W W W W World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page Contents Page for This Volume, What is New
FINALE
THE PLEASANT PERFUMES OF THE TRUTH
If anti-propositionalism disdains the use of propositions to buttress biblical principles, which would fit into presuppositionalism, presumably, since it launches a prepositional principle, it is but a taste. Selective confirmation of a principle remains a reasonable thing in research, and a confirmatory procedure. Disconfirmation of rejection of such a principle is simply a further confirmation. This sort of objection, then, it is a natural enough lurk for the materialist, before all else, as for the jaded with talk and the loose with the vagaries of the followers of the irrational, who in argument, nevertheless use the rational, as if in a stroke of forgetfulness.
However, for all the banality of the protest in this, it is well that presuppositionalism is only one way to go. The way chosen in this site is simply logic TO the Bible. Invalidate logic, and you cannot argue for anything, so don't bother trying, except you have fallen in love with antinomianism or antilogy, a step however which does not validate the folly.
If you follow logic, as shown in SMR, TMR and other works, you are forced to the Bible, to preserve reason. In a mad world, filled with reason and unreason, where therefore reason would be inadequate to gain any understanding, this would be a case unlike the present. There people NOT in the image of the God who made it and them, could not fathom, and what would be so surprising about that! It would tend to confirm their vulgar estate.
Since as shown in such works as Design and Destiny ... and Light Dwells with the Lord's Christ, the result of using reason is to FIND the treasure of truth which in itself explains in harmonious fashion, in principle, all things, happy is the one who gains this delight, both in logic and in person. There is more of course here and there, and there is no long-distance psycho-analysis of God, or any such inane imagining; yet the principles in the Bible in its coverage of actuality and reality, these cohere, the explanations suffice, the verifications do not vary, being positive at all times; but one vast fact, in importance, remains in method central. It is this.
IF logic were of no worth, IF there were realms of irrational sedition ready to strike down reason, then there might well be no REALITY to be found where REASON REQUIRED IT.
In that case, requiring us to believe as shown, that God is, is almighty and has spoken, in a readable or comprehensible account, relaying His will and remedies for man, would be a procedure aborted, a grievous affair, like the loss of a child. However, this flamboyant case is precisely what does not happen, and it is vital to realise this. Reason requires just such a communication, stable, sure, readily available from the first in some recognisable form, invariant in principle, effectual in function, as the Bible. But it is there. Instead of the confusions of materialism (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7), we come to the profusion of harmonious, indeed conformist evidence. The Bible IS the verification of the entire logical process. It IS there, and it DOES ALL the things which were rationally required.
But it must also be inescapable as the word of God. He is a Spirit and it will therefore require spiritual understanding, which like a deaf ear, will not be able to respond is it is not there, or the aural orifice is pertinaciously closed (cf. Matthew 13:15ff.). That said, however, what it has to say is verifiable, and when the case opens as in thousands of illustrations, it is verified; and it must be validated - but that is precisely what it is WHEN it is found, for reason required it, and short of antinomy, it HAD to be there. BEING there in that critical situation IS validation, its affinity for the probe of logic and its constraints, its rational attestation.
The case in terms of Christian Biblical Apologetics*1
is simple in principle.
 |
NOTHING is presupposed. |
|
|
NO principles of this or that kind are required reading before starting. |
|
|
You want a REASON for it ? |
|
|
then reason will be used, since that is the commerce proposed. |
|
|
You do NOT want reason ? |
|
|
then you cannot even argue without hostility on the part of what you have dismissed, |
|
|
and so you become rationally, among the dumb. |
YOU DO however want reason in requesting reason ? That at least makes sense. Thus you follow it and it leads you to where the Bible is, and that confirms by testability (instead of military testiness as is the way of some of that ilk, or political configurations that harass, as is the way of others of like presumption). It does so no less by validity, duration, immutability of principle, cohesion of concepts and prior attestation to history, as desired, before it happens. In it, moreover, there is a separate attestation. It insists that the Messiah, son of God, unique incarnation of God, Saviour by sacrificial substitution for those who receive Him, offering this gift to all, forcing it on none, is crucial. ONLY God is the Saviour and as such He acts (Isaiah 43:10-11).
For thousands of years, the Book of the Lord, the Bible, insisted that He would come; it gave the date of His death (cf. The Christian Prescription Ch. 2).
He did come and did all just as foretold, in many details (cf. SMR pp. 939ff. and 973A), in overall spirit, in effectuality and in His own way. He foretold from there, what would happen, and it did (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9 for example), and to this day it continues to do so, as shown in the earlier parts of this present volume (Opus 213), to this day.
It is not so very hard really. Closing the door by prejudice or mere passion is, as in getting drunk, in some way relevant, but not rationally so (indeed, forsaking reason is tantamount to self-destructive ambience cf. SMR pp. 262-314). Whether by will or by force on others, it is a witless proceeding, proving nothing but incompetence, irrelevance to truth and a forcible personality or religion as the case may be, leaving in the end, where mere force rules, the god of that religion responsible for all! That is merely one of the anti-verifications of what seeks to collide with the Lord, opposed to the Lord as to reason. Abandon reason, and results unreasonable are all ready for wallowing.
The other option is believing in and receiving this same Jesus, not some other without objective and rational support, as if it did not matter whether you were injected with vitamin B or arsenic, injection being the thing! The book of Acts is full of just such action, amounting to thousands from the outset of the Messianic Gospel, such as was for so long foretold as in Isaiah. Here you follow reason, find what reasonably requires supernatural power and priority, verify it, find its voice and this being the only POSSIBLE truth, being objective and unsubsumed, and the necessary truth by reason's own stringency, it has both necessity and transcendence, self-attestation in uniqueness and the magnificent facility of inability to lie (cf. cf. Balms ... 6 -7, Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4.
The additional advantage that nothing denying reason can reasonably or even rationally argue, leaves man with no other option but faith or self-dismemberment, dismissing faculties in defiance, refusing to face reality and so departing from it, a hulk or a rind: an ultimate fiasco.
Repentance is a prelude (Luke 13:1-3), ransom is the discharge from guilt (Matthew 20:28, Titus 3:5-7, Romans 3:23ff., Micah 7:19ff.), peace is the product and a godly life is the by-product, as is taking up your cross and following Christ as Lord (Luke 14, Isaiah 35). Objection to the objective Jesus is merely a form of avoidance of the operation; but at least it is direct. In the end, the only way to ensure a safe delivery to hell is to manage to reject a known Jesus Christ (John 15:21-23, John 3:19).
 |
God Himself, |
|
|
having all things in His hand in justice and truth, |
|
|
seeking all (Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2:1-6), |
|
|
by mercy and action, from the first, before our time was, knowing who are His
own |
|
|
has acted in good time for a timely result (Galatians 4:4, Acts 17:26-30). |
Believe then in the Lord Jesus Christ, and dismiss the pretentious philosophies of unreason which have nothing to offer.
NOTE
Christian Biblical Apologetics
This refers to the presentation in this site. It is first of all Christian, but not this diffusely, as if containing the myriad heresies of our day, but stringently biblical in its rendering of the reason for the faith. That is, it relates to this as its acme, goal, objective and indeed mode. So far from limiting it, this gives it its thrust. So far from assuming what it has to prove, it defines it the more clearly.
As to method, such parts of these 213 volumes as are found in What is the Chaff to the Wheat! Chs. 3 and 4 , for example, give outline.