LESSON 2: The Surrender to Secularism

Lesson Objective: To be able to identify where, in contemporary society, a Christian mind is lacking.

INTRODUCTION
Key points from the last lesson: the importance of a healthy intellectual life; what the Christian mind is; humility in our thinking.

We are "being transformed by the renewing of our minds." (Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.)
-How do we test what is always changing? Consider the problem of the
materialist & the random physical universe.

Forget that Christian society has been largely lost, and that we are in a "post-Christian era", consider how our society may be transformed beginning with identifying what aspects of Christian thinking are presently missing and what the remnants are.
-Consider the role of Christians in education. Schools were attached to churches until the government, that time held to be Christian, took them over with our blessing. That trust has been abrogated. Next time around, let's keep our own schools.

IDENTIFYING THE CHRISTIAN MIND
The Intellectual Life of a Christian; discuss its uniqueness. How is it characterized? Its devotion to Christ, its submissiveness to Gods ultimate authority, its patent desire for fellowship among other Christians, it's expression in exploring the depths of the things of God, and its resultant joy in uncovering Gods thoughts after him. The philosophical discipline of epistemology teaches us how to know what we know, the limits of knowing. The discipline of metaphysics teaches us about what is real, what the nature of reality is.
-Because of the ninth commandment, it is important for Christians to learn proper rules for thinking; laws of logic, rules of rationality, right reason.

SCRIPTURE ON OUR MIND
Matthew 22:37 And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."

Romans 8:6-8 The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and p7th; 7the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it d8 Those8Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is his good, pleasing and perfect will.

1 Corinthians 14:13-15 Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray for the power to interpret. 14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. 15What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.

Notice here that not only do both the spirit and the mind (intellect) agree in fruitful prayer and worship, but they both should be involved, that they both ought to be engaged when praying or singing.

Proverbs 23:7 For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he

Proverbs 27:19 As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man.What things do we do, or not do, that affects our intellectual health? What makes up our intellectual life?Read, Sing, Listen, Interact with others

THE TEXT
Summary of Chapter 1: Blamires understands the secularization of society in general. But laments the secularization of Christian thought.

Questions for discussion:
What are some ways Christians adopt secular modes of thought?
Loyalty: a split between ends and means. Loyalty to my denomination? (moral issues)

Triviality: " Blamires described the man who "has a lot to say" about a lot of things and says so what? So did Hitler. Note how the trivial thinker removes all morality and all sense of edification to the point of vanity, emptiness.

Discourse: succumb to using language intended to convey Christian ideas and ideals outside the Biblical sense. eg. wicked, awesome, gospel, hell.

What was Blamires issue with advertising? Recall Preston Manning and his redone hair? "Think Big" refers to them hiring "tie consultants", etc..

THE ROOT
But what is at the core of all this schizoid thinking? Let's examine our presuppositions.




Consider the Calgary Tower. Can you spot it in the Calgary skyline? That circular, narrow, pointed building? Consider its shape. Consider what must be true for you to consider its shape. That is, what must already be true about the Tower you see in the skyline? Would it make sense, for example, to ask "Well it's all fine but I wonder if it has a foundation?". The role of a presupposition in thinking is to make thinking possible at all.

Presuppositions are held to be true without question, without evidence, and prior to having any other knowledge. They are a priori. They are the foundation of knowledge.

Only the Christian God of the Bible can be the final authority which makes any reasoning possible. Bold statement, but read Romans 1:19-23:

"For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles."

"..they knew God"?? An even bolder statement: they already know God! Then, they suppress their knowledge in unrighteousness. How do they know him? As Cornelius Van Til has said, as "back of everything," (Why I Believe in God, link here). Keep thinking, "foundation".

Consider logic, those rules of order which define rational thought. Imagine someone trying to argue against logic, someone who despises it and thinks it worse than useless, evil. How might they go about making their argument? will they say "Logic is evil."? We may say in return, "But you are structuring your sentence in logical order, obeying its laws so your sentence makes sense to me. Using logic to deny logic means, well, I win you lose." Perhaps they may say "Cookies sky infinitude sum." We may say, I'm sorry, you are completely incomprehensible. I win again."

You can see how problematic it becomes to deny logic. If you must use logic to argue against logic, your own argument refutes itself. But if you attempt some communication without it, you are reduced to irrationality. In fact, before you even begin the argument against logic, you've already lost! That is the power of a presupposition and the necessity of understanding what our presuppositions are so we may not violate ourselves.

Back to thinking Christianly. Whence logic? How do you account for it? The secular materialist must use it (for he, too is a creature of God in God's universe), but according to his thinking the universe is a random-chance mass of particles in unordered motion, stuff just moving around. Yet in his life are unchanging laws of logic that permeate his entire universe and apply to all people at all times. How does something so universal, so unchanging and so timeless arise from a universe of only petty particles prancing in perpetual anarchy? In fact, logic does not arise out of physical stuff yet permeates it, does not change, and is everywhere present at all times. What else does this sound like. Why, like the very mind of God. That is, logic is God thinking. Now, no secular materialist will fall down and cry uncle at this, yet he is unable to provide any account for logic whatsoever. Immanuel Kant, the 19th century European philosopher, tried to account for such things by appealing to transcendentals, thoughts held a priori. His problem was that he had nothing in his secular arsenal that could rise high enough to truly transcend the universe itself.

So the atheist mildy turns a blind eye and pragmatically goes about his way. He knows he uses logic and that's fine for him. Meanwhile, he opposes himself with futile thinking knowing the whole time that logic has been revealed to him without any hard evidence for taking it for granted.

Such a glance at presuppositions can be done with other things such as the laws of mathematics, physics and natural laws like causation (cause and effect), induction, absolute morality. At the core of all these things lay the only accounting that has ever been given to man; God. Only the Christian God of the Bible carries an unqualified answer as to how any thinking is intelligible at all.

Let's take a look at knowing what we know. Leonardo Da Vinci is transported in time directly into our Sunday School class. He sees everything you see, he has all the same sensory inputs you do and he is a very, very smart man. But he simply can not understand what that little square box with the glass window is. Note, he sees what you see, but does not know what you know.

Empiricists used to say that we know anything because of our experience in interacting with it. That is, we see, hear, smell, touch, or taste it and those are the only means by which we know anything. This is how we are sure that we know what we know and the only way to be sure about anything. Of course, their first problem came in having to abide by their own rules to show how they knew that we know things by our experiences only (did they see or hear or smell or touch or taste this truth somewhere?). But they were never able to account for the integration of brute facts which becomes knowledge. The sensory data input of experience only remains raw input and otherwise meaningless unless integrated somehow into a unity to actually mean something. In our example, you and Leonardo both see and touch and feel the same thing in the room, but only one of you has knowledge of the concept "television". All he has is the sensory experience of brute facts like "squareness" "glassness", "blackness", "hardness", etc.. (Consider the bushman and the pop bottle in "The Gods Must Be Crazy"). It may be asked, how is it so that you two differ in your understanding? Leonardo is a smart man. How come he doesn't just know it? Why does he not have the concept "television" just by looking at it the same where you are? "Because nobody has explained it to him," you say. Ah, so revelation is required? And who explained it to you? And who explained it to the first knower? We have raw data input from a brute fact plus other revelation? Would I even need the brute facts if I had an explanation/revelation? "Well, he can explore the facts and from them he may formulate the concept of television he never held before."

Watch what happens with this idea of knowing anything; it is still suffering from the problem.

What's interesting now is that when he is done his exploration of the square box, he will finally have, let's say, the concept "television". What is that? Is it that a particular television in his mind? No, he has the one concept in his mind now, not the one television (his head would explode if a television were stuffed into it). Is "television" the experiences he has just had interacting with the television? No, those are experiences, "television" is a concept. If experience where the criteria for knowing we could never speak of it since we have all had different experiences, no two the same. Yet for all of us the concept "television" is identical. Concepts are not experiences. My five year old son knows that when he goes from house to house he can spot a television though no two are the same.

You and I hear or read the word "television" and you and I know exactly, infallibly, what is being said yet we have never experienced the same televisions and most of the ones we have experienced have been different even in our own experience. "Television" is a singular, universal concept we all know yet none of us has ever seen it! We have seen only individual televisions. How do we get from the many to the one? Philosophers don't know. They've been trying to figure it out for thousands of years and have concocted all sorts of failed attempts. Needless to say, there are very few pure empiricists around.

How do Christians say we get from the many to the one? The same way that comes so natural to people when they are asked; someone has to tell them; revelation. Because God had already thought of it and now he has shared it, infallibly, perfectly, with us. Now we may go about and make sense to one another in a universe of concepts that relate perfectly to real things in this world, and not just an empiricist world of brute fact input, brute fact input, brute fact input. All our world, our thinking, our knowledge, is knitted neatly together in the awesome mind of the original thinker whose very thought has the power to make things real. Things like laws of logic, laws of nature, and televisions. Oh the thinks He thinks!

Only Christianity offers a full account that does not contradict itself, or fall on its own weight. Others don't like it, or they may just refuse to accept it. But is saves rational thinking and true philosophy by accounting for how knowledge is intelligible.

In the end, the surrender to secularism comes when we do not simply take God the thinker at His word.

Conclusion:
Christian thinking is a product of a Christian Mind, which is cultivated from within the Church to address any issues. But we need dialogue using Christian terms of reference and practice in the perishing discipline of truly Christian thought.

READING: CHAPTER 2: Christian and Secular Thinking. "I have necessarily given evidence of some of the presuppositions which distinguish the Christian mind's frame of reference from that of the secular mind."