The Golden Chain of Redemption

Question: "What is the Golden Chain of Redemption?”[1]

Answer: The “Golden Chain of Redemption" is also known as "the order of salvation" which deals with the steps or stages in the salvation of a believer (e.g. foreknowledge, predestination/election, effectual calling/regeneration, justification/sanctification, and glorification - Romans 8:29-30). Before our discussion, it might be helpful to provide some basic definitions[2] of many of the terms involved:

Foreknowledge: God's knowing (in this sense) prior to salvation those who would be saved based upon His active choice to forelove them.

Predestination: The act of decreeing or foreordaining events; the decree of God by which he has, from eternity, unchangeably appointed or determined whatever comes to pass. It is used particularly in theology to denote the preordination of men to everlasting happiness or misery.

Election: In theology, divine choice; predetermination of God, by which persons are distinguished as objects of mercy, become subjects of grace, are sanctified and prepared for heaven.

Regeneration: The new birth by the grace of God; that change by which the will and natural enmity of man to God and his law are subdued, and a principle of supreme love to God and his law, or holy affections, are implanted in the heart.

Evangelism: The proclamation and propagation of the gospel.

Faith: Evangelical, justifying, or saving faith, is the assent of the mind to the truth of divine revelation, on the authority of God's testimony, accompanied with a cordial assent of the will or approbation of the heart; an entire confidence or trust in God's character and declarations, and in the character and doctrines of Christ, with an unreserved surrender of the will to his guidance, and dependence on his merits for salvation. In other words, that firm belief of God's testimony, and of the truth of the gospel, which influences the will, and leads to an entire reliance on Christ for salvation.

Conversion: A change of heart, or dispositions, in which the enmity of the heart to God and his law and the obstinacy of the will are subdued, and are succeeded by supreme love to God and his moral government, and a reformation of life.

Perseverance: Continuance in a state of grace to a state of glory; sometimes called final perseverance.

Repentance: One's turning from sin to God. Real penitence; sorrow or deep contrition for sin, as an offense and dishonor to God, a violation of his holy law, and the basest ingratitude towards a Being of infinite benevolence. This is called evangelical repentance, and is accompanied and followed by amendment of life. Repentance is a change of mind, or a conversion from sin to God. “Godly sorrow works repentance to salvation.” 2Cor. 7; Matt. 3. Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice, from conviction that it has offended God.

Justification: The pronouncement of "not guilty" on a sinner. More specifically, the forgiveness of sin and absolution from guilt and punishment; or an act of free grace by which God pardons the sinner and accepts him as righteous, on account of the atonement of Christ.

Sanctification: God's separation of one from the lure or attraction of sin. More specifically, the act of God's grace by which the affections of men are purified or alienated from sin and the world, and exalted to a supreme love to God. “God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” 2 Thess. 2; 1Peter 1. (2) The act of consecrating or of setting apart for a sacred purpose; consecration.

Glorification: God's final removal of all sin from the life and presence of the believer in the eternal state.

Introduction: The Locus Classicus of the Golden Chain of Redemption – Romans 8:29-30

One the best loved verses in all of the word of God is Romans 8:28. However, most believers do not realize that the foundation upon which this great verse rests is the verses that follow, verses that describe what has been called “The Golden Chain of Redemption.” When Paul declares that God works "all things," without a single exception, together for his own glory and the good of his people, he is making quite a claim. One might think, "How can the Apostle Paul, how can you make such a sweeping and dogmatic statement?" The next verse begins with the word "for" and Paul's reason for being so certain is laid out in five tremendous statements. These statements have well been called, "The Golden Chain of Redemption." Let us examine them carefully:

Romans 8:29-30 For those whom (1) He FOREKNEW, He also (2) PREDESTINED to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; ³⁰ and these whom He predestined, He also (3) CALLED; and these whom He called, He also (4) JUSTIFIED; and these whom He justified, He also (5) GLORIFIED.

One the best loved verses in all of the word of God is Romans 8:28, but most believers do not realize that the foundation upon which this great verse rests is the verses that follow, verses that describe what has been called “The Golden Chain of Redemption.” When Paul declared that God works "all things," without a single exception, together for his own glory and the good of his people, he was making quite a claim. One might ask, "Paul, how can you make such a sweeping and dogmatic statement?" The next verse begins with the word "for" and Paul's reason for being so certain is laid out in five tremendous statements. These statements have well been called, "The Five Golden Links in the Chain of Sovereign Grace." Let us examine them.

I. The first important thing to notice is the five things are linked together into one unbreakable chain. If one of them is true then they are all true. The word "for" in verse 29 begins the argument that proves beyond question that all things have to work together for good for the people of God. The Apostle lists five things that are certain to happen because of God's sovereign purpose. God's people are (1) all foreknown, (2) all predestined, (3) all called, (4) all justified, and (5) all glorified.

All five of these things are set forth as not only essential to God's eternal purpose of salvation but also as absolutely certain of fulfillment. They summarize the salvation of sovereign grace that has it’s origins in eternity with God's foreknowledge and ends in eternity with our full glorification. Each link grows out of the former link to form one unbreakable chain. Every sinner who is "foreknown" is going to eventually be totally "glorified." Notice how all five links fit nicely together.

Romans 8:28 is the glorious declaration of that hope and assurance. We "know" something for certain, namely, that “God causes all things to work together" for a group of people described as "those who love God." They are further described as those who “are called according to His purpose.” The second thing naturally follows after first thing. The first thing, loving God, describes the true character of a child of God. All true Christians sincerely love God. The second thing, "called according to his purpose," gives us the cause that made the first thing possible. God purposed to have some people love Him and He sovereignly called these particular people by His power. We love him only because He first loved us. He called us on "purpose" according to his own plan. I am sure you realize that most people think God calls everyone in the same way and justifies only those who are willing to respond to the call in repentance and faith. This is, of course, half true but not true at all in the sense that Paul is talking about calling. It is impossible to fit that idea into this golden chain.

II. When verse 29 says, "For those whom He foreknew," it must be referring to a specific identifiable people. They are the identical same people who in verse 28 "love God" and have been “called." All of those who are "foreknown" are also "predestined to become conformed into the image of His Son." The foreknown ones and the predestined are the same identical people. All those who are foreknown and then predestined are next "called." Being effectually called is the first step taken to bring guilty sinners out of the graveyard of sin and death and ultimately glorify them in heaven in full redemption. The order of these things is important. It is especially important in the next step. All those who are called, because they have been foreknown and predestined, are also all "justified." In other words, everyone, without a single exception that is effectually called by the Holy Spirit unto salvation will always be justified.

III. Four-point Arminian theology teaches that God calls all men without exception and those who, with their free will, decide to respond were then justified and predestined to be eternally secure. The predestining purpose of God always came after the sinner's willingness to answer God's call. It is obvious that this idea is not possible in this passage of Scripture. According to Paul, our calling unto salvation by the Holy Spirit comes after and grows out of our predestination and not vice versa. If that were not true, the text would say, "God calls all men, and justifies only those who are willing to believe." However, the text puts the order exactly in the reverse order. We were not predestined to final glorification because we were willing to believe, but we were made willing to believe only because we had already been predestined. Calling is merely the first step towards the foreordained end of total glorification and all who have been foreordained to that end will be called and justified. The Holy Spirit clearly states that all without exception who are called are also justified. It is impossible to be called, in the sense that Paul is using the word "called," without also being justified.

Obviously Paul is talking about effectual calling, or regeneration. The first result of being called is that we are justified, and the final climax of God's work is total glorification. All those who are justified will most certainly be glorified. That fact is so certain that Paul speaks of it as already past, and so it is in the eternal purposes of God. This is the only place in Paul's writings where he jumps from justification to glorification and skips sanctification. It is not because he quit believing that sanctification was essential, but in this argument he is talking about the "eternal purpose of God" and present and ultimate glorification are completely and absolutely certain for every foreknown, predestined, called, and justified person.

IV. Let me paraphrase these verses and answer the question, "How can I be sure God will do what he promised in Romans 8:28." I can be sure because "Those," all of them and only them, who have been foreknown by God in electing grace, are certain of ultimate salvation (total glorification) because God has sovereignly purposed to conform them, all of them and only them, into the image of Christ. God's first step in this gracious purpose is to effectually "call" them, the foreknown and predestined ones, all of them and only them, by the power of the Holy Spirit through the gospel. Those, all of them and only them, whom he calls he also "justifies" and applies to them the righteousness of Christ. It is impossible to be foreknown and predestined and not be called just as it is not possible to be called if you were not foreknown and predestined. Likewise it is not possible to be called without that calling producing justification. Those, all of them and only them, who are justified are already glorified in the sovereign purposes of God. In God's mind it is what we would call a "done deal."

To review what we have seen thus far, the biblical order of salvation is:

1. Foreknowledge = Foreordination that is based in God’s eternal decree.

2. Predestination/Election – God’s sovereign determination of who would be saved by His own good pleasure and not based upon anything in those who are chosen (Rom. 9:11).

3. Effectual Calling – the outward call of the gospel comes to the sinner through evangelism and the inward call of the Holy Spirit experienced in the heart of the person brings about spiritual regeneration (John 6:44). This inward call is the “call” of Romans 8:29-30. This effectual calling leads to (a) spiritual regeneration which logically leads to (b) Repentance unto life/faith in Jesus Christ. Regeneration, saving faith, and repentance all occur simultaneously in time but logically, regeneration comes before faith/regeneration (1 John 5:1; 2 Tim. 2:25).

4. Justification – the declaration of a sinner as righteous before God on the basis of Christ’s righteousness credited to them. The believer is also declared completely sanctified (holy) at the moment of justification but also continues to grow in holiness practically throughout life. Conversion immediately follows regeneration/repentance/faith and justification as expressed in an outward profession of faith and water baptism.

5. Glorification (sinless perfection that only occurs when in heaven).

Conclusion: It is important to realize that the “Golden Chain of Redemption”/Order of Salvation has as much to do with salvation stages as it does with the cause(s) of salvation itself. For example, the Reformed position has faith as an effect of regeneration rather than the cause of it (versus how the Arminians understand it). Thus, a person is regenerated by the Holy Spirit in order to be gifted with faith, but there is no such thing as a regenerated person that is walking about without saving faith. The two (regeneration and faith) go hand-in-hand and are assumed by the biblical writers to co-exist. So, what does this say about who is ultimately responsible for the believer’s faith? The Arminian position has the believer responsible for whether or not God saves him, and thus a person must persevere to the end before he can be assured of salvation. What does this say about a believer's security? These and many other questions are dependent upon the “Golden Chain of Redemption” for their answers, and it is thus important that a believer understands from which perspective those answers are given.

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[1] This is also known as the “Order of Salvation” or in theological literature it is known more commonly by the Latin phrase Ordo Salutis.

[2] Some definitions are liberally taken from the online Webster’s 1828 Dictionary and may be more or less modified to conform to modern English readers (http://www.cbtministries.org/resources/webster1828.htm).

John Piper on Hearing God's Voice in the Word

I found the article below to be truly refreshing in light of some people's frequent claims to audibly hear the voice of God.

The Morning I Heard the Voice of God

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By John Piper March 21, 2007

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Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six o’clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today.

I couldn’t sleep for some reason. I was at Shalom House in northern Minnesota on a staff couples’ retreat. It was about five thirty in the morning. I lay there wondering if I should get up or wait till I got sleepy again. In his mercy, God moved me out of bed. It was mostly dark, but I managed to find my clothing, got dressed, grabbed my briefcase, and slipped out of the room without waking up Noël. In the main room below, it was totally quiet. No one else seemed to be up. So I sat down on a couch in the corner to pray.

As I prayed and mused, suddenly it happened. God said, “Come and see what I have done.” There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment. At this very place in the twenty-first century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality. I paused to let this sink in. There was a sweetness about it. Time seemed to matter little. God was near. He had me in his sights. He had something to say to me. When God draws near, hurry ceases. Time slows down.

I wondered what he meant by “come and see.” Would he take me somewhere, like he did Paul into heaven to see what can’t be spoken? Did “see” mean that I would have a vision of some great deed of God that no one has seen? I am not sure how much time elapsed between God’s initial word, “Come and see what I have done,” and his next words. It doesn’t matter. I was being enveloped in the love of his personal communication. The God of the universe was speaking to me.

Then he said, as clearly as any words have ever come into my mind, “I am awesome in my deeds toward the children of man.” My heart leaped up, “Yes, Lord! You are awesome in your deeds. Yes, to all men whether they see it or not. Yes! Now what will you show me?”

The words came again. Just as clear as before, but increasingly specific: “I turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There they rejoiced in me—who rules by my might forever.” Suddenly I realized God was taking me back several thousand years to the time when he dried up the Red Sea and the Jordan River. I was being transported by his word back into history to those great deeds. This is what he meant by “come and see.” He was transporting me back by his words to those two glorious deeds before the children of men. These were the “awesome deeds” he referred to. God himself was narrating the mighty works of God. He was doing it for me. He was doing it with words that were resounding in my own mind.

There settled over me a wonderful reverence. A palpable peace came down. This was a holy moment and a holy corner of the world in northern Minnesota. God Almighty had come down and was giving me the stillness and the openness and the willingness to hear his very voice. As I marveled at his power to dry the sea and the river, he spoke again. “I keep watch over the nations—let not the rebellious exalt themselves.”

This was breathtaking. It was very serious. It was almost a rebuke. At least a warning. He may as well have taken me by the collar of my shirt, lifted me off the ground with one hand, and said, with an incomparable mixture of fierceness and love, “Never, never, never exalt yourself. Never rebel against me.”

I sat staring at nothing. My mind was full of the global glory of God. “I keep watch over the nations.” He had said this to me. It was not just that he had said it. Yes, that is glorious. But he had said this to me. The very words of God were in my head. They were there in my head just as much as the words that I am writing at this moment are in my head. They were heard as clearly as if at this moment I recalled that my wife said, “Come down for supper whenever you are ready.” I know those are the words of my wife. And I know these are the words of God.

Think of it. Marvel at this. Stand in awe of this. The God who keeps watch over the nations, like some people keep watch over cattle or stock markets or construction sites—this God still speaks in the twenty-first century. I heard his very words. He spoke personally to me.

What effect did this have on me? It filled me with a fresh sense of God’s reality. It assured me more deeply that he acts in history and in our time. It strengthened my faith that he is for me and cares about me and will use his global power to watch over me. Why else would he come and tell me these things?

It has increased my love for the Bible as God’s very word, because it was through the Bible that I heard these divine words, and through the Bible I have experiences like this almost every day. The very God of the universe speaks on every page into my mind—and your mind. We hear his very words. God himself has multiplied his wondrous deeds and thoughts toward us; none can compare with him! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told (Psalm 40:5).

And best of all, they are available to all. If you would like to hear the very same words I heard on the couch in northern Minnesota, read Psalm 66:5-7. That is where I heard them. O how precious is the Bible. It is the very word of God. In it God speaks in the twenty-first century. This is the very voice of God. By this voice, he speaks with absolute truth and personal force. By this voice, he reveals his all-surpassing beauty. By this voice, he reveals the deepest secrets of our hearts. No voice anywhere anytime can reach as deep or lift as high or carry as far as the voice of God that we hear in the Bible.

It is a great wonder that God still speaks today through the Bible with greater force and greater glory and greater assurance and greater sweetness and greater hope and greater guidance and greater transforming power and greater Christ-exalting truth than can be heard through any voice in any human soul on the planet from outside the Bible.

This is why I found the article in this month’s Christianity Today, “My Conversation with God,” so sad. Written by an anonymous professor at a “well-known Christian University,” it tells of his experience of hearing God. What God said was that he must give all his royalties from a new book toward the tuition of a needy student. What makes me sad about the article is not that it isn’t true or didn’t happen. What’s sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely-glorious communication of the living God which personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence.

I am sure this professor of theology did not mean it this way, but what he actually said was, “For years I’ve taught that God still speaks, but I couldn’t testify to it personally. I can only do so now anonymously, for reasons I hope will be clear” (emphasis added). Surely he does not mean what he seems to imply—that only when one hears an extra-biblical voice like, “The money is not yours,” can you testify personally that God still speaks. Surely he does not mean to belittle the voice of God in the Bible which speaks this very day with power and truth and wisdom and glory and joy and hope and wonder and helpfulness ten thousand times more decisively than anything we can hear outside the Bible.

I grieve at what is being communicated here. The great need of our time is for people to experience the living reality of God by hearing his word personally and transformingly in Scripture. Something is incredibly wrong when the words we hear outside Scripture are more powerful and more affecting to us than the inspired word of God. Let us cry with the psalmist, “Incline my heart to your word” (Psalm 119:36). “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). Grant that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened to know our hope and our inheritance and the love of Christ that passes knowledge and be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 1:18; 3:19). O God, don’t let us be so deaf to your word and so unaffected with its ineffable, evidential excellency that we celebrate lesser things as more thrilling, and even consider this misplacement of amazement worthy of printing in a national magazine.

Still hearing his voice in the Bible,

Pastor John

Wiping the Floor with the Talpiot Tomb Theory

After working full steam for 16 days, writing about 10 pages per day (documentation included of course), Dr. James R. White provides an overview of his new 158 page book refuting each major argument of the Talpiot Tomb Theory here.

Go Endocannibalistic!

Endocannibalism
Eating other human beings within a social group.

I'm the comedian of the blog and defer to the brains, but sometimes something just needs to be said. I wrote this as a result of a review of the article at the bottom of the post. It was inspired by a challenge to the members of the local atheist group the Piedmont Freethought Association at their October meeting if I remember well, and caused the president to loose his cool and steamroll the conversation using a loud voice and other associated facial expressions and body language that he later apologized for. The sarcasm is intended as a tool to demonstrate the foolishness of the subject.

This juicy tidbit just in from the Endocannibals; Dr. Evan Snyder of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, California, who led the study, in the journal Nature Medicine: "Human stem cells taken from both embryos and fetuses delayed a fatal brain and nerve disease in mice, moving throughout the brain to take on the jobs of damaged neurons, scientists reported on Sunday."

As long as man (and women for you people who can't yield to the Christian Worldview) disregards Genesis 1:26-28 we will 'enjoy' covert endocannibalism. Just like Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (5/21/1960-11/28/1994) we will kill other human beings for our benefit.

Genesis 1:26-28 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

What is the difference between a toasted Grandma Maude' tongue and liver sandwich and embryonic stem cell research you may ask? Why it is A-1 Steak sauce of course. You see, in both circumstances a human being dies for another's benefit without their express determination to do so. Now don't get me wrong, perhaps my grandmother would have permitted me to eat her internal organ and her sharp tongue, but I made a decision not to kill my grandmother and my unborn children. (Andrea sighs in relief ;-)

Why would one decide not to kill their grandmother for food and their unborn children to harvest their eyes for cornea transplants? Only one answer: THEY WERE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD! Otherwise all things considered, the powerful triumphs over the weak. Yes folks, Hitler, tattoos and lunch meat. The postmodern world will make truthiness self serving right down to the choice of the packets of mayonnaise and ketchup at the abortion clinic where the dismembered bodies of little babies await transport to the pumpernickel bread and Mount Olive pickles.

Lunchtime!

Original Article Link

God's Love for Mankind - Titus 3:4

INTRODUCTION (Read Titus 3:1-15)

As we have looked at Titus chapter three it is clear that that Apostle Paul wanted Titus to remind the Cretan Christians to do several things. In verses 1-2, we see that Paul wants Christians to pray for their unbelieving political leaders and to submit to the authority of the secular state as long as the state doesn’t require them to break the Law of Christ. Paul then asks Christians to carefully consider their present salvation in light of their past sins by remembering that many of us were also once foolish like the unbeliever. At one time, we were just like the unregenerate, whose practices we now hate, and were it not for the sovereign, electing grace of God in salvation, we would still be wallowing in our sins. Paul says,

^NAU Galatians 5:19-21 Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, ²¹ envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (cf. 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Eph. 2:1-3; 4:17-19)

The apostle Paul admitted that before his conversion he “was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor.” (1 Tim. 1:13; cf. Acts 8:3; Phil. 3:6) Yes my friends, before regeneration, all human beings are considered depraved in their nature and hostile to God no matter how outwardly moral, respectable, and religious they might seem to be (Rom. 8:7-8; Eph. 2:3; Col. 1:21). And as true as that is, if we are going to truly appreciate the grace that God has granted us by considering the pit of sin that we have been rescued from, we have to remember that unbelievers act like unbelievers and we shouldn’t expect anything else from them. In our former condition, “we also were once foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.” (Titus 3:3). And it’s because of those things that it’s so easy to get irritated with unregenerate people. They have different goals, impulses, motivations, likes and dislikes. This is because they serve a different spiritual father, one that has mastered the art of lying and deceit (John 8:44). Jesus said to the Pharisees, "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

In spite of the fact that they’re children of the devil, the Bible tells us that God has showed a particular type of love for all men whether elect, reprobate, regenerate, or unregenerate. Titus 3:4-7 says,

^NAU Titus 3:4-7 But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, ⁵ He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, ⁶ whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷ so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

The word “But” used in verse four turns the emphasis from remembering our former lost condition to a need that is just as important for us to realize now. This is the need of remembering our present condition of salvation. When you look at verses four through seven, that is actually one sentence in the original, and it’s in that sentence that Paul lists seven categories again, but now focuses these on the seven aspects of salvation. In this section, Paul sweeps across the glorious truths of salvation, showing that every aspect of it is sovereignly initiated and energized by God alone.

When we look at verses four through seven we are reminded that we are radically different from the way we once were, and from the way that lost still are, and that it’s only because of God’s kindness, His love, His mercy, His washing of regeneration, His renewing by the Holy Spirit, His Son Jesus Christ our Savor, and His grace.

Among other things, remembering our salvation should motivate us to keep in mind that the only reason we are different now is because He saved us. When we are continually hammered by this ungodly world with the constant temptation to enjoy it’s hedonistic pleasures, we should focus above all else on the sovereign grace of God, who delivered each one of us from that life purely by His own will and for His own glory and not because of anything desirable or worthy that was in us. It is God who “so loved the world [both Jew and Gentile] that He gave His one and only Son, what whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life, . . [and] that the world should be saved through Him” (John 3:16-17). So, when we speak of God’s goodness in light of our former badness, we should take the time to look at Titus 3:4 so that we can remember God’s general lovingkindness to all people, a lovingkindness that eventually led us to saving faith in Jesus. We’ll look at this under two main points:

I. God’s Kindness for Mankind Revealed in His Common Grace

II. God’s Love for Mankind Revealed in His Special Grace.

TEACHING/APPLICATION

I. God’s Kindness for Mankind Revealed in His Common Grace.

^NAU Titus 3:4 But when the kindness of God our Savior . . . . appeared,

^BGT Titus 3:4 o[te de. h` crhsto,thj kai. h` filanqrwpi,a evpefa,nh tou/ swth/roj h`mw/n qeou/(

Historically, Christians who have held to the doctrines of sovereign grace have held that there are two major types or categories of God’s grace: (1) Common Grace and (2) Special Grace. Common grace is the general goodness and lovingkindness that God shows to all people everywhere but is not saving and is resistible. In other words, it is the grace that is common to all men. Special grace is different because it is saving and is irresistible.

1. Common Grace - Every aspect of salvation is from Yahweh alone, and when considering God’s love for mankind, we should first remember that we were saved by His kindness. However, it is important to teach that crhsto,thj (“kindness”) implies that God has a sincere and genuine goodness and generosity of heart toward all people. It is God’s nature to be kind to those who hate Him. There are many verses that teach us that God has a general love and care for all men as creatures, and that this is displayed in nature through His Providence. In one of the most famous passages of Scripture, Jesus says, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” The point of Jesus’ command is that since God loves all men, even His enemies, we should too! Would God command us to do something that He Himself will not do? This is the second greatest commandment, which sums up the entirety of the Law (cf. Matt. 22:37-39).

Jesus also commanded people in Luke 6:35 to “. . . love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind [crhsto,j] to ungrateful and evil men.” (Luke 6:35). This is another good illustration of Common Grace. God is merciful to all men in the sense that He gives good things to all men, expecting and receiving nothing in return. It is important to point out that He is this way to all sinners, regardless of their spiritual state. Doesn’t this teach us something important?

Again, this Common Grace is seen clearly in the many blessings that God gives to all men as His creatures. This is seen when He makes provision for them through nature. In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas were preaching the gospel in Lystra. The people began to think they were the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes and Paul says to them, "Men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you, and preach the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, WHO MADE THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH AND THE SEA AND ALL THAT IS IN THEM. ¹⁶ "In the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways; ¹⁷ and yet He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”[1]

King David proclaimed, “He loves righteousness and justice; The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the LORD.” And Psalm 145:9 says, “The LORD is good to all, And His mercies are over all His works” and verse 14-15 says, “The LORD sustains all who fall And raises up all who are bowed down. ¹⁵ The eyes of all look to You, And You give them their food in due time. ¹⁶ You open Your hand And satisfy the desire of every living thing.”

So, nature tells us something about God’s goodness and general love for all His creatures (cf. Psa. 19:1-3; Rom. 1:18-21). Scripture teaches that “everything created by God is good” (1 Tim. 4:4 cf. Gen. 1:31) and that “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” (James 1:17). When the rich man woke up in Hell he was told by Abraham, “. . . remember that during your life you received your good things . . .”. God gives good things even to the reprobate who ends up in Hell.

One might be tempted to ask why God is so good to the reprobate even though they hate Him. Several good answers are available. First, God gives these things to all men because they display His love for them as creatures (cf. Psa. 145:9). Second, the elect and reprobate are scattered throughout the world and mixed up together. God gives rain to the reprobate as well as His elect, and even gives these good things to the elect before their conversion to Christ when they had the same spiritual nature as the reprobate. Third, God blesses the reprobate sometimes because it benefits the elect. We read in Genesis, 39:5 that “the LORD blessed the Egyptian's house on account of Joseph; thus the LORD'S blessing was upon all that he owned, in the house and in the field.” Just as people were blessed in Joseph’s day because they treated God’s children really well, so it is the same with us today.

So, basically, to sum up common grace you can say this: God gives some good to all men, and all good things to some men. In other words, the Lord bestows a measure of bounty and lovingkindness to all men as His creatures, but in the end He gives all good things in creation to only some of them (namely, the elect). We need to keep these two in balance. This brings us to a discussion of point number two, God’s love for mankind shown most clearly in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

II. God’s Love for Mankind Revealed in His Special Grace.

^NAU Titus 3:4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared,

^BGT Titus 3:4 o[te de. h` crhsto,thj kai. h` filanqrwpi,a evpefa,nh tou/ swth/roj h`mw/n qeou/(

2. Special Grace - What’s even more amazing is that our salvation from sin and spiritual death comes completely from God’s special, saving kindness. This “kindness” consists of His loving, benevolent, and completely gracious concern to draw us to Himself and redeem us from sin forever. God shows this special saving kindness to His elect children. In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul declared, “God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness [crhsto,thj] toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4-7 emphasis added).

We should always remember based upon what Paul says in Titus 3:4 that we were saved by God’s uninfluenced love for mankind, a phrase that translates the compound Greek word filanqrwpi,a, from which we get the English word philanthrophy. It is composed of phileo (“to have affection for”) and anthropos (“man” or “mankind”) and refers to compassion, especially the eagerness to deliver someone from pain, trouble, or danger. It involves more than mere emotion and always finds a way to express itself in some form of helpfulness.

In the last two chapters of Acts, Luke records two instances of unsaved Gentiles showing philanthropia. Before Paul boarded ship to be taken as a prisoner to Rome, the centurion “Julius treated Paul with consideration [filanqrwpi,a] and allowed him to go to his friends and receive care” (Acts 27:3). After the shipwreck off the coast of Malta, Paul and all the others on board managed to safely reach shore, just as God had promised (27:22-26). Luke then reports that “the natives showed us extraordinary kindness [filanqrwpi,a]; for because of the rain that had set in and because of the cold, they kindled a fire and received us all” (28:2).

Paul again refers to God as Savior in Titus 3:4 (cf. 2:11), the central title for both God the Father and Christ the Son and is the overall theme of this letter (see also 1:3, 4; 2:10, 11, 13; 3:6). Near the beginning of his letter to the Romans, the apostle asked rhetorically of those hypocritical Jews, “Do you think lightly of the riches of His [God’s] kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4; cf. 11:22). Paul wants these hypocrites to understand that the purpose of God’s kindness is to give opportunity for repentance. Only the patient lovingkindness of God can be at the back of the apostle’s question in Romans 2:4. And in the same way, it is the sovereign kindness of God working in His Special, saving grace that initiates the irresistible drawing of the Holy Spirit that eventually leads to repentance (John 6:44; 2 Tim. 2:23-26).

With that in mind, this shows that both the kindness and love for mankind mentioned in Titus 3:4 basically describes the same thing in two different words. The two words together especially in the context of these four verses, shows the even deeper agape love that God has for fallen mankind. The best known and most loved passage that expresses God’s agape love is “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). And it is because God has such a great and compassionate love for mankind that He delivers sinners from the oppression and fatal danger of their iniquity through their only rescue, Christ Jesus!

So when did this kindness and love for mankind appear? Well, it was through the incarnation of Jesus Christ that God’s sovereign kindness and love for mankind appeared, at which time His grace also appeared (Titus 2:11). “God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4-6). One commentator correctly stated,

It must be borne in mind that Paul writes as one who has in his own life experienced all this. He does not stand next to his story, but he is himself part of it. Hence, these words about the kindness of God our Savior and his love toward man are as warm and tender as was the heart of this same apostle, a man who was often seen to weep, and who once wrote very touchingly, “The Son of God loved me, and gave himself up . . . for me!” (Gal. 2:20).[2]

And so all believers, who had God’s love exhibited to them even before they were converted by His Special Grace, should glorify God with Paul as they say: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Gal. 2:20; cf. Rev. 1:5).

John Calvin said that although God,

. . . . testifies his goodness and love to all, yet we know it by faith only, when he declares himself to be our Father in Christ. Before Paul was called to the faith of Christ, he enjoyed innumerable gifts of God, which might have given him a taste of God’s fatherly kindness; he had been educated from his infancy, in the doctrine of the law; yet he wanders in darkness, so as not to perceive the goodness of God, till the Spirit enlightened his mind, and till Christ came forth as the witness and pledge of the grace of God the Father, which, but for him, we are all excluded. Thus he means that the kindness of God is not revealed and known but by the light of faith.[3]

CONCLUSION

Brothers and sisters, does it not bless your soul when you take the time to consider God’s kindness and love demonstrated to you in and the rest of the world through the gospel of Jesus Christ? Doesn’t your soul greatly desire to see Him face to face only to experience the fullness of His joy! Do you not long to participate in that intense time of fellowship in heaven with Christ Jesus and all those precious saints that you so dearly miss that preceded you in physical death? For it is in heaven, when the day of resurrection has past, that we will experience the fullness of the golden chain of redemption in the glorification of our bodies. We will then understand what the scene in Revelation 5 means where John says,

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, ¹² saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing." ¹³ And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, "To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever." ¹⁴ And the four living creatures kept saying, "Amen." And the elders fell down and worshiped. Revelation 5:11-14

Unbeliever, have you considered the kindness and love that God has shown to you? Have you considered the horrible penalty for your sinfulness? Do you realize that you are lost and depraved without Christ? Do you realize that your unrepentant sins keep you separated from fellowship with your Creator? You have stolen, cheated, lied, committed adultery, fornication, have disrespected your parents, have hated God in thought, word, and deed, and have blasphemed His name, and to top it off, you have despised His grace. What worse, is that even though you are a wretch, you probably think that you are a pretty good person and that God’s a pretty good guy too. What you don’t know is that God is good, but He’s not safe. You think that He’ll let you go scot-free of the crimes you’ve committed against Him just because you think “He’s a pretty good guy.” Well, this pretty-good God doesn’t exist because it’s a figment of your imagination. The God of the Bible is a good God, but He’s nothing like the wimpy god of your imagination. He’s the Ultimate source of all that is good and because He’s an infinitely good God He must judge your infinite crimes against Him accurately and thoroughly, and as a result, you will serve your sentence forever in the eternal prison of Hell, a place the Jesus described as a horrible outer darkness (Matt. 22:13). And so, He will either damn your soul to this eternal prison or bestow upon you forgiveness of sins through Christ paying the penalty for your sins so that you don’t have to. Jesus said that you will experience this judgment if you don’t turn from your sins and put your faith in Him. And so, I will say the same thing to you that God said to the nation of Israel, a nation that had fallen into worshipping false gods, “As I live!' declares the Lord GOD, 'I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die . . . ?” (Ezek. 33:11)

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[1] See also Job 37-39; Psalms 65:5-13; 104:1-30; and 136:25.

[2] William Hendriksen and Simon J. Kistemaker, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of Thessalonians, the Pastorals, and Hebrews, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004), 389.

[3] John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries: Vol. XXI, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2003 reprint), 330.

Reading This Will Do Some Good

John Piper's father passed away. Here's his recollection of the events.

Cold-Calling JWs and Exegetical Atomic Bombs - Part Deux

Introduction: The following series of posts will provide a somewhat detailed exposition and defense of the major passages that have traditionally been used to teach and defend the deity of Jesus Christ as the second person of the Triune Godhead. In the days of the apostles, the battle cry was “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15). Sadly, that focused and dogged determination to defend the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith has changed in modern times through the continued watering down of those doctrines through liberalism, neoorthodoxy, higher criticism, secular humanism, and finally postmodernism.

However, to effectively counter the development of heretical doctrines within the Christian Church the Apostle Paul told Titus that one of the qualifications for the elders at Crete was that they had to hold “fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.” (Titus 1:9). As pastors/elders/overseers equip their flocks for the work of the ministry for the building up of the body of Christ (Eph. 4:11), they should teach the flock of God to speak out against false teachings that confuse as well as outright deny definitive Christian theology and compromise the purity of the Church. For if purity is not maintained, then the precise lines of doctrinal purity will be blurred and smeared, and false teaching will be mistaken for truth by unsuspecting sheep.

Not only should elders be able to defend the faith against all opposition, but all Christians should be able to reasonably and biblically communicate essential Christian doctrines such as Justification by faith alone, the tri-unity of the Godhead, and the deity of Jesus Christ as the second person of the triune Godhead. This booklet will be focused upon explaining and defending the deity of Christ from the traditional passages that have historically used by Christians to do so and it will be written in such a way that every Christian can learn and benefit from the material contained in it. These passages will include John chapter 1, John 20:28; Hebrews chapter 1, Titus 2:13, 2 Peter 1:1, and Revelation 1. Accurately explaining, affirming, and defending who Christ is based upon His own self-disclosure to us in Scripture not only honors Him as He should be honored, but also highly glorifies Him and thus constitutes true worship done in spirit and in truth, the very thing that the Father seeks (John 4:24).

John 1:1-3

The Greek text of John 1:1 (with English transliteration and translation following) reads VEn avrch/| h=n o` lo,goj( kai. o` lo,goj h=n pro.j to.n qeo,n( kai. qeo.j h=n o` lo,goj, en archē ēn ho logos, kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon, kai theos ēn ho logos (In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God). Verse 2 goes on to say in English, “He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”[1] These passages clearly express the divine nature of Christ from an exegetical standpoint in the following ways:

1. Jesus (the “Word”; cf. v. 14) is eternal. Grammatically the verb translated “was” (h=n, ēn) (“In the beginning was the Word”) is an imperfect tense which indicates the continued existence of the Word in this context. Hence, the Word is eternal, and without origin. The grammar is clear in that it indicates that Jesus did not have a beginning nor was He created at some point in time as the ancient Arians taught.[2]
2. The Word was fully God (1:1c; qeo.j h=n o` lo,goj, theos ēn ho logos; also see John 1:18; 20:28; 1 John 5:20).

3. Jesus was the Creator as the text of 1:3 says that he made “all things”. In Greek this is pa,nta diV auvtou/, panta di' autou (“all things through Him,”) and the word translated “by” is dia. Dia with the genitive autou has the same force as in Col. 1:16ff; 1 Cor. 8:6 and Heb. 1:2 in that such a grammatical construction indicates that the Word was the originative means by which the universe was created. Dana and Mantey provide the following clarification regarding the use of dia, dia here since it implies that “Jesus was not the absolute, independent creator, but rather the intermediate agent in creation”[3] thus showing that the entire Trinity was involved in the creation of the time-space-matter universe. Thus, Christ’s deity is so plain in light of His creative function that the New World Translation of Jehovah’s Witnesses had to change John 1:1c to read: “and the Word was a god”[4] to further obscure the truth.

Of course, the insertion of the English indefinite article (“a”) would teach that Jesus is one god of many gods and hence violates the clear monotheism of Holy Scripture. It is also important to point out that the Unitarianism of the Jehovah’s Witnesses would also be violated if Jesus were not one in essence with the Father, and so their own doctrine refutes itself (2 Tim. 2:25). The concept of a supreme God that is the ruler and head of all the lesser gods was a pagan concept and not a Christian one. Commenting on John 1:1, Reformed theologian, Benjamin B. Warfield stated,

According to the predicates which he [John] here applies to Him he can mean by the ‘Word’ nothing else but God Himself, ‘considered in His creative, operative, self-revealing, and communicating character,’ the sum total of what is Divine (C. F. Schmid). In three crisp sentences he declares at the outset His eternal subsistence, His eternal intercommunion with God, His eternal identity with God: ‘In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God’ (Jn. i. 1) . . . . He was not was nevertheless not a separate being from God: ‘And the Word was “-still the eternal ‘was’ – ‘God.’ In some sense distinguishable from God, He was in an equally true sense identical with God. There is but one eternal God; this eternal God, the Word is; in whatever sense we may distinguish Him from the God whom He is ‘with,’ He is yet not another than this God, but Himself is this God . . . . John would have us realize that what the Word was in eternity was not merely God’s coeternal fellow, but the eternal God's self.”[5]

Biblical scholar, David J. Ellis, explains further:

The fullness of the Godhead and the Word are identified. The active Word immanent in the world is no less God than the transcendent God beyond all time and space. The absence of the definite article in front of ‘God’ taken by some to mean that the Word possessed something less than full deity, implies, however, that other persons exist outside the second Person of the Trinity.[6]

Thus, from the first century to the present period, orthodox Christians have used John 1:1 as a clear proof-text that affirms the deity of Jesus Christ. The next important passage for our consideration in part III will be John 1:18.

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[1] Italics mine for emphasis.

[2] It is important to note that the modern equivalent of the ancient Arians is the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

[3] H.E. Dana & Julius R. Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, (New York NY: MacMillan, 1958), 102.

[4] New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, (Brooklyn, NY: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1984), 1327.

[5] Benjamin B. Warfield, Biblical Doctrines (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1996), 190-92. Italicized emphasis mine.

[6] The International Bible Commentary with the New International Version, F. F. Bruce, Gen. Ed. (Nashville, TENN: Guideposts, 1986), 1232.

Where is Mary?

This information puts an end to the Jesus family-tomb theory.

Dialectical Tensions II

Introduction: What follows is the final interaction I had with a very cordial atheistic idealist.

Thanks for your reply and willingness to discuss these issues rationally and cordially. Since my time is limited, this will be my last response to you. Essentially what you’re arguing for is an atheism that is Platonic versus materialistic in nature. You have rightly recognized that philosophical materialism is bankrupt for some of the following reasons as represented via the following syllogisms:

Argument One:

1. Material things are extended in space.
2. Logical laws are not extended in space.
3. Therefore, logical laws are non-material.
4. Materialism posits that non-material entities do not exist.
5. Therefore, logical laws do not exist.

Argument Two:

1. Laws of logic are objective, universal entities that apply to all people, places, and times.

2. Materialism holds that only particular entities have ontological existence.
3. No material thing is a universal entity.
4. Logical laws are not material things.
5. Therefore, logical laws do not exist.
   

Argument Three (using “is-ought” fallacy):

1. Some atheists say that because we are logical means that we ought be logical.
2. But what is the case doesn’t tell us what should be the case.
3. Therefore, because people are logical it doesn’t follow that they should be logical.

Argument Four (Against Rationality using “is-ought” fallacy):

1. Some atheists say that because man displays rational behavior means that they ought be rational.
2. But what is the case doesn’t tell us what should be the case.
3. Therefore, because people act rationally it doesn’t follow that they should act rationally.

You stated,

You seem to be confusing atheism with materialism. As an atheist, I simply do not believe in God. This does not rule out an immaterial world. For example, atheism is technically consistent with a supernatural afterlife (albeit one not controlled by a God). Therefore, presupposing immaterial abstract laws of logic is not a problem. I do not have to show how these are compatible with naturalistic materialism, because I am not holding to a naturalistic or materialist position, merely one without the Christian God.

And so, you rightly note that there are some atheists that not only believe in the physical realm, but like you, they also believe that non-physical things exist. To put it in other words, you believe not only in a physical realm but also a non-physical one that is often called a realm of ideas, a mental realm, or some sort of non-physical realm. I’ll try not to say “spiritual” because you may object that this is too “religious” so, I’ll try to avoid that kind of jargon. And so, as a Christian, I’ll take the time to consider a philosophy that which was popularized and systematized by Plato, and again, as I’ve already reiterated, this particular philosophy believes that there’s not only the physical domain, but there’s also the non-physical domain. However, this philosophy is a secular philosophy (meaning, it’s not governed by sacred ritual, religious dogma, and things of that nature). This philosophy has been known in Western philosophy as idealism.

The outworking of Plato’s beliefs

Plato did not believe that the physical world was ultimate reality but in fact he thought that it was at best, a secondary reality. He taught that the physical world is always changing and because it’s always changing it cannot be the object of knowledge. So, for whatever it is that we know in the realm of concepts, ideas, thoughts, immaterial laws, those things are unchanging. In other words, these objects of knowledge do not move around, they are not in flux. And so, since this world is always changing, then the ultimate object of knowledge is not grounded in this world, but it must be in another world, one that’s not like this constantly changing world of time and space. So, when I write the number “3” on the chalkboard, I am putting the numeral “3” on the board, a physical representation or instantiation of “3” rather then the number “3”, which is the concept “3.” And so, concepts are things that are immaterial, meaning you can’t go grab them out of the refrigerator and you can’t stub your toe on them. So it goes with the concept of humanity. Humanity doesn’t exist in this world, but humans do and so Plato said that there must be a realm of these ideas (the idea of “3”, the idea of humanity, the idea of mortality, etc.). Now, there’s a little inconsistency that’s humorous here, you don’t want to nag about it, but Plato was embarrassed to say that there was a form or idea for icky sorts of things. He didn’t think there was a form for things like hair, warts, or feces. He thought that there’s no need to have a form for those things. Now, I’m certainly not discrediting the intelligence of Plato, for he truly was a brilliant man, but one has to wonder what’s wrong with a guy when he’s that inconsistent.

A Brief Critique of Platonic Idealism

For all the noble concepts such a justice, goodness, and truth, according to Plato, there is a realm of ideas or ideals (hence the name Idealism) where they are found. So, in this world, we find Huey, Duey, and Louie out on the pond and duckness in heaven above (although I don’t like saying “heaven above” in this context because that makes it sound almost religious when it’s obviously not). So, Plato believed in a realm of ideals (i.e., ideas), and so I’m going to offer a friendly critique this position, which is often called Platonic idealism.

Now, there are many atheists who wouldn’t call themselves Platonists per se, but nevertheless, they take for themselves this same basic philosophical position. They want to say that all that exists is the physical cosmos and matter in motion but then they want to believe in immaterial concepts like love, justice, and fair play. They may not be as sophisticated as Plato in developing this realm of the forms and the relationship between the forms and things in this world, but they are, under the skin, philosophical brothers and sisters with Plato. Of course, there are other forms of idealism than just the one I’m writing about, but the most rigorous form of idealism in the history of Western thought is Plato’s. And so, if we can deal with the most philosophically rigorous form of idealism (which is Plato’s), then we can more easily handle the others also.

So, Plato said there’s an immaterial realm that contains the concepts and ideas of things like duckness, humanity, justice, and love. In fact, according to this philosophy, everything you can think about (unless it’s disreputable like warts.) has a form in that immaterial realm of ideas. Now, in this world of time and space, we find particulars (particulars are material objects that are locatable in space such as a chair, a person, a tree, an atom, etc). For instance, think about the three ducks Huey, Duey, and Louie out on the pond. So particulars are in this world of time, space, and matter. Universals, that is, the universal idea or concept of “duck” is in a different realm, an immaterial realm. What is one of the things that you would be inclined to ask Plato if you got to talk to him?

“PLATO, HOW DO YOU *KNOW* THERE IS ANOTHER REALM?”

It is at that point that Plato falls right into the Christian apologist’s hands at that point because his answer would’ve been (unlike those who are less philosophically sophisticated): “I’ve never seen that other realm because it is not open to the senses. But, there must be another realm because it’s a rational necessity.” In other words, if there is no other realm like that then we cannot make sense of our experience. I’ll readily admit that this is good thinking on Plato’s part, but it falls dreadfully short because it ends up writing philosophical checks that it can’t cash, as we’ll see in a moment.

Now, those of you who have paid careful attention will understand why the ancient church had such a problem with Plato. We had church fathers that wanted to say that Plato was a “crypto-Christian” in the sense that Plato represents the Christian worldview but he didn’t have the advantage of hearing from Moses and the prophets. And so, some early Christian apologists made a huge mistake in trying to make a quasi-Christian out of Plato, but you can almost understand why they made this mistake because they wanted to put Plato in heaven because his argument was good. The point is: Plato said there has to be something more than this world or this world just doesn’t make sense. So, let’s take a look and see how he tried to “make sense” of this world.

Refutation of Plato’s Idealism

Q: Do you know who refuted Plato to his utter embarrassment? His best student, Aristotle refuted him.[1] Aristotle’s response to Plato was classic. He said, “What good is an unchanging form outside of this world?” He was essentially saying, “Big deal Plato. We never encounter these forms or ideals (ideas) and so how can they help us explain anything?” Aristotle also added this, which was really rigorous, “Especially, how can they help us explain motion? The most pervasive characteristic of this world is motion and you’ve got these unchanging blocks or forms such as the concepts of love and justice. How do they help us explain what happens in this world?” It was in this context that Aristotle coined the phrase, “You’re so heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good.” You’ve got this philosophy that answers the problem of how there can be immaterial laws of logic and laws of morality (In that case it would be unchanging moral values such as goodness and justice), but they don’t have any relationship to this world!” Now what did Plato think the relationship of those ideals or forms was to this world of time and space? The answer he offered to Aristotle essentially was this, “The things of this world participate in their form.” “Participate in their form”? You must understand that this is considered philosophically ridiculous.

The best Plato could do to explain this was to use the illustration of different actors participating in their role. He said that is kind of like what it is. All the ducks in this world are all trying out for “duckness.” They’re all playing the part of duckness. So, there are many actors playing the part but there’s only one role. [What a dreadful philosophy!] So, we’re coming down to the basic nature of reality and Plato is resorting to a metaphor! It’s actually worse than that.

The Question we then ask Plato: “Plato, how is it that the forms end up informing the material world?”

You see, the ducks are made out of matter. Think of it this way, your mother is making cookies, she’s rolled out the dough and she’s got a little duck-like cookie cutter and she imposes the cookie cutter on the dough and now we’ve got three duck-like cookies. But now, what if your mother never brought the cookie cutter and the dough together? Would we ever get any duck-cookies? No, and so Plato can’t just say that there’s another realm of ideas like justice, “duckness”, and so forth. He’s got to bring that realm of ideas into contact with the physical world in which we live and he knew that he couldn’t explain how that’s supposedly done because in Plato’s philosophy (and in modern Platonic forms of atheism) there is nothing or no One that imposes such immaterial forms on the physical world.

Plato knew that [2], and when he was pushed to give a rational explanation as to how the forms (ideas) informed the physical world he said he didn’t know and he had to resort to a non-revelational myth. Again, Plato said that he would have to resort to a non-revelational myth to explain it. He ended up saying that the demiurge [3] imposed the forms on the material world many years ago. Of course, this isn’t a philosophical explanation, it’s a mythical story! Worse than that, it’s not even a story that Plato believed was literally true! So, another theoretical question we can ask Plato and modern atheistic Platonists:

**“So, getting back to the main point Plato, how do you get your forms (concepts, ideas), how do you get your laws of logic, how do you get your universals, how do you get your moral absolutes, how do you get your class concepts, how do you get all those things into this physical world?”**

And the answer given by one of the greatest idealist philosophers in the history of Western thought said, “I don’t know, beats me!” So he loses because you can’t have a worldview that just *arbitrarily* says, “Well it’s kind of like an actor playing a role, or like the demiurge making cookies.” But that’s just *not* going to cut it philosophically, and that’s why his best student Aristotle went in a completely different direction. Aristotle said, “I don’t care about anything that exists outside of time and space because the only thing that’s going to be helpful to us are things that exist in time and space. But then of course, when you take Aristotle’s route, you’re right back to the materialistic atheism that was briefly refuted in the earlier syllogisms.[4]

Aristotle realized that Plato’s attempt to bring ideals, class concepts, or laws into his explanations was not justified. So, he could believe it, but he couldn’t justify why he believed it. And in order to know something with certainty, you have to have a justified, true belief (or to be more philosophically correct per Plantinga, you need warrant). Plato may have had a true belief (in the sense of positing the existence of an immaterial realm), and Aristotle said, “I’m not sure that it’s true”, but it’s certainly not justified or in other words, we have no way of knowing whether it’s true or not. So ultimately, it’s no good.

The modern atheistic idealist

Now, the modern idealist may say “You know I don’t believe in a god but I believe in the immaterial laws of logic and the immaterial moral absolutes consisting of class concepts like justice, fairness, equity, and love.” Or, “I don’t believe in the Christ of Christmas but I believe in peace and goodwill toward men.”

Questions for our Atheistic Idealist friend:

1. From within your worldview, how can justice be absolute since in your worldview everything’s changing and everything’s subjective? There can’t be any objective, absolute notion of an immaterial class concept like justice to apply to this world since everything’s changing and everything’s subjective. And by the way, the world’s not a very happy place if there’s no justice either, so you can just forget about your goodwill and peace on earth at Christmas time also! There are no ideas or ideals that you can justify. But if my idealist atheist friend goes on to say, “No, I really think that they exist . . .” then I’m going to ask,
2. Where do they exist?
3. How do they exist?
4. Where did they come from?” Or to give the atheistic idealist the best question of all[5],
5. What’s the relationship between your ideals and the world we live in? That last question is the problem that Plato couldn’t answer and that’s the problem that no idealist can answer. Remember that as you think through these issues.

So, atheistic idealists (who are, by default, metaphysical dualists) believe that there are two types of reality and they will always be faced with the dilemma, “How do you bring the two types of realities into relationship with each other?” Again, that is the 64 million dollar question that idealists cannot answer! You go on again to state,

“So, I ask you, why can I not presuppose the existence and correctness of the absolute laws of logic, and produce a coherent worldview?”

Again, you can, but when you do, if you are an atheist of any stripe, you will have to appeal to some form of mystery, the very thing that you cannot account for nor can you resolve the rational/irrational dialectic present within such a position. You stated,

”You say that I have no 'epistemic warrant' for presupposing the laws of logic. I still do not see how you escape the same problem with God.”

Keep in mind that by making the above statement you admit that you do have a problem justifying the uniformity of logic from an epistemological standpoint. Christians have no epistemic problem because God has revealed Himself to us in history and through His word and we have no source to which to turn of higher epistemic status than His own authority. We have no epistemic problem since we can justify our knowledge of the uniformity and regularity of the universe by appealing to the revelation and mystery of the triune God while avoiding the rational/irrational tension present in your own system. You go on to ask,

“You say that the bible gives you authority to say that nature is uniform? So, what gives you ‘epistemic warrant’ to presuppose the truth of the bible?”

God’s own testimony provides its own self-authenticating, epistemic warrant. There is no higher referent point to turn other than God’s self-disclosure of Himself as found within history and recorded in His written word. We cannot appeal to extra-biblical evidence in order to bolster the truthfulness of God’s own word because to do so would mean that God’s word is no longer the ultimate authority, but the extra-biblical evidence is. Please allow me to explain in some detail.

In the history of apologetics, Christians apologists have done two things (the vast majority have done the one and I’m in the small minority that does the other). The vast majority say (1) we let the secular world determine the standards for obtaining epistemic certainty and then we as Christians come along and say ‘we can meet those standards.’ So, when we pass the test of those standards with an A+, therefore, you can say then that Christianity is certain. Now, it doesn’t take any sophisticated work in epistemology or logic to see that if that is your general approach, even if you can get to the conclusion that Christianity is certain (and I don’t believe any evidentialist has done that, I mean there’s a whole lot more in-house talking amongst evidentialist Christian apologists about the certainty of the Christian faith than there is conviction outside), but even if you could theoretically get to that type of certainty, you would get to it at a very high price because Christianity becomes certain at the cost of something being more certain that it; namely, those very standards set by the secular world.

So whenever you have an apologetic system that argues, “You tell me what the standards of truth and certainty are and I’ll meet those standards and then you’ll see Christianity is true” - even if you get to that conclusion, you have to grant to your opponent that there is something of higher epistemic authority; namely, those very standards that have been delivered to you and by which you measured the truthfulness of Christianity. This is the very thing the Christian should avoid.

Now there’s another fatal defect that goes beyond this; which is if you use this approach for defending the Christianity, you will also end up saying, “. . . and you don’t need Christianity for your standards.” Christianity at best becomes the conclusion of the system, not the heart of the system. You not only say that Christianity is less certain that those secular standards, you’ll end up indirectly saying that those secular standards make sense on their own. This is what Reformed theologians have called autonomy. Something is autonomous when it’s independent, when it’s self-sufficient, when it’s a law unto itself.[6] So, if we prove Christianity is certain by this method, we do so as the cost of granting that secular standards are more certain and that secular standards are autonomous. And, if I were an unbeliever that had some knowledge of philosophy and I realized that these were the implications of the approach I’d say (like you have hinted at already with your questions), “Even though you’ve proven the resurrection of Christ to me, I don’t need Christianity because my standards are sufficient as far as they go.” And consequently, Christianity is at best an appendix to my system and not the heart of it.

However, the biblical approach from a Christian standpoint, is to say, “There can be no certainty regarding anything without Christianity.” Now, on that approach, instead of taking one standard that somebody else gives you, showing that you pass that standard, then concluding that Christianity is true, instead you say, “We can take anything in the world that anybody claims to know (i.e., “I know that that’s my car.” “I know that stubbed toes hurt.” “I know that rape is wrong.”), anything that a person knows and challenge them to show how they could possibly know it if the Christian worldview were not true. This is really a turning of the tables – we’re saying that there can be no standards without Christianity. There can be no absolute standards, nothing can be known with certainty without the Christian worldview. Of course, that’s a much bolder claim and you can understand why some people would shy away from it because it would seem to lead to the conclusion that unbelievers don’t know anything. But that isn’t what it leads to at all, it leads to the conclusion that you, as an unbeliever can know *a lot* of things, you just can’t account for what you know. Again, you can still know many things, but you can’t give an account of what you know. As Cornelius Van Til liked to say, “Unbelievers can count, but they can’t account for their accounting.” So, unbelievers can know much about the world.

My unbelieving exercise science co-workers know a lot about anatomy, exercise physiology and so forth. But, if the Christian worldview were not true, my unbelieving co-workers couldn’t know anything about bones and muscles and thus, couldn’t do their job. So, my unbelieving co-workers have a job in exercise science not because their worldview is right, but because my worldview is right. Even though they are taking the measurements of joint angles, strength, and cardiac output, it’s only on the basis of a Christian outlook on life that anything makes sense. Science, math, morals, human dignity, or whatever else you can think of has its epistemological root in Christian theism. You go on to ask,

“Instead of presupposing a God who says that nature is uniform, why can't I just presuppose that nature is uniform, and skip God?”

Because to do so would mean that you would be (a) suppressing the truth in unrighteousness since you willingly refuse to give credit where in your heart of hearts you know credit is due (Rom. 1:18-25), thus suffering eternal death. Also, (b) you’ll die intellectually as you will have to maintain the rational/irrational dialectical tension that was referred to earlier.

”I would not be merely ‘assuming’ that the laws of logic will operate in the future as they have in the past, because that violates the presupposition I have proposed.”

Well then if you know with 100% certainty that the laws of logic will continue uniformly in the future please show how you know this will be the case without begging the question by appealing to past experiences. Also, please explain in greater detail how I have “violated” your presupposition that the laws of logic are “absolute” based upon your original question,

“Why can't I just presuppose the existence and correctness of absolute laws of logic?” and “How do you account for the existence of God? I'm sure you will say you don't need to because its your presupposition, ie. what you take for granted. Why can't I do the same maneuver with the laws of logic?”

I do not understand how “presupposing the existence . . . of absolute laws of logic” and “taking them for granted” as part of the whole of reality is not essentially the same as assuming that they exist absolutely (“absolute” - being self-sufficient and free of external references or relationships) and thus, being absolute, will continue to operate uniformly in the future. This is what I understood when you used “absolute” in the first series of questions you posed.

It is also important to note that you hint at your own assumptions of the uniformity of said laws when you wrote, “Why can't I just presuppose the existence and CORRECTNESS of absolute laws of logic?” [All capitalized letters mine for emphasis]. Presupposing “correctness” assumes that the laws of logic will operate uniformly in the future, thus providing an external, objective, means by which you can tell what is correct and what is incorrect. So, while you seem to be trying to remove the burden off your own shoulders here, you still have to contend with the fact that you are indeed assuming (whether you’re aware of it or not) that the “correctness” of logical law will continue uniformly in the future, and to assume otherwise, means that we cannot necessarily have this conversation because the law of non-contradiction may not operate uniformly tomorrow. This one of the absurdities that your position logically leads to.

“Appealing to mysteries or abstract laws of logic that “just are” does not cause any conflict in my worldview, because I am not holding to the positions that you ascribe to me. Once again, I merely constructing a worldview that doesn’t include the Christian God.”

It is certainly understandable that you would deny my arguments against your position so as to deflect the irrationality thereof, but to those who understand the history of Western philosophy and can follow what I’ve previously written, you are thinking just like the atomistic scientific rationalist because whether you want to admit it or not, you are maintaining a rational/irrational tension within your worldview and my internal critique of your position stands. Repent of your irrationality and sinful autonomy, and turn to the Lord of Reason, the Lord Jesus Christ (Col. 2:3).

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[1] Aristotle’s best known student was Alexander the Great.

[2] Plato knew his system had this problem for he certainly wasn’t dumb, he was one of the most brilliant unbelievers that ever lived.

[3] A god-like being in ancient Greek philosophy that communicated through the physical world through emanations called aeons. The network of these emanations was called the pleroma.

[4] Aristotle was not technically an atheistic materialist, but he operated as such on a philosophical basis.

[5] Sometimes the idealist will blow off those questions by saying “Well, I don’t know where they came from and it’s not really important.” However, we are back to the same problem that we discussed in part I, namely, that of the rationalist appealing to a type of mysticism in order to justify his rationality, which creates a tenuous rational/irrational dialectic that his worldview cannot sustain and one that his worldview wants to avoid.

[6] Autonomy comes from the Greek autonomia, which literally means “self-law.”