created, and seen without sin before therefore the fall, is therefore categorically not a part-process by man.
The creation the fall the remedy the relay of it, all was a sovereign work of God, and so is the salvation, and so for that matter is the deliverance of Christians when the time comes, from their odious confinement and persecution by the man of sin and his parallel representations, devil's messiah (I1 Thessalonians 1-2, Matthew 24, Daniel 7). There is neither lapse nor lull before the Saviour comes as in Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 59,66, Luke 21. GOD DOES IT ALL, but man is RELEVANT through the brilliant wisdom of God, who knowing all and giving to the creation in His image, man, that measure of independence which is fitting to such an image, enables him even as fallen, to have NOTHING baulk the desire of God that he might be saved, but that inherent preference for darkness which surpasses all appeal, both temporary and eternal.
On nothing in man's power does it rest; yet in terms of what man was made to be, it has a status in divine knowledge, and so the Lord acts, for He knows who are His (II Timothy 2:19). Man is neither irrelevant nor autonomous nor chosen in a mysterious way comparable to Allah's disparate condition, away. In this, the word of the everlasting God, tested in heart and in history, confirmed on all sides, giving way in nothing to any, there is no skerrick of mystery: GOD wishes to save all, but does not force Himself as you see endlessly in multiplied scriptures (not even when OFTEN He has both desired and sought a people or person, the latter as in Jeremiah 13, concerning the king). No, not even there. Conviction is His procedure, not disconnection; although when the issue is no longer appeal but judgment, this is according to truth. Freedom does not re move justice, but it enables one to seek it one's own way, however grossly misled.
In divine love, the Lord ensures sin does not PRE-empt, but in the prodigies of His wisdom,, surpasses it; nor does sin as yet in this trial time, suffer extinction, as if man is not tested, being declared. He is tested, as in Job! Reality rules... And God drafts history in the great laboratory of time to achieve all His good pleasure (as in Isaiah 44-46).
It is God's affair, not man's. But God being the grand One that He is, in love makes it relevant to man, to avoid any being lost whom He would find, within the blessed domain of His love. Thus the divine insurgency is not a militant marshalling yard where faith is an instrument equivalent to force, a take-over. Such would remove all relevance of love, making a parade of personality control. It is rather a vast movement that assembling His own chosen people, both Jew and Gentile, in which He has filtered out the recidivist in heart, the superficial and the deceitful, the self-elevating manipulator, and includes the poor of heart and weak of spirit, who scarcely dare to raise their eyes, but DO seek for what is there, even t he salvation of God, with all their hearts. This, known to God before all time (Ephesians 1:4), and so seen to the uttermost with nothing to hide it, is implemented in His own mode through the Gospel, the criterion, the test, the exhibitor.
This is but one of the foci where the biblical precision when followed carefully, yields only clarity, and resolution, and that in total harmony of every one feature with every other, in a way delicious to the mind, comforting to the soul, and energising to the spirit.
Again, following in all things what is written, sustaining no reductionisms, what is the result like to the mind and to the spirit ? The untampered truth of the word of God and the purity of His love becomes like the flush of melting snow water. Remove the blockage and the river of truth flows ever so smoothly from its alpine, nay sublime source.
This is not the only blockage removed in this presentation of Biblical Christian Apologetics (BCA), in following the Bible; but it is a crucial one. It is for this reason that the Bible-based solution to the age-old contention in this area provides a hearty help to realm of BCA, which had available the essence of the matter, in the Bible itself, all along. Hence the seven volume work on this topic is no waste of energy, but a crucial element of sound apologetics, one requiring therefore intense care in the insistence on all the biblical components of the divine provision for understanding, and not just some of them, as frequently found in this and that system.
Unfounded extremisms on both sides have been harrowingly common for those so unhappily turning the truth into partisanship, and the resolution available in divine revelation, by departure from it, into an intrusive invention of the human mind. Streaking off on a tangent from biblical truth, many sack the sublimity and remove the clarity of the word of God (cf. Mark 7:7). So they move into extremes this way and that, which do not work because they expand beyond or crawl beneath the biblical amplitude. Praise God it all rests in His word, which is magnified, being truth.
On the biblically constrained topic of the love of God, see for example the following.
SMR Appendix B
Massifs of Pure Splendour Ch 7,
Christ's Ineffable Peace ... Ch. 2,
GOING WITH GOD Ch. 2,
Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 6
The Glow of Predestinative Power Chs. 4, 8, 1,
¶The Christian Pilgrimage Ch. 3,
Great Execrations, Great Enervations, Greater Grace Chs. 7 and 9,To Know God ...Ch. 1, Keys to the Comfort of the Kingdom of Christ Ch. 7,
The Uncomprehending Darkness and the Self-Revealing Light Ch. 11,
Hapless Hitches and Holy Healings ... Ch. 2,
The Open Mind, The Closed Door and the Call of Christ Ch. 1.
See also *1 above.
News 57, 59, The gods of naturalism ... Ch. 3,
History, Review and Overview ... Ch. 5
TMR 1, 8, SMR Ch.3, and pp. 159, 315B-316A, 137, 1-50,
Repent or Perish Ch. 7, End-note 2, 4;
The Majestic Might of the Merciful Messiah Ch. 5; ASP 16, 4 Section 4
Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamics Ch. 2 (the historical trends,
the tedium and the
non Te Deum of
nescient naturalism) ,Dig Deeper, Soar Higher ... Ch. I, *1A (includes hyperlinked lists of many related naturalism errors),
Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamics Chs. 3 - 4 (the last with much much in free verse, cf. ASP Ch. 9: emphasis in DDDD 4, Darwin is dead);
Divine Drama Ch. 10 (and smuggling in gods); SS 8,
Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch. 3 - and I Timothy 6:20;
Wake Up World Chs. 2, 4, 5, 6,
Earth Spasm, Conscience Chasm, Renewal of life Ch. 7;
Prospect, Retrospect and Reality Ch. 5
Religion, Religiosity and Revelation
|
See That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 1 for an extensive treatment to the point.
See for example Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming, Chs. 4-6, esp. the last; SMR pp. 106ff., and to this add the continuing cloud of witnesses who leave the naturalistic myth with delight and relief at their deliverance from such obsession, from amid their Ph.D. emplacements in the field (cf. Creation magazine, in many editions, including the latest, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2014, pp. 36ff.).
On Hoyle, and associated matters,
read for example SMR pp. 209ff.,
224ff.,
252A,
H - L,
|
See for example, re Big Bang hypothesis, with its nieces and nephews, the following.
Department of Bible ... Vol. 3, Ch. 6,
Lively Lessons ... Ch. 5,
Defining Drama Ch. 3,
Christ the Cumulative and the Culmination Ch. 9,
Cascade of Truth ... Ch. 6,Dig Deeper ... Ch. 1
The Way of Truth and the Way of Error Ch. 8.
THE REASONABLENESS OF REASON
In this way, as we seek then find the testimony of God, the realm of reason within man and rationality outside him yield fine fruit, and ground for fruit, the one investigating with the very SAME reason that is found in USE in the universe at large, one system in material and personal realms, the one investigable by the other, both of one order. Indeed, in Ch. 3 SMR, the hollow folly of Hume's attack on reason, its omission of a central datum, is exposed, whereas the futile evasions of Kant on its relevance to ultimacies is exposed in Predestination and Freewill, Section 4, while other attempts to reduce things to mere verbal chatter ignore, like one blind to his own sports car, the fact that it WORKS! and therefore, being interpretable, definable, its laws exhibited and its results found, like anything else of this kind, it deserves its own word, being specifiable just as cats and frauds are, by what each is, does and where it fits in verbal framework, just as what it deals with fits in other spheres, whether these be mental or physical. Confusion has its death-bed in the endless dilemmas and dithers of efforts to disable that with which you yourself argue!
Reason does not convert; but it leads.
Reason is not faith, but it helps.
Reason is not a mist, but a must; and without it you are disabled from all argument.
Reason is integral to man and to the universe and they match, from one Maker of the limited and constrained, the delimited and the confronted as the case may be, one Maker of the thinking and the realms of investigation, with their concurrence in flowing function and mutual confirmation, and of their dysfunction when abused. Likewise, though His ways do not change, He is source of the imaginative, as part of liberty; and its trials always have their results, and the realms of facts and fairies, creation and nullity as source, these have their respective outcomes, however adorned with escapist irrationalities and verbal fencing.
Thus reason shows where to find God, not to speak His word; but through this finding it receives the revelation, duly attested, that is needed, so that just as HE speaks His word, reason shows its location, information being within it, and confirmation outside it, on all sides.
See Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Deity and Design ... Ch. 2 for example. See also SMR Ch. 1, Sparkling Life Ch. 4.
See on this, such sites as ...
Christ the Cumulative and the Consummation, Ch. 9,
Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Ch. 6,Lively Lessons ... Ch. 5, Dig Deeper, Higher Soar ..., Ch. 1
The Way of Truth and the Way of Error, Ch. 8,
The gods of naturalism have no go! 28.
Deity and Design ...
Why Not ... Ch. 12.
Department of Bible ... Vol. 1, Ch. 11, Vol. 2, Chs. 5, 8, Epilogue,
Vol. 4, Ch. 2.
See on this, such sites as ...
Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 13,
Dizzy Dashes, Heady Clashes and the Brilliant Harmony of Inevitable Truth Ch. 6,
SMR Chs. 3 with 5, by contrast,
Department of Bible ... Vol. 4, Ch. 2
See further in Appendix to follow.