Lesson 6 The Christian Mind, It's Conception of Truth

Objective – to identify the underlying presupposition in the Christian conception of truth and why it cannot be denied without intellectual collapse

REVIEW
This week in review: intellectual activity, challenges to the Christian Mind; See newspaper article on “neutral” ground and the contradiction.
Awareness of Evil
Conception of Truth – truth as ‘what my net can’t catch ain’t fish.’
Presupposition, as conceived of transcendentally, not evidentially. Review again the Christian presupposition.
“The proper place of Christian presupposition is in the consideration of worldview. Not in the detailed mass of information or science, such as what happens when salt is dropped in water, etc.”

INTRODUCTION

Apologetics very much a part of this chapter. P118 he answers challenges. Why? Because of the nature of the temptation to abandon Christian presuppositional thinking (the Christian Mind) for “neutral” thinking.

The “rocklikeness” of the Christian Mind. Why? The nature of its presupposition.

P 119 on the Church.” It is before us, God put it there.”

P 119-120 “The Christian mind has an overriding sense…We have to insist…”

Christianity is not a nice comforting story that we make up as we go along…”

Consider my recent interaction with a Gnostic humanist on the internet.

GH :"What we have here is a God that one is scared into believing in. Hardly the God that Jesus spent most of his time talking about. "BT: Scared to believe in? You have no idea the depth of your own fear of this God:Isaiah 33:14The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?Luke 12:5, the words of Jesus:But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!

Read page 120, 121,122

-Christianity as antithesis, offence
-Christianity as objectively true
-Not built on a “blockhouse” methodology:
Blockhouse methodology: An apologetic approach that begins with beliefs supposedly held in common between believers and unbelievers, then tries to supplement that common ground with additional truth. Van Til finds this methodology in Aquinas’s distinction between natural reason and faith, and in other forms of “traditional apologetics.”
P 124 God is not so cruel …”
· Not the sole domain of educated elite
P. 123 “We must deprecate the idea…”

-Some apologists fail because they assume godless presuppositions
P 123 “These apologists carry….
-Not the subjective truth of Christian committees or councils
P129 “One is the pernicious notion that….” The unbeliever defers his thinking to the fallacy of The Authority Of The Expert.

Article: A BLOCKHOUSE METHOD OF DEFENSE INEFFECTIVE
By Greg Bahnsen (http://home.earthlink.net/~scotsman1517/id72.html)
It has been pointed out that the difference between a Roman Catholic-Arminian and a Reformed type of argument lies in the fact that the former is direct and the latter is indirect. The former grants the essential truthfulness of the non-Christian theory of man and of method, while the latter challenges both.
A truly Protestant method of reasoning involves a stress upon the fact that the meaning of every aspect or part of Christian theism depends upon Christian theism as a unit. When Protestants speak of the resurrection of Christ they speak of the resurrection of him who is the Son of God, the eternal Word through whom the world was made. The truth of theism is involved in this claim that Christians make with respect to the domain of history. And what is true of the resurrection of Christ is true with respect to all the propositions about historical fact that are made in Scripture. No proposition about historical fact is presented for what it really is till it is presented as a part of the system of Christian theism that is contained in Scripture. To say this is involved in the consideration that all facts of the created universe are what they are by virtue of the plan of God with respect to them. Any fact in any realm confronted by man is what it is as revelational through and through of the God and of the Christ of Christian theism.
But if this is true--and it would seem to be of the very essence of the Biblical point of view to say that it is true--then it follows that the whole claim of Christian theism is in question in any debate about any fact. Christian theism must be presented as that light in terms of which any proposition about any fact receives meaning.

Blamires on what the unchristian mind looks like, P 126, 127

“All these notions spring from the erosion of objectivity…”

Why? because all else other than the Christian worldview reduces to subjectivism and subjectivism always reduces to scepticism.

From Apologetics we learned that a contradiction at the level of presupposition can deduce anything. “There is a God and there is no God.”

Scripture: Proverbs 26:
4Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
5Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

I liked this: p 128 “It is a strange delusion…” Consider a model for Christians…why do we see farther now?

Again, page 129,” Of course, …”

Atomism, the study of the minute and not the whole. Thus “university”, unity in diversity, has only diversity as the psych departments delimits the determinism of behaviouristic evolution, and the poli sci group foments dissent under banners of freedom and the university has no account of how they could be so opposed, no unifying thesis.

CONCLUSION

Next Week The Christian Mind, Its Acceptance of Authority