This far-reaching
prophecy speaks near and far, in shorter and longer travails of prophecy
in terms of Assyria, in a way
shown elsewhere on this site (cf. SMR pp. 780ff., and *10, 881ff.; and see Romans 9:21-28 with
Romans 11). For the present, it is our purpose not to consider the time,
but the timing and the quality of this result! Not only the Kings but the
people, not the discipline alone but the devotion, not the folly of pride
alone, but the beauty of truth: all are found in their settings in these
divine dealings, and the last is greater than the first.
It is now time to return
to the questions of principle, and to see the irrational follies of attempting
to limit or defile, logically, the power of God.
- Potency
unchanged in the changeless
prescriptions
of the changeless Christ
As for God,
as demonstrated in Chapter 1, SMR, He is
no grossly squirming, tormented molester of His works, creating them for deception
while He acts out in their lives - the lives of His creatures - the
restless inferiorities of His own nature. There being no inferiorities
in His own nature, there is no restlessness, yearning or seeking or turning
for the desired, but unattained: as we have already pointed out.
Here we must pause
a moment to consider the godless character of such a conception, not merely
to remind ourselves that it is excluded from logical possibility, for the
Creator, but to consider the implications for those of this ilk who
are creatures. Instead of realising potential with delight, growing
with joy, achieving - with fulfilment of divinely composed task-equipment:
people, through ambition or fear, may worry and weary out their folly in
a defilement of the wonder of life... before, as here, seeking to project
their own incompetent aspirations, impiously, impudently and irrationally
onto their Creator. IN OTHER WORDS, people often harass themselves into a
morass, a bog of folly, and then preposterously try to imagine their God
is either as impotent or as impure as they. But let us revert.
There are, we said,
no inferiorities or restless elements in the nature of God; this is to affirm
what we have reasoned in Chapter 1, as being clearly the case. To what would
they be inferior ? To His own standards ? If so, then He would have instituted
aspects, standards not in harmony with His capacities or will or both; so
that there would be inability, instability and limits, constitutive limits,
so that HE would be created: for how else would He receive such limits! Since
He is NOT created, this One of whom we speak, such conditions and qualities
are logically impossible for Him, a simple contradiction in terms.
To extract this or
that from His creation, when to it has come ALL in its environment, internal
and external, being and conditions, is a purpose twice illogical, if attributed
to God. First, there is NOTHING THERE which he did not put in, including
the system in which it all works. He would be extracting His input! Second,
IF He needed something, or thought He did from His creation, to fulfil, complete,
advance Himself, or whatever, then without the creation He would be inadequate,
circumscribed, limited in Himself, qualitatively incompetent, incomplete,
immature, undeveloped. But if THIS were so, then to God would be attributed
the same conditions, limitations or growth phenomena, potential to actual,
as we, being created, have as our gift, our dower, the manner in which we
live. It would in that case be simply imagined that He was in a growth phase,
in a deficiency mode, and would again simply require us to find HIS creator.
Since however it
is of the creator that we speak, this simply means that this imaginative
concept about His inadequacy, this also, is a contradiction in terms. To
God belongs power, capacity; and nothing at all limits Him in any way. How
aptly speaks the word of God on this point, and it is wise to consider it
which is true:
"The
cattle on a thousand hills...", He says, "are mine. If I were hungry, I would not
tell you; for the world is mine, and all its fulness."
Nor is there any question, in
that supreme nature of God, of embattled or embittered psychic components,
alert to project themselves into a quarrel with the texture of His creatures:
there is no way His words will work against His deeds. For God, truth is
as sure as His Being. For confirmation and pith, let us note again, the Scripture
says: God ... cannot lie.
What
glorious inability; what omnipotent incapacity! How we learn the supernal
nature of omnipotence!: it does not deny itself. If it did, it would not
be omnipotent, but a writhing system, contorted in its set conditions: and
set, one must ask, by whom? Only by God; and since this is
He, then not set for Him. He sets what He will and makes all
what He would, there being no source or strength for any other action in
despite of this. That is the nature of the Almighty, as we have seen at length.
Necessarily the case, it is also given by revelation as we see.
We may add, for the
sake of completeness, that it is also of necessity true that God is no experimenter,
vivisecting His toiling creation - His pressured products - while gaining
more knowledge for future divine exploits. He already knows all, as
shown in Chapter 1. This is merely one sub-case of what has already been
shown to be impossible.
Neither morally nor
intellectually does God's very nature allow, then, alliance with lies. Accordingly,
He has spoken His truth, His word, His remedy - provided His Redeemer to
man, Jesus Christ, one infinitely pure, wholly efficacious. Creation is not
a covert operation for divine growth, development, catharsis or deception.
In confirmation, what does the Scripture say: God does "not willingly
afflict the children of men'' (Lamentations 3:33); "Thy word is truth''
(John 17:17). It is good in this Chapter
of John, to see this; as well as to reason to it, as we do
and have done.
Yet there is more.
God is lie-less, we have earlier shown; but truth also has in Him
its only possible basis, an emphasis of Chapter 3, above. In fact, without
God, truth does not exist. (Incidentally, this leads to the delightful absurdities
that afflict the atheist - and as we see, the agnostic. If God did not exist,
then, we would not truly say that He did not exist; for truth would not be
available with which to say any such thing. No statement that He does not
exist is logically possible even in terms of self-consistency. The atheist
is at once in a bog of confusion. )
If He were not there,
there would be only interaction with no basis of perspective beyond reaction.
Shall a cog designate the design ? Without a revealed God, truth is
unattainable; including any alleged truth that there is no God... or may
not be one. That too is an assertion, not equatable with nullity as an interpretive
medium. It requires knowledge to designate such a possibility.
Unless then, God
is there and known, it would not be possible to assert meaningfully
that He is not. Your speech is then the screeching of cogs as to eminence,
and it incorporates the vision of the viewless from the standpoint that is
anything... and even that anything is itself a situational
squeak, with no station for survey. It is the standpoint that does not stand.
It reminds one of
the old War song: `We're gunna hang
up our washing on the Siegfried line, when the Siegfried Line ain't there!'
The Siegfried Line ? the vaunted German line of armour.
Indeed, when men
assert - this or that is the truth, about the nature of things,
whatever characterisation, it is not because they are insane ( I speak of
the unbeliever who here needs perhaps some defence, in measure ). No, it
is because statements about truth are natural to image-bearers of
the truth. This merely, once more, verifies in our own human beings, whose
products we are, and who has composed us. Even in denying God, logically,
men attest Him.
God
is then at peace without the squirmings, warpings, turmoil and triteness
of little man, when sin controls him, defeat seduces him and illusion controls
him, seeking fulfilment in the illicit or derivative joys from the misuse
of other products of God, or, if possible, of God Himself, as happened at
Calvary.
God
is at rest, and has attained and will sustain all His good pleasure; everlastingly
what He would be; but the opposite is true of the men, whose lives yearn,
but do not attain; are harassed, vexed, but do not achieve their innermost
designs (cf. pp. 30-34 supra). The
psychiatry of paranoia and schizophrenia, melancholia and obsession has no
cosmetic side.
Casual or hedonistically
taken drugs are merely one of the tangible options for the warped personality,
avoiding the paths of peace available in the purity and the power
of the Creator: often thereby deriving the illusion of attainment of what
is lost, through the folly of wilful avoidance of the way to find it - Jesus
Christ.
There is rest.
There is, however,
no rest for the wicked ( Isaiah 57:21), who are "like the troubled
sea, when it cannot rest''... (it. added). That is the nature
of the case, in its crucial and final outcome. That too is verification of
their abuse of design, a predictable consequence; and rest for the redeemed
in Christ is the correlative verification. It is indeed, experientally, one
that passes all understanding; and that too, it is verification (Philippians
4:7).
A FURTHER
EXCERPT, this time from pp. 614-615 SMR may shed further light on the whole
matter of the power of God, which not only makes processes, but the scope
for them.
The downfall of Darwin
And Darwin ? His delusion is the same.
Scholar after scholar (and we could mention Morris, Løvtrup, Nilsson,
Goldschmidt, Gould, Kouznetsov, Korochkin, Bird) acknowledges its failure.
Neither has it given any evidence in over one hundred years, to verify
it, as the noted Professor W.R. Thompson pointed out in his introduction
to a new Everyman edition of Darwin's famous book; nor could it, nor is it
workable technically, while men like Denton, Eden, Schützenberger show
it is contrary in nature to the technology now revealed in the cell. In short,
it has neither the evidence nor the logic nor the method.
In fact, it is not even dealing with the origin of species,
as has been pointed out, but rather with their sustaining, which sidesteps
the issue, and Darwin himself noted that the eye could only by absurdity,
be seen as coming to be by his methods! (Dysfunctional specialised components
are blind!)
Again, if men
were made by mere manipulation of matter ('manipulation' - but not even that,
for in this theory, there is no one to manipulate)... by mere interaction
then, within a system, then of course by definition, they can
only apprehend within the conditions of a component; cannot evacuate from
either its limits or its constraints; cannot invade from beyond its thrall
to see it as it is, for on this view, there is no beyond. Therefore, in this
schema, there is no way in which a simply interactive part, embodied within
a system as a component, can envisage a whole, cognise, construe and capture
the system: for that is a different feature from mere action at a point.
Hence Darwin could not possibly,
on his own system, have known what the truth was, as with Marx, as
with Freud. In the rigours of relativity, there is no absolute, so
that it is absolutely impossible to know... even the rigours of relativity
as the truth. The theory dies with the opening of the mouth, to declare it
(*1). {See also That Magnificent Rock, pp. 103 ff., SMR pp. 100-101, Ch.3.}
As to 'theistic evolution',
it is not merely idly blasphemous in attributing to God the movements within
a system which uses trickery, treachery and force to 'advance' (this being
the principle, and man on this basis coming to be as consequence),
to elevate creation to the 'pinnacle' of man from the slimy depths... That
is not all. It is not merely that this would implicate God in obliterative
tantrums, as he lurched through this eccentric process of 'creation', receiving
magnificent help from the brave citizenry below, who by striving and conniving,
helped things along; for, instrumentally, we accept what we
use (*2). Such a view therefore is mortally delusive.
Nor is theistic evolution
less futile than any other such theoretical fantasy, without absolute creation
`thrown in': lacking as it does, the evidence of self-activated advance in
design complexity, of progressive continuity of change. It is as ludicrous
as anything else in the God-bypass area, in meeting the evidence of the Cambrian
Age, that sudden apparent bursting forth of a large percentage of advanced
creatures very near the first (on the theoretical basis in fashion); and
of stolid non-transmutation in decidedly unadventurous fossils. Refusing
to co-operate, they give the impression of being almost clandestine creationists.
The evidence chronically
and almost callously, for evolution, runs in manifest contradiction,
indeed, to the entire observation of decline and decay which is the only
evidence available, relative to overall 'drift' in an established system.
This evolutionism,
of whatever variety, then, is merely an added blasphemy and irrationality,
in callow and ineffectual confrontation with God and His glory, and the evidence
and logic jointly.
Creation and creator remain the sole possibility;
and those of us who know Him, we are not therefore 'cast down'. Nor did the
Psalmist long remain in that condition (Psalm 73:2-3,13-14). It is, as the
Psalmist shows, wholly an error to be envious at the boastful. Their
paths are indeed slippery, and the latest attack on and revolt from God comes
and goes, and to use a slang Americanism, when it goes, it `goes good'!
It is all madness,
revolt and revolution, refusing God, evidence and logic alike. Every
lust to replace God and find a system that works, to analyse our condition
and remedy it without God has failed. The 1991 collapse of Communism
is merely a routine treatment, one more example of what is intrinsically unworkable,
always has been, and always will be.
They fail intellectually,
as humanity invariably finds, when, rubbing its eyes, perhaps 50 years
later, it sees its error. They fail in behaviour, when the 'Spock' generation
becomes the `shock ' generation, and the `liberated' generation becomes the
annihilated generation. They fail physically and morally when the generation
needing no aid from God gains AIDS from man; when the enlightening liberators
turn into Red Guards and the economic marvel becomes a request for grain,
to avoid starvation, grain from the West... or for money, to avoid bankruptcy!
Will man never learn! His brave new world, continually constructed
(in mind) with morbid fascination, is neither brave nor new.
Sometimes these matters,
then, weigh on the spirits of men; and the Psalmist is showing his suffering
as the Psalm 73 proceeds from the first verse, a statement of conviction
about the constant and continual goodness of God to His own people
(He doesn't force people), to a statement of heaviness in verse 2.
But as for me,
my feet were almost gone, he says,
admitting his envy
at foolish people, who momentarily and superficially had seemed fortunate
in their gross prosperity. Thus, temporarily blurred in spiritual vision,
he suffers what you might call ...
God
very simply is all-powerful, all-knowing and is not involved in hand-me-down
constructions of "Nature"-like limitations that space or matter could contribute.
As
to that, the things themselves are His product, it is He who delimits them.
Nothing delimits Him.
He
is what He is, always has been, always will be, changeless without fault,
inviolable in His nature, irrepressible in His power, love though He be hated,
true though He be reviled, doing always what He says He will do.
7.
"CAN
YOU BE ABSOLUTELY SURE
ABOUT
ANYTHING ?" -
THIS
WAS THE QUESTION OF A DENTIST, ARISING FROM A DENTAL TOPIC BUT EXPANSIVELY
DEPLOYED. It certainly deserves an answer. Some others may like to see it.
For some it may seem a barb, to others a balm. Palates differ.
This
was the way one wrote to cover the matter.
Dear Dr X,
It seemed it would
be good to give you a non-dental answer to your question today on the topic,
"Can we be absolutely sure of anything?"
I in the midst
of tooth woes, noted that I could not be absolutely sure in the dental field,
being too ignorant therein.
However you deserve
an explicit positive answer as well. Here it is.
First, if I could
not be absolutely sure that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour, the required
Saviour for all in terms of spiritual necessities for life, and the due and
just Judge and Lord of all men, I neither could nor would preach, whether
in this land or in any of the others where I have done so. It would seem
an imposture, an imposition and a waste of time. 99.9999999% sure would seem
an impudence, if one were preaching. If God has spoken, that is it. If not,
that is it. If one cannot tell the difference, that is extraordinary; but
that is covered in the Bible in terms of Ephesians 4:18-19 and Romans 1:18-19
(the AV has "hold" but the Greek here is more clearly given Greek dictionary
renderings, 'hold down, suppress,
restrain' ).
2nd: If
all were relative, then it would be a self-contradiction to affirm this as
absolutely sure; since that would instantly disprove the proposition in its
very presentation. 3rd: If nought were absolute, then the statement
of this as absolute fact would constitute equal self-contradiction. 4th:
If all man did were necessarily subjective per se, then the statement
itself would disprove itself likewise in its very utterance. Antinomies abound
touching numerous points for the proposition in the negative.
If however at the
positive level, one is asked, Can you prove God ? the task is not hard, not
least consisting in removing, like weeds, philosophic devices. I proved this
in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, and have added some 8 more volumes
more or less allied, to that trilogy, ranging from Predestination and
Freewill to The Other News.
If the question is,
How then can you be sure? The answer is first negatively as therein shown,
that nothing else is logically tenable, valid and non-self-contradictory.
Second, positively, it is that validity, being shown to attach only to a
self-revealing God and action within that framework, moves to God and His
certifiable and verifiable revelation in the Bible without logical competition
in that field. That once identified, expresses itself beyond all that reason
could relevantly ask, yet fully in accord with it, to verify, confirm and
validate what logic requires in the first place.
As to your question
therefore, Can we be absolutely sure of anything?: First by faith I believe what
you ask to be so, YES, one can; and secondly by reason one finds on
investigation that it is a self-verifying matter by means of the actions of the
One to whom logic indefeasibly directs. Hence the answer is a double
affirmative. Two short expository enclosures on the topic, are to hand, and I'll
put them in. We have about 1.4 million words on the Web at URL : {update 2012 - now
http://webwitness.org.au with about 25
million words}
under World Wide
Web Witness Inc.,
dealing with Christian
Apologetics and allied materials, ranging from verse to news.
Validity
is given a whole chapter (5th , see also 7th) at
the above URL, with the longer ending :- thatmagrock/validity.html, but it
is substantially covered in 2nd. Edition, The Shadow ...,
Chs.1 & 3, esp. 253-316G. In the 1st Edition, Chs.1, 3 ( &
5 ) also deal with it. I think you have that.
Well, that's something
to get your teeth into.
Cordially in Christ
- Rev. Dr. Robert Donaldson,
Minister, The
Australian Presbyterian Bible Church Inc.
Enclosure:
1)
From a volume of the present author,
That Magnificent Rock (slightly edited for our use):
"2. Objectivity at Last
Such
is the sway of intellectual fashion that the very concept of objectivity
seems to some to be hopelessly adrift. However, the fact is that even in
our own distorted culture, we often speak of 'being objective', of the need
for objectivity, and in terms of displeasure, may state that someone is not
being objective.
Philosophically
rather than practically the concept is becoming almost outré.
In
fact, however, it is probably simply a synthesis of bad philosophy and guilty
conscience which, in many cases, leads to this thought. Is it objectively
true that people cannot be objective? If so, how do you know? ...objectively?
If not, why assert it?
If
one is to be logical (see The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, 'SMR', Chs.1,
3), then we have reasoned that it is best not to overthrow reason. If one
DID, by what would it be? If by reason, then? An odd accomplishment, since
that entity or functionality is to become invalid, which would do it. Without
reason perhaps? but by what would this become reasonable?
If,
then, one is to follow reason in all its dimensions, despite the jejune and
to the point, ill-informed claims of Paul Davies in 24 Hours regarding
this element (That Magnificent Rock, Items B and C - cf. D
- in Ch.7, Models and
Marvels in our Web Library), why then one will USE reason. IF one does,
and in particular uses causation, in which reason inheres, with which speech
is endued, by which thought may test, in terms of which characterisability
exists, through which in turn, description proceeds and articulated thought
moves: what then? Then one comes with the same rigorous and inevitable necessity
to God that the trilogy noted above shows. For more detail on this, see Ch.1,
pp. 3-10, Chs.3 and 10, and Index
on 'Causality', 'irrationality', SMR.
If
on the other hand, one avoids reason by denying it, one uses it to do so,
and if it is invalid, so is the reasoning presented to show this. If one
follows it, one arrives as shown in step by step detail Ch.1 SMR, at God
the Almighty, omniscient, the remedy-providing God. WHEN one does (in theory),
there is of course still a mighty hurdle which millions will never cross.
Thus,
IF you do not know God, then HIS objectivity is of no crucial help to you:
IN THEORY, yes. It resolves the subject-object impasse. In practice, NO!
it does not resolve it for you personally. It is like KNOWING there is a
marvellous symphony concert on next Tuesday, at 8 p.m., at some designated
place. However... other interests prevent your being there. You might go,
but you do not; you do not hear it. In this case, it is objectivity which
you do not hear. That is the nature of it.
THAT
is not a logical but a psychological problem. It is not a failure of reason
but of you; and you are not reason. Your will has bewitched you; but then
do not complain. If that is what you want... That is the personal side to
it for any human creature now living on this earth.
However,
it might be urged that we are merely assuming that GOD is objective. Not
so. In SMR, which is now on the WEB in its 2nd Edition, and of which copies
of the first Edition are still available, it is shown of necessity truth
is what GOD speaks. This is not a necessity bound on Him from outside; for
that would be a contradiction in terms. It would however be a contradiction
in terms - these being derived in detail, step by step in the place noted:
to assert that it is not truth, objective, actual reality without distortion
or deceit, which He utters.
Further,
in the context noted, we find that He is not subject to character imposed
from within
or without , or to circumstances
operating beyond Him, which could deter or inveigle Him into such steps,
unless He were divided, seeking what He could not obtain or at war with Himself,
with obtruding inputs beyond His control which He acts to negate: nor does
He contradict Himself, being wholly what He desires in eternity, free of
the constraints of antithesis as of the contortions of collision of word
and deed. SUCH things would involve Him in a system which He did not create
or a desire in His creation which He could not meet; and this would limit
His power or prevenience, either of which involves a contradiction in terms
as developed in SMR. (Cf. e.g. pp.
26ff., 581.)
There
is a further confusion. People are so culturally conditioned in many cases
after centuries of indoctrination, that not only is the Paul Davies' type
of error on causation, ignorantly asserted by some, but it is simply ASSUMED
that to be human IS to be subjective.
It
is true that to be human PER SE is not to be God. It is true that those who
are simply and merely human are limited. It is also true that such persons
may show enormous and frequent involvement in deception and self-deception,
often confessing the same, and illustrating it; but this is not simply to
be assumed in all cases. To BE a subject, moreover, is not identical with
being subjective. THAT would be a play on words, not a work of reason. It
MIGHT; but that it MUST be so, is a mere assumption. WERE it true, moreover,
and IF the meaning of 'subjective' were taken to be :'wrong, inadequate,
not seeing things in the light of truth' - as would often be the connotation,
then of course the very statement to this effect could not be taken as true.
IT too would be 'subjective'; unless a tick logical slide were being engaged
in, which is merely invalid.
To
be a subject does not mean to be ONLY a subject. It means that you have a
plateau or performance or function in terms of which you assess, are conscious,
consider, reflect and retort, in the case of a human being; but it does not
per se also mean that you CANNOT expand beyond such a limit. That, to render
it vivid by analogy, would be like saying that man cannot fly. That is true
in broad general terms; but if one considers, then hang-gliding would need
to be defined out, and aeroplane travel would need to be excluded. One would in the end
have to re-define what one meant by 'fly', so as to exclude a number of ways
in which it could be done. So here: man may indeed by subjective; and it
is not hard so to be. If however one wishes to make the broad, general statement
that MAN CANNOT be objective, there are... problems.
Indeed,
one will often be ASKED to be objective without any sense of irrationality.
THIS concept is as much part of the culture as the assumption that man cannot
be so. Christianity in terms of the Bible, offers clear solution to this
cultural antinomy. MAN OUGHT to be objective, in the sense of not callowly
or corruptly, even if unconsciously, distorting the facts. Man often fails
in this, so that the request is that it be avoided. Then someone might say:
BUT HOW? Note first however that it is not thought insane to ask, or to expect
this.
A
'subjective subject' is a more precisely
defined term than a subject. When we employ this non-redundant term, we clearly
mean that a person who is limited is also in this case departing from criteria
available. What then of an 'objective subject'?
What
does this mean? It could mean some one limited; but one having a particular
framework of operation, which in some ways is neither being misused, nor
(in the end) a hindrance or exclusion agent against truth. We could, and
should, go further. GOD is a subject in ONE sense. This Being is not LIMITED
in power, operation or knowledge by any force, system or history, culture
or condition.(See SMR Chs.1,4,10.) If then we were
to refer to Him as a subject, we should need to amplify the definition. He
is a subject in the sense that He has a personal distinctiveness from all
others who survey scenes, act and respond. There is no reason why this particular
use of the term should not be made; but it is necessary to be aware that
there are narrower and broader usages available.
Man
however is a subject, but whether he be subjective (a more distinct and normally
pejorative term) is another question. The confusion of these two concepts
is merely an error and is of no value in dealing with the topic; its point
being simply this, that we avoid it, like any other confusion. Very well:
man is a subject who may or may not be subjective, depending on the case.
IF he does not know God, then in some pejorative sense, he will in general
be subjective (cf. SMR pp. 102,
*31, 299-302, 42-47, 88ff., 580ff., and Ch.3) ; for then his subjectivity
will be in the realm of impacts known or unknown which may limit, distort
or derail; and without the truth which depends on the One whose knowledge
is absolute and whose perspective is immovably adequate and accurate, and
specific to His person, there will be systematic defects.
Let
us not be careless here however There MAY be some elements from time to time
which are formally right. Divorce from the appointed working relationship
with God does not remove the Biblical reality that the form of man's thought
contains that which even sin does not in every case wholly defile. In fact,
this is the Biblical ground for the fact that man is not simply absurd and
incapable of truth.
The
amusing extension of this, of course, is that whenever people tell what the
position really is (including the view that we do not or cannot know what
it really is) they are not insane; but merely expressing a built-in expectation
of what WOULD be appropriate, if God were known, as in fact He ought to be.
People's residual areas of construction, not wholly distorted, may urge them
to such a modus operandi, even when, through sin, it has become self-contradictory.
Whether
or not man as subject can avoid being merely subjective depends quite simply
on this: Could people find, or be found by God; or more precisely,
ARE they so
found? If they do,
or are, then the path to such avoidance lies open. The alternative is an
irrational abyss of self-contradiction, which lacks nothing in the ludicrous,
the comic and the poignantly regrettable.
By
the way, red herrings are the usual way of fleeing from all this utilised
by those so inclined(other than physical departure, often found also, form
the premises of discussion); or should we say they are one of the norms ?
Thus we had better cover one of them . 'Man' is in our language a term of
dual usage here: it MAY mean masculine member of the human (hu-person) race;
or it MAY mean 'member or members of the human race'. and it may be racially
indiscriminate. It has been used here in the second sense, without regret,
disparagement or any negative implication or assumption whatever. Woman is
of precisely the same value as is man.
But let us return to our theme.
The options
are
1) the abyss
of irreconcilable confusion
( which
is not the height of reason ) and
2) the pursuit
of the only rational alternative ... to come
to the finding of the self-verifying God whose reasonableness, harmony and
testimony are not only adequate and uniquely so to reason, but as shown in
detail in SMR, beyond all masterpiece in superabundant verifiable provision.
To its self-verifying properties later come HIS self-expressions in performance
in the lives of those who know Him. This is a further dimension.
The cost of
course is by many deemed, or unconsciously felt to be, too high. Christ Himself
exhorted to 'Count the cost'. It involves acknowledgment of sin appropriation
of the divine, donated remedy, Jesus Christ the living Prince of Life, and
allegiance to Him beyond all. Indeed, as He said, "So likewise, whoever of
you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple!" There are times
when the word 'cannot' is very refreshing; and refreshing is exactly what
the gracious Lord provides according to need and an open heart (Acts 3:19).
The two re's: Repent and refreshing, are twins. In general you cannot PARTLY
keep to physical laws if you want an experiment demonstrating them to work;
far less can you do so in spiritual things, when the Supervisor Himself stands
to witness.
In other
words, there is a prescription if you are in favour of using your mind.
1)
Turn to the street called reason, and
2)
follow it to objective revelation,
3)
verify it, and then
4)
turn to the APPLY section, and do so (cf. James 2:17-20, John 14:21-23).
Before
doing so, however, count the cost, and realise this, that in moving from
being merely (if uniquely) valid, to being objective, you lose the ungerminated
grain aspect of your life, and must germinate. This is both
wonderful, and potentially distressing, depending on whether the Lord has
given you the grace to find Him. You will not do so while your precious self
is in vogue. Repentance and reception of the Redeemer put you 'in place'
- but WHAT a place, in the heart and household of God."
2) A Related Page or so from SMR
Troubled by an absolute God
as erring man may well be, like a furry ferret, he frequently likes to burrow
into the pleasant seeming holes of relativity, avoiding the open skies of
The Absolute Inadequacy of
Relativity
If we say: All things are
relative: religion is relative; my religion is relative (to my preference,
taste and so on), and so is yours... what then ?
Then nothing is absolute.
Then the proposition, that everything is relative, cannot be presented as
absolutely true; it cannot indeed be absolutely true that there is no absolute
truth. That is a flat contradiction as distinct from a plausible opinion.
To hold that, is to argue for the removal of logic; and that is to argue
with the very thing which is being denied in the process.
To find that
everything is relative, absolute truth is needed; and to find that would
be impossible if indeed everything is relative.
If therefore, everything
is not relative, then we can make statements which are better than nonsense
about what IS and what is not. If something is absolute, then something may
be said about some things which is not mere nonsense, internal self- contradiction.
If all were heredity
and environment, then there would be no way to see beyond and to know it.
If anything may be affirmed meaningfully, then the power to reach the actual
standpoint in which truth is possible and indeed in which it is correctly
seen and so no illusion, must be there. Such a standpoint requires a minimum
of two conditions: first there must exist a truth to which one can
attain (not mere reaction of reactors); and second, there must exist a way
to find it (not mere interaction). There must be a true standpoint,
a true perspective, a right way of viewing things; and there must
be an opening to know it.
The unrelative is
the absolute; and the absolute is necessary, if anything is to proceed. A
series of related entities does not logically account for any entity; multiplication
is not causation. "Nothing" is not a possible origin; for it has no potential
or future (if indeed it be nothing). Something... therefore must always be,
if anything can ever be; and some things are.
What must always
be ? what is adequate for what-is-to-be, must always be; or we would be rankly
asking for effects without adequate cause, which is to reason by denying
reason; which is self contradiction.
An adequate something
always in existence involves an adequacy for the provision of mind and spirit,
as well as the laws of matter, which show no evidence of being self-creating;
and if they did, would show a program at work, which requires an information
technique to input it.
This adequate something
requires to be dependent on nothing; for if it were otherwise, the problem
would be retarded, but not removed. Absolute everlasting independence is
the necessity for... dependence. You do not produce your cause by referring
to this and that aspect of what is here (*1). Thus by analogy, a poem is
not explained as to its origin by inspecting the semi-colons and the commas
and considering their connections. Their causal origin and their causal content
need analysis and specifiability.
An adequate cause
is ontological as well as organisational; there must be cause for inter-active
existence, as well as for inter-active mechanisms. Only that producer which
is entirely, eternally self-sufficient and sufficient for all things meets
the case, causally. Insufficiency, we recall, cannot produce; and derivability
requires the system in which it occurs, for the power to be derivable to
operate. The system requires its base, its cause; and more of the same does
not produce that cause, but merely adds to the burden upon it. Hence the
absolutely underivable and eternal is necessary for anything to be affirmable
as true; including relativism. But since this contradicts relativism, this
is possible only as an exercise in self-contradictory fantasy.
The ruin in moral
or metaphysical relativity (Einstein, of course, in giving theories
deemed apt for certain relationships, was laying down one more `absolute'
or definitive-type input concerning law)... this is often paralleled
in religion, by two more rabbit tunnels, enticing to ferrets. To these,
we now turn. Fascinating to students of foreign languages can be word studies.
What however about our own language ? Let us dig and look briefly at two
words with a view to studying the darkening tunnel-use often made of these
areas.
{It continues
in SMR pp. 255ff.}